Death Shoots a Birdie Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  PAINTED BUNTING Passerina ciris Family: Fringillidae

  About the Author

  Praise for the Birdwatcher’s Mystery series by

  Christine Goff

  DEATH TAKES A GANDER

  “A great mystery . . . intriguing.”—The Best Reviews

  “A very tidy murder mystery story . . . A person doesn’t have to have an interest in birds or birdwatching to enjoy this story as the characters, setting, action, and dialogue carry the plot well. A good read, enjoyable from start to finish.”—Roundtable Reviews

  A NEST IN THE ASHES

  “[A] light mystery for those that desire to kick back and do a bit of ‘inside’ birding . . . A good alternative for any birder who needs a little evening or weekend R&R!”

  —Tehachapi Mountains Birding Club

  “An interesting and timely book . . . It entertains and challenges readers to consider environmental issues at the same time that it enlivens them with its many twists and turns.”—Scribe and Quill

  “Well written . . . very informative yet an enjoyable read . . . I recommend this cozy. I look forward to reading others.”—Books ’n’ Bytes

  DEATH OF A SONGBIRD

  “An entertaining amateur sleuth(s) tale that contains a story line that smoothly sings a bird song . . . [a] soaring series.”—BookBrowser

  “An interesting twist . . . If you are in the mood for a light murder mystery with a definite avian twist, Death of a Songbird is a good read.”

  —Tehachapi Mountains Birding Club

  “Interesting facts about birds and birdwatching enliven this meticulously plotted tale. Death of a Songbird will intrigue all who are fans of traditional stories.”—Romantic Times

  A RANT OF RAVENS

  “An engaging and believable heroine . . . A Rant of Ravens is a deft and marvelous debut mystery set in the complex and colorful world of birdwatching. A smart, informative, and entertaining read . . . its Colorado setting is well-drawn and captivating.”

  —Earlene Fowler, author of The Saddlemaker’s Wife

  “A Rant of Ravens has what you expect from a good mystery—a smart detective (the sometimes too-smart-for-her-own-good Rachel Stanhope) and a plot that takes some surprising twists as it careens toward the final page.”

  —Margaret Coel, author of The Drowning Man

  “A Rant of Ravens stars a gutsy heroine in fast-paced action with a chill-a-minute finale.”

  —Carolyn Hart, author of Dead Days of Summer

  “Rachel Stanhope has the potential to grow into a very strong heroine. She is very gutsy . . . and is willing to go out on a limb, literally, to save her aunt. A quick-paced read with an unusual hook and a lively protagonist will leave readers eager for Rachel’s next outing.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “Unfolds at a solid, leisurely pace that allows the reader to relish the plot and ponder what will happen next.”

  —BookBrowser

  “Fans of traditional cozies will welcome the debut of this series that also offers wildlife facts.”—Romantic Times

  “[Christine Goff] knows how to write an intriguing, entertaining mystery peopled with interesting, colorful characters (including the birds)—and the birding lore is an added bonus.”—Mysterious Galaxy Books

  “Goff knows how to add in bird lore, the vivid Colorado landscape, and a vengeful parakeet whose hobby is dive-bombing visitors in this nifty debut . . . A Rant of Ravens soars.”—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  “A fresh new series featuring birds, suspense, the Rocky Mountains, a spunky heroine, and plenty of complications . . . what more could anyone ask?”

  —Christine T. Jorgensen, author of Dead on Her Feet

  Berkley Prime Crime mysteries by Christine Goff

  DEATH OF A SONGBIRD

  A RANT OF RAVENS

  A NEST IN THE ASHES

  DEATH TAKES A GANDER

  DEATH SHOOTS A BIRDIE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DEATH SHOOTS A BIRDIE

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / March 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Christine Goff.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  eISBN: 9781101224441

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks

  belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my dad, Harry McKinlay,

  who helped me explore the swamp.

  Acknowledgments

  My deepest thanks to Lydia Thompson, artist and birder extraordinaire, who supplied me with insider information on the birds of Coastal Georgia; to the tour guides, who escorted my father and me through the swamp, for sharing their knowledge of the wildlife and legends of the Okefenokee; and to Suzanne Proulx for her friendship and expertise in all thing
s writing.

  Additional thanks to Gwen Shuster-Haynes, Margie Lawson, and the women of the “Think Tank” (Christine Jorgensen, Leslie O’Kane, Cheryl McGonigle, Kay Bergstrom, and Carol Caverly) for their unflagging help, support, and encouragement; and to Averill Craig for submitting the winning title for this novel.

  And finally, I would like to thank my editor, Cindy Hwang, for her patience; Peter Rubie, my agent, for his unflagging confidence; and my family, my biggest cheerleaders, who continue to believe I can do anything—well, almost anything.

  Chapter 1

  Rachel Wilder studied Guy Saxby’s photograph in the Hyde Island Birding and Nature Festival brochure, and compared it to the man standing near the bird feeders. He had the same square jaw, the same sharp eyes, and the same light hair, though he looked blond in the photograph and gray in the sunlight. She would swear it was him. Tamping down her excitement, she drew a deep breath of the humid Georgia air, and pushed back an errant curl.

  “Rae, are you coming?”

  “Lark!” Rachael called in a stage whisper, waving her hand in the universal signal for “Come here.” “Come here!”

  Her friend stood her ground. Anchored to the bottom step leading to the entrance of the Hyde Island Nature Center, Lark planted her hands on her hips. “What is it?”

  Rachel gestured again, and Lark reluctantly stepped down. Rachel met her halfway.

  “Isn’t that Guy Saxby?”

  “How should I know?” said Lark. “I’ve never met him.”

  “Lark, you have to have seen him at some point, or at least seen pictures of him.” Guy Saxby was a big birder, huge, and so was Lark. Their paths must have crossed somewhere. “Look at his photograph.”

  Rachel shoved the brochure into Lark’s hands. She looked down at the photo, then at the man nearby. “Now that’s what I call a really old headshot.”

  “Granted. But is it him?”

  Lark scrunched up her face and tipped her head sideways, her long blonde braid whipping side to side. “I think so.”

  “Yes.” Rachel shot her arm into the air then dropped her elbow to her waist.

  “He’s the guy, isn’t he? The one Kirk wants you to cozy up to?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Rachel had briefed her traveling companions on her assignment during the ride up from the airport. Lark Drummond, Cecilia Meyer, and Dorothy MacBean had flown in from Colorado to attend the Hyde Island Birding and Nature Festival. It had been two years since she’d seen them, and they had been more interested in hearing about what she had been up to than what she had planned. They wanted to know how she liked living in New York. How well she liked her job. Was she in love with Kirk Udall?

  To their credit, they had a vested interest. They were all there when she met him, during the investigation into his colleague’s murder in Elk Park. A reporter for Birds of a Feather magazine had been murdered, and Rachel’s aunt was implicated in the crime. Rachel had been staying with her. Together Rachel and Kirk, with the help of the Elk Park Ornithological Chapter, had cracked the case. She and Kirk had been dating ever since.

  “He asked you to spy on the man,” said Lark.

  “Kirk didn’t actually use the word spy.”

  But that was the gist. He had been all set to join them himself when the magazine decided to send him to Sri Lanka at the last minute. They wanted a piece on how bird populations weather natural disasters, which left her to ferret out Saxby’s secret.

  Kirk was doing an expose on Saxby, an icon in the birding world. As a young professor, he had written a book entitled A Sacrifice of Buntings about the plight of the painted bunting on the Eastern Seaboard and his observations had proved prophetic. Now he was a world-renowned expert on endangered species, and set to unveil a new project. Something big. Something that would “rock the bird world.” Kirk wanted the inside scoop.

  “Now that we’ve identified the guy, no pun intended, can we go?” asked Lark. “Dorothy and Cecilia are already inside.” Lark looked wilted in her jeans and flannel shirt, and Rachel felt a stab of sympathy. The others were dressed for Colorado weather. It was only late April, but the temperatures in Georgia were already into the eighties. At this point, all any of the Coloradoans cared about was air conditioning.

  Rachel wasn’t exactly dressed for birdwatching herself. She’d worn black silk crop pants and a tank top on the plane, but at least she was cool. “You go ahead. I’ll follow you.”

  “Don’t tell me. You’re going to go and introduce yourself, aren’t you?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Lark climbed the stairs while Rachel retrieved her binoculars from the car. Creeping up to stand beside Saxby without scaring the birds on the feeder, Rachel adjusted her binoculars.

  A brightly painted bunting squatted at the base of the broken-down bird feeder, seemingly oblivious to the aesthetics of its surroundings. Georgia greenery touched the sky to the south and east. To the north and west were the parking lot and a Dumpster. Small and sparrow-sized, the bird kept a watchful eye as he ate, peering out from behind a scarlet eye ring and swiveling his blue-violet head side to side.

  “Beautiful, isn’t he?” asked Saxby.

  Rachel kept her binoculars trained on the bird. “Gorgeous.”

  A light breeze molded the painted bunting’s bright apple-green feathers flat to its back and ruffled its scarlet underparts as though underlining her statement. Behind him, two lime-green females twittered like schoolgirls enamored with a new beau.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel gave Saxby the once-over. Based on the gray that peppered his hair, he had to be in his mid-fifties, maybe twenty years older than she. Tanned and fit, he was of average height, average build. His shorts zippered at the knees, and he wore a state-of-the-art, long-sleeved, vented shirt straight out of the BigPockets catalog.

  He seemed to sense her scrutiny, and returned it. “Are you from around here?” he asked.

  “No.” She kept her answer short and simple. She figured it was obvious by the way she was dressed—no colorful T-shirt and shorts like the locals. “I’m from New York.”

  “City?”

  The question sounded rhetorical, so she didn’t answer.

  “You’re not down here for the festival, are you?”

  Rachel lowered her binoculars. “Do you find that so hard to believe?”

  “A pretty, young businesswoman . . .” He half-shrugged, then straightened and focused sharply on something beyond her. “Whoops! Here comes trouble.”

  He pointed, and Rachel glanced left. In a flash of rainbow colors, a second male painted bunting swooped into the trees, rousting the first male off the bottom of the feeder. Hopping up and along the pole, the feeder bird perched at the topmost point and belted out a song.

  Saxby joined in with a husky baritone. “This land is my land. It’s not your land.”

  Rachel grinned. He had scored a direct hit on the painted bunting psyche. It was one of the species Lark had said they would see on this trip, and Rachel had boned up on the bird. The males of the species were territorial, and had even been known to kill their competition in defense of their breeding ground. The females tended to choose the best provider, even if it meant sharing a mate. Obviously, the bird in control of the feeder had the edge.

  The interloper dived out of the live oak, swooped past the Dumpster, and landed on the graveled driveway, cutting a swath past the wax myrtles. Pressing himself close to the ground, he shook out his wings.

  “He’s making a challenge!” Saxby raised his binoculars and twisted them into focus.

  Rachel followed suit.

  The painted bunting flitted across the Georgia dirt, and hopped a few inches closer. Defiantly, the feeder bird flaunted his scarlet rump and sang louder, his voice jerky and off-key. The females stopped eating and huddled closer together on the backside of the feeder.

  In a riot of colors, the male birds flew. Rachel lost track of which bird was which as they flu
ttered their wings in each other’s faces, grappling mid-air before tumbling to earth.

  Rachel leapt forward. “We have to stop them before one of them ends up dead.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” yelled Saxby. He grabbed her arm, but it was too late. The birds broke apart. One bird flew into the trees. The other hopped up on the feeder.

  Saxby’s body tensed. “Do you know how many people would kill for the chance you just had, to see two painted buntings in battle? Very few people ever have the opportunity to witness life in action like that.”

  Rachel felt her hackles go up. “One of them was sure to be hurt. It seemed only right to stop them.”

  Saxby looked disgusted. “Have you ever heard the saying ‘survival of the fittest’? By interfering you’ve upset the ecological balance.”

  Rachel felt the heat rise to her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I just . . .”

  Saxby’s body language softened. “You’re new to birding, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. She had started birding just three years ago, and only had the opportunity now and then. She’d been doing more serious birding with Kirk, but only for the past year.

  “Well, what’s done is done. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.” Saxby dangled his binoculars against his chest. “Besides, it looks like the older bird would have won.”

  Rachel frowned. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Check out the face of the bird on the feeder. The incoming male was a young bird. The feeder bird bears a few scars. He’s learned to defend himself in a turf war.”

  “By eliminating the competition?”

  Saxby shrugged. “It works for him.”