Death of a Songbird

by Goff, Christine

  “Yeah, Drummond, but you didn’t see anything. Nope,” Crandall said, picking up a shard of pottery. “It looks to me like he was lookin’ for somethin’. Too bad about your plates.”

  Dismayed by the mess and furious that someone dared to invade her personal space and destroy her personal things, Lark fought back tears.

  “You got any ideas what he was after?”

  Lark moved her head. Pain sliced across the back of her eyes. “No. It didn’t look like he was carrying anything, either.”

  “Did you stumble across anything recently that someone might have wanted? Something small enough to stick in a pocket or down the back of your pants?”

  “No.”

  “Did your new partner give you anything?”

  “No—” Lark stopped as it occurred to her. The ledger. “I brought home a business ledger.” Why hadn’t she thought of that up until now? She must have been hit harder than she thought. “It—”

  Officer Klipp, gun slapping against uniformed thigh, clanked in and interrupted. “Whoever was here has cleared out, Chief. He must have found what he wanted. The only two rooms trashed are the kitchen and living room.”

  “Where was this ledger you mentioned?” Crandall asked.

  “On the bookshelf.” She pointed to the carnage on the floor.

  “Okay, have the boys dust for fingerprints. We’re going to want to search this room carefully.” Crandall set down the fragment of stoneware and dusted his hands together. “How about you and I have a talk in your office?”

  “Shouldn’t we look for the ledger?”

  “When the boys are through. If we searched for it now, we’d be compromising evidence. Let’s go.”

  Lark obeyed, leading Crandall through the back door of the Drummond whereby avoiding the guests out front, who’d been rousted by the lights and sirens of Elk Park’s finest. Jan Halloway had been in the crowd, still wearing her dinner outfit. And Norberto, dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt.

  The intruder had been dressed in black.

  Paul and Katherine had been there, too, outside in pajamas and robes. She didn’t remember seeing Buzz Aldefer.

  Stopping in the hotel kitchen, Lark loaded a tray with coffee mugs, a carafe of hot coffee, and a handful of creamers. “Do you take sugar?”

  “Nope.”

  When they rounded the corner from the dining room, Velof jumped up from the desk.

  “We’re eluding the mob,” explained Crandall. “Why don’t you join us?”

  “This way,” Lark said.

  Velof opened the office door, and Crandall walked in, taking Lark’s chair behind the desk. Lark grabbed a visitor’s chair opposite. Velof closed the door and stood gazing out the window.

  “Okay, so who wants to tell me what happened tonight?”

  “I’ll start,” volunteered Velof. “There’s not much to tell. Peter Jacobs called in sick, so I was forced to cover his shift.” Velof looked pointedly in Lark’s direction. She ignored him. Managing a staff was like being a mother. As much as possible, you ignored the squabbles.

  “I sent over chicken soup,” he continued, “but Jacobs wasn’t there, so—”

  “Just tell me what happened later.”

  “I worked,” snapped Velof, “until Lark called for security.” He paused. “For what it’s worth, I believe Jacobs left with the Mexican girl, which means we’ll need to run an ad for evening help.”

  Lark repositioned her ice bag. “You think he left?”

  “Yes. His suitcase is gone, and some of his clothes.”

  Crandall toyed with the stapler on Lark’s desk. “How do you know that?”

  “I searched his room.”

  “You what?” Lark pulled herself forward in her chair. “Stephen, you’re not allowed to use your key to enter another employee’s private space.”

  He stiffened. “I was suspicious, and rightly so.”

  “That may be, but—” She heard her tone. The mother scolding. Children!

  “How about Lark’s space?” Crandall asked. “Have you ever been there uninvited?”

  Both Lark and Velof swiveled to face him. Lark waited for the answer.

  “No.” Velof sounded shocked at the suggestion.

  “And what did you do after Lark called?”

  “I forwarded the phones to voice messaging and walked over to the carriage house. I couldn’t see any reason to call out security if the culprit had already fled. I assumed it was a child’s prank. I must say, it wasn’t until after I noticed everything flung about the living room that I knew it was serious. She’s normally quite neat.”

  “How would you know?” Lark asked, convinced now that he had been spying on her.

  Velof reddened.

  “You’re fired,” she said.

  “I am the best help you’ve got!”

  “Maybe so, but poking your nose around my house or anyone’s private rooms is despicable. In fact, it’s illegal, isn’t it, Bernie?”

  “Yep.” Crandall poured himself a mug of coffee. “Getting back to the break-in, did you see anything suspicious before Lark called? Anyone hanging around the lobby who shouldn’t have been there?”

  “Wait, I’m not quite finished—” Lark wasn’t quite ready to drop the illegal-to-spy-on-your-employer business.

  “No,” interrupted Velof. “I checked periodically to see if there were any lights on over there, or if her truck was parked out front. I wanted to talk to her. But I saw nothing suspicious at all.”

  “Thank you, Steve. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

  “Stephen,” muttered Velof.

  “Whatever.” Crandall stood up and steered him toward the door.

  Velof looked at Lark. “Should I mind the desk or get my things and leave?”

  Lark glared, pushing back in her seat and letting the ice bag rest in her lap. She needed him at the desk.

  “Well?”

  “I’m thinking.” Velof was all she had with Jacobs missing in action. “Okay, mind the desk.”

  “So I’m not fired?”

  “Not yet. But we’re not through discussing this.”

  “You need to chill out, Drummond,” Crandall said, shutting the door behind Velof. “Good help’s hard to find.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “You heard it before. I got back around one o’clock, walked through the door, and was attacked. I managed to dial the phone, and Velof called security.”

  Crandall rested his elbows on the desk and his chin in his hand. “I’m looking for details, not the big picture.”

  “Details. For starters, the guy was wearing a black ski mask with the initials EZLN.”

  “Do you know anyone besides Teresa who might have a connection to a hat like that?”

  “Norberto. He works out of Chiapas and buys coffee in the area. But, honestly, any one of the people I was with at dinner tonight would have had access to such a mask. They’ve all traveled to the area on business or pleasure.”

  “Pleasure?”

  “It’s a great birdwatching spot.”

  “So tell me about this dinner party. For starters, who was there?”

  “Paul Owens, Katherine Saunders, Jan Halloway, Buzz Aldefer, Norberto Rincon, and me.”

  “And did anyone else know you were going to dinner?”

  “I might have mentioned it at the Warbler while we were cleaning up after the memorial service for Esther.”

  “So Vic might have overheard?”

  “Yeah. On the flip side, Teresa wasn’t there.”

  Crandall seemed to chew on the information. “Okay, so go back to the beginning. Did you notice anything when you pulled in the parking lot?”

  Lark thought back. “I climbed out of the truck. I heard Jan Halloway was on the patio, so I stayed in the shadows, trying to get into the house without having to talk to her.”

  “Now, who’s Halloway again?”

  “She’s the CEO of Jitte
rs Coffee Company.”

  “Right.” He made a note for himself. “And why were you avoiding her?”

  “Because she was drunk. I just didn’t feel like dealing with her anymore tonight.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Cut the crap, Drummond. You were sneaking up your front walk, and…”

  “I saw someone peeking out one of the top-floor windows. After that I—”

  “Do you know which one?” Crandall asked. “Is there a way to find out whose room it is?”

  “Sure. It was the second from the right, top floor, room four twenty, the Lady of Drummond’s room.” She came around the desk and flipped on the computer. “We have everything on a program now. I just call up the number and… voilà.” She pointed to the screen. “The room’s assigned to Buzz Aldefer.”

  Buzz was the only one at dinner unaccounted for on the patio tonight.

  Crandall rubbed his jaw. “You mentioned a ledger. What’s that all about?”

  “I brought it home from the Warbler. It’s an inventory and supply ledger, but it had some weird dates and numbers recorded in it, numbers I can’t decipher. I figured that maybe if I brought it home and took my time over it, I could figure out what they mean.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “I think maybe—and it’s a big maybe—Esther was tracking the coffee shipments of her competitors. She made all sorts of notations in the margins: names of people, descriptions of things. I didn’t get a really good chance to look at it.”

  Crandall rolled Lark’s chair back from the desk. “Let’s go see if we can find it.”

  Lark left the dirty mugs and empty carafe for Velof to clear. In the Drummond kitchen, she stopped long enough to refill the ice bag. The stainless steel counters, the subzero refrigerators, and oversized sinks gleamed in the fluorescent lighting casting eerie blue shadows on whitewashed walls.

  “Who would have known about the ledger?” Crandall asked, his deep voice echoing.

  “Everyone at dinner tonight.”

  “Paul Owens?”

  “Sure,” Lark said. “He was there when I admitted I was having trouble understanding some of the information.”

  “Give me everyone’s names again. I may want to talk with them.”

  “Owens, Katherine Saunders, Jan Halloway, Norberto Rincon, and Buzz Aldefer.” The shadow at the window.

  “Did Teresa know about the book?”

  Lark tried to think. She knew she hadn’t said anything to her about it. “I don’t know. She may have seen me with it. She was waiting for me on the porch when I brought it home.”

  When they reached the carriage house, Crandall sent one of his men down to check on the Warbler; then he Rachel asked to describe the ledger.

  “It was plain brown, leather. Paper-sized. I stuck it on the kitchen bookshelf.”

  Crandall, Lark, and two officers searched. After about fifteen minutes, head pounding, Lark sat back on her heels.

  “It’s not here,” she declared. “The ledger’s missing.”

  At five A.M. the next morning, Lark woke up to Shania Twain belting “Feel Like a Woman.” She’d considered canceling out on the hike after last night’s break-in, then changed her mind when she’d realized all of the others would be there. By breaking into her house, the killer had made this personal. She refused to wimp out.

  Groaning, she tumbled out of bed, gulped down three painkillers, and crawled into the shower, turning the spray to sting. Between Bernie insisting she answer more questions and Velof demanding to know if he still had a job, she’d ended up with less than two hours of sleep. Barely enough to function on, even without a head wound. Then again, Thomas Edison claimed a human being performed best when they slept only twenty minutes out of every four hours, and he was a genius. Maybe sleep deprivation helped one to see things more clearly.

  Climbing out of the shower, Lark toweled off, pulling on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. The hike today took them up the east face of Elk Mountain to Paris Pond. Not quite as strenuous as the hike up Long’s Peak, but they would still reach twelve thousand feet by the time they reached the pond and turnaround point. No place to be in shorts, even on a sunny day.

  Lark grabbed her jacket and binoculars and surveyed the mess in the kitchen. She and Crandall had picked up a lot of the books looking for the ledger, but many still lay open on the floor, spines cracked and broken. Paper clips made the going treacherous, along with pencils and pens, sticky note pads, scissors, pliers, rubber bands, and the occasional phone drawer treasures still scattered across the linoleum.

  She snatched up her boots at the back door and pulled them on, then shrugged into her jacket out front on the stoop. The air felt nippy, a welcome relief from the eighty-degree temperatures. Maybe there was a cold front moving in.

  When she arrived at the bus, Dorothy was there to greet her. “You look horrible, Lark. You weren’t out drinking all night with Jan, were you?” She gestured toward the Jitters CEO, who looked pale and haggard as she sat on a nearby picnic bench.

  “No.” Lark told Dorothy about the break-in and the missing ledger. “Heavens. Are you okay?”

  “I’m here.”

  “What’s wrong, Dorothy?” Cecilia asked, scurrying over.

  Lark repeated a simplified version of the story. “Pass it on.”

  “Oh my. Maybe you shouldn’t be going on the hike today, dear.”

  “I’m fine. A little bump on the head, that’s all. I wouldn’t miss it.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Norberto talking with Jan. Excusing herself, she edged away from the sisters and closer to the couple, until she could overhear their conversation.

  “Tell me why I’m doing this,” moaned Jan, clutching a cup of coffee, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

  “Because it is part of the convention, and you’re the guest of honor,” replied Norberto. “It’s your job.”

  At the word job, Jan perked up and tried pasting on a happier face.

  The day-long hike was traditionally called the Volunteer’s Hike. Every year, those who donated their time and energy to making the Migration Alliance convention a success were treated with a one-on-one birding experience with the MA guests of honor. Today’s guests consisted of Jan, Norberto, and Buzz, along with Paul, Katherine, and half a dozen other special presenters, all knowledgeable birders, most gung-ho.

  The volunteers included Dorothy, Cecilia, and Gertie, along with fifteen or twenty other generous souls from all across the country. Lark was the designated group leader.

  Once everyone had assembled, Lark climbed up on the short retaining wall and waited for the buzz of conversation to die down. “Can everyone hear me okay?”

  “Speak up,” shouted someone in back.

  “I don’t know why I’m your appointed leader,” she said more loudly, rewarded by a thumbs-up signal from the back and a pulsing in her head. “I’m sure it’s only because I know the area, There are certainly better-qualified birders with us today.” Balanced somewhat precariously on the rough wall, Lark repositioned her feet and pulled out a park map. “We’re hiking up to Paris Pond today. We’ll go by bus to the trailhead, hike about four miles in, and climb about two thousand feet in elevation. Everyone needs a sweater and water bottle. And some of you may decide to stop at Alpine Meadow, just before we cross Alpine Creek and start our ascent to Paris Pond.”

  A woman near the back raised her hand.

  “Yes, Harriet?” Lark asked.

  “Is the walk fairly easy most of the way?”

  “It’s gentle to Alpine Creek. That’s about two and a half miles in. After that, the climb is steeper, and there are a few places where the path narrows enough that if you have any fear of heights, you’ll be uncomfortable.” Lark scanned the crowd. “Anyone is free to stop and turn around whenever they’d like. The reason we’re ascending to Paris Pond is to give you a chance to spot white ptarmigan and brown-capped rosy-finches.”

  “Wha
t other species will we see?” shouted a man Lark didn’t recognize.

  “We’ll have a fair chance of seeing blue grouse, three-toed woodpeckers, and pine grosbeak, along with the red-naped and Williamson’s sapsuckers. There’s potential for black swifts, and a good chance of seeing the Rocky Mountain subspecies of fox sparrow.” She glanced at her watch. “Okay, we’ll be leaving in ten minutes. Anyone who needs to, grab a jacket, get water, and use the bathroom.”

  Lark climbed down off the wall, careful not to jar anything. Her head hurt the worst, but her right ankle was tender from being twisted when she tripped over the book. No sense in exacerbating either by being too active.

  Gertie stopped her en route to the bathroom. “I overheard one of the hotel guests saying you had a break-in at your house last night. Is that true?”

  “Yeah.” Lark told her about the intruder and the missing ledger.

  “What’s Crandall doing about it?”

  “Investigating. He said he might question a few people, but he didn’t act like it was a big rush.”

  “That figures.” Gertie worried her bottom lip with her teeth, then asked, “Rachel is supervising at the Warbler today, isn’t she?”

  “That was the plan. She and all three of the kids.”

  “Don’t you think one of us should call her, just to make sure she’s up?”

  “Trust me, Gertie, if she can run a million dollar advertising campaign, she can handle the coffee shop for a day.”

  Gertie flipped her head, making her bob bob. “You know, running the Warbler’s not as easy as it looks.”

  Before Lark could answer, Dorothy came charging up the sidewalk. She wore blue jeans, hiking boots, and a bright pink jacket zipped up to her throat. She’d crushed a pink baseball cap over her curls. “Here,” she said, thrusting a walkie-talkie into Lark’s hand. “I have one, too. Consider it a safety precaution. Walk away from me, and we’ll test them out.”

  Gladly. Anything to escape Gertie. Lark went in search of Velof.

  The walkie-talkie cracked to life. “Testing, testing,” squawked Dorothy. “Do you read me? Over.”

  “Loud and clear,” replied Lark, squelching the volume. Talk about scaring the birds.

  “What is that contraption?” Velof asked. He looked saggy this morning himself. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, and one piece of his hair stuck up unbridled.