A Murder of Crows (20 page)

I took the papers Vern handed me and sat down at the big oak table that nearly filled the room. Boo’s mother placed a cup of coffee in front of me, then sat down in the chair beside me. Boo laid a plate full of crumb cake on the far side of the photos I had spread across the table, and I immediately breathed in the warm scent of baked apples and cinnamon.

“Just took it out of the oven,” Tillie told me. “It’s an old family favorite recipe.”

“Those are the best kind,” I said, beginning to salivate. I felt like one of Pavlov’s dogs, but without the bell. Give me a whiff of something freshly baked and my mouth was watering like a faucet. Since Luce and I had gotten married, I swear my mouth was salivating almost 24/7 thanks to her cooking. I was going to have to start wearing bibs.

“My wife’s a chef,” I said to Tillie, “and she collects recipes. She says that the new recipes can’t compare to the handed-down ones when it comes to pure comfort level.”

“I’d agree with that,” Vern said, using his fork to lift a square of the cake onto his plate. “Homemade beats store-bought hands down. In fact, that’s what I thought was going on when our neighbors put up those poles. I thought maybe they were going to line up rows for a vineyard or some new crop project—try to diversify. Then when I saw the feeding platforms I wondered what in the heck they thought they were doing, because the hawks around here don’t need any help finding food, believe me. We’ve got plenty of little-bitty field critters for them to pick off.”

I swallowed a bite of the cake. I’d thought the same thing. If the owners next door really did put up the platforms to try to lure in birds—like Ferruginous Hawks, for example—they needed to get their avian facts straight. Even if the hawks picked up a few free meals as they passed through the county, it was completely unlikely they’d relocate their nesting grounds because of it. Not to mention that Ferruginous Hawks weren’t any kind of protected species.

Sure, it was a thrill for a Minnesota birder to see one, but their presence wasn’t going to jeopardize a wind farm site.

So either the neighbors were ignorant or desperate … or both … to get the lease from the wind farm.

Okay, that much I could believe. If I could earn up to $8,000 a year per tower in leasing payments, I’d want a few towers in my backyard, too.

Accepting that Sonny was advocating for, or advising, these same neighbors, though, that was a stretch I didn’t know how to make. Sonny would know—would have known, past tense, I reminded myself—that the idea of trying to bait Ferruginous Hawks, or any other kind of bird, for that matter, in large enough numbers to impact an environmental survey was not only stupid, but doomed to fail. Birds took longer than one season to change nesting habits, and food provision was only a piece of that puzzle.

Yet Boo and his dad maintained that Sonny had been on their neighbor’s side of the battle.

Try as I might, however, I just couldn’t figure out how Sonny, a respected birding expert in the state, could have given such faulty information and poor advice—not only to the wind farm developers, but to the Metternick’s neighbors as well. It was almost like he’d set them all up for failure. Why would Sonny have done that?

“See, there aren’t any of those poles or platforms in these photos from my survey,” Boo said, smoothing his fingers lightly over the aerial pictures. “Here’s our property line. And over here …” he paused, his finger coming to rest on a tiny, but bright, pink rectangle a few inches beyond his parents’ farm boundary. “Is that Arlene Weebler’s pickup truck?”

Vern leaned over to examine the spot on the map.

“I do believe it is, Boo,” he said after a moment of scrutiny. “That girl has the only pink truck in the county. Kind of hard to miss, even in an aerial survey.”

“So what was Arlene doing out there at 6:00 am in the morning?” Boo asked his dad. He turned to me to explain. “I did the survey at dawn. Arlene is our neighbor’s daughter, and she’s never been known to be an early riser, much less interested in exploring her dad’s fields at the crack of dawn. Arlene is much more the nightlife kind of girl, if you catch my drift.”

“I didn’t know Morris had a nightlife,” I commented.

“It doesn’t,” Vern answered me. “That’s Arlene’s problem. She’s sort of a grenade waiting to go off, but her dad doesn’t have any ordnance training, so it’s anybody’s guess what she was doing out there or why.”

“Is this the neighbor who wants the wind farm lease?” I asked. “The same neighbor who had Sonny Delite running interference with the energy company so they could get the lease?”

“Yes,” Tillie said. She was leaning over the map, too, squinting at the pink spot that marked Arlene’s truck. “Does that truck bed look funny to you?” she asked.

I looked at it more closely. It seemed like some kind of material was draped over the back end of the truck bed.

“Oh, my stars,” Tillie breathed. “I do believe she was entertaining someone in that truck bed. I’d heard a rumor at the beauty parlor, but I don’t like carrying tales about my neighbors.”

“What did you hear, Ma?” Boo prompted her.

“Well, Clarissa was doing my hair, and she said that if anyone thought the Weeblers were related to that Mr. Delite, who was helping them get the lease, then they were just as bamboozled as the energy company.” She sat back down in her chair and looked at each of us, clearly debating how much gossip to share.

“You’re saying that Sonny wasn’t a cousin to Mr. Weebler?” I clarified.

Tillie picked at her piece of crumb cake with her fork. “That flour I used must be getting too old. This texture just isn’t as light as I like it.” She returned to my question. “Apparently not, Bob. The reason he was helping the Weeblers was because he had a … special friendship … with Arlene.”

Oh, boy.

“Let me guess,” I speculated. “This ‘special friendship’ included early morning birding sessions in the back of Arlene’s pink pickup truck?”

Tillie tried to suppress a smile. She nodded, still focused on ventilating the cake on her plate. I’d heard about letting wine breathe to improve its body, but stabbing crumb cake to make it lighter was a new one on me.

“It seems Arlene finally found a reason to get up in the morning,” she offered. “You know what they say about the early bird catching the …”

Boo groaned. “Please, don’t even go there, Ma.”

“Well, she may have caught Mr. Delite, but Arlene sure didn’t catch any grasshopper sparrows on our property, I guarantee,” Vern said, ignoring his wife’s innuendo. “Those birds are over on the other side of the Weebler’s farm. I bet once she and Sonny figured out that ruse wasn’t going to work, they started putting up those platforms in hopes of attracting some other important birds to our property. They must have heard that Boo’s aerial surveys proved that we don’t have any big birds nesting out there, so they decided to try to bring some in.”

I shook my head. “Sonny would have known better,” I insisted. “If he suggested that plan, he knew it wouldn’t work from the start, which means he was deliberately sabotaging the Weeblers’ plan to get the wind farm lease. The big question is ‘why?’”

Tillie cleared her throat. “To get back at Arlene for letting the cat out of the bag about their—ah—birding dates?”

I looked at Tillie. “Is there some other little piece of gossip you want to tell us?”

“I don’t think it’s technically gossip,” she said, “when it’s already public knowledge. Sonny Delite was married. He wore a wedding band. But his wife never came with him when he was consulting for the energy company, not that it made any difference to Arlene.”

Vern sighed. “That Arlene is a law unto herself, unfortunately for her parents.”

Tillie nodded in agreement. “And Stevens County is a long way from the Twin Cities. What’s that expression these days? ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’ Not that Spinit is anything like Vegas, mind you,” she assured me. “You can’t even buy a lottery ticket in this town. You have to go into Morris for that.”

She picked up a piece of crumb cake with her fork.

“I imagine that Mr. Delite must have assumed that what his wife didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. In other words, he could have his cake and eat it, too.”

She popped the bite of food into her mouth for emphasis. After she chewed and swallowed it, she added, “Or rather, he could … until Arlene left a message on his home phone message machine to call her.”

“Arlene called his wife?” Vern asked. “Arlene may be a loose cannon—and I, of all people, know what a loose cannon can do—but she’s not stupid.”

“Clarissa said that Arlene told her it was a mistake,” Tillie reported. “But I’m not so sure.”

She tapped the empty fork on her plate.

“I have a sneaking suspicion that Arlene Weebler knew exactly what she was doing when she left her phone number on Mr. Delite’s home message machine,” Boo’s mother said. “That girl always did have a knack for causing trouble, especially when she was the one who could benefit from it.”

“You think she was blackmailing Sonny into helping her family snag the lease,” I said, mentally connecting the dots that Tillie had drawn.

“I can’t imagine that Mr. Delite would want his wife to know he was keeping company with another woman while he was away from home on a business trip,” Tillie pointed out. “That tends to ruin marriages.”

Especially if it was the second time it had happened, I silently considered.

Thanks to our own little soap opera at Savage this week, I knew that Sonny hadn’t been the model husband. And I wasn’t the only one who knew it, either. Between Boo, Gina, Gina’s brother Noah, Rick, the Savage police department and probably innumerable students who heard snippets of conversations they shouldn’t (Sara Schiller came to mind), Sonny Delite’s past infidelity was old news.

And contrary to the old saw that “the wife was the last to know,” it was crystal clear to me now that Prudence Delite had known.

Sonny Delite was a liar and a cheat. Prudence’s announcement of that at Millie’s Deli on the morning of Sonny’s death couldn’t have been clearer … now that I knew what she’d been talking about.

At the time, though, I hadn’t known, but I’d learned a lot more about my occasional birding pal’s private life than I ever wanted to in the last few days. He may have been an ace birder and outstanding environmental advocate, but his personal life had been going down the drain for a while.

Until it got completely flushed away, that is.

A sudden chill swept down my spine.

Had Prudence pulled the plug on her husband for a repeat offense?

She’d acknowledged that he was dishonest, and she’d mentioned how hard it had been on her when he was away on his environmental crusades, but had she finally decided his extracurricular activities were just too much to overlook?

I replayed the Sunday morning scene at Millie’s in my head.

Red had been surprised to see Prudence and moved quickly to contain her friend’s violent outburst when she arrived. Then, even though Pru had slapped her, Red had immediately attributed it to grief and begun to virtually smother the bereaved wife with concern.

Now I found myself wondering: was the concern Red showed Pru not so much the key to that scene as the smothering? By restraining her and feeding her ham and eggs, Red had effectively stopped Prudence’s behavior from spiraling even further out of control. Our favorite waitress had, after all, told her old buddy to “put a lid on it.” At the time, I’d assumed that Red was reminding Pru that her grief was blinding her to Red’s superior combat skills, although now it seemed equally possible that she could just as easily have been warning Prudence Delite to put a lid on something else.

Like her mouth.

Or guilt.

Had Red jumped to Pru’s defense to keep her from incriminating herself in Sonny Delite’s murder?

How close of a friendship did Red and Prudence have? Close enough that Red would be an accomplice to murder?

The smallest snippet of conversation from Sunday morning came roaring back to me.

When Luce came back from the kitchen, she said that Chef Tom needed Red to help with food prep, even though she’d come in to work late.

I knew from countless breakfasts at the deli that Red always came in at 6:00 am.

But not, apparently, on the Sunday morning that Sonny Delite was murdered.

Red had come in late.

True, Red had seemed surprised when she learned from the radio that Sonny Delite had been found dead, but it wasn’t like she was overcome with shock, I recalled now, especially given that the dead man was the husband of her dear old friend. Then, when Prudence herself showed up shortly thereafter at the deli with her police escort, Red had visibly paled. I’d gotten the clear impression that Sonny’s death hadn’t upset our waitress nearly as much as Pru’s unexpected appearance did.

I ate another bite of crumb cake while Boo rolled up the aerial surveys, and I remembered another piece of conversation. This time, it was from this morning.

Red’s son had lost a job in utilities a few years back, and she’d been furious, Prudence had told me.

And then I could almost hear Alan speculating at Millie’s over our brunch. He’d suggested that Sonny’s death was the delayed result of the Henderson utilities defeat—that someone had waited two years to exact revenge on Sonny for shutting that project down.

Could Red have been that someone?

Sonny wouldn’t have thought twice about taking a cup of tea from Red. He’d probably done that every time he’d eaten at Millie’s. Red was someone he knew and trusted.

But how could she have known he was at the Arb early on Sunday? And wouldn’t Sonny have thought it odd to run into Red near the Education Center, especially if she was waiting for him there with a hot cup of tea?

I looked at the last bite of cake on my plate and lost my appetite.

They’d done it together. Prudence and Red had joined forces and murdered Sonny.

Yup. Lying and cheating really did tend to ruin marriages, didn’t it?

Not to mention lives.

I suddenly tuned back in to the conversation at the table. Tillie was arguing with Vern about Arlene’s role in Sonny’s demise.