Death of a Songbird

by Goff, Christine

  The phone call had paid off. Through her father’s connections, they’d discovered that Nettleman, the soon-to-be ex-U.S. Representative from Colorado’s Fourth District, had been an ecowarrior in his younger days—information important to solving the murder of Donald Bursau. But it had come with a price.

  “Believe me,” continued Lark. “One of these days my father will call in the chit.”

  Rachel withheld comment, serving up lightly burned toasted cheese sandwiches. They munched in silence. Rachel drank water. Lark guzzled milk. Finally, Lark couldn’t take any more.

  “Okay, if I call, Rae. Mind you, I said, if, what do I ask him?”

  Rachel broke her sandwich in half and twirled oozing melted cheddar around her finger. “I’d ask him if he’s ever heard of Buzz Aldefer, or if he knows anyone in the top brass of the U.S. Air Force who can verify Buzz’s military presence in Mexico. Surely he’d check it out for you.”

  “Even if he did, he’ll just come back and say he doesn’t know anything.” Lark wiped a milk mustache off on her napkin. “He’s not stupid. The U.S. can’t admit any knowledge of government activity in Mexico. They’re our allies. Besides, I’m sure his phones are tapped.”

  “Then ask him to call you back from the pay phone on the corner. It’ll drive the surveillance team wild.”

  Lark laughed. “You love this cloak and dagger stuff, don’t you?”

  “No! It’s just how they do it in the movies.”

  “Get real. Admit it. You love it.”

  Rachel shook her head and started loading the dishwasher. “He’s your father, Lark. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  Out of excuses, Lark placed the call. The conversation with her father was brief. He was headed out to a “function,” but he would check things out and call her back.

  “Well, I’ve got to go,” Rachel said, wiping her hands on a dish towel as Lark hung up the phone. “There’s an EPOCH meeting at Bird Haven in an hour.”

  Monday. Lark had forgotten all about the meeting. “Maybe I should come—”

  “Maybe you should take a nap.”

  Rae had a point. Every muscle in her body ached. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Of course, I’m right. You’re as bad as Katherine Saunders.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Dorothy told me that Katherine showed up at the conference headquarters this afternoon and announced that the show would go on. Apparently, she’s decided to give the workshops as planned because, ‘Paul would have wanted it that way.’ Gag.” Rachel pulled on her jacket and scooped up the keys to her car. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Meanwhile, get some rest.”

  “Hey, Rae?” Lark out called following Rachel out onto the porch and watching her scamper to the bottom of the steps. She paused, one foot in the car.

  “Hey, what?”

  “Thanks.”

  “De nada.”

  Lark sat down on the porch steps and watched until the green Toyota disappeared from sight. Trusting people came hard, and most people she met didn’t care to fight through the veneer of self-sufficiency she threw in their path. Rachel, on the other hand, had leapt the hurdles.

  Tipping her face toward the sun, Lark basked in the warmth of the rays and soaked in the scenery. Longs Peak and Elk Mountain rose in the distance beyond the Drummond like two giant siblings come out to play. They wore snowfield hats with pointy pompadours, and the afternoon sun shimmered off cliff faces positioned like well-aligned teeth. Idyllic and deadly.

  But it wasn’t the mountain that had killed Paul Owens. A person of flesh and blood had ended his life. And now, two people, both of whom were connected to the Chipe Coffee Company, were dead. The question was, why? Because of what they knew?

  Possibly.

  More likely, it was because of what they planned to tell.

  It was still dark when Lark woke up.

  Her heart pounded, and she lay still, barely breathing, trying to orient herself to her surroundings. Slivers of moonlight crept in around the edges of the curtains. She lay on top of a comforter, in her clothes.

  She remembered moving from the deck to the bedroom and nothing more. Now, except for the person standing at the foot of her bed watching her sleep, she was completely alone.

  A dark figure.

  Her heart banged in her chest, and she feigned slumber, fighting off shivers of fear. Adrenaline pumped through her veins, and she willed herself to lie still.

  Who was it? Who was standing there? The killer?

  She didn’t dare open her eyes any further for fear the moonlight shimmering across her face would give her away. Her muscles twitched. Lark shifted positions and pretended to stretch in her sleep.

  The figure remained rooted in place, like a mannequin posed at the foot of the bed.

  Panic welled up inside her, and she stuffed it back down, trying to remember whether she’d locked the doors before lying down on the bed. The memory eluded her.

  Stupid. That was the first thing she should have done.

  A warm hand touched her foot. Lark’s heart leaped to her throat, threatening to choke her.

  “Lark. Wake up.” The voice belonged to Teresa Cruz.

  Lark leaped out of bed, banging her ankle on the bedside table. “What in the hell are you doing in here?”

  She flipped on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in a soft warm glow, then reached to massage her ankle bone. Teresa stepped back. Her dress—the same outfit she’d worn to sing in—hung in tatters on her tiny frame. One of her eyes was swollen black and blue. A green tinge radiated out from the center in painted streaks of yellow. She licked a cut on her swollen lower lip and drew a ragged breath.

  “Oh my God, what happened to you?”

  “He tried to rape me.”

  “Who?” Lark searched her face. “Jacobs?”

  Teresa nodded, ducking her head in shame.

  Lark’s blood percolated. “Where is he now?”

  “At the Manor House. He came back to get his paycheck, and…” She dropped her chin. “I had nowhere to go.”

  “Sit,” ordered Lark, pointing to the bed. She reached for the phone. “I’m calling Bernie Crandall. He’ll pick Jacobs up and—”

  “No! No police.”

  “Look, he already knows everything, Teresa,” Lark said, dialing the number. “He knows about the green card. He knows about you and Jesus. He knows because a man named Paul Owens was murdered last night, and I had to tell him everything.”

  “Paul Owens is dead?” Shock vibrated in the words. Teresa’s breath came in sharp spurts.

  “You knew him?” Lark cradled the receiver after the first ring, before Crandall picked up. Gently, she eased herself down on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “I met him in Chiapas. He came to my father’s house with Esther once or twice. She was so excited that he was coming here.” Teresa’s hand groped for Lark’s. “Do you believe in heaven?”

  Lark shied away from the question. With her aversion to bodies, she didn’t feel qualified to answer. “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” Teresa said, pulling her hand away.

  Not the answer she wanted to hear. “Teresa, do you know a man by the name of Norberto Rincon?”

  The girl stiffened. “Why?”

  “Because he was asking about you.”

  Teresa’s face paled. “He’s a ladino that sells coffee for my father.” Teresa gathered her torn skirt, pulling it around her like a blanket. “Did you tell him where I was?”

  “No.”

  The girl doubled over as if in pain. “He’s the reason Esther threatened to send me home.”

  Lark felt as if she’d been sucker-punched. Early on, Teresa had inferred that it was because of the visa. “How so?”

  “He works for the PRI.”

  “I thought your father sympathized with the Zapatistas.”

  “He does, but the PRI doesn’t care about that. They are very pers… How do y
ou say?”

  “Persuasive?”

  “Sí, that’s the word. Señor Rincon forced my father to mix the coffee.” Lines of anguish contorted her face. “The whole thing makes me sick.”

  “What do you mean, mix the coffee?”

  “My father grows organic beans, and also some for sun-grown harvest. The organic crop is worth so much more money, but it grows much slower, and there are fewer beans.” Teresa’s eyes pleaded for Lark to understand. “Norberto Rincon threatened my father. He said, if my father did not sell him some of the sun-grown beans with the tag of the organic, he would destroy our farm.”

  “So your father complied, and did what Norberto wanted.”

  “Sí. And Señor Rincon paid him the price for the organic, so, if anyone ever found out, it would look as though my father had cheated him.”

  “What’s the difference in the value, the difference in the price between the types of coffee?”

  “The sun-grown beans sell for eighty-five cents a kilo. The organic beans sell for over a dollar.” Teresa rubbed her arms against an imaginary chill. “When Señora Mills found out what my father had done, she was so angry. She said selling bad coffee is bad for her business.” Teresa cupped her knees to her chest. “If Norberto is in Elk Park, I’m in very bad danger.”

  Lark stroked the girl’s back like she would a baby’s. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here with me.”

  Teresa fluttered her fingers across her bruised eye and choked out a bitter laugh.

  “Right,” Lark said, scooting off the end of the bed. “I’m not sure I’d believe me, either.”

  She left the girl sitting in the bedroom and padded to the kitchen to get some ice for her eye. Bits of information swirled in her head, like pieces of a puzzle waiting to be connected. Find enough of the pieces, find the solution.

  She pushed them away. The pieces were Crandall’s job, not that he seemed particularly interested in her theories.

  She checked the doors, locking both the front and the kitchen, and made sure all the windows were locked up tight. Grabbing a set of towels from the linen closet, she hurried back to the bedroom and handed Teresa the cold compress. “Put this on your eye.”

  Teresa complied, wincing as she pressed the ice to her bruise.

  “I want you to stay here with me. Here’s a towel and washcloth. The guest room’s this way, down the hall.”

  Teresa dropped the ice bag and clutched the bedpost with both hands. “No. I don’t want to sleep there alone. I want to sleep here, with you.”

  The king-sized bed proved to be too small for the two of them. Teresa kicked and rolled, moaning in her sleep and consuming three-quarters of the giant bed. Lark felt like a kick-boxer fending off an attack. At five A.M., convinced she’d taken enough abuse, she crawled out from under the covers and crept to the kitchen for coffee.

  It was early, but she placed a phone call to Bernie Crandall anyway. Time to unload.

  “Bernie, it’s Lark. Teresa Cruz showed up.”

  “When?”

  “Two, maybe three o’clock this morning. It seems Jacobs offered to help her, until she didn’t come across, then he beat her up. She’s asleep in my bed.”

  “I’ll be over in an hour.”

  Out the kitchen window, the Drummond sputtered to life. The night shift departed. The day shift arrived. The breakfast crew smoked cigarettes outside the back door, while guest room lights blinked on in a random pattern.

  Lark sipped her coffee. The one missing piece of the puzzle was the key, the one everything else was constructed around: the ledger. So where had it gone, and who had taken it?

  The answer was obvious: one of Crandall’s four remaining suspects.

  All of them were guests of the Drummond, people with lives that existed elsewhere. When the Migration Alliance ended, provided Crandall let them, they would all go home, leaving Elk Park mourning its dead.

  So, thought Lark, suppose I were a guest in town, and I’d murdered two people and stolen something I wanted to hide. Where would I keep it?

  Again, the answer was obvious.

  In my hotel room.

  Aside from the maid, no one uninvited entered a room. A ledger or small ski mask could easily be shoved in a drawer, stuffed into a suitcase, or locked in the room safe with no one ever knowing.

  Tomorrow was Tuesday. In two days, the conference would be over, and Esther’s killer would walk free.

  Lark wondered what it would take to convince Crandall to conduct a search of the guest rooms at the Drummond. A search required a warrant—in this case four—and just cause. Given enough evidence linking a suspect to the crime, the judge might grant him one warrant, but asking for four only proved he was grasping at straws.

  She, on the other hand, could gain entry by use of a housekeeping passkey. Shades of Velof. Funny how easy it was to justify bad behavior when it played to your own advantage.

  CHAPTER 17

  Her phone rang at five-thirty, while she was in the shower. Shutting off the water, she swaddled herself in a towel and, being careful not to wake Teresa, hurried to the kitchen to answer.

  “Lark bunting,” cooed her father through the receiver, the childhood endearment sparking a weakness of tears.

  “Daddy,” she replied in kind. “Did you find out anything?”

  “What, no chitchat? No ’Hi, how are you?’ Just get down to business, aye? What’s happened to your manners?”

  His harsh assessment jolted her back to reality, putting tearful sentiment to rest. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m a little preoccupied.”

  “You could at least ask about your mother.”

  “How is Mom?”

  “She’s fine. Thanks for asking.” He chuckled, then she heard him gulp some liquid. Coffee? Orange juice? It was way too early for anything else. “I did unearth some information for you. Seems you were right. Buzz Aldefer is not the birdwatcher he’s cracked up to be.”

  From her father’s standpoint, the news was bad. Buzz Aldefer ran a covert operation on foreign soil without proper sanctioning. An Air Force officer working undercover for the CIA, his orders had been issued by a CIA underling by the name of Dean Munger. Aided and abetted by Katherine Saunders, a former grade school chum of Munger’s, Buzz had ventured into the heart of Chiapas under the guise of being a birder attached to the Migration Alliance board. His true mission was to gather intelligence for the CIA.

  “He’s actually Special Ops. The Air Force knows that he’s been feeding Munger information for the past seven or eight years.”

  “And you say Katherine knew also. Did her partner, Paul, know?” Fear of discovery might be enough of a reason for a Special Ops spy to kill someone.

  “Munger didn’t say. By that point, he was too busy trying to deny everything.”

  “Did you learn anything more about Katherine?”

  “It seems her father, Preston Saunders, defined the term patriot. His birdwatching took him all over the world, and his prestige opened doors to trouble spots the State Department only dreamed of going. They recruited him as early as the 1930s to gather intel for the United States government in Europe.”

  “Like father, like daughter.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  A crackle of static on the phone line broke the awkward silence. “I have to go, Dad. Thanks for your help.”

  “Wait, there’s one more thing you should know. Munger thinks there’s a chance Aldefer’s gone rogue. It seems he’s been out of pocket for a while, and Munger thinks he’s on the take. Seems he’s been spending an inordinate amount of time lately with a known PRI sympathizer by the name of Norberto Rincon.”

  The image fit: Norberto profited from buying coffee from the Indians for as little as possible, then selling it to Jitters at the top of the market. Not the work of someone who rallied to the cause. Yet he’d spoken softly when stating facts about the plight of the Chiapas Indians, and he seemed genuinely concerned about the plight of the average worker. An incong
ruity.

  As she dressed, she tried assembling everything she knew into separate categories: motives for murder, means, and opportunity. In her mind, the pieces tangled and intermeshed.

  The four suspects and two victims had all known each other. They were friends of a sort: partners, lovers, business associates, colleagues.

  Means was apparent. The knife used to kill Esther had never been found. The knife used to kill Paul belonged to Lark.

  Opportunity was a given. Crandall had already established the fact that nobody had alibis.

  Motive was trickier. Possibilities included jealousy, hatred, revenge, self-preservation, and greed. Lark figured money topped the list.

  Crandall showed up at six on the nose. Lark caught him up on the latest, then roused Teresa out of bed to answer his questions.

  “Where were you at five P.M. the afternoon of August twelfth?”

  “Driving.” She had taken the Big Thompson Road and ended up in Loveland.

  “Can anyone verify that?”

  “No.”

  “What were you arguing with Esther about on the day she died?”

  “Money. She owed me money that my father had given to her to keep safe for me.”

  “How much money?”

  “Ten thousand dollars.”

  Crandall scratched his head. “So, why was she sending you home?”

  Teresa looked down at her hands.

  “Tell him, Teresa,” Lark said. She wondered if the girl’s answer would be something other than what she expected.

  “My visa had expired. She’d found out that my father was cheating her by mixing shade-grown with sun-grown coffee. Esther said it put her business in jeopardy to let me stay.”

  Crandall glanced at Lark. “Does INS know about the visa?”

  “Not yet. Arquette’s working on a solution, but…”

  He nodded, asked a few more questions, then stood. “Unfortunately, Teresa, I’m going to have to take you into custody. Under the circumstances, and with the flight risk so high…” He let the sentence dangle.