The Real Macaw: A Meg Langslow Mystery

but I did find Rob’s little pocket video camera. I turned it on and began figuring out how to use it.
    Not hard. Not that I expected it to be, since my mechanically inept brother seemed to have no difficulty using it.
    I sipped my tea and started at the beginning of the camera’s memory. Lots of pictures of Rob’s feet. One long sequence showing the corner of the refrigerator while Rob and Rose Noire tried to figure out why the camera wasn’t on. Their dialogue was muted, but audible in the silent, empty cafeteria.
    “Wait a minute!” he said. “It’s been on all the time! Great!”
    “Do you know how you turned it on?” Rose Noire asked.
    Apparently not, because the next sequence showed wildly gyrating scenery and an occasional glimpse of Rob’s jeans-clad legs as he strolled along, swinging the camera in one hand, unaware that it was filming.
    But after a while his camerawork improved. A sequence of Rose Noire trying to feed both boys at the same time really captured the insanity of life with twins. Though if I were Rose Noire, I’d have made him stop filming and help. I would have to confiscate the sequence of Josh, unwisely left diaperless, happily peeing into the air—and onto his nearby brother. It was cute, but I didn’t want Rob sharing it with the immediate world on YouTube.
    And then videos of the animals began to appear. Puppies frolicking on our living room rug. A trio of cats grooming themselves in unison like a feline precision drill team. A lot of footage of Tinkerbell, the wolfhound—I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she became a permanent resident. And then some footage of the macaw.
    The original macaw. I could see now that it was a completely different blue from the one we had now, a darker blue with overtones of gray and maybe a slight tinge of purple. I’d have to take Mother’s word for it that this was Prussian blue.
    Clearly Rob was amused by the macaw’s blue language. I watched several scenes in which the bird swore like the proverbial sailor with Rob giggling in the background. In the first two, the camera jiggled in time with his laughter, but he soon learned the trick of setting it on a piece of furniture. This not only improved the quality of the video, it allowed Rob to get into the action, feeding straight lines to the macaw.
    In one shot, I could hear Mother’s voice in the background.
    “Rob!” she exclaimed. “What in the world are you teaching that poor bird?”
    “It’s not my fault,” Rob said, turning off-camera to look at her. “The bird already knew all that. Parker must have done it.”
    “Parker, Parker,” Mother said. She was still off-camera, but I could almost see her shaking her head in gentle, sorrowful reproof.
    The macaw echoed her, repeating Parker’s name.
    Wait a minute. The bird wasn’t just echoing her. Parker’s name appeared to have triggered something.
    “Oh, Pahkeh,” the bird said. “Oh, yes, Pahkeh. Ohhhhh! Pahkeh! YES!”
    Rob dropped out of the picture, though his giggles could still be heard. Make that guffaws. Apparently he was so overcome with laughter that he had to roll on the floor. Mother presumably tsk-tsked and left the room, head high, pretending not to hear the macaw.
    But the video kept rolling, and the macaw kept repeating Parker’s name in what was clearly the heat of passion—and in a strong, nasal New England accent.
    Francine’s accent. She’d said it herself—she stuck out like a sore thumb because no one else in the whole county sounded like her. And judging from the cries and moans the parrot was uttering, I’d bet anything that Francine knew Parker a lot better than anyone had suspected.
    Hadn’t Rob recognized her voice? No, Rob probably hadn’t met Francine. Even if he had, her accent wouldn’t have struck him as strange. His staff at Mutant Wizards were a multicultural lot, so he was used to hearing accents from Brooklyn, Mumbai, Sydney, and yes, no doubt from Boston’s Route 128 tech corridor.
    I found myself remembering something. Francine’s face at the T-Ball game, when the other mothers were laughing over Parker’s many girlfriends. I’d assumed her facial expression was disapproval. What if it was jealousy?
    And no wonder she’d been fretting so about her accent. She probably knew that the parrot imitated her. Perhaps she and Parker had laughed about it when he was alive. But once he was dead, the parrot might be the only witness to their affair.
    What if both Vivian and