The Kiskadee of Death (17 page)

 

Chapter Twenty

W
hy can't any of these people control themselves?” I asked Luce as we walked back to the Birds Nest after getting lunch at a nearby
taqueria
.

Knowing that it was our last full day in McAllen, we'd decided to walk the few blocks to the small taco shop in order to soak up as much sun and warmth as we could before we had to head home to Minnesota's cold tomorrow. We had chosen wisely, too, since the handmade chicken tacos, homemade tortilla chips and salsa bar had been so amazingly good that lunch had totally driven all thoughts of MOBsters from my mind while we'd feasted.

Now, though, the crazy web of relationships and possible motives behind Birdy's murder had regained its spotlight in my head. Not for the first time, I mentally cursed my counseling instinct to set things right, which seemed, more often than not, just to make matters worse.

“Because they're normal human beings?” Luce suggested, looping her hand around my arm.

“I'm beginning to doubt that,” I said. “I'm to the point where I actually think I'm going to wake up any minute now and say, ‘wow—it was all a dream.'”

Luce patted my arm and yawned. “Speaking of dreamtime, I really need to lie down for a while this afternoon. Do you mind?”

I kissed her cheek. “Of course not. You sleep, and I'll sit out on the back porch and envy Rhonda for all the birds that come to her feeders. I'm pretty sure we're not going to be seeing any Great Kiskadees or Golden-fronted Woodpeckers in our yard when we get back.”

After an hour of watching the parade of Texas birds that frequented Rhonda's urban bird heaven, I was nodding off myself, lulled into total relaxation in the hammock strung up on the edge of the porch. I almost didn't hear my cell phone's distinctive chirping ring tone through my post-lunch siesta. By the time I fumbled it out of my pocket, I'd missed the call. A quick check at the phone's log told me that it had been Eddie.

I called him back.

“You're still with us,” I said. “Good. Nobody shooting at you today, huh?”

Eddie's voice boomed through the phone. “Nope. Just me and my bodyguard buddy, who still hasn't developed a sense of humor. I think everyone else has forgotten I exist, except for the chief,” he said. “Pacheco was here this morning to tell me the investigation into Birdy's death and my shooting has stalled out. No new leads and no evidence.”

If that were the case, Cynnie Scott didn't have anything to worry about. I was certain that, if Pacheco could turn up any reason to question her further, he would have done so by now. I thought briefly of trying to call Cynnie to let her off the hook of her fear of arrest, but I didn't have her contact information. What would I say, anyway?

Hey, Cynnie—that second most stupid thing you've ever done? Not to worry. Chief Pacheco knows it was just a stupid thing and not a reason to arrest you. But about that most stupid thing? Sorry, can't help you there.

“Pacheco says he's totally stumped,” Eddie continued over the phone. “He even ran background checks on all the MOB, hoping something interesting might pop up, but he came up with nothing. He said he's beginning to think it might be a random shooting after all.”

“Except for your bottle of Aquavit showing up near Birdy's body,” I reminded him. “That can't be random.”

“You wouldn't think so, would you?” Eddie agreed with me. “I still think someone tried to frame me, but who knows? Maybe whoever picked it up when I lost it helping with the float was meaning to return it to me, but they lost it while birding.”

“In the same vicinity as where Birdy was killed?” I asked. “I don't think so, Eddie.”

“Well, Bob, if you have any miraculous revelations about who killed Birdy, and why, I'm sure Chief Pacheco would be happy to hear about it,” Eddie said. “Judging from his comments, I think the chief is about ready to throw in the towel on this one.”

We talked a few more minutes about his progress on the drone, and I told him Luce and I were going to be leaving for home after tomorrow's Citrus Festival Parade. I went back to dozing in the hammock, but not before I turned my cell phone off.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, I decided.

Hello, naptime.

And just before I fell asleep, I finally knew what it was that had struck me about Eddie's recording at the Estero Llano parking lot. Aside from Birdy, Poppy Mac was the only one with a knapsack. Buzz had carried his impressive walking stick, binoculars tucked in a case attached to his belt, and Gunnar, Schooner, and Paddy had binoculars hanging on their chests.

Their Hawaiian shirt-covered chests.

But unless they had interior pockets on those shirts, none of the MOB magpies were bringing along a bottle of Aquavit.

Paddy's wife, though… she could easily have a small liquor bottle stashed in that bag.

Heck, she could have had a hammer in there for all I knew.

It occurred to me then that Buzz had had a backpack when we'd first encountered him on the deck on Wednesday morning. I wondered where he had picked it up, since Crazy Eddie's recording plainly showed him backpack-less when he'd arrived. Had there been some kind of hand-off in the park?

I had a bad feeling that if a hand-off was happening in Estero Llano early in the morning in secluded areas, it probably wasn't a cookie exchange.

When Poppy had mentioned the other day that the area had long been known for drug smuggling and illegal immigration, I'd passed it off as a local reputation that might or might not be accurate, sort of like how almost every college in America says it's the biggest party school in the nation. After our own encounter with Border Patrol at Bentsen-Rio Grande, though, I had personal proof that illegal activity along the Mexican-American border was a fact of life.

Crap.

I'd already crossed Buzz Davis off my suspect list, and now I was going to have to put him back on, because I didn't know where he'd gotten a backpack, or what was in it. On top of that, when I added what I'd learned that morning about the former astronaut's sharpshooting ability along with his unrequited love for Rosalie, I figured I'd better promote the man to the number one suspect position. Why Buzz might want to hurt Eddie was beyond me, but the man clearly had the skills to do it. As for motive to kill his best friend, long-simmering resentment and revenge could rank right up there with passionate competition.

Gee, whoever thinks that age can slow a man down could learn a thing or two from Buzz Davis.

I wasn't sure if they would necessarily be good things to learn, however.

And then I realized I had a question for Chief Pacheco that might finally help him get closer to identifying Birdy's killer.

What, exactly, cracked open Birdy's head? Was it the impact of a fall, or the impact of a weapon?

If the former, then I had nothing to offer Pacheco. If it was the latter, I knew two people who could have been carrying a concealed weapon in Estero Llano on the morning that Birdy Johnson was killed: Poppy Mac and Buzz Davis.

Definitely not two of a kind. Aside from their mutual interest in birds, Poppy and Mac seemed as unalike as a… Plain Chachalaca and a Zone-tailed Hawk.

Which, by the way, I'd hoped we might see ever since Schooner had mentioned it the other day. It would be a lifer for both Luce and me.

Another lifer, I should say. We'd already added more lifers to our list during this trip than we'd found in the last three years back home in Minnesota. I guessed I was just being greedy.

And human, right?

Doesn't everyone want to go for all the gusto they can get?

Luce and I had jumped at an unexpected opportunity to visit the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and here we were, enjoying sunshine and birding in January.

Lots of the MOBsters had decided to retire here and enjoy the climate and birding year-round.

Buzz Davis had sold the family land and apparently made a fortune.

Poppy Mac wanted to ride on the first spaceship to launch from SpaceX.

Gusto. Life. Live it.

I sounded like a beer commercial.

I called Eddie back and asked him to show the chief the recording again. I explained what I'd been considering, and he agreed it was worth another look, and that he'd get right on it and call the chief. Luce woke up, we had an early dinner at Roosevelt's in McAllen, then went out to the corner of Tenth and Trenton streets to watch the nightly performance that Rhonda, our Birds Nest hostess, had recommended we see: the amassing of the blackbirds along the telephone wires.

Seriously, it was like a scene from that classic Hitchcock thriller “The Birds,” but longer in duration and in physical area. I parked the car in the Target store lot, and Luce and I got out to lean against the hood of the SUV. Four of the eight overhead wires were already crowded with blackbirds, who constantly shifted and hopped aside to allow room for more incoming birds. Gradually as the sun lowered in the sky and the night fell, the noise level of the gathering birds increased, until I had to raise my voice to speak with Luce beside me.

“This is creepy,” I said, staring at what must have been thousands of blackbirds perched on the wires that ran in all directions. Silhouetted by the fading light, the birds seemed to grow in size and numbers, until the whole intersection was a study in black and white—black birds, black utility poles, white car lights and the white faces of people passing by in cars. It reminded me of an old black-and-white movie with sinister characters and gangland shootouts.

Which got me thinking about the local MOB.

They weren't exactly sinister with their Hawaiian shirts, floppy hats, hearing aids and binoculars.

But because of Eddie's bottle of Aquavit and the fact that all the birders knew where Birdy would be on an early Wednesday morning, I was more convinced than ever that one of them had killed Birdy.

And tried to shoot Eddie.

And with that thought, I finally hit on why someone would target those two particular men and want me and Luce to get out of the area: the drone.

Birdy asked Crazy Eddie to help him with the project. Eddie had joined the MOB when he arrived, and like any close-knit flock, the MOBsters all knew each other's business, or at the least,
thought
they knew each other's business. As Eddie had pointed out, some folks, like Rosalie, thought the drone project was all about immigration control, while others believed it was for cracking down on drug smuggling.

If I had to pick which group might be more dangerous to tangle with over Eddie and Birdy's drone work, I would guess drug dealers. Based on everything I'd ever read or heard about the illicit drug trade, I assumed huge amounts of money were involved, and the people running the smuggling rings weren't always nice about it, to say the least. Think violence, shoot-outs, murder, gore and revenge. True, I didn't know that for a fact, but I hoped I never had the occasion to, either.

Nor did I have any personal experience with illegal immigrants, other than a few students who seemed to have slipped through the cracks of bureaucracy and ended up enrolled in our high school. The business of bringing in undocumented foreign-born individuals for profit was so far out of my worldview I couldn't begin to grasp all the technicalities and legislation surrounding its prosecution; from a simple comparison of profit versus risk, it seemed like the drug dealers had more to lose from discovery by drones.

Ergo, my choice of drug runners as the bad guys who were after Birdy and Eddie.

As for our threatening note, I figured that was damage control of some kind because we were personal friends of Crazy Eddie's. Maybe whoever was behind the attack on Eddie was warning us away so he, or she, wouldn't have to add us to the target list.

A considerate killer?

That was an oxymoron, wasn't it? Killers were supposed to be heartless, not kind. I seriously doubted that, in the annals of murderers, there was a page devoted to killers most likely to be named “Mr. or Ms. Congeniality.” For some reason, I just couldn't picture a bunch of murderers hanging out together to confer titles on each other, like a bunch of student editors getting together to name classmates as “Best Athlete” or “Most Likely to Succeed” for the school yearbook. That would take a consensus, and…

Oh. My. Gosh.

A terrible possibility slipped into my head.

What if the entire MOB was involved in Birdy's death?

What if the MOB was, in truth, a
real
mob dealing drugs, and Birdy had caught them in the act?

Holy crap.

 

Chapter Twenty-One

E
ven though we had another quiet night at the Birds Nest, I didn't sleep very well. I needed to talk to Crazy Eddie and the chief and bounce my new theory off of them. I realized I had no concrete evidence to support any of my speculations, but I was sure I was onto the right track.

My gut, you know. It talks, and I listen.

And sometimes it's even right.

“Bobby,” Luce said when I told her of my new set of suspicions over our breakfast of Rhonda's home-made granola and yogurt parfaits, “not that I want to discredit your ability to help the police solve crimes, but seriously, if everyone in the MOB is involved, there is no way Chief Pacheco could have missed a drug ring like that right under his nose. He knows all these people. His mother is one of them.”

I gave Luce a noncommittal shrug. “So? Maybe he's in on it.”

My wife laid her spoon next to her empty dish and leaned forward, her elbows on the little bistro table. “Do you hear yourself? You sound like a conspiracy theorist. A conspiracy theorist gone nuts, if you want to know the truth.”

“But that's just it,” I countered. “I do want to know the truth. And I want to know it today,” I added.

“Can you handle the truth?” she asked me, a smile starting, then growing, to light up her face. She caught my eyes with hers in a steady gaze.

“I'm pregnant,” she announced.