A Birder's Guide to Murder Read online

  “It isn’t good. You haven’t seen her at all?”

  Derek shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “What about you, Karl?” I called out.

  Karl dropped a couple of bird bars in the ABE-logoed tote of a woman about his age. “Trick or treat,” he said as the bars hit the bottom of the bag.

  She laughed and thanked him.

  “I haven’t seen her since breakfast. Shouldn’t she be here helping us out? Esther’s an actual employee. She’s getting paid to do this, not me.”

  “I’m sorry, Karl. I shouldn’t be asking you to do all this work. And for nothing.” Especially if it was true that he had dropped a bundle of cash in the casino. “I’ll pay you for your time. I promise.”

  Karl blushed. “I was only joking, Chief. I don’t need no money.” He grabbed his leather belt and hitched up his trousers. “I’ve got me a nice pension. Enough for two.” He winked at Robin who stood on the other side of the divider.

  “You are incorrigible,” Robin said with a grin. “I hope you plan on behaving yourself in Costa Rica.”

  “Costa Rica?” I asked.

  “Robin talked me into taking one of their nature tours,” Karl explained. “I always wanted to see the jungle.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I replied. I’d have to warn her about making him keep his gun at home. “Speaking of seeing things, where’s Floyd?”

  Karl answered. “He read the note that fella left you and high-tailed it out of here. He said he was going to look for you.”

  “That’s odd.” I scanned the crowded aisle. There was no sign of Floyd. Or Esther for that matter. “What fellow and note are we talking about?”

  “Some bozo in a costume came by looking for you, Chief.”

  “For me?”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Karl answered.

  Derek laid a hand on Karl’s shoulder. “By bozo, Karl means zombie.”

  “A zombie came by looking for me?” Peter Porter was dead. Who could it have been? “Was it a woman by any chance? Was it his girlfriend, Suze?”

  “Nope. It was definitely a guy.” Karl outlined a straight shape with his hands. “The man needed a shave. And a shower. You get a better look at him, Derek?”

  “I don’t know about the shower but it was definitely a man,” was Derek’s answer.

  “That lets Suze out then. I wonder who it could have been. I don’t know any other zombies personally. Except for Stalker.”

  “Who?” asked Derek.

  “Never mind,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, this zombie had a note for you, Chief. He didn’t act like he knew you personally. It was in an envelope with your name on it.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Maybe ten or fifteen minutes,” Derek answered after a look at his wristwatch.

  “I hope whoever it was comes back. What did the note say?”

  Karl shrugged. “Like I said, he handed the envelope to Floyd when he saw you weren’t here. He said somebody paid him to deliver it. I asked him who but he said he’d never seen her before.”

  “Her?” My head was throbbing.

  “That’s what he said,” answered Karl. “After the zombie lurched off to wherever it is zombies go during the daytime, Floyd read the note. He said he was going looking for you.”

  “You think it’s important?” asked Derek.

  I chewed my lip. “It could be. Floyd opened the envelope and read the note. Now he’s disappeared. I wish I knew what was in that message. It wasn’t attached to a brick, was it?”

  The guys looked at me blankly.

  “Never mind. What did this zombie look like? Maybe I can find him at ZombieFest. At the very least, he might be able to identify the woman who’d given him the message to deliver.”

  “Like he should have been buried six feet under,” answered Karl. “One zombie looks pretty much like another.”

  “Derek?” Maybe he could give me a more helpful description.

  “Like Karl says. Just your average run-of-the-mill zombie.”

  That wasn’t helpful at all.

  “And neither of you two read the note?”

  Both shook their heads in the negative.

  “Floyd tossed it in the trash can on his way out,” Karl said.

  “He did?” I grabbed our plastic trash can from under the table and started sifting through the garbage.

  “Not that one,” Karl explained. “That big one over there by the exit.” He pointed. “You want me to fetch it?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll do it myself.” The note was intended for me, after all. Maybe it was a note from Stalker wanting to hook up with me. In which case, the trash was the best place for it. I pecked Karl on the cheek and Derek on the lips. “Hold the fort, would you?”

  Derek chuckled. “Do we have a choice?”

  “You could tell me no.”

  “What, and break a perfect string of yeses?”

  “Ha-ha.” I hurried to the trash barrel only to discover a clean black plastic bag lining the inside. I cursed and scanned the hall. A man in gray overalls was deliberately pushing a maintenance cart through the crowd.

  I stopped him as he was about to make his exit. The cart held a mound of bags and a pair of brooms. After a little haggling and the promise that I would haul the bag to the dumpster, the worker allowed me to take the top bag. He stated with certainty the bulging bag contained the trash from the bin Karl had indicated.

  I dragged the bag to the ladies’ room. Ignoring the occasionally amused and often disgusted glares of the women moving in and out, I spread the trash out on the floor.

  “Lose something?” asked a stout woman washing her hands in the basin next to me.

  “I lost an earring,” I said, sifting through the soggy debris.

  “Good luck,” she quipped, drying her hands on a paper napkin she’d plucked from a basket between the sinks. “All I see is trash.”

  Icky trash was all I saw too. Frustrated, I dumped the second half of the trash on the tile floor. Pushing scraps of paper, plastic bottles and crumpled brochures around with the toe of my shoe, I spotted a coffee-stained white envelope. I fell to the ground and snatched it up. Amy was written in scroll near the center of the envelope. A little more digging and I found the typed note: If you want to see Esther, bring Marty to the Bowlarama. You have until 3 p.m.. Come alone or the old lady dies.

  Gripping the counter, I hauled myself off the floor and yanked open the bathroom door.

  “Hey! What about all this rubbish?” a woman with a British accent remonstrated.

  “I’ll be back!” I promised.

  I shoved my way outside and climbed in the minivan. I read the crumpled note again. Derek had said the message had been delivered ten or fifteen minutes before I had arrived at the booth. I had lost time with the maintenance worker and then more time sifting through the trash in the ladies’ room.

  It was quarter to three now.

  What was I going to do? I had no Marty and very little time left. Even if Marty was at Laurel Cove, which I doubted, there wasn’t time to drive into Philadelphia, explain the situation to him and drive all the way back.

  I had no choice but to go and hope that I could convince whoever had sent me the note to let Esther go. Besides, whoever was behind the sinister message couldn’t possibly harm us in the middle of a bowling alley. I pictured bowling shirts, beer and quirky shoes. What harm could come to anyone in a place like that?

  The worse thing that happens at bowling alleys is a 7-10 split or the occasional gutter ball—except in my case, in which they occurred all too commonly.

  We’d be safe. And I’d talk our way out of it. Whatever it was.

  Pulling out of the Expo Center parking lot, I realized I had no idea where this Bowlar
ama was.

  I slammed on the brakes, rolled down my window and waved at the first oncoming car. “Can you tell me where the Bowlarama is?”

  “Bowlarama?” The leonine-faced driver furrowed his brow a moment and rapped the steering wheel with his knuckles. “Two blocks down on your left.”

  “Thanks.” I lifted my foot from the brake.

  “But I wouldn’t bother, if I was you, lady. The joint closed down two years ago.”

  His parting words echoed in my brain as I rolled up the window and sped off. An abandoned bowling alley sounded like just the place to find a killer.

  There was no time to spare.

  The Bowlarama, with its busted signage, stood at the corner of a long-neglected shopping center. The asphalt parking lot was buckled and sagging and filled with potholes and litter. Many of the storefronts had cracked and broken windows. There was something spooky about the crumbling shopping center.

  A weathered sign had been thrust into the asphalt up near the street: This Site Available.

  For what, I couldn’t imagine. Somebody would have to tear all these crumbling buildings down and start from scratch.

  I parked near the street and cut the engine. Fishing my binoculars from the back of the van, I studied the bowling alley. It appeared deserted.

  All hopes of being able to count on being surrounded by the public had vanished. If I went in, I’d be on my own.

  And without the one thing I was supposed to bring to the party: Marty.

  What had made Esther’s kidnapper think that I would have him? Let alone that I might have convinced him to turn himself over to this kidnapper in exchange for her safe return?

  As these thoughts rolled round and round in my much-bruised brain, my binoculars fell on something that made my stomach turn queasy and my blood turn cold.

  Karl’s rental car.

  It was tucked away behind the corner of the shopping center to my left, sticking nose out. It might have been another car but what were the odds?

  I lowered my binoculars and drove over for a closer look. I came to a halt beside the vehicle. There was no sign of the driver.

  I left the van and peered in the dirty windows of the car—what was left of them. Cardboard took the place of glass on the driver’s side. An American Birding Expo tote drooped over the back seat. Several empty coffee cups were strewn about, including one holding the remains of a cigar—somebody was going to be in trouble with the rental agency for that—yesterday’s newspaper and a multitude of fast-food wrappers.

  And there was my brick, on the floor of the passenger side. I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers. Back off had been scratched into the short end on one side. I hadn’t noticed that before.

  Definitely Karl’s rental.

  Floyd was somewhere nearby.

  I did a slow turn of the narrow strip of broken glass and rock-strewn pavement. I was out of sight of the bowling alley.

  “Floyd?” I said softly. “Are you here?”

  A cold wind whistled past. Two liter-sized plastic soda bottles rattled past my feet and bounced off the drab concrete block wall.

  I hoped Floyd had not done something stupid.

  But in my heart I knew that he had.

  27

  I moved slowly to the van, grabbed my purse from the passenger seat and pulled out my cellphone. I massaged the dark screen to life. My finger hovered over the number pad. I should call the police. I should call Derek.

  I should run for my life.

  But I couldn’t. Not with Esther being held by someone who had killed twice before. If whoever Esther’s kidnapper was so much as caught a whiff of police, Esther and Floyd could both end up dead.

  Floyd was probably up to his farsighted eyeballs in trouble.

  Realizing that there was no good answer to my current dilemma, I slid my phone down my sock between my boot and my ankle. I wanted it with me but not someplace obvious that a kidnapper-slash-murderer might find it.

  Returning to the rental car, I retrieved the brick that had almost been the end of me. I slid it inside my coat pocket and zipped up.

  I started walking, keeping to the edges. If I drove the van up to the bowling alley, there was every chance of being seen—if I hadn’t been spotted already. I had the uneasy sensation of being watched.

  I was also worried that anyone passing by car might get suspicious of me wandering around an abandoned shopping center and stop to see what mischief I was up to. Worse yet, report me to the police.

  Skirting the empty storefronts, I angled across the parking lot to the rear of the bowling alley. There was no sign of movement and no other vehicles were in sight. The clouds had rolled in with the promise of rain and the sky had grown visibly darker since my arrival.

  Trash was heaped up outside the back wall of the bowling center. Someone had once been sleeping there too. A rusting shopping cart and a battered cardboard box large enough to hold a refrigerator lying lopsided against an eggplant-colored velvet sofa that itself looked like it had been gnawed on by hundreds of sharp little teeth.

  I didn’t want to know what those sharp little teeth had been attached to. I prayed the beasties were nocturnal.

  I tiptoed up to the windowless back door and pulled on the rusty handle. As decrepit as everything appeared, the door was solid and held. I wasn’t getting inside that way.

  I rounded the building, coming at last to the main entrance. It had been boarded over but several pieces of lumber had fallen or been pulled off by looters, squatters or the weather—probably a combination of all three.

  The building had an airlock entry to protect the main facility from the elements. Being careful of the broken glass, I squeezed myself through the hole created by a pair of crossed two-by-six boards. That left me facing what was left of an inner set of doors. The steel security curtain was hanging askew. Someone had managed to pry open the metal bars designed to keep out intruders, a long time ago by the looks of it.

  A single scuffed bowling pin was wedged between the two main doors, propping them apart. I pulled open the door on my right.

  Inside, all was silent and dark. I bent quietly and picked up the bowling pin. It wasn’t much, but like the brick, in a pinch it would do as a weapon.

  Testing the weight of the pin in my hand, I was surprised. It was heavier than I had imagined it would be, several pounds at least.

  I waited as my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. I’d read somewhere that it can take upward of thirty minutes for a person’s eyes to adjust to the dark. I did not have that kind of time to spare.

  I moved forward tentatively, with shuffling steps. The low ceiling hung like a dark cloud over my head. I decided that the chest-high, blurred shape to my right was the main counter. To the left, I could make out the outline of what had once been a dining area.

  “Hello?” I said softly. “Esther?”

  Hearing no reply, I moved to my right. A ragged hole in the ceiling let in a cold light rain that hit me in the face. I grunted in surprise. A blur of rustling feathers shot out from the edges of the hole.

  I recognized the distinctive high-pitched twittering of chimney swifts.

  The bowling pin in my hand was growing heavier by the second.

  “I ought to shoot you right now.”

  The words had come out cold and venomous somewhere ahead of me.

  I froze.

  “Where the hell is he?”

  It was a woman’s voice. There was a familiarity to it but I couldn’t quite put a face to it. Whoever she was, she wasn’t happy. I sensed she was a good fifty feet away.

  “Do you mean Marty?” I asked.

  “Marty, Klaus. Call him whatever you want. He is supposed to be here. You were supposed to bring him.”

  There was a sudden flash of fire with an accompanying bang. I jerked, fearing that
she was shooting at me. But I was unscathed and all I heard was the sound of falling debris in the distance. “The next bullet is for you, Amy. Where’s Ritter?”

  “He—he’s been arrested. The police have him.” I squinted into the darkness. My vision was getting a little better. “Nikki? Is that you?”

  “Don’t play games with me. I know he never made it to jail. The man’s a snake. But one way or another I’ll see him dead.”

  “Why?” My brain was struggling for answers. “Because he murdered JJ, your boss?”

  Nikki’s laughter echoed throughout the bowling alley. “You’re not so smart after all, are you? I murdered JJ,” she gloated.

  Which meant she had probably murdered Peter Porter too. “Why? Why would you murder JJ?”

  “Let’s call him a sacrificial lamb.”

  “I don’t understand.” I bent down and slipped my cell phone from its hiding place. There was no way I could handle Nikki alone.

  She was armed, dangerous and crazy.

  “I knew that if I killed JJ and made it look like the Osprey had been involved that it would flush him out. Why do you think I sent an email from JJ’s computer suggesting I invite this old coot?”

  I suddenly understood. “That’s why Birds and Bees was invited to the Expo. That’s why Esther was specifically asked. You were using her to get to Marty.”

  “And it worked.”

  “How did you know that Marty knew Esther?”

  “Let’s just say our families go way back. Marty and my dad had some run-ins.”

  “Run-ins?”

  “Marty ruined my dad’s reputation. He was branded a double agent. It was a lie,” she hissed. “It was all Marty’s fault. He set Dad up.”

  “Where is Esther? Let me talk to her.”

  The bright light of a cell phone flashlight app suddenly lit up a face in the distance. It was Esther. Black duct tape covered her mouth.

  “Esther, are you all right?”

  She nodded once and the light went off.

  “Let her go, Nikki. Please.”

  “Gee, I’d like to do that, Amy, but we had a deal. Marty for Esther.” I finally understood that Nikki and Esther were standing at the far end of one of the old lanes.