Never Murder a Birder

by Edie Claire

  Simultaneously, she screamed her head off.

  She felt the canvas purse leave her fingers just as her face hit the muddy water with a bracing splat. Every muscle in her body tightened as she awaited the crackling sound of a shot, a piercing pain… but all she felt was the cold and all she heard were the fluent curses of her assailant. She lifted her head from the water.

  He had moved away from her by several feet. He was pacing frantically, swatting at the tall grass, his gaze alternating between scanning the ground at its base and peering over the top of it toward the boardwalk. Leigh’s screaming had stirred up a commotion of chatter — as well as a few additional screams and yells — from the unseen visitors beyond. Feet pounded on the wooden boards from all directions.

  Leigh’s first sight of the man scrambled her brain. She didn’t know him… but she did. He was quite tall, quite large… but he looked so silly now. Everything he wore was cheap-quality tourist stuff and appeared newly purchased, even though it was spattered with mud. But nothing fit him well. His fisherman’s cap was way too small and sat perched uncomfortably high on his head, and his khaki slacks were so short they revealed several inches of his surprisingly hip-looking black leather boots.

  Gucci shoes?

  That was it!

  She had seen him at the airport in Corpus Christi… standing next to Eva Menlin! He must have come with her… they were working together… But he couldn’t be her husband, could he? Her husband had been at their home in New York City when he’d reported her missing.

  Leigh stared at the man’s heavily muscled shoulders and tree-trunk thighs as he slashed viciously through the grass with a forearm. She imagined him chasing Stanley, tackling him, strangling him with his bare hands…

  No, this behemoth was no ordinary traveling companion. He was a goon. Eva’s goon. She must have brought him along for her own security, which wasn’t a bad idea when delivering millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds to a bunch of crazy people. But he had found out more than he needed to know, perhaps, and he had turned on her. Maybe Eva’s professional reputation and family’s good name prevented her from ripping off her clients, but a hired hand would have no such compunction. He had seen a chance to end his days as a working man, and he had taken it. Then some nerdy old birdwatching retiree had gotten in his way…

  Now Leigh was doing the same.

  She scrambled desperately to get up, but the damned muck was difficult to maneuver out of, particularly when she was trembling. All she needed was a couple more seconds of confusion, just the slightest additional delay before he found the purse again, and she should be able to escape. Surely he would just run, then. Chasing her down and killing her, after all, would cost him valuable time.

  Her flailing around wasn’t pretty, but eventually she got to her feet. She shot a glance in the man’s direction and was happy to see him bending over and searching wildly through the grass, cursing fluently as he did so. He must not have seen where the purse landed, either. Perfect.

  She whirled and started off in the opposite direction. She knew better than to scream now — the man was angry enough that he could shoot her in the back out of spite. She leapt into the cover of the grass and started on a detour that would get her back to the boardwalk without getting any closer to him, but she hadn’t gone six feet before she screamed again, this time unintentionally.

  Another man had planted himself directly in her path. This one’s long legs assumed a wide-based stance, and his lean, sinewy arms held a gun at eye level, pointed at the center of her chest.

  Are you freakin’ kidding me?

  Who the hell was this?!

  This man wore jeans, short boots, a tee shirt, and a light jacket. His brown hair was short and nondescript and his eyes were an expressionless, steely gray. Leigh had never seen him before. “Be quiet and put your hands up!” he ordered in a firm, yet hushed tone.

  “Freeze!” another male voice boomed in the distance.

  Somewhere, a woman screamed.

  “I said freeze!” the unseen male voice repeated.

  Leigh stayed frozen. She didn’t know whether the man in front of her would shoot her or not, but she knew for certain that the goon behind her would. God only knew what the third man wanted, but shocked inertia kept her hands at her sides.

  A vicious angry growl sounded close by in the brush, followed by the pounding whoomp of bodies colliding and a series of inarticulate grunts.

  “Don’t move!” Leigh’s captor yelled at her, swinging his firearm to the side. He stepped away from her toward the melee. “Freeze! Police!”

  Leigh exhaled with a rush and an expletive. NOW you tell me?

  Heedless of his instructions, law officer or not, she started moving. Leigh Koslow Harmon was getting the hell out of here.

  She had moved only another three feet when a shot crackled through the air.

  The sound was so loud it battered her eardrums and rattled her skull, and she fell to her knees, wondering if her head was all there. Panicked hands felt her face and her hair for blood just as the sound of a man groaning and screaming overcame the buzzing in her ears enough to register.

  “Hands behind your back! Hands behind your back!”

  Now people were screaming all over the place.

  “Leigh!”

  Warren’s call carried over the general clamor, and Leigh lifted her chin. Oh, right. Her husband had been here too, hadn’t he? He must be worried about her…

  She tried to get up, but her legs felt like jelly. She looked down at her hands. No blood. That was encouraging. The rest of her body looked intact, too. It was the goon over there groaning… he must be the one who’d been shot.

  “Leigh!” Warren called again.

  “I’m okay!” she yelled back, finding her voice. She put her hands down on the sandy soil for balance, then pushed herself slowly back upright on gimpy legs. “I’m coming!”

  “No, you’re not,” the steely-eyed gunman argued, appearing out of nowhere to level his gun at her again. “I told you to hold still.”

  Leigh almost laughed at him. A person could only have a gun pointed at them so many times before thinking she must actually be asleep.

  “You said you were the police,” she rasped instead.

  “Texas Rangers, Company D,” he replied coolly. “Put your hands up.”

  Leigh stared back at him with disbelief. “Me? What did I do? I’m on your side!”

  “Don’t make me tell you again.”

  Leigh put her hands up.

  The officer stepped around her and briefly patted the pockets of her shorts. There was no place else she could hide a weapon, seeing as how her cleavage couldn’t conceal a cough drop.

  “All right,” he said, no less coolly. “You can relax, but stand still for now.” He kept his gun out.

  Leigh said nothing sarcastic. But she thought plenty.

  She looked over her shoulder where the Ranger was looking and could see Eva’s erstwhile bodyguard thrashing around on the ground. His hands were cuffed behind his back, but still he kicked wildly at the officers who surrounded him. One of his shoulders had a fist-sized spot of blood on it, and he was simultaneously groaning like a baby and swearing like a sailor. The officers were shouting commands at him as they gradually closed back in.

  Leigh tried to slow her breathing, then caught her captor’s eye. “My husband is worried about me. Can’t I go out now and show him I’m okay?”

  “He heard you,” the Ranger replied with maddening calm. His gun was still trained and ready.

  Leigh’s patience, such as it was, snapped. “What is this?” she demanded angrily. “I am the victim here! Why are you acting like I did something wrong?”

  The Ranger had the gall to smirk at her. “Well, now, Ms. Harmon,” he said levelly, even as the shouting next to them increased, along with the din from the unseen crowd on the boardwalk. Leigh was bothered that he knew her name. If he understood everything that had happened, why was he holding a
gun on her?

  “I don’t suppose,” he began, his lips lifting into the slightest of smirks, “you want to tell me how you, and only you, knew exactly where to find those diamonds?”

  “I…” Leigh’s mouth hung open for an unfortunately long period of time. Her face took on the hue of a tomato. Why was it, she thought to herself bitterly, that for her, and only her, the God’s honest truth always sounded so flippin’ ridiculous?

  “I stepped on them,” she answered finally.

  The Ranger’s smirk grew smirkier. “Oh you did, did you?”

  “I know it sounds stupid,” Leigh said defensively, shoving away the highly practical thought that she should probably shut up until she had a lawyer. She didn’t and shouldn’t need a lawyer, dammit! “But that’s what happened. I was trying to get to Walter and I was looking for someplace solid to put my foot, and there was a piece of cloth stuck in a clump of grass, and I stepped on it.”

  She paused, allowing him to digest the concept. A swarm of activity continued behind her; the goon was still groaning and cursing.

  “So why come back now?” the Ranger asked.

  “Because I only just this morning found out that whoever killed Stanley must have dropped the diamonds!” Leigh insisted. “Even then, I didn’t remember seeing the cloth until I came across another piece of trash over by the bench. I’m only here today because my husband wanted to see the preserve… but then I remembered seeing the blue—”

  Without warning the Ranger stepped up, grabbed her by the wrist, and jerked her forward. Leigh shrieked in surprise as she stumbled, wondering if she were about to get her first taste of police brutality. But she understood the Ranger’s actions when the ground on which she’d been standing was taken over by the writhing body of the oversized maniac who, even though he was cuffed and bleeding from one shoulder, had somehow managed to pull a knife. For such a large man, he was amazingly agile. He twisted his body and kicked out in the air toward his captors, holding the knife behind him. He was surrounded by three men, all with guns drawn, any of whom could have finished him off at any time. But no gunshot came. The officers seemed content to stay back and wait out their quarry.

  Leigh offered no resistance as the Ranger pulled her farther away, out into the shallow water. She looked toward the boardwalk and could see that the crowd had been pushed back and was being held at bay by a local policeman. Warren was there, standing right behind the patrolman, and Leigh could see his shoulders slump with relief at the sight of her. But in the next second all hell broke loose again.

  The goon, who had yet to give any sign of either tiring or giving up his pointless battle of resistance, had noticed her. At least she assumed he had, because the vile string of insults now foaming out of his mouth were distinctly targeted towards the female of the species. “You blah blah… you ruined everything you blah blah… how did you even know where to look, you blah blah… I’ll blah blah your blah blah blah…”

  He wriggled and bounced on the bank like some demented inchworm, moving rapidly closer to Leigh. But again, his struggle was pointless. He couldn’t move anywhere near as fast as she could, even if there were not now four Texas Rangers ready to shoot him, again, if he managed to get to her. At least, that’s what she was hoping they would do.

  But perhaps that wouldn’t be necessary. “Excuse me?” Leigh yelled back at him, even as she continued to move away. The Ranger told her to be quiet, but she didn’t care. Her whole body flamed with fury. This man had wanted those diamonds so badly he had killed the woman who hired him to protect her. He’d killed a perfectly innocent birdwatcher who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he would certainly kill anyone and everyone who tried to prevent his escaping now, including her. “Are you talking to me?” she taunted.

  The Ranger yelled at her again.

  “You little blah blah bl—” The goon’s last insults were unfortunately garbled. Squirming with rage in his single-minded pursuit, his prone form had wiggled out of the grass and off the bank, and his last kick had propelled him neatly out over several inches of water. The man remained oblivious to his situation even as his body splashed down and his still-moving mouth disappeared below the water line, and Leigh watched with grim satisfaction as he sucked in a lungful of muck, then roared back up two seconds later, gasping, sputtering, and coughing — but no longer kicking.

  “Move in!” one of the Rangers shouted, and the discombobulated goon was swiftly tackled, disarmed, and shackled.

  A cheer rose up from the boardwalk.

  “Can I go now?” Leigh asked when the crisis was over, trying her best to appear a good citizen. Her previous captor had been an active participant in the melee; she could have crept off.

  The cool-eyed Ranger studied her with a look that was both annoyed and admiring. “For now,” he answered. He pointed toward the people on the boardwalk. “Stay with the local officer until we have a chance for some more questions.”

  “Can’t wait,” Leigh quipped, already walking. She was prepared to hear more insults from the bodyguard, but he seemed to be preoccupied with coughing. She held her head high as she sloshed across the mud. As horribly embarrassing as it would be to get stuck right now in front of everybody, fear of quicksand wasn’t enough to make her take anything but the most direct route to Warren. She could feel her husband’s frustration at being restrained by the police officer, and when she came close enough he broke away and met her halfway.

  Leigh’s knees went wobbly as she collapsed against him.

  He enfolded her in a warm, crushing hug. “Five minutes,” he whispered in her ear, his voice husky with emotion. “I left you alone for five minutes…”

  Chapter 26

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Leigh said, watching with glee as the fins of yet another group of bottlenose dolphins appeared beside the boat. She, Warren, Bev, and Hap were cruising around the ship channels, taking in the local sights and enjoying the warm Texas air in the hour before sunset.

  “Oh, now, Carl was happy to do it,” Hap insisted, leaning out over the railing next to her. “We all felt bad that you two missed your cruise earlier, and Carl doesn’t need an excuse to take this old girl out on the water on a day like today.”

  “At least let us reimburse him for the gas,” Warren offered.

  “Not a chance,” Hap declined. “We’d already collected a little money to get a defense fund set up for the preserve. Thanks to you, that unsolvable problem was solved before we’d spent a dime! Seems the least we could do is treat the two of you to a charter dolphin watch and a nice, romantic dinner out on your last night here. The rest will go to the preserve’s regular foundation, don’t you worry.”

  One of the dolphins leaped partway out of the water, and Leigh smiled as she heard its happy clicking sound. “The kids would love this.”

  Warren smiled in agreement. “We’ll have to bring them here sometime.”

  “Absolutely!” Bev insisted. “Can’t promise you we’ll still be working at the Silver King or the Grande, of course. Their future’s pretty much up in the air. But wherever we end up, you and those twins of yours are always welcome! What kind of cookies do the young’uns like?”

  Leigh turned to her hostess with both a laugh and a groan. “Do you have any idea how long I am going to have to starve myself to recover from what was supposed to be a week of fresh air, exercise, and caloric moderation?”

  Bev chuckled without remorse. “I just make the treats, darlin’. The consequences aren’t my problem.”

  “Now you see what I’ve got to live with,” Hap laughed, patting his protruding belly.

  “So that’s why I married you!” Warren exclaimed to Leigh, putting a hand to his own trim waist.

  She punched him. “And I thought it was because you enjoyed spending quality time with law enforcement.”

  Bev and Hap both laughed, albeit a little nervously.

  “We really are sorry this week hasn’t been more
… relaxing for you,” Bev said sadly. “We’d hoped to show you a better time.”

  “Oh, please,” Leigh said quickly, “none of what happened was your fault! And you’ve been fabulous in helping us out.”

  “Absolutely,” Warren agreed. “I would never have been able to finish my work here if it weren’t for you and your birder friends keeping an eye on… things. We owe you so much.”

  Bev smiled. “Well, we birders stick together,” she said smugly.

  Hap made a snorting sound. “I still say you can’t be so sure about that.”

  “Now, Hap!” Bev protested. “I never did disagree with you! You know I took the risk of renegades into account.”

  “Do you mean,” Warren asked, “you thought that some of the birders might go rogue and start hunting for the diamonds themselves? I have to admit, I was wondering about that myself.”

  Bev shrugged. “Well, sure. People are people, after all. But that didn’t make forming the group a bad idea. The cause needed an army to have a fighting chance. Besides, I figured having a little peer pressure could help keep folks on the straight and narrow. If any of the regulars suddenly started wintering in the south of France, someone was gonna know the reason why!”

  Leigh chuckled. “I thought the birders showed amazing devotion to the cause.”

  “So did I,” Warren agreed. “Just remind me never to get on their bad side.”

  “And how,” added Hap. “Some of those people are wicked scary, I’m telling you.”

  “Oh, they are not!” Leigh found herself defending, even before Bev could say a word.

  Hap’s blue eyes danced as he teased her. “You telling me you’d be up for meeting the likes of Bonnie in a dark alley? That woman nearly took my head off last week. Said I smeared her binocular lenses when all I did was pass the blame things across the table.”