A Murder of Crows Read online

  A Murder of Crows

  Jan Dunlap

  Copyright © 2012 Jan Dunlap

  ISBN 978-0-87839-876-8

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition: September 2012

  Electronic Edition: September 2012

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302

  www.northstarpress.com

  Facebook - North Star Press

  Don’t miss the other books in the Bob White Birder Murder Mystery Series

  A Boreal Owl Murder

  Murder on Warbler Weekend

  A Bobwhite Killing

  Falcon Finale

  Chapter One

  I hate scarecrows.

  They creep me out.

  Oddly angled arms, dangling hands, shirts stuffed with straw and stuck up on a pole out in a cornfield. If I were a crow, they’d scare the bejeebers out of me. As it is, being a human, I still wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley, even though I know they’re just lifeless dummies with permanent bad-hair days. Heck, I’d rather not even see them in a cornfield in the bright sunlight.

  As far as I’m concerned, scarecrows are second in creepiness only to clowns.

  In fact, the worst day of my life was the day my kindergarten class went on a field trip to Emma Krumbee’s Apple Orchard just outside of Jordan, Minnesota, to pick apples. The apples were great —believe me, nothing tastes better than fresh apples right off the tree in the crisp days of autumn. But what was not so great was that Emma’s had a display of scarecrows for the harvest season, and our teacher, Mrs. Meyers, shepherded us right through the middle of it to get to the apple trees.

  Talk about spooky. Not only were there Frankenstein and vampire scarecrows, but straw-filled contorted body shapes wearing doctor and nurse uniforms, complete with scalpels and knee hammers. Throw in a pair of scarecrows dressed in high school letter jackets and it could have passed for the set of a teen slasher movie. The most horrifying moment, though, was when I happened to find myself looking up at a leering clown face painted on a pumpkin head perched atop an overstuffed tuxedo, and every nightmare I’d ever had of white-faced scary clowns with mops of maniac hair came roaring back at me.

  My classmates may never know how close they came to wearing my breakfast of Honey-nut Os and strawberry Pop-tarts.

  I clapped a hand over my eyes and grabbed the back of the jacket of the kid in front of me. I was done. No way was I looking at any more scarecrows. I figured my classmate could just tow me blind to the apples, but he ratted me out.

  “Bobby White’s pulling on my jacket,” the rat squealed to Mrs. Meyers. “Make him stop!”

  I felt Mrs. Meyers gently prying my fingers off the kid’s coat and taking my cold hand in her warm one. I slid a glance at her through my fingers.

  “I don’t want to see the scarecrows,” I whispered, afraid that the clown would overhear and exact a bloody and gruesome vengeance on me. “They look like dead people.”

  “No, they don’t,” she assured me.

  “Yes, they do,” I whispered louder, the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickling as I imagined the clown’s gloved hand reaching for me.

  Mrs. Meyers smiled her brightest smile and leaned down to give me a hug.

  “No, Bobby, they don’t,” she gently insisted. “But if you’re frightened, just stick with me, okay?”

  No problem. I stuck to her like super glue all the way to the apples. It’s a wonder she could even walk with me wrapped around her left leg.

  But now I know for sure that she was wrong.

  Scarecrows can not only resemble dead people, but they can look exactly like a dead person.

  Because I found one scarecrow that was.

  A scarecrow that was a dead person, I mean.

  Baby Lou was strapped to my chest in the forward-facing carrier thing that Luce and I had given to my sister, Lily, and her husband, Alan, when Lou was born in June. It was a perfect October morning, and since I’d promised to babysit my niece—it’s Louise, actually—for the day, I figured it was high time she started her life list of birds, so we’d buckled Lou into her car seat and driven out to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chanhassen to stroll the trails and see what late migrants we might find.

  The fact that it was also a weekend during the Arboretum’s annual scarecrow display had, unfortunately, escaped me, but as my lovely wife reminded me, we didn’t have to walk where the display was set up around the Visitor Center. Instead, we’d taken Three Mile Drive to a parking area near the restored prairie, and set off on a walk that wound through chest-high golden grasses and into a multi-hued forest of turning leaves.

  “She’s falling asleep,” Luce said, nodding at Baby Lou on my chest.

  I glanced down at the fine mop of black hair that crowned my niece’s head.

  “My fault,” I said. “I promised her a rarity to start her list, like that Ferruginous Hawk that was spotted yesterday out in Stevens County, and all we’ve seen so far are your everyday Canada Geese and Wild Turkeys. I haven’t been this bored myself since the back-to-school faculty meeting in August.”

  “Good morning,” Luce said in her greeting-a-stranger voice.

  I looked up to see another Arboretum visitor who had appeared a few steps in front of us. He looked about my age, was carrying a thermos mug of coffee, and I guessed he was a regular at the Arb: his dark-green sweatshirt had the Arboretum’s logo on it. It reminded me that before we headed back home, I wanted to pick up a similar one in the Visitor Center’s gift shop as a birthday gift for my dad.

  “Morning,” the fellow mumbled, his head down. He hurried past us and continued in the direction from which we’d come.

  “I need to stop in at the gift shop before we leave this morning,” I told Luce before I forgot. “Dad’s birthday is next month, and I want to get him a sweatshirt like that guy had on. Dad loves the Arb.”

  I glanced back at the man who was disappearing around a bend in the trail. “Geez. He didn’t even make eye contact with us.”

  “Yes, he did,” Luce said. “You were too busy staring at Louise and talking about a faculty meeting to notice. We’ve passed several people this morning, but I don’t think they registered on your radar thanks to Baby Lou.”

  I lightly stroked my niece’s soft hair.

  “She’s pretty enthralling,” I admitted, then finished what I was saying about the school meeting. “The only reason I didn’t fall asleep during that particular snooze-fest was because Alan and I were trying to guess which of the new teachers is the Bonecrusher.”

  Not that I’m a big fan of professional wrestling, mind you. I’m a baseball man. I catch a few Twins games every summer at Target Field in Minneapolis and keep a close eye on the season stats for all the major league teams. Every spring, I coach the sophomore girls’ softball team at Savage High.

  Or, at least, I try to. Believe me, it’s much easier said than done.

  But when the word spreads that a former world-class professional wrestler joins the faculty at a quiet suburban high school like Savage, it makes you sit up and take notice. That is, you would take notice if you knew who to look at, but so far, no one was admitting to anything. In the effort—which was generally hopeless more often than not—to keep students focused on academics, our assistant principal, Mr. Lenzen, had decreed that the identity of the former wrestling celebrity would be kept secret.

  Which, of course, made it the hottest topic of th
e new school year in both the student cafeteria and the faculty lounge: who, in a previous life, was the Bonecrusher?

  “I think you should respect the Bonecrusher’s privacy,” Luce commented as she led the way along a leaf-strewn trail towards Wood Duck Pond, a small lake that backed up to the marshes behind the Arboretum’s Learning Center. “For all you know, it was his idea, not Mr. Lenzen’s, to keep his identity secret. Maybe he wants a fresh start without the baggage of his past career. Not everyone enjoys notoriety and being recognized in public.”

  “But that’s exactly the problem,” I pointed out. “No one has a clue what his face looks like because he was always masked in his matches. Alan and I looked the Crusher up on the Web, but in every photo, he was always dressed in a full-head mask and bodysuit. For all I know,” I said, echoing her words, “Mr. Lenzen could be the Bonecrusher, though I find that highly unlikely since Mr. Lenzen wouldn’t be caught dead wearing tights, let alone a full leotard. My bet is on Boo Metternick, our new physics teacher.”

  “Because he’d look good in a leotard?”

  I smiled at my wife. “Because he’s built like a tank, and so far, he doesn’t talk much. I figure he’s trying to keep a low profile.”

  We followed a curve in the trail, and spotted a late Green Heron wading along the edges of the lake.

  “Now that I can recognize,” I said. “A Green Heron in Wood Duck Pond. Look Baby Lou,” I said, gently lifting her tiny chin up with my finger, “your first Green Heron.”

  “Bobby, she’s asleep,” Luce reminded me.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a contorted form splayed against a thick tree trunk a little ways off the trail. I noted the baggy blue jeans and flannel shirt, the beat-up floppy felt hat and ragged gloved hands of a classic scarecrow. Perched above it in the tree branches was a murder of crows.

  It looked like a set for a Halloween movie.

  “I thought you said that the display was only set up around the Visitor Center,” I said to Luce.

  “That’s what I read on the map we got at the Arboretum gatehouse,” she replied. “I guess they must have decided to stick a few extra ones in near the trails.”

  I studied the scarecrow from a safe distance.

  “I hate scarecrows,” I said.

  “I know,” Luce assured me. “At least it’s not a clown one.”

  It definitely was not, but it still gave me the bejeebers. Even from my vantage point on the trail, the proportions of the scarecrow’s body held an eerie resemblance to human form. The way the arms hung down from the shoulders looked too real, like there were the weights of a real man’s hands in those gloves and not just straw stuffing. The denim-clad legs looked too solid to be packed with old newspapers. I looked up at the head, but the battered old hat hid the scarecrow’s face. And then I realized that where there should have been straw sticking out above the collar of the shirt, there wasn’t any.

  In fact, now that I thought about it, I couldn’t see any straw anywhere on this scarecrow.

  What scarecrow doesn’t have straw?

  I moved a foot closer in its direction, and the crows responded with a few harsh calls as they took flight from the tree branches.

  I was right.

  No straw anywhere.

  I lifted a limp Baby Lou out of the carrier on my chest and handed her to Luce.

  “Stay here,” I told her.

  “Arf,” she responded.

  “Funny,” I said, even though “funny” was not the feeling I was getting at the moment.

  Try “icy finger on my spine and I’m going to regret it, but I have to do this” feeling, because there was something definitely not good about that scarecrow.

  I moved off the trail and stepped through the thick carpet of fallen leaves that littered the forest floor. When I got within four feet of the scarecrow, a startled squirrel leapt from a nearby branch, knocking off the figure’s old hat, revealing a thick head of hair.

  Human hair.

  No wonder the scarecrow looked so life-like.

  Because it was.

  Or, it had been.

  “Oh, crap,” I whispered, dropping beside the body and searching for a pulse in its exposed neck.

  The skin was cold.

  “Double crap,” I breathed.

  “Bobby, what is it?” Luce called from the path.

  “Not what, who,” I called back to her. “Call 911, Luce. I think we found a dead man.”

  I took another look at the corpse’s face and felt a wave of nausea rush into my throat.

  Triple crap.

  This wasn’t just any old dead man scarecrow.

  This was someone I knew, someone I’d first met eight years ago while looking for a Louisiana Waterthrush in a mosquito-breeding bog outside Minneapolis. Since then, I’d crossed paths with Sonny Delite, one of the state’s best known birders, more times than I could count.

  I swallowed the bile in my throat and looked in the dead man’s face.

  “Hey, Sonny,” I whispered shakily. “Bad day for birding, huh?”

  Chapter Two

  “And I’d been doing so good,” I complained to my best friend and brother-in-law Alan Thunderhawk. “It’s been sixteen months since I last found a body.”

  Baby Lou sat cradled in her dad’s big arms as we waited for lunch at our regular table at Millie’s Deli in Chanhassen. After calling the police on her cell phone from the trail where we found Sonny, Luce had called Alan to come get Louise, since we figured we’d be stuck at the scene for a while and didn’t want our niece involved in a murder investigation at the ripe old age of four months. Once he’d arrived, though, Alan had insisted on waiting for us to finish with the police, and then he’d insisted we go to Millie’s for lunch and tell him everything.

  “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the woods, huh?” Alan tipped up the end of the bottle of formula as Baby Lou sucked it noisily dry. “So when did you last see Sonny? Alive,” he added, as if I really needed a reminder that the man I’d found was dead.

  “Hey, Bob, you better watch out or Chef Tom’s going to talk that wife of yours into coming to cook for him,” Red, our waitress, informed me as she slid a hot Reuben sandwich onto the table in front of me. “Luce is back in the kitchen trading recipes with him again.”

  I shot a glance at the plate that Red left at Luce’s place. “Tell her that her Cajun omelet won’t wait for her if she doesn’t get out here,” I said. “I’m hungry enough to eat both of our meals.”

  “Birds pretty rough on you this morning?”

  “Bob’s going to be back in the news, again, Red,” Alan told her. “He found another body.”

  “No kidding?” Red grinned. “Man, you birdwatchers have all the fun around here. I’m going to have to give it a try—birding, not body-finding.”

  “Don’t go with Bob, then,” Alan warned her. “Those two activities are just about synonymous with him.”

  I gave him a dirty look as I bit into my grilled sandwich.

  “You know, I bet I’d be pretty good at birding,” Red continued. “Back in one of my previous lives, I did some tracking when I was in the army.”

  I swallowed my bite of Reuben. “I didn’t know you were a veteran.”

  Red gave me a sharp salute. “Twenty years, United States Army. That’s why I like working here,” she added, winking. “Chef Tom’s a regular drill sergeant. Makes me feel right at home. Except that the food’s a whole lot better here than it was when I was in the service.”

  Beside me, Luce slid into her chair. “Tom needs you in the kitchen,” she told Red. “He says just because you got in late this morning, it doesn’t mean you get out of food prep.”

  “See, what did I tell you?” Red grinned, leaving us to our meals. “Duty calls.”

  I caught Alan’s eye across the table.

  “Two or three years,” I finally answered him. “The last time I saw Sonny, it was at the public hearing for the proposed power line acro
ss the Le Sueur/Henderson Recovery Zone. Sonny spoke rather eloquently on behalf of the eagles and the herons on the Minnesota River Flyway there that would be most negatively impacted by the construction.”

  “I’d say he spoke very eloquently—and persuasively—since the pro-birding party won that battle,” Alan noted. “But we all know that whenever there are winners, that typically means that there are also losers, and sometimes, losers have long memories.”

  He removed the bottle from Lou’s slack mouth and set it on the table next to his plate of old-fashioned meatloaf. My niece’s tiny lips pursed in sleep as her dad dug into his lunch with his free hand.

  “I also recall that the utilities company that was involved with that project took a pretty public thrashing for its attempt to slide the project into implementation without due process in the surrounding communities first,” Alan said. “The company tried to bypass public forums and informational sessions, hoping to avoid the confrontation they knew would result. By the time the conservation advocates rallied their supporters, the press was all over it, and the utilities people took a beating. I don’t think that Sonny’s group exactly endeared itself to their adversaries, if you catch my drift.”

  “You mean they made enemies,” Luce clarified.

  Alan nodded while he took a gulp from his mug of coffee.

  “You think Sonny’s death has something to do with the Henderson power lines?” Luce asked.

  I shook my head in disbelief. “That was years ago, Alan. You’re suggesting that someone was not only angry enough with Sonny because of his stance about conservation and his role in stopping the project, but that the same someone would wait three years to get revenge. To kill Sonny. I don’t think so.”

  I popped a French fry into my mouth. Lou threw out a little fist as she stretched in her sleep, and Alan shifted in his chair to keep his daughter’s tiny moccasins away from his meatloaf.