Rant of Ravens

by Goff, Christine

  “We know Bursau received a call from Bird Haven on Monday, before he checked out of the hotel,” Lark said. “The question is from whom?”

  “It seems safe to assume—”

  Rachel shot Kirk a scathing glance. “That it was one of us, or Mike Johnson arranging to meet him—”

  “In order get their hands on the disks,” Lark finished.

  “Oh, my,” Dorothy said. “Who would do that?”

  The killer. Rachel combed her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her face. “Sheriff Garcia would say Aunt Miriam.”

  “That’s pure speculation,” Forest said. “For all we know, the person called to offer him more information.” He looked pointedly at Gertie.

  Charles cleared his throat. “Miriam told me she was going to call Bursau.” His voice was barely audible. “She wanted to buy his silence in regard to Will.”

  Rachel stepped toward him. Eric placed a restraining hand on her arm.

  “Why didn’t you tell us this earlier, Charles?” she asked.

  He shot Rachel a defiant glare. “I gave Miriam my word I’d keep quiet. I tried to talk her out of it. I told her not to call. I was, I still am, convinced that reporter was trying to blackmail her.”

  Rachel glanced at Kirk Udall. The man had one heck of a poker face.

  Quiet blanketed the patio. Lark sloshed coffee into a mug. Finally she broke the silence. “Okay, let’s say Bursau agreed to meet Miriam, give her the disks, and erase his computer files. She had time to pick them up on her way to The Thicket Monday night. Remember, she drove down alone. Rae stayed home that night.”

  Cecilia pulled a tissue from her purse and blotted her upper lip. “This is getting serious.”

  Getting? One man is dead and Aunt Miriam is missing, and she thinks it’s getting serious?

  “Where do you suppose the disks are now?” asked Udall.

  Leave it to him to ask the obvious question.

  “Maybe Miriam stashed them somewhere in the house.”

  Or maybe she took them with her when she left.

  Eric slid his chair back. It screeched on the patio stones. “If someone knew Miriam had the disks, they might have tried searching the cages to find them.”

  “Or maybe they wanted to hide them somewhere,” Harry said, dusting his hands together.

  “Or maybe someone just killed two birds with one stone,” Rachel said.

  The birders glared.

  “Sorry, no pun intended.” Rachel looked down at her hands and played with her fingers. Here’s the church, here’s the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people. Only in this case it was a barn. “Bursau was doing a story on bird trafficking, right? So doesn’t it stand to reason that the bird traffickers wanted both the disks and the birds?”

  Dorothy fidgeted with her tissue. “Why on earth would Miriam get herself involved in something so dangerous?”

  “To protect Will,” Cecilia declared. “I would do almost anything to protect my Jim.” That was saying a lot, considering her husband had been missing in action for over forty-seven years.

  Harry coughed.

  Lark stirred her coffee, licked the spoon, then pointed it toward the other birders. “That’s probably why Kirk’s friend Bursau exited stage left, and checked out with no advance notice.” She cast a guilty look at Rachel.

  Rachel decided to let her wallow in it.

  “Then who shot him?” Eric asked.

  “Who cares?” Lark responded. “The point is, if Miriam had what she wanted, she had no reason to kill the guy.”

  “Unless he planned to report what he knew anyway,” Kirk said. “Maybe she figured Bursau was lying.”

  Rachel glared at him. “We’re operating under the assumption that Aunt Miriam is innocent, Kirk.”

  “Duly noted.” He gave a rakish smile that tugged at her resolve to remain annoyed with him.

  “How many disks does a box of computer disks hold?” Harry asked. “Assuming it was full.”

  “Usually ten,” Rachel answered.

  Lark’s head came up. Her spoon clanged on the counter. “If Miriam has even one of the disks…”

  Rachel locked eyes with her. “Then she’s got a clue to Bursau’s killer.”

  Lark nodded. “Which means—”

  “Your aunt Miriam’s got herself in deep doo-doo,” Udall said.

  After a cursory search of the Raptor House and Bird Haven turned up nothing, the discussion petered out around three o’clock. Miriam had been missing nearly twenty-four hours. Rachel watched the others prepare to leave with growing apprehension. She didn’t want to wait for word from Aunt Miriam all alone.

  The consensus of the EPOCH members was that whoever’d killed Bursau had most likely come after Miriam. The hope was that she had something the killer wanted, and there would be some type of ransom request, or else that she had fled and was hiding out. But if that was the case, why hadn’t she called?

  Fear for Miriam’s safety and a need for company drove Rachel into town for dinner. Two chocolate milkshakes and bellyache later, she drove back to Bird Haven, checked the voicemail, and went to bed.

  Hours later, she woke with a start. Her heart pounded, sweat beaded her brow. She reached to touch the pillow beside her, then remembered where she was.

  Something was wrong! She pushed back the comforter and sat up. What had wakened her? She didn’t remember having a bad dream.

  The wind gusted outside, stirring the trees. A branch tapped against the windowpane. She exhaled. Just another new sound to contend with.

  In New York she’d learned to tune out the noise—the blare of horns, the squeal of tires, the clatter of construction, and the endless prattle of voices on the street outside her window. And, until two months ago, Roger snoring softly beside her in bed.

  In Elk Park, she was learning to sleep alone and to contend with the sounds of silence—quiet so intense she heard pine needles brushing glass, wood snapping with temperature changes, and the voices of her soul. She’d been here only six nights, but already she’d learned to differentiate ranch house noises.

  A floorboard creaked.

  Rachel’s breath caught in her throat. Her pulse quickened. That was the sound of someone walking—upstairs. There was someone inside the house!

  Maybe Aunt Miriam had come home. Rachel swung her legs over the side of the bed. Miriam was a light sleeper, and she paced the floors at night. Rachel heard her whenever she stepped into the hall and creaked down the stairs for hot chocolate.

  But she would have seen Rachel’s note. If it was Miriam, why hadn’t she wakened Rachel when she came in?

  She jammed her feet into a pair of fleece-lined slippers, and pulled a robe over her flannel nightshirt. It was just a little before two o’clock. Whoever was prowling around upstairs didn’t belong there.

  Rachel eased open the bedroom door, forming a silent prayer that it wouldn’t squeak and that whoever was in the house was someone she wouldn’t mind meeting in a dark alley. She inched her way slowly down the hall, feeling her way by trailing her fingers along the rough-board wall. Pine scent assailed her nostrils. Her heart throbbed in her ears.

  She stopped at the end of the hall. She could see the stairway, and the landing halfway to the first floor. Moonlight streaked the walls in barlike patterns of white and black. Then the shadow of someone descending the stairs fell across the hardwood floor.

  She pressed against the splintery boards and squinted in the darkness, trying to identify the person padding down the carpeted steps. Too tall to be Aunt Miriam, and most likely a man, judging by the way he held his arms.

  A white blur flew at her face, and she flung her arms up, emitting a sharp squeak. Perky! Damn!

  The person on the stairs froze, then bolted, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Instinct told Rachel to run for the study, lock the door, and dial 911. Self-defense training told her to be aggressive. The intruder knew she had seen him. Turning tail would only give away t
he fact she was terrified, and give him the advantage.

  As Grandma Wilder always said, the best offense is to kick him where it hurts. If the prowler came within range, Rachel planned to karate chop his balls off.

  She fumbled for the light switch. “Stop!”

  The lights flared on. A flash of blue bolted into the living room.

  Shit! What now? What if he’s not alone?

  Rachel succumbed to instinct, grabbed the hall telephone, and punched in 911.

  “What’s your emergency?”

  “There’s someone in my house.”

  “I’m having trouble hearing you, Miss.”

  “That’s because I’m whispering.” She didn’t want the intruder to double back and stop her from placing the call. “There is someone in my house.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss, but you’ll have to speak up.”

  “Send help. There’s an intruder who doesn’t belong here.”

  “Did you say there is someone in your house?”

  “Yes.” Did the dispatcher have delayed response syndrome?

  “You have an intruder?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Hold the line, Miss. I’ll dispatch someone to the scene, but it may take a few minutes. Can you confirm your address for me?”

  “Bird Haven. I’m at Bird Haven.” Rachel set the receiver down on the table. While the dispatcher dinked around, the intruder was getting away, and he was a possible link to Aunt Miriam’s whereabouts.

  “Are you still there, Miss?” The dispatcher’s voice rasped through the receiver. “Please remain on the line!”

  Rachel didn’t answer. A door slammed at the rear of the house.

  Think, Stanhope! She hadn’t heard a car engine, so the intruder was still on foot, and therefore still on the grounds. Was he still in the house? Had he slammed the door to trick her into believing he’d slipped out the back?

  The thought chilled her. Anyone willing to enter an occupied house to steal something was a person on the edge. Had whoever’d come here tonight known she was home?

  Rachel moved cautiously into the living room. She crossed the room, fearful of the lurking shadows. Grabbing a poker from the set of fireplace tools, she balanced it on her shoulder like a baseball bat and started up the short flight of steps leading to the dining room.

  A sharp whistle caused her to jump. Perky flew in, lit on the mantel, and whistled again.

  “Shut up!” whispered Rachel, hyperventilating into her cupped hands.

  Make me, said the bird.

  Don’t tempt me, you little tweet. She brandished the poker in his direction. Where the hell was the sheriff?

  She climbed another step. The stair creaked. Rachel froze. If the intruder was still inside and hadn’t heard her arguing with the stupid parakeet, he couldn’t have missed the squeaky step. Alerting him to her whereabouts didn’t seem like a great idea. On the other hand, if he’d slammed out the back door, he was getting away.

  Be bold, Stanhope. Quit mincing your way along. Rachel raised the poker and charged into the dining room. She glanced left, then right. Not a soul was there.

  Perky flew up the parallel staircase on the opposite side of the fireplace and perched on a candlestick. Problem, Chicky Baby?

  “I don’t suppose you’d tell me if you saw someone circling around.”

  Nope.

  Rachel flipped off the bird, then moved stealthily toward the cozy area attached to the dining room. She passed the swinging door that led to the kitchen. It didn’t slam, and the kitchen doors to the patio slid open and thumped closed. The cozy area off the dining room had the only door in this part of the house that slammed. It exited onto the back patio.

  The door was shut tight, but unlocked. Rachel drew a deep breath, exhaled, and flipped on the patio lights. A figure loomed in the window.

  CHAPTER 10

  Eric stepped forward and pressed his nose to the glass. Rachel yanked open the door. Forest and Charles rushed forward, flanking him from behind.

  “What in God’s name are you doing here?” she demanded, wielding the fireplace poker in anger.

  Eric’s gaze traveled along the piece of metal and rested on the hooked end. He took a step back. “We were installing some security measures, and heard your call on the scanner. Are you okay?”

  “Did you see anyone running away from here when you came up from the barn?” Rachel peered past him into the night that encircled the patio with a curtain of black. The three men looked at each other and shook their heads.

  “Nope,” Eric said. “We didn’t see a soul.”

  Sheriff Garcia surveyed the chaos in the study and shook his head. “You sure you didn’t hear anything?”

  Rachel stared in horror at the emptied drawers, slashed cushions, and strewn desk contents littering the floor. She swallowed to steady her voice. “Positive. But you can’t hear anything from my room. I heard something only when the person stepped into the hall. Because of the board that creaks.”

  “Was the person carrying anything?”

  “Not that I could see. His hands were free.”

  Sheriff Garcia rubbed the ends of his mustache. “He could’ve stuffed something small in his pocket. You say he was headed down?”

  “When I reached the hallway, he was on the stairs.”

  “And that’s when you flipped on the lights.”

  “Right.”

  “And what did he do then?”

  “He ran.” Rachel squelched her annoyance at his line of questioning. It was a common marketing strategy to repeat information. The rule of thumb was to repeat things a minimum of three times for maximum retention. In the last four days, she’d decided that it must be a Sheriff’s Department strategy to rephrase and requestion witnesses as many times as needed to get the answers the sheriff wanted to hear. Garcia was into round five. He should have gotten the answers by now.

  Garcia turned to the three men. “And none of you saw anything?”

  Forest responded first. “No, like we told you, Sheriff, we were wiring a security system. Eric heard the call over the scanner, shouted to Charles and me, and we all ran up to the house.”

  “You were together the whole time?”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “Out in the Raptor House wiring a security system to protect the buildings from break-in.”

  “Together?”

  “Yes.” The three men nodded in unison.

  “And you were wiring this system at two o’clock in the morning.”

  “That’s right, Sheriff,” Eric said. “We’ve already lost three birds. I don’t relish losing any more.”

  “I’ll be the first to admit it’s taken us longer than we had anticipated,” Forest said, pressing a fist to his hip. “Are you going somewhere with this line of questioning, Vic? It’s apparent something’s on your mind. Perhaps you’d like to enlighten the rest of us.”

  Garcia gestured to the uniformed officers working the crime scene that he was stepping outside, then signaled for Eric, Forest, Charles, and Rachel to join him in the hall. The floorboard squeaked as he stepped through the doorway. He stopped, then bounced up and down, making it creak several times more. “From what you’ve told me, the three of you were in separate parts of the Raptor House. Could you actually see each other?”

  “Not always,” Eric admitted.

  “But you were in constant communication?”

  “Not constant,” Charles said. “Get to the point, Sheriff. What are you driving at?”

  “I’m just trying to establish your alibis. We already know that one of you”—he raised his palms—“one of the birdwatchers made a call to Bursau from here on the night of the murder.”

  Forest puffed out his cheeks in indignation. “Are you suggesting Eric, Charles, or I might have come up here and rifled Miriam’s study?”

  “No, I’m just verifying your whereabouts.”

  “This is ludicrous,” Charles said. “Even if one of us wanted to come in here, none of us would be s
tupid enough to risk being seen. Rachel would have recognized any one of us.”

  Garcia swung his head back and forth. “Not in the dark.”

  “I heard her say she turned on the lights,” Forest pointed out.

  “Yes, but the intruder was running by then. She saw a flash of blue, then he disappeared through the darkened living room.”

  The sheriff’s suggestion was chilling. Could it have been one of these men? Rachel’s gaze traveled over the threesome. All of them wore blue jeans.

  “This is utter rubbish. Hell, I could no more outrun this young girl than I could outrun Deputy Fife over there.” Charles gestured at a young deputy squatting near the door.

  “You play tennis twice a week, Pendergast. And you work out at the club. I think you underestimate yourself.” The sheriff grinned. “What do you think, Ma’am?”

  Rachel didn’t know what to think. Or, for that matter, whom to trust anymore. “I fail to see a motive.”

  Garcia rubbed his chin. “Why?”

  “Because he was obviously after the computer disks,” Charles said, plopping down on the hallway settee, “and we’d already searched for them up here this afternoon.”

  “What do you know about the computer disks?” Garcia asked suspiciously. He eyed each of them, petting his mustache

  Finally, Rachel spoke up. “I know only what was mentioned in the newspaper. Or rather not mentioned.” She related how Kirk Udall had shown up with the paper, and how they’d come up with the hypothesis about Bursau’s selling out his story. “Of course, it’s only a theory.”

  “You say this new reporter’s here, in town?” Garcia signaled to the deputy dusting the door for fingerprints. “Go and bring in a fella by the name of Kirk Udall for questioning. Find out if he has an alibi for tonight.”

  The deputy departed immediately.

  “He was here earlier,” Rachel said. “I don’t see what he would gain by coming back and doing this.”

  “What would any of you have to gain?” Garcia rubbed his forehead and stared at the carpet. “Did this Udall fellow say anything about receiving any files on disks from Bursau?”