He dashed back to his van, reached in, and pulled out something. I saw Zeke shift the shotgun a little, but the object the falconer was pulling out was one of those magnetic signs people use when they want to advertise their business without doing a permanent paint job on a vehicle. In black letters on a red background, it read SOME LIKE IT HAWK: NATURAL PEST CONTROL. CHARLES DOANE, PROPRIETOR.
“Interesting,” Grandfather said. “So you have a lot of hawks?”
“Just the one,” Doane said. He opened the driver-side rear door to show us a large cage containing a hooded hawk. “Sheba.”
“Red-tailed hawk,” Grandfather said—to me or possibly Zeke, since presumably Doane knew what kind of bird he had, and Caroline had been fostering assorted injured raptors for decades. “Not a bad specimen.”
Doane beamed proudly as Grandfather peered in at the hawk.
“No offense,” I said, “but exactly how is one hawk supposed to tackle a major pigeon infestation? Unless it eats a lot more than the average bird, it could probably only chow down on a pigeon or two a day. That wouldn’t even slow down the growth of a real infestation. Unless Sheba’s the advance scout for a whole army of hawks you plan on bringing along now that you’ve scouted things out.”
“No, one or two hawks should be fine for most bird abatement jobs,” he said. “Pigeons aren’t dumb. They figure out most of the things we do to chase them away—all those ultrasonic noisemakers and hawk profiles and such. They get used to them. But a natural predator—that they don’t get used to. Once they learn a hawk is flying the territory, they leave.”
“And the pigeon problem is gone, as long as you and your hawk are around,” I said.
“Once you convince the pigeons that an area’s not safe, they pretty much avoid it,” he said. “I’d only have to come out once or twice a week to keep the area clear.”
“Any reason they were having you disguised as a guard?” I asked.
“It wasn’t supposed to be a disguise,” he said. “Mr. Fisher—he’s the one who hired me—he asked if I would mind wearing the company uniform. I have T-shirts with my company name on it, but he didn’t think that would go over well with his management—he said some of them can be real sticklers for decorum. Plus, he thought if I just blended in with the security staff, I’d be less of a target if any of the locals were softhearted. And he even agreed they’d pay me a beginning security officer’s salary on top of my company’s fee, and it included the uniforms and laundry service so…”
He shrugged.
“They probably thought you’d be a more menacing figure in the uniform,” I said.
“Menacing? Me?” His voice squeaked slightly.
“So you had no idea what was going on when they hired you,” I said. “But you’ve figured it out now?”
“Not really,” he said. “All I know is that they’re pretty frantic to get that guy out of the cellar. They think there’s a secret passage he’s using to get in and out, and there’s a standing reward of ten thousand dollars if anyone finds it. A few of the security officers spend all their free time tapping on walls.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. What if they branched out from tapping on walls on the inside of the courthouse to probing for tunnels on the lawn outside?
“If they find any, the Caerphilly County Historical Society would love to hear about it,” I said aloud. “I’m afraid they find the courthouse embarrassingly lacking in local color. No ghosts, no secret passages.”
“Well, they’ve got a murder now,” Caroline said. “That should keep them happy.”
“No.” I shook my head. “If it happened a century ago, maybe, but a grisly modern murder—that’s not local color, it’s scandal.”
“You’re probably right,” Caroline said. “Well, time’s a-wasting. Let’s take care of these pigeons.”
Doane frowned. He threw the magnetic sign back on the passenger-side seat of his van and straightened up.
“Just what do you plan to do with those pigeons?” he asked.
“Put ’em in a cage where they’ll be safe until Phinny Throckmorton can claim them again,” Caroline said.
“He probably thought we were going to feed them to our raptors,” Grandfather said.
“Kid, you’ve been hanging around the wrong people,” Caroline said. “Why don’t you quit that horrible job?”
“I would if I could get another one that would let me pay the rent and feed Sheba.”