The Puffin of Death by Betty Webb Page A

members of the Geronimo County Birding Association could more rightly top the suspect list, not him. The snag was that other than the tearful Dawn, I didn’t know them.
    A glance at the kitchen clock showed that it was nearing one, but I wasn’t at all sleepy, so instead of turning in, I went into the small living room and sat down at the desk. Upon firing up my laptop, I Googled the Geronimo County Birding Association. It took me a while to land on the right website because I spent the first few minutes stumbling through several Native American sites devoted to the old Apache warrior. I finally landed on the Geronimo County Birding Association website, illustrated by dozens of pictures of birds. When you clicked one, you could even hear its call. After listening to a few tweets and warbles, I moved onto the MEMBERS link, where I found a list of the organization’s twenty-seven members. By themselves, the names would have meant nothing to me, but fortunately, the site also featured a MEDIA link. I clicked on that, and found several articles from various Arizona newspapers about the club. The article that interested me most appeared on July 10 in the Geronimo County Ledger-Dispatch.
    POWERBALL WINNER TREATS
BIRDERS TO ICELAND
    by Max Avery
    Bird-watcher Simon Parr’s motto must be “My luck is your luck” because the winner of the largest Powerball payout in history—$610.3 million—is treating eight of his bird-watching friends to an all-expense-paid trip to Iceland.
    â€œThe coastal towns in Iceland see large groupings of varietals every August,” said Parr, in an interview at his Apache Crossing home. “There are the native birds, of course, like the whooping swan, razorbills, and puffins, but because the summer weather is so balmy and the winds so warm, birds from all over Europe and even the Middle East have been known to drop by.”
    When asked how he chose the lucky people who would be traveling to Iceland with him to see the varietals, Parr answered, “That was easy! I’ve been a member of the Geronimo County Birding Association for twenty-two years, and these are the members I’ve traveled with before to various birding sites—Cape May, New Jersey, the Florida Everglades, and once even to Patagonia, which is all the way down at the farthest tip of South America. Everyone paid their own way then, of course, but now that I have the money, why not treat my friends?”
    Those lucky people are Geronimo County residents Adele Cobb, Perry and Enid Walsh (Perry Walsh is the newly elected president of the Geronimos, as they are known), Benjamin and Dawn Talley, Lucinda Greaves, Judy Malone, and actor Tab Cooper. All, with the exception of Mrs. Talley, who only recently began accompanying the group on their bird-watching adventures, are longtime members of the Geronimos.
    Also accompanying the group to Iceland is Parr’s wife, the famed romantic suspense novelist, Elizabeth St. John. She and Parr have been married for 26 years, but because of her career demands, she hasn’t always been able to join her husband on his birding adventures.
    Both Parrs have already displayed a strong bent toward charity. In addition to treating his friends to the trip of a lifetime, Parr has donated $500,000 to the Apache Crossing Girls & Boys Club and a battered women’s shelter. Ms. St. John, whose books feature an archaeologist likened to “a female Indiana Jones,” long ago set up an archaeology scholarship at Arizona State University, but with her 50% share of the Powerball payout, is she has begun funding a sanctuary for abused circus animals.
    Included with the article was a group shot of the club. Although their faces were too small to be of much use for identification purposes, they all wore bright red windbreakers and matching baseball caps emblazoned with the initials “GCBA.” That wasn’t all. A sidebar listed the group’s touring