By the time Tom and I arrived back at the Inn & Suites, the sheriff’s car was parked in front of the lobby entrance. I came in through the automatic sliding door and started down the hallway before I remembered I didn’t know which room was Shana’s.
Then I realized I didn’t need to know which room she was in, because I could hear the yelling almost all the way out to the lobby. Heck, they could probably hear the yelling all the way to the next county, for that matter. As it was, the door to her room was wide open and I almost had to fight my way through the crowd of our fellow birders that blocked the hallway.
“I want her arrested!”
Just inside the room, Chuck O’Keefe had his face inches from Sheriff Paulsen’s. For his sake, I hope he’d used mouthwash because he’d need every bit of leverage he could get to make friends with that sheriff. After spending a good portion of the morning being thoroughly questioned by the lady lawman—make that lady lawwoman—I knew that Sheriff Paulsen was one tough cookie and wasn’t about to let some man from the city tell her what needed to be done in “her” county. On top of that, she’d actually seemed to warm up to Shana after we’d settled into her squad car this morning for the ride to the police station to make our report.
“Sorry about the bumping,” she’d apologized as we jolted onto the blacktop that led back to town. “Some of these county roads can do a real number on a car’s suspension—even police cars that are practically built like tanks. You doing okay, Mrs. O’Keefe?”
Of course, that might just have been the sheriff trying to be nice to the pregnant lady. Once Sheriff Paulsen saw how awkward it was for Shana to climb into the cruiser’s back seat, she’d probably figured she was going to have to get a car-sized can opener to get Shana back out. I wondered how quickly the Minneapolis police department could get a Jaws of Life to Fillmore County.
Seeing Paulsen stare down Chuck now, I had to admit that I was glad to have the sheriff on our side because I was fairly sure that if Chuck thought he could bully her into doing what he asked, he had another thing coming.
Or maybe even a pair of handcuffs, courtesy of Fillmore County’s finest.
Shana, meanwhile, was standing on the opposite side of the room, her hands on her hips and her green eyes blazing with anger. A big bear of an older man I didn’t recognize was patting her right shoulder, speaking hurriedly to her in an obvious attempt to calm her down.
Good luck with that. Even when she was an average-sized, nonpregnant woman, Shana had had the tenacity of a king-sized bulldog when challenged about anything. Don’t even ask me about the time she insisted we could find a Mississippi Kite near Caledonia, down in the southeastern corner of Minnesota. Since those birds rarely make it north of the Iowa border to nest, I laughed when Shana told me she’d seen one in Houston County the summer before we met. Determined to prove it to me, she’d dragged me down to Caledonia three weekends in a row that following June to look for the bird—three miserably cold, rainy weekends. And sure enough, she found the Kite on our third try, not even a mile from where she’d located it the previous summer. Being the generous, gracious man I am—was, even back then at age sixteen—I conceded that she had been right and vowed to never again question her birding prowess. Shana, on the other hand, was not generous or gracious—she rubbed it in all summer long that she had been right and I had been proven wrong. If I learned nothing else about Shana from that experience, it was that I’d better be willing to take the consequences if I challenged her integrity.
The way Chuck was doing right now in a hotel room at the Inn & Suites.
“She killed my father!” he shouted, his finger pointing at Shana.
“No, she didn’t,” Sheriff Paulsen stated unequivocally. “She wasn’t anywhere near your father at the time of his death, Mr. O’Keefe. She’s got witnesses and an airtight alibi.”
“She didn’t have to be near him!” Chuck yelled. “She’d get someone else to do it. Do you think she’s stupid? Believe me, she’s not. She’s had this one planned since the day she met my father. Marry the rich old guy, give him some great new cause to distract him, and then stick in the knife when he’s not looking. Oh, and that doesn’t even include the pregnancy part. Now she’s got heirs to claim the family fortune. ”
For a second, I thought Shana was going to leap over the bed—big belly or not—and go straight for Chuck’s throat, but just as she moved forward, the man behind her grabbed both of her arms and held her back. It didn’t stop her from shouting at Chuck, though.
“You bastard! As long as Jack was married to the company, you were happy. But you could never forgive him for finding something else to care about when he met me, could you? Especially since you saw me first. Don’t think I don’t know it, Chuck. You were so jealous of Jack and me that it ate you up. And now you want me to be punished for it.”
She turned briefly to the man holding her arms. “Let me go, Ben. I’m not going to touch Chuck.”
He did as she asked, but seemed reluctant to let her get too far out of his arms’ reach.
Shana raked her hand through her chin-length black hair, dragging in a long deep breath. From where I stood in the room’s doorway, I could tell that some of the fire in her eyes had gone out as she looked back at Chuck.
“If you want to know the truth, Chuck, I do hold myself responsible for Jack’s death. But it has nothing to do with the family fortune.” Her eyes shifted to the sheriff. “Now will you please get my stepson out of here?”
I moved aside as Paulsen pulled Chuck out of the room and down the hallway. Behind me, Bernie was shooing the other birders off into their own rooms, promising everyone a full report later at dinner at the A&W. I turned to leave, too, but Shana called my name.
“Bob, please don’t go.”
The tenacious bulldog had disappeared, and in its place was a very tired, very pale Shana. She indicated the man next to her. “I want you to meet Ben Graham. He’s an old friend of Jack’s and the mayor of Spring Valley. Ben, this is Bob White. He’s a birding pal from way back.”
I stepped further into the room and shook the man’s hand.
“I’m sorry to be meeting you under these circumstances, Mr. White. I’ve known Jack my whole life. We grew up together. It’s a terrible day for all of us.”
I nodded in agreement and stole a glance at Shana, who’d practically collapsed into the armchair in the corner of the room. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Mayor. Jack was a great guy.”
“Yes, he was,” Graham replied, sorrow thick in his voice. “And call me Big Ben. Please. Everybody around here does.” He rubbed a huge hand over his forehead and closed his eyes briefly. “Sheriff Paulsen called me about noon with the news, and I tried to get over here for Shana as soon as I could. Unfortunately, Chuck beat me to it.”
“He hates me,” Shana said, her eyes fixed on the flat white ceiling. “From the moment I met Jack, Chuck started hating me. I’d just finished speaking at a fund-raising dinner for the Nature Conservancy at the Hilton in downtown Minneapolis, and Chuck was an attendee. He suggested we go downstairs to the bar in the lobby for an after-dinner drink. I was done shaking hands and begging for money for the night, so I said sure. We took the escalator down, and then, just as he pulled out a chair for me at a table in the bar, Jack walked in. He’d been at a board meeting in one of the hotel’s other ballrooms. Chuck invited him to join us and … four months later, I quit my job with the Conservancy to move back to Minneapolis and marry Jack.”
“You gave Jack another chance at life, Shana,” Graham assured her, sitting down on the end of the bed. It creaked under his weight. He reached over to pat her jean-covered knee. “He was dying a slow death grieving before he met you.”
Shana gave a brittle laugh. “I don’t know how good a chance at life is when it ends up killing you.” She glanced briefly at Graham and then me. “Jack got involved with the eco-communities because I was involved with them. We knew what we were doing was pushing a hot button in the state. We knew that Jack was making enemies. But we never imagined it would come to murder.”
“You don’t know that, Shana,” Graham pointed out. “At this point, no one knows anything for sure. But the sheriff will find out, believe me. Sheriff Paulsen’s a good woman and an even better sheriff.”
The mayor stood up then and grabbed his suitcoat from where he’d apparently tossed it on the bed when he’d arrived. He leaned over to drop a kiss on Shana’s forehead and turned to me. “Can you stay with her for a while? I think she needs a friend of her own right now more than she needs a friend of Jack’s.”
I took the hand he offered and shook it. “Of course. And if there’s anything else I can do, let me know.”
Graham left the room and shut the door behind him. I figured it was time to shift into grief counselor mode, but when I turned to Shana, she wasn’t on the verge of more tears as I had expected.
Instead, she smiled apologetically.
“Sorry, Bob,” she said. “You came to get a Bobwhite, and instead you landed in the middle of a soap opera. Welcome to a nasty part of my world.”
I walked over to the bed and perched on the end of it, my hands on my knees.
“You want to talk about any of this?” I asked her. “I’m an experienced counselor, you know. Though I have to say that most of the time, the extent of my counseling involves badgering students to quit cutting classes or mouthing off to teachers. Insanely jealous stepsons don’t usually figure into the mix, you know.”
“Wow,” she noted. “You really do have it easy, don’t you?”
“My momma didn’t raise no fool,” I assured her. “Of course, I haven’t told you about the zombies, wannabe vampires, and unrelenting egotists that brighten my day, either. And, believe me, a teenage girl in her first crush or dump is pretty intense. No job comes without risk, Shana. In fact, I’m lucky to be walking around with most of my brain cells still intact despite daily exposure to what often becomes mind-numbing routine, not to mention outright lunacy. And that’s on a good day.”
I caught a hint of amusement in Shana’s eyes as she let out a sigh.
“Enough about me,” I said. “How did Chuck get wind so fast of his dad’s death? He sure hightailed it down here.”
Shana rubbed her fingers against her temples. “I’m afraid that’s my fault, actually. I called him on my cell this morning, just after we got to the police station. I thought he should know. I didn’t want him hearing it from anyone else. I had no idea he was going to come to Spring Valley, let alone insist that the sheriff arrest me for … for …” She shook her head, hastily wiping away the tears that were collecting in her eyes.
Without thinking, I reached out and patted her knee in comfort. “Shana.”
“Just give me a moment, Bob,” she said, taking a deep breath. She wiped her eyes once more and then picked up where she’d left off.
“I guess it was a good thing that Ben rode over with the sheriff. Chuck has always respected Ben and his friendship with his father. He’s known him practically his whole life. I think Ben’s being here was probably the only thing keeping Chuck from going totally ballistic.”
I blinked at her. “What I just witnessed wasn’t totally ballistic? I thought Chuck was going to bite off Sheriff Paulsen’s head for an appetizer before he tore you apart for the main course.”
A loud knocking came from the other side of Shana’s room door.
“It’s probably Bernie,” Shana said. “She’s been so sweet, trying to take care of me.” For a moment, she studied my face. “And she thinks the world of you, Bob. That you can do no wrong.”
“Yeah, right,” I laughed. “That’s why she couldn’t wait to tell Sheriff Paulsen this morning about my Angel of Doom persona.” I got up from the bed. “I’ll get it.”
But when I opened it, it wasn’t Bernie in the hallway. Instead, a hundred lights flashed in my face as voices shouted over each other to be heard. A crowd of people pressed toward me and I had the distinct impression of cameras and microphones being pointed in my general direction.
“Mrs. O’Keefe!”
“Who found the body?”
“Is it true that you and your husband were having marital difficulties?”
I slammed the door shut.
“It wasn’t Bernie,” I told Shana, who had covered her face with her hands. “A pack of vultures, maybe, but definitely not Bernie.”
I could see one emerald eye peeking at me through Shana’s fingers.
“You don’t want to get involved with this, Bob. I should have realized the press would be all over it as soon as they heard. They love Jack.” She closed her eyes and lightly placed her hands on the mound of her belly. “Loved Jack.”
Now it was my turn to study Shana. If she’d slept at all while I’d been birding with Tom, it wasn’t obvious. She had gray shadows beneath her eyes and her lips were tightly pressed together. I could feel the tension radiating from her all the way across the room.
The woman needed a break.
I walked over to the large window behind her and slid open the pane, then removed the screen. Setting my hip on the window sill, I angled my legs through the open space and stepped outside the building. As I’d figured, there were a bunch of cars and television vans in the parking lot, but no people. I turned back and held out a hand for Shana. With a little careful maneuvering, I was sure we could get her out through the window.
“Let’s blow this pop stand, honey. We’ve got birds to chase.”