Apparently Aubrey agreed with me.

“Done with your birds?” she repeated. “The place is full of those messy canaries and cockatiels of yours.”

She pointed with her chin to the aviary and the cage-lined walls.

“Not those,” he said. “The finches.”

He held up the cage with the single bird he’d grabbed from the aviary. A rather dramatically colored bird, with an orange head, green body, purple and yellow breast, and stripes of blue and black around the face.

I’d seen birds like that before—in the cage that had mysteriously appeared on the third floor of our house.

“A Gouldian finch,” the fake bird-watcher said, causing me to wonder if I’d been wrong in thinking of him as a fake. He wasn’t particularly swarthy, either. “They’re endangered in Australia. And illegal to import. Of course, I’m sure you bred those, right?”

“Yeah,” Freddy said. “You didn’t let them go, did you,” he asked, turning back to Aubrey.

“I just got here last night,” she said.

“And the day after you get here, my finches disappear. They were here yesterday.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” she said. “I didn’t even know you had finches here.”

“Maybe Dad and Grandpa took them,” Rob put in.

Freddy’s eyes narrowed.

“Why would they do that?” he asked.

“Just give up,” the bird-watcher said. “We’re not after you—we’re after the big guys.”

“We?” I asked. “Who is we?” The man glanced at me and ignored my question.

“If you give us information on them—” he went on.

“Look, dude,” Freddy began.

“Arroyo,” the man said. “Carlos Arroyo, with the—”

“Whatever,” Freddy said. “Do I look that stupid? Like turning stool pigeon on them is going to be good for my health. No thanks.”

“No one’s going to hurt you over a bunch of birds,” Aubrey said.

“Yes, except it isn’t just about birds, is it?” I said. “Because the same guys who smuggle in birds are also smuggling drugs, right?”

Freddy and Arroyo both looked at me with surprise.

“Montgomery Blake is my grandfather,” I said, with as much of a shrug as I could manage in my trussed-up condition. “He’s always going on about the connection between wildlife smuggling and drug smuggling and for that matter, arms smuggling. So what are the odds that birds are the only thing Freddy’s smuggling? He’s probably dealing a little cocaine, too, or is it heroin?”

“Oh, Freddy,” Aubrey said. “How could you?”

“You can’t get away with it, you know,” Arroyo said. “They’ll be watching for your car. Just give up.”

Freddy stared at him for a moment, then went over and began rummaging in Arroyo’s pockets.

“What are you doing?” Arroyo said.

Freddy emerged with a set of car keys.

“But they won’t be watching for your car, will they?” he said. “By the time you get loose, I can be long gone.”

He turned on his heel and headed for the door. As he walked, he pulled out his cell phone and punched a couple of keys.