I looked at the note again, hoping the magic wish fairy might have suddenly appeared and rewritten it to say “You won the lottery!” or “Beer is now free at your favorite liquor store!” But no, it still read “BEN—KILL BOBWHITE?”
“Okay. That’s it,” I groaned. “Someone stick a fork in me. I am so done.”
And then the note disappeared. Only it wasn’t the wish fairy making a belated appearance. Bernie was leaning over my shoulder, reading the note that was now clutched in her fingers.
“Ooh!” she gasped. “This explains everything!” Her eyes darted to my face, then Shana’s. “Jack knew about you two! He was insanely jealous. He planned to kill Bob this weekend while we were birding.”
“What about Bob and Shana?” Tom asked from the backseat.
“What?” Shana and I said at the same time.
“Well, it sounds good, doesn’t it? Just like one of those movies of the week on the cable channel. Love triangles, betrayal, revenge, murder. I love those movies! I can hardly peel myself away to microwave popcorn even during the commercial breaks.”
Bernie waved the note in excitement. “This clinches it. Jack must have sent this note to Ben after he checked into the hotel. He had it all planned out. He’d have Ben, his lifelong buddy, set up the hit on Bob because he was jealous of any of Shana’s male friends—even though he had no reason to be because we all know that Shana would never cheat on Jack, and that she’s crazy about him. Jack, though, is insecure because he’s not getting any younger.” She turned to Shana. “Sorry, honey, but it’s the truth.”
“Bernie—” I tried interrupting, but she was on a roll now.
“But since Big Ben runs the show around here, no one would ever suspect him of being part of a murder plot, so Jack figures it’s the perfect crime. He asks Ben to kill Bob, and no one’s the wiser.”
“But I’m not the one who’s dead,” I reminded Bernie.
“Yeah,” she admitted, frowning at the hotel stationery in her hand. “That sort of messes up my plotline. I guess those television writers really do have their work cut out for them, don’t they?”
“What about Bob and Shana?” Tom asked again.
“Nothing!” I sputtered.
“We’re old friends,” Shana said. “That’s all. I didn’t even know Bob was going to be here this weekend till I saw him in the hotel lobby last night. Bob has nothing to do with Jack’s murder. Bob has nothing to do with anything.”
Gee, that sure told me where I stood in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t know if I should be relieved or disappointed: not a killer, but definitely insignificant.
Shana wasn’t finished, though. She plucked the note from Bernie’s fingers. “I don’t know what this is about,” she said, waving the bit of paper in the air. “But I do know one thing: Jack would never, ever, even think about killing someone, no matter what that person did.”
Stan’s words suddenly came back to me. “But he’d stop funding him, wouldn’t he?”
Shana’s eyes caught mine. In the dim glow of the overhead light, I could see no green in them, only a dark reflection of confusion that slowly gave way to suspicion. “How did you know that?” she whispered.
“A little birdie told me,” I answered. Then I wondered if she knew the other thing that little birdie had shared with me.
“But Chuck started the payments back up, Shana.”
Her face visibly paled even in the semi-darkness of the front seat of the car. “Stan found them,” she said, her voice flat. “That son-of-a-bitch.”
“He likes you, Shana. He’s trying to help. I think,” I added.
“Not Stan,” she ground out. “Chuck. He’s the son-of-a-bitch. He was making payments to Ben behind Jack’s back. That’s why Stan was down here birding. He was supposed to meet Jack and me after dinner tonight to tell us what he’d found. Jack hired him to make a very discreet audit of OK Industries because Ben didn’t seem to be hurting financially the way we thought he would after Jack cut him off.”
She crumpled the note in her hand. “I asked Jack to bring Stan in. He’s an old friend, and I trust him. Jack didn’t want to think it was Chuck making the payments. That son-of-a-bitch,” she repeated.
“You and Stan are old friends?” I asked, but Shana had already turned around in her seat to face Tom and Bernie.
“Jack and Ben grew up together,” she explained to them. “Their families were close. When Ben went into politics, Jack supported him financially on a regular basis, because the Grahams didn’t have any money, and because Jack believed in Ben’s judgment.” She rubbed her hand across her brow. “Until this spring. Then Ben started siding against Jack when it came to developing the eco-community here. It wasn’t like he sided with anyone else—he just kept his considerable political clout—as you mentioned, Bernie—out of the discussion altogether.” Shana shrugged. “So Jack stopped funding Ben.”
“And now Jack’s dead,” Tom finished.
“But Big Ben’s still getting money from OK, right, Bob?” Bernie pointed out. “Isn’t that what you said?”
I nodded.
“Then Big Ben has nothing to complain about,” she concluded. “He’s still got the money coming in.” She tapped the wadded note in Shana’s hand. “So who knows what this is about, but it sounds to me like your stepson has some explaining to do, Shana.”
I looked at the faces of my passengers. No one seemed able to comment on Bernie’s remark, so I turned off the overhead light and put the car in gear.
“It’s past my bedtime,” I said. “We can think some more about this tomorrow, but right now, my pillow is calling me.”
Unfortunately, so was someone else. I handed my ringing cell phone to Shana and told her to answer it for me.
She popped it open. “Hello.”
After listening for a moment, she glanced at me and said into the receiver, “This is Shana O’Keefe.”
Another moment passed with Shana listening. “He’s driving,” she told the caller.
Yet another moment went by with Shana on the phone. “I’ll let him know,” she said and ended the call. She laid the phone in the cup holder next to my seat. “That was your sister. She wants you to call her as soon as you stop driving.”
Great.
Lily.
Like I really wanted to hear her rip into me about my latest birding-gone-bad weekend. I could already imagine what she had to say.
“I’m getting MARRIED, Bobby, and you find another body! What are you THINKING?!”
I’m thinking I’m going to drive to Arizona. No, make that Alaska. Hell, I’d drive to China to avoid talking with Lily tonight. Maybe by then she’d forget what she wanted to say to me.
Not in this lifetime, if I knew my sister.
“She also said to tell you that you looked terrible in the footage on tonight’s newscast,” Shana added. “And she said you can forget about renting a tux for her wedding because you’re no longer invited. Somebody named Rick can be the best man.”