A Murder of Crows (11 page)

“My dad’s a proud man, Bob,” he said with affection. “I’ve offered to help my folks out in their retirement with some money I’ve got invested from my previous career, but he won’t take it. So I told him to let me know if there was anything—anything at all—I could do to make this deal happen for him.”

“You’re a good man and a good son, Boo,” I told him. “I hope it works out for your dad.”

“Thanks, Bob.”

He gave me a little salute.

The gesture reminded me of my conversation with Red at Millie’s Deli on Sunday. She’d saluted me, too.

Poor Red. I hoped she was doing better after her fall down the stairs and that her memory had returned, because I wanted to ask her about Sonny. In particular, I was curious as to why she thought he was opposing the planned wind farm while Alan claimed the opposite was true. What had Sonny said to her the last time he was eating at Millie’s? And what exactly was her relationship with his wife, Prudence?

Once again, I found myself wondering about Red and what she might be able to tell me about the Delites. If Red was going to be working on Thursday morning, Rick and I could swing by the deli for an early breakfast on our way north. Then, while Chef Tom scrambled some eggs and fried bacon for me, I could grill Red.

“Hey, Bob?”

Boo had stopped outside my doorway.

“You guys be careful driving to Morris on Thursday. This time of year can be iffy with weather. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten caught in sleet storms out there and almost ended up in the ditch … or worse,” he warned me.

I tried to remember when I’d mentioned the Morris trip to Boo, but I came up blank. I’d gradually become accustomed to the fact that my wife had an uncanny ability to read my mind, but I didn’t especially like the notion that someone I barely knew could pull off the same trick. It made me feel vaguely uneasy.

Threatened, even.

Weird.

I had to ask. “How did you know I’m going to Morris?”

Boo laughed once more.

“A little bird told me.” He held up his hand in farewell and walked away.

It didn’t take any imagination at all to guess that Rick, Officer Big Mouth, had broadcast our plans to Boo. The two men must have become real buddies since Rick had learned the truth about Boo’s past—maybe that shared secret had provided them with a bonding experience, in the same way that the hypnosis-gone-awry incident had apparently made Boo feel more comfortable with me. I’d learned as much about Boo during our brief student round-up as I had in the last two months of working with him.

Heck, if I’d known that talking to chickens was the key to opening up the channels of communication between me and our celebrity faculty member, I would have gladly demonstrated my famous turkey call for him weeks ago.

In fact, the more I thought about it—Boo’s reticence, not the turkey call—I realized that the man’s reluctance to get close to people was probably no surprise, given his former identity as a wrestling celebrity. During our back-to-school workshops, and even since classes had started in the fall, I’d noticed that Boo avoided casual conversations with the other faculty members. At times, I’d thought his silence had bordered on being spooky, the way he’d watch his colleagues during lunch breaks without saying a word. But now it made perfect sense. The man had lived in the glare of publicity as the masked Bonecrusher, and while he might have enjoyed his ride of fame and his reputation in the ring, he was in a different world now. I expected the last thing he wanted was his showbiz past to follow him into the halls of a high school and his future as a respected faculty member.

Notoriety wasn’t always a good thing.

Just ask Sonny Delite.

Actually, I guess you’d have to ask his widow now.

Unless Red had her memory back.

I wondered again if Rick and I would see Red on Thursday morning before we took off for Morris.

I grabbed my jacket off the coatrack and locked my office door behind me. From down the hall, I could hear some kids loitering, slamming lockers and yelling at each other. I shook my head. My day wasn’t done yet. Time to be the voice of authority at Savage High School.

But someone beat me to it.

“You. Out,” Boo said, his voice carrying back down the hall to me.

Whoosh
. Those kids were gone.

Disappeared.

Vanished.

Geez.

I’d thought Boo was spooky because he’d been so quiet around other adults, but that was nothing compared to how spooky he was when dealing with students. Those kids hadn’t even stopped to breathe when he told them to leave. When I asked kids to quit loitering, they handed me a pile of excuses about why they were there and who gave them permission, even when I knew they were lying to me. Instead of compliance, I got stories, disrespect, and defiance.

The Bonecrusher got results.

Forget about getting Boo on my lunchroom shift.

I wanted him as my personal valet.

Then again, I now knew that the Bonecrusher didn’t like liars, and I had no doubt that even though a lot of students couldn’t recognize their own stupidity if it slapped them in the face—sometimes repeatedly—every one of Savage High School’s population could clearly hear the take-no-prisoners tone in Boo Metternick’s voice. I guessed that wrestling steers on his father’s farm in Spinit taught the young Boo a thing or two about asserting himself.

Imagine that—the world-famous Bonecrusher hailed from a dot on the map out in Stevens County.

The same Stevens County where a new wind farm was proposed that would insure Boo’s parents’ retirement, unless a sketchy consultant lied his way into stopping the deal.

I stopped in my tracks.

Stevens County was the site of the wind farm that Red said Sonny was fighting, and Alan said Sonny was supporting.

So which side had Sonny been on?

A more troubling question pushed that one aside in my head.

Was Sonny a consultant for the energy company?

The consultant that Boo accused of lying?

When I’d heard about Sonny’s involvement in the project, I’d assumed he was acting as an environmental advocate, since that was the role he’d always played in the previous projects. To me, that implied that Sonny was against the construction of a wind farm, and Red’s comment had seemed to support that.

But Alan’s announcement had corrected that misconception: these days, both the opponents and proponents of an energy project called in assistance from environmental experts to support their side of the debate. To meet government guidelines, the development companies had to prepare and submit studies to the public utilities commission of how the proposed project would impact local species, along with plans to manage the natural area responsibly. Those studies were the work of environmental specialists.

Likewise, those groups opposing a project prepared their own studies, also produced by experts in conservation research. Just as in any case where two perspectives are represented, commissions often heard two different stories about the same topic. With any luck, the studies all came to the same conclusion, but often enough, it seemed, the two versions sat squarely on opposite sides of the fence. When that happened, the feathers began to fly, just as they had in the Goodhue County situation, with each side accusing the other of fabricating, or omitting, important information.

If Sonny had joined the payroll of an energy company as its environmental consultant, I wanted to believe that he’d be as committed to conservation as he’d always been as an independent concerned citizen. But if Boo had his facts straight, the consultant in the Stevens County project was deliberately misleading the energy company in the attempt to benefit his relative.

The consultant was a liar and a cheat.

Which, I unhappily recalled, was the very thing that Prudence Delite had said about her husband.

Her
murdered
husband.

Chapter Ten

I dodged around Rick and launched the ball toward the basket. It hit the rim and bounced back towards me, but Boo jumped up and snagged the ball out of the air. He dribbled it back out beyond the top of the key with Rick hot on his heels. A moment later, Boo had turned and shot the ball in a perfect arc that sent it straight through the basket with barely a swoosh of the netting.

“Pretty,” I told Boo. “I bet your high school coach loved seeing you make that shot.”

Boo grinned. “Yeah. Every time I did it, he just about cried.”

It was early Wednesday morning in the Savage High School gym, and Boo had joined Rick and me once again for our weekly before-school-hours pick-up game.

“So when is that lightweight brother-in-law of yours going to get back in the game with us?” Rick asked, the basketball cradled on his hip. “It’s not like he’s the one who gave birth. I can’t imagine he’s not up to playing basketball yet.”

“The operative word there is ‘up,’ Rick,” I told him. “Alan takes the midnight shift with Baby Lou most nights so Lily can have a break and get some sleep. Then by the time he gets back to bed, he’s only got a few hours before he needs to be in the classroom. Getting up early for basketball isn’t rating very high on his list of priorities right now.”

“Like I said, he’s a lightweight.”

“I want to see you say that to him when he does get back on the court, Stud. He will clean your clock.”

“He’s that good?” Boo asked, a trace of a challenge in his voice.

I looked over at the muscular frame of our new physics teacher. Boo had his hands clasped together on the top of his head, his triceps bulging like thick ropes between his shoulders and his elbows. If you painted him green, he could be the Hulk for Halloween.

Which reminded me that I was still up in the air about a costume for the faculty party.

I’d only had the one idea so far—the buzz saw-carrying hockey-masked serial killer—but with the murder case of an old friend gaping wide open, I just couldn’t generate any enthusiasm for it.

“Alan Thunderhawk would give anyone a serious run for the money,” I assured our secret celebrity. “He would, that is, when he’s on top of his game,” I amended. “Fatherhood has made some inroads into that at the moment.”

“I’ll say,” Rick added. “These days, Alan looks more like something the cat dragged in, instead of the hotshot collegiate athlete he used to be.”

He turned to Boo. “Where’d you go to college?”

The big guy shrugged. “Out east. I didn’t play basketball, though. I was a wrestler.”

Well, duh.

With a move so quick I hardly saw it, Boo snatched the basketball from Rick and sent it flying towards the backboard.

It dropped through the hoop in a perfect basket.

“Are you guys going to Stevens County just for the day?” Boo asked.

Rick watched the ball bounce and then roll in his direction.

“Man, you are both fast and accurate,” he said to Boo, clearly impressed with the Bonecrusher’s court performance. “Remind me to be on your team when Alan gets back and we start playing two-man basketball.” Rick turned to me. “We will crush you, Bob.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “You and the Bonecrusher.”

Rick’s eyes darted in Boo’s direction, then back to me. He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled. “I didn’t say that.”

I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t have to. I’m not totally without my own resources, you know.”

Boo said nothing while he scooped the basketball up from the floor with his big hands.

“That’s the plan,” I finally answered Boo. “Rick and I want to try to sight a Ferruginous Hawk that’s been hanging around up there this week. We’re hoping to find it on Thursday, but this particular species of hawk is notorious for being here today, gone tomorrow. It may well be out of the state by now.”

He spun the ball on the tip of his finger.

“Could I ride along with you guys? I’d like to get up there to see my dad and find out what’s going on with the wind farm plans.” He popped the ball up and back into his hands. “If you could just drop me off in Morris, that would be great, if it’s not too much trouble for you. I’m sure I can catch a ride out to the farm from there. And then I could be back in town in time to catch you on the way back.”

I glanced at Rick, who nodded in agreement.

“Sure,” I told Boo. “You direct me to your dad’s farm, and we’ll drop you off right there. But we need to be back in Savage by six o’clock, since Stud has a big date lined up.”

“Let me guess,” Boo said. “Gina Knorsen?”

“News travels fast,” I observed.

“Not all news,” Boo pointed out. “I don’t think anyone else on the faculty knows yet that she’s being investigated in connection with the murder at the Landscape Arboretum over the weekend.”

Rick’s face went hard. “What do you know about that?”

“Not much,” the Bonecrusher admitted. “I ran into one of your police buddies in the parking lot after school yesterday. He was talking into his cell phone, and he didn’t hear me coming up behind him.”

“You’re joking,” Rick said. “No way a police officer wouldn’t hear you coming up behind him.”

“Just like you saw me coming when I stole the ball from you before my last basket?”

I jabbed a finger into Rick’s shoulder.

“Got you there, Stud. Not only is our new physics master silent, but he’s invisible, too. He’s Boo the Ghost.”

Shoot. Another great idea for Boo for the faculty party. I might as well be his costume designer at this rate.

Boo laughed.

Rick didn’t.

“You need to not say anything about Gina or this investigation to anyone,” he warned Boo, his voice cop-serious. “She doesn’t have anything to do with that murder, and she sure doesn’t need anyone asking her questions about it.”

Boo took a step closer to Rick, his voice softer, but just as serious.

“I know that,” he said. “Gina Knorsen wouldn’t hurt a fly. She might have picked up a few combat skills from teaching in the rough part of town, but the woman’s a sweetheart.”

He leveled his gaze at Rick.

“You’re not the only one she’s impressed, you know.”