The Kiskadee of Death (18 page)

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

I
was really proud of myself. I didn't faint, I didn't jump up and down in a pure adrenaline rush, I didn't roll my eyes, or anything.

Anything.

That's what I didn't do. I didn't, couldn't, do anything for a few moments. I just stared into Luce's brilliant blue eyes, feeling my own face stretch into the biggest smile I'd ever had. Then, without a word, I got out of my chair, and knelt beside my wife's knee, my hand sliding gingerly onto her belly.

“That is the best truth I have ever heard,” I said, feeling a dampness rising in my eyes. “Marry me, Luce.”

“I already did,” she reminded me.

“That's a good thing,” I said, wondering why I couldn't seem to come up with something more memorable or romantic or… anything.

“My brain has stopped working,” I told my wife, who was beginning to laugh at me.

I threw my arms around her and pulled her into me for a long, happy, delirious kiss. When I let her go again, I rocked back on my heels.

“Okay, I think my brain is working again now. I obviously needed oxygen. Thanks for the mouth-to-mouth,” I said. I snapped my fingers as I suddenly realized why Luce had been teasing me about dates yesterday morning.

“The date—you missed your monthly cycle,” I said, then couldn't help adding, “Mama Luce.”

“Happy Valentine's Day, early,” she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “You know what I feel like doing right now?”

I eyed the door that led back to our bedroom.

Luce gave me a light swat on my chest.

“Wrong,” she said, laughing again. “I feel like a parade, and if we get going right now, we can stop in and offer that last minute help the MOB needs to make their Citrus Festival Parade float the very best it has ever been.”

I stood and looked down at my wife. “Are you sure? I mean…”

I nodded at her midsection.

“I'm pregnant, Bobby, not terminal,” she clarified. “And there's nothing like a parade to celebrate good news. Besides, as you yourself pointed out to the chief, the queen herself expects us to be there, and we don't want to keep the queen in suspense.”

 

Fifteen minutes later, I parked the car at one end of Buzz Davis's long driveway behind a line of other vehicles. The MOB float had been moved out of the garage onto the brick-paved apron and to my surprise, the float looked pretty darn good. The front truck cab was clearly now the head of an enormous Green Jay, composed of spray-painted blue oranges, and the trailer behind it sported a citrus-studded map of Texas, along with a collection of a dozen six-foot tall photos featuring the Texas specialty birds. Clumps of people filled the apron around the truck, tacking up last minute grapefruit halves, talking with each other, drinking coffee, and in general, having a grand old time. Behind the float, I spotted a human-sized Great Kiskadee getting a pirate-style black eye patch fitted to his head by none other than the lovely, tiara-crowned Citrus Festival queen herself, Pearl Garcia.

“Look,” I said to Luce, pointing at the resplendent Pearl and the costumed birder. “The One-eyed Kiskadee is here. He'll be a local legend by the end of the parade, if he isn't already.”

“And there's Mark's Mustang,” my wife said, yearning in her voice, pointing at the classic car parked near the float. The Mustang's convertible top was down and the white leather interior gleamed in the early morning sun. “I wonder if it's going to be Pearl's ride during the parade?”

“Yo, Minnesota!”

Schooner waved us over to where he stood near the truck cab door with Chief Pacheco.

“I thought maybe you'd left us and headed home already,” he said when we got closer to him.

The words of our midnight warning rang in my head. I threw a quick glance at the chief, but he seemed preoccupied, his gaze directed at his niece Pearl with the giant kiskadee. Could Schooner have been our intruder?

As usual, he was wearing the local birding uniform—a floral print shirt topping a pair of khaki shorts. I almost asked him to turn around for me so I could inspect the shirt for rips, but I couldn't come up with a good line.
Hey, Schooner, I want to check you
out
just didn't hit the right note for me.

“We had to see the finished product,” I told Schooner, patting the cheek of the truck cab-turned-Green Jay. My hand came away with a tinge of blue on my palm. Okay, so that was one thing I'd gotten right about the MOB: spray-painting grapefruit was an inside job.

“We're leaving after the parade,” Luce told him. “We're missing the Winter Carnival parade back home, but I have a feeling this one, in seventy-degree weather, will more than make up for it. It was nice meeting you, Schooner.”

With that remark, Luce took my arm and steered me towards the back of the float. Pearl and the kiskadee were nowhere in sight, but Cynnie Scott,MOB president/conservation advocate/unlucky-in-love local legend, reached out to snag my sleeve and draw me into a conversation she was having with Poppy Mac.

“Bob,” she said, excitement practically oozing out of her, “and Luce, you two have got to hear this. Buzz just told me he's using the proceeds from his sale of the land to the SpaceX project to fund a new initiative for conservation of key migratory areas! Isn't that fabulous? He's the conservation start-up I mentioned to you yesterday!”

“I knew he was one of the good guys!” Poppy interjected, her round cheeks flushed with pink over her wrinkles. “You can always tell. He's just got that look, you know? Like a white knight. And he's naming the initiative for Birdy in honor of all of Birdy's lobbying with state officials to guarantee that the spaceport will implement bird-friendly directives. It's just so exciting!” She clapped her hands together in delight. “And now I won't feel guilty when I take my seat on the first space flight!”

“You got your seat?” Luce asked.

“Yes!!” the older woman exclaimed. “Paddy gave me the ticket last night—it was his early Valentine's surprise for me!”

I gave Luce's hand a squeeze and planted a kiss on her cheek.

“A lot of that going around, it seems like,” I whispered as a tingling sensation ran down my spine.
I was going to be a father. I was going to take my child birding. Wow.

I pulled Luce away from the women and headed into the garage. I wanted a moment alone to hug my pregnant wife again.

And just as I wrapped my arms around her, a scream echoed in the garage and a giant kiskadee bolted by me, one hand slapping something hard into my stomach, its other hand dragging a screaming Pearl behind him.

The kiskadee threw Pearl into the green Porsche in the far stall of the garage, vaulted the hood of the sportscar, jumped into the driver's seat and reversed out at high speed. A screeching brake sound, a loud squeal of the tires, and the car went roaring away down Buzz's long driveway.

“Pearl!” Rosalie Pacheco screamed from the front of the garage. “He has Pearl!”

Ignoring the yells and chaos that had erupted in the garage, I looked at the hard object the kiskadee had stuck into my stomach and which now lay in my hands.

“What is that?” Luce asked, looking at the small weighted black sack I was holding.

“I'm not sure,” I said.

“It's a sap,” Chief Pacheco said, snapping a pair of handcuffs on my wrist. “And you're under arrest, Bob White, for assault with a deadly weapon and maybe a murder, too.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
he next thing I knew, I was in the back of Pacheco's squad car looking out at Luce, who was surrounded by a clutch of MOBsters trying to comfort her.

Pacheco put on his lights and siren and roared out of the drive.

“I didn't do anything!” I yelled to the chief over the ear-splitting sound of the siren. “Luce was right there with me since we arrived. Ask anyone!”

“I know that!” Pacheco yelled back. “We're going after Buzz and Pearl!”

He pushed a keyring back to me through the screen behind him. “It's the key to the cuffs. Open 'em.”

I reached forward and grabbed the keys. It took a minute or two for me to fit it in the lock—it's not like I usually get a chance to practice that little trick when I'm on birding trips, you know—and free my hands.

“So why am I here?” I shouted over the wailing that was still coming from the squad car. The chief took a corner, fast, and I had to grip the car door handle to keep myself from splaying out on my side.

I wondered if this was what it was like to drive with me when I was speeding.

“Because you were right there!” Pacheco called back.

He cut the siren, but not his speed. “You had the sap in your hand, and I needed an extra pair of eyes to keep up with Pearl and the bird. Look for the green Porsche!”

“There!” I shouted, “It hung a right two blocks ahead of us!”

The chief obliged.

“Gunnar,” he told me, his voice rushed while he tore after the Porsche, “you know, the birder with the bandana around his head. Someone found him crumpled on the ground, unconscious, just as Pearl screamed. I checked his pulse, could see blood on his head, and I started running in her direction, but the bird had her. Then, I see you've got the sap in your hand, so I grab you to come with me.”

“What's a sap?” I asked.

He spun the wheel again, and I grabbed at the back of the front seats to keep myself erect.

It didn't work. I ended up banging my shoulder against the car door.

“Put on the seat belt!” Pacheco commanded.

“Now you tell me,” I complained, then complied, hurriedly locating the shoulder harness for the back right seat.

“The sap is what hit Gunnar,” Pacheco shouted back to me. “It's what killed Birdy—it cracked his skull. You had the murder weapon in your hand. I wasn't about to lose it, so I took you along with it.”

He pulled the squad car level with the Porsche. Luckily, most of the streets we'd flown through had been empty; the few cars on the road I had noticed in our mad dash had all pulled over when we came roaring by, courtesy of the blazing lights on top of the car. I looked out the window to see the back of the kiskadee's head and noticed a black eye patch dangling against the nape of his yellow neck.

Good to know that the kiskadee—Birdy's killer! Buzz?—was conscientious enough to remove the eye patch before racing around town at breakneck speeds with a kidnapped girl in his front seat with him.

Kidnapped.

Crap.

He'd kidnapped the Citrus Festival queen, who also happened to be the niece of the chief.

A really protective chief.

I got a really bad feeling about what was going to happen next.

A car shoot-out?

A hostage situation?

The Porsche suddenly pulled over and braked to a stop. Pacheco slid his squad car in front at an angle, blocking any forward progress the getaway car might make.

“Stay down!” the chief shouted at me as he jumped out and ran in a crouch around the front of the squad car, his service revolver in his hand.

I flattened myself on the back seat.

I heard car doors opening and slamming and Pearl shouting “Uncle Juan! Uncle Juan! Don't shoot!”

I braced myself for the inevitable sound of gunshots, but none came.

I counted to fifteen, then slowly lifted my upper body to peek out the back window.

Chief Pacheco stood on the sidewalk beside the Porsche with his left arm wrapped around his niece's shoulders, his gun trained across the top of the car on the giant kiskadee that stood next to the driver's open door. I peeled myself off the back seat and stepped out of the car to join Pacheco on the street. The chief pushed Pearl behind him and told me to get her into the squad car.

“Take off your head,” I heard him order the kiskadee.

I glanced back in panic—had the chief said he was going to take off the kiskadee's head?

No, no, I heard it wrong, I realized as I watched the kiskadee reach his hands up to remove the head section of his costume.

Thank God.

No mob-style execution on the streets today, after all. This was Texas in the twenty-first century, not a black-and-white gangster movie set in 1930s Chicago.

And Pacheco had Birdy's killer: Buzz Davis, multi-millionaire, ex-astronaut, and Birdy's best friend.

The bird's head came off, but it wasn't Buzz Davis inside that kiskadee costume.

It was Mark Myers.

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

B
ut you couldn't have killed Birdy,” I blurted out, my hand resting on the doorframe after I'd stashed Pearl in the chief's car. “I saw you on Crazy Eddie's tape. You came to Estero Llano and then left right after Buzz and Birdy had gone into the park.”

“I didn't kill Birdy,” Mark said, his eyes locked on Pacheco's gun barrel. “He was my friend. He was about the only person around here who had any faith in me. But if it weren't for me,” Mark seemed to choke up with emotion, “he might still be alive.”

“He didn't kill Birdy,” Pearl's voice sobbed from inside the car. “But we know who did. That's why we ran.”

“I'm going to cuff you, Mark,” Pacheco said, his voice hard. “If nothing else, you broke the law with your driving, and until I hear this whole story, I want you restrained.”

Mark held up his feathered hands. “Cuff me. Please. There's nowhere I'd rather be right now than in the back seat of a squad car. Maybe then, Pearl and I can be sure we're going to make it through the day alive.”

The chief holstered his gun and rounded the car to put handcuffs on Mark.

“Are you all right, Pearl?” I asked the queen, her tiara slightly askew, as she took several deep breaths and sniffed loudly to regain her composure after her sobbing had subsided. “What happened in the garage, anyway?”

Pearl adjusted her tiara, and smoothed her satiny dress over her waist. “Mark and I,” she began, “we were, ah… well…”

She folded her hands in her lap and wouldn't look at me. “We were kissing a little behind the empty crates in the garage, and then we heard Gunnar start to say ‘hello' to someone, but then there was an awful thud, and we heard a man saying ‘Keep your mouth shut, permanently, you bozo,' and then,” she broke off to look up at me, her eyes filling with tears.

“Mark put his hand over my mouth so I wouldn't make any noise, and no one would know we were there, because we were afraid of the man who said ‘bozo', but Mark accidentally knocked a crate with his kiskadee tail, and it made a noise, and then we heard the man say ‘who's back there?' in a very rough voice, and Mark grabbed my hand and we practically exploded out from behind the crates, and Mark almost knocked the man over, but he didn't, and then—”

I put up my hands in a “slow down” gesture to stop her frantic narration. By then, Pacheco had stuffed Mark in all his feathered glory into the seat beside Pearl and told me to get into the front passenger seat.

“So when you bumped into the guy, he tried to hit you with the sap, but instead, you grabbed it out of his hands and kept running,” Pacheco said, apparently reciting back what Mark had just conveyed to him.

“Yes,” both Mark and Pearl answered.

I noticed that Mark covered Pearl's hand with his own feathered one. She threw him a grateful glance and a small smile.

Oh, no, I thought. The boyfriend isn't going to like this. I remembered my introduction to Guardsman Pacheco at Fat Daddy's and the way he'd defended his Pearlita. The guardsman might find himself with some stiff competition from a white knight—or a Great Kiskadee, as the case happened to be—for Pearl's affections. Mark had, after all, whisked the queen away to safety.

Considering how fast he had been driving that Porsche, however, I'd say there was definitely more whisking than safety going on in that fair damsel's rescue.

“So who was it?” Chief Pacheco demanded of the two young people, twisting in his seat to interrogate them. “Who clobbered Gunnar? Who did you grab the sap from?”

The two youngsters looked at each other blankly, then at the chief.

“We don't know,” Mark said. “I think I've seen him during the float building, but I don't know if I could pick him out of a crowd. Schooner's the only other birder I've hung out with, the only one I really recognize. When this guy tried to hit me with the sap, I wasn't going to ask for his name and address.”

“He was one of the MOB,” Pearl insisted. “I'm sure he's the one who wears flowered shirts a lot.”

I put my head in my hands and groaned.

“They all do,” I said. I turned to look at Pacheco as he pulled his radio from the dash and called in a report. When he was finished, I asked, “Your people will get fingerprints from the… what did you call it, again?”

“Sap.”

“Right, sap,” I said, immediately realizing the problem with that answer. “And they'll be my fingerprints, won't they?”

The chief nodded, pulling away from the curb. “Mark's fingers are covered with the costume, and I'm sure our killer is careful, and apparently experienced enough, to know to wear gloves when he uses a sap.” He looked at me for a moment and actually smiled a little. “Unlike you, Bob White.”

“What is a sap?” Pearl asked from the backseat.

“It's a little weighted ball inside a cloth sack,” her uncle explained. “It's a weapon, and in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, it can kill someone by crushing the exactly right part of their skull. Our medical examiner determined that was what killed Birdy, but I didn't want anyone to know in hopes our killer would slip up and give himself away by mentioning a sap.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “In the old gangster movies, didn't those guys carry saps?”

Pacheco shrugged, threading the squad car through quiet residential neighborhoods.

“Don't know,” he said. “I didn't watch gangster movies when I was a kid. My mother thought they were too violent for children. We watched cartoons.”

“So did I,” Mark offered from the back seat. “Watching cartoons is what got me interested in fast cars and car chases.”

I saw Pacheco give Mark a dirty look in the rear-view mirror.

“It's important,” I muttered, more to myself than to the chief. An idea was tugging at the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite get it into focus. “I know it's important. Gangsters—mobsters—carrying saps. Didn't they threaten to use them on somebody who owed them money and didn't pay up? What was that called?”

“Collections?” Mark guessed, then changed the subject. “Is Gunnar dead?”

The boy's voice softened. “I don't think I can handle being responsible for two deaths.”

The chief turned onto a gravel drive that led up to a one-story cream-colored adobe house. “Why do you say that, Mark? You didn't kill Birdy, so how is it your fault?”

I heard a masculine sniffle from the back seat.

“Because if I hadn't been late that morning, the morning that Birdy was killed, he wouldn't have been alone,” Mark answered. “I'd promised to help him finish a surprise for Rosalie, and I was late, and I was embarrassed, because I'd been drinking the night before, and I didn't want him to know, because he's been…” Mark paused and sniffed again. “I didn't want to disappoint him after all the times he's stood up for me when I've screwed up with Uncle Buzz.”

Pacheco stopped the car and told the two young people to get out and go in the house until he came back for them.

“Where are we?” Mark asked.

“It's my house. My grandma's home,” Pearl told him. I heard her dress rustle and then her face was pressed up near the screen behind our front seats, her fingers splayed out on the metal mesh.

“I can't stay here, Uncle Juan,” she pleaded with the chief. “I'm the Citrus Festival queen—I have to be in the parade!”

“You're also a witness to an assault and can possibly identify a murderer,” he firmly told her. “You're staying here until I come and get you. Mark,” he said, turning to the costumed boy, “I'm depending on you to keep her here. Do you understand me?”

Mark nodded. “She won't go anywhere.”

Pearl burst into tears. “But I'm the queen! What will everyone say?”

“I can tell everyone you're under arrest for abetting a criminal,” her uncle suggested.

Pearl gasped in disbelief. “You wouldn't!” she cried.

Pacheco nodded. “I would, if it meant keeping you safe.”

“You can't!” the queen persisted.

I studied the faces of the uncle and niece, both equally set and stubborn.

Great. Another inter-generational family fight. What was it about these Texans, anyway? First Buzz and Mark, and now Pacheco and Pearl.

Family counselors had a goldmine in Texas, I decided.

“Look, you two,” I said. “The parade doesn't start for another three hours, right?” I asked, checking my watch. “Maybe we can have the killer in custody in time for you to ride in the parade, Pearl. He's got to be flustered now, knowing we have the murder weapon, and that we have witnesses.”

“But I don't know who he was!” Pearl insisted. “He's a birder, and that's all I know.”

“But he doesn't know that,” I reminded her. “He might think you've already named him, and that your uncle is closing in on him this very minute.”

Pacheco tilted his head in acknowledgement of my conclusion. “Could be, Bob. All the more reason that I want Pearl here, and no one knowing about it. You're riding back to Buzz's garage with me, and by the time we get there, we're going to have this figured out.”

He turned to Mark and Pearl. “Stay here until you hear from me. And no fooling around,” he added, giving Mark a dark look.

Out of the blue, I thought about Luce being pregnant. The knowledge had totally escaped my mind in the heat of the chase, but now as I watched the two young people walk into the little house, all I could think of was: if I have a daughter, she's never going to be left alone in a house with a boy.

Even if he is dressed as a state specialty bird.

Especially if he's dressed as a state specialty bird.

“Okay, Bob,” Pacheco said as he pointed the car back down to the main road of Mission, “it's time for you to prove to me that your exceptional memory for details is good for something other than identifying birds. You got a threatening note the night after working on the float, and Gunnar got sapped for not keeping his mouth shut, according to Mark and Pearl. What did Bandana Man say to you when you were building the float that could possibly lead us to a murderer?”