Death of a Songbird

by Goff, Christine

  “I don’t see it,” he said finally.

  Katherine whispered something to Jan, then glared at Lark.

  “Geez,” Buzz said, slapping the palm of his hand against his forehead. “Think, Lark.”

  “Like I told you, I had it last night.”

  After a hasty search of the clearing turned up no sign of the walkie-talkie, Buzz called them back together. “What we need is a plan. Here’s the way I see this operation. First, Lark, Norberto, and I will go back to where Lark found Paul.” Katherine sputtered a protest, but Buzz held up his hand and silenced her. “If he’s alive, if, Norberto and I can carry him out. Lark knows where he is.”

  Katherine turned and buried her head against Jan’s shoulder. Jan smoothed the woman’s hair. “Go. We’re okay here.”

  Limping in the lead, Lark backtracked her way through the forest, past the area where she heaved, to the spot where she’d turned into the woods. Several yards in from the path, they found Paul’s body.

  Buzz crouched, creeping forward like a Russian Cossack dancer. “He’s dead, all right We’d better not touch anything more.”

  A crackle of static broke the air.

  Norberto ducked, then glanced around. “What was that? Did anyone else hear that?”

  “Lark? Come in, Lark. Over.” Dorothy’s voice sounded muffled. Out of reflex, Lark patted her jacket pockets.

  Buzz levered Paul’s body. The walkie-talkie lay beneath him, pressed into the ground. “How the hell did this get here?”

  What was Paul doing with the walkie-talkie? He had to have lifted it off Lark while she was sleeping. Had he been trying to contact someone?

  Norberto squatted down and whispered something to Buzz. He replied in the same hushed tones.

  “What are you two discussing?”

  Neither man answered. Buzz looked at the ground.

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with this?” She felt an urge to defend herself, then decided better of it. No sense in adding fuel to the fire.

  “Let’s go back to camp,” Buzz said. He squeezed past Lark, pushing a branch out of his way and letting it snap back in her face.

  Lark caught the branch in her hand. “You didn’t answer my question, Major.”

  Buzz turned to face her. “Little lady, I don’t know what to think. All I know for sure is that that man back there is dead.”

  No shit, Sherlock.

  “It was your knife, and everyone connected to you and your coffee business seems to be dropping like flies.”

  She felt an irrational urge to giggle, while tears of anger burned her eyes. How dare he accuse her of murdering Paul? “For the record, if one of us killed him, it wasn’t me.”

  “Lark? Come in, Lark.” Dorothy’s voice crackled over the radio again. “Are you there? Over.”

  “Oh my, I hope they’re all right,” Cecilia said in the background.

  Buzz keyed the walkie-talkie. “This is Major Buzz Aldefer. Over.”

  “Thank heavens, we were beginning to get worried.” Relief flooded Dorothy’s voice. “Search and Rescue’s on the way. Over.”

  “Ten four,” Buzz said. “And you better call the Sheriff’s Department. Paul Owens is dead. Over.”

  There was an answering crackle as the microphone was keyed on Dorothy’s end, but no voice came through.

  “Do you copy? Over.”

  “Ten four,” Dorothy said. “I’ll contact Sheriff Garcia. Over and out.”

  The search party arrived in the meadow within the hour. Lark was glad to see Eric and Harry among the rescuers.

  “Hey,” Eric said, standing on one leg, the other knee cocked. Except for being fully clothed, he made a perfect Abercrombie & Fitch photo opportunity.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “We heard you had some trouble last night.”

  Word spread fast.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Better now.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Harry said.

  Eric nodded in agreement, and Lark felt warmer inside. Brushing back the loose hairs that strayed from her braid, she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Did Dorothy get a hold of Vic?”

  “Ian contacted him by radio. He’s on his way.” Eric paused. “Bernie’s en route, too, with the federal boys.”

  Paul was murdered on Forest Service land, so park law enforcements personnel would have to check out the scene of the crime. It was a guaranteed circus.

  “Listen up,” yelled Ian Ogburn, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife officer and head of the local Mountain Search and Rescue team. He clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “This is what we’re going to do.”

  The plan hatched was to build a zip line using a rope and pulley-type device.

  Tying the backpack full of beef jerky, Gatorade, and granola bars on the end of a thick rope, Ian twirled it lasso-style above his head and heaved it across the chasm. Buzz scrambled to pick it up.

  “One of you needs to tie the rope in that tree,” said Ian, pointing high in the branches of a giant ponderosa. It sat a good ten feet back from the creek, its trunk measuring over six feet in circumference. The closest limbs to the ground jutted out from eight feet in the air. “Which one of you knows how to tie a bowline knot?”

  Lark and Buzz both raised their hands. A bowline was a strong knot forming a loop that didn’t slip. She’d learned to tie one sailing summers off the coast of Maine.

  “One of you needs to shinny up there, wrap your end of the rope around the tree about fifteen feet in the air, and tie off. Any questions?”

  Since it required a leg up to perform the feat, Buzz cupped his hands and offered to lever Lark into the tree. “I’ve got sixty pounds on you. There’s no way you and Norberto together could boost me high enough.”

  “Promise you’ll add monkey to my list of accomplishments?”

  “Let’s go on three. One, two…” Buzz strained, boosting her into the air. Lark grabbed hold of the lowest branch, swinging on the limb like a child on a jungle gym bar. Pushing against the bark with her feet, she shinnied up into the tree.

  “Go a little higher,” Ian yelled.

  Grabbing the branch above her, Lark hauled herself farther up into the tree. Fifteen feet below, the ground swayed.

  “Don’t look down,” Buzz ordered.

  “Got it,” Lark said, focusing her gaze on the branches above her. There would be plenty of time for looking down when she tried climbing out of the tall pine.

  Two branches higher, and Ian yelled, “There, that’s high enough.”

  Lark wrapped the end of the rope around the thick tree trunk. Making a loop in the long side of the rope, she fed the end up, around, back, and yanked down. The knot tightened and held. She tugged. “Okay. It’s tied off.”

  Ian jerked on the tope. “Is it holding?”

  She flashed him a thumbs-up.

  “Okay, climb down.”

  That was easier said than done.

  Lark stretched her leg out, searching with her toe for a branch to rest her foot on. Slowly, she inched her way down the tree, until her foot met air.

  “That’s as far as you can go,” Buzz called. “You’ll have to jump down from there.”

  “Jump?” Not with her ankle throbbing like it was, and her head still tender. “Can’t you reach up and get me?”

  “You’re still too high. Try hanging from one of the branches, like you did when you climbed up there?”

  Lark peered down at Buzz, and the world spun. Now she knew why she’d never been a mountain climber. Clutching the tree, she pressed her face against the trunk. Sticky, pine-scented sap oozed across her cheek.

  “Okay, here goes.” Securing herself between two branches, she worked her way into a sitting position on the lowest one. “Be ready to catch me in case this doesn’t work.”

  Flipping onto her stomach, she swayed in the air, then spun over the top and dropped into a hanging position. Tree bark scraped her stomach and the palms of the hands.

&n
bsp; “Slick move,” shouted Eric.

  “It wasn’t intentional.”

  “You’re right above me, Lark. Let go, and I’ll catch you.”

  “Doesn’t this remind you of one of those management retreat activities?” Jan asked, speaking for the first time. “You know, where they ask you to trust each other and make you play dumb games, like the one where you fall into the arms of the other managers.” She laughed. “I always knew they’d drop me.”

  Luckily for Lark, Buzz caught her before she hit the ground.

  Soon, Ian and several of the rescue crew zipped across the chasm using special carabineers. They quickly set up a pulley system designed to transport people back across in a sling.

  The first one to go was Katherine. Jan followed, then Norberto. On each return trip, a law enforcement officer descended upon Elk Mountain. Before long, the clearing swarmed with officers. Then, once again, Lark escorted them to the spot where she’d first found Paul.

  Hours had passed since she’d last been there. The sun had warmed the land, heating the forest, stirring the insects to life. Flies buzzed around Paul’s body, flitting across his jacket and nibbling at his blue-tinged lips.

  “He’s dead, all right,” Crandall said, sitting back on his haunches and pushing his fingers through his hair. “Looks like someone wanted him dead.” He turned to Buzz. “It would take someone pretty big to subdue a man this size.”

  Vic stroked his mustache. “Not necessarily, Bernie.”

  “Why do you say that?” Crandall scootched forward. “What am I missing here?”

  Lark’s legs felt weak, and she propped herself up against a nearby tree.

  Vic reached out, and with one finger pushed Paul’s face to the side. “See this?” He pointed to a lump above Paul’s right ear. “He took a blow to the head.”

  “Now hold on a minute, boys,” Buzz said. The older man looked flustered. “Who’s to say he didn’t fall? Maybe he bumped his head, then landed on the knife? There’s rocks all over the place.”

  Vic shook his head. “There’s no way he could have sat up on his own after pumping out that much blood. Nope,” he dusted his hands against his knees, and stood. “It looks like our friend here was helped out of this world. I’ll put money on it.”

  “Guess this sort of lets Vic and Teresa off the hook,” Lark said.

  Crandall turned, raising his eyebrows. “How do you figure, Drummond?”

  “Neither one of them could have killed Paul. They were stuck on the other side of the creek.”

  “That’s true, Drummond, but it doesn’t let them off the hook for Esther’s murder.”

  “You’re saying there are two killers? That someone else murdered Paul?”

  “It’s possible. Maybe there’s two of them working together.” Crandall rose to his feet. “Of course, if you were to eliminate them, it sort of narrows down the suspect list, don’t it, Drummond?”

  And now there were five.

  CHAPTER 16

  Lark leaned against the trunk of an aspen tree and tried spit-washing the sap off her face. Thirty feet away, the Search and Rescue team wrestled to transport the stretcher carrying Paul Owens’s body across the gorge.

  First Esther, now Paul. If he had been right, Esther died because she planned to blow the lid on some illicit Mexican-based operation. Which meant he had died for the same reason. But why?

  Lark figured it must have to do with the numbers in the ledger. He had said the numbers were too high.

  “Lark, you’re next,” shouted Ian.

  She walked to the edge of the washout, stepped into the harness, and allowed Ian to tighten the belt around her waist. Then he clipped the harness to the transport strap.

  “Have you ever ridden a zip line?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you afraid of heights?”

  “A little.” More so since her climbing accident. Even climbing a tree had brought on a feeling of vertigo. It swept over her now in spite of the fact her feet were planted solidly on the ground. A déjà vu of sorts, or a sympathetic memory, like men who experience pregnancy with their wives.

  “Then take my advice. Don’t look down.”

  Lark cheated, sneaking a look at the washout and creek below. The ground dropped away. The world spun. She closed her eyes and gripped the rope with both hands, then Ian shoved her into the air.

  Two hours later, snuggled down into a hot tub of water, Lark was grateful to be home. The soap bubbles stung her cuts and scrapes, but the water warmed her to the bone, and for the first time in over twenty-four hours, she felt human again.

  “Let me get this straight,” Rachel said. She perched on the closed commode, having shown up within hours of the rescue for the official word on “the ordeal on Elk Mountain.” Dorothy and Cecilia had tendered their own versions, but both were prone to embellishment. “So you’re saying Vic and Teresa have been exonerated?”

  “In my opinion, though technically, until the two murders are officially linked, they’re both still suspects in Esther’s murder.”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s throw them out. That leaves five suspects.”

  “Four, please. I swear, I didn’t do it.”

  “Four, then.” Rachel ticked them off on her fingers. “Buzz, Katherine, Jan, and Norberto.”

  “Bingo.”

  She recounted. “Bing. There is no O unless you add yourself back in.”

  Lark threw a shower sponge at Rachel, then slipped beneath the mounds of bubbles to wet her hair. She worked her fingers through the tresses, fanning them out until the long blond strands swayed like seaweed on the water.

  Out of the four, Lark had whittled the field to three. Resurfacing, she used her hands to squeegee the water and soap from her face, then said, “For what it’s worth, I don’t think Katherine did it.”

  “Why not?”

  “No reason, just a gut feeling. You should have seen her reaction when she learned Paul was dead.”

  “She might be a good actress. She’s had a lot of public speaking experience.”

  “But what would have been her motive?”

  “Didn’t you say she forced the breakup between Esther and Paul? Maybe she wanted Esther out of the picture for good.”

  “Why? The affair happened over two years ago, and Paul chose the Alliance. If she’d wanted to kill her, why wait so long? Two years goes way beyond premeditation. And, besides, Esther was no longer a threat.” Lark tamped down a mound of bubbles. “Let’s abandon emotion as a motive and look at the facts. Both victims were connected to the Chipe Coffee Company. Let’s suppose the reason for the murders was financial, that it all had to do with business. Bad business.”

  Silence blanketed the room.

  Finally, when it grew uncomfortable, Rachel spoke. “Then you could be in danger.” She crossed her legs and leaned back against the toilet tank. “How much did you tell Bernie and Vic?”

  “I told them everything.”

  “Did you tell them about the letter from Paul?”

  “No.” She had intended to tell Crandall about the letter she’d found, but had never gotten the chance. “Vic was there the whole time, and I didn’t want to upset him.” Groping for a towel, she dried her face. “You know something, Rae?”

  “What?”

  “I never fished the letter I kept out of the hamper.”

  Rachel went in search of the envelope in the khaki shorts, while Lark climbed out of the bath, toweled dry, and assessed her injuries in the bathroom mirror. There wasn’t a square inch on her body that remained unbruised. Even her hair hurt. Pulling on clean blue jeans and a fresh T-shirt, she let her hair hang loose and padded barefoot to the kitchen.

  The mess from last night was in remission. The books shoved haphazardly back in the bookcases, the drawers closed, the cereal swept up, and the counters wiped down. Lark guessed Rachel had been busy. She heard the washing machine click on and begin to fill, then Rachel emerged from the laundry room, letter in hand.


  “Sit,” she said, handing Lark the envelope. “You read this, while I make some grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  Too tired to argue, and glad to have someone taking care of her for a change, Lark obeyed. Pulling the letter out of the envelope, she skimmed the page.

  “Well?”

  “It doesn’t say much. Lots of mush. But he does apologize for the blowup with Katherine, so I guess that part of the story was true.” She read on. “Can you believe this, he actually asks her to wait for him.”

  “Bastard.”

  Lark glanced up. Whatever Rachel was thinking, Lark bet it involved her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Roger. She was slicing cheese with a vengeance, thin shoulders tensed, biceps taut. Tears had formed at the corners of her eyes, and she blotted them away with her sleeve.

  “That crying stuff’s reserved for onions,” Lark said. She stuffed the letter back in the envelope and tossed it on the table. Time to change the subject. “Do you know what else is weird?”

  “What?”

  “Buzz Aldefer could not identify a golden eagle.”

  Rachel slathered butter on the back sides of the bread and plopped them into a pan. “Sorry, Lark, but I don’t see what IDing birds has to do with the price of coffee in Mexico.”

  “The guy’s billed as a big government birdwatcher. He’s been a Hawkwatch volunteer in Chiapas. So why couldn’t he name that bird? A golden eagle isn’t a hard identification to make. Not if you know eagles. Heck, even you could do that.”

  Rachel flashed her a bright smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Trust me,” Lark said. “That man is no birdwatcher.”

  Rachel grabbed a spatula and flipped the sandwiches. “I don’t mean to harp at you,” she said, cranking the heat on the stove, “but why haven’t you called your dad and asked him to check out Buzz Aldefer?”

  The question caught her off guard. “Because.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Because, asking Senator Nathan Drummond, the senior senator from Connecticut, for a favor means owing him big time. Nothing ever comes free. The price varies, but there’s always a price.”

  In the Drummond household, even love came on condition. It had been doled out for good grades and nice behavior, and it had taken her a long time to realize that she’d spent most of her life bartering for affection. “I already owe him for the phone call I made in June to find out about Forest Nettleman.”