Sacrifice of Buntings (8 page)

They needed to talk
to Chuck Knapp.

Rachel thought about it all through dinner on Tuesday night and considered bagging out on Wednesday’s Little St. Simons trip. She figured with most of the birders out in the field, it might be easier to corner him during the day. Provided he wasn’t out on a trip.

Lark and Cecilia wouldn’t hear of it.

“You can’t miss Little St. Simons, Rae,” Lark said. “I guarantee we’ll see more birds out there than anywhere else we go this trip.”

“Besides,” Cecilia said, “the police are doing their job investigating this horrible crime. If Guy is innocent, they will clear him.”

Rachel noticed her choice of words, but then Dorothy concurred, so Rachel set the alarm for 4:30 a.m.

Little St. Simons was ten thousand acres of pristine barrier island accessible only by boat. It was exactly the same amount of land the Andersons had put up for trade, except Rachel couldn’t believe the swampland would measure up by comparison. Little St. Simons was one of those rare places on earth—secluded, unspoiled, and beautiful.

The boat departed Hampton River Club Marina and churned its way through pristine marshland to Barge Landing. There the birdwatchers were loaded into the backs of two pickup trucks and ferried along a sandy road through live oaks draped in Spanish moss. Rachel sat on the tailgate, sandwiched between Lark and Dorothy, and imagined the land to be much like this when it was occupied by the Guale Indians. The only traces she could see of modern civilization were the small grouping of buildings that comprised Little St. Simons Lodge.

According to the guidebooks, in the 1770s, a U.S. senator from South Carolina purchased six hundred acres of the island for a rice plantation. Eventually, he bought up the island, but when the end of the Civil War sent the plantation culture of Georgia’s sea islands into a tailspin, his family sold out to the Eagle Pencil Company, sight unseen. The pencil company’s plan was to harvest cedar trees for pencil production, but the trees proved too damaged by wind and salt to make quality pencils, so the owner of the company, Philip Berolzheimer, traveled to Little St. Simons to salvage his loss. Instead, hypnotized by the island’s beauty, he built a private hunting lodge, allowing only his family and closest friends from New York to visit.

In 1979, Berolzheimer’s descendants opened the island to the public, but even then it was protected. The family served as stewards of the land, hiring educated staff to conduct tours, and thus limiting the impact of tourism. Little St. Simons truly was an island paradise.

Rachel gaped at the scenery as they passed through a gnarled canopy of oaks, cedars, pines, and wild magnolias. Pine warblers flitted overhead—a stocky bird, olive with a yellow chest, it had two distinct wing bands. Tracking a flash of bright yellow, she spotted a prothonatory warbler, its golden head and chest easily discernable among the branches.

“Listen,” said the trip leader.

A clear whistle descended from the treetops, rising on the last note:
teeew, teew, teeew, teew, tuwee
.

“That is a yellow-throated warbler.”

“That would be a life bird for me,” Dorothy said.

“I have it already,” Cecilia announced.

“Then we’ll be tied up at six hundred and ten birds each.”

“If you find it,” Cecilia said.

It took Dorothy a minute and a half to locate the bird. Perched high in a tree, it belted out its song. “Right there.”

Rachel studied the bird, and then a flash of blue moved through her peripheral vision. She searched the trees to the left and found a very small bird hidden in the branches. Blue-gray with white wing bars, it had limited yellow on its throat, pale eye crescents, and black- and rust-colored bands on its chest. “What bird is that?” She pointed to the upper branches. “About eleven o’clock in that oak tree. It’s fairly well-hidden in the branches and leaves.”

Zz-zz-zzz-zzzeee-wup
.

“Good catch,” said the leader. “That’s a northern parula. They’re common in the summer here, but they like to stay hidden. Can someone get a scope on that bird for us?”

Four people obliged, including Rachel, with Lark’s help.

“That makes six hundred and eleven for me,” Dorothy crowed.

Rachel wondered when this had become about listing. Before this trip, the sisters had always just been excited to see the birds. Now it seemed like a major competition.

“It’s beautiful,” Rachel said. She tried snapping a picture, holding her digital camera to the scope’s eyepiece. Tomorrow she’d get a real lesson. “Anyone else care to look?”

Several people stepped forward, and then Lark took a turn. Both Dorothy and Cecilia were too wrapped up writing in their field notebooks to take more than a quick peek.

“On this trip, I’m going to pull ahead,” Dorothy said.

“Oh my, Dot, I suppose we’ll just have to see about that.”

The trucks moved on, snaking along a small creek and stopping beside a small pond.

“What’s the name of this lake?” Lark asked.

The guide looked at her funny. “Where are you from?”

“Colorado.”

“That explains it,” he said. “Around here, we call this a pond. East Myrtle Pond. There’s a bird tower you can climb over there. We’ll be looking for wading birds here. Egrets. Ibis. If you’re lucky, a roseate spoonbill.”

“I don’t have that,” Cecilia said.

“Me either,” Dorothy replied.

They did get lucky. On the far side of the pond, three large pink birds swung their spatulated bills from side to side in the water.

From the tower, they quickly added to their list: white ibis, glossy ibis, wood storks, great and snowy egrets. To the north, second-growth cypress served as a rookery. The trees were full of nesting birds—wood storks, yellow-crowned and black-crowned night herons, egrets, black vultures, and anhingas. Overhead an osprey streaked toward its nest, while a bald eagle made lazy circles in the sky.

“Keep your eyes open,” instructed the guide. “You may see lots of other critters in here, like raccoons, opossums, and bobcats. It’s also prime habitat for alligators and snakes.”

“What kind of snakes?” Rachel asked, unable to squelch her squeamishness.

“Mostly cottonmouths and rattlesnakes.”

After that, Rachel spent a lot more time watching where she stepped. She noticed Lark treading carefully too.

After an hour, they loaded up the trucks, skirted the salt marshes, adding a reddish egret and small blue heron to their list, and then stormed the beach.

The shorebirds were plentiful as well—Wilson’s plovers, piping plovers, American oystercatchers, black-necked stilts, American avocets, whimbrels, long-billed curlews, and red-knots galore.

Little St. Simons had proved to be a birder’s paradise. As a group, the total field trip count was ninety-two species, of which Rachel counted sixty. Dorothy had seen all ninety-two, and Cecilia managed ninety. By the end, Dorothy stood one bird ahead on the life list.

Rachel felt sad to leave. There was something spellbinding and slightly primitive about Little St. Simons and its miles of coastline. It made Hyde Island, even with its murder, seem positively civilized.

Saxby was waiting for them back at the hotel, and while the others agreed to join him for dinner, Rachel begged off. She was tired, but, more important, she had an early-morning workshop the next day: digiscoping with Chuck Knapp.

One of the things she remembered from her college news reporting class was it’s best to arm yourself with knowledge before an interview. If she planned on talking with Knapp the next day, she wanted to be prepared.

First off, if Becker and Knapp had seen an interesting bird—one that would change their mind about the land swap—what could it have been?

It couldn’t be any of the birds she had seen. Even the rare ones from the field trips were common enough to the area not to make news. Rachel surfed the Web, pored over her guidebooks, and found that several endangered birds made the swamp their habitat. Hadn’t Saxby said he’d spotted a nesting red-cockaded woodpecker in the area? Or what about something like the ivory-billed woodpecker? The bird was thought to be extinct until 2005, when it was spotted in an Arkansas swamp. Maybe Becker and Knapp had found one here. It was the same sort of habitat, and the bird used to live in this region.

Of course, their “treasure” didn’t have to be a bird. Other animals, plenty of them, made the swamp their home: spiders, snakes, various kinds of biting flies. After reading about them, Rachel made a mental note to be sure to take the insect repellant on Friday. No way did she want to become a meal for the yellow flies.

Becker’s book might have provided some insight. Too bad it hadn’t been published in time.

Too bad he is dead
.

Exhausting her search on the creatures at the swamp, Rachel turned to researching Knapp. She read his bio in the program, read his bio on his Web site, but otherwise couldn’t dig up much more than the fact that he was both a wildlife filmmaker and photographer. Something she already knew.

Rachel checked her e-mail and found a message waiting from Kirk.

find out anything more on saxby? the birds are thriving here, but the species have changed some. sort of like what happens when there’s a wildfire. wish I was there. kirk

Rachel pictured him in his khaki shorts and then replied:

I’m not so sure. Paul Becker, one of the keynote speakers, was murdered. Dorothy and I were questioned. Saxby is the prime suspect. He obviously has something big to reveal, but he refuses to dish. Becker had something big up his sleeve too. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s one and the same. There’s a filmmaker named Chuck Knapp who might know something. I’m going digiscoping with him tomorrow. I’ll be in touch.

She paused, and then added:

Thinking of you. Rachel

She hit Send.

The others came back from dinner with Saxby’s tales of the interrogation. The detective had grilled him relentlessly, convinced he had been there. Saxby had stuck to his guns and insisted he never made it inside the Nest. Finally, they had released him.

“I told you, he didn’t do it,” Dorothy crowed.

“He’s still their prime suspect,” Cecilia pointed out.

“Thank you for your input,” snapped Dorothy.

“Why?” Rachel asked. “If the guard turned him away, and they can’t prove he was there…”

“The guard doesn’t remember talking to him,” explained Dorothy. “And we said he was there, or he was supposed to be there.”

“The detective admitted to Guy”—Rachel noticed Lark used his first name—,“that the shots came from outside,” she continued. “He thinks the person arguing with Becker might have slipped out the doors and shot him back through the glass.”

“That’s absurd,” Dorothy said. “We would have heard the door open.”

“Maybe, or maybe not,” Rachel said. “That would have been about the time I bumped into that rack, and the scuffle came before the shot.”

“He didn’t do it.” Dorothy’s voice verged on tears.

Rachel patted the end of her bed. “Sit down. I’ve been doing some research.”

She told them what little she had discovered and then asked them what they thought of her endangered species theory.

“It makes sense,” Dorothy said quickly.

Too quickly? Rachel wondered.

“Oh my,” Cecilia said. “I think you girls are grasping at straws.”

“Seriously, Ceese,” Dorothy said. “A find like the ivory-billed woodpecker would give someone lot of notoriety. Look at the man who found the one in Arkansas. If Knapp and Becker had one clearly on film—”

“It would upstage Guy,” Lark said, “giving him an even stronger reason to have it out for Becker.”

Dorothy stiffened. “Are you insinuating that Guy Saxby would kill Becker to steal his film?”

“I don’t think that’s what she was saying,” Rachel said. “If that were the case, he’d have to kill Knapp too. But”—How to divulge this? —“Sonja Becker did say that years ago Saxby had stolen her husband’s work and then published it as his own.”

Dorothy stiffened. “That is a lie!”

“There is no way to prove it, one way or the other,” Rachel said. “Especially with Becker dead.”

The four of them fell silent. Lark perched on her bed, sitting opposite Dorothy. Cecilia sat in a chair by the window. Dorothy stared at her hands in her lap, and Rachel could feel her heart breaking.

“Look, Dorothy, I’m with you,” Rachel said. “I don’t think Guy killed Becker either.” Now she was calling him Guy. What she didn’t say was that she didn’t believe Saxby had the backbone to kill anyone. “Let’s make a suspect list, and this time let’s write down the names and their motives.”

Rummaging around on the bedside table, Rachel produced a pad of paper and a pen, and poked Dorothy with the end of the pen.

Dorothy drew a deep breath. “There’s Wolcott,” she said.

“Except I think he wants the trade,” Lark said. “Remember how he acted at dinner the other evening? He played it cautiously, but he seemed firmly in the Andersons’ camp.”

“Agreed,” Rachel said. “He might not have known Becker switched sides. We didn’t know until Sonja let it slip.” Rachel wrote down Wolcott’s name.

“He’d need a strong reason to want the trade,” Lark said. “Strong enough to kill over.”

Rachel couldn’t think of anything.

Dorothy’s head came up. “What if he has some development plans no one knows about?”

“That’s good,” Cecilia said.

“What are we talking about?” Lark asked. “More hotel beds. I’ll bet the Andersons would be against that.”

“Unless they were working with him,” Cecilia said.

“Like in
Murder on the Orient Express
.” Rachel recalled Agatha Christie’s famous novel made into a movie in 1974 starring Albert Finney and Lauren Bacall. Maybe it was a conspiracy. She scribbled a note beside Wolcott’s name: “check out ulterior motives.”

Lark kiboshed their excitement. “I don’t see Wolcott as the murdering type.”

“There’s a type?” Dorothy asked. “If so, Guy certainly doesn’t fit, yet everyone seems willing enough to suspect him.”