Parrot Blues (22 page)

“Could someone have slipped him some or done something to lower his potassium?” The strenuous exercise that was crossing my mind was sex.

“Possible, but that wasn't what killed him.” He paused. His antennae quivered. I tried to stay as still as a lizard so as not to frighten him off. “It wasn't epinephrine in that vial,” Talbert said. “That was the very first thing I asked Dr. Hirsh to check. Terrance has had allergic reactions before, and epinephrine always worked for him.”

“What
was
in the vial?”

“Saline solution. Saline solution had been substituted for epinephrine. Both are clear fluids. The difference would not be apparent to the eye.”

“Saline solution wouldn't kill him, would it?”

“No, but it wouldn't bring him out of anaphylactic shock, either.”

“Is there any chance the pharmacy could have made a mistake?”

“Highly unlikely.”

“Wouldn't Terrance have noticed if the vial had been tampered with?”

“That would depend on how carefully it had been done. I'm sure the police will check for fingerprints.”

I was already expecting two sets. Who knew whether there would be any more.

“A person in anaphylactic shock is not going to be thinking or observing very carefully. The blood pressure drops precipitously, the tongue and lips swell, the bronchial passages close up, there is a
strong
sense of foreboding.”

“That seems natural if a person can't breathe.” I had a bad vision of Terrance gasping for air and clutching the vial. It may have been a quick and painless death, but it had to be beyond terrifying. And what had I been doing that morning? Making love in the desert and handing over his two hundred thousand dollars.

“What killed him was anaphylactic shock and the fact that he didn't have epinephrine to counteract it. I prescribed epinephrine and he was told to carry it with him at all times.” Dr. Talbert tapped the file on his lap.
His
conscience was clear.

“What was it that put him into shock? Do you know?”

“An examination of his stomach contents should determine that. However, I believe it was peanuts. Ever since he was a small child Terrance had been highly allergic to peanuts. It's the one allergy he had that was life threatening. Peanuts were in the granola he ate for breakfast. The medical investigator took a sample.”

They had the Kid to thank for that.

“There's a treatment some mothers use for children with a peanut allergy. I can't recommend it because it is not approved by the AMA, although it can be effective. The mother mixes a very small amount of peanut with water and feeds it to the child daily. It helps to establish and maintain a tolerance. Peanuts are a difficult food to avoid. There was a case of a woman in New England who was highly allergic. She ate chili in a restaurant and it killed her. You wouldn't think chili would kill anyone, would you?”

It might, I thought.

“A cook had put peanut butter in the chili to thicken it. I want you to know that I did not recommend this desensitizing technique to Terrance. He was using it long before he came to me.” Talbert tapped the file, which, presumably, contained evidence to support his claim. “His mother started it when he was a small boy, and Deborah continued the treatment. He shouldn't have had such a violent reaction to the peanuts in the granola. There shouldn't have been any peanuts in his granola.”

“What would happen if the treatment were discontinued?”

“He'd lose his tolerance, and his reaction could be severe.”

“Did you know that he and Deborah had split up?”

His reaction was startled. This was one event that his antennae had not picked up. “No. I didn't.” He paused for a moment while his mind sorted through the invisible stimuli. “That would explain it. Deborah would never have discontinued the treatment; she loved Terrance.”

“That's not exactly what I've been hearing.”

“I haven't seen her for a couple of years, but when she first married Terrance she used to come
here
with him. She loved him then, but who knows? Love is not an exact science. I hate to lose a patient,” he said softly. He looked at the clock on the wall and sighed. “I have to go. I have a child with asthma to see.”

“Thanks for you help,” I said, but he wasn't listening. His attention had already shifted from the patient who was dead to the child who needed help.

******

I stopped at the Wild Oats natural foods store on my way back to the office. In the bulk bins they had raspberry granola, blueberry granola, maple syrup granola, honey-nut granola. They had a total of fifteen different types of granola. All the ingredients were labeled, and not one of them contained peanuts.

15

I
WORKED LATE
that evening and stopped at the lab on my way home to tell Rick how Terrance had died. The sun was sliding toward Gallup as I entered the university. When I stepped out of the Nissan, I heard the sound of a raucous party. I remembered from my UNM days that partying is what college students do best. I'd been pretty good at it once myself. Music was playing—loud. The first sound I pulled out of the cacophony was the beat, but it wasn't the nineties beat of grunge rock, or rap or Megadeth. It was the slow and raunchy retro rhythm of the blues. As I approached the lab I could see that the door was open a crack and hear that that was where the party sounds were coming from. The last time I'd pushed open an unlocked door I'd found a dead body, but that building had been as quiet as a vault and in this one a lively party was going on. Could Deborah have been returned? I wondered. Was she alive and well? Was this a celebration? Since the parrots ruled the lab, it occurred to me that this could be a party without a human present. It wouldn't take much to get the parrots to partying.

I pushed open the door and heard, “Start me talkin', babe, tell you everythin' I know,” in the voice of a world-weary blues singer or an irascible Amazon parrot—or both. The radio was on loud; the rhythm section kept the beat. It happened to be blues night on KUNM, and parrots love the blues. Maxamilian was balanced on top of Deborah's computer, bobbing his head and belting out the lyrics. He watched the action through Deborah's window on the lab, showing me the back of his double-yellow head.

The other Amazons were on the lab table boogying and providing a disorderly backup chorus to Max. Colloquy and Perigee had been let out of their cage. They jerked and swayed on a manzanita perch. Their long blue tails shimmied, their necks stretched, their large heads bobbed in time, their eyes were bright and surrounded by yellow ovals. Rick Olney was dancing with the parrots. He snapped his fingers, swung his hips, shuffled his feet, and swiveled his pelvis, reaching deep into a collective and unconscious rhythm as instinctive in nature as a growl. He would have been surprised to see how rhythmically he could move once he forgot he was doing it. “Talkin' Babe” finished, and KUNM segued into another song.

“Round here,” Maxamilian growled in the raspy voice of a Bo Diddley or a Muddy Waters, “round midnight. Make me feel so good, make me feel…”

“All right,” Rick Dances with Parrots shouted, leaping in the air.

“All right,” the backup Amazons cackled.

My
pheromone sensors went into overtime. I had a few in my eyes, a few in my ears, a number in my nose, and a whole lot just under the surface of my skin; they sensed enough testosterone zinging around here to create a baby, cause a war, commit a murder. Energy seeks its own level, and Rick's energy level said to me that he'd gained in power, succeeded at crime and/or gotten laid.

Max swiveled his head one hundred and eighty degrees, and I came into his line of vision. “Call my lawyer,” he shrieked, laughing at his little joke. I made a
shhhh
motion with my finger to my lips, but it was too little too late and he wouldn't have listened anyway. Rick spun around and saw me standing in the doorway. He stopped moving as suddenly and awkwardly as a kid caught playing the game of statues. He was off balance, with his weight on one foot, his elbows in the air and his hips in the middle of a twist. I could have pushed him over with my little finger. A blush started from his toes and rose rapidly to the edge of his square haircut.

“Oh, shit,” he said, finding his balance, straightening up and snapping off the radio.

“Midnight special, baby,” growled Max.

“Be quiet, Max,” Rick said.

“Quiet, Max,” the bird echoed. “Be your pistol, too.”

“I, um … it was um … it was Alice,” Rick said, turning a deeper shade of rose.

So it
was
a celebration. I'd been right about that. “When?” I asked.

He looked around as if the walls had ears and those ears belonged to someone with money and authority, but no one with that profile was visible here. “A few hours ago.”

“Was it all you expected?” I asked. In my own experience, it takes a while to get up to speed.

“Better,” he sighed. “I'm in love.”

I was reminded of the last time I'd heard the word “love,” only a few days ago. “Sara Dumaine told me that she and … Terry … were in love,” I said. I hadn't told him that before; I hadn't been sure it was any of his business.

“No!” Rick cried. If he'd been a parrot, his feathers would have been standing on end.

“Those were her words. She was at the house when I got there Monday, weeping over Terrance's body.”

“Goddamn,” Rick said. “It doesn't surprise me that Terrance was screwing around, but with Deborah's sister? No wonder Deborah had been in such a rotten mood.”

“You think she knew?” Rick had let his guard down in love's afterglow. Trust a lawyer to step into the breach.

“She wouldn't have told me if she did, but something had been bothering her. I could see that.”

“She
was
getting a divorce,” I said, which, I knew as well as anyone, could ruin a mood.

“She's been divorced before,” Rick said.

“
That doesn't make it any easier.”

“Deborah and I didn't talk about personal stuff much.”

“Have you heard anything from her?”

He shook his head. “Not a word.”

“If you're still thinking about calling in the police, I have the card of the detective who's investigating Terrance's death.” Now that the OMI had discovered the saline solution, I was sure there would be an investigation. I handed Rick Detective Hernandez's card, which he stuffed into his jeans pocket without looking at it, but taking a hard look at his running shoes.

“I thought you told me it was an allergic reaction,” he said. “Why would the police investigate that?”

“Someone substituted saline solution for the epinephrine that would have pulled him out of it, which makes it homicide.”

“Really?” he replied.

“Really. Are you going to call Hernandez?”

“I'll think about it.” He reached up to straighten the missing glasses. The rock and roller had vanished. The bright, stiff young scientist had returned. My question was why he had to think about doing something today that he'd once been so eager to do. I wondered if the answer might be found in the file Terrance and his men had searched Deborah's office for. “I don't have a copy of Terrance's will,” I said. “I wasn't his lawyer for that.” And if Baxter, Johnson had handled it they weren't likely to tell me what it said. “Did Deborah have a copy?” It might contain information about the trust set up to provide for the parrots. It might tell me if Terrance had left anything (or everything) to Sara Dumaine. It might tell me whether Sara had a motive.

“I don't know where it is,” he mumbled, but his skin color gave him away.

My next question was, “That tape that Alice showed my friend the other day, what was on it?”

“Parrot talk. It's a multiple-track tape that repeats phrases that Deborah wanted to teach them. Parrots learn by rote. With the tape, they could go on learning even when Deborah wasn't here.”

“Can I listen?”

“It will get them worked up again.” He looked at the wall clock. “It's bedtime.”

The Amazons watched us with their pupils dilating and contracting, waiting for the next move. Colloquy preened Perigee. Max climbed up on the window ledge. “They don't look like they're ready to go to sleep to me,” I said.

“I am.” He turned around, walked into Deborah's office where God was in the details and Max was on the computer, and tried to coax Max into retiring for the night. There were a couple of keys hanging from a hook on the wall, and while Rick's back was to me I lifted one and put it in my pocket. If
he
wouldn't help me, I'd do it myself.

I followed him into the office, and subtle as a lawyer, asked, “What do you do with the feathers that fall on the floor of the cage?” I didn't want to admit that I'd been snooping through Deborah's office. Max knew. “Don't tell, Max”; I sent him an interspecies telepathic message.

“We give them to the Hopis to use in their ceremonials,” he said.

“Do you have any left? I collect feathers.” Not true. I don't collect anything.

He opened the drawer he'd put the feathers in before, only now it was empty. “No. We've given them all away,” he said in the absentminded manner of someone who was a poor rememberer or a bad liar.

“Did Terrance come by the indigos legally?” I asked him.

“Actually, he did. He took them out of the country before Brazil signed an export ban. You wouldn't be able to do it legally now. Indigos were thought to be near extinction, but in nineteen seventy-eight a flock of about seventy was discovered in the Raso. The World Parrot Trust is taking steps to preserve them, and getting good cooperation from the local people. Deborah loved the Raso. In Brazil she was a queen. She got respect for being a linguist. Here, nobody's interested. Parrots can be difficult, but it's easier to get funding for studying them in America than for studying people. Time for bed, Max.”