Cockatiels at Seven (27 page)

And if you do anything to him, I’ll kill you, I thought. Even if I have to come back as a ghost to do it.

“Timmy—we should hide Timmy,” I said aloud. Sandie glanced at Timmy’s car seat and realized that I was right—Timmy was directly in the line of sight if I opened the door.

“I can just put him down here,” I suggested, opening the basement door.

“Don’t close the door all the way,” she said. She inched around until she was in a spot where she was out of sight from the front door but had a good view of the basement door.

I picked up Timmy’s car seat, pretending to find it harder than it was, and huffed as I carted it across the kitchen. Though thanks to my blacksmith work, I wasn’t really having any trouble. And my back was to Sandie, so I hoped she didn’t notice that while pretending that I could barely lift the car seat, I was actually holding it with one hand while undoing the buckles with the other.

“Sssh,” I said to Timmy. “Don’t move.” He looked a little puzzled, and I was relieved to see that he didn’t immediately leap out. I pushed the door almost closed so Sandie couldn’t see him.

The knock came again. Sandie waved with the gun. I walked over to the door and opened it.

It was Rose Noire.

“Meg, what’s going on?” she asked, stepping inside. “I just dropped your mother off from the garden party, and your dad wasn’t home, and he’s not answering his cell phone and then we called to see if he was over here and you didn’t answer, so I came over to see what was going on.”

“Relax,” I said. “I have no idea where Dad and Dr. Blake are, but Michael talked them into letting him go along, so I’m sure they’ll be fine. And the reason I didn’t answer is that after I finally got Timmy to sleep, I must have conked out myself while watching TV.” I pretended to stifle a yawn. “Thanks for waking me,
though—I always get a crick in my neck when I sleep on the couch. I’m going to bed.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Rose Noire said. “Your aura is very strange tonight.”

“My aura’s probably tired,” I said. “I know the rest of me is. Busy day. I’ll tell you about it later, though. Hey, why don’t we meet for a burger tomorrow at the grill? You can bring Sammy.”

Since Rose Noire was a passionate vegetarian, I was hoping this suggestion would strike her as odd. And since Sammy, in addition to being one of her beaux, was also one of Chief Burke’s deputies, I was hoping maybe she’d get the message and call the cops.

She blinked.

“Okay,” she said, after a few seconds. “That sounds nice.”

She was turning to leave when a brightly colored bird suddenly flew down the stairs and began fluttering around the chandelier.

“What’s that?” Rose Noire asked.

“A Gouldian finch,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Dad and Dr. Blake are keeping a few upstairs in one of the bedrooms.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Look what he’s doing to your rug.”

Yes, the Gouldian finch was doing what most birds do when stressed or excited. Assuming I figured out a way to survive whatever unpleasantness Sandie had planned, I’d worry about the rug tomorrow.

“Do you want me to help you catch him?” she asked.

“No, you go on home,” I said.

The finch tired of circling the lamp and flew into the kitchen.

“Birdie!” Timmy exclaimed from the kitchen.

“Stop!” Sandie yelled.

“Get out and get help!” I said, giving Rose Noire a shove out the door and slamming it behind her.

In the kitchen, Sandie shrieked, and then a shot rang out.

“Oh, my God,” I muttered and headed for the kitchen.

The finch flew out, leaving another white streak along the hallway floor, and I almost collided with Timmy.

“Run away!” I said, and ran to open the front door for him.

“Stop right there!” Sandie said.

Instead of running outside, Timmy continued up the stairs after the finch.

I followed Timmy.

When we reached the second floor hallway, we met a flock of Gouldian finches coming down from the third floor. To judge by the number of droppings they were producing, none of them were too happy about the situation.

“Birdie! Birdie!” Timmy called, and jumped up and down, trying to reach the brightly colored finches.

“Keep running,” I said.

Our arrival spooked the finches, and they wheeled and headed back up toward the third floor. Timmy gave chase and I followed.

“Stop!” Sandie called. She fired another random shot, and I heard breaking glass.

It occurred to me, halfway up the stairs to the third floor, that I should have stayed on the second. The second floor was more completely furnished, which meant I’d have had a better chance of finding something to use as a weapon. On the third floor, the only two rooms that contained anything were the bedroom at one end of the hall, where Rob had been stashing his stuff, and the bedroom at the other end, where I’d seen the cage of tropical birds.

When they reached the third floor, the finches swooped in a circle around the light fixture a couple of times and headed for the room they’d presumably come from. Timmy followed, thus narrowing down my choices.

The first thing I saw after bursting into the room was a cloud of brightly colored birds whirling in front of my eyes. Some were Gouldian finches, but there must have been several other species as well.

Then I spotted Michael, Dad, and Dr. Blake. They were all three trussed up, hand and foot. But apparently Sandie was less experienced in bondage than Freddy, and hadn’t thought to anchor them to anything. Michael was hopping from birdcage to birdcage, opening the cage doors with his teeth. Dr. Blake was hunched over by the window, trying to dial a cell phone with his nose. Dad was in one corner, and appeared to be attempting to stuff himself into the dumbwaiter, in preparation for a Houdini-like escape.

They all three greeted my arrival with glad cries. At least I assumed, from the expressions on their faces, that it was glad cries they were trying to utter through the neckties Sandie had used to gag them.

She had also used neckties to tie them up. I felt a twinge of irritation at her lack of consideration. Totally irrational, but I knew how much Michael’s ties cost, and for that matter, how pricey it was to clean them. I spotted Michael’s tie rack on the floor nearby—apparently she’d wrenched it off the wall and brought it in here. It only had a couple of ties left. Couldn’t she have used something else? Because clearly I was going to have to slice the ties off to free everyone and, assuming we all survived this, replacing Michael’s entire tie wardrobe was going to be expensive and troublesome.

I’d worry about that later, I thought. I realized that I still had the utility knife stuck in my pocket and reached for it.

Timmy seemed to think the hopping was a wonderful game, and was hopping around madly. Bad enough that I was thinking of waylaying a gun-toting criminal when the only weapon I had was a utility knife. Doing it with Timmy in harm’s way—

“Dad!” I said. “Let’s send Timmy down in the dumbwaiter. Rose Noire’s calling for help.”

Dad wriggled out of the way and, to my immense relief, Timmy was charmed with the dumbwaiter and crawled in without even being asked. I quickly sent him down ten or fifteen feet and was pulling out the utility knife to begin slashing ties when—

“Stop that! Hands up!”

We turned to see Sandie standing in the doorway, pointing the gun at us. Well, waving the gun all around in her attempt to cover all four of us.

“Drop the knife!” she snapped at me.

I followed orders.

“Get over there,” she said to Michael, waving him in our direction. “You too,” she added to Dr. Blake.

Michael hopped over to my side. Dr. Blake used more of a slow shuffle.

“Sometime today,” Sandie said.

“He’s over ninety,” I said. “That’s as fast as he goes.”

Dr. Blake gave Sandie a look that ought to have felled her, and growled something through his gag.

“Where’s the kid?” Sandie asked.

We all looked innocent. I shrugged. Sandie looked around. We might have gotten away with it if Timmy hadn’t chosen that moment to giggle.

“What’s that—a secret tunnel? Get away from there!”

We all obediently hopped, walked, or shuffled away from the dumbwaiter door. I tensed to jump her—surely while she examined the dumbwaiter and figured out how to raise the platform Timmy was on, she’d have to take her eyes off us for a few seconds.

“Uppie!” Timmy shouted from the shaft. “Want uppie!”

Sandie began shuffling around the perimeter of the room toward the dumbwaiter door. She didn’t take her eyes off us. Nor did I take mine off her. Sooner or later—

Suddenly she screamed, and leaped into the air. This sounded more like panic than anger. I looked down and realized that the missing Emerald Tree Boa had reappeared, and had slithered over Sandie’s foot on the way to the birdcage.

“Snake!” she shouted. She leaped back, fired a wild
shot at the snake, and knocked over one of the birdcages in her flight. Panicked birds fluttered around the ceiling and fled the room. Michael, Dad, Dr. Blake, and I all hit the floor as she continued whirling about and firing wildly.

It could only have been a few shots—she’d already fired several at the finches and the snake—but it seemed to go on forever. When I finally heard the click that meant she was out of ammo, I leaped over, tackled her, and sat on her.

“Is everyone okay” I asked.

I heard the distorted sound of Michael, Dad, and Dr. Blake trying to talk through their gags. I glanced over. Dad and Michael were nodding vigorously. Dr. Blake was scowling, and appeared to be scanning the room for something.

Holding Sandie’s arm in a hammerlock, I dragged her with me over to where the tie rack was and used two of the remaining ties to bind her hands and feet.

Then I raced over and managed to pull the gag out of Dr. Blake’s mouth.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “But it’ll be a miracle if she didn’t hit any of the birds. Is the boa all right? Untie me so I can check.”

“The boa’s fine,” I said. “I’m going to—”

“Put the gun down!” I turned to see Rose Noire, hair wildly askew, standing in the doorway holding a pitchfork.

“Relax,” I said. “She’s tied up. Are the police on their way?”

She nodded, eyes still darting left and right for enemies.

“Great,” I said. “Start untying everyone, will you? I’m going to put the snake back in the hall bath, before he eats any of the birds. Then I’ll come back and help you.”

“Uppie! Uppie!” came Timmy’s voice from the dumbwaiter.

“Oops,” I said. I draped the snake over my shoulders, the way I’d seen Dr. Blake do it, so I’d have both hands free to haul the ropes. When Timmy’s head appeared in the dumbwaiter doorway, his eyes lit up.

“‘Nake!” he said. “Want ‘nake!”

“This is Dr. Blake’s snake,” I said. “If you behave yourself until we get everyone untied, I’ll find you a snake of your very own.”

Timmy sat down in a display of ostentatious good behavior. He stayed that way for a good ten seconds. Then he popped over to look out of the window.

“‘Leese cars!” he exclaimed.

Two hours later, we were all still answering questions from Chief Burke, the DEA, the USF&WS, the state troopers, and even a few stray Clay County sheriff’s deputies who’d followed the state troopers over to our house and hadn’t quite given up hope that some of the excitement might have strayed over onto their turf. But I could tell that the end was in sight. Not that anyone was running out of questions, but I could see that Chief Burke was running out of patience with the various interlopers.

And also running out of patience with my questions.

“Yes, we’ve got Freddy’s accomplice in custody,” he finally said, the fourth or fifth time I asked. “It was another one of his cousins. Trey Hamilton. You didn’t really need to skedaddle back here in such a hurry. Trey’s no killer. We picked him up halfway to Richmond with a flat tire and a van full of foul-mouthed parrots. And if he and Freddy give us a whole lot of information about the higher-ups in the smuggling business, they might get out of prison in time to collect social security.”

He also got a little irritated when I asked if Sandie’s gun was the same one that had killed Jasper.

“We can’t just eyeball it and tell, you know,” he said. “We have to send the darned thing down to the crime lab in Richmond, and overworked and backed up as they are it could be weeks before—”

“I understand,” I said. “But is it at least the same caliber?”

“Yes,” he said, as if he begrudged even that one syllable.

The proverbial last straw landed when a grim-faced woman from the county social services department showed up to take charge of Timmy.

“Ms. Walker is refusing to talk any more until she can see for herself that her son is safe and sound,” the social worker said. “I’m supposed to take him down to see her.”

I glanced down at Timmy, who was sprawled across my lap. He was fast asleep. So was my left leg.

The social worker looked at her watch.

“They told me to hurry,” she said.

I shook Timmy awake as gently as I could.

“Wake up,” I said. “You’re going to see Mommy!”

“Mommy?” he said, sleepily. He slipped off my lap to stand on the floor and look blearily from side to side, but he kept one hand on my leg while the other held Kiki in a death grip. Kiki was overdue for another round of major repairs, but thanks to the safety pins, cotton wads, gauze, and adhesive tape from my traveling first aid kit she probably wouldn’t fall apart until things quieted down enough that I could get to work with the sewing kit.

Or would it be Karen wielding her sewing kit? She hadn’t looked all that seriously injured at the accident scene, so maybe she’d be able to go home and take Timmy with her.

“Yes,” the social worker said, cheerfully. “I’m going to take you to see your mommy!”

She came closer and bent down to pick him up.

“No!” he shrieked. He scrambled back into my lap and threw both arms around me.

“But I’m taking you to see your mommy,” the social worker said.