The Kiskadee of Death Read Online Free Page A

opposite shore through my binoculars. I wondered if there were any other park specials hiding along the shore.
    â€œIs that an overturned canoe?” Luce asked. She was apparently looking at the same thing I’d just focused on. “And… an alligator sunning next to it?
    â€œCorrect on both counts, my dear,” I said. “I guess that definitively answers your earlier question, too.”
    The alligator opened his reptilian eyes and I got a good look at the beast’s broad head. I continued to study the canoe behind him, wondering where it had come from on the little lake and why someone had left it overturned. A second later, I lowered my binos and used the corner of my shirt to wipe the lenses clean before raising the glasses back to my eyes.
    Crap.
    I wasn’t seeing a smudge on my lens, after all.
    That really was a man’s hiking boot sticking out from beneath the end of the canoe.
    A boot attached to a leg.
    â€œI’m on vacation,” I muttered. “I don’t have time for this.”
    I laid my binoculars on my chest and turned to the group of birders beside me.
    â€œDoes anybody have cell phone reception out here? Because we need to call the park office and the police,” I announced. “I think we’ve just added a dead man to today’s park list.”
    Â 

 
    Chapter Two
    T hank you for your calm reaction when you realized you’d stumbled on another body,” Luce said to me an hour or so later as we sat down at a table on the park’s observation deck.
    â€œI live to serve,” I responded half-heartedly, “though acting as a dead person locator service is not one of my preferred job descriptions. Especially when I’m supposed to be on vacation,” I added pointedly.
    Luce patted my hand and continued.
    â€œYou did good, Bobby,” she reassured me. “Given the ages of those birders, we may have had a couple of heart attacks on our hands if, instead, you’d yelled ‘Call the cops! That’s a dead body!’ I mean, you and I have been down this road before, adding a dead man to our birding lists, but for these folks,” she nodded at the elderly birders on the deck, “I’m sure it’s a novel experience.”
    â€œI sure hope so,” I muttered. “I’d hate to have to tell the next generation of birders that they should consider taking courses in forensics before they venture out into the field.”
    Although that was exactly what I’d started to think might be a good idea for myself.
    With my body count now up to eight over the last few years, I was beginning to harbor the suspicion that maybe I was in the wrong business with my job as a high school counselor. The idea of making a career out of searching for bodies was not one that filled me with excitement, though I had to admit, I could generally depend on finding more avian rarities when I was trying to help the police solve a murder case than I ever could manage from my tiny broom closet of an office at Savage High School. If I had my career planning to do over again, I’d for sure look at double majoring in forensics and natural history.
    Today’s body, we learned, belonged to Birdy Johnson, Buzz Davis’s birding buddy. After our 911 call to the local authorities, a flock of park personnel had descended on us at Alligator Lake, quickly followed by a swarm of the Weslaco city police and a squad of emergency vehicles. One of the park maintenance men had put a small boat in the water and ferried the police chief across the lake to the abandoned canoe. Upon their approach, the alligator slipped off into the water and sought a quieter shore for sunning, leaving them gator-less access to the scene.
    Within minutes, the two men were back on our side of the lake with grim faces and an ID of the dead man.
    â€œIt’s Birdy Johnson,” the police chief announced to the assembled group. “I need all you folks