Death of a Songbird

by Goff, Christine

  “You don’t have to answer,” Katherine told him. She turned to Lark. “Suffice it to say, he works with our national security in mind.”

  Was Katherine protecting him? “Forgive me,” Lark said. “I didn’t mean it like—”

  “No, no. Not to worry,” interrupted Buzz, brushing a hand across his flattop. “The Air Force’s interest is in the migratory patterns of birds. We need to learn more about their migration in order to understand how their flights might impact military maneuvers. And how our operations impact their flights.” He slathered pâté on a cracker. “I’ve only been observing in Mexico for the past several years. I’m still learning. But I can tell you one thing: Be careful flying a plane in or out of Chiapas in March, or you might eat a hawk for lunch.”

  “I’ll heed the advice.”

  “Are you satisfied?” Katherine asked coldly.

  Lark toyed with the drips of condensation forming on her crystal water glass. “I just have one more question.”

  “You don’t know when to stop, do you?” snapped Jan.

  Katherine glared at all of them. Norberto hid a smile behind his napkin. Paul craned his neck and tugged at his shirt collar.

  “Have any of you ever seen a red-faced warbler?”

  The rest of dinner passed with talk of birds and adventures, then about nine o’clock, Lark excused herself.

  “No, don’t go, yet,” Paul protested. “We’re just about to order after-dinner drinks.”

  “I really have to go. I’m leading the hike to Paris Pond in the morning, and we start out at five o’clock.”

  After another polite volley of protest, Owens decided to leave, too, and walked her out to the truck. The moon rode high in the sky, bathing the parking lot in shades of dawn and dusk. Trees stood like sentinels of the forest, dark against the whitewashed ground.

  Boop.

  “Did you hear that?” Lark turned toward the pine trees that lined the road leading out of the parking lot. She cocked her head. “Listen.”

  Another hollow boop came from high in the trees.

  “Your call,” Paul said.

  “A flammulated owl.”

  Paul nodded.

  Lark squinted, trying to spot the bird among the trees. “Do you see it?” she asked.

  Paul moved right, then pointed. “There, on the branch. In this moonlight, you can even see its dark eyes and mottled plumage.”

  “What are you two looking at?” Jan asked, stumbling down the porch steps. “Oops.”

  “Careful there, Jan.” Buzz scooped her up before she hit the ground, setting her on her feet. “Whew, boy. Which one of us is driving?”

  Lark raised a finger to her lips.

  “Ohhh,” Buzz opened his eyes wide, then, contorting his face, mimicked Lark. “Shhhh, everybody.” He looked around, swiveling his head from side to side, then let out a deep, booming laugh. “Why are we being so quiet?”

  “Because there’s an owl in the trees,” whispered Lark. She pointed, but the creature was gone.

  Buzz craned his neck. “I don’t see him.”

  That’s because you frightened him away.

  Jan let out a peal of laughter. “Did someone say we’re going hiking tomorrow? I’m going to need an Advil. Better yet, a bottle of Advil.”

  Lark climbed into her truck.

  She waited for Owens to wheel out of the parking lot ahead of her. Following at a slow pace, she maintained a safe distance, content to bring up the rear. His car lurched in the potholes, weaving from side to side. Lark could see Jan, wedged in the backseat between Norberto and Buzz, her head lolling back and forth.

  What were Paul and Katherine thinking, bringing those three to Migration Alliance? It was clear none of them gave a hoot about birds. To Jan and Norberto, shade-grown, organic coffee spelled money. Plain and simple, everything perched on the bottom line. The increased consciousness among Americans might force them to tout the environmental message, but the facts remained: Profit ruled the day.

  But what was Buzz’s interest? It wasn’t money. There was no financial gain for him. And it wasn’t the birds. Drunk or sober, a serious birder would have shown more interest in a flammulated owl. So, what was he watching? The people? She’d read stories about spies who used bird-watching as a cover. Maybe Major Buzz Aldefer was in Mexico ferreting out intel?

  Ahead of her, Owens flipped on his blinker and turned left onto Raptor House Road. Lark stopped her truck at the junction and watched him drive away. Several things about the past couple of days had been bothering her: the odd numbers in Esther’s ledger, the letter written by Paul, and tonight’s conversation about business.

  Lights shone from the windows at Bird Haven. Rachel was still up. Time to pay her a visit.

  Rachel came to the door in her pj’s, red hair tumbling around her shoulders. “Lark, what are you doing here?” Rachel peered past her into the moonlit night.

  “Got a minute?”

  “Is everything all right?” She stepped aside to let Lark enter, eyeing her outfit.

  “Peachy, except I just came from the weirdest dinner party.” Lark brushed past her, and Rachel closed and locked the door.

  “What do you mean?” She gestured for Lark to follow and padded ahead of her down the hall toward the family room. Irish folk music, piped through a central stereo system, played softly in the background.

  Lark plopped down in the easy chair and briefed Rachel on the highlights: who was there, the conversation, the nuances. “Things just seemed out of kilter. Like Jan. She kept trying to find out how much Esther paid per kilo for the coffee she purchased.”

  “She’s in that business.” Rachel shrugged. “Did you tell her?”

  “No, but Paul divulged the fact that Esther paid seventy percent above market price. If Jan can add and multiply, she can figure it out.” Lark kicked her shoes off and wiggled her toes in the plush carpeting. “What I want to know is why it mattered to her so much.”

  “Chipe Coffee is her competition. It’s good business to know.”

  “Maybe, though I’d hardly classify Chipe as her toughest competitor.” Lark studied the rug. “Maybe she thinks Norberto is ripping her off.”

  “You’re smart enough to do the math in reverse. What’s he getting paid per kilo?”

  “Nobody would say. Paul even Jan asked point blank, and she replied that she wasn’t drunk enough to give away trade secrets.”

  Rachel repositioned a cushion behind her back. “So she wouldn’t give you any information, but she kept asking how much Esther paid for coffee.”

  “That’s about the size of it. The only stats she offered were on the number of sixty-kilo bags Jitters purchased every year and the number of dollars they donated for social and bird habitat-related programs.” Lark toyed with the hem of her skirt. “It got me to thinking. Did I tell you about Esther’s ledger?”

  “No.”

  Lark described the book. “I have no idea what the numbers mean. She wrote dates in there, too, so I think she was keeping track of someone else’s shipments.”

  Rachel pulled her hair back and looped it into a knot. “It’s easy enough to find out the market price of coffee using the Internet.” She uncurled herself off the sofa. “Want to try?”

  “I’m game.”

  Lark followed Rachel back to the bedroom suite situated in a wing off the front hallway. It consisted of a bedroom, an up-to-the-minute bathroom, and a small office. Rachel commandeered the desk chair and booted up the computer, swirling the mouse on the mouse pad. “Let’s try searching ‘Mexican Coffee.’”

  The computer whirred, and the search engine located a cookie recipe, several sites for a New Mexican gift packaging firm, and twenty-five companies selling roasted organic coffee from Chiapas but featuring no additional information on the country or its political troubles.

  “Jitters is listed here. Let’s check it out.” Rachel clicked on the connect bar, and the Jitters site popped onto the screen. A coffee plant dominated the scr
een, with bean buttons labeled to lead you through the pages. The home page carried information on the company, with links to worldwide store locations, franchise information, and purchasing information on bulk coffee and merchandise. The pricing was competitive, but there was still no specific information on the coffee coming out of Chiapas, Mexico.

  “Try ‘organic coffee,’” suggested Lark, pulling up a straight-backed chair. The results were similar: recipes and companies, like Jitters and Chipe, selling beans.

  Inputting “Mexico+coffee,” they discovered a site with information on the struggle between the Zapatistas and the government over coffee production, but nothing about coffee exportation.

  Finally, after half an hour of trial and error, they stumbled upon the site of the Mexican Coffee Council. Rachel downloaded the information, and Lark pored over the printouts. “It says here, Mexico exports approximately four point five million sixty-kilo bags of coffee a year. Of that, only about sixty thousand bags are classified organic. Chiapas is the largest producer.”

  “I have a question,” Rachel said. “Can coffee that’s not organic be considered shade-grown?”

  “Not by my definition.”

  “I’m serious, Lark.”

  Lark lowered the pages, and stared at Rachel, who was still hunched over the computer. “Technically, I suppose so. There are some shade-grown farmers that still use pesticides to help control insect damage.”

  “Okay, here we go,” Rachel said, scrolling down the screen. “It says here that coffee prices range from eighty-five cents per pound to one dollar twenty-four cents per pound.”

  Lark doodled the numbers on the back of the printouts. “Did you know that most people pay more for a cappuccino than the average Mexican coffee picker makes in a day?”

  “No.”

  The matter-of-factness in Rachel’s reply, the acceptance, fit with the relative opulence of their surroundings. They lived in luxury, while out there people struggled to survive.

  Rachel reached for the mouse and logged off, shattering the profundity of the moment. “Want some ice cream? I need a bedtime snack.”

  Lark dogged her heels down the hallway. “What if Norberto was ripping Jan off, and Esther figured it out? What if she threatened to tell Jan?”

  “Then that might be a reason to murder her,” Rachel said, pulling a carton of ice cream out of the freezer. She scooped heaping mounds of chocolate into two clear glass bowls. “Provided, of course, we’re talking about a lot of money?”

  “I’m guessing, but say Norberto sells thirty thousand bags of coffee to Jitters a year…” Lark calculated the math in her head. “If you take sixty kilos times two point two…” She chewed her lip. “That gives you one hundred thirty-two pounds. Times that by around a dollar ten per pound, and… He’s pulling in gross around one hundred forty-five dollars a bag. That amounts to—”

  “Try this.” Rachel tossed her the calculator from beside the phone.

  Lark ran the numbers again. “If the numbers are right, after paying off the farmers, Norberto would be banking around four hundred thousand dollars a year.”

  “That’s a lot of money. But, maybe he’s not the one profiting.”

  Lark sucked on a bite of chocolate ice cream. “Then who?”

  “What about Jan Halloway?”

  Lark rolled the idea in her mind. “I don’t think she’d take those kinds of risks, not with her business. Jitters Coffee Company means everything to her. Besides, she already makes great money.”

  “Hmumm.” Rachel clinked her spoon in her bowl. “Do they still consider Vic a suspect?”

  “As far as I know. And maybe with reason.” Lark told Rachel about finding the love letter from Paul.

  “Do you still have it?”

  Lark remembered stuffing it in the pocket of her shorts. What had she done with it after that? Teresa had been waiting for her when she arrived home, and Velof. She’d changed for the MA opening ceremonies and tossed the shorts in the laundry. The letter must still be there. “I left it at home.”

  “You need to show it to Bernie,” Rachel said. She cleared the dishes from the counter and wiped it with a wet rag. “And you need to tell him about tonight and this afternoon.”

  Lark found her shoes and slipped them on. “You know, there’s another person worth considering as a suspect.”

  “Wait, who do we have so far?”

  “Vic, the mistreated common law husband. Paul Owens. Katherine Saunders, the possessive partner. Teresa, Norberto, and Jan.”

  “Who’s left?”

  “Buzz Aldefer, the guy assigned to MA from the Air Force. He claims he’s interested in migration patterns of birds, and Paul told me he volunteers at Hawkwatch in Mexico, but I think he might be a spy.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, a spy. James Bond, double oh seven.” Lark twirled her truck keys on her finger. “Don’t look so shocked. Birdwatching is a great cover. It would be a perfect way for a military man to get intel on what’s happening with Mexico’s civil uprising. He puts on his birding vest, treks into the backcountry, and no one’s the wiser.” Lark flipped her braid off her shoulder, feeling it slide down her back. She liked that theory. “I’ll bet the Air Force talked Katherine into supplying the cover, and that’s why she was so protective of him when I asked what he did in Mexico. And I’ll bet that’s why Norberto reacted so violently when Buzz broke a glass on the patio Thursday night. He probably recognized him. Heck, maybe Norberto’s passing him secrets about the people in Chiapas.”

  “I think you need to go home and go to bed.” Rachel walked Lark toward the door. “Though, that type of theory would be easy enough for you to check out.”

  Lark bristled. “I’m not calling my father.”

  Rachel leaned against the edge of the front door, rocking it back and forth. “It was just a thought.”

  “A bad one. I’m not doing it.” Lark had already called her dad, the senator, once this summer to ask for his help. She had no intention of making a habit of it. “The object is to prove to Daddy that I’m self-sufficient, not prove to him I’m needy.”

  It was nearly one o’clock in the morning by the time Lark parked her truck in front of the carriage house. The Drummond lounge still hopped. Several partygoers were guzzling last call on the patio. Their laughter floated through the pines like the hoots of an owl, and Lark prayed they would keep it down to a dull roar. She had to be up early.

  A harsh laugh sliced the air. She recognized it as Jan Halloway’s. Lark heard her telling someone how the nightlife in San Francisco would just be warming up now, and Lark closed the door of the truck with a soft click. Last thing she wanted was to be heard.

  Scooting along the sidewalk, she hugged the side of the carriage house. The moonlight cast eerie shadows, calling out the ghosts that haunted the upper floors of the Drummond Hotel. On nights like this one, guests complained of hearing a woman weeping and light footsteps pacing the upper halls. The Lady of the Drummond.

  Lark glanced up at the top floor. A shadow crossed a window. A curtain fluttered.

  With the hairs on her arms standing on end, Lark bounded up the front steps. She flung open the door and stepped into the living room, her foot striking something hard. Her ankle twisted, and she fell, landing hard on the wooden floor.

  Her elbow smacked the door frame.

  The screen banged shut against her head.

  Damn. Lark pushed herself up, her fingers landing on a thick book. What’s this doing here?

  Struggling to her feet, she tripped over several more books on the floor, then waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Dappled moonlight illuminated the living room. Books lay strewn everywhere on the floor.

  “What the…?” She reached for the light switch.

  A dark figure struck her from behind, knocking her to the floor. Sprawling on her face, she slid. The couch loomed in front of her. Her head cracked against the wooden leg.

  Scrambling to her feet, she stumbled ba
ckward toward the door.

  She was struck again, this time from the side, and her legs buckled beneath her. Her leg twisted as she fell, and the torque on her ankle was so strong she thought the bones would snap. Allowing her body to roll, she released the pressure and clambered to her feet.

  Where was he? Where the hell was he?

  She spotted a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. A large book crashed toward her head, and she raised her arms, deflecting the blow. Anger and fear combined, and in one movement, the victim became the aggressor.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. Her hand groped for a weapon, something to defend herself with, and struck the telephone. The phone system was hooked into the Drummond’s. Knocking away the receiver, she punched 0. A high-pitched beep punctuated the darkness and froze the moment in time.

  “Good evening, Drummond Hotel.” Velof’s voice sounded faint and far away.

  “Stephen, this is Lark!” she screamed.

  Her attacker bolted. Man or woman, tall or short, in the blur of motion, Lark couldn’t tell. Dressed in black, hands gloved, face covered by a ski mask, the intruder fled toward the kitchen.

  “Lark! Where have you—”

  “Stephen, there is someone in my house. Call security.”

  At the kitchen door, her attacker turned. Lark pressed her hand to her forehead and felt a warm, sticky sensation. Moonlight shone on her assailant. Boldly written on the forehead of the mask were the letters EZLN. Esther’s killer had come to call.

  CHAPTER 13

  A half hour later, Lark stood beside Bernie Crandall, an ice bag pressed to her head, eyeing the chaos. Books, their spines cracked and broken, littered the floors. Drawers stood open, their contents scattered. Several dishes were broken. And the pantry’d been rifled and cereal boxes emptied onto the floor.

  “Okay, so you’re sure this guy was wearing the same mask.”

  “Positive.”

  “Then the question is, what the hell does Esther’s killer want with you?”

  “I did witness the murder.”