Legal Seagull

Chapter Three

I stared at my pushy seagull visitor, unwilling to blink my eyes for fear he might disappear. “Did you say...? M-M-My long-lost grandmother?”

The bird nodded, a smug expression on his beak. “We seagulls always have our eyes on the ground. In fact, I knew who you were even before you became my assignment.”

“But how?”

He shook a wing at me. “Now, now. That would be giving you the payment without first completing the job. So what do you say? Will you agree to help us?”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. Ever since Pringle had unburied Nan’s secret letter, revealing the fact that my real grandfather had orchestrated my mother’s kidnapping, I’d been dying to meet the family I hadn’t known existed. My grandfather, William McAllister, had already died by the time we discovered his existence, but Mom and I had been able to connect with a number of other relatives who still lived down in Larkhaven, Georgia.

No one knew where my biological grandmother had ended up, though. No one except this seagull, apparently

“Good,” he said before settling himself on the dashboard. “Since you haven’t got wings, we’ll drive.”

I turned the key in the ignition. “Where are we going?”

“To the flock, of course. Head south by southwest.”

I’d never quite mastered navigating by cardinal directions, so I simply drove straight. When I started up the car, the bird clumsily fell back onto the seat, where he occasionally hopped up to get a view through the windshield and criticize my driving.

“Not that way. South by southwest!” the seagull shouted.

I turned to the left, which seemed to satisfy him.

“What’s your name?” I asked after we’d been driving for a while.

“Me? I’m Bravo. Second in command for Flock 82.” Wow, this was all so official. I had no idea birds were so well organized or that they organized themselves in a vaguely militaristic way.

“If you’re second in command, why were you assigned stalker duty? That doesn’t seem like a job for a high-ranking bird.”

Bravo clucked in disgust. “That’s what I said, but Alpha wasn’t having it. Said you were too important to trust to a rookie. You do your job now, and I’ll be everyone’s hero. Maybe score myself a new nest or even rise to challenge Alpha.”

“I don’t really understand how any of this works,” I confessed. “Birds are usually too afraid to talk to me.

“Not too afraid,” Bravo corrected. “We just find you wingless folk a bit tiring.”

Perhaps I should have been insulted, but if I could fly, I’d no doubt want to see more exciting things as well.

“This is the place,” Bravo said after a few more awkward minutes had passed. He motioned for me to park next to a row of dumpsters behind a strip mall.

“What now?” I asked after exiting my car.

Bravo let out a horrible shrieking caw, and suddenly an army of white descended from the skies.

The plumpest of the gulls landed right between me and Bravo and studied me with a frown curled on his beak. “Is this her?”

“Hi. I’m Angie.” I offered a hand in greeting, but then immediately withdrew it when I realized he had no way of shaking hello.

“You don’t look like a lawyer to me,” the seagull, who I now took to be Alpha, spat and lifted one foot into his under-plumage.

I chuckled uncomfortably. Maybe it was a good thing birds didn’t normally choose to chat with me. Let’s be honest here, they were pretty weird. Not only that, it seemed fully possibly that even the slightest misunderstanding could send Alpha pecking toward my eyes with hostile intent. Suddenly, my demanding tabby didn’t seem such a burden.

I shook my head and forced a smile. “I’m not a lawyer. I’m a private investigator.”

Alpha whipped his head to the side without moving his body an inch. “Not a lawyer, huh?” he addressed me while staring daggers at his second in command.

Bravo tittered nervously. “Of course you’re a lawyer. I found you at the law firm, remember?”

“I used to be a paralegal, but—”

“Stop helping,” he yelled through a gritted beak.

“This is why you’ll never be Alpha,” the seagull leader declared.

A few ill-spirited jeers rose up from the flock, and Bravo buried his face beneath a wing. Poor guy.

“I’m not a lawyer, but I can get you one. At no charge,” I sputtered, suddenly desperate to help the poor guy and not just because he knew where I could find my missing family.

Alpha stretched both wings overhead and opened his beak wide in a yawn. “Go on.”

“He’s my boyfriend. I can call him right now.”

“Stop squawking and start walking,” he told me with a stony gaze.

I took this to mean that I was to call Charles now. Dutifully, I pulled out my phone, noting it was still the early afternoon and praying Charles wouldn’t be in court or with a client.

He answered on the third ring. “Angie. Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine, but I have a bit of an emergency on my hands,” I mumbled into the receiver.

“Where are you?”

I walked around to the front of the strip mall and gave him the name of the first shop I saw. “In Dewdrop Springs,” I added.

“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” he promised without asking for any more information.

“Thank you. Love you,” I said before ending the call. I could explain once he arrived. That is, if I could figure out how to explain what I still didn’t understand myself.

“Well?” Alpha asked, hopping over to stand directly at my feet.

“He’s on his way,” I said, and Bravo released a giant sigh into the wind.

“Told you I had the right one,” he clucked.

“Can you maybe explain to me what’s going on?” Unfortunately, I couldn’t leave now that Charles was coming over to handle things—namely, because he still needed me to translate the animal-to-human communications.

“Why should we tell you anything?” Alpha demanded. “You’re just the go-between.”

Bravo chose that exact moment to fly to my shoulder and grab the soft fabric of my shirt as a perch. Naturally, I screamed and started waving my hands around wildly to unseat him.

“Jeez, relax,” he huffed. “This isn’t a Hitchcock movie, and I’m not a Hitchcock kind of bird. So relax already.”

Alpha laughed and flew onto my now free shoulder. “I like you. You’re funny.”

It took everything I had not to frantically bat him off. At least he liked me, right?

“That movie did wonders for us, you know? All these generations of gulls later, and good ol’ Hitchcock still has humans running from us in terror. We used to have to run from them, you know. Back in the dark ages of avian history.”

I nodded solemnly, amazed that any creature could be more ridiculous than my cat—let alone a whole society of them. “Is that what this is about?” I asked, too curious not to try to pry it out of him once more.

“No, no, no.” Bravo flew over and took a spot on my other shoulder, which meant I was now sandwiched between him and Alpha and feeling incredibly exposed. “This isn’t about humans at all. Well, except for the fact we needed your help.”

“You needed a lawyer,” I reminded them. “Why?”

“When dealing with an inferior opponent, sometimes you need an inferior judge. No offense. That’s where you and your lawyer friend come in.”

Ouch.

“An opponent, huh? Is somebody suing you? Charging you with a crime?” Both options seemed equally likely—and equally ludicrous.

“Don’t be silly. This isn’t about silly laws.” Alpha leaned forward menacingly and a mighty cry rose up from his flock. “This is war.”