“It’s a grebe,” Rachel corrected.
“You can put this visit on his bill.” Ryan.
“You know, I’ve never heard that one before.” Rachel could be as deadpan as Ryan. “Now. What’s this about a dead bird?”
Keeping details to a minimum, I explained the situation.
“I’m not top-drawer with bones, but I’m crackerjack with feathers. Let’s go into my lab.”
If Rachel’s office held a few dozen genera of birds, her lab was home to the entire Linnaean lineup. Kestrels. Shrikes. Moorhens. Condors. Hummingbirds. Penguins. There was even a stuffed kiwi in a glass-fronted cabinet at the far end.
Rachel led us to a black-topped worktable and I spread the bones on it. Raising half-moon glasses from her bosom to her nose, she poked through the assemblage.
“Looks like Psittacidae.”
“I thought so, too,” said Ryan.
Rachel did not look up.
“Parrot family. Cockatoos, macaws, loris, lovebirds, parakeets.”
“I had a pip of a parakeet when I was a kid,” said Ryan.
“Did you?” said Rachel.
“Named him Pip.”
Rachel glanced at me, and the chains on her half-moons swung in unison.
I pointed to my temple and shook my head.
Returning her attention to the table, Rachel selected the breastbone and gave it an appraising look.
“Probably a macaw of some sort. Too bad we don’t have the skull.”
A flashback. Larabee speaking of the headless passenger.
“Too small for a hyacinth’s. Too big for a red-shouldered.”
Rachel turned the sternum over and over in her hands, than laid it on the table.
“Let’s see the feathers.”
I unzipped the baggie and shook out the contents. Rachel’s eyes dropped back to the table.
If a woman can lock up, Rachel did it. For several seconds not a molecule of her being moved. Then, reverently, she reached out and picked up one feather.
“Oh, my.”
“What?”
Rachel gaped at me like I’d just pulled a nickel from her ear.
“Where did you get these?”
I repeated my explanation about the farmhouse basement.
“How long were they down there?”
“I don’t know.”
Rachel carried the feather to a work counter, pulled two strands from it, placed them on a glass slide, dropped liquid onto them, poked and repositioned them with the tip of a needle, blotted, and added a cover slip. Then she settled her ample buttocks on a round, backless stool, fiddled and adjusted, and peered through a microscope.
Seconds passed. A minute. Two.
“Oh, my.”
Rachel rose, waddled to a bank of long, wooden drawers, and withdrew a flat, rectangular box. Returning to the scope she removed the slide she had just prepared, selected one from the box, and viewed the latter.
Puzzled, Ryan and I exchanged glances.
Rachel followed the first reference slide with another from the box, then went back to the slide made from Rinaldi’s feather.
“I wish I had a comparison scope,” she said, exchanging Rinaldi’s feather for a third reference slide. “But I don’t.”
When Rachel finally looked up her face was flushed and her eyes were wide with excitement.
18
“That’s some kind of parrot?” Ryan asked.
