The Kiskadee of Death (20 page)

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I
've always been much better with close-up work than long distance,” he said, “so don't you be thinking I'll miss my shot at this close range the way I missed your friend Eddie, because I won't.”

“And what then?” I asked him, mentally willing Luce to run from the room screaming for help. “You kill me, and then you're going to have two murder charges against you. Chief Pacheco is on to you, Paddy. He's got your sap and he's going to trace it to you with DNA. He's going to know you killed Birdy.”

Yes, I lied. Again.

So sue me.

I bet if you were staring down the barrel of a gun, you'd lie, too.

Get out of here, Luce,
I kept trying to message her.

What a time for her to forget to read my mind.

“Chief Pacheco has nothing on me,” Paddy said, patiently, as if he were explaining something to a child, “and he's not going to find anything either, because Poppy and I have been in the witness protection program a long time. More than thirty years now, isn't it Poppy?”

I kept my eyes on his gun, but I caught sight of Poppy out of the corner of my eye. She was leaning against the far side of the kitchen island that stood between Luce and me and the four-season porch. She was clearly unconcerned that her husband held a gun in his hand.

“A little more than thirty, yes,” she replied, tucking a strand of too-red hair behind her ears. “We've had so many moves since you testified against the mob. It's hard for me to keep track of the years, anymore. Let me see, after Chicago, we—”

Paddy cut her off.

I was almost grateful to him. The woman could talk you into a coma.

Maybe that was the real reason Paddy Mac refused to replace the bad batteries in his hearing aid. He didn't have to listen to his wife talk, because he couldn't.

Sometimes technology really is the solution, I guess.

“Poppy, be quiet, darlin',” he told her gently, his eyes and gun still locked on me. “You know, I thought it was funny, telling Gunnar the truth, because I knew he'd think I was joking.”

I nudged Luce behind me with my elbow.

“Just goes to show you, you can't trust a man when he's drinking beer with you. You never know when he might remember what you told him.” Paddy shook his head. “You should have gone home when I told you to, Minnesota.”

“You left the note on our door,” Luce said from behind me, her tone more angry than accusing.

No, no, no, honey,
I cautioned her in my head.
Don't upset the nice old man with the gun in his hand. That would not be a good idea at this particular moment.

“
Why bother threatening us, Paddy?” Luce probed. “Why didn't you just shoot us in our bed at the Birds Nest if you were so worried we might figure out that you killed Birdy?”

Oh, great
, I thought.
My wife is giving advice to a hit man
. Not only was she not reading my thoughts for once, but she was questioning a killer about his decisions.

I tried harder to mentally telegraph her.

What are you thinking, Luce? Get out of here!

Obviously, my wife was thinking about a lot of things, because the next words that came out of her mouth were: “And why did you shoot at Eddie if you killed Birdy for a seat into space? What did Eddie have to do with that?”

Paddy looked at my wife with surprise on his face.

“I was trying to clean up the mess I made,” he said.

Ha! I was right. Again. The killer was a neat freak.

Not that it made me feel any better, at the moment. Especially since the neat freak killer still had a gun pointed at me.

“I heard someone coming in the woods, and didn't have enough time to pull the canoe all the way over Birdy's foot,” Paddy explained. “I'd picked up the bottle the night before when Eddie left it at the garage. I stuck it in my pack, thinking I'd return it to him when I saw him again, but then I decided I could put it to better use if I left it by poor Birdy. I thought if I left the bottle, Eddie would take the rap.”

A tiny squeak came from down the hall behind Paddy. I checked for a reaction in his eyes, but there wasn't any.

He didn't hear it.

His hearing aid hadn't picked it up.

Thank God for bad batteries.

“But if that was the plan,” I asked him, hoping to gain precious seconds for whoever was, I had to believe, coming to our rescue, “why try to kill Eddie? You'd be ruining your own frame-up.”

Paddy cocked his head to one side. For a split-second, I couldn't breathe.

Had he somehow sensed that there was someone creeping up behind him? Was I going to get a bullet in the next second?

No. Not yet.

Paddy Mac was smiling at me.

“I decided I'd rather frame Schooner,” he said. “The man was a sharpshooter in Vietnam, you know, and I figured when the chief ferreted out that little piece of information, he'd figure Schooner was after both Birdy and Eddie. I had a little birdie of my own—make that a Poppy of my own,” he amended, giving his wife a wink, “drop the hint that Schooner was involved with drug dealing. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump then for the chief to conclude that Schooner had a motive to kill those other two—he was trying to end the drone project to protect his own illegal business.”

“Oh, no,” Poppy said, from the far side of the kitchen island. “I was supposed to say it was Schooner? I thought I was supposed to say that Mark was the one involved with drugs. You told me to say it was Mark, Paddy, so that's what I told Bob and Luce here at the gift shop. You mean I got it wrong?”

Paddy shot her a glance, but the gun in his hand remained trained on me.

“Why would you say it was Mark, when I distinctly told you to say Schooner?”

I heard another squeak in the hallway. Help was getting closer.

Paddy was still oblivious, and I needed him to stay that way for just a moment longer.

So for once in my life, I decided to not break up a fight.

I stopped being a counselor.

“Why did you say Mark, Poppy?” I asked her, my eyes still on Paddy's face. “Why didn't you do what he told you to do?”

“I did!” Poppy insisted from behind me. “He didn't tell me to say Schooner, he told me to accuse Mark!”

Paddy turned his head to yell at his wife. “I said to accuse the mark, woman! Schooner was
the
mark, not Mark!”

As soon as Paddy's attention left me for his wife, I whirled, shoving both Luce and myself around the edge of the kitchen island and taking us to the floor. I heard a gunshot and then another.

“Paddy!” Poppy cried out.

I could hear scuffling near the stovetop, Poppy crying, and the sound of jostling bodies.

“Minnesota, are you all right?”

I looked up from where I was covering Luce with my body on the floor to see Schooner standing over us.

“We've got Paddy,” he said, extending a hand to help me up. “You're safe. Both of you.”

“You were the one coming down the hall,” I guessed, standing up and pulling Luce upright and into my arms for a smothering hug.

“I love you,” I whispered into her ear. I turned to Schooner. “Luce said you knew how to move soundlessly and, man, that was exactly what we needed. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Schooner nodded in acknowledgement. “Some things you never forget,” he said. “It's nice when one of those things turns out to be helpful, and not just one more recurring bad dream.”

He smiled then, moving the conversation on and away from what I suspected involved his PTSD history and his memories of war.

“Although,” he said, “those couple of squeaks in the hallway sounded like sonic booms to me. Anyone other than Paddy would have heard those squeaks. All I could do was pray he hadn't replaced those bad batteries yet.”

On the other side of the room, Chief Pacheco and two deputies were cuffing Paddy and Poppy Mac. I thought I heard Poppy apologizing fervently to Paddy for getting her instructions mixed up, but Paddy was ignoring her.

Or he couldn't hear her. Or maybe both.

“Hey, Minnesota,” Schooner said, clapping his hand on my shoulder, “how about I get you and your lovely wife a nice cold glass of the best fresh-squeezed orange juice you've ever tasted, and then we go cheer on the best MOB float you've ever seen?”

I looked in the eyes of the man who'd saved our lives and smiled. “Well, I have to tell you, it's the first MOB float we've ever seen, but I have no doubt, it's going to be the best.”

I put my hand out to shake his. “Thanks, Schooner. You're a good man. One of the best, yourself.”

He shook my hand. “My pleasure, Minnesota.”

“So where's Pearl?” Luce asked. “Did you and the chief take her and Mark to the parade starting point before you came back here?”

Crap!

I'd totally forgotten that the kids were marooned out at Rosalie's house for safe-keeping. How could there be a Citrus Festival Parade without its Queen?

“Let's go,” I said to Luce, grabbing her hand and starting for the door to the hallway. “Chief, I'm going to go get Pearl!” I shouted across the room to Pacheco. He looked up briefly and nodded.

“We need statements,” he called back. “We can do it here later.”

We headed out to the garage, where Buzz and Rosalie were in the center of a group of birders, all of whom seemed unusually quiet. They reminded me of a handful of birds in a bush that suddenly go silent when a hawk flies by.

Hearing gunshots inside a house will probably do that to you, I figured.

As soon as they caught sight of Luce and me, however, the group broke out into a barrage of questions.

“What happened?”

“Did anyone get hurt?”

“Where's the chief?”

“Who all was in there?”

“The chief will let you know,” I told them. “We've got to retrieve Pearl and get her to the parade start.”

Buzz stepped out of the crowd and handed me a keyring.

“Take the Mustang,” he said. “Pearl wanted to use it for the parade, anyway. After what she's been through this morning, she deserves to ride in style.”

He cast a glance back in Rosalie's direction and smiled. “I have a feeling Mark would be happy to be her designated driver.”

Then, his eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

“Thanks, Bob. For everything,” he added.

“Any time, Buzz.”

I turned to my wife and held out the keyring. “I think you should drive, Luce.”

Her eyes lit up and she snatched the keyring from my fingers.

“You got that right, Minnesota,” she grinned. “Let's fly.”

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I
got Rosalie's address from Buzz and put it into my phone GPS. Luce slid into the driver's seat and turned the key in the ignition. When that big V-8 roared to life the look on her face was about as blissful as I've ever seen it.

The woman sure loved her cars.

Did they make infant car seats for classic Mustangs?

I couldn't wait to find out.

In the meantime, though, we had a queen and her white knight to pick up.

“Take a left, Luce,” I told her, and we glided smoothly out of the neighborhood.

With the Mustang's top down, the sun was warm on our faces and a light breeze carried the scent of lemons and oranges into the car.

“So, did you get what you wanted out of this trip?” I asked my wife as we drove out to Rosalie's house to pick up the kids. “Sunshine, heat, lemons and birds?”

“I did,” she assured me. “I got it all. Mission accomplished… and then some.”

She threw me a happy glance. “How about you, Bobby? Did you get what you wanted?”

I gazed at my wife behind the wheel of Mark's Mustang. She was as beautiful as ever.

And she was carrying our first child.

“Yup,” I said. “Aside from a murder, a shooting, an almost-arrest, a car chase, and being held at gunpoint, it was pretty darn satisfying as far as a birding vacation goes.”

I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Mission accomplished,” I said, patting her on the belly, “and then some.”

 

Bob White's Bird List for Kiskadee of Death

Ruddy Duck

Sora

Gadwall

Common Gallinule

American Coot

Mottled Duck

Blue-winged Teal

Green-winged Teal

Vermilion Flycatcher

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

Green Kingfisher

Great Kiskadee

Plain Chachalaca

Golden-fronted Woodpecker

Black-crested Titmouse

Buff-bellied Hummingbird

Northern Mockingbird

Inca Dove

White-tipped Dove

Turkey Vulture

Eastern Screech-Owl

Couch's Kingbird

Great-tailed Grackle

White-eyed Vireo

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

White-winged Dove

Orange-crowned Warbler

Rufous Hummingbird

Curve-billed Thrasher

Red-crowned Parrot

Gray Hawk

Green Jay

Altamira Oriole

Eared Grebe

White Ibis

 

Acknowledgements

Researching and writing this book has literally opened new horizons for me, since I'd never visited the Lower Rio Grande Valley before I met Nancy Millar at a Birding Diversity Conference several years ago. Nancy, a dynamo who is the vice-president of the Convention and Visitors Bureau of the McAllen, Texas, Chamber of Commerce, invited me to come to McAllen and see for myself why it's such a world-class birding site, and so I did. (Of course, it didn't hurt that there was almost a one hundred degree difference in temperatures between Minnesota and Texas when I left for McAllen in January 2014.) My visit convinced me I had to set my next Birder Murder Mystery there, and I am indebted to Nancy for introducing me to the area, the culture, and the many new friends I met there.

Rhonda Gomez is one of those friends, as well as my go-to source for good restaurant recommendations and my hostess at the Birds Nest in McAllen. Keith Hackland, the owner of the Alamo Inn, was my charming and informative host in Alamo, where I met fellow Minnesota birder Gunnar Berg, whose name, along with his Hawaiian shirt, I have borrowed for one of my characters. Carlos Rivas, superintendent at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, graciously answered my questions about legal jurisdiction along the Lower Rio Grande Valley and clarified some immigration points for me. Sarah Williams, the executive director of Frontera Audubon, tipped me off to the SpaceX project, which became such a key piece of
Kiskadee of Death
. Finally, I have to add the folks at Shipley Do-Nuts to my thank-you list for my personal tour of the McAllen store, and yes, the Bavarian cream-filled doughnuts are awesome.

Here in Minnesota, I have another crew to thank for their contributions to my crafting my manuscript. Thanks to Joe Byrnes for sharing with me his true story about almost getting arrested at Falcon Dam in Texas. Sharon Stiteler, the Birdchick, sent me to Fat Daddy's in Weslaco when I told her I was going to visit the nine World Birding Centers along the Lower Rio Grande Valley. My team at North Star Press—Corinne, Curtis, and Anne—continue to keep me on task and inspire me to make each book better—I am honored to work with them and be a part of the North Star family.

As always, I am incredibly grateful to my family for all the support they give me in my writing career. A big round of applause goes to my son Bob for checking my manuscript for avian accuracy, in addition to being so patient with his mother as I continue to develop my own birding skills and store of knowledge. As for my husband Tom, there will never be enough words to thank him properly for everything he contributes to my ability to pursue this writing passion of mine. I am truly blessed in every way.

Finally, I want to acknowledge all my readers for joining me on this Birder Murder Mystery ride. Your comments and suggestions are always appreciated, and you make my day when you let me know how much you've enjoyed Bob White and his adventures. I hope you'll continue to share your enthusiasm with others, encouraging all of us to look at our great outdoors with new eyes.

Good birding to all!