A Murder of Crows (6 page)

Yet I could still hear the particular register of the tone in Red’s whisper, and it had sounded urgent. It had reminded me more of a Killdeer’s cry as it protected its young, rather than a Blue Jay calling to stake out its territory in defense.

Okay, that’s weird—trying to interpret human behavior through bird calls, but what can I say? Given the choice between figuring out birds or humans, I think birds are a whole lot easier. With birds, what you see—and hear—is what you get, which is definitely not the case with a lot of humans.

Trust me. I was the one who’d been suckered by the faked sincerity of a habitual reprobate into babysitting a bag of flour for a day.

Two American Crows flew across the yard, followed by a pair of Blue Jays.

So, had Red been trying to protect Prudence from something else, or was she just reminding her friend of her physical prowess? Did it even matter? As Luce had reminded me, Prudence had just learned that her husband was dead. Of course, she was out of control. As a counselor who dealt with students and their families, I’d seen the whole gamut of reactions to stress and crisis. In fact, Red gave Prudence the same advice I offered in those situations: take it one step at a time.

And Prudence had immediately responded, which, I had to say, wasn’t always the case with my students. Gee, maybe I should ask my favorite waitress for some pointers in that department the next time I saw her.

Assuming that Red had her memory back by then, that is. Until that happened, no one would be asking Red much of anything, I guessed.

Including the police trying to place suspects at Millie’s Deli on Saturday.

Ouch. Bad timing for a concussion.

I watched two dull-colored American Goldfinches fly in and land on the feeder’s perches. Without the usual collection of summer birds around, they had the feeder all to themselves for the moment. I wondered if they would stick around for the winter or fly south before the end of fall.

Talk about timing.

“Salmon or tilapia?” Luce asked.

“Salmon,” I said, “with that really tasty glaze you put on it.”

She lifted a shapely blonde eyebrow at me.

“And which glaze would that be? I’ve only tried about six different ones in the last month, and as best as I can recall, you said they were all very tasty.”

I gave her beautiful lips a big smacking kiss.

“They were,” I agreed. “But the one I’m thinking of had a half-cup of teriyaki base, a pinch of ginger, a tablespoon of rice wine vinegar, a clove of garlic, and, I believe, one-third cup of oyster sauce.”

Luce laughed. “If I had your memory for details, I’d never have to write down another recipe.”

“Speaking of memory,” I said, “don’t you think it’s a little odd that Red just happened to fall down the stairs and lose her memory on the same day that Sonny Delite was murdered, especially when the police might need to question her about who was in the deli the day before?”

She pulled the clip that had held her hair back during her work day at Maple Leaf and shook it loose down her back. “Are you suggesting that Red knocked herself out on purpose?”

“No,” I replied.

At least, that hadn’t been my first idea.

My first idea was that Prudence had attacked Red in another surge of crazed fury over Sonny’s death and sent her tumbling down the stairs. My second idea was that Prudence did it deliberately to keep Red from talking to the police about Sonny, the husband she adored, but also claimed was a liar and a cheat. If Red and Prudence were such good friends, it certainly was possible that Red would have information about Sonny that the police might be interested to learn. Prudence had, after all, told me she would have done anything for Sonny. Could that include guaranteeing that nobody spoke ill of him, especially to the police investigating his unexpected demise?

I mean, his murder?

Now that Luce had proposed another way of looking at Red’s fall, though, I couldn’t help but wonder if my wife might have a point. Maybe it wasn’t Prudence who wanted to keep the police from questioning Red.

Maybe Red didn’t want the police to question Red.

And why would that be?

“You’re such a suspicious man, Bobby,” Luce said, demonstrating once again her eerie talent of reading my thoughts. “I’m going inside to start dinner. Let me know when you solve the case, Sherlock.”

A lone House Finch landed on one of the feeder’s perches and gave me the once over.

“So I’m not Sherlock Holmes,” I told the bird. “Doesn’t mean I can’t play detective, does it?”

The finch cocked its head.

“I know, I know. I’m just a high school counselor,
for crying out loud
. Geez, everybody’s a critic.”

From inside the house, I could hear the crinkling noise of butcher paper being unwrapped from what would soon become our dinner. My mouth began to water in response. Just the thought of Luce’s fresh salmon had me salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I followed my wife inside to where she was standing by the counter, already measuring ingredients into a bowl for homemade biscuits.

“Why in the world would Red want to hurt herself?” Luce posed the question when she saw me.

She’d been thinking it over, too, which didn’t surprise me in the least. In the year since our wedding, I’d learned a secret about my bride. Luce was as stubborn as I was when it came to solving a puzzle. If I was a Sherlock Holmes, she was my Dr. Watson.

“Because she wanted more days off than Chef Tom would give her,” I said in exasperation. “I have no idea! I just think it’s too coincidental that the one time Red might have key information for a murder investigation, she’s suddenly memory-less.”

Luce stopped blending milk into the mixture.

“It’s a murder now?”

I’d forgotten she didn’t know.

“Rick was in my office this morning when he got a call,” I explained. “Sonny was poisoned. The medical examiner found traces of hemlock in his stomach. In lieu of any evidence that he committed suicide, they’re treating it as a homicide.”

“Oh, my,” she breathed, staring into the bowl of dough. “What about an accidental death? Maybe Sonny mistakenly ate … no,” she declared, affirming my own opinion. “No way. Sonny was an expert woodsman. He couldn’t have mistakenly ingested hemlock.”

She went back to stirring the biscuits, but I could tell from the tilt of her head that she was still mulling it over. I may not be a mind-reader like Luce, but I do know body language, and body language doesn’t lie.

Sure enough, a moment later, she added, “Wild ginseng does look an awful lot like water hemlock. If you were harvesting your own ingredients for brewing a natural tea, I guess it could be possible that …”

“You’d pick poisonous water hemlock by mistake? Remind me not to drink any loose leaf ginseng tea the next time someone offers it to me,” I told her. “For that matter, I don’t think I want to drink any more ginseng tea, period.”

Luce dumped the dough onto the floured kitchen counter and patted it out with her fingers into an oval shape.

“I’m just saying it could happen,” she insisted. “I know Sonny was into natural foods. Maybe he routinely harvested his own tea leaves. Lots of people hunt for edible mushrooms and roots these days to use in their diets.”

I suddenly remembered Red reassuring Mrs. Delite that her meal was all organic. Maybe Luce was onto something here. Maybe Sonny’s death was just a terrible mistake—he’d taken an early morning stroll, picked some leaves and thrown them into his morning cup of tea, thinking he was going to savor some wild ginseng.

“But what about the scarecrow get-up he was wearing?” I wondered aloud. “You’re the one who thought that was a clear indicator of foul play,” I reminded her.

She looked me up and down.

“Maybe I spoke out of turn,” she said.

I glanced down at my weathered blue jeans and my favorite flannel shirt that I’d worn to work. Stick an old hat on me, and I could be Sonny’s fashion double.

“Okay, so maybe the clothes aren’t a dead giveaway.”

Luce groaned.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean that intentionally,” I tried to apologize. “It was a slip of the tongue. Bad Bob! Bad Bob!” I reprimanded myself.

Luce laughed and cut the dough into biscuits.

I watched my wife’s expert chef’s hands smoothly transfer the biscuits onto a waiting cookie sheet. She could probably do it in her sleep, I realized. Had Sonny likewise been on automatic early Sunday as he strolled the Arboretum and unthinkingly tossed in a deadly leaf to steep in his morning tea?

Stranger things had happened, I supposed, though at the moment I honestly couldn’t think of any.

“I think you should call Rick and tell him about the ginseng,” I told Luce. “You might be able to save the local detectives a lot of trouble for nothing.” I watched her pop the tray of biscuits into the oven. “And maybe you’re right—I am too suspicious.”

Luce cleaned her work area and put away the bag of flour. “By the way, thanks for picking up flour. I forgot to put it on the grocery list when I shopped yesterday afternoon, and I know how you love those buttermilk biscuits with salmon.”

“What flour?” I asked.

“The bag of flour I found in the front hallway when I came in. To be honest, I was surprised you’d thought to stop at the store and pick it up. I didn’t know you were aware we were out of it.”

The bag of flour.

Goldie.

Oh, crap.

I looked into the oven where the biscuits were already rising into fluffy magnificence.

“That’s somebody’s baby in there,” I said, not sure if I should laugh out loud or pound my head against the kitchen wall.

“Say again?” Luce asked.

I pointed at the oven, a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth.

“That bag of flour was Sara Schiller’s child development class ‘baby.’ I was babysitting it for her today, and I had to bring it home overnight.”

Luce looked from me to the oven, then back to me.

“Well, that settles that question,” she said. “Once we have kids, I’m sure not leaving them alone with you at home.”

Chapter Six

I made a quick detour on my way into work on Tuesday morning and pulled into the Stop ‘n’ Go gas station two blocks from the high school. I grabbed the first bag of flour I could find and went to pay at the register.

“Morning, Bob,” said a voice behind me.

I turned to find Paul Brand, our new art teacher, holding a steaming cup of coffee in one hand as he dug in his pocket with the other.

“Hi, Paul,” I replied. I nodded at his large cup. “You’re a wise man. The java here is far superior to what we get in the teacher’s lounge.”

I paid the young man behind the cash register, and waited for Paul to do likewise.

“So how are you adjusting to life at Savage High?” I asked him. “Are the students treating you okay?”

“They’re good kids,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

I waited a beat for him to say something more, but he didn’t. I fished through my memory to see what tidbit I could retrieve about him to continue the conversation, but came up empty. I really didn’t know anything about him, other than he was our new art teacher and had played hockey.

And Alan thought he was the Bonecrusher.

I studied Paul while he dropped his change in his pocket. Only an inch or two shorter than I was, he was broader through the shoulders and slimmer at his waist. I tried to visualize him in a black mask and leotard, which was a little tough at the moment, since he was wearing a mustard-colored cotton V-necked sweater over an open collared shirt, his sleeves rolled neatly up to his elbows. Even though I could see the definition of muscles in his biceps, with his wavy jet black hair and chiseled cheekbones, he looked more like a GQ model than a former wrestling star.

Except for his broken nose. That was definitely not GQ.

I propped my bag of flour against my hip and abruptly realized that I was staring at Paul’s crooked nose.

“It looks a lot better now than it did when it happened,” he informed me. “Fortunately, I have a very high pain threshold.”

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean to stare. Still, that must have hurt,” I added. “Hockey?”

“State tournament, my senior year of high school,” he said. “My mother cried all the way to the emergency room. I figured I was just paying my dues as a hockey player. Believe me, I’ve taken worse hits.”

The way he said it made me think about Alan’s insistence that Paul was the Most Likely Faculty Member to Be the Bonecrusher in our bet. Did Alan know more about Paul than he had shared with me? I always made a point of being on good terms with all of the teachers at Savage, but that didn’t necessarily mean I had access to the same grapevine of information that teachers seemed to share amongst themselves. Before I could ask Paul to elaborate, though, he abruptly changed the subject.

“You’re the counselor for students in the last part of the alphabet, right?”

“I am.”

“I’ve got some real issues with a student named Sara Schiller,” he said. “She’s cutting my class on a regular basis. Last week we started a scrapbooking project, and she has yet to even get started.”

“Scrapbooking? You mean like photo albums?”

“It’s a lot more than that,” he corrected me. “It’s actually an art form that goes back to the fifteenth century in England. It’s the creative selection and preservation of personal and family history through the use of photographs, literature and artwork. Most of the students really enjoy the embellishment techniques I teach them.”

Embellishment?

Embellishment?

Heck, I was still grappling with the photo album as art concept.

Paul checked the time on his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Would you talk with Sara, please?”

“I will,” I assured him, following him out the door to where I had parked in front of the store. I shifted my newly-purchased bag of flour into the crook of my arm and watched him walk towards the rows of gas pumps. While he wasn’t the biggest guy I’d ever seen, he carried himself with a certain swagger that reminded me of my brother-in-law, back when Alan and I were in college together. Alan had been, and still was, a talented athlete. Judging from his easy gait, it looked like Paul was in that same club.