Moonbird Boy (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Four)

by Abigail Padgett

  "Vass ist Zeit?" he mumbled at the old-fashioned clock nailed to his nightstand, and then shook his head. He'd just asked, "What is time?", a philosophical conversation-stopper he was sure the clock would decline to answer. It was one-thirty in the morning, and a steady drizzle muted the sounds of Frankfurt outside his barely open window. A lonely, Victorian sort of night, he thought. A perfect night for holding Bo in his arms and listening as she told him tales of Irish banshees and haunted peat bogs.

  The memory of her lying next to him in bed, talking softly after their lovemaking, made his heart pound. But Bo Bradley was thousands of miles away, and he had to finish this damned military child abuse project before he could return to her.

  Grabbing the duvet off the floor, he turned on the bedside light and stomped to the electric wall heater. A confounding array of knobs with metric markings, he'd spent nearly a month trying to adjust it, to no purpose. It still refused to produce heat from midnight to six a.m., the only hours in which he wanted heat.

  It would still be Saturday afternoon in San Diego. Bo might be home. He wanted to tell her why he hadn't called yesterday. She'd be pleased with the reason, he knew. Half joking, she'd asked him to go to Bremen and lay a pastrami sandwich on the grave of her first psychiatrist, Dr. Lois Bittner, who'd died and been buried by friends there while at a conference. He hadn't been able to bring himself to get the sandwich, but he'd flown to Bremen with a bouquet of bronze mums that he thought perfectly matched the color of Bo's hair, and laid them on the grave. In the mums was a note saying, "From Bo, who will bring the pastrami sandwich herself. Thank you for helping her learn to survive when she was young so that I could love her now. Andrew LaMarche."

  Then he'd toured the city, enjoying himself thoroughly. At a bookshop he'd bought a charmingly illustrated edition of the Grimm story "The Bremen Town Musicians," which he and Bo would give to Estrella and Henry Benedict's baby when it arrived four months in the future. The text was in German, French, and English. Bo would be sure to approve. And maybe by then she'd agree to marry him. He was doing everything he could to promote that possibility, including remaining in Germany while she faced the demons of clinical depression alone.

  In the dark he remembered an earlier tour, a day trip through the Lahn River Valley from Limburg to Wetzlar, where Goethe endured his doomed love for Charlotte. The procession of turreted medieval castles was delightful, but in a little town called Hadamar he'd seen something that froze his heart. Just an old hospital, still in use. A psychiatric hospital no different from any other except for its gas chamber and crematorium where thousands deemed "mentally defective" by Hitler's Reich had been gassed, their bodies incinerated. Thousands, any one of whom might have been Bo. And there had been, he'd learned, five other hospitals identically equipped. The trip ruined, he'd driven quickly back to Frankfurt and holed up in his room, sickened. He would never tell Bo what he saw in the nondescript Lahn Valley town, he decided. Neither would he forget.

  After kicking the useless heater with his bare foot, Andrew flung himself back into bed and glowered at the rainy window. Bo had asked him not to fly to her side. She'd said it wouldn't make any difference, and Dr. Broussard had confirmed Bo's view. Only professional care, time and the right medications would make a difference, the psychiatrist had said. And emotional demands on Bo, demands that she could not meet while depressed, would only make her feel more inadequate, different, useless. In the transatlantic phone call he'd mustered enough courage to ask a final question.

  "What about suicide?"

  "Don't worry," Eva Broussard had answered with feeling. "Bo has no history of suicide attempts, and even Mildred's death isn't likely to prompt one. She may think about it; that's normal. But she'll never admit it. Bo has a spark inside that won't easily be extinguished, Andy. Some would say it's her manicky skew that makes her that way. You and I know it's more than that. But she needs downtime now, and some space from which to watch life from a remove."

  So he'd stayed in Frankfurt and helped the military establish protocols for dealing with child abuse when it occurred among personnel based overseas. He'd worked sixteen-hour days for over three weeks, and the program was in place. All he was expected to do in the final week was to introduce academic authorities on various aspects of the problem at a series of formal seminars and dinners. Anybody could do it. He wanted to go home.

  Bo's phone, when the rattling connection was complete, merely rang four times and then the answering machine clicked on.

  "I miss you," he said simply, and hung up.

  Then he strode to the room's little closet and began pulling his clothes from hangers. His suitcase was under the bed, already dusty. A sign he'd been away too long.

  Within an hour he'd packed, sent a telegram to the adjutant in charge of the training program saying he'd been called home on an urgent personal matter, and arranged for a flight to Paris, from which he would fly to New York. The ticketing agent was working on a flight from there to California.

  "Anywhere in California," he'd said. "I just need to get home."

  Chapter 17

  Bo would later define her discovery in St. Louis as one of the strangest scenarios she'd encountered, including those whispered or shouted in psychiatric emergency rooms. But the strangeness would only reveal its entirety later, like a black-and-white photographic print in its pan of developer. Vague at first, just a ghostly outline. In the beginning Bo merely thought she was, at last, truly crazy.

  It was surprisingly easy to follow Zach to his destination from the airport. She selected a cab from the row waiting at the terminal curb, and said, "Follow that car," as Zach's cab pulled away.

  Her driver, a grizzled version of Santa Claus in an ancient orange shirt and plaid bow tie, grinned and said, "Lady, I've been waitin' thirty years for somebody to say that. I s'pose you don't want 'em to know they're bein' followed, right?" "Right? Can do."

  Bo alternately marveled at the man's driving facility and at the Midwestern trees in their autumn color. Zach's cab, four cars ahead, kept a steady pace going south on Lindbergh Boulevard, skirting the city. And everywhere showers of golden cottonwood and sassafras leaves fluttered on trees or blew in clouds, tossed by the wind with the blood-red of maples and sumac or the brown-mottled orange of oak and hornbeam. She'd forgotten it would be fall here. A real fall where the sight and smell of dying leaves filled the air with courageous, doomed splendor.

  "Everything is transient," she told the driver.

  "I've noticed that," he answered. "Say, who's this fella we're followin', your husband?"

  "No, it's a black Indian and a gangster, or at least a suspected gangster. The Indian may have killed a friend of mine. It's important that they don't see us."

  The cabby rubbed his bulbous, bloodshot nose with a grimy index finger. "Black Indians? Gangsters? Lady, you crazy or somethin'?"

  "There's some question about that at the moment," Bo replied, still mesmerized by the leaves. "But it doesn't matter. Just don't let them see us."

  "It may not matter to you..." the man rumbled, and then fell silent. Zach's cab had swerved into a well-to-do older neighborhood of winding streets and widely spaced two-story homes. At a respectable distance Bo's driver turned as well. The neighborhood was not the destination she had imagined, which involved dim riverfront alleys or at least a garlic-scented Italian restaurant with a beady-eyed bouncer named Tony who would wear a tuxedo jacket over a torn undershirt. Nothing was making sense. Why would Zach and the gambling kingpin fly from San Diego to St. Louis only to do a house-and-garden tour?

  From the curved porch railing of an expansive white frame house, a boy in school blazer and cap tossed peanuts onto the leaf-strewn lawn where several gray squirrels dashed to retrieve them. A block further, a young woman who looked like Audrey Hepburn pushed a black baby carriage briskly along the sidewalk. Bo couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a baby carriage. Bobbing on its thin tires it looked like a boat, she thought, or a little hearse, or...r />
  Cut the weird imagery, Bradley. You're here on business.

  "Where are we?" she asked. The area bore no resemblance to anything she'd seen in the last twenty years.

  "Kirkwood," the driver replied, gauging his speed carefully to that of the car barely visible ahead.

  "Oh," she answered. "I lived in St. Louis for a while. Kirkwood's pretty nice, right?"

  "Everything's transient," he reminded her. "Hey, your gangster Indian's stopping." Smoothly he made a sharp right and braked on a side street in a rustle of leaves. "White brick on the right five houses up on the street we just turned off. That'll be fifteen fifty."

  "Wait for me," Bo said, handing him a twenty from her purse and exiting the cab. Then she untied the blue sweater from her shoulders, pulled it on, and crossed to the other side of the wide street on which they'd entered the neighborhood. In her khakis and hiking boots she didn't look entirely out of place, she thought.

  Retying the scarf Indian-style across her forehead, she removed her sunglasses, jammed the straw hat down as far as possible over her hair and began a serious walker's long stride and exaggerated arm swinging. Zach was going to see her. No way to avoid that. But with luck he'd just see a local matron out for a constitutional before her husband returned from his office in the city. To complete the image Bo stooped to gather a handful of bright leaves. Centerpiece for the dinner table. A nice touch.

  Ahead, Zach and the other man had followed the winding flagstone path to a white brick colonial. The red of its bricks showed through the weathered paint, projecting a homey, quaint demeanor completely at odds with the two men on the raised doorstep. Only a block away now, Bo slowed to feign admiration of a narrow formal garden set in ivy and mums.

  No one was answering the door of the white colonial, but the presence of Zach and the other man had captured the attention of several small dogs in a chain-linked run along the house's western side. Their frantic barking made Bo's palms grow clammy. Any one of them might have been the dog on her answering machine!

  All small dogs sound alike, Bradley. It's ridiculous to think there's any connection. But what if there is...?

  The manicured neighborhood felt like a set, a facade hiding secrets tangled like frayed electrical wire. Because of it Mort was dead and Bird was alone. Because of it a noble undertaking would be abolished and the last of an ancient people prostituted to the lure of easy money. But what was it? Bo couldn't still the trembling of her hands as she drew closer to the white brick house. Soon she'd be directly across from it, shielded from sight only by the idling cab waiting for Zach and his companion. But there was no way to turn around without attracting attention.

  Zach was writing something on the back of an envelope he pulled from the mailbox as Bo drew closer, her heart pounding blood against her eardrums. He jammed the envelope back into the mailbox vertically so that it bent under the lid, its edge a visible tab against the matte black metal. Then he and Zach strode quickly toward the cab.

  The timing couldn't have been worse, Bo realized. The two men were now facing her as she passed directly across the street from them. How could Zach not recognize her? He'd seen her jerky, loping walk a hundred times. And her hands. Freckled hands with long, knobby-jointed fingers. Bo sensed her hands announcing the identity of their owner like neon signs. "These big Irish knuckles are Bo Bradley's!" they yelled. "And the big Irish feet, too!" Bo felt as naked and shining as a fish in the pale Midwestern sunset.

  But Zach didn't see her. She heard the cab doors slam and then saw it accelerate to turn at the next corner. Propelled by fear, she walked a block past the colonial just to be sure the men weren't going to return, seize her, and throw her bound and gagged into the trunk. But only one car drove by, a metallic beige station wagon full of Girl Scouts. Bo reined in her terror and crossed the street. Unless she died of a heart attack first, she was going to see what was on that envelope.

  In minutes she reached the flagstone walkway and affected a casual saunter as she approached the mailbox. Cars were moving on nearby streets, but no one was watching as she pulled the white rectangle from its black box. "You'll get the boy when you call off your dogs," it said. "Back off if you want him alive." The note wasn't signed.

  "Is there something I could help you with?" an icy female voice inquired from the dog run. "Dr. Keith isn't home at the moment."

  Bo stuffed the envelope back into the mailbox. "I'm, uh, I had an appointment with Dr. Keith to discuss, um, a new dog food Ralston-Purina is test-marketing in St. Louis," she told a tall woman of about seventy who was standing behind the chain link fence holding one of three Jack Russell terriers. The woman wore stylishly pleated gray flannel slacks and a red sweatshirt adorned with a cartoon of a deer in cartridge belts and a deerstalker cap over a caption that read, "Arm Deer." The hand holding the terrier was bigger than Bo's and not at all frail. "I thought maybe that..." Bo gestured toward the envelope, "was a message, you know, canceling the appointment."

  "She didn't mention any appointment," the woman said. "I live next door, just got home from my Girl Scout troop meeting. I'm taking care of the dogs, watching the place. Why don't you leave your card. She can call you when she returns."

  "She," Bo thought. So Dr. Keith was a woman. But who was "the boy," and what could this St. Louis doctor have to do with Zachary Crooked Owl and Ghost Flower Lodge? Maybe "the boy" was Bird! Had the note been a threat against Bird? "...if you want him alive," it warned.

  "I'll phone Dr. Keith at her office to set another time," Bo said, backing down the steps into fading light.

  "Office? You must mean at the university. Well, suit yourself." The woman set the dog on the ground where it jumped against her legs with the other two. In the autumn dusk their leaping white bodies glowed hypnotically. There was something about those dogs...

  "Yes, the university," Bo concluded. St. Louis boasted several institutions of higher learning, she remembered from the time she'd spent there long ago. Among them three universities—the Jesuit-run St. Louis University, Washington University, and the University of Missouri at St. Louis. Calls to their switchboards would locate this Dr. Keith, but then what?

  "Um, when do you expect Dr. Keith to return?" she called over her shoulder.

  The older woman narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I have no idea," she answered.

  Bo hurried the three blocks back toward the street where the cab would be waiting. A deliciously autumnal dusk was falling fast, and warm amber light glowed from the windows of several houses. The street was a chronicle of domestic solidity from which she was excluded by nature. But maybe not, she thought. She could marry Andy, have a house like one of these. At dusk she'd turn on the lights.

  The silly, simple fantasy was calming as she turned the corner expectantly. Where she'd begun this puzzling adventure a mature sugar maple dropped a cascade of leaves that rustled in the empty street. The cab was gone.

  "That jerk!" she whispered angrily at the space where a yellow car should have been. But it was just an inconvenience. She was an adult, after all. She had money and a credit card. She wasn't dependent on cab drivers with ratty beards and no sense of honor. Lindbergh Boulevard was a few blocks away. The major street was lined with gas stations, restaurants, sundry businesses. She'd hike to it, grab a sandwich somewhere, and phone for another cab to the airport.

  To her delight, a Steak'n'Shake restaurant was visible from the corner when she got to Lindbergh. Its black-and-white logo actually made her salivate as she sprinted toward the promise of a real hamburger and crispy, sinful French fries. Nobody would see her, she grinned to herself as she entered the brightly lit diner. She was out of place, unconnected, a wraith no one would notice as she savored the forbidden.

  After phoning Southwest Airlines and arranging for a return flight that would leave in three hours, Bo checked with Directory Assistance and learned that Dr. Ann Lee Keith's number had been removed from the directory "at the customer's request." An unlisted number. Not surprised, she sele
cted a corner booth and ordered a burger, fries, and a vanilla shake. Then she took a pen from her purse and began to write on a napkin.

  "Who is Dr. Keith?" she wrote. "What is Keith's connection to Zach Crooked Owl, and what is Zach's connection to the gangster? Why did Zach and the gangster come here? (To threaten Keith, but she wasn't available.) What other reason do they have for being in St. Louis? (They wouldn't fly here just for that; there's something else going on. What?) Who is the boy in the threatening note? Bird? Why would this Dr. Keith want Bird? (Is Keith Bird's mother?) Why are Zach and the gangster suggesting that they have this 'boy' and will harm him if Keith doesn't 'call off her dogs'? (If Bird is the boy, Zach and the gangster don't have him; they don't even know where he is.)"

  The milkshake arrived, foamy and vanilla-scented. Before scooping the whipped cream off its top with an iced-tea spoon, Bo made a last notation on the napkin. "Call off what dogs? Why does Dr. Keith have three Jack Russell terriers? Is that a Jack Russell's bark in those weird phone calls I've been getting? What in hell is going on?"

  Later in the airport ladies' room she dropped the seductively dark lipstick in a trash container and splashed warm water on her face. Her reflection in the mirror looked a little bright-eyed and tense, she thought, but within reasonable boundaries. She'd been up since six, but she'd napped during the three-hour flight to St. Louis. By most standards this impulsive trip would be judged odd, but she'd chosen to do it because not doing it made her feel worthless. And she'd uncovered something. She had no idea what it was, but it was definitely something. The trip, despite its expense, had definitely been worthwhile. She felt okay.

  "Eva," she said into a pay phone near her departure gate, "I'm just calling to check in like you asked. Everything's fine. Don't worry."

  Over the loudspeaker a booming voice announced a commuter flight to Peoria, Illinois.