The Kiskadee of Death Read online

  The Bob White Birder Murder Mysteries

  The Boreal Owl Murder

  Murder on Warbler Weekend

  A Bobwhite Killing

  Falcon Finale

  A Murder of Crows

  Swift Justice

  Visit Jan online at www.jandunlap.com for more about the Birder Murders, and like her Birder Murder Mama author page on Facebook!

  The Kiskadee of Death

  Jan Dunlap

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  Saint Cloud, Minnesota

  Copyright © 2015 Jan Dunlap

  Cover art © iStock/Getty Images

  ISBN 978-0-87839-799-0

  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 2015

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302

  www.northstarpress.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bob White’s Bird List for Kiskadee of Death

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  One of the best things about birding is that there are always birds somewhere to be seen.

  For example, even in the dead of winter in Minnesota, you can find species of ducks or gulls that have wandered down from the Arctic to add to your life list, which is always a thrill for a birder. You might have to shovel a ton of snow off your car before you can set out to see a rarity, or put on five layers of clothing so you don’t freeze to death while you’re looking for the bird, but we Minnesotan birders have learned to accept the hardships of our hobby.

  Some of us have also learned that our native birds are a lot smarter than we are—after all, they fly south for the winter every year, along with most of the state’s retirees. While we poor working Joes, like me, are struggling through snowdrifts on a daily basis, Minnesota’s migrants of the human and feathered types are catching rays in the Yucatan and ordering drinks from cabana boys.

  “Make that a piña colada for me and a splash of water in the birdbath for the warblers, please.”

  Which was why I decided to take a tip from our Minnesota snowbirds of both persuasions and head south to warmer climes after the thermometer on my back deck stopped working when it hit the eighth day of sub-zero highs in January.

  “Honey, we’re heading to the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas,” I told my wife, Luce, over the lemon mousse she’d prepared for dessert after dinner. “With windchills expected in the negative forties next week, school will be cancelled anyway. If I add a few of the vacation days I’ve got coming, we can be spending a week in shorts and tee-shirts, watching Great Kiskadees and Green Jays from Harlingen to McAllen to Mission. What do you say?”

  Luce took a bite of her mousse and considered my offer.

  “It’s my early Valentine’s gift to you,” I prompted. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Luce, especially one that wants to carry you away from the bitter cold.”

  She gave me a glare and then pointed with her spoon at the mousse in front of her. “Only if I can bring back a crate of lemons fresh from the tree,” she said. “Because if I have to use one more left-over-from-last-season, tasteless lemon in my kitchen this month, I’ll throw my juicer out the window and set fire to my favorite vinaigrette recipes file.”

  Since my wife’s a professional chef—and I get to eat like a king because of it—the idea of her tossing in the dishtowel is never a comforting thought as far as I’m concerned. Our mutual passion for birds may have been the first sticks in building the cozy nest of our relationship, but Luce’s amazing cooking skills were some of the saliva that held it together.

  Oh, wait. Maybe that imagery doesn’t work for you. It’s a bird thing, you know—constructing nests with saliva. But I digress…

  “We can arrange that,” I promised her, already planning our driving route south in my head. “I’ll personally pack all the fresh citrus you want into the car for our ride back home.”

  I lifted my own spoon of mousse in salute.

  “Lower Rio Grande Valley, here we come! Great Kiskadees, Green Jays, and fresh lemons await!”

  Good thing I didn’t know then what else we were going to find in Texas on our spur-of-the-moment birding get-away, and I’m not referring to the shortage of parking spaces around the annual Citrus Festival Parade we ended up attending in the American border town of Mission, either.

  Limited parking was nothing compared to having handcuffs snapped on my wrists for assault with a deadly weapon.

  Yee-haw.

  * * *

  “We haven’t missed our turn, have we?”

  Luce peered at the asphalt road ahead of us that seemed to lead straight to the Mexican border. It was Wednesday, our third morning of birding along the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and we were looking for the entrance to the World Birding Center’s Estero Llano Grande State Park to try to add a Green Kingfisher to our bird list for the week.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied, taking a quick glance at my odometer. “I think we’ve got another third of a mile before the turn. Based on how little signage we’ve seen this week for the parks and birding centers, though, I’m beginning to wonder if Texas birders would just as soon keep the birds to themselves.”

  I adjusted my front window visor to reduce the morning sun’s glare. The flat land of the valley stretched out on all sides of us, with occasional palm trees dotting the landscape, along with mesquite, yuccas, and willows.

  “I doubt that,” Luce said, “given that birding and birding-related tourism seems to be the biggest economic engine in this area. I don’t think I’ve ever visited a place where more people are talking about birds than they are here. It really is a birder’s paradise. There,” she added, pointing to an approaching fork in the road. “That’s the left turn to the park. There’s even a sign for you.”

  I signaled my turn and drove into the half-full parking lot at the entrance to Estero Llano Grande State Park. Luce and I got out of the car, enjoying the warmth of the air and the sunshine on our bare arms.

  “I think I could get used to seventy-degree weather in January,” I said, “not to mention dry roads. It makes birding a lot more fun when you don’t have to battle windchills and blizzards to add birds to your life list.”

  I held
out my hand for the bottle of sunscreen Luce was squirting along her long, albeit Minnesota fish-white, lovely legs.

  She passed the bottle to me over the front hood of the car, and I dutifully applied a thick coating across my arms, nose, cheeks, and the back of my neck. I tossed the bottle back in the car and pulled out my backpack, which was already loaded with binoculars, bird guides, a camera, and water bottles. I slipped my arms through the straps and shrugged it snug against my back. Luce came around the front of the car and wiped a smudge of sunscreen off my cheek, then dropped a kiss on my lips.

  “I’m so glad you talked me into this trip,” she said. “Not that you had to try very hard,” she admitted. “I was just so ready for a change of scene. I was beginning to think I was going crazy.”

  I returned her kiss with one of my own. “Yeah, I sort of figured that out when you threatened to burn your recipe books and only eat fast food for the next month. You hate fast food.”

  Luce shook her head in dismay.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” she confessed. “I just haven’t felt like myself for a while. Winter can be wicked, but vacation is a wonderful thing,” she concluded, adjusting her new ball cap on her head.

  A Great Kiskadee and a Green Jay—regular species in the Lower Rio Grande Valley—were embroidered on the hat. “I feel like a whole new woman,” Luce announced.

  “What was wrong with the old woman?” I asked. “I thought she was pretty nice, except for the fast food threat. That was scary.”

  Luce laughed and wrapped her hand around my bicep. “I bet it was. But I don’t want to think about cooking today, Bobby. Let’s go find that Green Kingfisher for you.”

  We crossed the parking lot to a brick-paved path that wound through a garden of palms and thick vegetation to a large viewing deck that adjoined the Visitor’s Center. Beyond the deck lay a broad pond, currently hosting a multitude of Ruddy Ducks, Soras, Gadwalls, Common Gallinules and American Coots. I lifted my binoculars to my eyes and quickly picked out a pair of Mottled Ducks, along with both a Blue-winged Teal and a Green-winged Teal floating nearby.

  “We had thirty species this morning by 9:45,” said a petite woman standing near the rail of the deck. Her voice carried the lilt of the Hispanic accent that we’d found so common in this local stretch of southern Texas towns from Brownsville to Rio Grande City.

  I lowered my binos and looked her way. Like many a birder, she wore khaki shorts, a loose cotton shirt, and a floppy hat that shielded her face from the bright morning sun. Binoculars hung from a strap around her neck, and I guessed she was in her late sixties judging from the wisps of black and silver hair that framed her face below her hat brim.

  “I’d call that a good morning for birding,” I told her.

  “No esta bad,” the woman replied.

  When she caught my momentary look of confusion, she smiled.

  “It’s not bad,” she said, translating her bit of Spanish into English for us.

  I returned her smile. “Spanglish, right?”

  She nodded. “Yes. You know it?”

  “We’re learning,” Luce assured her.

  Like so many people we’d met in the Valley since our arrival, the woman’s comment had been a mix of Spanish and English words. Known as ‘Spanglish,’ it was one more unique characteristic of the area that blended together Hispanic and American culture. I was getting more comfortable hearing it in casual conversation, and I was even picking up a few Spanish words myself, but it still took me a second to catch on and process the two-language combination.

  “We’ve had a total of 326 species seen here in the course of the year,” our new acquaintance said.

  She moved towards me and extended her hand to shake mine. “I’m Rosalie. Welcome. I’m one of the volunteer naturalists here. I help visitors with bird identification.”

  “Bob White,” I told her, and nodded toward Luce, who was studying the pond through her own binos. “My wife, Luce.”

  “Luce?” Rosalie tilted her head to the side, reminding me of a quick little wren eyeing an insect. “Is that short for Lucy?”

  “No,” my wife explained, turning away from scanning the pond. “It’s short for Lucia. My parents named me for the Swedish Saint Lucia. A lot of people mispronounce Lucia, so I go by Luce.”

  Rosalie clasped her hands in front of her chest, her voice filled with delight. “Es un nombre precioso. A lovely name! And it carries your heritage. You are Swedish, no?”

  Luce smiled. “My grandmother is Swedish. I’m American.”

  Rosalie proudly patted her own chest with both hands. “I was born in Mexico, but I am an American now. My children—they are all Americans.”

  I pointed to an oversized chalkboard lying across the top of a large circular table on the deck beside Rosalie. “Is that a bird list?”

  Rosalie nodded briskly. “That’s our list from this morning. I had a group of twenty birders out here an hour ago. Is this your first visit to Estero Llano?”

  “It is,” Luce answered her. “We birded the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge yesterday, and the day before that, we spent the morning at the Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park.”

  “Ah,” Rosalie commented with a friendly smile, “you are making the rounds of our parks. There is so much to see here, no?”

  “Too much,” I told her. “We’ve already decided we’re going to have to make the trip again. Once is definitely not enough to thoroughly explore all the birding sites around here.”

  That was an understatement.

  In just two days, Luce and I had already added nineteen birds to our life lists, and those were all birds that were common residents of the area, known collectively as “Valley specialties.” There were still another twelve or so “specialties” we had yet to see, but I was hopeful we’d get them all before heading north in another three days.

  Seeing Valley specialties wasn’t the extent of the birding we’d found here, either. The Lower Rio Grande Valley is where two major migratory corridors—the Central and Mississippi—converge, making it the best place in the United States to see more than 500 species of birds.

  Not only that, but the Valley is also the meeting point of four different climate zones—temperate, desert, coastal and sub-tropical—along with the birds who thrive in them. Throw in the South and Central American birds whose northernmost range ends at the Rio Grande, and a Minnesotan like me can potentially see birds I’ve only dreamed about.

  And believe me, I’ve dreamed about a lot of birds.

  That’s why I was already planning our next trip to the Valley.

  “They had a Virginia Rail this morning, Bobby.” Luce pointed at one of the items on the chalkboard list.

  “It’s one of our winter visitors,” Rosalie noted. “Not one of the most visible ones, to be sure, but we’re always happy when it makes an appearance.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. Rails are notorious for their birder-avoidance, and the marsh in front of us was a perfect habitat for them with the lush vegetation around it. “I’m hoping we catch a glimpse of one while we’re in the area this week,” I told Rosalie, “but so far, no luck.”

  “Are you making the grand tour of the nine World Birding Centers, then?” Rosalie asked.

  “Trying to,” Luce said. “But we need at least a couple weeks more to even begin doing justice to all the species here. The birding is amazing.”

  “And this isn’t even migration season,” Rosalie pointed out. “You probably already know that we sit at the convergence of two major migratory corridors.”

  I nodded. “Yes, we know.”

  Seriously, I didn’t think any birder to the area couldn’t know that fact—every park we visited had displays about the Central and Mississippi flyways joining up in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. I’d always thought Minnesotans were p
roud of sitting on the Mississippi migration corridor with all its own spectacular visitors, but our pride paled in comparison to the Texas birders’ love of their two flyways.

  “You should see this place in November,” Rosalie continued. “We get busloads of birders pulling in to see our migrants. That’s when we have the big Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, too, you know.”

  I knew that, too. The event had been on my wish list for years, but I had yet to attend the RGVBF—being a high school counselor tended to put a crimp in any travel plans I might try to hatch between August and December. From what other birders have told me, it’s a five-day birding bonanza based in the city of Harlingen, Texas, with expert-led field trips to all the World Birding Centers, along with every other nature preserve and refuge along the Lower Rio Grande. Around 1,200 birders show up for the event, which means there’s a whole lot of bird-talking going on.

  Yup, definitely my idea of a good time.

  “So what should we absolutely not miss while we’re here at Estero Llano?” Luce asked Rosalie.

  “Well, if you haven’t seen a Common Pauraque yet, there’s one that frequents the trails on the far side of Alligator Lake,” Rosalie suggested. “Pauraques spend most of their time on the ground, and since they’re a nightjar species, they’re active at night, feeding on insects, so you’ll have to look pretty closely to find one during the day. Also, it has great natural camouflage; its feathers make it almost invisible among the leaves and sticks on the ground.”

  “So we better not step on one, right?” I joked.

  “You may laugh,” Rosalie responded, “but the fact is, Common Pauraques often choose to run, rather than fly, from predators. In fact, in areas where there are a lot of feral cats or dogs, the Pauraque population doesn’t last long. So, yes,” she smiled. “Please don’t step on the Pauraques.”

  “Anything else we should be looking for?” Luce asked.

  Rosalie looked out over the pond and pursed her lips. “Well, there is a one-eyed Great Kiskadee that’s been showing up around the Valley. We haven’t added it to our new species list yet, but you never know.”