Tom put the car in gear, and we started back towards the tiny town of Fountain.
Out my side window, I spotted a Red-shouldered Hawk gliding over the rolling plains and hills covered in a profusion of June’s green growth. No ATVs here rutting the slopes or trashing the wetlands. The scene was good enough for a postcard. “Gliding along in Fillmore County,” it could read. “Wish you were here.”
For a moment or two, I could almost forget I’d started the day with discovering Jack’s body. But I couldn’t stay distracted very long.
“Do you know anything about Shana and Jack?” I casually asked Tom. “Before yesterday I didn’t even know they’d gotten married. It’s been years since I’ve seen either of them.”
“You mean besides the political stuff that Jack’s involved in?”
“Yeah.”
Tom rolled his window down and a wave of fresh air blew through the car.
“Not much. It seems like Shana stays out of the spotlight—you never see her in pictures in the papers or on television with Jack. I guess they keep their relationship pretty private. And I expect, with her being pregnant, they liked keeping it that way.” He threw me a glance. “I remember when they got married, though. A bunch of the nurses at work were sure that Shana was a gold-digger. I think they had a problem with the twenty-year difference in Shana and Jack’s ages. Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is. Lots of men marry younger women. Lots of women marry older men. I mean, geez, Jack had been a widower a long time, and if he and Shana could be happy together, why not?”
The hawk put in another appearance, gliding across the road ahead of us.
“Red-shouldered,” Tom said.
“Yeah, I know. I saw it a minute ago, too.” I watched it skim the earth and then lift skywards, a small rodent trapped in its claws. “Late lunch.”
“Shana’s not a predator, Bob. Besides, Jack was nobody’s fool. Just look at the corporations and politicians he’s taken on in the last couple years. Ever since Minnesota passed the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment in 2008, Jack O’Keefe has been knocking heads together in St. Paul to make sure conservation legislation gets passed and implemented. From what I understand, he’s just about abandoned the family business to devote all his time to the environment.”
Tom slowed down to read a mile marker, then turned right onto the next road.
“I almost forgot—there’s a seepage meadow up here on Rice Creek that I birded last year about this time,” he explained. “I found some Upland Sandpipers there. Since we’re in the neighborhood, we might as well check it out. You know, now that I think about it, I bet Jack got so involved with conservation because of Shana. She went to grad school in ecology or something.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said again. I didn’t tell him how well I knew it, either. I didn’t think he needed to hear about my teenage crush and how I nursed a broken heart during my senior year in high school because the older woman of my dreams had tossed me over to go dredging through muck in a graduate program.
Me or muck, Shana?
Gee, when I put it that way, it almost hurt all over again. Except for the fact that I’d finally arrived at the brilliant insight years later that she’d never considered me anything near a romantic candidate, thinking she chose muck over me might really put a dent in my self-esteem.
Good thing I’m a tough old bird, huh?
Of course, having Luce in my life probably made Shana’s early rejection of me a lot more manageable now.
Actually, having Luce in my life made everything more manageable now.
Except for Tom’s driving.
I bumped my head again on the roof of the car as he hit another pothole.
“Sorry,” he said. “These roads aren’t too well maintained, are they?”
“I think we’re on a cattle trail, Tom, not a road.”
“Oh no, this is the road. Look up ahead.”
Sure enough, there was an open wetland situated on what looked to be an old streambed about a hundred yards in front of us. It was bordered on one side by a stand of forest, with a few old oaks scattered across the surrounding hillocks. I noticed some wire fencing along the forest side, with a few “No trespassing” signs hanging along the edges.
Tom parked the car and we got out to walk closer to the meadow. Once we got within forty yards of the wetland, we saw two Upland Sandpipers poking their long bills into the soggy earth. Hoping to not disturb them, we skirted the meadow and slid in close to the forest where a portion of the fencing had been torn down. Then I had the weirdest sensation, like someone was watching me.
Behind me, brush moved.
A lot of brush.
I slowly turned around and there, about twenty feet away, was a cat.
A big jungle cat.
A tiger, in fact.
Oh joy. I’d apparently found the missing part of the circus, but unfortunately, I’d forgotten to bring my chair and whip.
Hello, kitty.