“It’s fine with me, as long as he doesn’t plan on scattering her ashes there.”
Gertie made a face. “Get real.”
“I’m dead serious. When Bob, my father-in-law, died, God rest his soul, Mrs. Meyer, that’s my mother-in-law, wanted his ashes scattered along the shores of Whitmore Lake. Well, you can imagine how the local homeowners reacted, not to mention his Methodist relatives. But Mrs. Meyer was dead set on the idea, and argued her way to city hall. Thank heavens, she eventually lost.”
“So, did they force interment?” Lark asked.
Cecilia’s face pinked up, and she shuddered. “It was truly the most embarrassing thing. You see, after her request was denied, Mrs. Meyer held a funeral, complete with urn and urn bearers and flowers. Everyone thought she’d buried Bob at the Whitmore Lake cemetery. Then, several years later, Dorothy and I paid her a visit. You remember, don’t you, Dorothy?”
“How could I forget?”
“Mrs. Meyers showed us in, and for once seemed happy to see me. You see, I don’t think she ever really approved of my marriage to her Jimmy.”
“What happened next?” Rachel asked.
“She served tea in the living room. It was a massive space, with a fireplace and two large windows that looked out over the lake. I remember her standing in a pool of light, gesturing with flourish toward the windows, and announcing, ‘And there’s Bob.’”
“She’s scattered him anyway?” Lark asked.
“Oh no, dear.”
“That’s what she’d always intended to do,” Dorothy said.
“But she hadn’t.” Cecilia waved a finger at Dorothy. “Instead, she’d kept him, propping his ashes beside the mantel in a taped-up white cardboard box.”
“And she’d printed Bob in bright blue calligraphy across the front,” added Dorothy.
Gertie paled. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I wouldn’t joke about something like that. My father-in-law was a wonderful man.”
“And your mother-in-law was a fruitcake.”
“Dorothy!”
“Face it, Cecilia. She was nuttier than a peanut roll.”
“Whatever happened to Bob?” Lark asked, morbid curiosity getting the better of her.
“When Mrs. Meyer died, we buried them together. Bob would have wanted it that way.”
“Well, Esther deserves a proper send off” Lark said. “And with a stipulation that Vic doesn't scatter her ashes among the bird feeders, the Warbler would be the appropriate place.”
They all agreed.
“What comes next?” Cecilia asked.
Four pairs of eyes turned to Lark.
“We make a to-do list.”
Listing was a legacy from her mother. Elizabeth Drummond made lists of groceries to buy, phone calls to make, appointments to keep, and errands to run. She made lists for the gardener, the chef, and Lark’s nanny. She made lists because—as a mother, the wife of Senator Nathan Drummond, and the president of the East Haddam, Connecticut, Junior League—Elizabeth relished organization.
Lark had refined the technique. She listed rarely, mostly birds. But, when she did, rather than making multiple lists, she used a column system, grouping items of importance in outline form on a single page.
At the top of a sheet of paper, she scribbled “Warbler Café,” then jotted down the number one and wrote “personnel” beside it. Not counting Teresa, the Warbler Café had three part-time employees—Matt, Scott, and Lisa—all college students home on summer break. According to the posted schedule, Matt and Lisa worked Fridays and weekends. Scott worked weekdays, except Mondays, when the Warbler was closed. Teresa worked every shift, or had until today. Lark wrote their names in the “personnel” column, then drew a line through Teresa’s name.
“We need someone to oversee general operations: bookkeeping, payroll, ordering, that sort of thing. And someone will need to cover daily ops: roasting, grinding, brewing coffee, etc. Anyone willing to volunteer?”
Rachel pushed herself up from the couch. “You can count me out of this discussion, so I’ll go make some sandwiches.”
“Scratch Rae.” Lark hadn’t figured she’d volunteer. Rachel was leaving in a couple of weeks, going back to her job as a top designer for the New York City-based marketing firm, Images Plus. Besides, even if she stayed, she telecommuted to work on a daily basis, sometimes seven days a week. She wasn’t a partner. And she didn’t have time to help out much, anyway. “Anyone else?”
Gertie raised both hands in the universal sign for surrender. A dental hygienist for Elk Park’s lone DDS, her weekdays were spent cleaning coffee stains off other people’s teeth. “I can’t do it, either.”
“But you could help on weekends,” Lark said, jotting Gertie’s name down and writing “Sat/Sun” beside it.
Lark scribbled her own name next. Better to volunteer for a job than get stuck with one she would hate. She was tied up at the Drummond Hotel on most days, but her hours were flexible, and she did have business experience. “I don’t mind overseeing the general ops.”
“Which leaves us with the day-to-day operation?” Dorothy crooked a finger at her sister, and the women huddled together in whispered conversation. Lark prayed they were equal to the task.
“We’ll do it,” announced Cecilia. “But this week poses a problem. The Migration Alliance convention kicks off this evening.”
Which meant all four of them had additional obligations.
Dorothy served as MA’s local program director. Cecilia pinch-hit backup. The Drummond, designated MA headquarters, was hosting tonight’s kickoff party, Friday night’s banquet, and next Thursday’s wrap-up barbeque. In addition, Lark was slated to lead several birding field trips during the week, and there was an all-day volunteers hike on Sunday which was mandatory for everyone.
“Why don’t we just wait until next weekend to reopen the store?” suggested Dorothy. “It will give us more time to prepare, and—”
“No,” interrupted Gertie. “Think of the revenues. Think of how much money we’d lose.”
“How much?” Dorothy looked to Lark for the answer.
Lark fingered her braid. “The only way to really know is to look at the books. Barring that…” She shrugged. “Do you want my educated guess?”
Dorothy nodded.
“It’s the busy season, so… I’d say the store could gross several thousand.”
“See?” Gertie said. “I was right. We can’t afford to stay closed, or, for that matter, to host Esther’s memorial.”
Everyone ignored Gertie’s last comment.
“Can we hire someone to supervise?” Cecilia asked, as Rachel carried a large tray in from the kitchen. Everyone looked at her.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Cecilia said.
“How do you feel about helping out family?” Gertie asked.
Rachel glanced at Lark. “Is this a trick question?”
Lark nodded. “We need someone to supervise at the Warbler on Sunday.”
“It’s only one day,” Dorothy said.
Rachel bobbled the tray. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Oh, please reconsider,” Cecilia implored. “We’re desperate.”
Lark leaned back in her chair and watched Rachel cave.
“I know I’m going to regret this,” she mumbled. More loudly she said, “Okay, since there’s no other way, I’ll cover Sunday. How—”
Cecilia clapped her hands.
“However—”
Gertie sneered. “I knew there’d be a catch.”
Rachel banged the tray down on the coffee table, bouncing half-sandwiches off their plates. “As I was saying, someone else will have to come in and close out the register. I don’t want to be responsible for the money.”
“Done,” Lark said.
“And you’ll need to find someone else to cover any scheduling conflicts or crises.”
“Understood.” Lark added a note to her list. “Consider yourself a token supervisor.”
; Rachel rolled her eyes. “What’s everyone want to drink?”
Dorothy glanced at her watch. “Is it that late already? Oh goodness, conference registration opens in an hour. We have to go.”
Cecilia sprang to her feet and smoothed the front of her pedal pushers. “I must say, I do feel better now that we have a plan.”
Four hours later, Lark surveyed the Drummond patio with satisfaction. The cash bars were in place, the hors d’oeuvre table set, and chairs scattered strategically about. Even Velof appeared calm. Earlier, he’d been a mess.
Lark had returned from Bird Haven, changed into a pair of khaki pants, and devoted the afternoon to putting out fires. The coffee supply was dangerously low, so she’d ordered an overnight delivery of Song Bird Coffee from the American Birding Association in Colorado Springs. Expensive, but organic.
Two maids were still out with the flu, and three of the kitchen staff had called in sick. Velof triggered a mild panic with talk about an outbreak of Legionnaires’disease, and Lark had spent over an hour convincing staff members it was safe to stay and work.
The most recent problem cropped up at three, when four departing guests didn’t check out, leaving four incoming guests without rooms for the night. She was still working on that one.
“Everything looks perfect,” Dorothy said, coming up behind her. “Did you remember to order lights for the podium?”
“Yes, Dee. Maintenance set them up an hour ago. Stop worrying.”
Dorothy had changed from her pedal pushers into a sleek black pants suit. From underneath the sleeveless jacket peeked a short-sleeved pink shirt with a wide ruffled collar. A name tag in a plastic holder dangled against her chest at a rakish angle.
“You look terrific.” Lark gave her two thumbs-up. “Everything’s going to go fine.”
“We can only pray.” Dorothy glanced skyward.
Lark eyed the clouds. Earlier in the day, the sky had threatened rain. Dark thunderheads had rolled over the mountain peaks, bringing jagged flashes of lightning that speared toward the earth. Not a drop had fallen, and the storm had moved past. Now, only a wake of puffy white clouds remained to gather the sunset.
“Even the heavens fear Paul Owens,” Dorothy said.
Lark cocked her head. “What do you mean by that?”
“He’s very demanding.”
That informational tidbit didn’t bode well for the Chipe Coffee Company partnership. Lark had only met him once, at a promotional fund-raiser in McAllen, Texas. He’d seemed nice enough then. “What else do you know about him?”
“For one thing, he writes his speeches days in advance and practices them incessantly. I must have heard tonight’s comments and set of introductions six times—once or twice yesterday, and at least four times today already.” Dorothy glanced around to see if anyone was listening, then leaned in closer to Lark. “And, I can tell you something else, Lark. Paul Owens is only a figurehead. It’s Katherine who holds the reins, and that woman makes the devil quake.”
“She can’t be that bad.”
“With God as my witness,” Dorothy said, raising her right hand and pretending to place her left on a Bible. “She’s a witch with a capital B.”
Lark added the information to what she already knew. Katherine, the only daughter of a prominent birder, shared her father’s passion for all things avian. It was he who had provided the seed money to found the Migration Alliance, and she who had placed Paul in the organizational driver’s seat.
“Don’t look now,” Dorothy said. “But here comes Stephen. What do you suppose the problem is?”
Velof’s loafers clicked a staccato on the flagstones, hailing his arrival. Lark spun around. “What’s up, Stephen?”
Dashing in a black Armani knockoff, he ruined the effect by sputtering, “People are starting to show up in the lobby, and, if I may say so, some of them are quite inappropriately dressed.”
Lark could imagine. Most of the people she had seen were dressed in bright green MA T-shirts emblazoned with a white ptarmigan. “How so?”
“We have men in shorts, women in tank—” Velof stopped short, his eyes scanning Lark’s attire.
She tugged at the straps of her silk knit top and brushed nonexistent dirt from the seat of her khaki pants. “These are birders, Stephen. They’ve come here to walk the mountain trails and look at the fauna. I think we can relax the rules for a couple of days.”
“What about our other guests? The ones who aren’t interested in birds, but in the more civilized customs of humanity?”
“They can dress up and eat in the dining room.”
“You’re setting a dangerous precedent.”
“Sometimes you have to bend the rules.”
CHAPTER 7
At five o’clock sharp, with the sun drooping in the summer sky, Dorothy MacBean opened the doors and five hundred people flooded the patio. A small quartet played valiantly in one corner, fighting to be heard above the chatter. From experience, Lark knew that many of the attendees only saw each other once a year at the MA convention or another birding event, and stories of spotting a bird, field trips, and hitting a landmark number abounded. In search of downtime, she clustered near the bar with a group of Elk Park Ornithological Chapter members.
Harry Eckles, one of her better friends and a longtime EPOCH member, lounged against the stone railing, stretching out his long legs. “I, for one, don’t want to hear any more about Esther. I want to hear about the bird you saw.”
“Ja, me, too,” Eric Linenger said, joining them with a cold beer in hand. Having shed his park ranger uniform for chinos and a short-sleeved shirt, the tall Norwegian looked like he'd stepped out fo an Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement. A light breeze ruffled his brown hair, molding a thin cotton shirt against his well-formed pecs. Blue eyes gazed at her down a long, thin nose.
His gaze traveled her length. Lark’s heart pounded beneath her silk blouse. Self-consciously, she raised her hand to her throat. It had been a while since a man had looked at her that way.
An elbow jab to the ribs nearly doubled her over and jolted her back to reality. What had she been thinking? Eric Linenger was the most eligible, most sought-after bachelor in Elk Park. Why would he be interested in her?
“Go ahead, dear,” Cecilia said, tucking her arm back to her side. “Tell us.”
“Well,” Lark coughed and patted her chest. “I’ve never seen a bird like it. It was some kind of warbler, small, with a red throat, a red face, and a black cap.” She expounded on the details, recalling the markings as best she could without her field notebook. She’d left it at Bird Haven. She made a mental note to retrieve it later. Bernie Crandall needed to see it.
“You’ve just described a red-faced warbler,” Harry said.
“That’s impossible,” Andrew Henderson scoffed, popping a miniature egg roll into his mouth and tugging at the belt around his extra-wide girth. “There’s never been a sighting in Colorado.”
“You’re wrong,” Harry said. “Schottler and Stachowiak spotted one in Wheat Ridge in 1993. Schottler even got a picture.”
Lark felt vindicated. Leave it to a biology professor to collect that kind of data.
“Okay, one sighting,” Henderson conceded. “One.” He held up a pudgy finger. “Elk Park’s just too far out of the red-faced warbler’s northern range to make it feasible.”
“What is the range?” Cecilia asked. Lark was wondering the same thing.
“Southwestern New Mexico,” Harry answered, uncrossing and recrossing his ankles. “However, it seems obvious Schottler’s bird didn’t know that.”
Cecilia dug inside the heavy black leather purse she kept draped over her arm. “Wait. I have a guide book.” She ran a finger down the index and flipped the book open to the photo plates. “Is this your bird?”
She held up the picture for Lark to see.
“That’s it!”
“I’m telling you, it can’t be,” said Henderson, cramming another egg roll into his mouth. “Did any
one besides you and Rachel see this bird?”
Lark winced. She knew where this was going. Rachel was a novice birder. Her corroboration wouldn’t satisfy anyone. “No.”
He flung open his arms. “There you have it.”
Lark ignored him. “I still want to know what the book says.”
Cecilia skipped to the next page and scanned the text. “Found in Mexico and Central America in pine-oak forests. Reaches northern limit of range in Arizona and New Mexico.” She glanced up, said, “Not exactly true,” then glanced back down. “Usually seen in mountain canyons at six thousand five hundred to nine thousand feet elevation. It prefers yellow pine, spruce, or Douglas fir and is often sighted near streams.”
“Where did you say you spotted it?” Eric asked.
“On the peninsula.”
“There are lots of pine trees on the peninsula, and it’s near the stream’s inlet,” Cecilia said. “Plus Elk Park falls within the right zone, just a skosh north.”
“Wishful thinking, if I ever heard it.” Andrew spoke around a mouthful of egg rolls.
“It’s been so hot, maybe the bird thought he was in New Mexico,” countered Lark. “All I know is, I saw it, and it looked like that.” She jabbed a finger at the guide book picture.
“You know,” Harry said, straightening up. “Lark may be onto something.”
“What? With the weather theory?” Eric asked, taking a swig of beer and winking at Lark.
Harry nodded. “With global warming, ecosystems change, and the creatures inhabiting those ecosystems change. Sometimes it happens over long periods of time; sometimes it occurs overnight.”
Lark perked up. “You mean like what happened after the Mount Saint Helens eruption.”
“Sure, that would be an example of a rapid occurrence.”
Cecilia looked confused.
“I read about it in Audubon,” explained Lark. “During the volcanic eruption, the pyroclastic flow sterilized the land around a place called Spirit Lake. It created an area called the Pumice Plain. Ten years after the blast, Forest Service ecologists started observing strange combinations of birds showing up in the area—birds associated, with more desert-like conditions. Like what you’d find in the Great Basin, rather than somewhere like the Cascade Range.”
Death of a Songbird Page 7