The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery)

by Boneham, Sheila Webster

  forty-five

  “Holy cow.” George was studying one of Giselle’s photos with Tom’s magnifying glass. “Holy crap.” He shifted to another photo, then the third. “Holy mackerel.”

  Tom and I looked at each other, and Tom said, “Holy ornithologist, Batman, tell us!”

  George looked up and set the magnifying glass on the table. “I need to see this bird. I need to be sure.”

  “Giselle is pretty scared …”

  “Janet, if this is what I think it is, it’s one of the rarest parrots on earth. And it shouldn’t be here.”

  “But you’re not sure?” asked Tom.

  “Pretty sure. I need to see the bird. For one thing, there’s nothing here to show scale, so I don’t know how big this animal is.” He went back to examining the photos through the magnifying glass.

  Tom looked at me. “He’s sure.”

  George looked up, put the glass down, and leaned back. He took a deep breath and looked at Tom, then me, then back at Tom. “Yeah, damn it.”

  It was two p.m., and I knew that George wanted to get out to the island soon, but his interest in Giselle’s foster bird seemed urgent. “Do we have time?”

  “The stuff I ordered to catch the island bird isn’t here yet, so yeah, let’s do it.”

  “I’ll call Giselle.” I flipped my phone open, then closed it and looked at Tom. “Give me your phone. Mine’s dead again. It was just working a little while ago …”

  “You need a new battery,” said Tom. We traded phones and I went off to the bedroom.

  Giselle’s phone rang five or six times and I expected to get her recording when she squeaked, “Hello?”

  “Giselle, it’s Janet. I need …”

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. White.”

  “No, it’s me …”

  She cut me off with, “Yes, I can babysit Saturday morning.”

  Silence for a moment, than I asked, “You can’t talk?”

  “Yes, that’s perfect. Thanks for calling.”

  “Call me when you can.”

  “See you then.”

  She was gone, and a shiver started at my shoulders and trickled down into my shoes. What the heck? I sat down on the bed and tried to think. Who could be there that would make her pretend I was someone else? Campbell? Moneypenny? Not likely, unless one of them came to check on the bird. Her cousin Persephone? That would be more likely, except that Giselle wasn’t fond of the woman and claimed not to have had much contact with her in a long time.

  “Did you get her?” asked Tom when I returned to the kitchen.

  I told them about the call. “I’m a little worried about her. We should go anyway, make sure she’s okay.”

  “Maybe not right now,” said Tom. “She obviously didn’t want someone to know she was talking to you.”

  “What if I go?” asked George. “Nobody knows me.”

  “What would you say?” It wasn’t a bad idea, I thought, if he could come up with a reason to ring her doorbell.

  “What if I’m, I don’t know, looking for my lost dog or something?”

  Tom and I looked at each other.

  “We’ll take the rental,” said George, standing up. “No one knows that car, even if they’ve been watching the two of you.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Tom.

  “Then you stay here and man the phone,” I said, grabbing my purse from the back of my chair. George and I were out the door before Tom could protest further. He followed us to the car and said, “Call me when you know she’s okay, will you?”

  “We will,” I said.

  “Seriously. If I don’t hear from you in an hour, I’m calling Jo.” He looked at George and said, “You said yourself that Campbell is dangerous, so don’t do anything stupid, okay? It’s rare, but it’s still a bird. Wait for help if you think you need it.” He paused. “What if Campbell’s there? He knows you.”

  “He won’t know me. I had longer hair and a big bushy beard back then, and I weighed about eighty pounds more.”

  Tom looked doubtful. “Just be alert.”

  “Right!” said George, already backing out of the driveway. When we were out of Tom’s subdivision he glanced at me and said, “Really nice guy, Tom.”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Worries about you.”

  “Right.” I started to get mad, and then it hit me funny and I began to laugh. “What is it with you men? I’ve lived alone for, jeez, two decades. I’ve photographed wild stallions and grizzlies. I’ve hiked most of the Appalachian Trail with my cousin. Girl cousin. And now I need a man to take care of me?”

  “What is it with you women?” George sounded mildly amused. “A man shows concern for your safety and you think he’s trying to stifle you?”

  I didn’t really think that about Tom, so I kept mum.

  “What if Tom were snooping around that place, that Treasure House?”

  “Treasures on Earth.”

  “Wouldn’t you tell him to be careful?”

  “Turn left at the corner.”

  He put his signal on and slowed down. “Wouldn’t you worry?”

  “That’s different.”

  “My wife is a rock climber. I’ve never asked her to stop, but when she goes off somewhere with her climbing buddies, I don’t eat and I don’t sleep.” He stopped for a light and looked at me. “I don’t tell her to be careful anymore because she gets mad, like you.”

  “I’m not doing anything dangerous. I just want some answers.” I thought of Anderson Billings and felt hot acid bubble into the back of my throat. My voice was thick in my own ears when I said, “Anderson was a friend, and I sent him out there.”

  We were both silent for a few minutes, but for my turn directives. When we crossed the Columbia Street Bridge, George asked about the rivers, which come together there.

  “The St. Marys and the St. Joseph merge here to form the Maumee.”

  “And if my sense of direction is working, the Maumee flows north?”

  “It does a little while, then twists and turns its way east into Ohio for a while, then north again to Lake Erie.” I gazed out the window at the muddy water. “I’ve always wanted to follow the river all the way to the end.”

  “So this is a regular river city, eh?” George paused for a moment, then said, “You didn’t kill Anderson, Janet, and you didn’t cause his death. But seriously, be really careful about Campbell. Rich was not a nice guy even before his world crashed around him, and if he’s smuggling birds, he has a lot at stake.” Not to mention if he’s been killing people, I thought, but I kept my suspicions to myself.

  We were on Giselle’s street by then, so I had George park the rental car in the driveway of a vacant house with a for-sale sign. It was about four houses from Giselle’s, and I gave him her address. We decided that he should pretend to be looking at the vacant house, go around back, and cut through some backyards until he was closer to Giselle’s place. As George put it, “A little paranoia never hurts.” He was starting to open his door when I had an idea.

  “Wait a second.” I grabbed a red sweatshirt from the back seat. “Take this. You can change in back of the house.”

  He smiled and said, “Sneaky,” then stuffed the sweatshirt under his T-shirt. He grabbed a baseball cap from the back seat too, tucked his ponytail up under it, and got out. He strolled along the front of the house, backed into the lawn as if checking the roof, and worked his way around to the side, then disappeared.

  I felt a little conspicuous sitting in the car until I remembered how dark the tinted windows were from outside. I doubted anyone could see me from the back or sides, at least not from any distance. A minute later a ponytailed man in a red sweatshirt pushed a wheelbarrow from the vacant home’s backyard into the yard next door. I shifted in my seat and watched, and soon a man of identical build in a green T-shirt and backward baseball cap strolled from the far end of the house next door to the sidewalk, where he turned toward Giselle’s house and, half a minute later, knocked on
her front door and disappeared inside. Sneaky back atcha, Dr. Crane, I thought.

  I scanned the street and noticed a Cadillac SUV parked in the shade of a huge old sycamore across from Giselle’s. Seemed an odd vehicle for this modest neighborhood. I’d only been in Giselle’s house once, but I knew it was tiny. The whole neighborhood had been built in the shadow of one of Fort Wayne’s General Electric plants, long closed now, to house factory workers. Like most of the houses in the neighborhood, Giselle’s had a living room, kitchen, two tiny bedrooms, and a bathroom. The area was fairly safe, but was not exactly prime real estate. In fact, Giselle was the rare homeowner here. Her father had co-signed the contract, and she had moved in a few months earlier. She had told me that most of her neighbors rented and didn’t stay very long.

  George had left the keys in the ignition. I reached over and turned them so I could listen to the oldies station. You would think Creedence would distract me, but my thoughts just bounced around in time to “Bad Moon Rising,” which seemed just too appropriate. I turned the key off and leaned into the corner where my seat met the side door, closed my eyes, took three slow deep breaths, tried to clear my head, and nearly had a coronary when someone knocked on the glass behind me.

  forty-six

  The knock on the window behind me sent my body straight up and my heart into overdrive. If I were any taller, I would have hit the ceiling of the car. I blurted something semi-coherent and turned around with my arm raised between me and the glass. A woman’s face was smiling at me from about six inches away.

  I tried to open the window, but the engine was off, so no power. Despite the temptation to slam the door open and knock the intruder down, I controlled myself and opened it slowly. She straightened up and minced backward on fuschia stilettos as I stepped out of the car. She started to say something, but her delivery got slower and slower in the two or three seconds it took me to clear the door and stand up.

  Body language is something people don’t think much about, but being around animals so much has taught me to pay attention to non-verbal cues, and I could see that the woman in front of me was now more frightened than I was. Some goofy image-centered part of my mind wished for a camera even in the midst of this opening parry. A camera and another photographer, since I was one of the subjects. My brain registered actions and reactions even as they happened and I realized that, on some fundamental level, the tables had turned. She may have prowled up behind me, but now I was the predator. The woman had stopped talking and was backing away from me, her eyes very wide and her mouth slightly open.

  My shoulders relaxed and I almost laughed. That reaction probably came partly from my adrenaline leveling off, but I confess that whoever she was, the woman in the fuschia suit and matching heels suddenly looked very like a rabbit to me. Body language, no doubt. I was back in control and made myself turn away from her for a moment to close the car door. I figured it would make her feel less threatened.

  “Oh, I …”

  I turned back toward her and relaxed against the car. “Sorry, but you startled the snot out of me.” Not the worst thing that’s ever come out of my mouth, but the look on her face made me sorry I’d stooped to nasal discharge, linguistically speaking. Gotta work a little more on your language, Janet. “Did you need something?”

  She tugged down on her jacket hems and then raised a hand full of long metallic-pink nails to pat at her short blonde hair. A “Price Reduced” sign had appeared on the for-sale sign behind her in the yard. A black Lexus was parked in the driveway next door, which wouldn’t have meant much except for the magnetic sign on the door advertising the same realtor as the one named on the for-sale sign.

  “Patricia Gilhooley?” I tried to sound breathless at the prospect.

  “Do I know you?” she asked, crossing her arms protectively across her chest.

  “I’ve seen your photo, I think. Yes, I’m sure of it. Fort Wayne Magazine, right? There was an article about you.” And if you buy that, I’ll sell you the old Wells Street bridge.

  Her fear gave way to flattery and she shifted into realtor mode. “Allen County Business Link. You must have seen the interview with me in the April issue.” I was nearly blinded by her oh-so-whitened smile.

  “That must have been it,” I said. It was a lucky guess. The second one, I suppose, although the first wasn’t pure luck. Her name was on the sign in the yard. But she was, by all appearances, doing well with her business, so I figured her photo had to be floating around. I’d have put my money on her having paid advertising out there, but the interview was even better. Honestly, if I’ve ever seen that magazine, it would have been during a long stretch in a waiting room lacking in reading options.

  “Are you here to see the house?” Patricia Gilhooley’s glossy lips puckered. “I don’t recall being notified of a showing today.”

  “We were driving by and saw the sign. Just, you know, having a preliminary look.” I hoped George didn’t walk into the middle of this. I could talk my way out, but he would be hard to explain, especially if he appeared from the neighbor’s backyard.

  “We?” She looked toward the house.

  “Yes, George walked around back to see if the yard would work for our dogs.”

  “It’s a rather small house.” She sounded doubtful.

  “Oh, it’s for our son, while he’s in school. He babysits our dogs sometimes, so they wouldn’t be here all the time.”

  “I see. I’d better go see …” Gilhooley said, starting to totter toward the house.

  “It’s pretty muddy back there.” I realized as soon as it was out of my mouth that it was about as ridiculous as I could get since we hadn’t had any rain in ages, but decided to keep bluffing. “That’s why I came back to the car.” Didn’t want to get my oh–so-dainty beat-up running shoes damp.

  “Oh, dear. They were supposed to fix that sprinkler system yesterday. I’m afraid the timer is off.” She fished a smart phone with a fuschia skin from her skirt pocket. I wondered vaguely whether she had skins to match all her outfits. “I hear it at all hours.” She glanced at me, then back at her phone. “My dad lives next door. I’ve been helping him since his operation.” Before she could check on the errant sprinkler guy, she smiled at something behind me and said, “Oh, this must be your husband?”

  Oh crap, I thought. Busted. Bluffing had worked before, though, so I turned toward the approaching ornithologist and said, “George! This is Patricia Gilhooley, the realtor for this lovely home.”

  George grinned and held out his hand. “George Crane. Cute little place.”

  “So, George, dear, what do you think of the yard? Big enough for our dogs when Tommy doggy sits?” I smiled at him.

  “Might be a little small, honey.” He took a conspiratorial tone with Ms. Gilhooley. “Hard to find a yard that suits three dogs.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean. I have two Yorkies.” She was shifting back and forth on her feet and I wondered whether she might have overreached with the height of those heels. As if to confirm, she said, “Why don’t we go inside, as long as you’re here?” and turned toward the front door. “What kind of dogs do you have, George and … I don’t think I got your name?”

  “Janet.”

  “George and Janet Crane. Okay.”

  “Two Great Danes and a St. Bernard,” said George, draping his arm across my shoulders. “They’re just the sweetest little guys, aren’t they, honey?” It was all I could do to keep a straight face, especially when Patricia turned back to us with a stricken expression. “And we’re starting to get a handle on the barking, at least when we’re home.” George went on, “We do have to have an extra garbage can, though, if you get my drift.”

  That stopped the sales pitch cold.

  “It sounds like you need a much bigger yard.”

  “I don’t know. They would only be here a couple days a week. But you might be right. We’ll talk about it.” George took his arm back and said, “Well, shall we, my dear?”

  Patricia G
ilhooley looked relieved and, I realized later, went down in history as the first realtor who did not offer me her card. As soon as we were in the relative privacy of the car, George and I started to laugh and he said, “Now that’s teamwork!”

  “Ohmygod, George. I think you missed your calling.”

  “What, flimflam man?” He backed out of the driveway and drove back the way we had come, still avoiding Giselle’s house. “You could be right, though. Two Academy Awards in one day. Purty good.”

  “So tell me!” I was dying to know what went down at Giselle’s house.

  But as I watched, George’s smile vanished and he leaned forward slightly, staring out the windshield. I followed his line of sight and had just registered someone walking toward us on the sidewalk to the left when George reached over, pushed my head toward my knees, and said, “Duck!”

  forty-seven

  “What the heck was that all about?” I yelled, brushing George’s hand away and sitting up. “Jeez, George, I think you sprained my neck!”

  “Sorry.” He was staring into the rearview mirror with occasional glances in the direction we were moving. “Campbell.”

  I tried to whirl around in my seat and nearly dislocated my right shoulder when the seat belt locked. “Shit!” I released the belt and turned to look out the back of the car. The person I’d seen walking toward us was still walking, but now his back was to us, and the glare on the back window made it impossible to tell much about him. I looked at George and said, “You sure?”

  “No doubt.”

  “But you haven’t seen him in years.”

  “It was him.” George settled back into normal driving mode, his primary attention back on the road. “What’s he doing there? On foot, no less?”

  “Good question.” I rubbed my shoulder, knowing I was going to have a nice bruise from the strap. “No one can even see through these windows, you know.”

  “Buckle up.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, but I did it. I believe in seat belts. My brother, Bill, wouldn’t be alive if he hadn’t been wearing his a few years back.