“I think maybe he has known her all his life. Poachers steal eggs from nests in the wild and then sell them for a profit to people like Corina, who hatch the eggs and raise them by hand. The more exotic and rare the bird, the more it’s worth. So Corina smuggles some birds out of Guatemala, sells them to a dealer here in Florida, and that dealer turns around and sells them to collectors and exotic pet stores for a handsome profit. Pound for pound, a bird like René is probably worth more than cocaine, gold, or even diamonds. On the black market, he could easily go for thirty or forty thousand dollars, possibly more.”
“So that explains the cash in her purse.”
“Yeah. She had probably already sold one bird, and I think she was on her way to deliver René to another dealer that morning we found her, but then there was a little snag in her plans. Remember the doctor said she was at least a month premature?”
Joyce shook her head again. “She probably thought she’d be back home in Guatemala by the time she had the baby.”
“Yeah, and with enough money stashed away to raise her right.”
She smiled wanly. “I think maybe we just figured out why they call it a nest egg.”
21
Joyce and I were perched shoulder to shoulder on the hood of her car, trying to figure out what we should do about Corina and the resplendent quetzal. I have to admit, I was at a complete and utter loss. I kept waiting for Joyce’s inner marine to take over and start handing out orders, but I think she must have been having as much difficulty as I was figuring out what in the world our next step should be.
In spite of everything, I didn’t want to make things harder for Corina than they already were, and I knew Joyce was feeling the same way. I kept thinking about what Corina’s life must have been like in Guatemala, how terrible the conditions must have been—terrible enough to compel her to take on such a dangerous, high-risk job. And what if she was caught? Smuggling an endangered species from one country to another is an international crime. I shuddered to think what would happen if Corina was arrested. She’d end up in prison, and then where would her baby be? How in the world could she have been so reckless? But I knew the answer. I would have done the same thing for my daughter if it meant the difference between feeding her or letting her go hungry.
Still, I couldn’t ignore the fact that what Corina was doing was not only illegal, it was unethical. It went against everything I believe in. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing while an innocent, endangered animal was passed from person to person for money with little or no regard for its well-being.
Finally we decided the best thing would be to try to convince Corina that what she was doing was wrong, and that if she agreed to stop, we would do everything in our power to help her and her baby, even if that meant letting her stay at Joyce’s rent free until she was able to get herself back on her feet.
As for whether or not it was wrong that we weren’t immediately reporting Corina to the police, we decided to leave unanswered for now.
Joyce stood up. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road. My ice cream is melting.”
We unloaded the rest of the groceries and brought them up the walk to the front porch. Joyce pushed the door open with her foot, and Henry the VIII came prancing in from the living room. He raced around our legs barking a mile a minute while we carried everything into the kitchen. I think he must have been trying to tell us what we’d missed while Joyce had been shopping.
I put the last of the bags on the counter, and Joyce fished out a pint of ice cream and put it in the freezer. “The rest of this can wait. I’ll go wake her up.”
She disappeared down the hall while I sat down on the couch and braced myself. Henry the VIII jumped into my lap and pawed at my hand, trying to get me to pet him.
From down the hallway, Joyce let out a little laugh and then I heard, “Ay dios mío.”
As I rubbed Henry the VIII behind the ears, I wondered how angry or afraid Corina would be when she heard what we had to say. I didn’t think she was capable of violence, but I also knew that anybody, animal or human, can be pretty unpredictable when backed into a corner. I hoped she would understand that we were only looking out for her best interest, but I wasn’t sure how easy it was going to be to get her to see that.
Joyce said, “Hey, Dixie, why don’t you come back here?”
Henry the VIII jumped off my lap and went scampering down the hall ahead of me. Joyce was leaning in the doorway of Corina’s bedroom with a sad smile on her face.
“She’s gone.”
The room had been meticulously cleaned. The bedspread was completely smooth, its corners neatly tucked in, and the pillows were leaned up against the headboard with their edges perfectly parallel to one another. Lined up on the edge of the bed and organized in neat piles were all of the things I had bought for the baby. The clothes, the diapers, the creams, the bottles, the blankets. Everything.
On the dresser in front of the mirror was Joyce’s antique birdcage. It was as clean as if René had never existed, and inside, leaning against one of the little wooden perches, was a plain white envelope. Joyce opened the cage door and pulled it out. Written in a childish hand on its face were the words I’M SORRY.
We both slumped down on the bed and sat numbly for a minute or so.
Finally Joyce said, “Well, I guess I better open it.”
She slid her fingers across the flap of the envelope and took a deep breath.
There was no letter inside.
Just two slightly wrinkled thousand-dollar bills.
* * *
I have a theory about cats. It’s based on my own ranking system, which I call the Kitty Craziness Factor, or KCF. It measures the level of feline loopiness in a household—like how much racing up and down the stairs there is, or climbing on furniture and pouncing on imaginary mice. The higher the Kitty Craziness Factor, the more loopiness. So in a household where the KCF is high, there might be, for example, spelunking down the living room curtains or skydiving off the refrigerator.
The process of determining the Kitty Craziness Factor is pretty simple. You just count the number of cats. A household with only one cat has a KCF of one. A household with two cats has a KCF of two. A household with three cats has a KCF of seven. I don’t know why a household with three cats has more than three times the loopiness of a household with only two cats, but it’s a scientific fact.
Betty and Grace Piker were two retired sisters who had a long-standing agreement with each other. If one found a cat and wanted to bring it home, the other would stop her—using physical force if necessary. They had seven cats, all rescues. It wasn’t even possible to measure the KCF in their household; it was completely off the charts.
The Piker sisters had gone to Orlando to visit their niece, who had just given birth. They were only staying for the day, so all I needed to do was check on the cats and feed them. The sisters were planning on being back home that evening.
All the cats were napping when I arrived, so things were relatively subdued. I washed out the food bowls and lined them up in a row on the kitchen counter. In each bowl I mixed a cup of dry cat kibble with just a little warm water from the tap. Then I opened the cabinet and pulled out a can of sardines.
Suddenly all seven cats stampeded into the kitchen, circling at my feet and bleating excitedly. I hadn’t even opened the can yet. I could swear they knew the sound it made when it clinked down on the countertop.
As I distributed the bowls around the kitchen to give everybody a little elbow room to dine in private, I felt like Dame Wiggins of Lee, a character from one of the books my grandmother used to read to me when I was a little girl. The book had been a gift to me from my brother on my very first birthday. Dame Wiggins had seven wonderful cats that could all cook and sew. When they weren’t outside ice-skating on the pond or flying kites, they were inside helping Dame Wiggins of Lee with all her daily chores.