Death Takes a Gander

by Goff, Christine

  “That’s a lie.” Gertie’s round face was flushed. Despite the boos, she climbed up on her chair. “There have been numerous studies done, and there’s not one drop of evidence that the fecal matter of geese causes illness. Not one.”

  “It’s still gross,” the woman near Lark said.

  Frakus stepped forward into an aisle. “That’s not true, Gertie. Why, in Seattle, we were issued annual U.S. Fish and Wildlife permits to round up and kill geese based on health risks. Now you tell me, why would they sanction extermination if there wasn’t some proof? And now we have sick geese.” He glanced around to see who was with him.

  The majority of citizens in the room seemed to have jumped on board. Lark wished Angela would say something. She could explain to these folks that killing the flock wasn’t a solution to the problem. Humans were the problem. The geese weren’t diseased. They were sick because of human exposure.

  “I can tell you this,” Frakus said, taking a parting shot. “It cleaned up our parks.”

  “Aren’t there alternatives to killing them?” asked a teenager near the windows.

  Good for you, thought Lark.

  “Trust me, nothing else works,” Bemster said. “I’ve paid Lou Vitti thousands of dollars to keep the birds off the golf course, to no avail. The town’s been shelling out for over a year. Since… ”

  Lark waited for him to indict himself by bringing up the bludgeoning incident. Instead, he switched gears.

  “Suffice it to say, to keep on paying Vitti would be throwing good money after bad. The geese stay away while the dogs are around, then they come right back.”

  “That’s because they’ve only gone as far as the lake,” Frakus said.

  Andrew Henderson lumbered to his feet, taking an impressive stance. “We don’t have many resident geese here. The sick geese are transients. They came in with the storm.”

  “We have enough geese to cause this town a problem,” Frakus countered. “All the more reason I say we do something now. If we don’t intervene, you can bet they’ll multiply.”

  “There are other methods we can use to reduce the numbers,” piped up Harry.

  Lark hadn’t noticed him sitting down front, but she felt a surge of relief he was here. He was the next best thing to Eric. Maybe the townsfolk would listen to him.

  Gertie bobbed her head, while Petey Hinkle tried pulling her down off the chair.

  “Give us some examples,” Mayor Lindor requested.

  “The most effective way is to replace their eggs with fakes to reduce reproduction,” Harry said. “Essentially, you’re tricking the birds into thinking they have a full brood until it’s too late in the season for them to lay more eggs.”

  “Why not try that?’ shouted a man near the doors.

  Heads started nodding. Lark felt encouraged. Up until that moment, it had seemed like the EPOCH members were paddling against the tide.

  “Because it’s costly,” Frakus said. “And it takes time. We have a problem now, and we’ll have a bigger problem in the spring.”

  “We can train volunteers,” Gertie said. “We don’t have to pay anyone.”

  “It won’t do any good,” Bemster said. “The geese are worse than rabbits. Besides, Vitti’s tried everything. He put out fake owls, scarecrows, Mylar balloons. He even sprayed the grass with methyl anthranilate.”

  Mayor Lindor frowned. “Which is… ?”

  “Grape soda flavoring,” Bemster explained. “Supposedly the birds loathe the stuff. Trust me, it might have stopped ’em from eating, but not from dumping.”

  Lark leaned over and whispered to Angela, “Have you ever witnessed a kill?”

  The agent shuddered, clearly disturbed by the thought. “It’s never been high on my list of things to experience.”

  “Mine either. I’ve read too many articles.” The most graphic one had described how officials lured the geese into fenced areas, then herded them down a narrow shoot and into a pen where they were chased, grabbed, and gassed to death.

  “And there’s another plus,” Frakus said, addressing the crowd like a prosecutor in closing arguments. “The town can donate the meat to charitable causes.”

  There was an audible, collective groan. Then Kip, the director of the local homeless shelter, shouted, “Don’t do us any favors, Frakus,”

  “Are you hoping to kill off the needy too?” someone else asked.

  “Remember the Drummond!” shouted a man near the back.

  The mantra was taken up, and a hundred faces turned to look at Lark. She forced herself to keep staring at Frakus.

  “What happened at the Drummond is an isolated situation,” he said. “Caused by using the livers of sick geese to make paté.”

  Lark pressed herself into the corner. Surely the townspeople knew she hadn’t authorized use of the geese.

  “It weren’t just the livers,” Kip said. “And it weren’t isolated. We didn’t serve no livers, but I had to close the shelter down because of those geese.”

  Lark drew herself out of the shadows. People at the shelter were sick?

  Angela also pushed forward. “Did you collect the geese off the ice?”

  From the manner in which Kip shrank back, Lark wished she could see Angela’s face.

  “That’s right,” he said, bolstering his courage. “We were legal. Frakus called and donated the meat to the shelter.” Kip shot him an accusatory glance. “Only, he forgot to tell us it was contaminated.”

  Lark’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. In all fairness, Frakus might not have thought the meat was bad. But more to the point, if Kip was the person Angela had spotted picking geese up off the ice, where had Ducharme gotten the livers to make the paté?

  The meeting degenerated into a shouting match, and Frakus came under full attack. Lark took momentary pleasure in his plight, then signaled to Angela she was leaving. The special agent bobbed her short, dark curls and followed her into the parking lot.

  “Wow!”

  “Do you realize what just happened in there?” Lark whispered, afraid that speaking aloud might somehow jinx this latest development.

  “Frakus got caught trying to kill off the homeless population?” Angela asked.

  “Get serious. It means that Ducharme wasn’t the one collecting geese off the ice.”

  Angela scrunched up one side of her face. “Not necessarily. For all we know, he could have collected the geese the same way.”

  The momentary crush of defeat caused Lark’s lungs to deflate, and she sucked in a breath. In order to save the Drummond, she needed to prove she and her staff were not responsible for the poisonings. Maybe it was time to start grasping at straws.

  “What if Frakus had given Ducharme permission as well?” she asked. “Then Frakus—or the town—would be responsible for the poisonings, right?”

  Angela looked doubtful. “Maybe, if Frakus admitted giving permission. That’s a big if.”

  They reached Lark’s truck. She climbed in and rolled down the driver’s-side window.

  Angela rested her arms on the sill. “Plus you’d need Ducharme to testify. The fact he took off plays against you.”

  Lark slumped back against the seat. “That does look bad, doesn’t it?”

  She meant it as a rhetorical question, but Angela answered with a question of her own. “What if Ducharme bought the geese?”

  “From Kip?”

  “From anywhere. Wouldn’t most places assume they could bill the Drummond?”

  Lark’s head snapped up off the headrest. They’d searched for a bill or receipt and touched base with their food distributors. She’d checked. Velof had checked. Heck, even Bernie Crandall had taken a whack at it.

  But what if Ducharme had opened a new account with a new company? Maybe the paperwork hadn’t arrived. Or maybe it had. Maybe it was sitting in her inbox.

  Angela followed Lark to the Drummond.

  The hotel, inviting in its holiday attire, projected a festive mood. Evergreen boughs draped the eaves, p
inned with red bows and wrapped in bright twinkle lights. Music pumped through tiny Bose speakers drifted across the veranda, lulling the night.

  By contrast, the lobby seemed somber.

  “Things have been a little quiet around here,” Lark said, nodding to the desk clerk and leading the way back to her office.

  Quiet was an understatement. Dead seemed a better fit.

  Unblemished by fingerprints, the opulent furnishings gleamed with an unnatural sheen; the red wool carpet showed vacuum marks, and music echoed off the sculpted ceiling. The only movement came from the sleepy desk clerk and the eyes of the paintings, which seemed to track their movements, hungry for interaction.

  Lark pushed open the office door and waved Angela to a seat.

  “It’s either here or it isn’t,” she said, pointing to the inbox on her desk. She picked up the stack of papers and handed half to Angela.

  Water bill. Electric bill. Gas bill. All astronomical figures. But no bill for the birds.

  “It’s not in my stack,” Angela said, setting it back on the desk.

  “Damn,” Lark said, tossing the last of the papers back on the pile. Tears made her eyes glisten. “I was so sure we’d find something.”

  Angela wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet. “Let’s go at this from a different angle. How many places supply wild game to restaurants? There can’t be that many.”

  “There’s more than you think.”

  “All we need to do is find the right one.”

  Lark pulled out the yellow pages, and Angela dragged her chair around the desk.

  “Try under food distributors,” she said.

  “First let’s try under game.” Lark flipped pages. “It says to look under meat processing or meat wholesalers.”

  The meat page contained two columns of names. Angela counted thirty-eight meat wholesalers, one meat broker, and fourteen meat-processing facilities.

  “We’ll just have to call them all.”

  “In the morning,” Angela said. “It’s too late to call now.”

  There was nothing more they could do, so Angela and Lark headed down to the Warbler Café to meet the others. A town landmark, the coffee shop was housed in the corner of a strip mall on the east end of town. A painted mural depicting a variety of Colorado warblers marked the front door, while a wraparound deck stretched to the south overlooking the lake. Inside, tables crowded a hardwood floor. A long counter stretched along the back wall, covered with jars of beans and a variety of cappuccino and espresso machines. In the far corner, a copper roasting machine agitated beans, spewing the fresh scent of coffee into the air.

  “Welcome,” Dorothy said, throwing open the door. Taking Angela’s coat, she shooed them toward a large round table in the center of the room, where Andrew and Opal Henderson were already ensconced.

  The couple waved, and Angela conjured the image of Jack Sprat and his wife—only in this case, Jack was Jacqueline. Andrew was stuffing a piece of banana bread into his mouth, while Opal sipped her drink. No doubt a nonfat latte.

  Gertie and Harry were making coffee.

  “This is a great place you have here,” Angela said.

  “Why thank you, dear,” Dorothy said, making a generous sweep with her arm. “You know we inherited it.”

  While Dorothy sliced more bread, Cecilia launched into the café’s history. “It was opened by Esther Mills with seed money from the four of us—myself, Dot, Gertie, and Lark. A year and a half ago, Esther was stabbed to death in the parking lot.”

  “How awful!” Angela vaguely remembered reading something about that. She just hadn’t connected the dots. “Did you ever catch the person who did it?”

  “Oh my, yes. Thanks to Lark.”

  “It wasn’t altruistic,” Lark said. “Like now, I stood to lose everything.”

  Angela refrained from comment and accepted a fishbowl mug of coffee from Gertie. Warming her hands, she breathed in the coffee’s aroma.

  “How’s Eric?” Andrew asked.

  Lark glanced at Angela.

  Does he think that’s where we had been? Angela wondered. “As far as I know, he’s the same.”

  Dorothy’s eyes brimmed with tears, and she sniffed, using her napkin to blot her nose.

  “Oh my, let’s not go all weepy, Dot. We need to stay strong, for everyone’s sake.”

  “He’s going to be fine,” Lark said.

  Angela counted backwards, trying to remember how many days it had been since the accident. Two? It seemed like more. The longer Eric remained in a coma, the more likely he was to emerge with some long-term damage.

  She tried shaking the thought and fished for a better subject. “How’s it going at the Raptor House?”

  Checking on the geese had been the primary reason for her coming up to Elk Park. The town meeting was secondary. She had been headed out the door when Verbiscar’s face had flashed across the TV.

  Now there was someone she’d like to see in a coma.

  Dorothy set down her napkin. “It’s a miracle, really. The geese have mostly recovered. You would hardly know they’d been sick.”

  Angela stared, convinced she’d heard wrong. Most times, no matter what you did, lead-poisoned geese died. Did that mean the toxin wasn’t lead?

  “No kidding,” Andrew said. “That’s weird. And there I was advocating we put them down.”

  “How are the banquet guests?” Angela asked.

  “They’re better too,” Dorothy said. “Of course, it didn’t stop the health department from closing down the kitchen at the Drummond.”

  “We’re waiting to see the results on lead-level tests,” Lark said. “They’re due in tomorrow.”

  “So where did you peel off to in such a rush?” Harry asked, joining them at the table.

  Lark explained how it had occurred to her that Ducharme must have ordered the geese from a new distributor. “Angela and I did some checking and came up with fifty-three possibilities.”

  “Did any of them check out?” Harry asked.

  “We’ll have to call in the morning,” Lark said.

  “Did any of the names look familiar?” Gertie asked.

  “Not to me.”

  “Me either,” Angela said. She pulled out the page she’d torn from the yellow pages. “Do any of them look familiar to any of you?”

  The EPOCH members passed the sheet around.

  “I recognize this name,” Andrew said. His finger pointed to “Organics Unlimited.” Angela felt a tingle of excitement travel along her veins.

  Opal wiggled in her chair. “I didn’t know he dealt with meat, did you?”

  “Who?” demanded Dorothy. “Don’t keep us guessing.”

  Andrew pushed aside the paper. “Donald Tauer. Organics Unlimited is a subsidiary company of Agriventures, Inc.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “Maybe we should pay them a visit?” Lark asked.

  Angela swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. It was time to come clean. “We can’t do anything. Kramner pulled me off the case.”

  “What?” cried the EPOCH members in unison.

  Angela looked down at the floor, her gaze tracking the uneven flooring, the shifts in color and light. When she looked up, she faced seven pairs of eyes.

  “He doesn’t think I have enough experience or that I can be objective.”

  Gertie snorted. “If you ask me, I’d say you were getting too close and ruffling too many feathers.”

  “Either way, I’m out.” She looked straight at Lark. “Take it to Kramner in the morning.”

  “Will he help?”

  Angela shrugged. “It’s what he needs. He rushed the tests on the samples. He should have the lead level reports back tomorrow. He knows his job.”

  “And if he won’t follow through?”

  For Lark it meant the difference between saving the Drummond and being forced to close down. Angela dropped her gaze and worked the toe of her boots against a crack in the flooring. “Then call me.”
r />   Angela slept in her own bed that night and ended up sleeping in. The telephone rang in the morning and yanked her loose from a nightmare. She’d been running through the woods at Barr Lake, headed toward the mist nets, footsteps pounding behind her. Now, clawing her way up from the depths of sleep, her heart raced. She squinted at the alarm clock and reached for the phone.

  “Angela?’

  Lark. “What time is it?”

  “Eight thirty.” Hysteria edged the woman’s voice, prompting Angela to a sitting position.

  “What happened?”

  “I called Kramner. He said the samples came back negative for lead.”

  In a shift of panic, Angela’s heart pounded. She clutched the comforter to her chest. “Okay. Let’s think this through. Something is making the geese sick. What about PAH contamination from the clay pigeons?” Although that wouldn’t account for the food poisoning in the Drummond guests.

  “No.”

  “What about the alternative shot?”

  “He claims there was nothing,” answered Lark, her voice sounding calmer. “It appears to be natural. The samples were clean.”

  If that was true—and Angela had no reason to doubt Kramner’s assessment—Radigan’s willingness to let them take samples made sense. He had nothing to hide. They’d been looking in the wrong place.

  “I guess this means Coot’s food poisoning was really an accident,” Lark said.

  “Looks like.” That would explain why Radigan’s son ended up sick. So what had poisoned the geese?

  Angela kicked her legs over the side of the bed and fished with her feet for her sheepskin slippers. “What about the lead levels on the banquet guests? Have those results come back?”

  “That’s another thing. All but one came back normal.”

  “What was the exception?”

  “It turns out one guy drinks orange juice from a pottery pitcher. His whole family tested high. He was actually lucky he attended the banquet.”

  Cold air from the slightly opened window wafted across Angela’s shoulders, and she shifted the comforter to cover her back. If the wetland samples from Barr Lake Hunt Club tested normal and the banquet guests’blood samples tested normal, the lab work on the geese was likely negative for lead too.