Cockatiels at Seven (24 page)

But why all the secrecy? And why was the fake bird-watcher tailing Rob? And speaking of the fake bird-watcher—where was he?

I stepped away from the window and circled around a bit. Toward the back of the barn I heard smothered laughter.

The fake bird-watcher was standing outside another of the windows, with one hand over his mouth and the other clutched to his stomach, shaking with suppressed laughter.

“Bit off the beaten path for bird-watching,” I said.

He stopped laughing, and I suddenly found myself staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Don’t make a sound,” he said, suddenly serious. “And put your hands in the air. What are you doing here?”

I put my hands in the air. Inside the barn, the opening bars of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” began playing.

“I asked, what you were doing here,” he repeated.

“You also said don’t make a sound,” I said. “I was trying to figure out if you expected me to mime my answer. I’ll need to put my hands down to do that.”

He didn’t look amused. Over his shoulder, in the barn, I could see that the gray-haired woman was doing a spirited dance routine with two enormous gray poodles.

“I followed you to see why you were following my brother,” I said. “What are you, a rival canine choreographer?”

“Hmph.” He glanced over his shoulder at the canine acrobatics inside, shook his head slightly, and focused back on me. “You’ll have to come with me.”

“I don’t think so,” a voice said from behind me. “Drop the gun.”

I turned slightly to find Freddy Hamilton holding a gun of his own.

“I said drop it,” Freddy repeated. “And put your hands in the air.”

The fake bird-watcher dropped the gun and raised his hands. I wasn’t sure whether I’d been rescued or had only gone from frying pan to fire. I kept my hands up, just in case.

“Now move, both of you,” Freddy said. “Inside the barn.”

We marched inside, holding our hands up. Rob and the woman turned in surprise when we entered. The poodles stopped dancing and raced over to lick our faces—well, my face and the other prisoner’s. They didn’t seem all that keen on licking Freddy’s face. From the portable CD player in the corner, Bruce Springsteen sang on unheeded.

In one corner of the barn, I saw a giant bird cage, about six feet square and eight feet tall, with several dozen brightly colored canaries and cockatiels roosting in it. Or trying to roost—about half the birds had their heads under their wings while the rest were fluffing their feathers and looking around rather irritably, as if loud rock and roll wasn’t their idea of a bedtime serenade. And one wall of the barn was lined to a height of six feet with rough shelves containing several dozen smaller cages, with or without brightly colored birds in them.

“Over there,” Freddy said, pointing with his gun to where Rob and the woman were standing.

“Freddy, what are you doing?” the woman asked.

“My business,” Freddy said.

“You’re doing it in my barn,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Freddy said. “But why’d you have to come back so early? You usually stay up in Maine till Labor Day. Everything would have been straightened out by Labor Day. Will you shut that damned thing off?”

Evidently Freddy wasn’t a fan of the Boss. The CD had segued from “Dancing in the Dark” to “My Hometown.” The woman—whom I deduced must be Aubrey Hamilton—walked over and cut the power.

“Great,” Freddy said. “Now put the dogs in one of the stalls. I don’t want them drooling all over me.”

“Poodles don’t drool,” Aubrey said. But she opened the door of one of the stalls and called to the poodles, who obediently followed.

“Him, too,” Freddy added, gesturing at Spike, who was fixing him with a stern look and growling slightly.

“What’s going on?” Rob asked, as he dragged Spike into the stall with the poodles.

“Shut up,” Freddy said. He tossed a roll of duct tape at Aubrey. “Here, take this and tape their hands together.”

“Freddy!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe you’re doing this!”

“Start with him,” Freddy said, pointing to the fake bird-watcher.

“This isn’t helping your case,” the man began.

“Shut up,” Freddy said, waving the gun a little wildly. “That means all of you.”

Aubrey sighed, but she didn’t try to talk him out of tying us up, which probably said a lot about Freddy’s character. That, and the fact that even though he let her use a utility knife to cut the duct tape, she made no attempt to escape—she just obediently taped the fake bird-watcher’s wrists together, then mine, and finally Rob’s. Freddy then ordered her to secure us to the vertical posts that supported the hay loft—perhaps he’d caught me measuring the distance between us. And when she’d trussed the three of us up to Freddy’s satisfaction, he secured her to a fourth post. Took him long enough, since he was still holding the gun in his right hand and had to do all the taping with his left.

When he’d finished tying up Aubrey, he came around and checked the rest of us. He must have been satisfied with Aubrey’s handiwork—he looked a little more relaxed and stuck his gun in his belt.

Not having the gun pointed at anyone made me feel a little bolder.

“So, did you kill Jasper Walker?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” Freddy said. “Him and me were friends.”

“He and I were friends, Freddy,” Aubrey said.

“You were not,” Freddy said. “You never could stand Jasper. But he was working with me in the bird business. He was the one who figured out where to get the cash so we could expand our operations—why would I kill him?”

“Thieves fall out,” I said. “Where did he get the cash?”

“The jerk never told me,” Freddy said. “And he never showed up with the rest of the cash he promised. He’s left me in the lurch, owing a hell of a lot of money to some really impatient guys.”

He shook his head as if disappointed with Jasper’s inconsiderateness.

“So you weren’t involved with the embezzlement?” I asked.

“The what?” Freddy said. He looked genuinely puzzled. As if he not only hadn’t been involved in embezzlement but didn’t even know what the word meant.

“Jasper was using the computer system he designed to steal money from the college,” I said. And apparently investing the proceeds in illegal finches.

“Don’t look at me,” Freddy said. “Computers are Jasper’s thing, not mine. And I had nothing to do with
his death.” His voice sounded a little shrill, and I winced when he pulled the gun out of his belt again. “Look at that crazy wife of his. I was coming home a couple of nights ago, and she came tearing out of Jasper’s driveway like a bat out of hell. Almost sideswiped my truck. I just figured they’d had a fight until I heard he was dead. Then I realized she must have been running away after killing him.”

After killing him, or perhaps after finding his body?

“Did you tell the police about seeing Karen?” I asked aloud.

“No,” he said. “I figured, why cause her any trouble?”

“More like you didn’t want to talk to the police,” the fake bird-watcher said.

“Whatever,” Freddy said, with a shrug. He stuck the gun back in his belt. “You can tell them for me. I’m getting out of here.”

He picked up a small bird cage, strolled over to the aviary, and opened the door. He reached in, grabbed a bird, and put it in the cage. Then he peered around as if looking for a particular bird.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

He closed the door to the aviary and scanned the cages lining the far wall. He went over to pull the covers off the few that had them. Then he whirled and strode back to Aubrey.

“What the hell have you done with my birds?” he shouted, waving his gun at her.

Was Freddy crazy? Two walls of the barn were lined with cages full of birds—some sleeping and others twittering softly. It looked like plenty of birds to me, but I try not to argue with people carrying guns.

Apparently Aubrey agreed with me.

“Done with your birds?” she repeated. “The place is full of those messy canaries and cockatiels of yours.”

She pointed with her chin to the aviary and the cage-lined walls.

“Not those,” he said. “The finches.”

He held up the cage with the single bird he’d grabbed from the aviary. A rather dramatically colored bird, with an orange head, green body, purple and yellow breast, and stripes of blue and black around the face.

I’d seen birds like that before—in the cage that had mysteriously appeared on the third floor of our house.

“A Gouldian finch,” the fake bird-watcher said, causing me to wonder if I’d been wrong in thinking of him as a fake. He wasn’t particularly swarthy, either. “They’re endangered in Australia. And illegal to import. Of course, I’m sure you bred those, right?”

“Yeah,” Freddy said. “You didn’t let them go, did you,” he asked, turning back to Aubrey.

“I just got here last night,” she said.

“And the day after you get here, my finches disappear. They were here yesterday.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” she said. “I didn’t even know you had finches here.”

“Maybe Dad and Grandpa took them,” Rob put in.

Freddy’s eyes narrowed.

“Why would they do that?” he asked.

“Just give up,” the bird-watcher said. “We’re not after you—we’re after the big guys.”

“We?” I asked. “Who is we?” The man glanced at me and ignored my question.

“If you give us information on them—” he went on.

“Look, dude,” Freddy began.

“Arroyo,” the man said. “Carlos Arroyo, with the—”

“Whatever,” Freddy said. “Do I look that stupid? Like turning stool pigeon on them is going to be good for my health. No thanks.”

“No one’s going to hurt you over a bunch of birds,” Aubrey said.

“Yes, except it isn’t just about birds, is it?” I said. “Because the same guys who smuggle in birds are also smuggling drugs, right?”

Freddy and Arroyo both looked at me with surprise.

“Montgomery Blake is my grandfather,” I said, with as much of a shrug as I could manage in my trussed-up condition. “He’s always going on about the connection between wildlife smuggling and drug smuggling and for that matter, arms smuggling. So what are the
odds that birds are the only thing Freddy’s smuggling? He’s probably dealing a little cocaine, too, or is it heroin?”

“Oh, Freddy,” Aubrey said. “How could you?”

“You can’t get away with it, you know,” Arroyo said. “They’ll be watching for your car. Just give up.”

Freddy stared at him for a moment, then went over and began rummaging in Arroyo’s pockets.

“What are you doing?” Arroyo said.

Freddy emerged with a set of car keys.

“But they won’t be watching for your car, will they?” he said. “By the time you get loose, I can be long gone.”

He turned on his heel and headed for the door. As he walked, he pulled out his cell phone and punched a couple of keys.

“Trey?” he said. “Change of plans. I’ve just got a few things up at the house to load and then—No, I’ve got them tied up.”

Who was he talking with, I wondered. And then I remembered that Trey was one of the names on the message slips on Karen’s desk.

Of course, so was Jasper. And the slips were dated Monday or Tuesday, when Jasper was already dead, which meant someone had been trying to reach Karen and pretending to be Jasper. Why?

“Dude,” Freddy was saying on the phone, “that’s way over the top. We can just leave them tied up here, no problem. And if—”

That’s all I caught before he slammed the door behind him.

We all looked at each other.

“What’s he up to?” Aubrey asked.

From outside, I heard the sound of a car door slamming.

“This is what Dad and Dr. Blake have been investigating lately, isn’t it?” I asked, looking at Rob.

“Probably,” he said. “I haven’t been involved in it for months.”

“But you were involved?”

“They sent me out to find out whatever I could about the Belle Glade Bird Farm,” he said. “That’s how I got started doing the doggie dancing. Sorry,” he added, turning to Aubrey.

“And I thought you were interested in learning,” she said.

“I was—I am!” Rob protested. “When they sent me, I didn’t realize how cool it was going to be. They were annoyed when you went to Maine and there was no reason for me to come out here for the rest of the summer, but I was relieved. I figured by the time you came back, they’d have finished their raid, and it would be okay again, and I could keep working on the dancing without them expecting me to spy on anyone. I mean, I felt pretty guilty, spying on Aubrey’s cousin.”

“Why should you feel guilty about spying on a major drug and wildlife smuggler?” I asked.

“Major?” Arroyo said, with a laugh. “That’s rich. Freddy isn’t a major anything. Except maybe a major idiot.”

“How do you know?” I asked. “And for that matter, who are you, Mr. Arroyo, and what are you doing here, anyway?”

“Carlos Arroyo,” he said. “U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I’d show you my ID, but . . . ”

“You can do that when we get loose,” I said. “Are you one of the guys who interrogated Henry and Phyllis Blanke?”

“Blanke? Who are they?”

“Never mind,” I said. He sounded puzzled, so maybe Fish and Wildlife wasn’t the only federal or state agency snooping around Caerphilly. “So you don’t think Freddy’s a major player in the smuggling game.”

“He’s chum,” Arroyo said. “We were hoping to follow him to the big sharks.”

“The drug suppliers,” Rob said, nodding wisely.

“Well, I’m sure the DEA would be interested in them,” Arroyo said. “We’d bring them in once we had enough evidence to make our move. But we mainly want the guys who’ve been doing the finch laundering.”

“Finch laundering,” Rob repeated. He and Aubrey burst into laughter. Okay, I admit I chuckled a bit myself.

“Why am I imagining a clothesline filled with brightly colored birds fluttering in the breeze?” I asked.

“Because you’re way old-fashioned,” Rob said. “Me, I see a passel of them tumbling round and round in the dryer.”

“Ouch!” Aubrey exclaimed. “They wouldn’t like that.”

“I always use the delicate cycle,” Rob said.

“Very funny,” Arroyo said, as if he didn’t really think it was the least bit amusing. “Finch launderers are the people who provide phony provenance to prove the birds are legal—that they were bred in captivity, either in this country or in a country where it’s legal to
export them to the U.S. That way the smugglers have an easier time selling them. In the wild, Gouldian finches are endangered, and I’d bet anything those finches weren’t bred in captivity.”