The Kiskadee of Death (16 page)

“It happens everywhere,” I said. “The upside is when it motivates people to be more conscientious about what we can do to preserve what we still have. Like 3M using their technology to develop bird-safe glass,” I reminded her.

Cynnie nodded as she pulled into a gravel space near the trail that led down to the river.

“That's true,” she agreed. She turned off the cart and we all got out. “Come this way.”

She led us on a short path that opened up to the Rio Grande.

“And sometimes, good birding karma just happens,” Cynnie said to us over her shoulder. “I heard a rumor last night that a start-up conservation group is making a bid for some land north of the SpaceX site to establish a new preserve. If they can get it, that might just provide the habitat our displaced birds are going to need when SpaceX is up and running.”

“Has that been hard for the MOB?” Luce asked. “I mean, you're the president and one of your members sold the land to the spaceport developer.”

I glanced at Luce, who was trotting along with me after Cynnie. She lifted her hands in a “well, I thought I'd ask” gesture.

“Oh, sure, I was mad at Buzz for a while,” Cynnie admitted, “as were several of the club members, but Rosalie and Birdy were always defending Buzz's decision to everyone. They said he had a plan he was working on. They said he was a sharpshooter, and not just because he used to win medals for it when he was in the service. Buzz was smart, Birdy said, and he always did the right thing, even when it hurt.”

The word “sharpshooter” stuck in my gut, and I thought of Eddie crouching beside my car with a bullet graze bleeding on his calf.

Buzz Davis was a sharpshooter.

Before I could explore that idea, however, Cynnie turned around for a moment to look me in the eye.

“You know that Buzz resigned from the astronaut program to enter rehab, don't you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“He resigned?” Luce asked. “He didn't get kicked out when Birdy reported him?”

“Birdy never reported anything that Buzz didn't want him to,” Cynnie said. “Birdy knew that Buzz was in trouble with alcohol, but he didn't turn him in to their superiors, if that's what you're thinking. The truth is that Birdy helped Buzz get himself into a treatment program. But the guys knew there would be an investigation about Buzz's performance prior to his resignation, and if it had become known that Birdy knew about Buzz's addiction, Birdy would have been in trouble for not reporting Buzz as soon as he was aware of the alcohol problem.”

“So Buzz protected Birdy by having Birdy publicly blow the whistle on him,” I finished for her. “Buzz didn't want Birdy's career crashed with his own.”

“That's right,” Cynnie said. “Those two guys were best friends their whole lives. As far as I know, the only thing that ever came between them was a ‘who,' not a thing.”

“Rosalie,” Luce said. “They were both in love with Rosalie.”

 

Chapter Nineteen

C
ynnie smiled at Luce. “You can see it, can't you? The three of them have been good friends for decades, but Buzz has been in love with her for years. Of course, she was married for many of those years, so Buzz never shared his feelings with her. Then, when Rosalie's husband died five years ago, she and Birdy became really close, probably because Birdy had lost his wife years before that. I've heard that sharing that kind of grieving experience can be very bonding for people.”

“So Buzz lost his chance,” I concluded.

I shook my head in disbelief. On top of everything else, there was a love triangle involving Birdy Johnson. And Buzz Davis, who happened to be an eagle eye with a rifle, had a plan he was keeping secret from the MOB.

Geez Louise. Let a Hollywood scriptwriter get a hold of this murder, and it was going to be a miniseries that ran for years.

“I hope that Eared Grebe is still here,” I finally said, “because my crime-solving karma just bottomed out.”

“Stop right there!” a voice commanded us. “On the ground. Now!”

The three of us turned to our left, where the voice had come from. A uniformed man stepped out from behind a thicket of mesquite. He had a gun on his hip and a nametag on his jacket.

“I said to get down on the ground!”

Cynnie propped her hands on her hips and yelled back, “Ricky, for crying out loud, you know me!”

I glanced from the slowly advancing man to Cynnie.

“You sure?” I asked her. I was ready to drop if the man's hand wandered anywhere near the gun. I'd have to tackle Luce down with me and cover her body with my own.

I know, I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy with an outdated perspective on women.

So sue me.

But I'm still protecting my wife.

“Yes,” Cynnie said, rolling her eyes, making me feel marginally relieved. “He's Border Patrol. He stops me about once a week when I bird near the river. I'm not hitting the ground, Ricky!” she shouted at him.

“Oh, come on, Cynnie,” Ricky responded as he approached. “It's a slow day. Give me something to do.” He stopped a few feet away and nodded at me and Luce. “Birding with Cynnie, right?”

“Yes,” Luce told him, holding her hands up at shoulder level in mock surrender. “You caught us red-handed, I'm afraid.”

“This is Bob White. His wife, Luce,” Cynnie introduced us to the officer. “They're here from Minnesota.”

“Lucy?” The man's face lit up. “I'm Ricky! Ricky Ricardo! ‘Lucy, I'm home!'” he said, doing a pretty decent imitation of Desi Arnaz from the classic
I Love Lucy
television series. “I grew up watching that show,” he enthused. “My mom loved Lucille Ball, and she had all those shows on tapes. You'd have to get them on DVDs now.”

I checked out his name tag.

It really was Ricardo.

“It's Luce,” my wife corrected him. “But I watched all those shows, too. I loved the chocolate factory episode.”

“What are you doing here, Ricky?” Cynnie asked. “I usually see you on the other side of the park.”

Ricky propped his own hands on his hips.

“We had a tip there might be an attempted river crossing sometime today,” he told us. “If it's a boatload of mothers and children, like it usually has been lately, we want to be sure they get turned over to the right authorities. So far, nothing's going on,” he finished. “Except for a couple birders who walked by here about ten minutes ago.”

“That's who we're looking for,” Cynnie said. “They spotted a rarity.”

“Have at it,” Ricky said. He gave us a short salute and went back into the thicket.

“He stops you once a week?” I asked Cynnie as we headed towards the shoreline.

“Yes,” she answered. “Because I know the area so well, and I've been birding here for so long, I tend to sometimes go where I want when I probably shouldn't.”

“Meaning?” Luce asked.

“Meaning this is a sensitive area and issue for the Border Patrol because of drug, weapons, or human smuggling, and I don't always put their concerns ahead of mine when I'm looking for a bird. Which is probably pretty dumb,” she added, “since the patrol just wants to keep everyone safe and secure, including the illegals who cross the border. I've never been arrested, though, so I keep going where I want.”

I suddenly recalled a story I'd heard years ago from a birder I know. At the time, I thought he was exaggerating, but now, I had no doubt Joe had been telling me the truth. He'd gone to bird around Falcon Dam, which is farther north along the Rio Grande, on the Texas side. After a full day at the dam, Joe got in the car to leave, only to find that the battery was dead. By then, it was dark. Out of nowhere, several heavily armed border guards dressed in dark combat uniforms appeared in the parking lot and confronted Joe. Fortunately for my friend, the guards accepted his birding story (I'm sure the binoculars and birding guides in the car helped) and didn't arrest him for smuggling. They did help him restart his car, however, and sent him on his way.

It made me very glad that we'd run into Ricky Ricardo during full daylight.

Besides, I really didn't want to add an arrest in Texas to my permanent record. A multitude of Minnesota speeding tickets, I could manage. Getting booked and a mug shot in Texas would be another story.

A story I'd rather not have to explain to my boss back at Savage High School.

Being a murder suspect in the past has been bad enough, but having to explain being mistaken for a drug smuggler might be even worse.

Can you say “goodbye state pension”?

We turned a bend along the shore and spotted a trio of birders Cynnie recognized. They all had binoculars up.

I followed the direction of their sight lines into the river and put my own binos to my eyes.

An Eared Grebe.

“Yes!” Cynnie said as she studied the bird in her sights. “And I've got confirmation with other birders. Take that, Buzz Davis!”

Luce murmured something, and I lowered my binoculars to see what she was doing.

“Over there,” she said, pointing to a log that was pinned against the shore of the Rio Grande on the American side of the border. It was a marshy area, almost tucked back out of sight from where we stood. I could see two long-legged birds perched on the log.

“Baby White Ibis,” Luce said.

I focused on the birds. They were cleaning their feathers and soaking up the warm Texas sunshine, their long bills slivers of light. Framed by the river and the shore, the birds were the picture of tranquility. Watching them, it was hard to imagine that the same river was the setting for the border conflicts that humans continued to wage.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Cynnie commented.

Yes, yet another woman could read my thoughts. Sometimes I wondered why I even bothered to speak out loud.

“It's hard to reconcile all this natural beauty with the nasty human complications around here,” Luce responded.

See what I mean? My mind is an open book for women, ­apparently.

“You know, I've lived here my whole life,” Cynnie continued. “Growing up, my family went back and forth across the border with ease. We loved going to Reynosa for shopping and the food. No one ever worried about safety.”

I took a final look at the ibis youngsters. Ignorance can be bliss… but it can also get you arrested on the Rio Grande if you land on the wrong shore.

“Hey, you guys!” Cynnie called to the birders further up the shore. “Thanks for the text. We saw the grebe. Did you see the two ibis?”

“We did,” one of the trio shouted back, waving a farewell to us. “Good birding!”

The threesome walked off onto a wooded trail, leaving us alone on the shore of the Rio Grande. Cynnie turned around and led us back to where we'd left the park cart.

“Of course, when I was a kid,” Cynnie resumed her reminiscing as we climbed back into the cart, “there were a lot more farm fields and citrus orchards around. A lot of them have become housing areas now as the cities have grown. I miss all the cotton fields, but you should see the sorghum fields after they're harvested—the farmers burn the fields, and it's an excellent time to watch for raptors hunting the exposed rodents. When the fields are burning, you can see flakes of burned plants floating down like black snow in neighborhoods even miles away.”

I tried to imagine what black snow would look like and decided it would make a long winter even bleaker.

“I'll stick with the white kind we get at home,” I told our impromptu birding guide. “It may be cold, but at least it's bright when the sun comes out. Black yards sound really depressing.”

Cynnie laughed. “Yes, I guess it is kind of ghoulish. It sure makes it easy to spot white birds, though.”

She pulled into the gravel area where we'd found the park cart. “You guys done here for the morning?”

“Let's see—a Gray Hawk, Plain Chachalacas, Green Jays, Great Kiskadee, Altamira Oriole, Eared Grebe, and White Ibis,” I listed. “
No esta
bad, as Rosalie would say. Yeah, I think we're done.”

As I helped Luce climb out of the cart's front passenger seat, Cynnie caught my eye for a final word.

“I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything to Buzz about what I told you regarding his feelings for Rosalie,” she said. “He's got more than enough on his plate right now with Birdy's murder.”

“Who said it was murder?” I asked her. Hadn't Chief Pacheco said his people were keeping that information from the public?

Cynnie looked at me in surprise. “Of course it's a murder case. There was a canoe turned over Birdy to hide his body. People who die of natural causes don't pull a canoe over themselves before they gasp their last breath.”

“Good conclusion,” I conceded. “So, who do you think killed Birdy Johnson?”

“I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to find out,” Cynnie said.

“Why do you say that?” Luce asked her.

“Because I'm afraid it might be someone associated with the MOB,” she confided, “and I know these people. At least, I thought I did. The idea that someone you know could be someone else entirely is very disturbing, not to mention frightening. It makes you wonder how much of what you think is a lie.”

“Why do you think it's a MOBster?” I asked her.

“What?” Cynnie looked confused.

“A MOBster—one of the MOB members,” I clarified for her. “Why are you suspicious of your club members?”

Cynnie blew out a breath of air. “Because they all knew Birdy. Isn't that the conventional wisdom—that murder victims are typically killed by someone they know? Well, we've got a whole flock of birders with personal connections to Birdy, so I suspect Chief Pacheco is at this very moment sifting through everything he can find out about every one of the MOB members. Including me.”

I had a very strong hunch the most important part of that little speech was the very last word out of Cynnie's mouth: me.

I put my hands on the side of the cart and leaned toward the woman. “What are you really afraid of, Cynnie?”

She gave me a look that was part defiance and part resignation.

“I'm afraid Chief Pacheco is going to arrest me for Birdy's murder, because at a public hearing last month about SpaceX, I told Birdy he'd better watch his back if he continued to support the sale of Buzz's land for the project.”

“You threatened him? Publicly?”

Cynnie shut her eyes and laid her forehead on the cart's steering wheel.

“Yes,” she confessed. “I was furious with Birdy. I couldn't understand how he could support a project that was going to do so much damage to our bird populations. It was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done.”

She lightly banged her head on the wheel. Her silver ponytail bounced on her back.

“Make that the second most stupid thing I've ever done,” she said into the wheel.

“I'm afraid to ask,” I said, “but what did you do that was worse than making a public threat against Birdy Johnson?”

A strangled laugh came up from the wheel.

“I fell in love with Buzz Davis.”