Six Geese A-Slaying(30)
“Down by Caerphilly Creek,” I said. “Let me guess: the oak tree was on Ralph Doleson’s property. By the Whispering Pines.”
“Near there,” she said. “But much closer to the Spare Attic. That off-site storage facility—did you know he owns that, too?”
“Yes,” I said. “Michael and I still have a bin there.”
“Why in the world would you need off-site storage with this place?” she asked, glancing up at our three-story house.
“We don’t,” I said. “We needed it before we moved, though, and Doleson wouldn’t rent month-to-month. Our final yearlong lease doesn’t run out till March.”
“That man is greed personified,” she said, shaking her head.
“ ‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone,’ ” I quoted. “ ‘A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!’ ”
“A Christmas Carol?” she said.
I nodded.
“I’ve been helping Michael rehearse.”
“Very apt,” she said. “I can’t help but think Ralph Doleson would be better cast as Scrooge than as Santa. Can you suggest that for next year?”
“Get back to the bald eagles,” I said. “They were nesting near the Spare Attic and . . .”
“We were going to put up an eagle cam,” she said. “You know—a web-based camera so people could watch the parent birds incubate the eggs, and then eventually observe the hatchlings. We had the camera, and some of those nice young men at your brother’s company did all the technical work to connect it to our Web site. But when we asked Ralph Doleson for permission to mount the camera on the roof of his building, he refused.”
“Did he give any reason?” I asked.
“No. It was just pure meanness,” she said. “It’s not that it was the only possible place to put it, but it was the only place we could get it installed without special equipment.”
“I can see how that would annoy SPOOR,” I said. “But isn’t all this talk of a boycott a little extreme?”
“If it had been just his refusal, yes,” she said. “We tried to explain the importance to him, and he refused again, so we made other arrangements.”
“What other arrangements?”
“It was your father’s idea,” she said.
I winced. I could picture Dad leading a contingent of SPOOR members on a daring midnight raid to install the webcam by stealth.
“He arranged to borrow Mr. Shiffley’s boom lift,” she said. “So we could put the camera in another nearby tree. But when we went out to do the installation, we found that someone had destroyed the nest.”
“Oh, no.”
“Including the two eggs.”
“Oh, dear,” I murmured. “That’s a pity.”
“It’s also a crime,” she said.
“I thought bald eagles were off the endangered species list?”
“They went from endangered to threatened in 1995, and were delisted entirely in 2007,” she said. “But they’re still covered by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.”
“Did you report him?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t prove it was Doleson,” she said. “We all knew it had to be, but we didn’t have any witnesses. So he’s going to get off scot free. There’s a lot of bad feeling about it among the membership. And then to hear he’d been chosen as Santa!”
“He wasn’t chosen, he was a legacy,” I said. “If I’d known about the eagles, I’d have vetoed him, but since no one told me anything about this before today . . .”
“I’ll tell everyone,” she said. “I think it will make a difference. I don’t think you have to worry about a boycott—I’ve pointed out that you weren’t around when the eagle slaying occurred and might not have known how unsuitable Ralph Dole-son was. But next year—”
“I don’t think you need to worry about next year,” I said. I saw Chief Burke standing nearby, frowning at the large number of costumed geese cavorting in the area. Since Minerva had taken his costume, he was back in his usual suit.
Ms. Ellie followed my eyes.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” I nodded.
“Was there a reason you were asking about Ralph Doleson? Is he—?
“Dead.”
“Oh, dear,” she repeated. “That’s terrible.”
“I thought you didn’t like him,” I said. I got the patented librarian stern look.
“I didn’t like him, but I didn’t wish him dead,” she said. “Just elsewhere. Is there some reason the chief’s paying particular attention to SPOOR? Apart from the fact that he knows very well how hard we tried to get Doleson arrested and how mad we were that we couldn’t?”