After Hazel and her grandmother had left, I took photos of Esmeralda with my phone and made up a quick flyer. My dad didn’t have a printer, and mine was still buried in a moving box somewhere, so on my way back from the farmers market, I printed two dozen flyers at the local grocery store for ten cents a pop, with Huckleberry whimpering at my feet every time a piece of paper shot out of the machine. Even though he was an LA dog, Huckleberry was low tech. I hoped that Stacey would let me hang one up in the theater.
When it came to Esmeralda, I had to do my due diligence just like I told Hazel we must, but a small part of me—no, a big part of me—hoped no one came forward. I had fallen hard for the friendly cat just like Hazel had.
The next morning, I was up so early that my head hurt. Huckleberry and Esmeralda slept at the foot of my bed. The pug was curled up in a ball, and the cat lay over the top of him like a fur rug.
The animals didn’t even stir as I slipped out of bed. I went to the window and moved one of the eyelet curtains aside. It was still dark out. I hoped this harebrained idea of mine was worth it.
After the disappointing visit to the farmers market the night before, I had made a phone call. I had called Hedy Strong, using the business card Wes had given me. Much to my surprise, she answered on the first ring, and when I told her I wanted to speak with her about the Cherry Glen Wind Farm, she asked me to meet her in the morning. The only problem was she asked me to meet her at six thirty a.m. at the county park where she was doing her morning bird count. When I asked if there was a better time, she’d said that was the only time and for me to take it or leave it. I took it, of course, but my sleep-deprived head was seriously questioning how wise that decision had been.
I glanced down at the animals. “No, it’s okay. Don’t strain yourself by waking up.” I padded down the hall to the bathroom.
Dawn was just breaking over the farm when I walked to my convertible. The pink and ocher light was breathtaking over the overgrown fields. I could just imagine what it would look like in years to come when those fields were full of lavender and sunflowers. One way or another, I had to save the farm from being lost. I owed Grandma Bellamy that.
The park that Hedy asked me to meet her at was part of the county park system on the edge of Torch Lake. Torch Lake wasn’t one of the Great Lakes, but it was still impressive. It was the longest inland lake in the state and was over one hundred feet deep in some spots. I turned on the county road that led to the park. My car bumped from the pavement onto the gravel and dirt parking lot. At this time in the morning, I was surprised at the number of cars in the lot. I checked my phone to make sure I wasn’t late. She’d told me to be there at six thirty sharp. I was five minutes early. Was predawn hiking a thing?
Just before I left, I had decided to take Huckleberry with me. I looked down at the little pug, wondering if I had made a mistake by bringing him. “You’re going to have to be quiet. I think these birder folks take their sport very seriously. No barks, no yips, no heavy breathing.”
He snorted.
I sighed. That was the best answer I was going to get from him.
Remembering Hedy’s brisk instructions on the phone, I followed the path marked with the loon, which would lead me to the lakeshore. In the woods between the parking lot and lake, the light was dimmed by the dense cover of trees. Bugs hummed in the tree branches, and bird twittered high above my head. A chipmunk scurried across my path. I tried not to think about all the wild animals that were in the woods. You’d think growing up in Western Michigan, I wouldn’t be a scaredy-cat about such things.
Finally, there was a break in the trees, and I could see the sparkling dark blue water of Torch Lake. Because of the lake’s different depths, you could see three shades of blue when the light hit it just right. The early morning was the perfect time to see those colors. When I stepped out onto the beach, it was quiet, so I jumped when I saw a cluster of ten people standing on the rocks and sand at the edge of the water. They all held giant cameras or binoculars up to their eyes.
A petite woman at the front of the group and with the largest binoculars of all, which were strapped across her chest in a harness, gave some sort of hand signal. Collectively, the group aimed their lenses up and to the right. There was a gasp, and one person whispered, “A tundra swan. It’s my first!”
“Shh,” the rest of the birders hissed, even though she had spoken softly.
With their reaction to the woman’s comments, I was afraid to approach the group to find out which was Hedy, though if I had to guess, I’d say it was probably the one with the largest pair of binoculars.
On the lake, a group of swans took off into the air. There was a rapid succession of shutter clicks as the flock took flight.
“That was amazing! Hedy, you must have a sixth sense to always know where the birds will land,” a large man in a pocketed vest and fisherman’s hat said.
“Thank you,” the small woman who had made the hand gesture said. “I have been birding on these shores for so long, I know the birds’ patterns. I’m lucky they haven’t strayed from them much. Let’s meet at the next dock. I believe from there you will be able to get another look.”
Hedy didn’t need to say this twice as the group quickly dispersed, heading in my direction to the parking lot. They blew by me with not so much as a glance. I supposed I wasn’t nearly as interesting as the tundra swans.
Hedy started up the path after them. “Ah, you must be Shiloh Bellamy.” She looked me up and down. “You’re taller than I expected you to be.” She glanced at Huckleberry. “You brought your dog.”
“He needed a walk.”
She frowned. “You are lucky he didn’t scare off those swans. You do not want a dozen angry birders after you.”
When she put it that way, it did sound bad. “He’s very well behaved.”
Huckleberry looked up at me as if he knew I was fibbing too.
I glanced over my shoulder in the direction the rest of the birders had gone. “Am I keeping you from seeing the swans?”
“They are beautiful birds, but I can take a minute or two. I’ve seen them dozens of times before, so it’s not like they’re lifers for me.” She paused. “That being said, let’s make this quick. I don’t want to miss a bird.”
“Like I told you on the phone, I’m Shiloh Bellamy from Bellamy Farm—”
She held up her hand.
“Don’t you want me to tell you why I’m here?”
“Shh!” She held her finger to her lips and stepped away from the lake and deeper into the woods.
“Are…”
She held up her finger again. “Shh! Listen,” she hissed.
There was a slight twittering in the woods. It was a light bird song, repeated three times before going silent.
“Yellow-rumped warbler by its song.” She made a mark in her phone.
“You can tell what bird it is from the song?” I asked. She had spoken in a normal volume, so I had taken that as permission to speak.
“Of course I can. Any dedicated birder worth her salt can. I have been studying birds for the last forty years. There is no bird call or song heard in Michigan I can’t identify within a few notes.”
Since I could barely tell a cardinal from a robin, I was not one to challenge her on that claim.
“Are you—” I started to ask to get back to my original question.
“Shh!” was her response to that.
A little bird with a yellow feather just above the base of its tail hopped on the branch of a nearby oak tree and repeated the song he had sung.
“See, yellow-rumped warbler,” she said confidently. “I’m never wrong. It’s not a lifer of course, but it’s my first one this year, which is surprising.”
“Lifer?” I asked.
“Oh. That’s birder slang for a bird I was seeing for the first time in my life. Birders keep life lists of birds. I keep several lists. I keep a life list, an annual list, and a region list.”
“It sounds complicated.”
She looked at me for the first time. “You have no idea. There is so much pressure to see the birds. I’m up at night waiting for dawn so I can go out again. You never know what you will find. This is truly a case of the early birder getting the bird.”
There was a twittering above us that sounded different from the warbler’s song. Hedy must have heard it too, because she grabbed her binoculars from that intricate-looking chest harness and put them to her eyes. “Knew it. Scarlet tanager. One of the prettiest summer birds. Even though they are bright red, redder that a cardinal even, they are hard to spot since they keep to so high in the trees. You really have to follow the sound to spot them. Would you like to see it?”
“Sure.”
She removed her binoculars and held them out to me. “Look straight up.”
I held them to my eyes and looked up. At first, all I could see were fuzzy tree limbs. Then I adjusted the lens for my sight. A bright red dot came into view; I zoomed in on that. The bird was completely red except for its black wings. “Wow. She’s beautiful.”
“That’s the male. Like with most birds, the female is not as brightly colored. In fact, the female is a dull yellow. It’s the men in the bird world who have to attract the ladies.”
I handed the binoculars back to her, and she snapped them back into the harness.
“Now what did you want to talk to me about? If it’s not about birds, I can’t help you. Birds are all I know and all I care to know.”
“I wanted to talk to you about Jefferson Crocker.”
“Crocker?” She wrinkled her nose like she smelled something bad. “Why would I want to talk about him?”
“You may not have heard that he died,” I said.
At my feet, Huckleberry buried his nose in the fallen leaves on the forest floor.
“Yes, I heard someone shot him. I can’t say I blame the person. If anyone had it coming to him, it was Jefferson Crocker. He was the worst kind of man. All he cared about was making money. He didn’t care what impact his choices made on the environment and the birds. Like so many, he assumed he would be dead in twenty-some years, so what’s in it for him to take care of the earth now?”
“You and he were in a dispute.”
“A dispute. I would call it a war. A battle between good and evil. Against short-sightedness and forward thinking. I had spent the last five years of my life fighting that man. Now, I can finally rest. Perhaps I won’t even keep an attorney on retainer any longer. Whoever killed him did me a favor.”
I shivered at her cold tone. I almost thought if Hedy were the one who had shot Crocker, she would just come right out and say it with a big smile on her face. I couldn’t see her hiding it. Which meant I might as well be back at square one.