Chapter Thirty-Four

Kate got out of the car as quietly as possible.

Artie, who had parked fairly far back in the drive and walked up, motioned for her to come to the door, then pointed upward to let her know the culprits were upstairs.

“Awful quiet up there,” he whispered as Kate and Bonnie reached his side.

“Of course it is. Dud’s wearing your overalls and feeding Bebe the sunflower seeds to keep the birds quiet.”

Artie frowned as they crept quietly into the house.

She could tell he wanted to go charging up to take care of his little buddies.

Suddenly a series of flapping and squawking sounds rang out from upstairs.

“Do you want to go up there and just get this over with?” Kate asked, seeing the tension building in the man’s expression and posture.

“I don’t think we should.” Artie took a step toward the staircase, then jammed his hands in his pockets and held his ground. “Unless we catch ’em actually bringin’ the birds down from their room, they can just say they were up there lookin’ at ’em. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve found someone in my house thinkin’ that it was open to the public.”

Another round of bird protests sounded through the house, followed by Dud muttering mild curses and Charlene saying, “If we’re gonna do this, we should just do it.”

If they were going to do this. Were they having second thoughts? Kate started to say something to Artie, but he spoke before she could.

“They better not hurt my birds,” he muttered.

Kate’s own heart was pounding. She wasn’t sure what Artie would say or do when he saw the couple who had betrayed his friendship trying to make off with his beloved birds. She felt sure that the Howells would pose no real threat to them, but she hadn’t considered that the Howells might pose a danger to the birds.

“Maybe I should go up there, Artie. I think I can probably talk to—”

“Don’t push me. I’m goin’ as fast as I can, but I can’t see the stairs.” Dud’s voice set off a new round of noise, this time the softer, more humanlike vocalizations of the blue Amazons. “I asked you to take that newspaper out of the window, Charlene.”

“I couldn’t reach it, Dud. Just be careful. We don’t want to upset the Amazons any more than we—”

“Hello, Charlene” was all Artie said when the small, dark-haired woman stepped into the well-lit foyer, where he, Kate, and Bonnie were waiting.

“Oh my...” Charlene looked as though she might suddenly be sick.

“What?” Dud reached the bottom of the stairs holding a large cage by the top handle. “Now, Artie, this isn’t what you think.” Dud held out his free hand as if to calm a frightened animal.

“I think you’re tryin’ to steal my birds,” Artie said through clenched teeth.

“Your birds?” Charlene stepped forward and confronted Artie practically nose to nose. “These aren’t your birds. These are birds you ended up with by default.”

Sensing Charlene would handily fill in the blanks of the rest of the story, if only given the chance, Kate put herself between Charlene and Artie. “Were you the previous owners of the birds?”

“No.” Dud came forward and held the caged birds out to Artie. “They weren’t ever ours, and they ain’t ours now.”

“What are you doin’, Dud?” Charlene’s voice was strained. Her face was red. She looked as if she might burst into tears at any moment.

“It’s over, Charlene. We never shoulda tried this, never shoulda convinced ourselves it was the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to do?” Artie jerked his head up from looking over his birds. “How could y’all possibly think this was the right thing to do? To take somethin’ that don’t belong to you? To act like you were my friends just so you could—”

“We did it for Joanie,” Charlene said in a voice firm but soft.

Artie’s face went pale. He set the bird cage on the floor beside his feet. “Joanie asked you to do all this?”

“She don’t know, Artie, I swear it.” Dud put his hand on Charlene’s shoulder and stood behind her. “Neither does Cassie. We came up with the idea all on our own.”

“Cassie?” Kate thought of the young woman hosting Sparrowpalooza Weekend as a fund-raiser for Joanie’s Ark. She had mentioned that they had expected the proceeds from the event to keep their doors open only for a couple more months. “So you two thought that since the birds had originally come to Joanie’s Ark, you would get them back, sell them, and donate the money?”

It made sense now, why they hadn’t touched the money in Artie’s donation box. They weren’t crooks, at least to their convoluted way of thinking.

“You know Joanie?” Artie hadn’t moved past that point.

“She works for us,” Charlene admitted as she hung her head. She tucked her hair back behind her ear and looked at her hands, taking a moment to flick a few flecks of polish off her fingernails. “We aren’t birders or outdoorsy types, but we do know about handling birds. We own a pet shop, and we always have a few in the store.” She held up her hands, showcasing the beak-shaped scars as evidence.

“In Pine Ridge?” Artie’s whole face lit up.

“In Atlanta,” Dud said.

“Georgia.” Kate tapped her finger to her temple. “That’s where your accent is from. My daughter lives in Georgia, so I knew I’d heard that accent before.”

Artie looked at the couple, obviously still in shock. “Y’all know Joanie? My Joanie?”

“And she told us about Artie,” Charlene affirmed. “Her Artie.”

“Yeah,” Dud said. “She was the one who told us she sometimes sees your name pop up on the message boards for parrot owners.”

“She was in the same online community as me? Why didn’t she...? I must’ve come off soundin’ pretty bad to you folks.” Artie looked at his feet, then peered up at Charlene to catch her reaction. “Since you wanted to do this to me.”

“I think you must have come off sounding pretty sweet,” Kate observed, placing a hand on Artie’s arm. “Since they thought they could do this to you.”

“A little of both.” Charlene took Dud’s hand, then looked back at him. With the parlor full of Artie’s awards and recognitions as a backdrop, her eyes filled with tears, and she sniffled. “Joanie lost you, along with everything else that mattered to her. It seemed so wrong that she’d lose Joanie’s Ark too. And there you are, this man who has everything, with these birds that had originally been brought to Joanie’s Ark. We just thought we could help her.”

“Me? You think I got everything?” Artie asked softly. “Without Joanie, I got nothin’.”

Charlene seemed at a loss for words. “We’re so sorry,” she said.

“Very sorry,” Dud echoed.

Charlene sniffed, and a large tear slid down her cheek. “I don’t know if it matters, but I feel like I have to tell you that I came up with this scheme myself. I convinced myself that a man who had an understanding with Joanie for all those years and then didn’t honor it and let her go, well, how much could he care about a pair of birds?” Tears were now streaming down Charlene’s face. “And then it got out of control. We had to set you up so Kate and Bonnie would be focused on you and not wondering about us. We set that trap to incriminate you, and we even went so far as to smear some of the oil from the seeds on a book in the library. We were so concerned with saving Joanie’s Ark that we forgot to be reasonable.”

Kate’s heart went out to Charlene. But she knew this was between Artie and the Howells, so she stepped back and didn’t intrude.

Charlene looked at Artie and, in a strangled voice, whispered, “We told ourselves it wouldn’t matter to you, that you didn’t care about anything or anyone. After spending time with you, I can see how wrong we were.”

“Thank you,” Artie murmured, his head bowed. He held his peace for a moment and then raised his head and cleared his throat. “I’ll talk to Cassie and offer to give tours of the place for her Sparrowpalooza deal. If we pool our resources, Joanie’s Ark and Best Acres, I think we can keep the shelter goin’.”

“What about Charlene and Dud?” Bonnie asked.

Artie eyed the couple. His expression turned gruff, but he couldn’t quite maintain it.

Charlene’s tears and Dud’s obvious contrition seemed to have truly affected him.

Finally Artie sighed and turned to Bonnie. “You’re the one hurt by their shenanigans, Mrs. Mulgrew. You want to call in the law?”

Charlene reached out a hand to Bonnie. “Please believe me, Bonnie, we never intended for anyone to get hurt, least of all you. You were nothing but kind to us. We were out getting ready to set more traps, when we heard you calling for help. We started looking for you immediately, and when Kate and Paul told us you’d been hurt, I thought I’d never forgive myself! We took down the rest of the traps, but words can’t express the regret we feel.”

Bonnie limped to Kate’s side and took a moment to study the pair. Then, in much the way she would have done as a teacher, she folded her hands on the top of her cane and turned the problem over to the ones who were responsible, to see for herself what they had learned from it. “Charlene, Dud, what do y’all think I should do?”

“We were wrong, and we are so sorry,” Dud said simply. “We made a poor decision to start with and then kept heapin’ on more and more bad decisions because we really thought the end justified the means.”

“You’re hardly the first person in the world to do that,” Bonnie said empathetically. Then she added with a smile, “Life and literature are full of examples of it.”

“We wanted to believe we were in the right. You got hurt, and we’re at fault. We’ll pay your bills, and make sure we reimburse the library for that book, too. But we wouldn’t blame you one bit if you turned us in,” Dud said.

Charlene jumped in. “Sorry doesn’t begin to cover it. I’m sorry for the lies and the traps and your injury and not speaking up sooner.” She wiped the tears from beneath her eyes and held her head high. “I’m ready to take my medicine. Do what you will with me. It was a wild idea, a bad one, but it was mostly mine.”

“No, Charlene, baby. I was right here beside you every step of the way.” Dud gave her shoulders a squeeze.

“I just felt so helpless when I knew what had happened to Joanie that I pushed you into it,” she said, looking up at him. Then she turned to Bonnie. “That’s not making an excuse; it’s just my way of saying I should be the one you report to the police.”

“Apology accepted.” Bonnie reached out and took Charlene by the hand. “I’m not going to report anyone to the police.”

“Thank you so much. You have all been so kind, especially when we were so foolish.” Charlene asked, her voice thinned by emotion, “Now what?”

“Now,” Kate mulled it over a moment, “there’s still a lot of work to do. I think if we all work together, we can give this story a happy ending.”