A Bobwhite Killing (21 page)

I ran my hand through my hair. “No, it’s not, Alan. Ben might be taking a low profile in this debate, but the fact is, he has a lot of pull in this county. Ask anyone. Big Ben plays the fiddle down here and everybody dances. Besides, as a local boy, he’s probably got long histories with enough council members to guarantee that nobody gets the nod to develop that property unless he says so. As for the ATV people, they must think he’s working behind the scenes to help them out, especially since he’s funneling Chuck’s money into their lobbying group.”

“But you think he’s playing them for fools, using them to stonewall the eco-community while he manipulates the zoning council to shut both groups out.”

“That’s exactly what I think,” I assured him. “If nobody can get the zoning they need, the land can’t be developed, which means the buyers go away, and the property continues to sit and deteriorate.”

“Which drives the price of the land even further down.”

“Absolutely. Then Ben, Chuck’s good old family friend, offers to take the property off his hands at a bargain price. Chuck can say ‘good riddance’ to a painful reminder of his quarrel with his father, and Ben gets legal rights—at a cut-rate price—to whatever he finds underground, maximizing his bone-selling profits.”

I scanned the meadow again and caught some sun reflecting off the surface of a stream that meandered through the sedge. “I’m starting with that one,” I said, striding towards the little ribbon of water. “Don’t fall through the earth again, Alan. Or if you do, yell really loud so I can hear you.”

“This is crazy!” he called after me. “We don’t know anything about finding caves.”

“You’re never too old to learn, Hawk,” I shouted back to him. “Don’t you have some secret Lakota trick for finding water?”

“Yeah,” he yelled to me. “It’s called ‘look for a faucet,’ White-man.”

I could feel a grin pulling at my mouth. Maybe having my best friend as my brother-in-law was going to be all right after all.

Two hours later, though, neither I nor my sister’s fiancé had found anything remotely resembling an entrance to an underground network of caverns. Even though I was convinced that the seepage meadow was hiding something, I hadn’t been able to locate it. Defeated and hungry, we decided to take a break for lunch and drove back to Spring Valley and the A&W. Along the way, I tried the phone number that Eddie had given me for Kami Marsden. I wanted her to check her surveillance records for any cars that had visited her place in her absence that morning. Unfortunately, I only got her voice mail. I left a message explaining what I was looking for and asked her to let me know as soon as she could.

We’d just sat down with our menus when Jimmy Olsen showed up at our table.

“Hey, Mr. White! Mr. Thunderhawk,” Skip greeted us, his brown and orange cook’s apron reaching almost to his knees. “You fall into any more holes?”

Alan shook his head. “Nope. The earth has been steady under my feet, Skip. How about you?”

Our junior reporter tipped his head toward the grill behind the front counter. “I’m on shift till five. But then I’m working on my article about the big cats. Gotta run—my manager’s giving me the evil eye.”

As he scurried back to the kitchen, the front door of the restaurant opened and in walked Shana and Tom. I waved them over to our table.

They looked miffed.

“Bad morning with Chuckie?” I asked.

“Yes, you could say that,” Shana answered, a hint of irritation in her tone. “You could also say that the only thing standing between you and a jail cell for assault is one very kind and understanding sheriff who has taken pity on me for being both widowed and pregnant,” she added. “Frankly, I think the sooner we all get out of town, the happier Sheriff Paulsen will be. My ongoing drama with Chuck isn’t helping her focus on solving Billy’s murder.”

“So she’s closing the book on Jack’s murder?”

Tom shrugged. “She’s got the gun that killed him, and it was in Billy’s car. That’s good enough for her, I guess.”

Alan and I exchanged a glance.

“It may not be once Kami comes to town,” Alan noted.

“What about Kami?” Tom asked.

I filled him in on our morning’s conversation with the tiger lady. When I finished, Shana groaned.

“Are you all right?” three male voices—Alan’s, Tom’s, and mine—nervously inquired.

Shana shook her head, her gaze fixed on the table in front of her. “It can’t be Ben. He couldn’t have killed Jack. They’ve been friends forever.”

This was starting to sound like a Greek chorus. First Kami, now Shana.

“Money—lots of money—can make people do crazy things, Shana,” I pointed out. “Even old friends.”

“So what happened to Chuck?” Alan tactfully changed the subject.

“The sheriff basically told Chuck to go home to Minneapolis and let her do her job,” Tom replied.

“Although she didn’t say it quite that nicely,” Shana reminded him.

“From my few interactions with the man, I doubt if anyone says things very nicely to him,” I commented. “He doesn’t exactly invite warm fuzzies, if you know what I mean.”

Shana took a menu from the table and sighed. “Regardless, he was always a good son to Jack. All those years, it was just the two of them after Char died. I really don’t know who was more dependent on the other—Jack on Chuck, or Chuck on Jack.” She glanced at the menu briefly and laid it back down on the tabletop. “Even when I’m furious with Chuck, I can’t ignore who he is and the importance of his relationship with Jack.”

She gently stroked her belly as it nudged against the edge of the table. “Or his relationship with these babies. He’s their big brother.”

I kept my mouth shut, as did Alan and Tom. I wanted to remind her what an ass Chuck had been to her both yesterday and today, but I figured this was one of those misty-eyed pregnant-woman moments that I better not crush with cold, hard facts. The guy was a jerk. No question. But if Shana wanted to defend him and find some good in the bum, that was entirely her business. Secretly, I hoped that his new baby siblings threw up on him at every opportunity.

“You never know,” Tom comforted Shana. “Maybe things will change when your babies come. Maybe he’ll change.”

Now I wanted to throw up. I know I’m usually Mr. Sensitivity, but I just couldn’t get to that point when it had to do with Chuck O’Keefe. I kicked Tom’s shin under the table.

“Ow! Actually,” Tom added, throwing me a pointed look, “Sheriff Paulsen told us we all had till sundown to get out of her hair or she’ll lock us up for obstructing her investigation.”

“That’s a little extreme, wouldn’t you say?” Alan asked. “It’s not like you guys are telling her what to do or compromising evidence, right?” He turned towards me and threw me the same pointed look I’d just gotten from Tom. “Right?”

I braced my hands on the table and tipped my chair back on its rear legs. “Why is everyone giving me that look? I’m not telling the sheriff how to do her job. I’m not contaminating evidence. I sure didn’t sabotage my own car.”

“Let’s just say she wants a clear field, Bob,” Shana said. “Without us around, she’s got fewer people to distract her. I can’t imagine having two murders in her county on the same day has made her happy. Especially when she’s got two major buyers looking at property in her jurisdiction. Unsolved crimes aren’t exactly the best publicity for attracting new investors into an area.”

I dropped my chair back onto the floor. “Okay. I get your point. But I still have to wait on my car. It won’t be repaired until tomorrow.”

I looked out the front window of the diner just in time to see my car being driven into the lot at the Inn & Suites. A man got out from behind the wheel, went inside the lobby briefly, then came back through the hotel door to climb into the passenger seat of a tow truck marked “Don’s Towing” that pulled up behind my car. Then the truck left the parking lot.

“I guess you don’t have to wait after all,” Alan said, watching the tow truck drive away. “Somebody must like you enough to make sure your car gets fixed even when the shop is closed.”

At which point, Big Ben walked into the A&W, spotted us at our table, waved, and came over to join us. He gave Shana a light kiss on her temple and a squeeze of her shoulder. “How are you holding up, honey?” he asked her, concern evident in his voice.

“I’m okay, Ben. Thanks for asking. Did you get the auto shop to open and repair Bob’s car?”

Ben smiled and gave us all a conspiratorial wink. “Sure did. Doesn’t hurt to have a little pull with the local merchants now and then. I know you folks want to get home.”

Not to mention off your back, too, I thought. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Skip watching us intently from his post near the grill. Was he putting two and two together the way I had and coming up with Big Ben the Fossil Guy?

Speaking of which, I figured there was no time like the present to confirm a theory.

“Do you go caving around here?” I asked the mayor.

For just a second, the pupils in his eyes dilated.

Bull’s-eye.

Score one for the birder.

“Sure I do,” he casually answered. “Me and lots of folks in Fillmore. Why?”

“Just curious,” Alan assured him. “We ran into Kami Marsden this morning while we were hunting for Bobwhites. It appears she’s got some caves under her land.”

Ben blanched. “Did she say that?”

“Not in so many words,” I said. “But she thinks there’s a good chance of it. Lots of karst country around here, right?”

“You could probably ask her yourself, Mayor,” Alan suggested. “I think she was on her way into town to talk with the sheriff about a few things. What was that she told us, Bob? Something about a meeting on Friday?”

Ben’s skin color drained another hue or two.

“Are you all right?” Shana asked him.

He rested his hand on her shoulder. “I’m fine. Just worn out is all.” He turned back towards me. “So did you find your Bobwhite?”

“One of them,” I said.

Shana and Tom both gave me incredulous stares.

“You did?” Tom asked.

“You didn’t call us?”

I answered Shana first. “I didn’t call because it wasn’t a bird. It was a piece of property. Bobwhite Acres. The spot for the eco-community.”

Now it was Shana’s turn to go pale. “Bobwhite Acres?” she echoed.

“Yeah. A little birdie told us that was the name proposed for the community,” Alan explained. “I’m guessing you didn’t know that?”

Shana said nothing, just shook her head.

“He was naming it for you, Shana,” Ben softly said. “He told me you said that Bobwhites were your favorite birds, ever since you fell in love with them one summer while you were still in college.”

That was news to me. I’d always remembered that Shana loved eagles, just like I do. It was one of the things we’d had in common when we birded together.

I glanced at Shana’s face then, and our eyes connected. And it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

I wasn’t the only one with a summer crush eighteen years ago.

Holy shit.

Somewhere beyond the roaring in my ears I heard Tom’s voice rising in excitement.

“You found a Worm-eating Warbler?”

I finally pulled my eyes away from Shana’s and looked over to see Tom and Alan in animated conversation.

“Yeah, that’s it. Worm-eating. Not worm-finding. I knew it was worm something.”

“And you didn’t call us?”

“We got sidetracked,” I said, knowing that any birder worth his birdseed wouldn’t take that lame excuse for an answer. I nodded slightly in Big Ben’s direction, hoping that Tom would pick up my cue and not say anything about those sidetracks we’d filled him in on before the mayor’s arrival.

Fortunately, Big Ben decided at that moment that it was time for his exit. He gave Shana another fatherly kiss on the top of her head and said he’d be in touch, then left the diner.

“He doesn’t look like a killer,” Tom commented as he watched the mayor go out the door.

“I don’t think killers wear nametags identifying themselves as such,” Alan responded. “It would be self-limiting in their line of work.”

“He’s not a killer,” Shana insisted, staring at her menu. “Would everyone please stop saying that? He’s Jack’s oldest friend. He’s hurting, too. Can we just get something to eat?”

I noticed she was avoiding making eye contact with me again. Or maybe it was just my imagination. Actually, I didn’t really want to make eye contact with her again right now, either. At some point, I realized, we were going to have to talk about … Bobwhites.

And a summer I’d never forgotten.

I waved at Skip in the kitchen and he scooted out to our table. “Could you get a waitress over here?” I asked him.

“Sure thing,” he said. “Coming right up. I didn’t know you knew the mayor, Mr. White. He comes in here all the time. Usually he just gets a root beer float to go, but on Friday night he was in here really late with that guy from Canada.”

“Canada?”

Skip turned to Shana. “I knew he was Canadian because he had that accent. You know, he said ‘eh’ a lot. Like ‘oh, I’ll have the onion rings, eh?’ And he left some Canadian quarters in the tip money, too.”

“Did you say Friday night?” I asked Skip.

“That’s right.”

I remembered the way Big Ben had reacted when Alan mentioned that Kami knew something about a Friday meeting, and was on her way to share it with the sheriff. Alan had been referring to Ben’s afternoon meeting with Billy that Kami had secretly observed, but Ben didn’t know that. On the other hand, if Ben had a meeting on Friday night with an out-of-towner in the diner, he’d have to reason that there was a good chance Skip wasn’t the only person in town to note it, which meant it could have gotten back to Kami, which obviously had unsettled Ben badly. The question now was: how much of a nose for news did our intrepid cub reporter wannabe really have?

“So, Skip,” I said, “who was the Canadian?”

He flashed me a grin. “His name is Kurt Deregneur, and he owns a collections agency.”

I caught the bemused look that Alan threw at Skip.

“He left his business card with the tip,” Skip defended himself. “He wrote ‘The onion rings were good’ on the back of it.”