Gone Gull

by Donna Andrews

  “So once you get the digital files of photos, you can read the location?” Grandfather was beginning to sound less despondent.

  “No, actually I would have no idea how to read the location,” I admitted. “But once I get the photos, I can get one of Rob’s techies to do it for me. Assuming location’s embedded in the file.”

  “And if it isn’t?”

  Actually, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But I’m good at thinking on my feet.

  “Well, we’ll at least have the time and date when the photos were taken. That can help us figure out where Prine was when he took them. If he took them last week, the gulls are probably somewhere near Biscuit Mountain. If he took them some other time—well, maybe we hire Stanley to trace his recent whereabouts.” Grandfather rather liked Stanley, who had overcome his previously low opinion of private investigators.

  “He’s a busy man,” Grandfather said. “Maybe I should call him now to see if we can get on his schedule.”

  “I already did, and he’s promised to come up to Riverton as soon as he finishes his latest case.” Actually, Cordelia had called him, but I knew Grandfather would react better if he thought it had been my idea. And the original plan had been to have him investigate the vandalism, but if it would keep Grandfather out of our hair, maybe Cordelia would let him take on the case of the missing gulls at the same time.

  “Hmph.” Grandfather was still frowning slightly. “Not exactly foolproof, this plan of yours.”

  “Well, what was your plan?” I countered. “Hold a séance and torture Prine’s ghost till he coughs up the location of the gulls?”

  “Don’t be silly.” He stood, hitched up his cargo pants slightly, then threw back his shoulders in what I’d come to recognize as his preparation for action stance. He assumed the same pose at least once in every one of his Animals in Peril documentaries—usually just before doing something foolhardy and dangerous that would look dramatic on camera and might even help whatever mistreated animal or endangered species he was trying to rescue that week. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go get the rascal’s computer.”

  “Sit,” I said. “We’re not going to get Prine’s computer now.”

  “Why not? No time like the present.”

  “If you seriously think Chief Heedles is going to give two murder suspects access to the victim’s laptop, you’ve got more loose screws than I thought.”

  “We have to steal it, then.”

  “Absolutely not! Don’t you even think of it!”

  He looked sulky again.

  “Remember,” I said. “The police are our friends.”

  He snorted.

  “Some of them are even our relatives.”

  “Oh, I see. Horace is going to steal the laptop.”

  “No one is going to steal the laptop,” I said through clenched teeth. “We don’t need the laptop. We only need someone to get us copies of the photos, or maybe just to tell us the location coordinates. I’ll speak to Horace about that. But in the meantime, play it cool. Don’t try to steal the computer. Don’t whine to the chief about photos in the computer. Just let me handle it.”

  Grandfather stared at me, frowning, for a few moments. Then he nodded briskly.

  “Good.” He sat down and picked up his fork again. “See that you do.”

  I exchanged a look with Caroline. She nodded as if to say that she’d do her best to keep him from badgering the chief or attempting to steal Prine’s computer.

  I headed for the buffet line. Normally I fretted when the people ahead of me took forever picking out what they wanted to eat. Today I didn’t mind—I was studying the denizens of the dining room. Although my motive wasn’t to pick out likely murder suspects—I wanted to find a table where I could eat in relative peace and quiet. Still, I found myself assessing them with murder in mind. Remembering the negative encounters all too many of them had had with Prine.

  I ended up sitting with Amanda. As murder suspects went, she seemed one of the least likely around. She’d probably want to talk about the murder, but then so would everyone else in the room. With the possible exception of Grandfather, and I was tired of talking about gulls.

  “So have the police interviewed you yet?” Amanda asked as I sat down.

  “Several times,” I said. “I found the body, remember. Have they interviewed you?”

  “Briefly,” she said. “And if you ask me, this Chief Heedles is barking up the wrong tree.”

  “How so?”

  “She kept asking about Jazz Hands,” Amanda said. “What did I know about them, how was Prine connected to them. And yeah, maybe Calvin Whiffletree and the rest of the Jazz Hands people are jerks, and maybe they’re behind the vandalism, but are they going to kill someone over your grandmother supposedly copying their idea? Sue her, maybe, but commit murder—I don’t think so. And in the unlikely event they did want to kill anyone, why Prine?”

  “Maybe because he deserted them for us?”

  “If I were them, I’d give you guys a medal for taking him off their hands. No, I don’t see them as killers. What’s more, your chief seems to have a peculiar fixation on those sleazy paintings of Eddie’s. Not that I want to ignore the possibility that some jealous husband did him in, but I think there’s another motive that she’s completely overlooking.”

  She paused dramatically.

  “And that motive is…?” I asked.

  “Money.”

  “Money?” I repeated.

  She nodded.

  “Could you be a bit more specific?” I asked. “Does Prine have money? Owe someone money? Are those sleazy paintings more valuable than they look?”

  “He cost a lot of people a lot of money a few years back,” Amanda said. “He was one of the people who went in for that Dock Street Craft Collective thing down in Richmond. You heard about that? Bunch of craftspeople trying to cut out the middleman and set up their own shop.”

  “I vaguely remember someone asking me if I was interested,” I said. “But my life was pretty crazy then—can’t remember why, since it would have been before the boys were born, but for whatever reason I didn’t even have the breathing space to check it out.”

  “Planning your wedding, maybe?” she suggested.

  “We eloped, remember?” I said. “Cuts down amazingly on the amount of planning required. But getting back to the Dock Street thing—another reason I didn’t think much about it was that I couldn’t figure out why they were going in for a shop instead of trying to sell online. A lot less overhead with that. So how is the collective a possible motive for killing Prine?”

  “The now-defunct collective,” she said. “A lot of people lost a lot of money on that project. And a lot of them blame Eddie.”

  “Were you one of them?”

  “No—lucky for me,” she said. “I’d already moved to North Carolina, and I figured I’d be too far away to look out for my own interests. But ask Gillian—she can give you chapter and verse.”

  I looked around for Gillian, but she wasn’t in the dining hall—or the adjoining library, or out on the terrace where the looms and spindles lay waiting for Amanda’s afternoon session. Not surprising—I’d figured out last week that mingling with the students—or, indeed, with anyone—was never going to be Gillian’s strong suit. Her idea of a fabulous meal in good company was a watercress sandwich, a cup of green tea, and a book of poetry. But we’d be teaching together in the barn all afternoon. Surely I could find a chance to talk to her.

  I went back into the dining room. Most of the diners were gone, or finishing up their dessert. The exception was at Chief Heedles’s table. She, Horace, Dad, and Officer Keech had finished their meals but were still hunched over the table, deep in conversation.

  I decided this might be the perfect time to begin my attempts to find Grandfather’s gulls. I strolled over to the chief’s table. They fell silent and looked up when I came near.

  “Sorry to barge in,” I said. “But I have a question for the chief.”r />
  “We should be going anyway,” Horace said.

  He, Dad, and Officer Keech stood, carried their trays to the service hatch, and hurried off, resuming their conversation when they were out of earshot. Victor the Klutz, who had been sitting nearby, straining as if to hear their conversation, looked back and forth between them and the chief. Just as they were about to disappear, he jumped up and followed them out. Evidently he thought he had a better chance of eavesdropping on them than on the chief and me.

  The chief pointed to a seat and waited, as if inviting me to ask my question without promising an answer.

  “Prine had a computer with him, didn’t he?” I took the offered seat. “Assuming he did, have you taken it into custody yet?”

  “We found a laptop in his room that we assume is his,” the chief said. “And a small portable printer. We’ve taken them into evidence.”

  “So the laptop’s safely off the premises?”

  “It’s down at my station.” She sounded slightly alarmed. “Is it dangerous in any way?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure it was safely out of Grandfather’s reach.” I explained about the pictures of the gull that Prine had presumably printed from his computer, and Grandfather’s resulting interest in the computer. “So if there’s any way you can give us a clue about where the gull photos were taken, we’d all very much appreciate it. Though I understand that maybe you can’t, or even if you can, the murder has to come first.”

  The chief studied me in silence for a few moments.

  “I am second to none in admiration for the fine work your Grandfather does for the environment,” she said finally. “I’ll consult the town attorney to make sure there’s no legal impediment to sharing this information, and if she approves doing so, I will.”

  “Thanks.” I was turning to go when the chief spoke again.

  “Is it possible that this missing gull could have something to do with the murder?” she asked.

  “I can’t imagine how it could,” I said. “Why would anyone kill Prine over a bunch of gulls?”

  “Your grandfather seems to think there’s a connection.”

  “Well, he would.” I shook my head. “He probably thinks some bloodthirsty rival ornithologist forced Prine to divulge the location of the long-lost Ord’s gull and then killed him to keep him from sharing the information with Grandfather.”

  “More or less,” the chief said. “It seemed a little over the top to me, but then so does a lot of what birders get up to. Is there a rival ornithologist nearby?”

  “Not that I know of.” Then a thought struck me. “Although there is a rival bird-watcher. Or at least a bird-watcher Grandfather doesn’t approve of. A Mrs. Venable. She’s ostensibly here to take the jewelry-making class.”

  “Ostensibly? You think she could be here because of the gulls?”

  “I’m sure Grandfather thinks so.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know her well enough to guess,” I said. “But Caroline Willner thinks she’s here because of Grandfather.”

  “Because of him? Or the gulls?”

  “Because of him. Mrs. Venable knows that most of the time, when Grandfather goes someplace, there’s a nature angle of some sort. Caroline suspects she found out Grandfather was teaching here this month and registered for a class so she’d have an innocent reason to come to Biscuit Mountain and snoop around. That way, if Grandfather’s here to film some rare bird, she can rack up another entry on her life list, or at least brag that she spotted it before Grandfather did.” I related the piping plover incident.

  “And as it turns out, there may be a rare bird,” the chief said. “Proving the wisdom of her strategy. But it’s odd that your grandfather didn’t mention this Mrs. Venable to me.”

  “He was probably trying to be subtle,” I said. “Not something he does very often, so he’s not very good at it.”

  The chief smiled slightly at that. But the smile faded, and I could see she was thinking. I watched her and waited.

  “Also odd for him to be teaching here, if you ask me,” she said. “You said yourself that if Prine were a famous painter he wouldn’t be teaching at Biscuit Mountain. So why is the world-famous Dr. Blake teaching here instead of rescuing lions in Africa or breaking up dogfighting rings or whatever else he’s always doing on television.”

  “To help Cordelia,” I said. “Oh, he won’t admit it—if you back him into a corner, he’ll claim I twisted his arm to do it. Or maybe that Caroline did. But that’s not what happened. When he heard she was starting the center, he started fretting about whether she was being impractical and extravagant. And when he heard she was having trouble getting craftspeople to teach here, he came up with the idea of him and Baptiste teaching wildlife photography. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “That was nice of him.” The chief looked surprised. Nice wasn’t a word you normally associated with Grandfather.

  “Of course, ever since he got here he’s been more curmudgeonly than ever.” I sighed and shook my head. “As if he has to prove he hasn’t gone soft.”

  “And unless I miss my guess, Ms. Cordelia has been giving it back to him with interest.”

  “Definitely. She hates being indebted to anyone, but especially to him. But at least if you asked her point blank, she’d admit the debt. Not only is he teaching the classes, he publicized them on his Web site and in the newsletters he sends out to every bird-watcher, animal lover, and environmentalist on the planet. A few days after that newsletter went out, his classes were filled, with a waiting list, and registration picked up on all the rest of the classes.”

  “That answers another of my questions,” the chief said. “How this Mrs. Venable found out your grandfather was here.”

  “She’d have had plenty of opportunities to find out. And who knows? Maybe she doubted that he was just teaching a class in a brand-new craft center in the middle of nowhere. No offense,” I added, hastily. “But that’s how Riverton probably looks to someone from any kind of a city.”

  “We prefer to think of ourselves as remote and unspoiled.” Her mouth was quirked in a smile, so I deduced that I hadn’t offended her too badly. “So even though Mrs. Venable was wrong in her suspicions—your grandfather was only here to teach his class—the fortuitous discovered of the long-lost gulls seemed to confirm her suspicions.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I still have a hard time believing anyone would kill someone over a bird. In fact, I just came up with another more plausible suspicion.”

  “And that is?”

  “I’m sure not everyone who gets Grandfather’s newsletters is really a supporter,” I said. “If I were one of the people he tends to target—greedy developers, animal exploiters, people who are up to something that threatens the environment—I’d probably subscribe under a pseudonym just so I could keep an eye on what he’s doing.”

  “Because just as Mrs. Venable assumes his presence here might lead to a rare bird, his other enemies might assume he’s here to do something that would threaten their interests.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re not exactly making my life easier,” the chief observed. “So in addition to checking out Mrs. Venable, I will need to find out if there’s anyone in the area whose nefarious commercial schemes Dr. Blake threatens.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But yeah—what if wherever the gulls are living is some place targeted for development by someone who knows exactly what a pain in the neck Dr. J. Montgomery Blake can be if he finds an endangered species right in the middle of their planned factory or golf resort?”

  “You think that’s likely?” Chief Heedles asked.

  “Likely? No. I think Cordelia and the center are the more likely targets. But possible? Yes. I suppose it’s possible that once the killer figures out that knocking off Prine won’t protect the secret of the gulls’ location, he’ll go after Grandfather. At least he will if Grandfather doesn’t shut up about his determinati
on to find the long-lost Ord’s gull, and fat chance of that.”

  “Given all that, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep a close eye on him for the time being.”

  “We always do,” I said.

  But she had a point. I looked around for Caroline, who’d made looking after Grandfather almost a part-time job.

  Chapter 12

  Caroline wasn’t in the dining hall, but I did spot Baptiste, the photographer who was teaching the actual photography part of Grandfather’s class. He was sitting at a corner table sipping an after-lunch coffee with his nose in a beige Gallimard paperback with the title Des chauve-souris, des singes, et des hommes. Bats, apes, and men—yes, that sounded like Grandfather’s cup of tea, and presumably Baptiste’s as well.

  “Bonjour,” I said as I reached his table. My French vocabulary is limited, but I like to air it occasionally.

  “Bonjour,” he replied. “And a very good morning it has been. Your admirable cook knows how to make a proper cup of coffee.”

  I noted, enviously, that his English carried only a trace of a French accent. Had he switched our conversation out of French as a courtesy to me, or because he found it painful to hear me butchering his native tongue?

  “I gather you’ll be out in the field again this afternoon,” I said aloud. “Could you keep a close eye on my grandfather?”

  “I always do,” he said, echoing what I’d said to the chief. “Is there any particular danger today?”

  “Could be.” I explained the conversation I’d just had with the chief. “Of course, we don’t know that the murder has anything to do with Grandfather—”

  “But the estimable Dr. Blake has a gift for making enemies,” Baptiste said. “Only among those who are also the enemies of our good earth, but still—he does not know the meaning of caution. I will be vigilant.”