A Bobwhite Killing (8 page)

But not because the balm soothed the itching.

Because Shana, who was driving me crazier every time I was near her, had her hands on me.

Not that it meant anything more to her than having to take care of a stupid, careless, proud and overconfident young birder. After all, she had been the one wearing the long-sleeved bug shirt and pants that covered almost every inch of her beautiful, ivory skin in mosquito-proof protection.

I, on the other hand, had been the “What NOT to wear for birding in August” model. Dressed in a tee-shirt and shorts, I was every mosquito’s fantasy feast—skin, skin, and more skin. I think it was a week before I could sit down without my legs tingling from the overwhelming need to itch. But even then, every time I thought about Shana touching me, I would have walked right back into that swamp had I been given the choice.

Yeah, I’d been unprepared back then.

Just like I was unprepared right now as the memory of that summer flooded over me, filling me with a yearning I couldn’t begin to describe.

“Are you going to stand there all evening with your mouth open catching flies, or are we going to dinner?” Bernie called back to me from the other side of the hotel’s entrance drive.

Only then did I realize I was frozen in the path of the hotel’s sliding doors. Shana, standing on the far curb with Bernie, also looked back at me, smiling, and I kicked myself in the head for so easily losing my sense of time and place, not to mention control of my libido. A whiff of White Shoulders lingered with me in the doorway, and I shook my head to clear it.

How about some focus, here, buddy?
I asked myself.
You want to help Shana, then get a grip, because the last thing she needs is a mutton-headed sixteen-year-old following her around.

A scream of brakes rounded the corner of the hotel as a news van headed straight for Shana and Bernie.

I was wrong.

The last thing Shana needed was an unexpected visit from the media.

Then I realized that the cameraman hanging out the window on the passenger side of the van wasn’t aiming his camera at Shana.

He was aiming it at me.

“Turn away!” Shana shouted at me, but it was too late. The van roared off, the cameraman grinning as he waved good-bye.

I crossed the driveway to Shana and Bernie. “This is not a good thing, is it?”

“Not unless you don’t mind having your personal life totally and completely appropriated by the media,” Shana replied, a quiet resentment lacing her voice. “When I married Jack, he warned me that our marriage was going to be a bonanza for gossip-mongers, so I’ve spent the last five years ducking the press as much as possible so we could have a real marriage, and not an unending media event.” She glanced in the direction of the disappearing van. “I’m afraid to even think about what’s going to be leading the news on television tonight.”

It took a second or two for me to catch Shana’s meaning, but when I did, it wasn’t pretty.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Jack’s murder is going to be at the top of the hour, with more details to follow. Details like you,” I pointed at Shana, and then curved my finger toward my chest. “And me.”

Shana nodded slowly in affirmation.

“Oh boy!” Bernie said, linking her arms through Shana’s right elbow and my left. She turned us toward the street and started pulling us along. “I’m having dinner with two celebrities! Wait till I tell the girls back home. They’ll be so jealous.”

Jealous?

Oh, man.

I almost stumbled over my own feet. What if my face did show up on the evening news as the lovelier-than-ever Shana O’Keefe’s brand-new companion? And what if Luce, the woman I loved, saw it?

Luce, the woman to whom I hadn’t mentioned Shana O’Keefe.

“I think I just lost my appetite,” I muttered.

“Nonsense,” Bernie said. “What you need is a good meal to fortify you for the night ahead. We’re going owling after dinner, aren’t we? I know I’m looking forward to some evening walking. If we have to stick around till tomorrow like the sheriff asked, I don’t see why we can’t just pick up what was on our original weekend birding plan for tonight anyway.” She gave Shana’s arm an extra pat with her hand. “I know it’s been an awful day for you, honey, but I can’t think of a better way to get your mind off your troubles than to go birding.”

And with that remark, our self-appointed mother hen hustled us across the two-lane road that separated the hotel from the restaurant and then ushered us into the old A&W drive-in. As soon as we walked in, Tom called to us from a table at the far end of the diner. I noted that Renee and Mac were seated with another couple from our birding group at the table next to ours and that everyone seemed fairly engrossed in reading through the menu.

Which, to be honest, wasn’t going to take too long since the A&W specialized in burger baskets and not much else. Not exactly nouveau cuisine, if you know what I mean. But definitely familiar fare for birding weekend trip regulars. I’m sure I’m not the only Minnesota birder who can say he’s eaten burgers in nearly every county in the great state of Minnesota.

Come to think of it, maybe the weekends should be renamed. “Birds and burgs” might work. Although then the trip leader better proofread the flyers carefully or we might be signing up for “birds and bugs” weekends.

Actually, I’ve been on some of those too. Trust me, when someone asks you to go birding in the Sax-Zim bog in July, say, “No.” The birds might be good ones, but the mosquitoes can carry off small children.

Glancing at Renee and friends as I headed towards Tom and our table, it occurred to me that their intense menu perusal was more likely out of consideration for Shana’s circumstances than any gastronomical curiosity. In fact, it seemed almost too obvious that the four birders were feverishly intent on not making eye contact with Shana as she passed their table.

Respect for a grieving widow was one thing, but the vibes I picked up from the group before I sat down next to Tom seemed distinctly different than sympathy.

Embarrassment?

Maybe. In the hotel lobby, Shana had walked in on the last part of Renee and Mac’s “sex scandal” commentary, casting Shana in the role of the naive wife. Having already had that conversation with Shana myself, I knew how she felt about people’s intrusive speculations, as well as her determination not to be labeled as the poor, pitiful wife who was caught unaware by her husband’s infidelity. So, sure, maybe Renee was feeling a little residual discomfort from that earlier encounter in the hotel.

Yet embarrassment didn’t quite fit the mood I felt emanating from the adjacent table. If I had to make a gut call on it, I would have said it was smugness, like they knew something the four of us at my table didn’t.

And that got me to wondering what else had happened at the hotel after Shana and I had made our window exit. Between Chuck’s accusations and Big Ben the Mayor’s revelations, I figured Jack must have been cringing in his grave.

Well, maybe not in his grave, since he wasn’t buried yet, but you get my point. The man’s dirty laundry was being strung out on the line for the whole world to see, and he wasn’t even around to throw a little bleach at it. It sure didn’t look like his best friend the mayor was going to be of any help in salvaging Jack’s reputation, either. In fact, based on Renee and Mac’s report, it sounded like good old Big Ben had been all too ready to throw the choicest bits of gossip meat to the media pack.

A best friend like that, nobody needs.

Yet he’d shown up pretty quickly to offer Shana condolences and support.

A soft chuckle interrupted my thoughts, and I glanced at Shana sitting beside me. Tom was telling her about our afternoon encounter with Nigel and had managed not only to amuse her, but elicit a small laugh. The woman was holding up pretty darn well, I thought, especially in light of what she’d been through since sunrise this morning. But then again, the Shana I’d known was like that: a real trooper who didn’t think twice about taking on the world or wading through mud for a chance to find a rarity.

Actually, Shana herself was the rarity.

No matter what the situation, it seemed like passion virtually spilled out of her, whether she was facing down a vengeful stepson or planning a future of research in exotic locations. The more I thought about it, the only time I’d ever seen her falter was this morning when she’d cried for Jack in my arms. And even that was passionate—I don’t know that I’d ever seen such stark grief in a person’s face as when Shana first saw Jack’s frozen features. Yet here she was, sitting in a diner with Bernie, Tom and me, planning a night of owling to pass the time while Sheriff Paulsen tried to solve her husband’s murder.

The fact was, Shana O’Keefe was a woman any man would be attracted to. If her raven-haired beauty didn’t catch a guy’s eye, her sheer vitality would. Heck, even here in the A&W, I noticed that the high school boys flipping the burgers were checking her out.

So why, I asked myself for the hundredth time, would Jack have cheated on her?

And why would Big Ben have been so eager to let the world know about it?

The waitress brought us the basket of onion rings that Tom had already ordered for us, but something didn’t smell right to me.

Not the onion rings. They smelled great. I loved onion rings.

No, something else was beginning to stink.

Or, rather, someone.

And his name was Big Ben.

It was a nice night for owling. We’d picked a spot just about twenty minutes away from the hotel where a spread of old-growth forest offered plenty of roosting spots for owls. About five minutes into our walk through the woods, we spotted a Barred Owl perched at the entrance of a tree cavity. Since it was still dusky, we could just make out his dark eyes peering at us above his richly barred chest.

“Those black eyes always give me the creeps,” Bernie whispered at my shoulder. “All the other owls have nice yellow eyes. They’re like little night lights in their faces.”

“Barn owls have dark eyes,” Tom corrected her.

“Well, I’ve never seen one,” Bernie replied. “But I’d guess it looks pretty spooky, too, sitting there in the dark with its black eyes glowing.”

“But Barn Owls have the sweetest face shape, Bernie,” Shana told her. “It’s like a white heart. And because they’re so light in color, they’re easy to see even at night. I saw a lot of them in Central America while I was working for the Nature Conservancy. Some of the biologists there think that the Barn Owl population has dramatically increased in wet lowlands and highlands because so much of their native habitat is being destroyed by deforestation.”

She paused when a low hooting call sounded through the trees.

“Sounds like a Great Horned Owl,” I said. “I guess the deforestation hasn’t pushed more Barn Owls our way yet.”

Shana chuckled lightly. “Can you believe that Great Horned Owls are very rare in Central America?” Shana asked. “I think everyone in America lives within the calling distance of a Great Horned Owl, but it’s a real find down there.”

We walked a while longer, listening to the call of the Great Horned as it floated through the night. Shana’s casual comments about her work in Central America reminded me that I knew little about the woman walking beside me in a Fillmore County forest on a balmy June evening. While Jack’s involvement with conservation had been highly publicized in the last few years, Shana’s name had never surfaced. Yet her passion for her chosen field was clearly something she hadn’t put aside when she’d left her job to marry Jack. Even when she referred to it in passing, as she’d just done, I could hear an excitement just below the surface of her voice. I could hear it because it was the same excitement that I always felt when I started talking about birds. For the first time since I’d seen her in the hotel lobby last night, I wondered what it had cost her personally to give up her globe-trotting research career to become Mrs. Jack O’Keefe.

Considering how she and her stepson had nearly come to blows this afternoon in her hotel room, I’d guess the price had been plenty high. And judging from Chuck’s threats as he left Shana’s room in Sheriff Paulsen’s company, that price was only going to go higher. Not only did Jack’s son want to blame his stepmother for his father’s death, but he was bound and determined to let everyone know exactly what he thought of the second Mrs. O’Keefe.

And it wasn’t a very complimentary picture.

“I’m beat,” Bernie announced when the trail ahead of us started up a slight rise.

“I say we call it quits for the night.”

“I second it,” Tom said. He caught my eye and tipped his head in Shana’s direction. “I think we could all pack it in, Bob.”

I stole a quick look at Shana and agreed. Either the shadows were especially dark here, or the day had finally caught up with her, rimming her eyes with circles of fatigue.

“Last one back to the car is an extinct species,” I announced.

The closer we got to the parking area, though, the louder the Horned Owl calls became. As we rounded the last bend of the trail, we saw the reason why. Standing next to her green Ranger with its “Owl Aboard” back tire cover was Karla Kinstler, a longtime birding pal of mine, who also happened to be the director of the Houston Nature Center and the world-renowned International Festival of Owls. As always, Karla wasn’t alone. Perched on her wrist was Alice, the Great Horned Owl.

“Karla,” I called to her as we approached.

She and Alice both swiveled their heads in my direction.

“Hey, Bob,” she answered back. “I thought that was your car, especially since I don’t know anybody else with a ‘BRRDMAN’ license plate. What are you doing down here in my neck of the woods?”

“Owling, my dear,” I told her. I introduced her and Alice to my little crew. “Alice is an educational bird. She came to Karla when she was about eighteen months old. She was hit by a car, and her wing never healed properly to allow flight.”

“He’s talking about Alice, not me,” Karla added, laughing. “Alice works with me at the Nature Center. We present programs.”