A Birder's Guide to Murder Read online

  Kim plunked herself down between Floyd and Karl who were only too happy to have her join them. She stretched her long legs. “How are my two favorite men tonight?” She planted a friendly kiss on each man’s cheek, leaving a smear of pink lipstick on each.

  Floyd blushed. Karl cackled.

  Was that a tinge of jealousy I had seen in Esther’s eyes when Kim kissed Floyd?

  “She telephoned a few minutes ago. She wants you to call her back right away.”

  “What for?” I barely knew the woman. We’d shared a couple of conversations about birds and a cup of coffee or two over the course of the trip, nothing more.

  Kim tossed down the crusty bit remaining of her pizza and licked her fingers all the way out to the tips of her lavender fingernails. She was always watching her weight. Why, I didn’t know. Kim is gorgeous. I, on the other hand, look like I lost my gym membership.

  Best friends can be so annoying.

  Kim’s blue eyes flashed as if reading my mind and gloating over that fact. “Remember when you told me about the American Birding Expo?”

  “Of course.” The American Birding Expo was going to be held in Philadelphia this year. I had attended the first expo prior to opening Birds & Bees. Seeing the level of interest in bird watching evidenced by the attendees had been one of the deciding factors that had led me to finally take the plunge and open my store. At the time, the ABE was being held in Ohio.

  Looking back on that time, planning my move back home and taking the plunge going into business for myself, I must have been crazy. While I had a passion for birds, I knew nothing about running a business.

  The Expo billed itself as North America’s premier, all-encompassing gathering of birding-related products, services, companies, destinations, and organizations.

  Mom and I had talked about attending the ABE again sometime, maybe even getting a booth in the expo hall to represent Birds & Bees.

  What could it hurt to attend, except the wallet?

  “We’ll have to check it out someday.” The store needed to expand, find new sources of revenue, if we were going to survive—especially since the payroll had grown with the addition of Esther and Kim as regular staffers.

  Attending the American Birding Expo might give us some ideas. Not to mention, get the word out about our little store in the heart of North Carolina. Our state, with its diverse systems ranging from the ocean to the mountains with the piedmont in between, offered a wide variety of bird watching opportunities. There ought to be some way we could sustain our modest business. We needed some opportunities of our own.

  “Phoebe said there’s been a last-minute cancellation,” Mom announced.

  My brow quirked up. “Really?”

  Mom drank from an untouched glass of ice water. “She said to let her know right away if you want it.”

  Not only did the American Birding Expo sound like fun—I hadn’t had a real vacation since long prior to buying my house and starting my business—but a trip to Philadelphia sounded like just the ticket. “It could be a vacation and a marketing opportunity all in one.”

  “Like they say,” Karl began, “kill two birds with one stone, Amy.”

  “You know I don’t love that expression, Karl.”

  “Who came up with that saying anyway?” Derek turned to me for the answer.

  I didn’t have it. “Definitely not a bird lover.”

  “What are you going to tell Phoebe, dear?” Mom asked.

  “It’s a big decision.” I mentally weighed the pluses and minuses and came up with a big fat zero, which was no help at all.

  “Judging by that look in your eye, I take it you’re in?” Kim said from across the table.

  “Well…” I suddenly thought of all the work involved and my heart popped like a red latex balloon against the tip of one of Esther’s knitting needles.

  “I hear the sound of waffles,” Karl said.

  “That’s waffling, dummy.” Floyd jabbed Karl with his elbow.

  “I’m not waffling,” I replied. “It’s just…”

  “Just what?” Mom set down her glass.

  “Who is going to watch the store? And what about marketing materials? We need, I don’t know, new business cards, a poster or a banner or something. Maybe some packaged birdseed.”

  We sold seed in bulk, plus packaged our own Birds & Bees mixes. “We have nothing prepared.”

  “I’ll bet the quick print place in town can make up most of that stuff,” offered Floyd. “The bank used to use them all the time. I can give them a call.”

  “Good idea, Floyd,” Mom replied. “Thank you.”

  I rubbed my neck viciously. “And the expense. Just think of it.”

  “The expenses will be minimal,” assured Mom. “Phoebe says the hotel rooms are paid for.”

  “And she’s giving us the booth for half price,” Kim added to the pot.

  “It sounds too good to pass up, Amy.” Derek squeezed my shoulder.

  “I guess.” I turned to my mother. “Rooms? Plural?”

  Mom nodded. “Phoebe says the exhibitor that had to pull out has booked several rooms at the Eagle Inn. Nonrefundable. She specifically said that we should all come. You too, Esther.”

  “Me?” Esther pinched her eyes toward her hawkish nose.

  Mother nodded. “Phoebe remembers you quite fondly.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Apparently, neither did Esther. She looked dumbfounded and annoyed all in one gray-haired bundle.

  “Eagle Inn,” Derek said smoothly. “That sounds like an omen to me.”

  “Omens can be both good and bad.” I knew. I looked deep into his eyes. “Do you really think I should do this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Can I come?” Floyd looked at me expectantly.

  I jerked my head. “You want to come, Floyd?”

  “Sure.” He rubbed his hands together. “I could use some action. A little road trip sounds like just the thing.” His eyes fell on Esther who wasn’t returning the look.

  “Well…” The whole thing seemed so overwhelming, so daunting.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” pressed Derek.

  “Why?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re not trying to get rid of me, are you?” Derek’s ex-wife, also an Amy, lived in town and was desperate to get him back.

  “Are you kidding? Never. In fact…”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought I’d come.”

  I gasped.

  Derek blinked at me. “If you’ll have me.”

  “Of course!” Suddenly this trip was looking more like a vacation than a chore.

  “Okay.” I slapped my palms on the table. “Let’s do it.” I smiled broadly. “We are all going to Philadelphia and the American Birding Expo!”

  “Does that mean we get to share a room?” Derek wriggled his brows.

  I blushed brighter than the brightest robin red breast. I mean, Mom was sitting right next to me. “I’ll be rooming with Mom,” I managed to squeak once I found my voice.

  “No, you won’t,” Mom said. “I can’t go. I have a checkup with Dr. Ajax later this week.”

  My mother had developed adult-onset myotonic multiple sclerosis with type 2 myotonic dystrophy. Dr. Ajax was her neurologist over in the neighboring town of Swan Ridge.

  “Besides,” Mom continued, “I don’t think I’d fare well on such a long road trip. Not to mention, somebody has to stay home and keep an eye on the store. You said so yourself.”

  I studied my mother. We look a lot alike, especially since she’d stopped dyeing her hair blond and gone back to chestnut brown, the same as me. Mom has brown eyes. I have blue eyes, as had my deceased father. I have a few inches on her height-wise. I’m thirty-four so Mom has a few decades on me time-wise. She says she is older but wiser.


  She’s right, but I’m not telling her.

  Because of her illness, Mom did tend to tire easily but I hated to leave her alone and said so.

  “I’ll keep you company, Barbara.” Kim reached across the table and helped herself to the dregs of my beer.

  I looked at her in surprise. “You don’t want to come?”

  Kim was always up for a vacation, whether it involved travel or not.

  “Nah. I’d rather stay home. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. Plus, you don’t expect your mother to handle Birds and Bees by herself, do you?”

  I had a feeling that what was on Kim’s plate was her blossoming relationship with Dan Sutton, a local police officer. “I would feel better knowing you’re here too. If you’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all,” Kim assured me.

  “Okay, then it’s settled. Me, Derek, Esther and Floyd. We’ll take the Kia.” The Kia was my somewhat trusty old minivan. I vowed to myself to have it serviced before the trip.

  “Great!” Floyd thumped the table with his palm. “Me and Derek can share a room. You and Esther can share the other.”

  Esther and I shared a look.

  That look was DISMAY.

  “Not so fast.” Karl waved his hand in the air. An unlit cigar rested between his index and middle fingers. He had carefully avoided lighting up. Not because it was against the law, which it was. Karl, as the former chief of police, felt himself above such things.

  No, the last time he’d lit a cigar in the biergarten, Paul had dumped a full mug of beer in his lap, extinguishing the cigar in the process.

  Paul maintained it had been an accident. I wasn’t so sure about the accident part. Neither was Karl, apparently, because he hadn’t lit up inside the joint since.

  “What is it, Karl?” I asked.

  “If Floyd gets to go, I do too.” He stuck his chin out defiantly.

  “Fine.” Suddenly everybody wanted to go to a birding expo? “I don’t suppose that’s a problem. You and Floyd can share a room. Right, Floyd?”

  “What about me?” Derek wriggled his eyebrows at me again.

  “It sounds like there are more than enough rooms to go around. You, me and Esther will have our own rooms.”

  It didn’t mean we had to stay in them.

  Floyd turned to his best mate. “If you snore, you’re sleeping in the bathtub.”

  Karl smirked. “And I suggest you not snore.”

  “Why is that?” Floyd made the mistake of asking.

  “Because,” Karl answered with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ll be packing heat.” He jammed the wet cigar between his lips.

  “No, no, no!” I waved my hands at Karl. “Nobody is packing heat on this trip. That’s all I need, a trigger-fingered half-blind septuagenarian waving a loaded weapon at passing motorists.”

  “Aw.” Karl waved his hand dismissively. “I haven’t done anything like that in ages.”

  I stared the former cop down. “You were packing the last time we all went to the Tuesday movie matinee. No guns, Karl. Let’s all survive this trip in one piece.” Karl opened his lips to retort but I cut him off. “And by one piece, I mean hole free.”

  “Fine. No guns.” Karl folded his arms over his chest and pouted. “Take away a man’s only source of happiness.”

  I turned to Derek and rolled my eyes. “See what you’ve gotten me into?”

  “You’re not changing your mind, are you?”

  “Not a chance.” I pictured romantic evenings with Derek, along the Delaware River, intimate dinners and late-night rendezvous.

  I turned to Floyd and Karl. “You’ll have to pitch in and help, both with the trip preparations and at the Expo.”

  “Absolutely.” Floyd nodded his assurance. “We’ll be glad to help out, won’t we, Karl?”

  “You got it, Amy. We’ll be like deputies,” he promised. “You tell us what to do and we’ll do it…Chief.” He held his hand over his heart. “Scout’s honor.”

  Chief?

  I liked the sound of that.

  Derek planted his hand on my knee. “When exactly is this American Birding Expo?”

  “Let’s see, today is Monday and the Expo is—” I turned to Mom for the answer though I feared I knew it only too well.

  “Friday, dear,” Mom filled in. “The Expo runs Friday through Sunday. Ms. Gates, Phoebe, said for you to plan on being there on Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest, to set up your booth.”

  I groaned. “It’s probably, what, an eight-hour drive from here to Philly?”

  “More like ten,” Kim corrected.

  “I’m glad you find this funny,” I said when Derek laughed.

  “Hey, I’m not the one who has to set up an entire booth.”

  “No?” I said sternly.

  Derek lifted his chin ceilingward. “I wonder if there are any good golf courses near this Expo thing. I might bring my clubs.”

  I grabbed his jaw and forced him to look me in the eyes. “I expect you to pull your weight, mister.”

  I grabbed my jacket from the back of my chair.

  Derek’s shoulders sagged. “Oh. Right, Chief.” He grinned sheepishly at Floyd and Karl who were sniggering.

  “It looks like we’ve all got a lot to do and very little time to do it in.” Derek came to his feet. “I’ll let my dad know I’ll be out of town for a few days.”

  I gripped his hand and held him back. “Are you sure you can come? I mean, absolutely sure?” Half the reason for going was to spend a little quality time with Derek. If he backed out now…

  “Don’t worry. Things are light in the office. Dad can handle the casework.” He looked past me to my mother. “And don’t you and Dad have dinner plans tomorrow?”

  “That we do.” Derek’s dad, Ben, and my mother were casually dating. I don’t think either of them were sure how far they wanted to take things.

  As for me and Derek, I knew exactly how far I wanted things to go. And there was nothing casual about it.

  “You had better telephone Phoebe Gates right away to let her know you’ll be taking the booth.” Mom handed me a slip of paper with a phone number scribbled on it.

  “You don’t want her to give the spot to somebody else,” Kim chimed in.

  “I’ll call from the apartment.” I closed my hand around the slip of paper. “Tomorrow morning we’ll make a list of everything we need and see if we can remotely get things together in time. I hope we know what we’re getting ourselves into.”

  “Next stop, Philadelphia!” Floyd climbed to his feet and grabbed his jacket from the table behind him.

  “Not me,” snapped Esther.

  “What?” I looked at her, nonplussed.

  “I don’t do Philadelphia.”

  “What do you mean you don’t do Philadelphia?” Karl blinked at her. “That makes no sense.”

  “Make sense of this.” Esther balled her right hand into a fist and waved it in front of Karl’s nose.

  The retired chief of police threw back his head and brayed.

  Floyd joined him. A pair of old goats enjoying a good joke.

  “Come on, Esther,” Floyd said. “Stop joking around. Of course you’re going. This is Birds and Bees business, isn’t it?”

  “That doesn’t make it my business.” She returned his stare eyeball for eyeball.

  “But you are the assistant manager,” Floyd persisted. “It seems only fitting that you represent the store.”

  Esther has no respect for the concept of a pecking order, let alone the one at Birds & Bees. In a short period of time, she had gone from renter to employee, to self-proclaimed assistant manager to partner.

  If I wasn’t careful, she’d end up owning the business, lock, stock and birdseed and I’d be sweeping the floors for her.

  I didn’t know wh
at was going on in Esther’s head at the moment—then again, I never did—but I couldn’t imagine why she would not want a free trip to Philadelphia.

  I leaned toward her. “Are you worried about your apartment?” Esther may or may not have a cat. I claimed she did. She claimed I was nuts.

  Technically, cats are a no-no, unallowed according to the lease. Then again, that was when I thought I was allergic to cats. I had recently learned, much to my chagrin, that I was allergic to goldenrod.

  The few times I’d been in Esther’s apartment—something both she and I avoided as much as possible—the sneezing I had experienced had been due to her goldenrod night cream.

  Not a cat.

  “I’m sure Mom and Kim will be more than happy to keep an eye on…things for you,” I said. Why Esther would not just come out and fess up to owning a cat at this point, I couldn’t imagine.

  Esther tossed her knitted bag over her shoulder and folded her arms. “There is nothing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that I wish to see.”

  “How about the Liberty Bell?” Karl suggested.

  “Cracked,” Esther was quick to reply. “Who cares?”

  “Independence Hall?” Derek put in. “You can see the very room where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were signed.”

  “Boring,” Esther snapped. “Leave it to a lawyer to think that would be interesting.”

  Derek shrugged at me as if to say I tried.

  “They have a lovely Museum of the American Revolution,” Mom said. “Your father and I took you when you were five. Remember, Amy?”

  “Vaguely,” I confessed. At that age, I remember thinking that one museum looked pretty much like any other.

  “Esther doesn’t need a museum on the American Revolution,” Karl bellowed. “She lived through it.”

  “Very funny, old man.” Esther shook her fist at Karl while Floyd shot him a withering look. “I said I’m not going and I’m not going. Take no for an answer already, people.”

  I didn’t bother to scold Karl. He and Esther were always taking potshots at each other. It was all meant in good, clean fun.

  At least it would be until Esther decided to run Karl through with one of her knitting needles.