The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery)

by Boneham, Sheila Webster

  “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  I opened my eyes and opened the box.

  twenty-six

  Saturday morning we loaded the kayak onto Tom’s van and the dogs into crates in the back and were on our way to Twisted Lake by six thirty. There was a nice breeze but something about the texture of the early sunlight promised serious heat later in the day, so it was good to work the dogs early. A few of Tom’s retriever-training friends would be there with their dogs, and Jay would likely be the token herding dog.

  We stopped for a traffic light and Tom glanced at me. “So really, you like it? You can exchange …”

  “I love it!” I patted the pendant that lay an inch above my sternum. It was a gold disc, about an inch and a half across, with an Australian Shepherd moving in profile at a trot. “You must be psychic. I’ve wanted a nice Aussie necklace ever since I got Jay.”

  “Yeah?” He smiled and drove on. “Glad you like it. Never know about women.”

  I snorted, and thought about my mixed emotions ever since I opened that box and realized that he was not proposing. How could I feel disappointed when I had been telling myself I didn’t want him to up the relationship ante?

  Tom went on. “As I started to say the other night, Drake and I are tired of living alone …”

  It’s scary how often the man does that. And now that he had misdirected me with the necklace, he really was going to propose. I closed my eyes and held my breath, trying to figure out what I was going to say.

  “… so I’m going to start looking for a puppy this week.”

  My whole body relaxed and I started to laugh.

  “What’s funny about that?” Tom looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, which I very nearly had, and then looked back at the road.

  “No, not funny. It’s great! A puppy! Perfect.”

  We talked puppies the rest of the way to the lake. When we got there, Collin Lahmeyer was already there, along with three other local members of the Northern Indiana Hunting Retriever Club. This was an unofficial session, and Collin had invited just a handful of dogs and handlers. Tom had told me that everyone here had a dog entered in the test the following week. Besides Drake, there was one more Lab, a yellow bitch named Annie, plus a Flat-coated Retriever and a Golden Retriever I’d never seen before, and Eleanor, a Golden I did know from training at Dog Dayz. As I expected, Jay was the token herding dog, but Collin had told me to bring him along for a swim. Besides, like most Aussies, he’s up to just about any sport you ask him to try, and he was a terrific retriever in water and on land.

  “Do I have time to go to the island now, before the dogs are out there?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Collin wiped his sunglasses and put them on. “Dogs won’t be out there anyway. We’re working water and upland retrieves, so no reason to have them on the island at all. Help yourself.”

  I can manage the kayak myself, but not gracefully, so I let the men use the advantage of several extra inches of height to lift it off the car for me and told them that I could take it from there. I got Jay out of his crate and switched his nice collar with license, I.D., rabies, and microchip tags for an old ratty one with just an I.D. I keep that one for wet, muddy outings. “Let’s go, Bubby,” I said, and Jay executed several vertical bounces to look me in the eye.

  It took me longer to lug the kayak to the shore and get in it, which I don’t do gracefully, than to paddle to the island. I offered Jay a ride, but as usual he preferred to swim alongside. He shook himself on the island’s grassy bank while I hauled the kayak out of the water, and we set off to explore.

  The island was three or four amoeba-shaped acres in size. Toward the middle, a small rise in the ground pretended to be a hill but didn’t quite make it. There was only one real tree standing, a ghostly old sycamore that from a distance appeared to be dead. Up close, I could see that a few branches had live leaves, but the tree probably wasn’t long for this world. Most of the ground was covered with thick brush and skinny saplings, thigh-high grasses and wildflowers. Everything had that beat-up look of late summer, except for the purple asters and ironweed and gold-petaled black-eyed Susans. A few saplings, mostly maples as far as I could tell, were taking hold, but only a couple of them even reached my chin. The remains of several good-sized trees lay rotting among the herbaceous plants. Something must have happened out here to strip the place of trees. Wind? A tornado? It wouldn’t have been recently. I made a mental note to ask Collin.

  I looked back at the main shore, trying to locate the spot where I had stood with my camera the previous Sunday. If I could see where I was when Drake swam out here, I might be able to figure out where

  he found the bag, or the general area at least. I knew I had been about halfway between the little peninsula where Collin had stood with his shotgun and the short beach where Tom had waited with Drake. And I knew I had been near a beech tree, because I had used its smooth trunk to block the sun for some shots.

  I spotted the tree on the shore opposite me and thought about Drake’s trajectory through the water and then on the island. Jay was rustling around in the brush, lifting his head every minute or so to check my whereabouts. I walked to a spot by the water that seemed about right for Drake’s line of travel the previous week, and I thought about how he had all but disappeared into the grass and weeds. Slowly I made my way in that general direction.

  My nose was starting to run, probably from mold spores on the rotting vegetation, and I reached into my pocket for a tissue. My fingers found something else, and I pulled out a business card. Anderson Billings’ business card. I must have worn these jeans to the final meeting of my photography class. I flashed on an image of Anderson handing me his card when I asked where I could see more of his photos, and that numbing sense of loss wrapped itself around me again. I was getting very tired of losing friends.

  I looked at the image on the card, a bluebird in flight, and reached for my cell phone. What had Anderson said? “There’s a bird?” Something like that. I pulled up his voice message and listened again, focusing on the important parts. “Janet, something funny is going on out here. On the little island, I mean. I went over there, spent maybe twenty minutes … I’m leaving here now, … but I could swing by your place or, you know, somewhere we could meet in, say, half an hour?”

  I stopped the recording and thought about his words as I walked, making my way west between the tangled vegetation and the water. Anderson must have been on his way if he wanted to meet me in thirty minutes. So how could he have drowned? And why were he and his canoe found in the lake while his camera was in his car? It just made no sense. I realized that Detective Jo Stevens hadn’t returned my call, and I hadn’t tried to reach her again. I needed to do that when I finished here.

  I played the message again and focused on the next part. “I’ll try you again when I get to Coliseum.” Meaning Coliseum Boulevard. “Janet, there’s a bird …” Did I hear a thump this time? I played it again, but I couldn’t be sure. Why was the message cut off like that? I wondered, and then my own reveries were cut off when Jay began a deep rumbling growl.

  twenty-seven

  Jay stood in an area of low grass between me and a stand of wild roses. He had drawn himself up tall and rigid and a deep low growl filled the air around us. His eyes were locked onto the far bank of the lake, or perhaps the fence just beyond it that separated Heron Acres from the Treasures on Earth Spiritual Renewal Center spread. Jay took several steps forward and growled again. His hair stood out all over his body as if he’d taken on an electrical charge.

  I walked to my dog and knelt beside him. “What is it, Bubby?” He turned his head and slurped my face, then turned back to whatever he saw or heard, his nose raised slightly and twitching. A shiver went up my arms, but I said, “Whatever it is, it’s a long way away, right, Bub?” I was talking to myself as much as to my dog, but I scratched behind his ear, then stood up and continued walking. Jay came with me and I asked him, “What did you see? A fox or somet
hing?” He stayed between me and the lake, glancing across the water every few seconds, but finally dropped his guard a few minutes later. I didn’t realize how tense my own shoulders were until Jay went back to sniffing around the brush and my muscles relaxed.

  We made our way slowly around the perimeter of the island, zigzagging between the low grass along the shoreline and the shrubs, grasses, and weeds toward the interior. There were remarkably few signs of human visitors—an old blue sweatshirt, a couple of empty beer bottles, a broken fishing pole. Jay chased up a rabbit. First I wondered how in the world it got out there, and then I hoped it wasn’t alone. Alone isn’t good. Alone is lonely. Just as I was feeling very sorry for the rabbit, I caught myself and squeezed out a different line of thought. Alone is independent. Alone is free. I watched Jay nosing through some tangled bittersweet vines and said out loud, “I’m not alone.” Jay raised his head and looked at me, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. “I have you and Leo.”

  A shotgun blast made me jump, even though I knew they were using blanks for the training session. It was followed by a loud squawk that seemed to come from the old sycamore on the island. Crow? It didn’t sound like a crow. I couldn’t see anything at that distance. I couldn’t see the mainland where the dogs and their handlers were, either. Too much island in the way and even without trees, the shrubs and lower-growing plants blocked my view.

  Jay went back to his exploration, and I continued walking. More blasts followed at irregular intervals, but I didn’t hear any more squawks, just the occasional tweet of a sparrow and the complaints of a very vocal blue jay. My own blue Jay and I walked on until I could finally see the action. A dog was swimming away from the shore, a wake fanning out behind, but the shadows cast by the trees offshore made it impossible to see who it was. It took me a moment, but I finally spotted the training bumper bobbing in the murky water. Jay saw it, too, and made a move to go after it. “Jay, down,” I said. He hesitated, but lay down and watched. As the dog emerged from the shadows, the sun hit her golden head and I was pretty sure it was sweet Eleanor, the Golden Retriever I knew from doggy school. She snatched her “bird” and turned back toward the far shore.

  I squinted into the sun and looked at the staging area for the practice retrieves. Something was going on over there. I tried to make out what all the movement was behind Rhonda Lake, Eleanor’s owner. There seemed to be two people, one of them with a television camera on his shoulder, trying to get close to the water. Then a man intercepted them, arms outstretched to form a barricade to keep them from getting too close to Rhonda and her dog’s landing spot. Collin Lahmeyer. His long-legged stride was impossible to mistake. I wondered what that was all about, but turned my attention back to Eleanor for the moment. She was a strong swimmer, and she burst out of the water and shook herself. “Look at her shimmer,” I said to no one in particular, and then I started to laugh at the memory of Jay “shimmering” his lovely white hair all over Neil Young’s expensive dark slacks.

  We were in sight of the kayak when Jay let out a yip and dove into a stand of Queen Anne’s lace and asters, his nub wagging a hundred miles an hour. I started to follow, caught my foot in a tangle of bindweed vines, and stumbled forward several giant steps, dragging the broken vine behind me. “Shit!” I reached down to unwrap the vine from my foot and snatched my hand back, swearing again. My shoelace was covered with burrs. They weren’t yet dried to the razor sharpness they would take on later in the fall, but they were nasty enough.

  Jay barked again. “Quiet!” I said, looking up from the tangle around my feet to see what he was up to. He’s not a silly barker, and I’ve learned to pay attention when he sounds off. He let out a muffled brffff and turned to look at me, as if to say, “That wasn’t a bark, okay?” and then he stuck his head back into the brush and began pulling at something.

  “Hang on,” I said, and bent to unwind the rest of the bindweed from my foot. Jay looked at me and whined, which I understood to mean, “But really, you gotta see this!”

  When I was free, I stepped more carefully through the nest of intertwined vines and tall grass, mumbling, “Better not be a dead rodent.” Jay has a knack for finding dead squirrels and chipmunks, the rottener, the better. But when I reached my dog and looked at the ground in front of him, I sucked in my breath.

  A pile of crimson feathers with a few turquoise ones mixed in lay at the base of a wild rose bush. What made me hold the air in my lungs was that most of the feathers were still attached to a body. A lifeless eye gazed back at me. The short crimson feathers on the bird’s head stood out in haphazard directions, rather like a punk rocker with a red hot dye job. The beak hung slightly open, as if its owner had been surprised by death. A curved beak. Parrot. I thought of Ava, Persephone Swann’s lovely bird. But this was not, I thought, the same species. Despite having half its breast gone, I could see that it had been a slightly smaller bird, and I didn’t recall Ava, or whatever he was called now, having yellow feathers in his tail, nor the stunning splashes of turquoise on his back that this little creature had.

  Jay made a move toward the bird but I blocked him with my arm and whispered, “Down.” He sank to the ground beside me, head thrust forward and nose twitching. I fished a plastic bag out of my pocket, inserted my hand, and started to reach for the bird when another squawk assaulted my ear drums. “What the …?”

  I stood and scanned the island, trying to locate the source of the racket. I’m not a real birder, but I do photograph enough birds and other critters in the wild to be familiar with most of the local voices, and this did not sound like any I knew. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say it sounded like a parrot. That’s just nuts, I thought, and then glanced at the little body at my feet. Parrots? As I continued to scan the island, and particularly the old sycamore, I fast forwarded through the past week. Parrots, I thought again, but this time I wasn’t asking. Something weird was going on involving parrots. First, the red feather in the bag that Drake found on the island. This island. Then there was Ava, Persephone Swann’s lovely “Amazon parrot,” which I had yet to identify more precisely. And Giselle’s comment about becoming a “parrot guardian,” which I took to mean foster home. Was Regis Moneypenny running a parrot rescue program though Treasures on Earth? The conversation with Di Holman about her dog Lennen’s discoveries of smuggled birds ran through my mind. Persephone’s insistence that I not photograph her parrot. Anderson Billings’ message had said, “Janet, there’s a bird …,” followed by that thump and then a terrible silence.

  A flick of red against the sky pulled me out of my dark thoughts and I watched a bird fly toward me from the sycamore. Details and color were lost to the bright cloud behind it, but it seemed to be about the size of a crow with a longer tail. As it closed on us, the colors blossomed. This was no crow. It was a parrot, vivid scarlet with flashes of gold and turquoise. It flew directly over us, low enough that I could hear air moving through its flight feathers, then circled out over the water and back to the semi-cover of the tree. “Janet, there’s a bird …” Had this been what Anderson meant? A parrot?

  I looked at the dead bird again and decided to leave it where it was for Jo Stevens. To make it easier to find, I tied my plastic bag to a chin-high clump of ironweed to my right and another to a shrub to my left. What if something messes with it? There were plenty of crows and other scavengers on the island that might be tempted. At first I couldn’t think of anything to cover it up without messing up the site, but then the image of an old sweatshirt came back to me. I thought it was pretty close to where I’d left the kayak. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Jo’s number while I ran for the sweatshirt, Jay bouncing at my side. The call hadn’t gone through by the time I got to the shirt, and I checked my phone. No bars. “Crap!” I shoved it back in my pocket, grabbed the shirt, and scurried back to the dead parrot. I debated for a moment, then decided that draping the shirt over the body wouldn’t hurt much and might keep scavengers away for a few hours. Before I did that, I too
k a couple of photos with my cell. Better than nothing, I thought. I covered the bird, weighting the shirt edges with rocks.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Time to get off this island and get some help, Bub.”

  twenty-eight

  The training session had wrapped up by the time Jay and I got back to the mainland, where wet-and-muddy owners were throwing sticks and balls for their wet-and-muddy dogs to retrieve. Jay flicked his gaze from them to me to them and whined. “Go,” I said, gesturing toward the furry mayhem, and he was off. I pulled Bill’s kayak well out of the water and joined Tom and Rhonda and a woman I didn’t recognize.

  “This is my frie … whoa!” Rhonda lurched into me as two dripping Golden Retrievers tugging at opposite ends of a float toy ran into the backs of her knees. “Hey, you two!”

  The dogs stopped cavorting and looked at her, still holding onto the toy. The other woman took the middle of the length of rope between the two plastic end grips in her hand and said “Out” very softly. The dogs let go, attesting to the many hours of training they’d had. Every muscle in their bodies spoke to their hope that she’d fling the thing back into the water so they could do it all again.

  “Who’s this handsome guy?” I asked, looking at the Golden I didn’t know.

  “This is Pilot,” the woman said, wiping her hand on her jeans and holding it out to me. “Stephanie.”

  “Janet.”

  She turned back to the dogs and pitched the toy into the water, and they were off.

  Rhonda joined in. “We’ve been planning a visit for ages and finally have a good excuse.” She went on to explain that they had met at the Golden Retriever National Specialty Show a couple of years earlier and had stayed in touch ever since. Now Stephanie and Pilot were visiting for a few days before all four of them headed off together for this year’s Nationals in St. Louis.