The Boreal Owl Murder (5 page)

I put thoughts of poaching and headlights aside and put on my “I’m in your corner” listening face and leaned back in my chair for the duration of what I was sure was going to be a rather lengthy, painful recitation.

Man, do I love Mondays.

“How big a yard are we talking here?”

I popped open the can of soda that Lily had handed me as we walked through the front display room of her landscaping shop and headed for her little office in the back. Since her place—Lily’s Landscaping—wasn’t too far from school, I’d stopped in on my way home.

“That stuff will trash your stomach lining,” she said, nodding to the can as I took my first sip.

“You gave it to me,” I said, feigning indignation.

Her expression was filled with contempt and older-sister superiority. “Yeah, because I know you drink it. That doesn’t mean I think you
should
.”

“You must really love me,” I said. “You’re worried about my diet.”

When we were kids, my mom always worried about what we were eating, or not eating.

“Did you have any fruit today?” she’d ask. “You need to drink milk at every meal, remember.”

When we complained about her nagging, she just patted us on the head and said, “I love you, too.” It always reminded me of watching a mother bird feed her babies, sticking food down their little gullets with all the finesse of a pile driver.

It occurred to me that Luce had remarked on my eating habits recently, too. I smiled. This was obviously a female-of-the-species thing—love meant worrying about what the other person ate. Guys didn’t equate eating habits with love. We equated eating with … eating. Love had nothing to do with the dinner menu. Maybe Smokey and I had more in common than I had realized.

“Mrs. Anderson has just under an acre,” Lily said, spreading a sheet of drawing paper across her worktable. On it, she had marked the yard dimensions, sited the house and sketched in a creek flowing through a small pond at one end of the property. A couple stands of trees and shrubs were already noted on the paper.

“You need three things to attract birds,” I told her. “A food source would be good, a place for cover and shelter that also provides nesting materials, and water.”

I pointed to the pond. “She’s got the water, so that’s taken care of, although the yard is big enough, she might want to put in a couple stone birdbaths in other places in the yard to attract some smaller birds, like finches or wrens. She’ll get ducks, geese, and maybe some herons or egrets with the pond. She might want to enlarge it a bit.”

Lily jotted some notes on the paper.

“What kind of trees are these?” I tapped the paper where she’d marked the already existing stands.

“Mostly old growth stuff. A few dead trees, oak, some nice maples.”

Lily swept aside a short wave of hair that fell across her cheek. She’s only thirteen months older than I am, and people used to think we were twins when we were teenagers, which we hated. We have the same auburn hair, the same grey eyes, and for a while, we were even the same height. But then I shot up. Since she topped out at only five-foot-four (if you can call that “topping out”), she has to look up to her “little” brother. I figure it’s a form of psychological payback for all the times she lorded it over me when we were kids. Just to be sure, though, I call her shrimp every once in a while to rub it in. She usually kicks me if I’m within range.

“Dead trees are good,” I said. “They provide nesting spots, so you’ll want to leave them. Maples work too. What about some evergreens or berry-bearing bushes?”

I took the pencil from Lily’s hand and drew in two big circles for some pines and cranberry shrubs. “That would provide both nesting shelter and food sources, as well as some nice color. Actually, white jack pine would be really nice. Have you got a supplier for that?”

Lily chewed on her lower lip. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I could try that new outfit where I got the Christmas trees from. The stock was excellent, and the prices even better. I think they’re up in Two Harbors, just north of Duluth on Lake Superior. Let’s see—their name was … kind of a funny name, I remember. Oh yeah! Very Nice Trees, I think.”

I met her eyes. “Very Nice Trees? You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

“Maybe it’s not the most imaginative company name I’ve ever heard, but they really were very nice trees,” Lily pointed out. “Actually, they were the most perfectly shaped Christmas trees I’ve ever seen. I sold them out in days and made a good profit. Truth in advertising is nothing to be sneezed at, you know.” She rifled through the filing cabinet behind her and pulled out an invoice.

“Yup. Very Nice Trees. Mailing address P.O. Box 487, Two Harbors, Minnesota. Say, weren’t you just up there over the weekend?”

Was it really only yesterday? It felt like days at least.

“Yeah. Mike and I were birding. We found a body.”

Lily gave me a quizzical look. “A … bird body?”

“Nope. Human.”

Lily’s rusty eyebrows shot up almost into her hairline. “Say what?”

I told her the birding-goes-bad story of the weekend.

“The good news, though, is that I’m not a suspect,” I assured her. “The bad news is that we didn’t get the Boreal, so I’m thinking I’ll be back up there this next weekend.”

“Give it a rest, Bobby,” Lily said. “I don’t like the idea of you up there with something like this going on. There are some real whackos tucked away in some of those remote spots, you know. I don’t know if they’re like the militia or survivalist cults you read about in the news once in a while, but I wouldn’t go looking for them. Even some of those conservation people up there get a little weird.”

“I’m not looking for anyone,” I reminded her. “I’m looking for an owl. But thanks for the concern. I love you, too, even if you are a shrimp.”

Her foot drew back for a kick, but I’d already jumped away.

I zipped up my jacket and headed for the front door of the shop. “Hey,” I called back. “If I do go this weekend, do you want me to check out Very Nice Trees for you? I could see if they’ve got very nice white jack pines.”

“That’d be great,” Lily replied, sticking her head out of her office. “If I do this yard like this, I’m going to need a lot of them, too.” She looked at me suspiciously. “Is this going to cost me extra?”

“No charge,” I said. “Just keep that birdseed coming.”

Still half facing backwards, I stepped outside and almost walked right into Stan Miller.

“You’re going back this weekend?” he asked.

Startled, and my head flooded with events of the weekend, the possibility that he was maybe Rahr’s killer, that he had already threatened me with the note on my bird feeder, and that he was there right now to do me harm, I didn’t exactly answer him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Okay, maybe that wasn’t the friendliest greeting I could have offered, but considering everything, it was the best I could manage spur-of-the-moment. Besides, I was ticked that he’d been listening in on my private conversation with Lily. Well, I considered it private, even though I’d just been shouting across the shop to her. I didn’t know anyone else was around. He could have announced himself or something, but instead, he’d just sneaked up on me, and I sure didn’t like the idea that now he knew my birding plans, too. Especially if he was my note writer.

“Stan! You’re early,” Lily said, coming out of her office.

I watched her walk over to Scary Stan, a smile on her face. I think my mouth was hanging open.

“You know him?” I asked her.

“Yes, I know him,” she replied. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

I grabbed her arm and dragged her back into her office, shutting the door behind us.

“That’s the man who almost shot me this weekend!” I said in a harsh whisper. “He’s Scary Stan, the birder. Everyone thinks he’s either a former government agent or a mob hitman or … or … just certifiably crazy.”

Lily crossed her arms over her chest. She’d shifted her weight to one hip and was tapped her toe. “You’re the one who’s crazy here, Bobby. Stan Miller’s an accountant. We met two months ago at a Wild hockey game. Since then, we’ve gone out a few times. He’s also been helping me with my bookkeeping. If he’s a birder, I didn’t know it. And if he’s the man who shot at the bear for you, I’d think you’d like to offer him your thanks, along with an apology for acting like such an idiot.” She opened the door and stalked out of the office back to Stan. I followed her.

“Sorry about that, Stan,” she said, casting me a rueful look. “My brother is having a mental breakdown or something. He says you’re a mob hitman or a former government agent. Are you?”

Thank you, Mistress of Humiliation.

“No,” Stan said, his voice as flat as his eyes. “I’m not.”

“Did you take a shot at Bobby this weekend?”

Stan’s eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch as his eyes made a quick slide in my direction. I swear I could read his mind.
Bobby?

“No,” he said again, slowly and carefully. “I scared off a bear that was considering lunching on him, though.”

Lily turned to me. “Satisfied? I’ll admit I didn’t know you two were acquainted, but out of fairness to Stan, I’m not going to hold that against him.” She went back to lock up her office. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Stan,” she called over her shoulder. “Just ignore my brother.”

I stepped closer to the man. “An accountant, huh? What kind of accountant wears face paint in the forest and carries a crossbow when it isn’t deer hunting season? Tell me, Stan, do you have any sidelines to that accounting business of yours?”

Not a single fleeting expression crossed his face. For all the movement he wasn’t making, the man might as well have been one of the stone sculptures in Lily’s showroom. I wondered if he was even breathing.

“I do some contract work.”

It’s alive!
I wanted to shout.

“What kind of contracts?”

His lip twitched. I think he was smiling.

“None of your business.”

I took another step in his direction and nodded back towards Lily’s office.

“This seems awfully coincidental to me,” I said, keeping my voice too low for Lily to hear. “You’re dating my sister, and you showed up right where I was birding this weekend. Of all the square miles in Superior National Forest, we ended up only feet apart. What are the odds of that happening, Stan? Even if you researched the same reports I did to find a Boreal, the odds against us being in the same place at the same time are astronomical. Do the math. You’re an accountant. On the other hand, I always let Lily know where I’m staying overnight when I go birding. As a precaution.”

I leaned towards him, my voice going even lower.

“Are you using Lily to keep track of my Boreal chase? Because if you are—”

“Let’s go!” Lily said, practically hurtling out of her office to take Stan’s arm and pull him out the front door. “Lock up for me, will you, Bobby?”

I stood on the front step and watched them climb into Stan’s top-of-the-line Lexus. The accounting business must be good, I thought. Or maybe it was his “contract work.” Then it dawned on me. Stan had denied he was a hit man for the mob or a former government agent.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t
currently
a government agent.

Or a sniper. Or crazy.

Lily had neglected to include those options.

I thought again about Stan’s spooky ability to show up without making a sound. For an accountant who supposedly spent the majority of his time at a desk in front of a computer, he’d sure looked fit in his bomber jacket and jeans when he’d left just now with Lily. I’d also gotten the impression on Saturday night that he’d been comfortable handling a rifle, which, I knew from very personal experience, he could shoot very accurately. At the same time, he wasn’t exactly a conversational wizard, if you know what I mean. I had yet to hear him utter a sentence with more than five words in it.

Stay out of the forest or you’re next.

Okay, eight words.

Stan must have worked all night on that one.

“No, Lily, I am not satisfied,” I announced to the empty parking lot. “Stan Miller is hiding something, and I think that makes him even scarier than he already was.”

I walked to my car, avoiding the puddles of melting snow that covered the path to the parking area. A light breeze touched the back of my neck, and I decided to make one more stop before I headed home. Hopefully, it would help me forget about Stan Miller for a while and the fact that my sister was having dinner with a man more fluent when he wrote a threatening note than he was when making polite conversation.

Five minutes later, I parked my scarlet tanager-red SUV next to the sewage ponds outside the old water treatment plant near the Minnesota River. I grabbed my binos from the glove compartment and scanned the water. I wanted to see if the thaw and breeze had drawn any new migrants in.

Folks new to birding don’t realize that some of the best places to find rare birds, especially migratory ones, might not be out in the countryside, but right in towns. Sewage ponds are good examples: water that stays open year-round attracts birds. Over the years, I’ve found more than thirty occasional species (occasional meaning they are here in the state only sporadically) and even two lifers (birds people might see once in their life) right here at the sewage ponds, not even ten minutes from my town house.

Sure enough, I spotted two migrants making an early haul back to their summer homes further north: a Greater White-fronted Goose and a Canvasback Duck. White-fronted Goose is almost a misnomer—this goose is actually gray, although it has a distinctive white area around the base of its bill. The “Greater” part is correct, however, since there really is a Lesser White-fronted Goose.

Maybe Lily’s truth in advertising applies to geese, too.

The Canvasback, on the other hand, has a perfect name: its back is the color of white canvas. Combined with its ruddy chestnut head (which Luce says reminds her of my hair color), it’s a real standout on the water. And if that weren’t enough to identify it, the Canvasback has an unmistakable profile: its head and bill form a long ski-jump that no other diving duck has.