EQMM 2007-02 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A BIRD IN THE SAND by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch’s professional couriers Stanton and Ives are off to a bird sanctuary in Arizona in the following new episode in their series. The research Mr. Hoch does for this and other series is truly astonishing—especially when one considers that he has written nearly 950 published stories, and many of them have exotic or historical settings. His writing has made him an accomplished “armchair” traveler, with only his home library to guide him.

The fact that Ives and I were flying west with a large white cockatoo didn’t mean we were saving on air fare. We were on a commercial airliner along with the bird, who seemed notably unimpressed to have a seat to itself with the seatbelt fastened snugly around its cage. Mrs. Wineworth had insisted that the bird make the trip with the human passengers rather than be consigned to a dark and chilly baggage compartment, and we’d tried three airlines before we found one that would allow it.

So the cockatoo, whose name was Eddy, sat between Ives and me in row five, a drape over its cage to keep it from chattering away to the other passengers. “I’ve had Eddy since my husband died twelve years ago,” Mrs. Wineworth had explained that day in our little office on Broadway at 12th Street. “But these days I have enough trouble caring for myself. They tell me Eddy could live to be fifty years old, and I’ll be long gone by then. I want to know he’ll be looked after when I’m gone. I hear there’s a place in Arizona….”

Indeed there was a place in Arizona, more than one, in fact. We were heading for the Mission Bird Sanctuary, southwest of Tucson, where a small group of dedicated folks had established a community for rare tropical birds in a former mission church. Mrs. Wineworth wasn’t about to entrust her beloved Eddy to a package delivery company, so she came to Stanton & Ives.

“I don’t like it,” Juliet Ives grumbled. “We’ve never had to transport a live creature before.”

“It’s only a bird,” I reminded her, dismissing the complaint. “If you weren’t so finicky you could have done it alone while I stayed in Manhattan drumming up new business.”

We left the plane at the Tucson airport with the temperature over ninety and Ives carrying the birdcage. I’d arranged for a rental car to take us over the dusty back roads to the mission. We headed out Route 86 with the cockatoo in the backseat. He’d stayed quiet for most of the trip, but once we turned onto the rutted dirt road near San Pedro he started squawking. “Hello … what happened? … cracker.”

“Give him a cracker, Ives,” I suggested, “but don’t let him nip your fingers.”

“Easy for you to say!”

After twenty minutes of driving through a desert region of cactuses and mesquites the old mission loomed ahead of us on the horizon. “There’s smoke off to the west,” I observed. “It’s been a dry summer here, with some brush fires.

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