A Birder's Guide to Murder Read online

  THE BODY IN THE BATHROOM

  “You brought me here to see this hovel?” The claustrophobic room reeked of alcohol and sweat. I turned to leave.

  “Not so fast.” Esther moved to a small door and pushed it open. “I brought you here to see this.”

  I was presented with a partial view of a white porcelain bathroom sink. “A bathroom? Really, Esther. This is a complete waste of both our time.”

  Esther beckoned me closer with her finger.

  I decided to take a look, if only to humor her before having her committed to an institution. This was Philadelphia. There had to be at least one mental hospital in the area with a vacancy.

  JJ Fuller sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his knee against the toilet bowl.

  “Please tell me he’s passed out drunk.”

  Esther waited a beat before replying. “He’s passed out dead is what he is…”

  Books by J.R. Ripley

  DIE, DIE BIRDIE

  TOWHEE GET YOUR GUN

  THE WOODPECKER ALWAYS PECKS TWICE

  TO KILL A HUMMINGBIRD

  CHICKADEE CHICKADEE BANG BANG

  HOW THE FINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS

  FOWL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

  A BIRDER’S GUIDE TO MURDER

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Table of Contents

  THE BODY IN THE BATHROOM

  Books by J.R. Ripley

  Acknowledgments

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  About the Author

  A Birder’s Guide to Murder

  J.R. Ripley

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by J.R. Ripley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Lyrical Underground and Lyrical Underground logo Reg. US Pat. & TM Off.

  First Electronic Edition: November 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0620-2 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0620-2 (ebook)

  First Print Edition: November 2018

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0621-9

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0621-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, thanks to Bill Thompson, III. A Birder’s Guide to Murder happened and Amy, Esther and the gang went to Philly because Bill sent me an email with the subject line: Crazy Idea.

  That idea was to have a book in A Bird Lover’s Mystery series take place at the American Birding Expo. The ABE is a very real event that is now held annually in Philadelphia. Murders rarely occur at the Expo unless Amy is attending so please don’t fret about going. And if you love birds and birdwatching, you should go.

  The ABE is presented by Bird Watcher’s Digest Magazine, of which Bill Thompson, III, is Editor-in-Chief, and the American Birding Association. My thanks to Jeffrey A. Gordon, president of the ABA, and the ABA staff for their kind assistance.

  Thanks also to Emily Jones, Ben Lizdas and the entire staff of BWD, and the volunteers who help make the Expo possible and patiently answered all my questions; to the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove and Carrie Barron, Assistant Director/Education Manager, in particular; and Richard Crossley for his unique birding guides and friendship.

  1

  Derek flipped rapidly through the pages of A Field Guide to the Birds of the Carolinas. “What did you say was the name of that bird we saw earlier, Amy?”

  I sipped and set my beer mug on the side table. “Which bird?” The scent of pepperoni and hops hung in the air.

  We had gone on a late afternoon bird stroll near Ruby Lake and along Lake Shore Drive, the town’s main thoroughfare. Near sunset, we ended our walk at Brewer’s Biergarten, which was next door to my own shop, Birds & Bees. Both businesses are located on Lake Shore Drive.

  Our group at the table, included Esther Pilaster, Floyd Withers, Karl Vogel and me. There had been more of us on the birding walk. The rest had retired for the evening. The small expedition had been part of our monthly Birds & Brews meeting.

  The meetups had been the brainchild of Paul Anderson, one of the biergarten’s owners—the tolerable one. The intolerable one was his partner, Craig Bigelow, my ex-boyfriend.

  I had been reluctant initially to take part in the whole birds and brews thing but Paul had been right—birds and beer went together rather nicely.

  Paul skipped the walk that evening, claiming he had too much work to do at the biergarten—his usual excuse.

  We had seen dozens of birds and close to a dozen different species. I had been particularly delighted to see a variety of warblers, bay-breasted warblers, magnolia warblers and Tennessee warblers.

  At Brewer’s Biergarten afterward, we talked birds, ate wood-fired pizza and drank one of the house brews selected by Paul. Tonight’s beer was a small batch IPA. The focus of the night’s conversation was supposed to be the red-eyed vireo. We had seen a number of the olive green and white songbirds hopping limb to limb in the lush canopies of the majestic oaks near the edge of the lake.

  However, the topic that I had so carefully chosen drifted further than a rufous hummingbird in a hurricane.

  Esther sat stiffly, knitting something out of gray yarn that looked suspiciously like a cat-sized sweater. Floyd and Karl had their eyes fixed on a replay of an Alabama stock car race on the big screen TV hanging in the corner of the bar.

  Esther Pilaster, or Esther the Pester, as I called her on occasion, although never to her face and sometimes affectionately, was a tenant of mine. I had inherited her when I’d bought the house. The previous owner had made her remaining in the building a condition of the sale.

  My nickname for her had stemmed from her annoying ways when we’d first met. We hadn’t exactly hit it off. To be fair, I think she had found me just as annoying when she’d inherited me as her landlord.

  “The one that was rummaging around on the ground next to the shops. The gray and white one,” Derek replied in answer to my q
uestion. He riffled some more through the guidebook.

  I had to give Derek credit for trying. He had been coming on more and more birding outings with me. He’d have been just as happy if we had been carrying golf bags over our shoulders and walking the back nine at the local country club chasing a little white ball rather than LBJs. That’s little brown jobs, not former U.S. presidents.

  Little brown jobs is an affectionate term birders give to small, nondescript birds whose identity cannot be readily determined, either because they had flown past too quickly, there was insufficient light or maybe—as was often my case—you just plain didn’t know what the heck it was.

  I squeezed Derek’s arm. “The same one whose name I told you not five minutes ago.”

  Derek scratched behind his ear. He looked like a big, ole adorable puppy dog. “Tell me again.”

  “Besides, we don’t call that rummaging, Derek. We call that foraging.” Floyd never took his eyes off the race cars on the screen as they banked a steep turn. Floyd is a retired banker and a widower with thinning gray hair and a bushy moustache. “Right, Amy?”

  We slapped our palms together. “Right, Floyd.” He had been one of my first customers. I own a shop catering to bird lovers and bird watching enthusiasts in the small town of Ruby Lake in western North Carolina. Floyd’s wife had been a bird watcher. He had taken up the hobby in her memory.

  “Right, foraging.” Derek persisted in turning the pages of the glossy guide. “The one making that high-pitched twinkling noise.”

  I arched my brow. “In the first place, what you call noise, is trilling. It’s music to my ears. Bird song can mean many things from a male trying to get the attention of a female, to defending their territory.”

  “Maybe you should try whistling to get Derek’s attention, Amy.” Karl hooted.

  “She’s already got my attention,” Derek said with laughter and more in his eyes. He cupped his hand over mine.

  “I’ll give you a hint,” I said. “A dark-eyed…”

  “Right, right. A dark-eyed…” Derek snapped his fingers thrice. “Shoot.” He ducked his chin. “I forget.”

  “Again?” Esther snorted. “What do you see in this guy?” She pointed a lavender knitting needle in Derek’s direction.

  “Free legal advice,” I joked. Derek, like his father with whom he shared a practice in town, is an attorney.

  Derek is also TDH: tall, dark and handsome, six-foot-two and eyes of blue. There was nothing nondescript about him, at least not in my guidebook.

  A thick row of holly bordered the fudge shop at the corner shopping center across the street. Dark-eyed juncos had been busily scratching through the leaf-littered ground beneath the bushes.

  “Remember the pneumonic I told you.” My boyfriend looked at me blankly. “Gray skies above, snow below? Must be a…”

  Nothing.

  His beautiful blue eyes stared into my tired blue ones with a complete and utter lack of comprehension.

  “Rhymes with below?” I hinted.

  Still nothing.

  Derek squeezed his brows together. “It wasn’t a crow, was it?”

  I smacked my hand against my forehead.

  “I’m glad I don’t need any legal advice.” Esther’s knitting needles clickety-clacked as she spoke, eyes on her work. She’s a small, narrow-shouldered, elflike septuagenarian with a hawkish nose, sagging eyelids covering her gray-blue eyes and silvery hair normally pulled tightly to the back of her head in a four-inch ponytail.

  She was garbed in loose-fitting tan slacks and a black Birds & Bees branded sweatshirt. Definitely not runway worthy but definitely not going to frighten our feathered friends either.

  Whether Floyd was frightened by her or not, I couldn’t say.

  Karl pointed to the TV screen. A racecar had bounced off the racetrack’s outside wall and two more cars like a careening steel ball in a pinball machine. Car one was now limping back to the pits. “That car’s done. They’ll probably have to junk her.”

  We all glanced at the screen.

  “Yeah, she’s junk, all right.”

  I finally understood what Karl was up to. “No helping, Karl. What is it with men?” I aimed my question at Esther. “They can remember who won the 1962 World Series—”

  “Yankees, four games to three.” That was Karl chiming in. Thick, black-rimmed glasses framed his gray eyes, which color-coordinated nicely with his own silver locks. “Over the San Francisco Giants.”

  Karl lives in a two-bedroom bungalow at Rolling Acres, a senior living facility near the outskirts of town. Floyd and Karl are good friends. Floyd has a condo in the same community. He’d moved out of his house and relocated there not long after his wife passed.

  “And how many cubic inches in a ’56 Corvette—”

  My point was interrupted again. This time by Floyd, who held up his hand for silence as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Two hundred and fifty-six,” he said proudly.

  “They didn’t go up to two eighty-three until ’57,” Karl added.

  “I believe that was one of the first mass-produced automobiles to reach the golden one horsepower per cubic inch ratio,” Derek contributed.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “It was a junco. A dark-eyed junco. And no, I do not know how many cubic inches it is or how much horsepower it can produce or even what its zero to sixty speed is.”

  “Right, a junco.” Derek flipped to the page in the bird guide. “Yep, that’s him.” His index finger landed on the picture of a gray and white bird resting on a bare tree limb. “Thanks, Amy.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “I tried to tell you.” Karl wrapped his hands around his mug.

  Paul ambled over carrying a half pitcher of the night’s brew. “Anybody need a refill?” Paul is about my age with brown eyes and wavy brown hair. He was Mr. Cool in his usual work outfit, a pair of designer jeans, polished black boots and a black Brewer’s Biergarten shirt.

  “No, thanks.” I was tired. The meeting had devolved into talk of baseball and cars. If I didn’t get some sleep, my eyes would be as red as that of the red-eyed vireo we were supposed to have been discussing. “I’m ready to call it a night.”

  “I’ll take some.” Karl raised his glass.

  “You got it.” Paul topped off the ex-chief’s glass and shuffled away.

  Derek scooted back his chair. “Come on, Amy. I’ll walk you home.”

  Esther picked up her pink knitting bag. “Wait for me.”

  “How about staying for one more round, Esther?” Floyd suggested. “Karl and I will escort you home afterward.”

  “No, thanks,” Esther replied.

  Floyd was crestfallen as Esther stood.

  Karl and Floyd used two modes of transportation. One of those modes was the Rolling Acres shuttle bus. The other was the humongous 1956 Chrysler 300B that the boys had purchased together as a project car. It was bright red with a capacious tan leather interior that must have required the sacrifice of a small herd of cows.

  The two men loved tooling around in the antique automobile. How they managed to steer the chrome-embellished behemoth around town without bumping into everything in sight was beyond me.

  The darn thing took up two parking spaces when they parallel parked. The Chrysler practically occupied parallel universes.

  As for Floyd and Esther, I thought they would make a cute couple; him a widower, her never married—so as far as I knew. Esther was keeping a wall between them.

  “Good news!”

  I turned at the sound of a familiar voice. My mother stood on the sidewalk. My best friend, Kim, was at her side. The outdoor seating area of the biergarten was separated from the sidewalk by a brick pony wall.

  Asia had its Great Wall of China. The Town of Ruby Lake had what was becoming known as the Little Wall of Beer. The occasional custome
r leaving an empty mug on the low wall had turned into a growing custom. Some nights, the wall was lined side to side with empty beer mugs. Paul thought it was cute and now actively encouraged the behavior.

  “Mom? Come on in.” I waved for them to join us.

  A waitress asked if they’d like anything to eat or drink. Both declined although Kim grabbed a triangle of cold mushroom pizza from the aluminum platter resting in the middle of the table.

  Esther was annoyed that our departure had been delayed.

  “What’s up, Mom?” I scooted over and Derek brought a chair from an empty table and set it beside me.

  “Thank you, Derek.” Mom sat. “Amy, do you remember that nice woman we met at the Outer Banks last year?”

  “You mean at the Wings Over Carolina Bird Festival?” Mom, Esther and I had attended the fall bird watching event for several days the previous season.

  “That’s right.”

  “We met a lot of nice people there, Mom.” Though Esther had done as much to drive away people as she had birds. Her people skills were even poorer than her nonexistent bird watching skills.

  Esther made Derek look good by comparison. Our first morning out on the marsh, she had chosen to wear a snow white jacket and a bright red hat. From a distance, her skull looked like the Angry Red Planet. And both colors were scaring the birds away.

  I’d had to buy her a pea green jacket and hat in Nags Head just so she would blend in better with our surroundings and not freak out the birds—or the tourists.

  “I’m talking about Phoebe Gates.”

  I inclined my head and thought a moment. I pictured a tall, athletic blonde in her early forties. She had led several of the shorebird field trips. “Sure, I remember Phoebe.”

  “I remember her, too,” Esther said none too kindly. “She kept suggesting that I invest in a new pair of binoculars. She got to be so annoying, I thought she might be a saleswoman working on commission.”

  To be fair to Phoebe, Esther’s binoculars looked like something Captain Nemo might have used to spot land when the Nautilus surfaced to look for the Mysterious Island. I’d seen steampunked pairs with more modern touches.