The Buzzard Table (13 page)

When Anne Harald returned with her smelly dull cousin, he made himself look like the clueless nerdy kid they seemed to think he was, ogling the pictures of naked young women splashing in a jungle pool.

As soon as his cousin and her do-good project left, Martin Crawford stripped off and put those befouled trousers out on the porch. With a little luck he would never have to wear them again. He filled a basin with warm water from the kettle and scrubbed himself until all the stench was gone. Dressed again in clean clothes from the skin out, he opened both the front and back doors to let cold fresh air blow through the whole house.

All credit to Anne and the boy, he thought, still surprised that they hadn’t left the instant they got a whiff of him.

But he was getting careless. Not merely that slip of the tongue with Anne, but leaving his computer alone with that boy. Happily, the screen appeared to be as he’d left it, and his mail program was password-protected had Jeremy tried to open it. Nevertheless, it had been a stupid mistake.

Especially now, when everything was coming to a head.

Thursday afternoon

B
oth of Jeremy Harper’s grandparents and his mother worked, so the modest three-bedroom house on the edge of Dobbs was empty when he parked out front that afternoon and went straight to his bedroom.

As he waited for his PC to wake up, he shucked off his jacket, turned his cap backwards so that it would keep the frizzy silver curls out of his eyes, and unwrapped the striped scarf from his long thin neck, fuming with impatience.

It sucked that his computer was so slow. He knew he was supposed to be grateful that his mother had scored this one when her company updated all their hardware, but jeez! Snails ran faster than this antique hunk of junk he was stuck with. He thought longingly of the Mac Pro that a friend had gotten for Christmas. All Sam did with that state-of-the-art laptop was play games and cruise the net for porn sites that hadn’t been locked out by his parents. If he had that machine and a decent photo editing program—!

Fat chance of that happening anytime soon, he thought gloomily. His Burger King job barely paid for gas and car insurance. No way was he ever going to save $3,500 for a Mac and the expensive software program that would let him work magic with the pictures he took.

At last the screen stopped blinking and he clicked on the photo app. Another wait for it to load, then he slipped his jump drive into the USB port and opened the file he’d copied from Martin Crawford’s computer. As he scrolled through the pictures, his curiosity deepened.

Not buzzards and definitely not Peru.

Each picture was time-stamped, beginning with Wednesday morning a week ago and ending with Monday; and most were aerial views of the Colleton County countryside. Not just anywhere in the country either, but out at the county airport. There was that little block building that acted as office and terminal and there were the hangars. And damn! Look at the clear shot of that little Gulfstream!

Each scene seemed to have been shot in bursts of three. He adjusted the focus until he could read the fuselage numbers. He jotted them down and switched over to his search engine. As part of his Patriots Against Torture activism, he kept the FAA bookmarked, and soon he was searching their database for the owner of this plane. When the name popped up and he Googled it, he was disappointed to realize it belonged to a local insurance agency and not to some shell company that might be fronting for the CIA.

The wings of a Learjet could be seen off to the side, but even at extreme magnification, he could not make out any details.

As one three-picture set after another of the airstrip and the surrounding area scrolled past, he puzzled over how Martin Crawford had taken them. Had he rented a plane and flown back and forth over the strip at a low altitude? A hot air balloon?

He flicked back to the beginning and saw three aerial views of the shack where the ornithologist was staying. The details were amazing. There was Possum Creek and Grayson Village and there was Crawford’s truck parked next to something square down near the creek. Another click or two and he was looking down on a flying buzzard, the back of its ugly red head and ruff of feathers clearly visible, and there on the ground so directly beneath that only the face of the foreshortened figure was clear—Crawford himself. He seemed to be holding up some sort of small device that was pointed straight toward the camera. Cell phone?

“
Holy shit!
” the boy whispered to himself as the problem of viewpoint crystallized into certainty. “He’s put a miniature camera on one of those damn birds!”

Why?

Jeremy leaned back in his chair to consider the implications. Clearly the device Crawford held was a remote that could trigger the shutter of the camera.

And all those pictures of the airstrip. Was the man a spy? If so, who for? What was an Englishman who used an Arabic keyboard doing here in Colleton County? Was he planning to rescue someone from one of those rendition flights or to blow up the place or what?

As one wild scenario after another filled the boy’s head, one thing was becoming clearer. Here was a story a hell of a lot more interesting and potentially more profitable than interviewing wounded veterans. Only how to go about it without letting Anne Harald or Martin Crawford realize what he was up to?

Once again he went slowly through the pictures, bringing each up to its maximum magnification so that he could see every detail. And that’s when he spotted them—three pictures that would surely be worth $3,500.

Thirty-five hundred?
Hell, make it 5,000
, he thought as he printed out the pictures.

The only real question was whether to make the call today or wait till morning. He ejected the jump drive, hid it where he was sure no one would ever find it, then went looking for the Colleton County phone book.

Taking a handful of the cheap throwaway cell phones from the satchel in his bedroom, Martin Crawford checked that all were still completely switched off before he put them in his jacket pocket. He had paid cash for the phones at different electronics chain stores in Raleigh, and his name was not connected with any of them. Nor had they been turned on since he drove out of Raleigh.

Before leaving the shack, he made sure that his own personal mobile was switched on and under the pillow on his bed. Modern technology was a wonderful thing, but it could also trip you up if you weren’t extra careful. Cell towers could and would track a phone that was switched on even if not in use.

It wasn’t much of an alibi, but better than nothing if he needed to claim that he had never left the place that evening. Not that he expected it to come to that.

Twenty minutes later, as the sun slid toward the horizon, he was seated in his nondescript black truck at a strip mall on the eastern edge of Cotton Grove, where he called a local motel that he could see from where he sat. As with so many motels around the South, this one was owned by a low-level consortium of Pakistanis.

When a clerk answered, he adopted an Egyptian accent and asked if an Alex Franklin had checked in yet.

“I’m sorry, sir. We do not have reservations for Mr. Franklin.”

Crawford thanked her, broke the connection, and checked his mental list of passport aliases the man commonly used. This time he pinched his nose and used a high-pitched French accent. “Do you have a Frank Alexander staying there?”

“Yes, sir. Will I connect you?”

“No, I’ll just come over when I get in. What room is he staying in?”

“So sorry, sir. I cannot be telling you that.”

“Never mind. I’ll call back once I fly in tonight. We’re giving him a surprise party. Do you know if any of our other friends have arrived yet?”

From the clerk’s voice, Crawford gathered that she was young and not too long in this country. “I am not knowing, sir. No one is saying this to me. Will you be needing a room, too, sir?”

“No, I usually stay with friends.”

He ended the connection, pocketed the SIM cards from both phones, wiped his fingerprints, then crushed the two phones he had used under his foot and deposited them in trash barrels at opposite ends of the small town.

He waited a full 35 minutes before calling the motel again, and this time he used his stepmother’s accent. Within minutes both were speaking Punjabi. He lent a sympathetic ear when the girl admitted that she was more homesick than she had expected to be, and a mild joke made her giggle. Two minutes later, he had extracted the room number and assured her that yes, there was indeed a surprise party of old friends in the works. She promised not to tip Mr. Alexander off.

Again he crushed the phone and tossed it in the weeds, then drove to another quiet spot where he used a wire cutter to reduce all of the three SIM cards to shreds of plastic and copper before strewing them along his route.

And then he waited.

M
aidie Holt, Daddy’s longtime housekeeper, had asked me to pick up a couple of bags of stone-ground yellow grits from the only store in Dobbs that carries that brand. The local grist mill has been in operation since the 1830s, and no commercial grits taste as flavorful. As long as I was getting them for her, I bought a bag for myself. There was a package of shrimp in the freezer that we had brought home from Harkers Island in the fall. They needed to be eaten before they got freezer burn, and shrimp and grits is an easy dish that doesn’t take too much preparation. I knew I had onions, a green pepper, and half-and-half on hand, so I wouldn’t have to stop at a grocery store.

The version I make calls for some sort of fancy Italian ham, but my brother Robert cures out a mean country ham with a smoky, salty flavor that can’t be matched by anything from Italy and he always gives us five or six pounds of it for Christmas every year, each slice individually wrapped for the freezer.

According to him and Daddy, our winters used to be cold enough to let the legs and shoulders hang in the smokehouse all winter without spoiling. No more.

A quarter cup of Robert’s ham diced and sautéed would easily substitute for pancetta, but no other brand of grits could substitute for the bags on the car seat beside me.

As I drove west out of Dobbs, it seemed to me that the days were getting noticeably longer. Time was passing much too quickly, though. Turn around twice and it would soon be summer—sandals, cotton slacks, and sleeveless dresses. What with the growth spurt Cal had taken this winter, I doubted if there was much he could still wear from last summer. Unfortunately, he likes to shop for clothes just about as much as Dwight does, but maybe I could issue a bench warrant for the two of them and haul them both out to one of the Raleigh malls this spring.

They say time is relative, and to prove it, Einstein supposedly compared a minute of sitting on a red-hot stove to a minute of kissing your lover. Driving into the sunset past pine thickets and dormant fields, I wondered how Sigrid, Anne, and Mrs. Lattimore were experiencing time these days. Was it zipping past or dragging?

I turned into the lane that led to our house, then took a cutoff that would take me across the farm to the homeplace. Bare-twigged oaks and maples formed a delicate fretwork against the orange-and-purple sky, reminding me of the stained glass windows in the church where Mrs. Lattimore’s funeral service would probably be held before summer. Even though Daddy’s almost never sick and always gets a good report on his annual physical, Mrs. Lattimore’s terminal illness made me doubly conscious of his eighty-plus years.

His old truck was parked at the back door, and without knocking, I opened the squeaky screen door, then the heavy wooden one, and walked into the kitchen where he and Maidie were. Both sat at the kitchen table and both were in their stocking feet. Maidie was taking the meat off a roasted chicken, carefully putting the skin and bones into a pot with chopped onions to make broth for pot pies. Daddy had spread a newspaper over his end of the table, and several pairs of shoes, including Maidie’s, waited for his attention. Despite the pungent onions, I could smell the shoe polish he had spread on the leather, a familiar homey aroma.

I hugged them both and snitched a bit of chicken while Daddy reached in his pocket to pay me for the grits. Maidie fumbled in her own pocket and came up with only two quarters.

“Don’t worry about a bag of grits,” he told her. “I didn’t give you no birthday present yet.”

“Ain’t my birthday,” Maidie said, her gold tooth flashing.

“Then it must be Cletus’s. Tell him happy birthday from me.”

“You mean you ain’t gonna get him that white Cadillac he’s been wanting?”

“What’d he do with the red one I give him for Christmas?” Daddy asked in mock indignation.

I laughed. Those two have been teasing each other for most of my lifetime, long before Mother died. They tried to get me to sit down and visit, but I told them Dwight and Cal would be wanting their supper soon.

“Y’all gonna be home this evening?” Daddy asked.

“Dwight’s probably already there and I’ll be there myself in a few minutes. Why?”

“Nothing really. Just ain’t seen Dwight to talk to this week.”

“Then come on over for supper. I’m fixing shrimp and grits.”

He looked at Maidie, who gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Go on. You’ll not be getting anything that good here. I was only gonna warm you up some stuff from last night.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” he said, speaking to both of us.

“Come!” I said.

“Go!” said Maidie.

By the time Daddy joined us, Cal had finished struggling with his math homework—fractions—and Dwight had picked up the newspapers that had been scattered around the couch when I came home.

I spooned the grits into a ring on a large serving platter and now I finished thickening the creamy sauce and poured it over the pile of sautéed shrimp in the middle.

“Yum!” said Cal as he speared a shrimp on his fork.

I knew I’d find a little pile of diced green pepper on the side of his plate when supper was over, but on the whole, Cal’s not a fussy eater, so I don’t nag. Dwight and I have a two-bite rule. He has to eat at least two bites of everything served, but then he’s free to fill up on bread and whatever else is on the table. No way am I going to lock horns in pointless food fights. He gets plenty of fruits and vegetables and it all balances out in the end.

Conversation was general at first because Dwight and I both know from long experience that Daddy will get around to saying whatever he wants to say in his own good time. We caught up on family news. Only six of my eleven brothers live out here on the farm, but two more live in Dobbs, so we stay in fairly close contact. We’re not as close to the three who live out west, but Daddy said Adam had called from California a couple of nights ago.

“Everything okay with them?” I asked.

“Far as I could tell,” Daddy said. “Sure didn’t say nothing worth a long-distance phone call.”

He’s from the generation that remembers when calling out of the state cost a dime or more a minute and it bothers him to talk more than three minutes even when he’s been told over and over again that there’s no extra charge.

“He did say Karen’s mama won’t doing too good and she may fly out here next week if somebody could meet her at RDU.”

I made a mental note to email Adam’s wife and ask for details of her flight.

Eventually, Cal finished eating and asked to be excused. He carried his plate over to the sink and then went into the living room to settle down in front of the TV.

Dwight split the remaining shrimp between our three plates and Daddy said, “I heared y’all know that buzzard man that’s staying across the creek over yonder.”

There was no point asking who he’d heard it from. Daddy’s web of informants stretches across the county and not much pertaining to him or his slips past unnoticed.

“Ferrabee Gilbert’s boy, right?”

“You knew her?” I asked, surprised.

“Naw, both them Gilbert girls was older’n me. I just used to see her around town once in a while ’fore she run off to Washington. Pretty little thing. Prettier’n her sister, and you know how she’s still a good-looking woman. Never quite understood how come ol’ Ben Lattimore turned Ferrabee loose for her. Her boy must take atter his daddy, though, ’cause I don’t see none of her in him.”

“You’ve met him?” Dwight asked.

“Well, I didn’t sit down and eat supper with him like y’all did, but yeah, I met him.” He cut a shrimp in half and I wondered if Chloe Adams had talked to Maidie, who has her own network of informants.

“They say he writes picture books about buzzards?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“See, the thing is, I’ve watched him feed them buzzards. Even seen him pick some of ’em up and put bands or something on their legs.”

I was intrigued. “The buzzards let him do that?”

“Ain’t all that unusual. Remember my cousin Bud? He raised a buzzard chick that got blowed outten its nest. They tame real easy. But I ain’t seen this man take no pictures of ’em. Course now, I only watched him a couple of times and it may be that he goes somewheres else to take pictures. They follow him, you know. Follow his truck anyhow.”

“What’s really bothering you about him, Mr. Kezzie?” Dwight asked, cutting to the chase.

“You know that dirt road that runs along the back of the airport? Garrett Road?”

I didn’t, but Dwight nodded.

Daddy took a forkful of grits and smeared them in some of the sauce on his plate. “Him and them buzzards go there almost every day it ain’t raining. There or to Johnson Mill Road.”

“That goes through the woods on the other side of the airport, doesn’t it?” Dwight asked. “What does he do?”

“Nothing,” Daddy said flatly. “Once or twice he just parks on the side and sets there. Sometimes when he hears somebody rattling down that dirt road, he’ll lean back and put his hat over his eyes like he’s sleeping, excepting atter they go past, he sets back up again and watches them buzzards kettling up over the truck.”

He took a large swallow of his iced tea. “I heared he was out there on Garrett Road around noon today, so I rode over to take a look. He had his jack and a spare wheel laying beside the right back wheel next to the ditch, so I stopped and asked if I could be of help. He thanked me kindly and said that he could handle it, so I drove on.”

“But?” Dwight asked.

“That tire won’t flat, Dwight, so why was he playacting that it was? What’s he doing out there?”