by Jan Dunlap
“Midnight snack?”
I glanced over my shoulder as I bent to retrieve the bag from the bottom of the machine. It was Renee Ackerman in a bright-blue sweatsuit.
“I have trouble sleeping during allergy season,” she explained. “I have to get up and move around so I can clear the congestion from my sinuses. Otherwise, I just lay in bed snorting and clearing my throat.” She dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “Sorry. Too much information, right?”
I waved a hand in easy dismissal. “Don’t worry about it.”
“So how long have you known Shana, Bob?”
The question caught me a little off-guard, but I covered my surprise at her bluntness by ripping open my pretzel bag and tossing a couple of the little twists into my mouth.
“Since I was in high school. We birded together a few times. I lost track of her once she left Minnesota to go to grad school.”
“So you knew her long before Jack met her.”
I wondered where this line of inquiry was going, and why.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
She seemed to be waiting for me to ask her something, but I just kept chewing on my pretzels.
“Shana’s a lot younger than Jack,” Renee pointed out.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I repeated.
I could have sworn I saw a spark of frustration flare in her eyes.
“I mean, Jack is—Jack was—a handsome, vibrant man any woman would want for a husband, but really, with Shana’s looks, she’d hardly have to settle for an older man.”
“Settle?”
This time, Renee heaved a very audible sigh of frustration. “I’m just saying that, if Shana were free, she could have her pick of young men.”
I looked Renee straight in the eye. Was this the reason I’d picked up weird vibes from her at dinner? Had she been vilifying Shana to her fellow diners over the burger baskets?
“You’re certainly not suggesting that Shana had anything to do with Jack’s death, are you, Renee? Because if you are, you are not only way out of line, but certifiably crazy.”
I turned on my heel to go back to my room.
“It’s Ben’s theory, not mine,” she said behind me.
I stopped in the middle of the lobby and looked back at her. “Ben’s theory? I thought he was touting Kami Marsden as a murderess, not Shana.”
Renee walked over to stand in front of me. “The truth, Bob, is that Ben Graham will say anything to bask in the media spotlight. I’ve known him since I was a kid. We all grew up together here in Spring Valley—Ben, Jack, Kami and I. The Four Musketeers, you know?”
“No, I didn’t know. And I really don’t care, either,” I bluntly informed her. “What I do care about is that Jack O’Keefe was killed this morning while he was supposed to be scouting birds, and that his death leaves an old friend of mine widowed and pregnant. That’s what I care about.”
Renee backed up a step, but didn’t break eye contact with me. “I care about that, too, Bob. Like I said, Jack was a friend of mine from my childhood. That’s why it surprised me so much when I heard Ben making insinuations about Shana’s relationship with Jack. I’ve never in my whole life, heard Ben Graham even breathe a word of criticism about Jack or anything he was involved in. He worshipped Jack. In Ben’s eyes, Jack could do no wrong. And he was here for Shana this afternoon, too.”
I stuck another pretzel in my mouth and waited for her to finish.
“But I also know that Ben thrives on attention. Ever since he went into local politics, he craves sound bytes like it’s a drug for him. If he thinks he’ll get a few more minutes of air time by implying that Jack’s wife might be less than devastated by his death, then he’ll say it.”
I chewed up the pretzel and swallowed it. “So, if you know this about Ben, why would you even listen to what he had to say about Shana?”
Renee crossed her arms over her bright-blue chest. “Because, once in a while, Ben turns out to be telling the truth. And it seems like it always used to be about the one thing you just couldn’t believe possible.”
“Such as?”
I noticed that she quickly checked around us to see if anyone else was within listening distance. Her actions reminded me of a high school student about to rat out a friend’s bad choices. It was almost like she couldn’t wait to share her inside information.
I was half expecting her to pull me aside, whisper in my ear, and then make me promise not to tell anyone.
I swear, some kids never do grow up. She and Chuck could start a club.
Apparently satisfied we were alone, Rene leaned toward me to give me the scoop. “When we were all twelve years old, Ben said he’d found an Indian arrowhead that was worth a thousand dollars. The three of us laughed at him, but sure enough, he had. It was in the local paper the next day. He’d been exploring by some bluffs near his uncle’s farm and found these old arrowheads. His uncle took the arrowheads to a collector, and the guy said the arrowheads were not only authentic, but quite valuable.”
That didn’t surprise me. There were still plenty of areas in Minnesota where ongoing erosion exposed new finds on a fairly regular basis. Just south of the Twin Cities, in fact, there’s a big park where elementary schools routinely take their students to find fossils of prehistoric flora. I know that when I went on that field trip in sixth grade, I got a whole new appreciation of what “ancient” meant. Before that, I thought my teacher, Mrs. Baumgarten, was ancient, but compared to the weathered piece of shale I picked up with a fossil embedded in it, I decided she was just “old.”
Not that I shared that with her. I may have been a kid, but I knew enough not to tell my teacher she’d just made the leap from “ancient” to simply “old.” Like I told Shana, my mama didn’t raise no fool.
“So Ben found an artifact,” I said to Renee. “Big deal.”
“It was to us, Bob. This was a small town, you know. Believe me, not much happened here that warranted any media attention from the big cities. Getting his picture in the paper, along with a quick segment on the evening news from Rochester, was a huge event for Ben. We were all star-struck for a while.”
I wadded up my empty pretzel bag and pitched it into the waste can near the vending machine. Renee yawned and patted her hand over her mouth.
“Sometimes I think that’s when Ben developed his taste for fame,” she added. “For weeks afterward, he kept telling us that one day he was going to find a gold mine in Fillmore and become famous. We were all pretty sure there was definitely no treasure hidden in these hills, but after the arrowhead story, we kept our doubts to ourselves.” She glanced at the gold watch on her wrist and grimaced. “It’s late. I’m going back to bed. Hopefully, I can get at least a few hours of sleep before we have to get up for birding in the morning. You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”
I covered a yawn of my own. “Yup. I don’t get down here very often, so I still want to try finding that Northern Bobwhite that Jack promised us. I have a couple ideas about places to look.”
“Great. I’ll see you in the morning, then. Good night, Bob.” She took a step in the direction of the hallway, then turned back.
“You know, Ben may not have found any gold in these hills, but he’s sure famous enough around here. He and Jack both became celebrities in a way—Jack with the success of OK Industries and Ben with his little political kingdom. Funny how life turns out, isn’t it?”
I nodded in agreement. “Good night, Renee.” I watched her walk away down the hall.
She was right—life was a bag of surprises. If I could have a dollar for every time I failed to predict the future correctly, I’d be a rich man. I thought of all the students I’d counseled over the years and how, invariably, the class slacker turned into a prosperous businessman, the girl who wanted to become a lawyer ended up training to be a massage therapist, and the athlete who barely graduated buckled down to get a teaching degree.
As far as I could tell, my professional crystal ball was full of mud.
Actually, my personal crystal ball wasn’t much better. If it had been, the last thing I would have done was sign up for Jack’s weekend birding trip because it sure hadn’t turned out fun at all.
Just deadly.
And then I registered what my eyes had noted on the back of Renee’s bright blue sweatsuit as she’d returned to her room.
Words were emblazoned across the jacket: Secure A-Man.
Wasn’t that the name of the security firm that had installed Kami’s original electric fence?
And what were the odds that Renee just happened to have a jacket with that name on it, just when Kami was having a load of trouble with her perimeter security?
Another funny twist of life?
Not if my gut had anything to say about it. Even filled with late-night pretzels, I trusted my gut more than almost anything. Over the years, that instinct had served me well in counseling students and finding elusive birds all over Minnesota. Now I had to wonder if it was learning how to track down a killer.
Or at least a fence-cutter.
I rubbed my hand over my eyes. I needed to get some sleep if I was imagining that Renee Ackerman was trying to set loose a tiger in Fillmore County.
Maybe late-night snacking wasn’t such a great idea after all. Good thing I didn’t go for the bag of jalapeno cheese curls—I’d probably be hallucinating by now, thinking someone was out to kill me.
Of course, there was that note that Shana had …
I rolled my eyes in total exasperation with myself. I really needed to get some sleep.
Chapter Seventeen
By six o’clock in the morning, I was back in my SUV with Bernie riding shotgun beside me. Behind us in their car were Mac and Renee, along with Sonja and Anders Nyberg, the other couple who’d elected to finish the weekend’s birding agenda despite the decidedly gloomy pall that Jack’s murder had settled over the group like a dingy old blanket. Shana had opted to waddle over to the sheriff’s office first thing to see how the investigation was going, and Tom had offered to accompany her. Depending on what they found out about any progress in the case, I’d make a decision about heading home or sticking around another day in Spring Valley.
“So did you call that sister of yours?” Bernie asked me as I pulled out of the parking lot.
I slid her a look. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re nosy?”
“Oh, sure, lots of times,” she cheerfully replied. “But I don’t listen. It’s my prerogative, you know. I’m an old biddy. Everybody knows that. So did you call her?”
I shook my head. “I’ll see her when I get home. With any luck, the sheriff will make an arrest today and my name will fall right out of the headlines. That’ll make everyone happy, Lily will forget all about it, and I’ll still have to get measured for that tux.”
“What about Luce?”
“What about her?”
“What did she think about you being on television with Shana?”
I followed the county road as it curved down out of town. “I don’t know, Bernie. I didn’t talk to her last night. And even though it’s none of your bees’ wax, Luce trusts me. She knows I love her. She’s not going to worry about our relationship because I’m trying to help out an old friend who just lost her husband.”
The car swung hard to the left as I rounded another curve and I noticed Bernie grip the dashboard.
“Okay,” she said. “I get the message. I’ll back off. You don’t have to drive like Bo Duke to get me to shut my mouth.”
“I’m not trying to drive like one of the Dukes of Hazzard,” I told her, suddenly concerned. I checked my speed. For once, I was watching it, keeping my foot well off the accelerator, yet the car was steadily gaining momentum as the road wound downhill between some small bluffs. I tapped on the brakes.
Nothing happened.
I punched the brake pedal down.
Still nothing, and we were picking up more speed.
“Shit.”
“What?” Bernie asked, still gripping the dash.
“My brakes are gone.”
“Shit!” she agreed.
“Hold on!” I glanced in my rear view mirror to be sure that the Ackermans were a good distance behind me. Ahead of me, the road snaked past a small rough turn-out area before it took a sharp turn to the right. If I was going to do some fancy maneuvering, it had to be now.
I jerked on my emergency brake, sending the car into a spin. The tires screeched as they skidded across the pavement and into the turn-out. Gravel sprayed up around our windows and with a lurch, my SUV came to a bone-jarring stop, facing the direction we’d just traveled.
“Go, Bo,” Bernie managed to say just before the air bags deployed and smacked us both square in the chest.
“Bernie!”
I released my seat belt and turned to help Bernie, who was looking dazed and frazzled behind her air bag, but all in one piece. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “Is this the part where I jump out of the car window? You know I’m not exactly Daisy Duke material anymore,” she added weakly.
I smiled at her reply. Not even faulty brakes were going to throw Bernie off her game. “You can be my Daisy anytime. Here, let me help you.” I pushed her air bag out of the way and released her seatbelt.
“What the hell happened?” Mac shouted outside my window.
“Are you all right?” Renee was beside Bernie’s door.
“My brakes quit on me,” I told them. “But I think we’re okay.”
Renee carefully helped Bernie down from the SUV, while I stepped out on my side. Mac was bending down, hands on his knees, examining the wheel well of my left front tire.
A puddle of liquid was sitting under it.
“Brake fluid,” Mac announced. “Somebody cut your brake line.”
I looked at him in stunned silence.
“Somebody cut my brake line?” I repeated, doing my best idiot imitation.
“Yes, Bob, that’s what I said,” Mac grimly assured me.
“Why would someone do that?” I looked back at the roadside edge of the turn-out where Mac had left his own SUV. I could see the Nybergs in Mac’s back seat, staring open-mouthed at our little accident scene. “I guess this means that Bernie and I are done birding for the morning. I’ll call for a tow. You guys know where you’re headed?”
Mac nodded. “Yeah, Renee knows the area. She’s birded it with Jack a few times the last couple years.”
From the other side of the car, Renee called out to me. “Bob, I think you’d better get an ambulance for Bernie. I think the air bag might have cracked one of her ribs.”
I hustled around the back end of the SUV and found Bernie sitting on the ground, leaning against Renee and holding her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. Her face was drained of color and she was trying hard not to grimace with pain. “I’m on it,” I told the women and pulled out my cell phone.
“Sorry, Bob,” Bernie gritted out after I finished talking with the dispatcher.
“Hey, no problem, Daisy.” I sat on my haunches beside her. “We’ll get you fixed right up, Bernie. Don’t you worry.”
She reached out with one hand and grabbed my shirt to pull me down into her face. “I heard what Mac said,” she whispered, almost nose-to-nose with me. “Someone’s trying to hurt you, Bob.” Her eyes filled with concern.
“Yeah,” I said. “I got that.”
“What are you going to do?”
I lifted a hand and gently patted her lined cheek. “I’m going to find out who, Daisy, and then I’m going to chase him down and make him apologize for hurting you. Nobody messes with a Duke and gets away with it.”
She let go of my shirt, worry still clouding her eyes. “This isn’t funny, Bob.”
I leaned back and studied her. “No, it’s not,” I agreed. “I’m pretty sure my car insurance just went through the roof.”
Chapter Eighteen
An hour later, I was back in the lobby of the hotel waiting for Shana and Tom to return from th
e sheriff’s office. Bernie was on her way to the nearest medical facility for x-rays and a thorough physical examination, and my SUV was sitting in the parking lot of the local auto repair shop. Since it was Sunday, my SUV was down for the count until at least tomorrow morning, which meant I was going to be enjoying all of Spring Valley’s ambiance and birding hotspots for another twenty-four hours or so. At least, I wanted to assume that I would be doing that.
After mulling over the fact that someone had deliberately sabotaged my car, and that Shana had a pesky little note in her possession that indicated Jack had asked Ben about killing me, however, I wasn’t sure I should be assuming anything about my immediate, or long-range, future.
Maybe not setting up that IRA at work yet wasn’t such a tragedy after all. If the next twenty-four hours were anything like the last, chances looked good that I wasn’t going to have to do any worrying about funding my retirement, because I wasn’t going to be around long enough to retire. Okay, I thought, mark that little task off the summer to-do list. One less thing to stress over, right?
Of course, stressing over getting killed wasn’t going to improve my longevity, either. I needed some answers, and I needed them now.
Who cut my brake line and why?
Why did Jack write a note to Ben about killing me?
Could I get my deposit back on that tux I was going to rent for Lily’s wedding?
A moment later, I saw Tom’s car pass by the lobby doors, and then a minute after that, he and Shana walked into the lobby. They both looked grim.
“It’s over,” Tom announced. “They found the gun used to shoot Jack in the glove compartment of Billy’s car. Sheriff Paulsen sent the bullets and gun to some lab to verify the match, but she’s satisfied she can close the case.”
Shana lowered herself to sit beside me on the lobby’s sofa.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her, taking her hands in mine. “I know you told me Billy was Jack’s assistant, but you must have known him pretty well, too.”
