A fulvous whistling duck? They didn’t even have those in North America.
“I don’t see anything.” The woman craned her neck, trying to catch a glance.
“It just flew behind those houses over there. They’re super rare. In fact, if you’re lucky enough to see one, it’s supposed to bring you good luck and great fortune.” I made that part up.
That seemed to get the woman’s attention. She raised her eyebrows and glanced at the man with her. “We could always use more of that.”
“Couldn’t we all?” I said with a little laugh.
I wondered if Michael was done yet. I couldn’t afford to glance back at him and check, though. I didn’t want to draw any attention to him.
“I am sorry that I interrupted your walk,” I continued. “I just believe in sharing in abundance.”
The man and woman glanced at each other again, as if that concept was foreign.
They were obviously tired of this conversation because they skirted around me and started to continue on their way.
Should I try to keep them here longer? What else could I possibly say?
Thankfully, before I put myself through anymore of this humiliation, I felt an arm around my shoulder.
“I saw it, honey.” Michael held up the binoculars and pulled me close. “It’s a great day for birdwatching.”
The man and the woman offered another tight smile before hurrying on their way.
As soon as they were out of earshot, I released my breath.
“Good job.” Michael stepped away from me, our charade over. “You picked a topic that played right in with binoculars. Quick thinking.”
I didn’t bother to mention to him that it had been an accident.
“But a very rare fulvous whistling duck?” He raised his eyebrows.
I shrugged. “I knew it had to be something unique and . . . I just didn’t know what else to say.”
“You did fine.”
Maybe, but I still felt a little rattled. “How about you? Did you see anything?”
He slipped the binoculars from around his neck and stuck them back in his leather bag. “As a matter of fact, I did. I was able to spot Art. He’s playing a round of golf right now. By the time he reaches the eighth hole, he’s going to be close enough for us to talk to him.”
“That sounds perfect. But we’re not going to be playing golf.”
“That’s why we’re going to need another distraction.” He handed his skater hat to me. “You’re going to need to wear this. I don’t have lice. I promise.”
I had no idea what he had up his sleeve, but I slipped the hat on.
Chapter Sixteen
As we waited for Art to make it to the eighth hole, Michael and I sat on the bench with nothing but time to kill.
“So how do you know so much about this country club?” I asked.
He shrugged again, and I saw the hesitation in his eyes. The man was a mystery on so many levels. Was he the innocent, playful boy next door? The dedicated father? Or did he have a wild past, complete with a come-to-Jesus moment?
I still wasn’t sure.
“Let’s just say I worked here for a little while.” Michael pushed his sunglasses up higher on his nose. “True fact.”
“You’re a local?” Another surprise. There was so much I didn’t know about this guy.
“I never intended to be. In fact, I moved up to New York City as soon as I was old enough to get out of town. But that all changed, and now I’m back here. I realized I couldn’t do this single parenting thing without some support. My mom and dad were more than gracious and allowed me to come back home.”
“I see. That’s great that you have them close. I’m sure it helps a lot.”
“It really does.”
“Does Chloe’s mom have a lot to do with her?” The question was probably too personal, but I asked anyway.
“I haven’t seen Crystal since Chloe was two months old.”
My eyes widened. “Wow. I had no idea.”
“It’s just one of those things . . . sometimes you wish you could go back in time and give yourself a good talking to. Then again, I wouldn’t trade Chloe for anything in the world. Great things can come from the mistakes we make.”
Wise words. “If you don’t mind me asking, what were you doing up in New York City?”
“I’d tell you, but you might laugh.” He rubbed the Jesus tattoo on his fingers.
“You might be surprised. Oscar thinks I’m a living, breathing Dora the Explorer, apparently. There are so many parts of my past that no one here relates to or understands.”
Michael stared off in the distance, and I was certain he wasn’t going to tell me anything else. Then he cleared his throat and straightened just slightly. “I played major league baseball for a few years.”
“Wow. That’s . . . great.” I’d never met anyone who’d told me that. “What happened?”
“I got too heavy into the partying. Drinking. I lost my contract. When Chloe was born, I realized I had to get myself straight.”
My heart lodged in my throat. I wouldn’t have guessed any of those things about Michael. But we all had our pasts, didn’t we? There were things we were proud of and things we wished we could hide away forever. That was just a part of growing up and maturing.
“So I told you all about me.” Michael turned toward me. “Now why don’t you tell me something interesting about you? I know that your mom was a missionary and that she met your dad down in some country that I’ve hardly ever heard of, but I do believe is real.”
“It’s very real. Believe me.” I drew in a deep breath as I contemplated what to say.
“Tell me something new.” He casually stretched his arm across the back of the bench, the action making his broad chest seem even broader.
He did have the build of a baseball player, I realized.
My mind went back to the journal my dad had left. I wasn’t ready to talk about that yet. Not with anybody. Not with my mom, my sister, and definitely not with this man that I’d only met yesterday. But it would be so nice to talk to someone.
“I graduated at the top of my class and was voted most likely to succeed. Granted, there were only seventy-five people in my graduating class, but still . . .”
“College?”
“I studied international affairs. I had a job lined up before I even graduated.”
“You’re an achiever.”
“I am. I actually just took the enneagram personality test. My sister made me, and that’s the exact label she gave me. Now she keeps calling me a three. What are you?”
“An enthusiast. Or, an eight, as your sister might say.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“I figured it wouldn’t.” He shifted, his smile disappearing. “What was it like being there when the political corruption started?”
I swallowed hard again as I remembered those days. “It was scary. There were riots. Innocent men died. People we knew. Families turned on each other. I never thought I’d see anything like that. The unrest started a decade ago. But every time it flared up, it would eventually die. Until recently. Everything seemed to explode.”
“I can’t even imagine. Did you say that’s why you left?”
“Partly. But the primary reason was because my sister has cystic fibrosis and the treatments here are so much better than in Yerba.”
He nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”
I glanced down at my hands. “My dad passed away right after we moved here. A heart attack. Now it’s just my mom, sister, and I. It’s not exactly the ideal situation, but we’re all doing what we can to make ends meet.”
“I think that’s really great that you’re helping your mom and sister out. We all need people to give us a hand sometimes.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess we do.”
Before we could talk anymore, Michael’s phone screen lit. He’d set an alert to let us know when Art posted online again.
“It says
Art just showed up at the eighth hole.”
I touched the hat on my head. “So what is this for? Can you tell me yet?”
“You’ll see.” A twinkle formed in his eyes. “Come on.”
I wondered what exactly was in store, and I prayed I didn’t blow it.
I watched as Art and two other men took their place at the eighth hole. The fence was close enough to them to work in our favor. That was the good news.
The bad news was that I was still a little anxious about what Michael had in store for us.
“Here goes nothing,” he leaned closer and whispered.
The next thing I knew, he flipped the hat from atop my head, and it went flying with the breeze over the fence.
“Oh, man!” Michael made a big production out of peering over the pickets and onto the greens below. “I’m sorry to interrupt your game, but my girlfriend’s hat just blew over there. Would you mind getting it for me?”
I watched carefully, curious about who would retrieve it. It was really a matter of chance, wasn’t it? Michael’s plan might not work.
But out of all three of the men, Art was the youngest. The other two appeared to be in their sixties or seventies.
Michael’s bet paid off.
Art walked toward the wayward hat and grabbed it for us. He flipped his hand out to give it back to Michael, a shiny, white smile on his face. “Here you go.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”
Art had only taken two steps away when Michael called him again.
“Hey, didn’t I see you before? At the Green Leaf Tavern maybe?”
Art froze.
I watched, soaking everything in, desperate to learn the tricks of the trade.
“Sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever been there before.” Art started to turn away again.
“No, I’m nearly positive it was you,” Michael said. “I remember your hair. It reminds me of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s. Impressive, by the way.”
Irritation crossed Art’s features. “I’m sorry, but I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
“As a matter of fact, I think you were there the day Flash Slivinski was, right before the murder.”
That got Art’s attention. He glanced at his golf buddies before walking closer to us and lowering his voice. “What kind of game are you playing here? What do you want from me?”
“We just have a few questions,” Michael said, remaining coolly unflustered.
“Who sent you?”
“That’s not important.” Michael shifted. “We have video evidence showing you leaving the bar about three minutes after Flash Slivinski and Sarah Vance. Probably the perfect amount of time to follow them at a safe distance.”
His cheeks turned a remarkable shade of red. “You don’t know anything.”
“We know that you work for Windsor Washington Golf Clubs and your company gave Flash one of his highest paid endorsement deals.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.” Art raised his chin.
“We also know that you want to drop him from your lineup,” Michael continued. “But doing so would probably cost you an arm and a leg. Considering business is already struggling . . . it seems like heads were going to roll.”
Art glanced back at his teammates and called, “You guys go on without me. I’ll catch up in a minute.”
The men muttered something before turning back to the game.
Art shifted toward us. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why did you follow Flash to the tavern that day?” I asked.
The question slipped out. I was probably supposed to stand by idly waiting for Michael to call all the shots. But the man was obviously lying. His eyes had shifted. His lip had twitched. His breathing had changed.
“I was there because I was trying to talk to Flash,” Art finally admitted. “I needed to convince him to let us out of that contract.”
“When he said no, you followed him and, in the heat of the moment, killed his date?” Michael said.
His cheeks reddened again. “No! It was nothing like that. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“But you did follow him?” I asked.
“I thought about it. Then I realized how desperate it would look. So I changed my mind. I figured I would try again another day. Turns out that when Flash killed the woman, he was in breach of contract. Problem solved.” Art shrugged. “But I didn’t do it.”
“I guess that worked out in your favor, didn’t it? With all this bad press, I’m sure you guys won’t be penalized for breaking your deal.” Michael didn’t mince any words.
Art’s nostrils flared, though the rest of his body remained calm. “I can prove that I wasn’t there that night. In fact, I left that club and met up with some friends at a different club down the street. I’ll give you their names and numbers, and they’ll tell you that I got there well before that woman died, and I stayed until 3:00 a.m. when the place closed.”
“I would like those numbers, if you wouldn’t mind,” Michael said.
Art pulled a pad of paper and a pencil from his front pocket and began jotting them down. Then, with a flourish, he ripped the sheet off and smacked it into Michael’s outstretched hand. “There. Call them.”
Michael glanced at it before turning his piercing gaze back to Art. “Before you go, is there anybody else you can think of who might have a grudge against Flash?”
My laid-back coworker was relentless. I was kind of impressed.
Art’s eyes lit, as if the question excited him. “Believe it or not, there is. I would talk to his manager, Bernard Sutherland.”
This was the second time the man’s name had come up.
“Why is that?” Michael asked.
“Because I heard the two of them hadn’t been getting along lately. And Bernard has a temper. If Flash found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . there may have been collateral damage.”
“Thanks so much for your help,” Michael said.
We waited until Art was gone, following his friends. Then Michael turned to me. “That last question is always important.”
“The open-ended one about who else might have done the crime?”
“That’s when people always open up and say what they’ve really been thinking the whole time you’ve been talking to them. I never close out a conversation without it.”
“Noted. Now what?”
Michael grabbed his bag from the bench, and we started toward Oscar’s car. “Now we need to track down Flash’s manager and see what he has to say.”
Chapter Seventeen
As soon as we reached Oscar’s BMW, I spotted something on the window. A paper.
I started to grab it, but Michael stopped me.
“Allow me,” he said. “Fingerprints and all.”
He grabbed a tissue from the glove compartment before picking up the corner of the paper. I read over his shoulder.
Back off or you’ll regret it.
I sucked in a breath. That was a definite threat.
Whoever the killer was, he’d seen us here today. He’d left this note.
“This pretty much eliminates Art,” Michael muttered. “He didn’t have a chance to leave this.”
“True . . .”
I glanced around. There was that feeling. The feeling that somebody was watching me.
The strange thing was I’d begun to sense that well before I’d taken this job. I wanted to believe the feeling was somehow tied in with my current case. But what sense would that make? My gut feeling told me it could possibly tie in with my father.
I looked back at the note. The uneven script was hard to read, like someone had written it quickly. Based on the thin strip of plastic at the top, the paper had been pulled from a pad.
“I’ll see if I can find anything on this, but I’m not holding my breath,” Michael said. “And that’s a true fact.”
“True facts are better than fake ones, that
’s for sure.”
Humor glimmered in his gaze. “Come on. Let’s go.”
An uneasy feeling seized me as I climbed into the car.
“Do me a favor,” Michael said as we started down the road. “Call Velma. Ask her to do a check on Bernard. I want to verify his alibi, especially now that it appears Art is innocent. I also want to know where he is now.”
I did as he asked and then held my phone in my lap, running everything through in my mind. The feeling that I was being followed. The facts of this case. My dad’s journal.
Especially my dad’s journal.
Finding it had shaken my world.
“What are you thinking?” Michael asked. “You look pale.”
I pushed away my thoughts and turned to Michael. The last thing I wanted to do right now was to explain myself, to voice my concerns aloud.
Yet, I did. It would be so nice to have somebody to talk to. Tahlia was still in Yerba, and I didn’t get to speak to her that much anymore. My secret concerning my father almost felt like a burden.
I couldn’t just share it with anybody. If my dad was really a spy, then that fact was top-secret.
I shoved the thought back down deep inside me again and tried to forget about my discovery for the time being.
“I guess I’m just trying to process everything that’s been happening,” I finally said.
“I know it can be a lot. But you’ll learn the ropes.”
“You just seem so good at this.” I meant the words. Michael was a natural when it came to making up stories and talking to people.
“According to my parents, I’ve always been a talker. It’s my gift, I suppose.”
“I can see where that gifting really comes in handy.” I paused and pulled in a deep breath, glancing over my shoulder one more time. “Do you believe him?”
“Who? Art?”
“Yes.”
“He had all the signs that he was telling the truth, but I’ll verify.”
“Seems like a good idea. So now we try to talk to Bernard, huh?”
“It seems like a logical progression.”
The Art of Eavesdropping Page 10