Chapter 6: Trouble in Paradise

I awoke with a start. I’d been dreaming about Charlie Goins and the Canadian peacock killer. I rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen for coffee. I sat on my balcony overlooking the bay, sipping from my mug and thinking about my dream.

My job as the head of the Longboat Key police department’s major crimes division is to keep the islanders safe from terrorists, car burglars and the occasional rabid raccoon. It is often a thankless job.

It had been three days since I’d seen Charlie and the Canadian peacock killer slipping out of the Town Commission’s workshop, obviously enjoying themselves and each other. I was beginning to think that maybe the two of them were in cahoots and were fomenting the chaos that seemed to have overtaken the island over the past few days. I had stayed clear of the town politics, which were at times more byzantine than even the Florida legislature’s.

The mayor had finally given in and ordered a portable toilet to be set up near the crosswalk at the Centre Shoppes where the Occupy GMD people were encamped. Somebody blew it up the first night.

A jurisdictional issue had erupted between the town and the Florida Department of Transportation over who should clean up the mess. The town’s position was that GMD was a state road and therefore not the town’s problem. The FDOT took the position that this was a sewage matter and therefore within the town’s purview. A stalemate had ensued and the mess had remained for the past three days. The good news was that the demonstrators had moved on to another crosswalk, but the bad news was that the Centre Shops had closed down until the jurisdictional issue was settled and the mess cleaned up.

I called Charlie. “This is Jake Bass. We need to talk.”

“How do I know you’re really Jake Bass?”

“Charlie, your paranoia is getting worse.”

“Yeah, but paranoia can save your life. Who’s your best friend?”

“You’re in the top 10.”

“Good to hear from you, Jake.”

“You’re sure I’m me?”

“Pretty sure. Nobody else would know that I’m one of your best friends. What did you want to talk about?”

“The Canadian peacock killer.”

“Bad guy.”

“At the commission workshop, it looked to me like you two were friends.”

“All part of my plan, Jake.”

“What plan?”

“My plan to infiltrate the Canadian-Bradenton Beach cabal.”

“There’s a cabal?”

“The good people of Bradenton Beach recalled their mayor, didn't they?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah, but a few months later they voted him back in.”

“See?”

“See what?”

“The Canadians are calling the tune up there. We need that border wall.”

“How’s the infiltration going?”

“Pretty well. I’ve got them convinced I’m a Canadian.”

“How did you do that?”

“I started saying ‘aboot’ instead of ‘about.’ I was immediately accepted.”

“Charlie, do you know anything about more of the peacocks disappearing from the village?”

“Not really.”

“One of the Village peacock lovers called about the disappearance of some of the birds. She said there had been no sign of the peacock catchers hired by the town, but there are fewer birds than they were a few days ago.”

 “Jake, have you noticed that the wings they’re serving at the Longboat Hooters are extra large?”

“They’re buying bigger chickens, I guess.”

“Did you know that peacocks taste a lot like chicken?”

“No. How do you know?”

“I ate some of those extra large wings while I was over there ogling last night.”

“And they tasted like chicken?”

“Yes.”

“Then what makes you think they weren’t chicken wings?”

“I think the Canadian-Bradenton Beach cabal is catching the peacocks and selling their feathers. You can’t have a bunch of plucked peacocks running around the village. That could get those people in another uproar. So they just kill the pesky things and sell the wings to the mayor to use at her Hooters franchise.”

“I still don’t see how you connect the extra large wings that taste like chicken to the alleged disappearance of peacocks.”

“I found a peacock feather still attached to one of my wings. Almost ate the darned thing, but it tickled my nose when I started to put it in my mouth.”

“You weren’t paying much attention to what you were eating?”

“I told you I was ogling. They got some pretty girls working there.”

“This is starting to sound like a case for the major crimes division.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

I got dressed and went to meet the Village peacock lover who was concerned about the disappearing birds. I knew her. I’d once arrested her for siccing her Rottweiler on a peacock. At first I couldn’t prove it, but after hiding in some bushes across the street from her house for three days, I saw a peacock slip into her yard and peck her car. She had been hiding in some shrubbery at the corner of her house and immediately gave an attack signal to the dog.

The peacock was old and sickly and couldn’t run very fast. The dog was on it in a flash. Good-bye peacock. Three days later the dog died from a disease often found in sick peacocks. The old woman was so traumatized that she began to protect the peacocks. She didn’t want any more of them to get sick and pose a threat to her new dog, a nasty little Chihuahua. We dropped the charges.

“I think my neighbor is behind the disappearance of the peacocks,” she said after we were seated in her living room with a pot of luke-warm tea.

“Why do you think that?”

“She and I used to be part of the anti-peacock movement. When I changed sides, she stopped speaking to me. She always sticks her tongue out at me when I see her in Publix.”

“Do you have any evidence that she’s involved in getting rid of the birds?”

“Well, she used to be married to a Canadian. Or maybe he was a Michigander. They’re all the same, you know.”

I left her house, intending to interview her neighbor, but events cascaded into more chaos, and I was called to the scene of another blown-up portable toilet at the crosswalk at the south end of the Key.