The Kiskadee of Death (6 page)

 

 

Chapter Five

A
bout an hour later, I was counting Plain Chachalacas as they roamed around on the ground in front of us in the bird feeding viewing area of the Valley Nature Center in Weslaco, Texas. As members of the Galliformes order of birds, a crowd of Chachalacas might remind you of a farmyard flock of fowl with their noisy socializing and lack of concern about humans lurking nearby. If you watched the classic adventure film
Jurassic Park
when you were a kid, like I did, however, a flock of Chachalacas might also remind you of a pack of little velociraptors.

But without the suspenseful soundtrack in the background or the digitally-enhanced murderous gleam in their eyes.

Really, we're talking hens here, not flesh-rending dinosaurs.

Their common name is actually a rough approximation of their call—four notes that sound like
cha-cha-lac-a
. Not exactly terrifying, but certainly distinctive enough to catch your attention. After another moment or two of watching the birds, I spotted the individual in the flock that the nature center's greeter had told us about: a piebald Plain Chachalaca. Typically, the birds are brown in color, but this one was the exception, making it stand out among its peers.

“Oops,” I commented to Luce. “I bet that one's mama had some explaining to do to its daddy.”

“You are such an idiot,” she said, giving me the evil eye.

I laughed and pulled her close for a kiss. “But you love me for it, don't you?”

“Ah, excuse me, sir?”

A pretty young woman seemed to materialize out of the scrub along one side of the bird viewing area. Dressed in an olive green shirt and pants, she had blended right into the scenery. Unlike the piebald Chachalaca, her coloration had hidden her well.

I released my wife and gave the young woman my attention instead.

“Yes?”

She stepped over a pile of branches and came closer to where we stood. Now that I could see her better, I guessed she was in her late teens or maybe early twenties. Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek braid that disappeared down her back and the nature center's logo was on her shirt. I read her nametag: Pearl Garcia.

“Color abnormalities can happen in any species,” she informed me. “Albinos, for example, are probably the color abnormality most familiar to people. The fact is that there are three main types of pigments found in feathers, and some birds have one kind of pigment, and others have another kind. Then, when an individual bird has one of those pigments missing or too dominant, you get a color variation from the norm.”

She pointed in the direction the piebald bird had scurried.

“Like that Chachalaca,” she said.

“Very good,” I complimented her. “Are you a birder, or is that just information all the employees here are required to know?”

The young woman smiled. “I'm a volunteer here and a birder,” she told me. “My grandmother made sure I memorized the names of the birds in her garden when I was a little girl. Before long, I was memorizing their vocalizations, too. I teach a class here to help people learn to bird by ear.”

Luce put her arm around my shoulder. “That's one of this guy's many charms,” she told Pearl. “He's an expert at birding by ear.”

Pearl's cheekbones reddened slightly. “And here I'm lecturing you about birds. I'm sorry. I meet so many people here at the center who are just beginning to take an interest in birds, I just assumed when you made the comment about the piebald…” she shrugged her shoulders in apology.

“I'm Bob White,” I said, hoping to diffuse her embarrassment.

She cocked her head and looked at me doubtfully. Luce laughed.

“No, really,” I assured the young birder. “That's my name.”

“And I'm Luce. His wife,” Luce introduced herself. “We're from Minnesota, and we're spending a week here in the Lower Rio Grande Valley to get some sunshine and new birds on our life lists.”

“Don't forget the lemons,” I reminded her. I turned to Pearl. “My wife is an amazing chef, and she says there is nothing better than fresh citrus off the tree.”

Pearl smiled, her brown eyes widening. “Then you have to come for the Citrus Festival Parade on Saturday. The main street in Mission is closed off for it, and people line the streets to watch. Some people come hours early to get a good seat, in fact.”

“Sounds like a pretty big deal,” I commented.

“Oh, it is!” she enthused. “There are bands, and horses, and floats all decorated with citrus fruit. And the street food is amazing! You have to try the chile and cheese
gorditas
—everyone says they're never better than the ones you can buy at the parade carts. The whole town comes out.”

A rapping sound interrupted Pearl's parade pitch. In almost perfect synchrony, our three heads turned toward the noise in the trees.

“Up about twenty feet,” Pearl said, pointing at the bird. “A Golden-fronted Woodpecker. We have quite a few here at the nature center.”

“Nice view of him,” I said. “I can see his red cap.”

“He looks a lot like our Red-bellied Woodpecker at home,” Luce noted. “They've both got the black-and-white barred back and they're about the same size. But there's no mistaking this guy with that bright gold nape.”

“Golden-fronted Woodpeckers are native to Mexico and Central America,” Pearl added. “The farthest north you might see them are in Oklahoma. The Lower Rio Grande Valley is where the Mississippi and Central flyways converge, you know, which is why our bird species are so plentiful.”

“Really?” I said. “Imagine that.”

Luce gave me a jab with her elbow. I threw her a wink.

“Have you walked all our trails here?” Pearl asked. “It's really only about a mile of walking, but in five acres, we have all the native habitats of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. We probably have hundreds of birds and butterflies, too.”

As if to prove the accuracy of her words, a Black-crested Titmouse flitted past us into the mesquite and thorn scrub that bordered one side of the viewing area just as a Buff-bellied Hummingbird flew in to draw nectar from a native plant. At the same time, a Red-bordered Pixie butterfly floated across the open space to land on a branch not far from Pearl's shoulder.

“We skipped the bog pond,” I told our young birder. “And we have plenty of wetlands back home, so we focused on the Cactus and Resaca Trails.”

“My grandmother says our Resaca Trail is very authentic with the plants we've got growing in there,” Pearl told us. “She grew up in Mexico, just south of Brownsville, where the coastal plain and dry river channels created rich farmlands. She worked in the fields when she was a kid. Every day, she'd tell me, she would rise very early, while it was still dark, to go out to the fields to help her parents pick produce all day. She hated it. So when she came to live in Texas, she was thrilled to go to school instead of into the fields to pick.”

Pearl gave us a big smile. “And she told me that story every time I complained about going to school. She'd shake her finger at me and say,
‘Lo tienes muy bien aqui, Pearlita. Quedate en la escuela, y no te quejas.'
That means,
‘You have it so good here, Pearlita. No complaining. Go to school.'”

She checked the slim gold watch on her wrist and offered us another smile. “And now I have to go do that. I've got a late afternoon class at South Texas College over in McAllen. I'm planning to be an electrical engineer. You two enjoy your time here. It was nice to meet you.”

Luce and I bid Pearl goodbye and then watched her disappear back into the scrub.

“Nice kid,” I said.

“She's not a kid,” Luce corrected me. “She's a young woman. And it sounds like she's pretty attached to her grandmother.”

“Who taught her to look at the birds,” I reminded her.

“And to stay in school,” Luce countered. “I'd say that makes for a pretty awesome grandmother. I wonder if she lives with Pearl? It seems like there are a lot of multi-generational households in this area.”

I knew from my own experience counseling our Latino students at Savage High School that extended families living together under one roof was a fairly common cultural practice. Like Pearl, those students benefitted greatly from the influence of their elders, not the least being the encouragement my students received to do well in school. I totally believed that, if I could assign a conscientious, hard-working grandparent to mentor every student I had, Latino or any other ethnic group, including Caucasian, I'd be dealing with a lot fewer problem children.

“Wherever she lives,” I said, “Pearl's grandma rates in my book.”

I checked my own watch for the time. “I think we should go check out the Alamo Inn where Eddie's staying. He said he'd be ready for an early dinner.”

We walked the Butterfly Trail, lined with a variety of native trees and bushes, back to the Visitor's Center, where the sound of sobbing greeted us as soon as we entered the building. A quick scan of the lobby revealed a small clutch of women huddled around the source of the crying near the receptionist's desk. I tried to avert my eyes and leave the group to its privacy, but just because I was on vacation from my counseling job didn't mean I'd been able to leave all my counseling instincts back at home in Minnesota.

I looked at the huddle.

The next thing I knew, my eyes were locked in surprised mutual recognition with the gaze of Rosalie, the volunteer naturalist and very upset friend of the deceased Birdy Johnson, whom we'd met earlier at Estero Llano. Her eyes were moist, but she wasn't the one sobbing.

The crying came from the woman she held in her arms, and as a third woman moved away after giving them both a hug, I realized I knew who was doing the crying.

It was Pearl.

As I looked again at Rosalie, then back once more at Pearl, I also realized something else.

“I think I know who Pearl's grandmother is,” I said to my wife.

I walked over to where the two women stood in a weepy embrace. On the way there, I grabbed a tissue from the box on the receptionist's counter and offered it to Pearl.

“Rosalie,” I said, turning to the older woman. “I'm so sorry for your loss. I think we just made your granddaughter's acquaintance in the bird viewing area.”

Pearl wiped her eyes, sniffled, and looked up at me. “You know my grandmother?”

“We met this morning,” I explained. “Rosalie here welcomed us to Estero Llano. I was one of the birders who spotted Mr. Johnson, unfortunately.”

At the mention of the dead man's name, Pearl's eyes began to brim with tears again.

Rosalie pulled her in for another tight hug. “It's all right, Perlita,” she murmured to her granddaughter. “Everything will be all right.”

“If there is anything I can do, please let me know,” I said.

Of course, I had no idea what I could possibly do for these two, since we'd just met, and I knew next to nothing about either one of them, except that they were both birders, and Rosalie hated picking produce and Pearl wanted to be an electrical engineer. Somehow, those little pieces of knowledge were not coming together in a momentous way to let me know what I could actually do for either of them. Let's be honest here—my offer was one of those automatic responses you make in times of extreme awkwardness. You never expect anyone to come back at you with a reply.

But Rosalie did.

She told me what I could do.

“You can find out why your friend killed my Birdy,” she softly said over her granddaughter's head. Then, her voice like steel, she added, “and I will take it from there.”

 

Chapter Six

S
he said, ‘my' Birdy?”

Luce and I were on our way to the Alamo Inn in Alamo, which was only a short drive from the Valley Nature Center in Weslaco. After Rosalie's unexpected suggestion for my assistance, I'd left the women, taken Luce by the arm, escorted her out to our car, and shared my brief conversation with the grieving naturalist.

“Yes,” I said. “I remember that the chief said something this morning about Rosalie and the deceased being close, but I guess I hadn't really considered how close they might be. Now I'm thinking
very
close.”

* * *

I pulled into a parking spot along the curb near the side door of an imposing historic white brick building. The door was a deep red, and off to its side hung a sign that read Alamo Inn Bed & Breakfast.

“This must be it,” I said, looking up through the windshield at the two-story building. With its straight lines and no-nonsense architecture, the Inn looked like a bank or land office on the set of an Old West movie. When I'd searched for the address on my phone, a brief description had come up noting that the Alamo Inn was housed in the original 1919 building of the Alamo Land and Sugar Company.

“I suppose the owners of the inn have the place furnished with antiques,” I said to Luce, checking out the potted plants and antique bench beside the red door. “Eddie told me this place books up years ahead of time. He said he was lucky they had a suite available for him on such short notice.”

Luce laid her hand on my right arm and waited for me to look at her.

“Bobby, you don't really think Eddie is involved in this, do you?” Concern had filled her voice, along with a note of fondness for my old friend.

“Of course not,” I assured her, then on second thought, amended my answer.

“I mean,” I said, “I don't think Eddie killed Birdy, but the fact that his bottle of Aquavit was found beside a dead man does make me think he's somehow involved. Not like he's responsible for what happened,” I clarified in response to the alarm in my wife's eyes. “But somehow, Eddie's tripped into something he probably shouldn't have.”

Luce removed her hand and nodded. “You think we can help him?”

“I think we have to,” I replied. “Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, but a woman bent on vengeance can't be far behind. I know I wouldn't want to find myself in Rosalie's bad graces. She sounded scary. If Eddie wants to make it back home to Minnesota after he finishes this consulting job with the border patrol, he'd better come up fast with proof that he's completely innocent of Birdy Johnson's murder, or he'll have a certain petite naturalist hunting him down.”

On that note, we climbed out of my SUV, and I tried the doorknob of the red door. It was locked.

“Bob! Over here!” Eddie called.

I turned around to see Eddie walking in our direction from across the street.

“I'm in the garden suites,” he said, hitching a thumb over his shoulder. “Come on over and meet the boys.”

Luce and I crossed the street and the parking lot that lay between the historic inn and its newer annex. Composed of two two-story buildings facing each other, the architecture reminded me of college dorms with outdoor hallways: a series of doors fronted with open walkways, and between the two buildings a lush garden of flowering roses, rosemary, red salvia, lantana, and a collection of other native shrubs and trees. As we got closer, we could hear laughter floating out from several open doors, along with some acoustic guitar music. I noticed Eddie had an open beer bottle in his hand, and his flannel shirttail hung loose out of his pants.

“What's this?” I asked him. “A birders' dormitory? You got a party going on?”

“Nah,” Eddie said. “Birding's done for the day, and so everybody kicks back a little. After our morning, we all figured we could use some winding down.”

He gestured with his bottle towards the second floor balcony where a fellow sat on a lawnchair, strumming a guitar in the late afternoon sunshine.

“You met Schooner this morning,” my old friend said. “He spends two months here every winter. Says it's better than a Club Med vacation.”

“Yo, Minnesota!” Schooner greeted us from the second floor. He picked out the first few chords of an old rock-and-roll tune I thought I recognized from hearing it on my dad's stereo turntable when I was a kid. “Smoke on the Water!” he called, lifting his hand to brush back some of his white mane. “You joining us for dinner before we go work on the parade float?”

“I want to take them to see the vultures first,” Eddie called back to Schooner.

A Northern Mockingbird swept past us on its way to land in the branches of a tree in the garden between the buildings. I followed its flight and spotted an Inca Dove perched on one of the tree's lower branches, not far from where the Mockingbird landed.

“You can get a bunch of species right here at the Inn,” Eddie said. He'd obviously noticed that my attention had followed the Mockingbird. “According to Keith—he's the owner here—they've had a bird count of 166 species in the two blocks around the Inn.”

He pointed at the blooms in the garden. “You see the flowers in there? Every time I walk by, hummingbirds are in there nectaring.”

“Last year, I saw a zone-tailed hawk fly right over the parking lot,” Schooner called to us. “Hey, have you seen the parrots yet?”

Two more men came out on the second floor balcony from open doors. The short one with the tropical shirt I immediately recognized as Paddy Mac, and the fellow with the bandana still wrapped around his head was, of course, Gunnar. I vaguely wondered if they always traveled in a flock.

“Do members of the MOB get a discount here?” I called up to the men. “Or is this the only place in the Lower Rio Grande Valley where they'll rent rooms to birders wearing Hawaiian shirts?”

The men laughed and toasted us with their own open beer bottles.

“Come on,” Eddie said. “I want to show you something.”

He led Luce and me to his own door and opened it to reveal his first-floor suite, which was more like a little apartment with its full kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bath.

“Looks comfortable,” I told him. “How long have you been working on this consulting gig?”

Eddie shut the door behind him and walked over to the small dining table covered with electronic equipment.

“Only about a week,” he replied.

I followed him over to the table while Luce went to use his bathroom.

“What is this stuff, Eddie? Rosalie told us you're working with the Border Patrol on sensors.”

Eddie nodded. “Well, she's partly right. I'm working with the Border Patrol, yes. But we're past simple sensors these days, Bob. I'm testing a new radar recognition program they're using with the drones they've got deployed along the American-Mexican border.”

“Drones?”

“You betcha. More fences and more boots on the ground can't do what a drone can,” he explained. “Drones give us eyes in remote spots, Bob. We've got mountain ranges along the borders that no patrol can adequately cover, making it prime terrain for hiding illegal immigrants. But with the drones, we get the surveillance data, dispatch troopers to intercept the movement we've picked up, and bingo! We shut down the traffic.”

“There are that many illegal immigrants coming into the country that we need a drone fleet?” I asked.

“It's not just people crossing the border that we're looking for,” Eddie clarified. “We're looking for any kind of illegal activity, and that includes drug shipments. In a three-month period a year or so ago, the drone surveillance led to fifty-two arrests, and the recovery of more than 15,000 pounds of incoming marijuana.”

“Holy smokes,” I said.

“Don't know how holy those smokes were, but I do know they were illegal.” Eddie picked up some kind of keyboard and tapped out a sequence on the keys. “Birdy Johnson asked me to check out the recognition system in hopes I can refine it to distinguish between adults and children. The radar can already differentiate between humans and animals, but if we could determine that children are involved, then we could get protective services involved faster and get those kids the help they're going to need sooner.”

I studied the equipment on Eddie's table a moment longer before I registered his mention of Birdy Johnson.

“Birdy Johnson was the old friend who asked you to take the job?”

Eddie nodded.

I blew out a lungful of air. “Rosalie thinks you killed Birdy.”

“Of course, she does,” he responded. “She heard me arguing with him about the drone's design the other night while we were sorting grapefruit for the MOB float for the Citrus Parade. I told him it was trash, and he didn't take my criticism kindly, so he said I was a dumb Norwegian. I probably would have punched him in the face if I'd been a foot taller, but since I'm not, I stomped on his foot.”

“You picked a fight with Birdy Johnson?” Luce asked.

I turned to find her behind me, her face even paler than her normal Minnesota winter white.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. “You don't look so good.”

“I don't feel so good,” she said. “Too much sun, I guess.”

“You want to lie down?” Eddie suggested.

To my surprise, Luce agreed. My wife can usually put the Energizer Bunny to shame when it comes to endurance; the fact that she did an immediate about-face and headed back towards Eddie's bedroom told me her sudden ill feeling was more than too much sun. I hoped she wasn't coming down with a cold. Getting sick could put a real crimp in our plans for the rest of our winter break here.

“She'll be fine,” Eddie said, obviously reading the look of concern on my face as I watched my wife leave the room. “She wouldn't be the first Minnesotan to be felled by the hot chile peppers down here.”

“We didn't have any chiles today,” I told him. “We had barbeque at Fat Daddy's. Good barbeque, and plenty of it.”

I returned to our conversation before Luce had made her entrance and quick exit.

“So,” I summarized, “Chief Pacheco not only has your bottle of Aquavit, which was found near Birdy's body, but he also has eyewitnesses to a fight you had with him?”

“Shoot!” Eddie said, sounding annoyed. “I bet that's where I lost my Aquavit. At the MOB's garage. I was passing it around to everyone there before I insulted Birdy.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. Eddie was telling me too much at once for me to keep it all straight. “You insulted Birdy? I thought you said you were trash-talking the drone.”

Eddie walked over to his little kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. He pulled out an unopened bottle of beer and offered it to me, but I shook my head.

“Suit yourself,” he said and uncapped it. “Birdy designed the drone, Bob. He's an avionics engineer from way back. He used to work at NASA.”

The framed wall photo of Birdy and Buzz at Fat Daddy's popped into my head, and I began to connect some dots.

“That must be why Birdy was involved with the SpaceX program, then,” I said. “He used to work in the space program when it was all government-owned. Now that it's spawned private industry looking to establish a profitable business, the companies probably love getting experienced ex-NASA folks on board to help develop the whole idea of commercial space tourism.”

I described the framed photo to Eddie, and another connection occurred to me. “Do you know if Birdy was at NASA while Buzz was an astronaut?”

Eddie nodded again. “That's where they met,” he said. “But I don't think Buzz was an astronaut, or at least, he never made it into space as one. If I'm remembering this right, Buzz Davis was kicked out of the astronaut program just before he was scheduled for his first flight. He had a drinking problem.”

“But Luce said she recognized him from a parade in St. Paul when she was a kid,” I recalled. “She said he was an astronaut.”

“He was. He trained as an astronaut decades ago,” Eddie conceded. “Those guys were the cream of the crop back then. Heroes in the making. But even so, a few of them never made it into space, because of medical disqualification at the last minute or because a space launch was scuttled. If Buzz Davis was in a parade back then, the organizers must have decided not to hold his disqualification against him.”

I thought about the man I'd met that morning on the park deck. He could have been the poster boy for healthy retirement with his tanned skin, clear eyes and athletic stride.

“He must have gone through rehab and changed his evil ways,” I said to Eddie. “Buzz Davis glows with healthy living.”

“And he wouldn't take a sip of my liquor the other night, either, now that I think about it. Unlike Paddy Mac and Schooner.” Eddie shook his head. “Those boys could be world-class professionals when it comes to boozing, let me tell you.”

I picked up a few pieces of equipment from the table and turned them over in my hands while I digested Eddie's observations about Buzz Davis and my new-found colleagues of the MOB. “So how are we going to get you off the chief's list of suspects, Eddie?”

“Find out who did kill Birdy Johnson,” he replied. “But let's have some dinner first. I'm starved. And then I'm taking you and Luce to watch the biggest flock of ugly buzzards you've ever seen.”

Oh, good. If anything could instantly restore my wife's spirits, it would be a flock of birds.

Although, I had to admit, vultures might be a stretch, even for Luce.