The Kiskadee of Death (9 page)

 

 

Chapter Ten

A
fter an hour of marinating in lemon juice as we worked on the panhandle of Texas, we were recruited by Gunnar to help him finish the lime ribbon that represented the Mississippi flyway. Since it was getting late (and nailing slippery lemons was taking longer than I had expected), the three of us decided it made more sense to combine our efforts to totally complete one section of the map and leave the rest of Texas for the next night.

“I heard you guys talking about Eddie getting shot at over at Frontera,” Gunnar remarked after instructing us where to nail the last crate of limes. “That's scary stuff. I knew your friend was working on some hush-hush deal with the Border Patrol, but he must have really ticked off somebody if he's dodging bullets.”

I set the crate down beside Luce and sat on the floor beside her where she was preparing to nail the halved fruits onto the chicken wire map. We exchanged a quick glance and a slight shake of the head to tell each other that neither of us had mentioned to anyone in the garage that the shooting was being considered as anything other than the work of a disgruntled and aim-challenged vulture hater.

Yet Gunnar had assumed Eddie was the target, not the buzzards.

“Why do you say that?” I asked him, trying to sound casual and not like I was snooping for Chief Pacheco, which, of course, I was. So far, everyone I'd told about Eddie's “accident” had responded with the same assessment as Cynnie Scott—that the anti-vulture roost crew had some gun-happy vigilantes in their ranks. Gunnar was the sole birder to suspect something more was going on.

“That's what Paddy Mac said when he told me about it,” Gunnar replied, then looked up from the limes he was slicing in half. “That's not what happened? Did Eddie get shot or not?”

I debated how to answer that, but before I could say anything, Gunnar chuckled.

“I should have known. That Paddy's always pulling my leg. Always looking for a whopper of a story to tell. Last week he tried to convince me he was in the witness protection program. He's got that Irish blarney streak in him for sure.”

Gunnar shook his head and took another lime from the pile near his cutting board.

“He was doing the same thing this morning,” he said, setting the lime on the board. “He came up with a dozen detailed scenarios for how and why Birdy died. Personally, I thought the one most probable was where Birdy stumbled into a drug deal gone bad.”

He grabbed another two limes and lined them up with the one already set on the board. With one stroke of the sharp butcher knife in his hand, he sliced neatly through all three. His technique reminded me of Luce when she was doing her chef thing in our kitchen at home; calculated, extremely efficient, and very, very skilled.

“I actually saw a drug bust on the street in Alamo one night when I was out owling,” Gunnar continued as he methodically sliced more limes. “You couldn't miss it, really. A truck squealed to a stop, with a cop car behind it, and two more patrol cars zoomed in from the opposite direction. Three guys piled out of the truck cab, guns blazing. The police took the shooters down, cuffed them and stuffed them into the back seats of the squad cars.”

“Whoa,” I commented.

Gunnar looked up and smiled, his wispy white eyebrows lifted almost to where his bandana circled his head.

“You don't have that happen where you go owling?” he asked in mock surprise. “Anyway, it wasn't until Chief Pacheco told us to have some respect for Rosalie's grief and to quit with the theories and butt out, that Paddy shut up.”

Gunnar cut through another three limes, then added as an afterthought, “I think Paddy forgot that Rosalie is Pacheco's mother. He's real protective of both her and his niece Pearl, I've noticed. I've seen the chief out at the park more than a few times in the last month, talking with Rosalie. Actually,” he paused, “not talking so much as arguing.”

I almost dropped a handful of lime halves on Luce's arm.

“Wait a minute,” I said, needing to hear the family tree again. “Rosalie, the naturalist, who was Birdy's close friend,” I said, giving a little pointed emphasis to the word “close,” “is Chief Pacheco's mother?”

Gunnar blinked. “Yes. I'm guessing from that look on your face you didn't know that. Am I right?”

“You're absolutely right,” I said, still trying to keep everyone's relationship to everyone else straight. “But Pearl—her last name is Garcia, I think.”

“That's right,” Gunnar said. “Her mom, Rosalie's daughter, married a fellow named Garcia. The story is he was in the U.S. illegally and had to go back to Mexico, and Pearl's mom went with him, leaving Pearl with her mom Rosalie. You can ask Rosalie about it. She'll be happy to tell you what she thinks of immigration laws that break up families.”

Ouch.

As a high school counselor in Minnesota, I heard a lot of similar opinions from the families of our immigrant students. Whether they were Latino, Somali, Hmong or Russian, every one of my culturally diverse students related tales of splintered families, long separations and ethnic discrimination. Coming to America was as much an ordeal for some of them as it was a promise for a better life, and my students' experiences were all on the legal side of the page.

I couldn't imagine what a mess it was for families that tried to enter the country illegally—the kinds of families that Eddie's surveillance drone was designed to find and help.

Eddie's drone.

Eddie had come to Texas as a favor to Birdy.

Birdy was involved with Rosalie.

Rosalie disliked the immigration laws.

“And Birdy told me we would have to keep an eye on Eddie, for everyone's sake,”
Rosalie had said.

And now Birdy was dead, and Eddie was getting framed for his murder.

By Rosalie? Had her relationship with Birdy gone south—way south—when he became involved in creating more effective border control with drones, because of her own family's heartbreak? As I recalled from our initial encounter this morning, Rosalie hadn't taken kindly to Buzz's inference about unwelcome migrants. And while she'd been suitably bereft with shock and grief early in the day, she'd impressed me as a tough cookie when she accused Eddie of Birdy's murder when she'd shown up at the Valley Nature Center.

How bitter was she about her family's situation? Bitter enough to kill Birdy and pin it on Eddie? If that were the case, she could basically take out two birds with one stone: the border patrol's drone designer and the drone's test engineer.

“Bobby?”

I realized Luce was waving her hand back and forth in front of my eyes.

“I think you've seen one lime too many tonight,” she said as I pulled my attention back into the garage. “We're done with the Mississippi flyway, and everyone is calling it quits for the night.”

I glanced around the garage and saw only a few people left near the float's truck cab, which, to my surprise, was actually beginning to bear a resemblance to a Green Jay. I looked for the kiskadee costume on the flatbed, but it was gone. Our chicken wire map, however, was a beautiful field of various citrus fruits, except for an empty patch in the middle of the state that we could easily finish off tomorrow night.

I stood up and then helped my wife to her feet. She swayed for a second, and I mentally kicked myself for letting us labor so long on the float when Luce had been feeling under the weather earlier in the evening.

“Are you all right?” I asked her.

She gave me a sheepish grin. “I think I got up too fast, and all the blood rushed out of head. Plus, I forgot I didn't have any dinner. I guess sneaking sections of oranges doesn't quite cut it as high octane fuel for creating parade floats.”

Nonetheless, I kept an arm around my wife's waist as we walked out of the garage.

Which turned out to be a good thing, since I had to swing her out of the way as a car came roaring down the driveway, swerving dangerously close to where we were walking.

“Hey!” I shouted at the driver, though I couldn't see his face since I was almost blinded by the car's headlights.

The car squealed to a stop in front of the open garage bay and the driver's door flung open. Out tumbled a young man, who quickly caught himself from falling flat on his face after he caught one foot in the car door frame. He pulled himself back up by grabbing onto the side of the door and hoisting his body erect to lean against the side of the car.

“No wonder he didn't see us,” Luce observed. “The idiot is wearing dark glasses. At night.”

“Actually, I doubt he'd see any better without them,” I replied. “That kid's drunk.”

“Oh, my,” Luce whispered, her voice barely a breath.

Startled by her sudden change in tone, I searched my wife's face.

“Are you sure you're all right?” I pressed her.

But she wasn't looking at me. Luce's eyes were riveted to the car in front of the garage.

“It's a vintage Mustang, Bobby.”

I glanced back at the car.

Luce was right. The drunk driver had a classic Mustang.

Though I'd never been interested in cars other than to have them transport me to birding spots, my wife had grown up with a father who adored classic sports cars and shared that love with his only child. Looking at Luce, you'd never guess she was a grease monkey at heart, but believe me, the woman knew her way around a V-8 engine. In the years I'd known her, in fact, plenty of our weekend birding trips had ended with a classic car show in some remote community.

I've learned that birders weren't the only people who loved a good road trip.

The car's noisy appearance had likewise attracted the attention of the last folks in the garage, but before anyone could say anything, the inebriated driver yelled out.

“Uncle Buzz!” the young man shouted, his long arms splayed across the roof of the car. “You need any more lemons tonight?”

He held up one hand to reveal a lemon in his palm.

“I got it at the bar,” the kid's voice slurred. “I told the bartender I knew just who could squeeze the juice out of it. You're good at that, aren't you, Uncle Buzz?”

From our spot on the driveway, I saw Buzz Davis walk out of his big garage and head towards the boy and the expensive car.

In the sudden quiet of the night, the older man's words carried to where I stood.

“I want you out of this car and inside the house,” Buzz told the young man. “Now.”

The kid stood his ground, still leaning against the car roof.

“Or what?” he challenged his uncle. “Are you gonna ground me permanently, like good old Birdy grounded you? You hated him for that, didn't you? I get that, now. Payback is a wonderful thing, isn't it, Uncle Buzz?”

“You don't know what you're talking about, son,” Buzz said, his voice tight, as he got closer to the kid. I could practically feel the older man's muscles tensing.

“I'm not your son!” the young man shouted at him. “I hate your guts! Everyone around here worships the ground you walk on, except for me, because I know what a two-faced liar you are!”

“Holy buckets,” Luce breathed beside me. “The kid is not only drunk, but begging for a fight.”

“And he's not leaving until he gets it,” I said, watching the young man ball his fists on the top of the car while he glared at Buzz.

The kid wasn't about to move, let alone go quietly into the house.

Whether that was because he was physically unable to stand unaided thanks to his alcohol level, or because he deliberately wanted to antagonize his uncle, I couldn't be sure. Either way, I could see where this confrontation was going.

It was headed south, and not in a good “escape from winter” heading-south sort of way.

Unless I missed my guess, Buzz Davis was about two seconds from grabbing his nephew and forcefully removing him to the house.

And I was fairly certain that, if he didn't land the first punch, his nephew would.

Crap.

I was going to have to break up a fight between a senior citizen and a twenty-something kid.

And I figured the odds were with the old guy winning.

I started toward the two men, but then I got a last-second reprieve.

“Yo, Mustang Mark!” Schooner shouted, running out of the garage to round the opposite end of the kid's car from where Buzz was closing in. “Hey, buddy! Over here!”

The kid's head swiveled away from Buzz and toward Schooner. He squinted into the glare from the well-lit garage to see who was calling for him.

“Hey, it's the old hippie!” he grinned at the birder, his angry exchange with his uncle apparently forgotten for the moment. “What are you doing here?”

Schooner threw his arm around the kid's shoulder and led him away from the car and towards the garage. “Finishing the float, man. You and I met right here, last night, remember? We talked cars and microbrews.”

I watched Schooner escort the kid into the garage and then up to, and through, the house door, avoiding the other birders, who, like me and Luce, had been accidental witnesses to what had almost amounted to a train wreck between Buzz and his nephew. A car door slammed, and my attention swung back to Buzz, who was now imitating his nephew's stance, his palms spread on the roof of the Mustang, his eyes directed down at the concrete driveway.

A few muted goodbyes were called to Buzz as the final float workers drifted off to the cars parked in the drive beyond the garage's third bay where the green Porsche gleamed in the overhead lights.

A love of sports cars ran in Buzz's family, I surmised, my attention shifting back to the vintage Mustang from the Porsche. Buzz continued to stand, braced at the side of the car, and I recalled what Eddie had said about Buzz's curtailed career as an astronaut: Buzz had been kicked out of the space program because he had a drinking problem.