Chapter Twenty-Two

Charlene’s words tumbled over and over in Kate’s mind as she drove to Pine Ridge Hospital. They hadn’t been able to find Artie and had parted ways. Kate didn’t want to keep Bonnie waiting.

Kate angled her shoulders back and took a few deep breaths. She would be at the hospital in a matter of minutes, and she didn’t want to carry any apprehension with her. She thought of a verse in Proverbs that she’d often heard quoted from the King James Version: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

She turned the Honda down a tree-lined street, and the hospital came into sight. She parked in the lot, then waited a moment. She couldn’t entirely shake her disquiet about the Howells and Artie Best. The Howells seemed so sincere and friendly, while Artie was a bit off-putting and surly. Yet at this point, she didn’t feel inclined to trust the traveling couple any more than she did the local bird wrangler. She wished the visit to Artie’s had given her more information, but really it had only raised more questions. And it had reminded her that Dot was still stalking about the countryside. What was she up to? Was Kate missing out on some essential clue by spending her time trying to talk to the elusive Artie?

Kate rubbed her forehead. She didn’t know how merry of a heart she would carry into Bonnie’s hospital room with so much weighing on her mind. She’d first approached the problem of the missing birds as more of a puzzle than a bona fide mystery. But the dangers that the situation might pose to others had turned it from a puzzle to a mystery that needed resolution. And now she had begun to think it wasn’t that simple.

Artie had a story. Charlene and Dud had their stories. The three of them had some common ground, and clearly some conflict as well. Then there were the traps and the unaccounted-for bird flocks and the bird-watchers slated to arrive in less than forty-eight hours.

Kate looked at the plain brick hospital and sighed. Bowing her head, she prayed that the Lord would clear her heart and mind and allow her to fit the pieces together in time. She got out and shut her car door. The reason that she couldn’t separate the pieces and distinguish between what was a curiosity and what was a potential threat was that she didn’t have all the pieces. She needed to have a heart-to-heart with Artie Best. And, at some point, talk to Dot. If Bonnie was up to it while they were in Pine Ridge today, she also wanted to talk to the organizers of the Sparrowpalooza Weekend.

And while warning the people at Joanie’s Ark about potential dangers from booby traps, she wouldn’t mind getting their opinion about the drop in the bird count.

Minutes later, she was in Bonnie’s sunny hospital room, suggesting they do just that: go to Joanie’s Ark and ask some questions.

“But only if it won’t be too much for you,” Kate clarified.

“Too much?” Bonnie put her hand to her forehead and laid back dramatically on her raised hospital bed, pretending to reel at the very mention of the idea. “Now don’t you start with that mollycoddling the retired lady nonsense. Remember, I’m retired from a job, not from life.”

Kate, happy to see Bonnie up and about, chimed in with a response drawn from her high-school years. “Yes, Mrs. Mulgrew.”

“The way people have been waiting on me and fussing over me for nothing more than a twisted ankle and a bump on the head? I have half a mind to do cartwheels all the way to the car just to prove to everyone that I’m not yet a spent force.”

“No one thinks you’re a spent force. Not by any means, Bonnie,” Kate assured her, smiling. Even after so many years, she still had much to learn from the feisty, energetic woman. “And if you say you’re up to it, then up to it we shall be!”

When the doctor signed the release papers and the nurses said good-bye to Bonnie, she didn’t do a cartwheel, but she did insist on making her own way from the curb to the car. To do so, she hopped for a whole four feet on one foot, an effort that both Kate and the attending nurse applauded.