The Boreal Owl Murder by Jan Dunlap

really scary and he hates my guts, but he does not make threatening phone calls. What a gem, huh?”
    Of course, that also meant one of two things: one—either my bird feeder note wasn’t from Stan at all, but instead was from the anonymous caller, or two—Stan and the caller were working together. The caller did say “we.” But if Stan hadn’t penned the note, then someone else had, and if that were the case, then I had to conclude that the note and the phone call were connected, which meant that at least two people—the “we” in question—I couldn’t identify were trying to keep me away from the owls.
    Bottom line: regardless of whether or not Stan was involved, I was now the subject of a group project.
    And that begged the question: What’s the assignment?
     
     

Chapter Nine
     
    By Wednesday afternoon, I was beginning to think I might have made a mistake by bargaining with Mr. Lenzen to use my personal days. Maybe I should have taken the suspension, after all. And thanked him, too.
    Kim had followed Lindsay in my office, and by the end of the day, I’d seen them both three times—twice individually and the third time, together. Talk about drama. I had a headache that wouldn’t quit, and my semester’s supply of tissue boxes was decimated. I thought if I had to be a sympathetic listener for one more minute, I would probably rip my counseling license from the wall and gleefully feed it to the paper shredder tucked under my desk.
    Which wouldn’t work, anyway.
    The shredder, I mean. It had been broken for months. But even if it did work, shredding my license wouldn’t stop me from being a counselor. Because even when the students made me crazy, there really wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be working. Despite the drama, I love the job. And when I love something, I can’t give it up.
    Like birding. Even when I’ve gotten anonymous letters and phone calls telling me to quit.
    In between the soggy acts of the Kim and Lindsay show, I’d been playing telephone tag with Knott, and it was almost three-thirty in the afternoon before we finally connected. I told him what Alan had told me about the war in the woods and spiked trees. He said they’d also found a rather large hammer in a melting puddle of snow at the base of one of the trees and were hoping to get some fingerprints, though he thought the possibility of being that lucky was pretty slim. I apologized for not telling him about my phone conversation with Rahr and promised to answer all his questions when I got to Duluth the next day.
    “They better be good answers,” he warned me. “You held back on me, Bob. That doesn’t make me real happy.” I could hear his chair squeaking. “You got a day off?”
    “Yeah. It’s in lieu of an official suspension by my assistant principal. I guess I’m a public relations liability at the moment.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Because a certain detective called to verify my whereabouts last Friday and apparently used the words ‘murder’ and ‘suspect’ in the same sentence, which gave my boss a minor stroke, which he took out on me in the form of a suspension, which I managed to reduce to a ‘pending’ suspension.”
    “Oh. Sorry.” He paused. “Do you get paid during a suspension?”
    “Some, I think.”
    “But you’d rather not have to find out, I’m guessing?”
    “That’s right. So I’m taking tomorrow and Friday as personal days off to come up to Duluth to redeem myself with both you and my boss, except he doesn’t know that, yet. I’m counting on the influence of that same detective to make sure I’m back at my desk on Monday.”
    “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.” Knott must have been tilting back in his chair, because I could hear more squeaking over the phone line. “It’s a deal. Can you make it here by lunch tomorrow?”
    We made plans to meet at Grandma’s down by the harbor at noon. I figured I’d get an early start and swing by the university