A Bobwhite Killing (11 page)

I tried to decide what to do, but all I could come up with was to get some sleep. “I’ll probably stick around to give Shana some moral support,” I finally replied. “She doesn’t have any family here.”

“You mean, besides her stepson,” she said and ended the call.

Yeah. Shana’s stepson. Chuck O’Keefe. A real gem of a guy. Prince of the OK kingdom. For some reason, though, I wasn’t expecting him to show up on a white horse in the morning to rescue his fair, albeit hugely pregnant, stepmother. In fact, seeing how furious Shana had been when I told her that Stan had caught Chuck’s financial sleight-of-hand, I fully expected that the next time the two of them faced down, it was going to be less of a royal reunion and more like the shootout at the OK corral.

And I sure didn’t want to be the one caught in the crossfire.

I couldn’t fall asleep. Physically, I was tired enough, but mentally, I was jumping through an endless chain of hoops. Why was Jack O’Keefe lying in a morgue tonight when he should have been in bed with his very pregnant wife? Shana seemed convinced that his death was the result of his work with the eco-communities, but murder for philosophical inclinations sounded pretty farfetched to me. On the other hand, money was always a good bet for a motive for murder, and Big Ben—childhood friend or not—sounded like a prime candidate for that one. Even though he was still on the dole from Chuck, maybe he figured his financial pipeline would run more abundantly without the elder O’Keefe in the company picture.

And then there was Chuck. As we say in the counseling profession, he was a mess.

Actually, we don’t say that. Usually, we say someone has “issues.” In Chuck’s case, we’d say he had a “truckload” of issues.

Like maybe a whole fleet of them.

None of which I had any interest in helping him resolve.

So sue me. I was on summer break. Besides, I counseled teenage kids, not kids that were thirty-something.

I got out of bed, pulled on my jeans, and walked down the hall to the lobby to see if there was anything edible in the sole vending machine that stood next to the emergency exit door. I dropped some quarters into the slot and punched the buttons for a bag of pretzels.

“Midnight snack?”

I glanced over my shoulder as I bent to retrieve the bag from the bottom of the machine. It was Renee Ackerman in a bright-blue sweatsuit.

“I have trouble sleeping during allergy season,” she explained. “I have to get up and move around so I can clear the congestion from my sinuses. Otherwise, I just lay in bed snorting and clearing my throat.” She dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “Sorry. Too much information, right?”

I waved a hand in easy dismissal. “Don’t worry about it.”

“So how long have you known Shana, Bob?”

The question caught me a little off-guard, but I covered my surprise at her bluntness by ripping open my pretzel bag and tossing a couple of the little twists into my mouth.

“Since I was in high school. We birded together a few times. I lost track of her once she left Minnesota to go to grad school.”

“So you knew her long before Jack met her.”

I wondered where this line of inquiry was going, and why.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

She seemed to be waiting for me to ask her something, but I just kept chewing on my pretzels.

“Shana’s a lot younger than Jack,” Renee pointed out.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I repeated.

I could have sworn I saw a spark of frustration flare in her eyes.

“I mean, Jack is—Jack was—a handsome, vibrant man any woman would want for a husband, but really, with Shana’s looks, she’d hardly have to settle for an older man.”

“Settle?”

This time, Renee heaved a very audible sigh of frustration. “I’m just saying that, if Shana were free, she could have her pick of young men.”

I looked Renee straight in the eye. Was this the reason I’d picked up weird vibes from her at dinner? Had she been vilifying Shana to her fellow diners over the burger baskets?

“You’re certainly not suggesting that Shana had anything to do with Jack’s death, are you, Renee? Because if you are, you are not only way out of line, but certifiably crazy.”

I turned on my heel to go back to my room.

“It’s Ben’s theory, not mine,” she said behind me.

I stopped in the middle of the lobby and looked back at her. “Ben’s theory? I thought he was touting Kami Marsden as a murderess, not Shana.”

Renee walked over to stand in front of me. “The truth, Bob, is that Ben Graham will say anything to bask in the media spotlight. I’ve known him since I was a kid. We all grew up together here in Spring Valley—Ben, Jack, Kami and I. The Four Musketeers, you know?”

“No, I didn’t know. And I really don’t care, either,” I bluntly informed her. “What I do care about is that Jack O’Keefe was killed this morning while he was supposed to be scouting birds, and that his death leaves an old friend of mine widowed and pregnant. That’s what I care about.”

Renee backed up a step, but didn’t break eye contact with me. “I care about that, too, Bob. Like I said, Jack was a friend of mine from my childhood. That’s why it surprised me so much when I heard Ben making insinuations about Shana’s relationship with Jack. I’ve never in my whole life, heard Ben Graham even breathe a word of criticism about Jack or anything he was involved in. He worshipped Jack. In Ben’s eyes, Jack could do no wrong. And he was here for Shana this afternoon, too.”

I stuck another pretzel in my mouth and waited for her to finish.

“But I also know that Ben thrives on attention. Ever since he went into local politics, he craves sound bytes like it’s a drug for him. If he thinks he’ll get a few more minutes of air time by implying that Jack’s wife might be less than devastated by his death, then he’ll say it.”

I chewed up the pretzel and swallowed it. “So, if you know this about Ben, why would you even listen to what he had to say about Shana?”

Renee crossed her arms over her bright-blue chest. “Because, once in a while, Ben turns out to be telling the truth. And it seems like it always used to be about the one thing you just couldn’t believe possible.”

“Such as?”

I noticed that she quickly checked around us to see if anyone else was within listening distance. Her actions reminded me of a high school student about to rat out a friend’s bad choices. It was almost like she couldn’t wait to share her inside information.

I was half expecting her to pull me aside, whisper in my ear, and then make me promise not to tell anyone.

I swear, some kids never do grow up. She and Chuck could start a club.

Apparently satisfied we were alone, Rene leaned toward me to give me the scoop. “When we were all twelve years old, Ben said he’d found an Indian arrowhead that was worth a thousand dollars. The three of us laughed at him, but sure enough, he had. It was in the local paper the next day. He’d been exploring by some bluffs near his uncle’s farm and found these old arrowheads. His uncle took the arrowheads to a collector, and the guy said the arrowheads were not only authentic, but quite valuable.”

That didn’t surprise me. There were still plenty of areas in Minnesota where ongoing erosion exposed new finds on a fairly regular basis. Just south of the Twin Cities, in fact, there’s a big park where elementary schools routinely take their students to find fossils of prehistoric flora. I know that when I went on that field trip in sixth grade, I got a whole new appreciation of what “ancient” meant. Before that, I thought my teacher, Mrs. Baumgarten, was ancient, but compared to the weathered piece of shale I picked up with a fossil embedded in it, I decided she was just “old.”

Not that I shared that with her. I may have been a kid, but I knew enough not to tell my teacher she’d just made the leap from “ancient” to simply “old.” Like I told Shana, my mama didn’t raise no fool.

“So Ben found an artifact,” I said to Renee. “Big deal.”

“It was to us, Bob. This was a small town, you know. Believe me, not much happened here that warranted any media attention from the big cities. Getting his picture in the paper, along with a quick segment on the evening news from Rochester, was a huge event for Ben. We were all star-struck for a while.”

I wadded up my empty pretzel bag and pitched it into the waste can near the vending machine. Renee yawned and patted her hand over her mouth.

“Sometimes I think that’s when Ben developed his taste for fame,” she added. “For weeks afterward, he kept telling us that one day he was going to find a gold mine in Fillmore and become famous. We were all pretty sure there was definitely no treasure hidden in these hills, but after the arrowhead story, we kept our doubts to ourselves.” She glanced at the gold watch on her wrist and grimaced. “It’s late. I’m going back to bed. Hopefully, I can get at least a few hours of sleep before we have to get up for birding in the morning. You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”

I covered a yawn of my own. “Yup. I don’t get down here very often, so I still want to try finding that Northern Bobwhite that Jack promised us. I have a couple ideas about places to look.”

“Great. I’ll see you in the morning, then. Good night, Bob.” She took a step in the direction of the hallway, then turned back.

“You know, Ben may not have found any gold in these hills, but he’s sure famous enough around here. He and Jack both became celebrities in a way—Jack with the success of OK Industries and Ben with his little political kingdom. Funny how life turns out, isn’t it?”

I nodded in agreement. “Good night, Renee.” I watched her walk away down the hall.

She was right—life was a bag of surprises. If I could have a dollar for every time I failed to predict the future correctly, I’d be a rich man. I thought of all the students I’d counseled over the years and how, invariably, the class slacker turned into a prosperous businessman, the girl who wanted to become a lawyer ended up training to be a massage therapist, and the athlete who barely graduated buckled down to get a teaching degree.

As far as I could tell, my professional crystal ball was full of mud.

Actually, my personal crystal ball wasn’t much better. If it had been, the last thing I would have done was sign up for Jack’s weekend birding trip because it sure hadn’t turned out fun at all.

Just deadly.

And then I registered what my eyes had noted on the back of Renee’s bright blue sweatsuit as she’d returned to her room.

Words were emblazoned across the jacket: Secure A-Man.

Wasn’t that the name of the security firm that had installed Kami’s original electric fence?

And what were the odds that Renee just happened to have a jacket with that name on it, just when Kami was having a load of trouble with her perimeter security?

Another funny twist of life?

Not if my gut had anything to say about it. Even filled with late-night pretzels, I trusted my gut more than almost anything. Over the years, that instinct had served me well in counseling students and finding elusive birds all over Minnesota. Now I had to wonder if it was learning how to track down a killer.

Or at least a fence-cutter.

I rubbed my hand over my eyes. I needed to get some sleep if I was imagining that Renee Ackerman was trying to set loose a tiger in Fillmore County.

Maybe late-night snacking wasn’t such a great idea after all. Good thing I didn’t go for the bag of jalapeno cheese curls—I’d probably be hallucinating by now, thinking someone was out to kill me.

Of course, there was that note that Shana had …

I rolled my eyes in total exasperation with myself. I really needed to get some sleep.

By six o’clock in the morning, I was back in my SUV with Bernie riding shotgun beside me. Behind us in their car were Mac and Renee, along with Sonja and Anders Nyberg, the other couple who’d elected to finish the weekend’s birding agenda despite the decidedly gloomy pall that Jack’s murder had settled over the group like a dingy old blanket. Shana had opted to waddle over to the sheriff’s office first thing to see how the investigation was going, and Tom had offered to accompany her. Depending on what they found out about any progress in the case, I’d make a decision about heading home or sticking around another day in Spring Valley.

“So did you call that sister of yours?” Bernie asked me as I pulled out of the parking lot.

I slid her a look. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re nosy?”

“Oh, sure, lots of times,” she cheerfully replied. “But I don’t listen. It’s my prerogative, you know. I’m an old biddy. Everybody knows that. So did you call her?”

I shook my head. “I’ll see her when I get home. With any luck, the sheriff will make an arrest today and my name will fall right out of the headlines. That’ll make everyone happy, Lily will forget all about it, and I’ll still have to get measured for that tux.”

“What about Luce?”

“What about her?”

“What did she think about you being on television with Shana?”

I followed the county road as it curved down out of town. “I don’t know, Bernie. I didn’t talk to her last night. And even though it’s none of your bees’ wax, Luce trusts me. She knows I love her. She’s not going to worry about our relationship because I’m trying to help out an old friend who just lost her husband.”

The car swung hard to the left as I rounded another curve and I noticed Bernie grip the dashboard.

“Okay,” she said. “I get the message. I’ll back off. You don’t have to drive like Bo Duke to get me to shut my mouth.”

“I’m not trying to drive like one of the Dukes of Hazzard,” I told her, suddenly concerned. I checked my speed. For once, I was watching it, keeping my foot well off the accelerator, yet the car was steadily gaining momentum as the road wound downhill between some small bluffs. I tapped on the brakes.

Nothing happened.

I punched the brake pedal down.

Still nothing, and we were picking up more speed.

“Shit.”

“What?” Bernie asked, still gripping the dash.

“My brakes are gone.”

“Shit!” she agreed.

“Hold on!” I glanced in my rear view mirror to be sure that the Ackermans were a good distance behind me. Ahead of me, the road snaked past a small rough turn-out area before it took a sharp turn to the right. If I was going to do some fancy maneuvering, it had to be now.