A Bobwhite Killing (23 page)

“My, what big eyes you have,” I told the lion. He gazed back at me, his amber eyes hypnotic.

“Nice mane,” Alan added. “He’s really got that natural look going for him.”

“I hope Kami heard us drive up,” I said, my eyes still locked on the lion. “Otherwise we’re going to be sitting here a while, because Simba doesn’t look like he’s in a rush to go anywhere.”

At which point, the lion heaved himself up from the ground and slowly strolled around the back of my SUV towards the farmhouse, where Kami was now standing on the front porch. She walked down the porch steps to meet the lion, who rammed his big nose into her stomach while she rubbed behind his velvety ears. She waved to us to come over.

I looked at Alan in my passenger seat. “What do you think, Hawk? Do you feel lucky?”

“Sure,” he answered. “I’ve always imagined throwing myself to the lions. Besides, it can’t be much worse than planning the wedding of the century, and so far, I’ve survived that, too.”

We got out of the car—although I admit I was moving pretty slowly, just in case the lion didn’t like sudden moves—and carefully approached Kami’s porch.

“He won’t hurt you,” she assured us. “He’s a sweetheart, along with being almost deaf. That’s why he stays close to the house. It’s familiar and safe for him.” She patted the lion’s big head. “He probably felt the vibration in the ground from your SUV and didn’t recognize it—that’s why he came over to check you out. His name is Claudius, by the way.”

The big cat nuzzled Kami’s shoulder. Being as tiny as she was, Kami barely stood a head taller than Claudius and had to brace herself against the step’s railing so he wouldn’t bowl her over. She made a circular motion with her hand and the lion turned around to face me.

“Let him sniff your hands,” she told me and Alan. “Then he’ll know you.”

“You use hand signals with him,” I commented, and she nodded. I reached out a palm for Claudius to smell. The lion’s nose felt soft across my hand and I watched his big nostrils flare as he snuffled. “Yo, Claudius,” I said.

“So what brings you out here?” Kami asked after Alan had likewise made the lion’s acquaintance.

I lifted my eyes from Claudius’s big muscular body and focused on Kami. “I want to see your surveillance tape from this morning to see if it caught whoever messed with your fence. Whoever did it would have had to come here to your farmhouse, wouldn’t he? I’m thinking it might be the same person who killed Jack, someone who’s apparently getting desperate for the eco-community to drop out and the ATV project to dig in.”

Kami cocked her head to one side, apparently considering what I’d said, then pushed Claudius away from her shoulder. “Let’s go take a look.”

She turned on her heel and led us over to a side door into the garage. Claudius walked right behind her, as obedient as a trained dog. Once we were inside, she flipped a switch that lit up the small space outfitted with an array of state-of-the-art monitors and equipment. Various lights blinked while the soft hum of a generator made a soothing sound.

“Very cool,” Alan offered appreciatively.

“Eddie Edvarg was definitely here,” I said to no one in particular. My electronics whiz buddy had, as usual, spared no expense in setting up his client with a superior surveillance system. If anyone had set foot anywhere near Kami’s farmhouse this morning, we were going to find it on a surveillance loop.

I felt a big furry head brush past my back and looked over my shoulder in time to see Kami leading Claudius back outside the small garage.

“Stay,” she told him loudly, parking him next to her red truck. I could just catch her hand signal to the lion through the open garage door. Claudius dropped to the ground and sprawled out on the pavement. “Good Claudius,” she practically shouted at him, patting his flank. The lion blinked and closed his eyes, and Kami rejoined us in front of the monitors.

“We’ll just have to scan back through the tapes to this morning,” she explained, punching a couple buttons on the control board.

“Did Mac Ackerman do your new fencing?” I asked while she continued to program the monitors.

“Yes, he did. I always hire people I know for jobs around the sanctuary, and Renee and I go way back.”

“Yeah, she told me about it,” I replied. “The Four Musketeers—you, Renee, Jack and Ben.”

Kami gave me a confused look. “Only in her dreams.”

My turn. I shot back an equally confused look at Kami. “What?”

“Renee was never close to Jack and Ben and me. She always wished she were, but it didn’t happen. We were in the same class at school, that’s all. In fact, in high school, I’m pretty sure she hated me, because Jack and I were a couple. She was crazy about Jack, and he wouldn’t give her a second glance. Ben was always nice enough to her, but she was only interested in Jack.”

“Wait a minute,” I protested. All kinds of comments were rushing back into my head and I needed a moment to sort them all out.

“Renee was making eyes at Jack.”

“All the girls were in love with him, including me.”

“Renee knows the area. She’s birded it with Jack.”

“We waited a good half-hour for her to get back from that twenty-four-hour pharmacy with her allergy prescription. If it hadn’t been for her, we could have gotten an earlier start on our birding. I mean, really, how could the woman forget her allergy medication at home when it’s allergy season? Talk about being unprepared.”

Rene Ackerman had been missing when we gathered to go birding yesterday morning. She’d had a teenage crush on Jack—a crush that may have survived well into adulthood, if Bernie’s observation on Friday evening had been correct. She’d also seemed pleased to pass along the gossip that Jack was cheating on Shana with Kami, which might have explained that smug feeling I detected from her in the diner last night, but now I wondered if that gossip was a vengeful move against Shana and Kami both. Lord knows I’d seen that kind of behavior plenty of times from the teen girls I counseled at Savage High, especially when unrequited crushes came into the picture.

On top of that, Rene knew three things Jack’s killer had to have known: one—Jack was in Fillmore County early Saturday morning (and a quick check of the hotel parking lot would have told her his car was gone); two—she knew the birding areas he knew because they’d birded together; and three—she had access to the plans for Kami’s security system since her company had done the installation.

Had Rene decided to finally get even with Jack for his high school dismissal of her and called him to meet her for an unusual bird sighting at Green Hills, where she shot him? I’d figured that Jack had to know his killer, and Rene certainly fit that bill. And if Rene had also decided to make some long-anticipated payback to Kami for being Jack’s high-school sweetheart, what better way than to sabotage the sanctuary fence and support a suspicion that Kami was a killer?

I watched the monitor as Kami manipulated the images to arrive at this morning’s surveillance.

“Try mid-morning,” I told her. “The time during which you were out at Green Hills.”

She ran the recording further ahead. Now I expected to see Rene, not Mac, Ackerman drive up on the screen at any moment.

But what about Billy? I asked myself, my eyes fixed on Kami’s monitor. How did he fit into a picture of Rene’s plan for vengeance?

“I’m still missing something,” I muttered. I turned to Alan who was hovering behind my left shoulder. “I can’t make Jack’s and Billy’s murders hang together,” I whispered, not wanting Kami to hear my speculation. “I think there’s a chance that Rene killed Jack, but I can’t figure out a connection to Billy.”

Alan studied me for a moment or two. “One bird at a time, Bob, isn’t that what you told me once?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“You know, when you’re on the trail of a specific bird? You told me that you focus on one bird at a time, but if others show up, you’ll be glad to spot them.” He pointed to Kami’s monitor. “Find Jack’s killer first, and if along the way, you can find Billy’s too, then you’re ahead of the game. Right?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding at his advice. “One bird at a time.”

“Here’s a car!” Kami’s voice was laced with excitement.

I looked back at the monitor’s screen as a vehicle approached the surveillance camera.

But it wasn’t Rene Ackerman behind the wheel.

It was Sheriff Paulsen.

“Darn it,” I said. I’d forgotten that Shana had said the sheriff was going to come out to Kami’s this morning, possibly to arrest her. Naturally we’d see her patrol car on the tape. “Any other cars?” I asked.

Kami shook her head. “That’s it, Bob. But anyone who knows my security setup could conceivably manipulate it at some other point along the fence itself, I think.” She looked up at me apologetically. “And whoever’s been messing with my fence seems to know it well enough to do just that. Nice try, but we’re not getting anything we don’t already know from these recordings, I’m afraid.”

“Although they’re going to come in real handy when the prosecution builds its murder case against you, Kami.”

The three of us spun around to find Sheriff Paulsen standing in the doorway of the garage. “Jack and Billy were both here late Saturday night. You’ve got the tapes to prove it. The same gun killed both of them, and Billy had a tranquilizer dart in his neck, a dart identical to the ones you use for your animals. You’re the only one left, Kami. Simple arithmetic. Three minus two equals the killer. You’re under arrest, Ms. Marsden, and anything you say or do will be held against you in a court of law.”

“She has an alibi,” I blurted out. “You can’t arrest her.”

The sheriff gave me a glare. “Are you her alibi, Mr. White?”

I shook my head. “No. But I can get you in touch with the man who is.”

I pulled out my cell phone to find Eddie’s number.

“Don’t bother,” Kami told me, her voice miserable. “Eddie can’t vouch for me.”

I looked at her in confusion.

“He was here on the property, but he was out camping. He can’t swear to my whereabouts all of Saturday morning.”

“What about Ben?” Alan asked. “Could he swear to it? Any of it?”

Kami threw him an angry glance, but said nothing.

“Could he?” I pressed her.

“Now that’s an interesting question,” Sheriff Paulsen observed, her voice sounding unnaturally tight. “Especially if this Ben you’re talking about is Ben Graham. Is it?”

I looked from one woman to the other, and guessed that despite her earlier fury at the mayor, Kami hadn’t gone to the sheriff with her suspicions and accusations about Ben’s role in the property tug-of-war. For some reason, she was still protecting hers and Ben’s privacy, or maybe, unlike Ben, she was too loyal to tip a murder rap in the direction of her lover. I guess love really is blind. Though if she and Ben had been together in the wee hours of Saturday morning, they’d be each other’s alibi, effectively safeguarding them from prosecution.

At least, that’s what I thought.

“Is it?” the sheriff repeated, her voice even more strained than before.

“Yes,” Kami let out on a sigh of resignation.

For a moment or two, the sheriff just stared at Kami. “I’m still taking you in, Ms. Marsden. And as soon as I find Ben Graham, I’m bringing him in, too. He told me he was home alone on Friday night and I didn’t question it. So who’s lying here? You or him?”

I knew the answer to that one: Ben. According to Skip, Ben had been in the A&W late Friday night with the Canadian collections guy. Whether he’d moved along to Kami’s after that, only she and Ben knew. And judging from Kami’s reluctance, she wasn’t happy about admitting it to the sheriff.

“Check the surveillance record,” Alan proposed. “If Ben’s car was here at the house early Saturday morning, you’ll have your answer, Sheriff.”

She turned to Kami. “I want to see it,” she demanded. “Right now.”

Kami punched more buttons on her control board until the recording on the monitor was dated for yesterday morning. We watched Jack’s car back out and drive away, then Kami fast-forwarded the video to the time stamp of three in the morning. Sure enough, a nice looking Audi sedan came into the picture and parked. The big bear of a guy who exited the car and walked up to the front porch of Kami’s home was, without a doubt, Ben Graham.

I slid a glance at the sheriff, her face suddenly suffused with heat.

“Not exactly the paragon of honesty you were hoping for in a mayor, I’m guessing,” Alan observed.

“Not exactly,” Sheriff Paulsen agreed through gritted teeth.

“He wants fossils,” I informed her. “He’s been playing the eco people and ATV lobby against each other to drive down the price of the land.”

The sheriff latched her eyes on mine. “What are you talking about?”

I filled her in on the mayor’s plan as Alan and I had assembled it, including Skip’s report about the Friday meeting with the collections man. By the time I finished, the sheriff was moving rapidly into meltdown mode.

Clang! Clang!

Geez—first Kami at Green Hills, now the sheriff. Ben Graham seemed to have that effect on women down pat.

“So he’s been using everyone and everything to get just what he wants,” Sheriff Paulsen spit out.

“Looks like,” I said, backing a little bit away from the irate lawwoman. I didn’t want to get burned by the steam she was generating in the small space. “Though I guess the rule is still innocent until proven guilty, right?”

She threw me a scalding glance. “I know how to do my job, thanks.”

“So Kami’s off the suspect list?” Alan asked.

“No. And I want you two out of here, or I’ll arrest you for the obstruction of justice. In fact, I want you to get out of the county before you totally screw up my investigation. Are you getting the message here?” She dropped her right hand to rest on the butt of the gun on her hip.

Great. Just because I’d stuck around to give Shana moral support, I was getting the boot from the law. I remembered that Tom had also said this morning that the sheriff wanted us all to go home, but she didn’t have to get nasty about it.

I exchanged a look of frustration with Alan. I didn’t want to leave, and I couldn’t shake a bad feeling about the way the sheriff’s investigation was going if she was planning to arrest Kami for Jack’s and Billy’s murders. It was like Sheriff Paulsen had already made up her mind about Kami’s guilt, even after we’d shared with her all the information we’d collected about Ben. Actually, now that I thought about it, she seemed a lot more upset about Ben’s potential fossil business than she did about the possibility that he might be involved in a double murder.