The Boreal Owl Murder by Jan Dunlap Read Free Book Online

National Forest, we ended up only feet apart. What are the odds of that happening, Stan? Even if you researched the same reports I did to find a Boreal, the odds against us being in the same place at the same time are astronomical. Do the math. You’re an accountant. On the other hand, I always let Lily know where I’m staying overnight when I go birding. As a precaution.”
    I leaned towards him, my voice going even lower.
    “Are you using Lily to keep track of my Boreal chase? Because if you are—”
    “Let’s go!” Lily said, practically hurtling out of her office to take Stan’s arm and pull him out the front door. “Lock up for me, will you, Bobby?”
    I stood on the front step and watched them climb into Stan’s top-of-the-line Lexus. The accounting business must be good, I thought. Or maybe it was his “contract work.” Then it dawned on me. Stan had denied he was a hit man for the mob or a former government agent.
    That didn’t mean he wasn’t currently a government agent.
    Or a sniper. Or crazy.
    Lily had neglected to include those options.
    I thought again about Stan’s spooky ability to show up without making a sound. For an accountant who supposedly spent the majority of his time at a desk in front of a computer, he’d sure looked fit in his bomber jacket and jeans when he’d left just now with Lily. I’d also gotten the impression on Saturday night that he’d been comfortable handling a rifle, which, I knew from very personal experience, he could shoot very accurately. At the same time, he wasn’t exactly a conversational wizard, if you know what I mean. I had yet to hear him utter a sentence with more than five words in it.
    Stay out of the forest or you’re next.
    Okay, eight words.
    Stan must have worked all night on that one.
    “No, Lily, I am not satisfied,” I announced to the empty parking lot. “Stan Miller is hiding something, and I think that makes him even scarier than he already was.”
    I walked to my car, avoiding the puddles of melting snow that covered the path to the parking area. A light breeze touched the back of my neck, and I decided to make one more stop before I headed home. Hopefully, it would help me forget about Stan Miller for a while and the fact that my sister was having dinner with a man more fluent when he wrote a threatening note than he was when making polite conversation.
    Five minutes later, I parked my scarlet tanager-red SUV next to the sewage ponds outside the old water treatment plant near the Minnesota River. I grabbed my binos from the glove compartment and scanned the water. I wanted to see if the thaw and breeze had drawn any new migrants in.
    Folks new to birding don’t realize that some of the best places to find rare birds, especially migratory ones, might not be out in the countryside, but right in towns. Sewage ponds are good examples: water that stays open year-round attracts birds. Over the years, I’ve found more than thirty occasional species (occasional meaning they are here in the state only sporadically) and even two lifers (birds people might see once in their life) right here at the sewage ponds, not even ten minutes from my town house.
    Sure enough, I spotted two migrants making an early haul back to their summer homes further north: a Greater White-fronted Goose and a Canvasback Duck. White-fronted Goose is almost a misnomer—this goose is actually gray, although it has a distinctive white area around the base of its bill. The “Greater” part is correct, however, since there really is a Lesser White-fronted Goose.
    Maybe Lily’s truth in advertising applies to geese, too.
    The Canvasback, on the other hand, has a perfect name: its back is the color of white canvas. Combined with its ruddy chestnut head (which Luce says reminds her of my hair color), it’s a real standout on the water. And if that weren’t enough to identify it, the Canvasback has an unmistakable profile: its head and bill form a long ski-jump that no other