by Liz Dodwell
“Perhaps more, or you might get less. Selling at auction is very volatile. I should think you’d certainly get $50,000 though.”
Nineteen
Everyone was on tenterhooks. At one and the same time I think we were all elated over our found treasure, and really nervous we were no closer to finding the killer.
Schroeder was making arrangements for the credenza to be picked up the next day and taken to a secure place for examination. Meanwhile, it had been brought into the house where Rooster and Tyler planned to watch over it through the night. K9 Securities were doubling their guard outside and the rest of us were hoping to get some sleep.
Polly the parrot had been showing off all evening by talking up a storm. No-one complained, though. After all, she was the one who’d directed our attention to the door panel.
“Old Miss Ledbetter must have taught her to say ‘Antique panel. Don’t tell,’ and shown her where the panel was hidden,” Mike said.
“Oh, come on,” I rolled my eyes, “I doubt she could associate the credenza with a few words she learned to mimic.”
Mike looked offended as he handed Polly one of her favorite pine nut treats. “Birds are a lot smarter than people think, and macaws are among the most intelligent.”
“I’ll take your word for it. And no matter what, she’s the greatest bird in the world as far as I’m concerned. I would have dumped that credenza with hardly a second look.”
Mike’s expression softened as I scratched the bird’s head. We were the last two in the kitchen, finishing up the dishes before heading to bed. It felt good that Mike and I could chat like old friends; the tension of a few days ago now behind us.
“How about a hot chocolate to take with you?”
Mike nodded his appreciation and sat at the table as I put water in the kettle and grabbed the chocolate from the cupboard before plopping down opposite him to wait for the water to boil. He was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt that exposed the bird tattoo on his arm. I couldn’t help but look at it for a moment, then quickly glanced away. Mike caught the look, however, and I bit my lips, feeling awkward.
“Sorry, I’m not prying. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
He dropped his head and began to drum his fingers on the table and I thought I’d just messed up again. Then he surprised me when he began to speak.
“I always loved birds, even when I was really young, but my family was so poor they couldn’t even afford a bird as a pet. There was a bird store in the town; it started as a place for people to buy bird feed and cages and such. Then customers began asking the owner if he would watch their pets when they went away, and so he started a boarding business alongside his store.
“Mr. Votaw was his name, but everyone called him Mr. V. He had a gray parrot of his own, Biggles, that hung out in the shop with him. I’d go in just to see Biggles and Mr. V. He was really a good man, started to let me help out with the birds he was looking after. He’d give me a quarter here and there; I thought I was rich.”
The kettle whistled and I jumped up to fix the hot chocolate. Mike went silent ‘til I set a mug in front of him.
“One day, a guy came into the store while I was there. He had this tattoo on his arm and I just couldn’t get my eyes off it. He saw me watching and came to talk with me. I thought he was being nice but Mr. V. later told me to stay away from him, that he was bad news.
“A few days later I came across the guy again. He recognized me, told me he had racing pigeons and did I want to see them? Of course, I didn’t give a thought to Mr. V.’s words of warning and off I went. That was the beginning.”
Mike wrapped his hands around his mug and sipped at the drink; I kept quiet, waiting for him to go on.
“The tattoo on Raptor’s arm – that was his name, Raptor – was for the Catbird Brotherhood. Raptor started calling me Little Big and drew me into his gang. Before long, I was running drugs for him. I felt important, and as if I belonged. But what did I know; I was a kid, just thirteen.
“Raptor would toss money at me from time to time and I would stash it away. When I had two hundred dollars I handed it to my parents, thinking they would be proud of me.” Here Mike paused and his eyes began to tear up. “They were angry. So angry. They’d had no idea what I’d been doing.
“A few months after that, Raptor took me into Mr. V.’s with him. The old man refused to serve him; said he was corrupt. Then he told me if ever I needed help, he would be there for me. Raptor was furious, swept his arm across the counter, shoving things aside, and grabbed Mr. V. He told him he’d better watch his back, ‘cause he would be coming for him.
“I was scared. Then a few days later I was even more scared when I found out Mr. V.’s store had been trashed and the old man was in hospital.”
Mike sipped at his chocolate again, and I noticed his hand shake.
“Anyway, it took me five years to break from the Brotherhood, and this,” he raised his tattooed arm, “is all I have left to remind me what a fool I was.”
“But what about your parents?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I was too ashamed of the life I’d been living to approach them. I joined the Marines and started fresh.”
“Surely now is different?”
“My dad told me then that I was no longer his son. I doubt that has changed.”
I was about to say something more when Mike rose and announced he was tired. Biting the words back I jumped up and put my arms round him. At first he stiffened, then relaxed and gave me a brotherly pat on the back.
“Goodnight, Polly.”
“’Night, Mike.”
Twenty
It felt good to get back to my little home. I opened the door and the dogs barreled past me, rushing around and sniffing at everything to make sure all was in order. While they did their doggie thing I lugged the cats inside in their carriers, and released them from incarceration. Leif and Ollie immediately rushed away, but Ditto’s attention went to the dogs who were whining and pawing at the pantry door.
Uh oh. Did something go bad in there?
I pulled the door outward. There was something bad in there alright. It was Sadie, attorney Newton Alden’s assistant – and she was holding a gun, pointed right at me.
Of course, the dogs rushed right in, tails wagging, excited to find a friend in the pantry of all places. But Sadie was no dog lover. She turned her gun toward Angel.
“Get them off me or they’re dead.”
“Angel, Vinny, Coco!” I used my sternest voice and clapped my hands. As expected, none of them paid the slightest bit of attention to me.
Horrified, I watched as Sadie’s finger appeared to tighten on the trigger, when she let out a shriek and her face took on a wide-eyed look of fear. Her hands jerked upwards and at that moment the gun went off, blasting a hole through the roof of my pantry. Angel whipped around, her paws frantically scrabbling for a hold on the tile floor. With Vinny and Coco close behind, she tore through the pet door into the back yard and to safety.
“What kind of freak place is this?” Sadie screamed and kicked out viciously at Ditto. I realized instantly what had happened. Wanting attention as much as the dogs, Ditto had rubbed himself around Sadie’s legs. Obviously, she didn’t like cats any more than dogs.
Fortunately for my chubby feline, he was still very light on his paws and dodged the kick with impressive ease. Not one to take a threat lightly, though, he managed to shred his claws down the offending leg before he, too, vanished with speed.
That left me alone, facing a dangerously freaked-out woman with a loaded gun. I held my hands up and tried to appear non-threatening. “Sadie,” I said, hoping my tone was soothing. “What do you want? How can I help you?”
“Help? You?” Her voice seemed to have gone up an octave or so. “Look what your disgusting creatures have done to me?”
She held out her bleeding limb.
“I’m so sorry, Sadie. Let me put something on that for you.” If I could work my way to the kitc
hen, I might at least be able to grab a knife to defend myself with.
“Forget it,” her lip curled in an ugly snarl. “Just get me the papers.”
What? “What papers would that be, Sadie?”
“You know, the papers from Naomi Ledbetter.”
“You have all the papers I have. In fact, you gave me all the papers I have.”
“Stop procrastinating. Just give me the stock certificates or bonds the old witch left. I know she had money; she kept hinting about it but would never tell me where she’d hidden it, but I heard the other day you’d found it. So hand it over.”
“Sadie, there are no stocks and bonds. The money is in the value of the door panel.”
“What are you talking about?” She was waving that wretched gun all over the place and I could see a vein pulsing in her neck. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to confuse me because I’ve been awake for more than twenty-four hours. Well, it won’t work.”
My brain suddenly jerked into life. “Is that how long you’ve been here?”
“Of course it is, you idiot, and I’ve waited long enough.”
Good grief. She must have heard the rumor I originally started and assumed the money was in paper. Then she’d been lying in wait for me and hadn’t heard about the antique panel.
“Sadie, an antique door panel was attached to the back of a credenza. It’s been valued at fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars and has already been taken away. Even if I could get to it, it’s not something you can easily hide, or sell for that matter.”
Sadie’s color turned from an ugly red to paper white. Her body went rigid except for the arm with the gun, which began to rise in my direction. I dove for the floor, sliding under the table, and had a moment of déjà vu about exploding eggs before I heard a shot and everything went black.
Twenty-One
It was an evening of celebration. Earlier in the day the antique panel had sold at auction for a whopping eighty-three thousand dollars. When the auction house heard what the money was to be used for, they had waived their fee, so Welcome Home would receive the full amount. All the residents and a lot of friends were crowded into the farmhouse enjoying a big feast with much laughing and back-slapping and hugging.
I was over the moon, even though my head still hurt a little from whacking the table leg and knocking myself out as I slid across my kitchen floor. The shot I’d heard hadn’t been from Sadie’s gun, but was Tyler.
I’d left Angel’s favorite squeaky toy, Itt - so named because it reminded me of Cousin Itt in the Adams Family - behind when I headed home. Tyler, who left soon after me, had seen it and decided to drop by my place so Angel wouldn’t fuss. He’d pulled in as Sadie’s gun went off in the pantry. Fortunately, he’s able to recognize the difference between actual gunfire and exploding eggs, and crept up to the window to see what was going on.
Not wanting to spook Sadie, he grabbed the gun he keeps in his car, climbed the fence into the backyard, and peeked in through the pet door in time to see Sadie lose her cool. As she lifted her gun arm, he got a shot off and into her butt; a fairly substantial target, I might add. By the time I came around a few minutes later, the cops and medics were arriving. Tyler had my head cradled in his arm. “The one time I don’t check your house is when you get yourself in trouble.” That’s my knight in shining armor.
“Where’s Tyler?” Mike parked himself on the arm of the chair in which I was sitting.
“He called a few minutes ago to say he’s almost here.”
At that moment the man of my dreams appeared in the doorway. With all the chatter I hadn’t heard his car pull up. I waved to get his attention and said to Mike, “Talk of the devil.”
Mike stood. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
I grabbed his sleeve. “No, you need to stay.”
His brows drew together in puzzlement, then we both watched as Tyler made his way across the room, closely followed by a Latino man and woman. As they got close, Tyler stepped aside. The man stopped and stood stiffly, but the woman barely hesitated. Crying out in her native tongue she rushed at Mike, throwing her arms around him and sobbing on his shoulder.
Quietly, I eased myself from the chair and, joining Tyler, we left them to it. When we looked back, Mike’s dad – you guessed it was his parents, right? – had inserted himself into the mix and the three of them looked like they would be a family again.
Twenty-Two
Tyler and I were sitting on the front porch in the swing as the last of the guests headed home. We were staying to help clean up but decided first to take a little time to ourselves.
“I enjoyed spending time with Mat and Jake as friends,” I said. “They’re so serious when they’re working.”
“You didn’t get jealous when they both hugged me, did you?”
I looked at the grin on Tyler’s face and slapped him on the chest. “Ha ha.”
He wrapped his hand around mine and we sat in companiable silence for a while ‘til he spoke. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to the Sheriff at all. Did you find out anything?”
“Yeah. Sadie pretty much fessed up to everything. Whenever Miss Ledbetter needed to sign anything or have something notarized, Sadie would go to her house, where the old woman would drop hints about having hidden wealth.
“Remember that company that tried to get you to let them clear the furniture out of the house after Miss L. died? Sadie hired them. She thought there would be a secret drawer or some such thing where the clue to the money would be hidden. When that didn’t work out she found Delbert Fannin, private investigator, and hired him to search for the money.”
“I don’t get it. Why would she kill him, then?”
“She spun Del a yarn about the money being rightfully hers. Said she was related to Miss L., and that I’d coerced her into changing her will. Whether Del really believed her story or not, at the end he turned out to be a good guy and told Sadie he was going to find the money and then figure out who it really belonged to.
“Sadie hightailed it out to the farmhouse that night to conduct her search and just happened upon Del. They had an argument and she grabbed a stick and clobbered him over the head, then dragged the body under the tarp.”
Tyler sighed heavily. “Del didn’t deserve this. Sadie is greedy and vicious. She would have been making decent money as a legal assistant; apparently it just wasn’t enough. I hope she goes away for life, especially after she tried to kill you.”
“She was a shopaholic, according to Wisniewski.”
Tyler guffawed.
“No, seriously,” I went on. “She had a serious shopping addiction; there were piles of unopened boxes in her home, from Amazon and other online stores, and she had a mountain of debt.”
“How does this happen to people?”
“Couldn’t tell you. Just be glad I’m not like that; your money is safe with me.” I poked Tyler playfully in the ribs. “Oh, there is some great news!”
Tyler looked at me expectantly.
“Mat and Jake are adopting Jack. They think he has great potential as a guard dog.”
“That crazy pup?”
“He just needs a chance. And if anyone can give it to him, the K-9 Security guys can.”
Tyler smiled. “Yep, that is good news.”
It was time to head inside and do our part in the cleaning. Entering the kitchen, we bumped into Mike, Polly on his arm.
“There you are. I was looking for you,” he coughed and shuffled a little. “Uh, listen. I really want to thank you both. My parents told me how you tracked them down and persuaded them to come here.”
“Persuasion wasn’t needed,” Tyler said. “They were over-joyed to know you were safe.”
“We’ve got a lot to make up for, and I’m going to try really hard to make them proud of me again.”
I smiled. “Will you move back with them?”
Mike hesitated. “I don’t know yet. Actually, I’d like to talk to you about Polly before I make any decisions.”
>
I understood immediately. “You don’t want to leave her. Well, I can tell you right now it’s obvious she belongs with you, whatever you decide. She wouldn’t be happy anywhere else.”
A big grin spread across Mike’s face, and scratching the bird’s neck I said to her, “Would you, pretty girl?”
“Pretty boy, pretty boy,” Polly responded, bobbing her head up and down.
“Wait a minute,” Tyler frowned. “She said ‘boy.’ ‘Pretty boy.’ Is she a he?”
We all looked at each other.
Oh my gosh. “That would make sense; males are generally better talkers than females.”
“But why would Naomi Ledbetter call a male parrot Polly?” Tyler asked.
“There’s no way to sex a macaw by external examination,” Mike chimed in. “Most people do DNA testing.”
“So perhaps Miss L. thought she had a girl at first, hence the name. By the time she discovered her parrot was a boy, the name had stuck.” This was exciting news to me. “Then Polly should really be Paulie, or Pally, or Phillie, or oh, oh, how about this? Polo?”
Tyler put his arm around my waist and steered me into the kitchen. Calling goodnight to Mike, to me he said, “Come on, there’s work to do.” But I didn’t hear him. My head was still full of happy possibilities for renaming Polly the parrot.
I just love happy endings. Don’t you?
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