A Bird in the Hand (8 page)

Her words, in the oft-repeated adage of my Irish grandmother, could have knocked me down with a feather. "Why do you have Tally's dove?"

I admit I was baffled. I had no such item that I was aware of, and then I saw that she was staring at my hand that held the tiny silver bird. I looked from it to her and back again. That, I realized was a great question. Why
did
I have it? I knew, of course, how I'd gotten it, but as to why it had been in my yard to begin with I couldn't say.

"It sounds fantastic, I do realize that, but I rescued this," here I offered the charm up for her inspection, "from two mockingbirds. They were in my yard, fussing over it, and I scared them into dropping it." I smiled at her, feeling a tad silly; I don't usually attack the local wildlife.

Silently she reached out her hand, and I gently dropped the bird into her palm. I watched her as she inspected it closely, raising it closer to her eyes and inspecting every inch—or in this case, every centimeter—until she had satisfied herself.

About what, I had not a clue, unless it was simply the fact of regaining one of Natalie Goldberg's possessions. Whatever the case, I decided to wait it out, to see what she would say. I still could not make a clear connection of any sort with Tally and the charm, nor had I linked either with the body in the neighborhood park. Or with my lately departed neighbor, for that matter. From where I stood, it was all a jumble of circumstance.

By the time I'd retrieved the charm, assuring Ms. Wentworth that I would be back the following afternoon so that we might have a chat about the mystery surrounding Tally's whereabouts, I was mentally exhausted. The woman was a bundle of contradictory emotions, a far cry from the stoic, in-charge secretary I had met on my first trip to the mayor's hidey-hole. In fact, a visit to the bakery seemed the best way to counteract my return appointment with Ms. Wentworth. With visions of sugarplums dancing about in my over-stimulated brain, I backed out of my parking place and headed downtown.

Carefully setting my sugar-encrusted prize on the seat beside me, I buckled up and headed for home. I wanted my warm cozy kitchen and the comforting presence of husband and dog. And I knew Gregory well enough to recognize the need for a little bribery, especially if I was to compel him into helping with the next stage of what I now thought of as
the investigation
.

Shedding shoes and jacket in the kitchen, I cocked an ear for signs of life. The familiar sounds of a cycling race eased from behind the partly closed door to the den, and I could almost make out what Gregory was watching. If the calendar said July, it was the granddaddy of them all, the Tour de France. If the calendar said springtime, as it did now, it was a recording of the previous year's Tour. I grinned to myself as I stuck my head around the door. My dear spouse was nothing if not predictable, and no matter the amount of bickering that we did, I loved him dearly, and he returned the feeling in spades.

I should have been suspicious of the lack of canine greeting, though, particularly one from Trixie. She is a credit to her gender, curious as the day is long, and a devoted keeper of all comings and goings in our home. For once, though, the house was silent.

Both Gregory and she were in deep slumber, curled next to one another in the recliner. Shaking my head, I advanced toward them, at the ready to shush Trixie if need be. I shouldn't have worried. Neither of them moved a muscle. In fact, it was too quiet, their breathing too deep for this time of the day.

I leaned in, sniffing to see if perhaps Greg had indulged in a rum and coke, his drink of choice, but I detected nothing in the way of spirits on his breath. That wouldn't have explained Trixie's snoring, at any rate, unless she had taken up the habit as well.

Well. This was certainly very odd. I reached out a hand and gave my husband's shoulder a mild shake, then a harder tug—nothing. It was then I noticed the small box sitting on the floor next to the recliner, its top open and bereft of its contents save a few crumbles of brown sugar-and-pecan topping.

I frowned, drawing my eyebrows together in a manner that ensured more and deeper wrinkles. I remembered tossing out the empty strudel box before I left for His Honor's office, which had precipitated my decision to stop for another of the addictive goodies. Could Gregory have gone through the trash and…no, it was too ridiculous to even contemplate. Somehow, though, the strudel box had made an encore appearance.

I decided to leave the twosome as they were for the time being. I needed to get dinner started anyway, and I could do this quicker without two pairs of eyes watching my every move in the kitchen. I started the dinner prep, setting out zucchini squash, scallions, garlic cloves, and unsalted butter. Since we were closing in on our "finally settled and stable" years, as we had christened our forties, Gregory and I had pledged to eat better, the odd pastry notwithstanding. And I figured that if the man had indulged twice today, he'd get a healthy dinner tonight whether he liked it or not. This was accompanied with a guilty glance at the bakery box sitting on the counter top.

I paused in mid-chop. I clearly recalled taking the empty box with me when I left earlier, dropping it into the trash bin that sat near the side gate. I laid the knife down and slipped my shoes back on, ready to solve a mystery of the culinary kind.

There it was, just where I'd tossed it, laying on top of yesterday's trash. I lowered the lid, standing perplexed for a moment as I tried to think. Unless he'd snuck out during the night, I had no idea when Greg would have had time to fit in another bakery run.

It wasn't that I was keeping tabs on what my husband ingested, not really. I just wanted to make sure that he didn't overdo the sweets. And it was a bit odd, this afternoon nap that he and Trixie were in the midst of. A bit
too
odd for my liking, as a matter of fact.

With that thought, I dashed back into the house, quickly rinsed my hands at the sink then went back into the den. They were just as I had left them, Gregory and Trixie, their heavy, even breathing almost as loud as the cycling announcer on the tube. I picked up the bakery box, gave it a suspicious sniff then paused. It smelled okay, but there was something a bit off about the crumbs. I could see among the golden bits of brown sugar and toasted pecans a few specks of white. I peered closer, trying to decide whether or not I should do the taste test, the type you see being done by detectives on television. (I've never been able to work that trick out, not even for my own books.)

"Gregory," I all but shouted. "Wake up." This was accompanied by a vigorous shaking of his shoulders with both of my hands. To my immense relief, his eyelids fluttered, and he looked up at me through bleary eyes.

"What's the matter, Caro?" he asked, only it came out, "Wuzza mat, Carrrro?" He sounded drunk, and the way his eyes kept fluttering shut was not helping his cause. I simply would not put up with my husband becoming a lie-about drunkard, not on my watch.

I think I might have said something along those lines if it hadn't been for Trixie. It occurred to me that she was just as knocked out as Greg, and I simply could not imagine her tippling. Besides, we kept the rum high above the stove in that cabinet too high for me to reach without the aid of a stool. Unless my dog had developed talents heretofore not recognized, she and my husband were acting as though they'd taken a dose of my sleeping pills.

My sleeping pills! I slapped my hand to my forehead and dashed back into the hall, hightailing it to our bedroom and over to my nightstand. The bottle stood exactly where I had last seen it, on top of the latest issue of
National Geographic
, the lid still firmly in place
.
I'd only taken one of the thirty prescribed for me, so I would know if any were missing.

I picked up the bottle with the edge of my shirt, careful not to touch the surface. I wasn't sure what made me do that, only that something felt off, and my mind tends to be suspicious anyway. I managed to pry open the childproof cap and dumped the medicine onto the comforter. My eyes scanned the small white pills, counting under my breath. It was as I had suspected. Twenty of the tablets were gone. I had a feeling that I knew exactly where they were. How they'd gotten there was the real mystery.

A phone call to Poison Control and the nearby animal clinic eased my mind somewhat, although I still wasn't comfortable with the alacrity that Gregory had displayed in falling asleep once more. I let my two darlings snooze, standing by with water for Trixie and a pot of strong coffee for Gregory.

I'd quite forgotten about dinner and had lost all semblance of appetite anyway, so I returned all the ingredients to the refrigerator. I cut myself a large slab of strudel after careful inspection of its topping and sat at the kitchen table. I felt as though my world was spinning out of its orbit once again: dead bodies, doctored pastries, unanswered questions. And a manuscript that wouldn't write itself. I sighed, careful to gather up the last of the crumbs on my plate. Well, I was only one person, and I'd just have to prioritize.

I managed to get some food into Gregory and Trixie (scrambled eggs for him, kibbles with a dollop of yogurt on top for her) and listened, dumbfounded, as my husband described his delight in finding the pastry box sitting on the counter near the kitchen door. He had assumed that I'd left it for him, a nod to his noble character or some other such nonsense, and took it as a sign to consume the entire confection.

Really,
I thought to myself as I helped him wobble down the hall and into our bed,
men can be incredibly self-serving.
Trixie, bless her heart, hadn't been as affected as previously thought. She'd only had the few crumbs that had fallen onto Greg's shirtfront and not much more. Her Sleeping Beauty act had been just that—an act. She'd sleep the entire day away if we'd let her, and between the two of us, we'd fallen victim to her wishes.

In all of this, I still hadn't been able to work out how some of my sleeping pills had ended up as streusel topping. To think that someone had slipped into our home and had been cognizant of the pills and where I kept them gave me a first-class case of the willies. To have known that Gregory, the public health nut, loved sweets was even stranger.

I admit to having slept with one eye open that night.

I sometimes look back at the Incident of the Poisoned Pastry, as I came to think of it, and can feel shivers creep up and down my spine for what might have happened. I think it was then, as I lay in bed that night next to Gregory and listened to his sporadic snores, that I realized I might have lost him. For that matter, I might have lost
me
as well, if that makes any sense. Someone had purposely targeted me and mine for what could have been a quiet death, a sleep-induced slide into the welcoming arms of oblivion (alright, I might have exaggerated a tad, but that was exactly how I felt).

And that someone apparently thought we had either seen or knew something that was important. Or, at the very least, something incriminating. I wasn't certain how the body in the park, the death of my neighbor, Tally Greenberg, and now this close brush with death were connected—or even if they were related somehow—but I wouldn't let that stop me. I'd cobbled together plots with more tentacles than an octopus before, and I determined that I would figure this one out as well.

I took a mental walk, searching for a link—anything—that would tie together the private detective's and my neighbor's demise. If Mrs. Greyson had spotted something amiss in the park, perhaps had actually witnessed the detective's murder, things might make more sense. On the other hand, it seemed that the only connection was locational. That thought gave me pause; perhaps that
was
the elusive tie-in. If it was connected to the HOA in some manner, then Avery Stanton deserved closer scrutiny.

Morpheus, my dear old friend, had failed to make an appearance at my bedside, so I carefully slid out from under the covers and crept into the kitchen for a middle-of-the-night cup of tea. Trixie had awakened as well, and the sound of her nails clicking against the tile seemed to me as loud as the neighborhood Methodist church's bells on a Sunday morning. I was still jumpy—and who could blame me? Between bodies and doctored sweets, I was becoming a basket case. Trixie, however, seemed to have recovered her equilibrium, and she plopped down on the rug next to the back door and began gnawing on the toy she'd left there earlier.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping my chamomile tea and staring at nothing in particular when suddenly a slight—what was it? A noise caught my attention.
That
gave me a jolt, sending my already overloaded nervous system into spasms. Should I get Greg? I glanced over at where Trixie lay. She was still chewing contentedly on her stuffed toy, so maybe I'd imagined it. I was tired after all, and I knew that the ears could play tricks.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, trying to think sleepy thoughts and salvage at least part of the night. Sometimes though, when my eyes are shut, my ears seem to pick up the slack, and the next time I heard the noise from outside, it thundered through my head. So much so that I bolted from my chair and sloshed tea across the tabletop, my heart a frantic bird trying to escape my chest.

Surely Gregory had heard it that time,
I thought, giving feet to my fear as I sped along the hallway toward our room.

I really had no idea what it was I was hearing. It might have been a cat on the prowl or an errant raccoon for all I knew, but I was taking no chances. I was determined not to be caught unaware, and my husband, whether he liked it or not, was needed for bulwark duty.

He lay exactly as I'd left him, on his side, one hand tucked innocently under his cheek. That did not deter me from grabbing his shoulder and giving him a firm shake, however. To his credit, his eyes opened straight away, and he lifted himself to an elbow, which was certainly more than I could have managed had the shoe been on the other foot. His resiliency amazes me.