Never Murder a Birder

by Edie Claire

  “I think they’ve been manipulating the stock price,” Warren said simply.

  Leigh was skeptical. “They don’t sound smart enough to do something like that.”

  “It’s not that difficult to do, at least not in the short term,” he countered. “Janelle could have figured out how to inflate inventory, decrease accounts payable. A little money laundering here, a little debit-memo fraud there — creative accounting can go a long way to increase a company’s reported income. The hard part is not getting caught.”

  Crap. What he said made perfect sense now. “So you think that when the kids took over, the first thing they did was force out all the people they didn’t like, and then they figured out some way to make it look like things were going great, even though the company was probably tanking?”

  “Right. But you can only keep up a charade like that for so long. There are records to keep, auditors to report to. They must have known it was going to come crashing down soon, because according to public SEC filings, all four sibs have recently cashed out. They’ve rather quietly sold nearly all their shares in the business. Selling out isn’t illegal in and of itself, of course. But manipulating the stock price for the purpose of—”

  “I get it,” Leigh interrupted again. She lifted Snowbell from her lap and placed the sleeping lump in her fluffy cat bed. “And you think Ted Sullivan got in the way somehow?”

  “There are any number of ways he could have,” Warren suggested. “He could have been helping them, and then demanded a cut for blackmail. They could have been hiding things from him that he found out and then threatened to expose. Or he could have been the mastermind behind the whole scheme, and either they felt he’d betrayed them or they wanted it all.”

  Warren grabbed the keys to the rental car. “There’s no telling which or how many of the four siblings were involved in the decision to go dark in the first place. It’s not clear that Sharonna or Russell have anything at all to do with the business. But regardless of who’s at the helm, Cortland’s will makes certain that all four siblings will share equally in the bounty — or the fallout.”

  Leigh’s mind again replayed a snippet of the conversation she’d heard through the wall of the Silver King. We’re each going to get our fair share, I promise you.

  She barely noticed when Warren kissed her goodbye.

  “The good news,” he continued, “is that we’re not dealing with some subtle sleight of hand from a criminal genius, here. Finney Enterprises doesn’t just have a red flag on it, it’s got a flashing neon sign that says, ‘Get Your Fraud Here.’ I have zero doubt that the Texas Rangers already suspect the Finney sibs for the Sullivan murder and I suspect the Feds are well into a financial investigation as well.” He stepped to the door. “All of which makes me feel considerably better about leaving you to go to work today. It’s only a matter of time until one authority or the other gathers enough evidence for an arrest. If the guilty parties were smarter, they wouldn’t even be here — they’d have hightailed it out of the country already. So all you have to do is stay away from all four of them and let nature take its course.”

  “Easy enough,” Leigh replied.

  He laughed stiffly. “I don’t believe that for a minute. But today, I don’t have to. I know you won’t be alone, whether you try to be or not.” He smiled at her as he let himself out the door. “Happy birding.”

  Leigh sat on the bed a while longer, attempting to digest the new information. But her brain had no intention of cooperating before caffeine, and she soon gave up and made herself a cup of coffee. She was halfway through her first dose when her cell phone sounded with her daughter’s ringtone. Allison was requesting a video call, which Leigh despised. There was simply no way to hold the phone where the camera didn’t give her either a triple chin or bags under the eyes. She held her phone down on the table in front of her so that the camera would be aimed at her coffee cup — one of several mugs that Joyce had emblazoned with a picture of Snowbell — then answered.

  “Aw,” Allison cooed. “That’s cute.”

  Leigh peered in at an angle to see that Allison was sitting on her cousin’s spare bed with Lenna’s three-legged tortoiseshell cat on her lap. “You should appreciate the view. I look hideous this hour of the morning. How’s Peep?”

  “She’s awesome,” Allison replied, stroking the cat. “Still likes Lenna best, but we’re buds now.”

  “Mao Tse doing okay? And Chewie?” Leigh inquired, asking about her own cat and dog.

  “Mao misses you, but she lets Aunt Cara pet her when you’re not around. Chewie’s going to gain five pounds, though, because Uncle Gil keeps feeding him under the table. He says he can’t stand those pathetic brown eyes staring at him.”

  Leigh sighed. “So gullible. And how about your brother? Is he—”

  “Listen, Mom,” Allison broke in. “I only have, like, two minutes before we have to catch the bus, but I wanted to let you know that Sharonna called me last night.”

  Leigh’s blood ran cold. She scooped up the phone and pulled it to her face. “What?!”

  “Don’t freak out,” Allison said calmly, still petting the cat. “It’s not that big a deal.”

  Leigh made some inarticulate noises. Allison kept talking. “It was, like, 2:00AM here, which is why I didn’t call you right away. And as for how she got my number, I’ve been thinking about that. My first thought was that she must have got hold of your or Dad’s phone. But I suppose you would have known about that.”

  Leigh managed only a gurgling sound. “But then I remembered that you have my suitcase,” Allison continued. “And I’m sure I put my cell number on the luggage tag. So there you go. Any idea when she might have seen your luggage? Snapped a photograph?”

  “What did she say to you?” Leigh practically exploded, cursing herself for not thinking of the abominable luggage tags sooner.

  Allison had the gall to smile. “It was pretty funny, actually. She seemed surprised at my voice. I didn’t bother to sound more grown up or anything, so if she was expecting you, that would have been a surprise. There was a pause, and then she just said, ‘This is Sharonna.’”

  Leigh waited a beat. “That’s all? Just ‘This is Sharonna?’”

  “That’s it,” Allison confirmed. “I decided to play dumb, so I said, ‘Who?’ like I was really annoyed at being woken up in the middle of the night. And then she hung up on me.”

  Leigh breathed a silent prayer at having given birth to such intelligent children. Although in Allison’s case, slightly less intelligence would also be acceptable. “I’m really sorry about this, honey.”

  Allison smiled and shook her head. “Stop worrying about me, will you? She thinks you used a fake number. You’re good. Still, I can’t help but wonder what she expected you to say back. What is it she wants from you? You know, if you and Dad would just give me the whole story here, I’m sure I could help you figure things out…”

  Over my dead body!

  Bad choice of words.

  “I have no idea what she wants,” Leigh answered. “But it isn’t your problem. Don’t miss the bus. And please don’t answer your phone again unless you know who it is!”

  Allison smiled thinly. “Bye, Mom. See you soon!”

  The video cut out, and Leigh’s teeth gnashed. The child hadn’t agreed to anything.

  She dressed quickly, prepared and served Snowbell’s breakfast, and then walked to Bev and Hap’s place. The fifth wheel was empty again, but Leigh found Bev in the small park office, talking on two phones simultaneously. Bev gestured through the glass door for Leigh to enter, and Leigh stepped inside and looked around with amazement.

  The tiny office had turned into a fully functional command and control center. One wall was dominated by an enlarged map of the town; the other by a giant, color-coded whiteboard. On the counter lay a series of rosters and reporting logs. Leigh studied the roster on top and saw her own patrol prominently listed. Sue or Bonnie, one, had volunteered their group to keep a
n eye out for birds and assorted mischief on the beach just north of the RV park. Perfect.

  Bev hung up both phones. “Morning, darlin’,” she said in typical motherly fashion, producing a tray of lemon poppyseed muffins and fresh strawberries from thin air. “You doing all right?”

  Leigh’s mouth started to water. She’d been doing well with the walking — until the blisters happened, anyway. And she could hit the pavement again, now that her feet were better. Besides, stress burned calories, right?

  She took a muffin. “I’m fine. Thank you. These look amazing.” She took a bite. They were amazing. She gestured around the room while she chewed. “I can’t believe all this. You and Hap are incredible.”

  Bev’s expression sobered. “It’s early still, but we’re already getting results.”

  Leigh wasn’t sure she found that comforting.

  “Janelle’s car just showed up at the Finney mansion,” Bev reported. “As far as anyone knows, Bruce is there too.”

  Leigh swallowed an overlarge mouthful. The Finney mansion, she had heard, was a six-bedroom spread on the south edge of town that had been built by Cortland and Debra in the eighties. It fronted the ocean and had a nice tract of land besides, with a giant deck for entertaining, a swimming pool, a tennis court, and a dedicated storage building for the tycoon’s boat trailers and collection of antique cars. The house had fallen into Bruce’s hands after his parents died, and rumor had it that his third wife Misti had been dumping a fortune into landscaping and redecorating ever since. Despite the size of the house, Bruce’s siblings were not known to the neighbors to be regular guests. “I take it that’s unusual?”

  Bev nodded. “Janelle almost never comes to Port Mesten. But for her to show up on a Friday, during business hours, is especially strange. And there’s something else, too. The dawn patrol at the north entrance to the preserve said they saw tracks out in the mud flats. All around the area that was taped off yesterday. And right through the middle of it.”

  Leigh’s throat felt dry. By “the area that was taped off,” Bev meant where Stanley’s body had been found. Ghouls! She poured herself a second cup of coffee from the small carafe on the office counter. “What kind of tracks?”

  “Boot tracks. Big ones,” Bev answered. “Like a tall man. They couldn’t have been there long, either. It rained pretty hard overnight, if you recall. It started about midnight, just as Hap and I were turning in. That would have wiped out any footprints the police left yesterday, and the birders were out at first light and didn’t see a soul. So whoever made those tracks had to have been running around out there in the wee hours in pitch dark.”

  The mental image sent a shiver through Leigh’s shoulders. “But why?”

  Bev shrugged. “You got me, honey. I can see somebody poking around out there just out of curiosity, but I can’t see them doing it in the dark. And alone. The team swore there was only one set of footprints.”

  “Did they tell the police?”

  Bev nodded. “I had them get in touch with the investigator from the Rangers directly. He’d given Walter his number yesterday, so we used it. No point diluting the message by sending it through the locals first… if you know what I mean.”

  Leigh did. “I have some news myself,” she said miserably. She summarized Warren’s theory about the Finneys’ financial problems, then described the disturbing call Sharonna had made to Allison’s number.

  Bev swore. “That skanky little witch! She just won’t quit, will she? Rosina told me this morning that she won’t leave the housekeeping staff alone, either. Yesterday she was nosing around the hotel with some guy who was translating for her. He was asking the girls in Spanish if they remembered what kind of car you were driving and what type of person you were traveling with.”

  Leigh’s face got hot. “What type of person?”

  “Yes,” Bev said speculatively, stroking her dimpled chin. “That was an odd bit. Rosina said the girls got the idea that Sharonna didn’t understand the man’s relationship to you. Now, wouldn’t you assume that any woman traveling with a man in a room with one bed was traveling with a significant other? Weird.”

  Leigh thought about the luggage tags. Taken at face value, she and Warren would appear to be traveling as a couple named Warren and Allison Harmon. As far as Leigh knew, there were no other personal identifiers in the room. She kept her purse in her backpack and all Warren’s things were with him in his briefcase. If Sharonna believed Leigh was someone else, then it might be reasonable for her to assume they were intentionally traveling with fake names on their luggage. But she might believe the phone numbers were legit, in case the bags got lost. So she’d given it a shot. And when a young girl’s voice answered? Of course! She would assume the number was fake, too.

  Leigh exhaled with relief. Maybe everything would be all right after all.

  It took exactly two seconds for panic to set back in. Warren. If Sharonna had called Allison’s number, she must have snapped a picture of the luggage tag while she was snooping in their hotel room. Had she snapped a picture of Warren’s tag also? Would she be calling him next? Sharonna might assume both names were fake, but if she bothered to do an online search on “Warren Harmon” she could quickly determine that he was a real person who lived at the address on the tag. Perhaps it was no wonder she was confused that Leigh’s doppelganger was shacking up with a legitimate financial consultant from Pittsburgh!

  Leigh started to say something, only to notice that at some point while she had zoned out, Bev must have picked up another call. The activities director had put on a headset, moved to the map, and stood ready with a notebook and pen in her hand. “Okay, go ahead,” Bev ordered into her mic. “Uh huh. What time was that? And he was headed which way? Gotcha. Thanks so much! What was that? A lesser black-backed? Where on the beach, exactly? Hey, that’s awesome! Congrats to you both!”

  Bev stuck a pin in the map, scribbled something on her notebook, then stepped to the whiteboard. “Russell’s in town,” she reported. “His car was spotted at the Cocoa-Nut Cafe. He just left, heading east. Now I’ll alert the other teams to keep a look out for him, too. Ah, this is working beautifully! I feel like I’ve stepped right into an episode of Hawaii 5-0.”

  Leigh had to smile at the other woman’s enthusiasm. She examined the pegboard map more closely. “Do you know where the other Finneys are?”

  “We think Bruce and Janelle are together at the mansion, like I said,” Bev answered. “Sharonna’s still in her room at the Silver King with the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign out. She’s never awake this early.”

  A hundred unconnected thoughts raced through Leigh’s sugar- and poppyseed-fueled brain, most of them unpleasant. She needed to think this through. She needed to concentrate. There had to be some way to safely extricate her family from this whole mistaken-identity debacle. And the sooner, the better.

  “Bev,” she said with determination. “Would you mind if I borrow those binoculars of yours again? I’ve been meaning to tell you, that salve you gave me worked great on the blisters. And right now, I’m feeling like taking a nice, long walk.”

  Chapter 16

  Leigh stood on the platform at the end of the pier and breathed in deeply of the ocean air. The morning sky showed no traces of the gloomy intermittent rain of late, and her beach walk had been refreshing. She wanted to rest her forearms on the weathered wood of the pier railing and lean out, but although she was not a particularly fastidious person when it came to animal waste, the amount of bird poop on that surface was too impressive to ignore. So she continued to stand up straight, enjoying the churning sound of the waves and the amazing sun-on-your-skin sensation that had lured her to Texas in the first place.

  Several fishermen had cast their lines off the pier. The whole area smelled vaguely fishy, but from the general level of activity around her Leigh suspected she was smelling bait rather than anyone’s catch. She looked down into the gray-brown water and saw nothing but one floating jellyfish. To her side, two surfe
rs were doing their best to stand on their boards more than three seconds at a time. But although the waves out by the pier were better organized than the churning froth closer to shore, the pulse of the Gulf was still chaotic, and the surfers didn’t seem to be having a very satisfying session.

  A gust of wind kicked up, and she tightened the strap of her floppy hat under her chin. She was in full disguise again… at least for now. She lifted her binoculars and focused in on a flying pelican. The binocs had proved a helpful addition to her ensemble. With the complete getup, not only did she find herself dismissed as uninteresting by virtually every man and woman under the age of fifty-five, but she also saw some pretty cool-looking birds. She had no idea what any of them were called, of course, but she found she still enjoyed looking at them. She also enjoyed looking at her fellow birders, whom she was quite certain had been following her progress ever since she’d left the Mesten Grande park office.

  She swung the binoculars around and focused on a spot up the beach a few hundred yards, where a couple moseyed along consorting with a flock of gulls. The man had his own binoculars to his eyes, and Leigh picked up her opposite hand and waved slightly. The man in her sights smiled and waved back at her.

  Warren would be pleased, wouldn’t he? At least it made what she was about to do all the more reasonable. She pulled her phone from her pocket and called Bev. “Leigh here, checking in from the pier,” she said brightly. “Any news?”

  “Bruce is on the move now,” Bev said sharply. “Best we can tell, he’s following Del Mayfield around. It’s like he’s got nothing to do with his own time! Janelle’s car is still parked at the mansion. Little brother Russell hasn’t stopped moving since his first cup of coffee this morning. He just seems to be trolling the streets. Quite honestly, Leigh, we think he might be looking for you. He’s driving around with his arm hanging out the side of that sports car of his, scanning up and down every block. Every time he sees a crowd gathered, he slows down and checks them out.” She chuckled humorlessly. “It’s sheer bad luck he’s come nowhere near you so far. If he had, I would have called you.”