The Blood Ballad (3 page)

“What am I supposed to write down? The only birds I know when I see them are a cardinal and a blue jay. All of those brown birds just sort of look alike. So, what am I supposed to write down? ‘Three brown birds with stripes'? ‘One brown bird with a white belly'? I have no clue what I'm doing.”

“Then I suggest you go and purchase a bird-identification book. They've got them in the visitors center.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because we're right on the river, and evidently this is a hot spot for birds. I'm told that we have one of the few groups of Eurasian tree sparrows in the country.”

I just stared at her. “Why aren't you going on the birding Olympics?”

“Because I don't have a stepfather who hates me,” she said and smiled. “Now, you really need to be at the Gaheimer House, because I'm supposed to be covering this house.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.” I grabbed my purse and jacket and headed for the door. “By the way, Rachel starts giving tours at the Gaheimer House next week.”

“I know,” she said. “She called and told me.”

“Okay, then. I'm off to buy a bird book.”

“Oh, wait, one more thing. Somebody named…” she began, stammering. She thunked her forehead with her finger and then smiled. “Glen Morgan called.”

“Glen Morgan? Should I know him?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “He said he needed to speak to you about our grandpa's music. Or something to that effect. He wouldn't tell me anything. He said he could only speak to you. Even after I told him that he was my grandpa, too.”

Our grandpa had been one of the premier fiddle players of southeast Missouri in his day. His day would have been a long time ago—like during the twenties. There were few people left alive who remembered him unless they were related or a musicologist. Since I knew everyone who was related to him within three generations, I figured Mr. Morgan had to be a musicologist.

“You look clueless,” Stephanie said.

“I'll call him Sunday, after the Olympics.”

“He didn't leave a number. He said he'd call back.”

I thought about it a moment and wondered what he could possibly want. I was always on the lookout for new photographs of my family or any new tidbit of information, so, mostly, my interest was piqued and I couldn't wait to hear what he had to say. There was a part of me, though, that kept thinking I ought to know the name Glen Morgan. It nudged and tickled at the back of my brain, but my poor brain was either too tired or too stubborn to turn loose any knowledge of one Glen Morgan. So I'd just have to wait until he called back.

“If he calls tomorrow, tell him to try me on my cell phone.”

“You're taking your cell phone to the birding Olympics? If Eleanore finds out, she will have a cow.”

“Well then, call the
National Enquirer,
because Eleanore can just have a cow. Maybe she'll have a two-headed cow, but there is no way in hell I'm going to be out in the woods for twenty-four hours without a way to contact the outside world. Besides, it's not like Eleanore's going to be right beside me the whole time.”

“All right, I'll give him the message.”

I gave her a quick hug and left.

Tobias Thorley was working at the visitors center when I entered it at just a few minutes past eleven. Tobias was a skinny, wiry man with a hook nose, and he could play an accordion better than anybody for a hundred miles. Okay, well, he was probably the only accordion player within a hundred miles, but still. He was very good and had been entertaining the tourists of New Kassel since the 1970s. He was also a plant expert and an amazing gardener. “Hi, Tobias. How are you? Ready for Christmas?”

He rolled his eyes. “Don't feel like Christmas. It's too warm.”

“I know.” It had been unseasonably warm for the past few winters. Even though we might get a cold spell and snow now and then, the overall winter was nearly nonexistent. Not like when I was a kid, or even ten years ago. A person used to be able to ice-skate on ponds or lakes in this area in the winter, but not in the past few years. Very sad, when you think about it. “Look, I'm here to get a bird-identification book.”

“Sure thing,” he said and handed me two of them. “I'd get this one.”

I looked at both of them and went with his suggestion, because, well, he was Tobias and knew all sorts of things that I didn't. I trusted his judgment. “Are there really this many kinds of birds in eastern Missouri?”

“Sure. Not all at the same time, though. You need to look at the map; it will tell you their winter range.”

“Oh, I gotcha.” About that time, a bird landed on the patio outside the door. “What kind of bird is that?”

“Starling. Female.”

“You mean you can tell the difference between male and female?”

“Some birds,” he said. “So, you're participating in the Olympics, I'm taking it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And you?”

“Yup. I'll be there.”

“Should I take a sleeping bag and a tent?”

“There's no sleeping,” he said. “Otherwise, you'd miss all the owls. And bats.”

“Bats? Bats are birds? We have bats?”

“Of course we have bats, and no, bats aren't birds, but I think they're nifty to watch anyway.”

“Well, for my sake, I hope we don't see any bats.”

He laughed at me and then said, “So, you ready to put in that garden this spring?”

Smiling, I tucked the bird book in my purse. “If you will help me, I'm up for it.”

“Good,” he said. I'm not a plant person at all. I loved my grandparents' farm, and I could spend hours in their orchard. I used to eat Grandma's strawberries right out of the patch. Either the green thumb gene passed me up or I never gave it a full chance. Well, after last year's successful rose show, I decided I wanted to plant things at my new house. Tobias was my most obvious choice for help, because the man could get anything to grow in the worst conditions.

I headed for the Gaheimer House, which was just down a few blocks on the main road in town, called River Pointe Road. Most of the townsfolk and shop owners were busy getting the Christmas decorations up because this weekend was our big holiday kickoff. Many people disagree with me, but I've made it a point not to decorate until the first weekend in December because I believe that Thanksgiving should be its own separate holiday. We all took a vote one year and the majority—surprisingly—agreed with me. So the big New Kassel decorating frenzy doesn't happen until the first Thursday and Friday of December. Saturday would be the beginning of our choir festival, while I would be out in the surrounding woods, hunched down with binoculars, looking for birds.

My stepfather, Colin Brooke, was walking down the street just as I reached the Gaheimer House. Colin used to be the sheriff in town, and now he was the mayor. Which was sort of good and sort of bad. It was good that the old mayor was gone and it was good that Colin was no longer in my hair as acting sheriff. That meant that he could no longer arrest me, which has happened more times than you would think. If you think being arrested by the man who will eventually become your stepfather doesn't put a strain on your relationship, it does. At any rate, it was good that he was no longer in a position to arrest me. It was bad because he was absolutely bored at being mayor and he had to be mayor for another two years. If Colin is bored, he makes everybody else miserable. But I had news for him. The townspeople—myself included—really liked the new sheriff, and so if he thought when his term as mayor was over that he'd just waltz back into his old job of sheriff, he just might get surprised.

“Hello, Torie.”

“Just keep walking. I'm not speaking to you today.”

“What did I do?”

“You got me into this birding Olympics,” I said.

He laughed, and I wanted to hit him. Colin was a big guy—ridiculously tall and casting shadows all about all the time. My mother fed him way too well, and as if he hadn't been big enough before, he'd now “filled out” to his capacity. Any more “filling out” and I could officially call him overweight, but he just hovered on the edge. On one hand, I felt sorry for him. My mother was the greatest cook in the world, and anybody would expand their normal boundaries while living with her.

“Hey, I'm going to be there, too,” he said.

“You are?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Oh, great. So, how exactly does this work?”

“We split up into groups of two. One looks for the birds; the other one writes down the birds they see. Simple as that.”

“Do we move around, or stay in one place?”

“That's up to the birders. Everybody has their own secret way of doing things. I've even been told that Eleanore brings a bag of sunflower seeds to entice the birds.”

“Is that cheating?”

He shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Who's my partner?”

“Call Eleanore and ask her.”

“Who are you with?” I asked.

“I'm with Elmer,” he said and rubbed his hands together. Elmer Kolbe, our semiretired fire chief, is a renowned outdoorsman. “I smell victory.”

Victory was actually my real first name. There was a joke in there somewhere, but I was entirely too irritated to find it. “Great,” I said. “May the best birder win.”

With that, I entered the Gaheimer House and shut the door behind me. Colin and I actually had more in common than one would think. We both loved my mother, we both hated bad guys, and we both thought the other was the most irritating person on the planet. It was enough to keep the family get-togethers civil. And besides, my kids were crazy about him, and it's difficult to dislike somebody entirely if your kids like him. Basically, we'd given up on all-out animosity and settled in a precarious relationship based on annoyance.

I kept myself busy for the next few hours. I called my local costume maker and ordered two dresses for Rachel to give the tours in. One was a Civil War–era costume. Since discovering that the Gaheimer House was part of the Underground Railroad, we had focused a little more on the Civil War era when giving the tours of the house. I also had a dress commissioned for her from the turn of the twentieth century. Rachel was small, so there was no way she could fit into my dresses or Stephanie's, or even any of Sylvia's old dresses, so I figured I might as well get her a few made for herself.

Around four o'clock that afternoon Eleanore Murdoch knocked on the back door. I answered it, wondering what had brought her to the Gaheimer House. Eleanore and I are not enemies per se, but we try to avoid each other whenever possible. She's outlandish, large, speaks in riddles half the time, and wears color-coordinated hats and socks with every outfit. Most of the time, her jewelry and her clothing have a food- or flower-related theme. Today, it was poinsettias. She had big red poinsettias appliquéd on her blouse and a black hat with a red plastic poinsettia sticking out of it. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike her for her appearance; in fact, she can liven up any room. We just sort of clash.

“Hi, Torie,” she said. “I just came by to let you know that you will be my partner for the birding Olympics. I expect my partners to be on time and quiet. Be at the park a half hour before six.”

I blinked. After I'd gotten over the cruel joke of the universe that I'd be spending the next twenty-four hours with her, I said, “The Olympics do not start until six in the morning.”

“Exactly why you must be there a half hour early. We must prepare and meditate.”

“‘Meditate'?”

“Become one with nature.”

“Why?”

“It will draw the birds to us.”

“Meditating will draw the birds to us?”

“Yes. They will feel our presence and will know that we mean them no harm, and they will come and be curious. And then you will write them down on our sheet. After I've identified them, of course.”

“But…”

“No buts, Torie. We shall be the champions.”

“Right,” I said, with the lyrics to the Queen song running through my head. Bet Freddie Mercury never thought his song would be the anthem for a bunch of crazy birders in Missouri.

“We shall be triumphant,” she said, raising her head a notch.

“Right,” I said. “Wait, Eleanore, I have question. Why are we doing the Olympics in the winter? Wouldn't we see more birds in the summer?”

“Well, there is a birding Olympics in the summer, too. We've just never participated in it. This is our first year, and I am so excited!” She took a deep breath and continued. “Basically, it's just a fun way to track the migration patterns of different bird species during the winter.”

“Why?”

“Because the birds that live here in the winter are different from the ones in the summer. Some are the same, obviously. But some are different. At the end of the Olympics, we turn all of our data in to the local birding chapter, which then turns the data in to whatever university was sponsoring it.”

“I gotcha,” I said.

“By the way, I have some photographs to give you from the horse show we had awhile back. I'll bring them tomorrow.” My mind was still reeling with how impressed I was with Eleanore's knowledge of birds, so I didn't really pick up what she was saying when she shook her finger at me, showing off her rambunctious red fingernail polish.

“Oh, and no bright colors. Blend.”

“Blend.” Did Eleanore really just tell me to blend?

“Tah tah, see you in the morning.”

I shut the door and banged my head on the pane of glass. I closed up the Gaheimer House, picked up pizza from Chuck's, went home, scarfed my dinner, and went to bed. I let Rudy take care of the nighttime routine on this night, since I had to get up at like four in the morning. The next twenty-four hours were going to be the longest twenty-four hours of my life.