Death of a Songbird

by Goff, Christine

  “Through the adjoining door into Jan’s room.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Carlene, the third-floor maid. What’s your point?”

  “The maid now becomes a potential witness for the defense. She can testify that you were in Norberto’s room under suspicious circumstances, based on the fact you snuck out. Even if I recover the evidence, given the right defense attorney, any judge worth his salt would toss any evidence right out of court on the grounds you might have planted it there.”

  The silence between them stretched. Truth was a hard thing to argue against. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  “We? No! Outside of my finding some hard evidence to prove Rincon or one of the others had a good reason to kill Esther, there’s not a damn thing we can do.”

  “I guess I screwed up.”

  The regret in her voice must have played through, because Crandall’s growl softened. “Look, I’ll try bringing him in for questioning. If I say I have reason to believe he’s in possession of some items the police are looking for, he may panic and try dumping the stuff. If we can catch him in the act…” He huffed out a breath. “It’s a long shot.”

  “I’m sorry, Bernie.” She meant it in more ways than one. The clock was ticking. On Thursday, after her closing speech, the Migration Alliance ended. On Friday, with nothing more than Crandall had to go on, the Alliance members would scatter to the winds, leaving behind only their contact information in the event Crandall wanted to question them.

  “Just go home,” he said, ignoring her apology. “And stay there. Please.”

  She’d done as he’d asked. After checking on Teresa, who was eating breakfast, she wandered over to the Drummond Convention Center to sit in on the white paper sessions. Designed as one-hour overviews, the talks covered a variety of bird-related topics and were designed to stimulate, or put you to sleep, depending upon the lecturer and his knowledge or passion for the subject at hand. Lark chose carefully.

  The first session covered the aspects of wind and weather. The lecturer, a meteorologist from Cambridge, dutifully explained how high-pressure and low-pressure systems combined to create horrific situations for migrating birds. He told stories of tropical birds, disoriented and lost, arriving in Newfoundland in time for the first winter storm; of birds so tired from being swept up in a hurricane that they died of exhaustion by the thousands on the beaches. Natural weather disasters, while good for the birders, are so bad for the bird populations.

  The second session was presented by Katherine Saunders. She looked thinner and older, and her black bob drooped. She wore a pants suit and flats, and for the first time Lark realized how short she was.

  “I want to talk to you today about the coffee industry. About its effects on the migratory songbirds of America. For those of you who are unaware, the decline of the Eastern songbirds is significant…”

  Lark allowed Katherine’s lilting voice to wash over her. She droned on about the farms, the technification of the coffee plantations, the processing plants that polluted the waters - the packaging and sales.

  “To stop this decimation, we must become responsible consumers. We must fight to educate the people of our nation. We must sponsor legislation that requires all coffee imports to pass the Food and Commodities agricultural testing limits required for organically grown crops. My friends, this is truly the only way we can hope to insure that the coffee we import is produced in shade and bird-supportive habitat. It is our duty to be responsible consumers.”

  Testing. The word resonated in Lark’s brain, drilled in by the applause of the audience. The speech flowed like political rhetoric—some truth, some skewed perception—lulling the listeners into a point of view. But the words testing triggered an idea.

  One hundred bags of coffee sat in the warehouse in Lyons, scheduled for delivery in the morning. Bags of organic coffee from the Cruz farms in Chiapas, Mexico. The same coffee Norberto Rincon sold to Jitters.

  Esther must have stopped the coffee deliveries because she realized the coffee Cruz sold her was contaminated with pesticide residue. According to Paul, she claimed to have proof that would blow the lid off the Jitters Coffee operations. The kilo bags, depending on how they were tagged, might or might not provide the link Crandall was looking for. Either way, it was worth a shot.

  The police chief was out of the office when Lark called him from home to tell him what she intended to do. She left a message with the desk sergeant to let him know she was headed to the warehouse, and that he should meet her there if he was interested.

  “You’re going out?” Teresa stood in the doorway in jeans and a peasant blouse. Dark curls cascaded around her shoulders and down her back. Dark eyes appeared vulnerable in the fading light.

  “Just for a little while.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  A footstep on the front porch caused Lark to whirl around. Jumpy. “It’s probably Velof.” He’d left her pretty much to her own devices most of the day. She walked toward the door, and heard a clattering of feet. Yanking open the screen, she found no one. A dusty set of prints indicated whoever stood there had beat a hasty retreat.

  The sun was dropping behind Longs Peak, throwing long shadows across the ground. The parking lot, jammed with cars, separated them from the Drummond. She could hear people laughing in the distance. She sensed someone watching her and glanced up at the fourth-floor windows. A curtain swayed.

  Teresa snatched up her sweater. “You can’t carry the coffee alone.”

  Lark’s heart crow-hopped. If she had heard the message Lark left Crandall, then the person skulking by the front door might have, also. Damn!

  She left another message for Crandall, this one more urgent, then grabbed her keys off the kitchen counter. Like sand through the hourglass, time was running out.

  The Commercial Storage warehouses were located in Lyons near the junction of Highway 7 and U.S. 36. The small town, population 1,200, sat at the confluence of the North and South Saint Vrain Canyons, twenty-one miles east of Rocky Mountain National Park at the base of the foothills. What started as a ranching community was now most famous for its annual Canine Festival. Once a crossroads, Lyons was now a budding metropolis, consisting of a main street and several cross streets. Restaurants, bike shops, music shops, art galleries, and antique stores congested the roadways.

  It was nearly six when they’d reached the warehouse lot. The sun had dropped behind the mountains and dusk blanketed the valley. Fluorescent lights winked on above the storage areas. Lark glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure she wasn’t being followed, then pulled up to the front gate. Black iron fencing encircled the lot. A coded lock box guarded the entrance.

  Rolling down the truck window, Lark punched in the number from the file: 12354. Creative security. Keep it simple. That way, the customers will never forget the number and wake up management in the dead of the night, and the criminals will never guess the code is so easy to crack.

  Chipe Coffee Company’s unit was located around the back side of the buildings, and it was about the size of a two-car garage. Teresa shivered as they rounded the corner and the street disappeared from view.

  “It’s okay,” reassured Lark. “We’re alone here.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Parking the truck, Lark dug in her pocket for the set of keys to the Warbler. There had been two keys that didn’t fit any locks at the café or at Esther’s house. One or both of them had to fit the padlock on the warehouse door.

  The first odd-shaped key didn’t work. It didn’t even fit in the lock. The second key scraped in halfway and jammed.

  “Move it around,” Teresa said.

  Lark jiggled the key. Slowly, in small increments, it settled into the lock. When it reached its hilt, she turned the key. The padlock popped open. Teresa jumped. Unhooking the lock, she slid back the deadbolt.

  The door, made of corrugated metal, rolled up like a garage door. Lark shoved it up out of the
way, hooked the lock on the opened door so she wouldn’t lose it, and groped for a light switch. A single, long fluorescent tube blinked on.

  The building, constructed of a steel frame and wood exterior, contained two small windows blackened with paint at ceiling-level. Several two-by-fours were nailed haphazardly across a hole in one wall, and the concrete floor crumbled in places where water had seeped in and froze.

  Piled in the middle of the room were two mounds of bagged coffee. In one stack, white nylon sacks measuring as long as Teresa and twice as wide held sixty kilos of coffee beans. In the other were smaller bags emblazoned with the Chipe Coffee Company logo.

  Coffee was imported raw. In most instances, beans were roasted before they were distributed, but in Chipe’s case, some of the smaller specialty stores roasted their own. Talley had indicated there was a shipment ready to go. This had to be it.

  She checked the bags. Each one was marked with the type of bean—roasted or raw—the type of coffee, the grade, and the name of the intended recipient. Client names jumped out at her—large chain supermarkets, small cafés, large restaurants—all clamoring for Chipe Coffee.

  It was the original mound of coffee that interested Lark the most. The bags shimmered with an iridescent quality some fashion designer would charge millions for. The contents malleable, the bags had shifted until they resembled a pile of pasty bodies stacked four and five deep in places. The necks were clamped shut with huge metal staples and encircled with wire-bearing, stout tags.

  The top few tags all read the same: “Cruz Farms. Sold to Chipe Coffee Company.” Dated December, they were stamped with the appropriate agricultural mark for organic foods and initialed as received by Esther. Tests run on the coffee would determine whether or not Cruz sold pesticide-laden coffee as organic, but it didn’t provide the link to Jitters.

  “Teresa?”

  At the sound of the male voice, Lark shoved the girl behind her. “What are you doing here? How did you get through the gate?”

  “We followed you. The gate was open.”

  We?

  “Jesus?” Teresa cried, clawing Lark’s arm to get around her.

  Norberto Rincon stepped into the light.

  “Jesus!” Teresa launched herself into the man’s arms.

  “Teresa.” Rincon spun her in circles, then bent to kiss her. He stopped midway and held her under the light. Pointing to the bruise, he muttered something in Spanish.

  “It’s nothing.” Teresa turned toward Lark suddenly, as though forgetting her manners. “Lark, this is Jesus. Jesus, Lark.”

  “We’ve already met.” Lark’s gaze darted around the warehouse. The two lovers stood between her and the door.

  Teresa looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “He may be Jesus to you, but he was introduced to me as Norberto Rincon.”

  “What?” Teresa blanched, her coppery skin turning a sickly yellow in the artificial light. She gripped Rincon’s arm. “Tell her who you are, Jesus.”

  “Let me explain it to her,” Buzz said Aldefer, stepping around the corner. “I’m with him.”

  “This is turning into a regular nonbirders birding convention,” Lark said, trying to act nonchalant. She grew more uneasy by the minute and prayed the sergeant had given Crandall her message.

  “He is not Norberto Rincon,” Buzz told Lark.

  “I got that picture.” She paused, then decided she had nothing to lose by spilling what she knew. “I also know you aren’t a birdwatcher,” she told Buzz. “You are a spy. You gather intelligence on the Mexican civil war for a man named Dean Munger at the CIA.”

  “Did your daddy give you that information?”

  He’d done his homework on her, just like she’d done her homework on Jan. “Yeah.”

  “Well, he’s got it right, which probably means the gig is up.” Buzz’s face took on a sad expression, then he shook it off. “Several years back, I met Norberto, the real Norberto, in a bar in San Cristóbal de las Casas. I had information that he was a known PRI supporter, so I struck up a conversation, just to see what kind of information I could get. Turns out he was soused and in need of a friend. He and a partner had come up with this idea to pass off inorganic coffee as organic coffee and pocket the difference. Damned if it didn’t work. He used his PRI influence to persuade farmers to go along with him, and sold over four million dollars’ worth of bad coffee to Jitters last year. The man’s a frigging millionaire.”

  Lark’s anger bubbled up along with her fear. “And you did nothing to stop him.”

  “Little lady,” Buzz said, straightening his bolo tie. “It wasn’t my job. My job was to observe and gather intel, and I did my duty.”

  Duty. The word struck a chord, but the note rang flat somehow. She couldn’t hear it clearly or discern what it meant. “You must have been surprised to see Jesus show up in Norberto’s place.”

  “You bet your patootie, darlin’.”

  She remembered Buzz dropping his glass on the patio. Jesus’s reaction, stepping back in the shadows and out of the limelight, made sense now.

  “How did you end up coming in Rincon’s place?” she asked him.

  “Norberto and I come from the same township. I learned he’d been invited to come to Colorado as Jan Halloway’s guest, but that he had never actually met her before. We—me and some of my friends—arranged an accident. He is recovering from a broken jaw and a few broken bones right now.” His hand caressed Teresa’s hair. “I knew my wife was here.”

  Lark swallowed, touched by his show of affection but afraid of what her next question might bring. She knew she had to ask it anyway. “I found the ledger and a black Zapatista ski mask in your room.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You were in my room.”

  She shrugged and made a motion like tap, tap, tap in the air.

  “Ahhh, the door. Jan was sooo upset. She tried to fire the maid.”

  “I know. It didn’t work.” Lark watched Teresa mold herself against her husband, claiming her rightful position beneath his arm. “You didn’t answer my question, Jesus.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His gaze was clear and never wavered. “The mask, I always carry. The ledger, I know nothing about”

  Lark believed him. “So who could have planted it there?”

  Jan? Propped open, the adjoining room to Jesus’ room provided all the access she needed. She could have opened the connecting door at will and slipped the ledger into his room.

  Katherine? Velof, in more and more standard practice, had given the coordinators keys to the VIP guest rooms to get them checked-in quickly. The question was, had he given them one per guest or several per room?

  Or there was still Buzz to consider. She glanced at the Air Force officer.

  “Hey, don’t look at me. My job is to—”

  “—gather intel,” she and Buzz said in unison. “I heard.” It took her a minute to realize that her fear had vanished. “Well, now that you’re here, you can help us gather some more evidence and haul it out to the truck. Before he died, Paul told me that Esther had proof of Norberto’s dealings with Jitters. The inference seemed to be that Jan knew about the coffee.”

  “Then she might have killed Esther to keep her from spilling the beans,” Buzz said. “No pun intended.”

  Spoken out loud, the thought grew in proportion. “Then,” continued Lark, “if she discovered Paul knew there was proof, she would have been forced to kill him, too.”

  Buzz nodded. “Sort of a Coffeegate.”

  Lark turned to Teresa. “Teresa, help me check these tags. We’re looking for one that’s different.”

  They found it at the bottom of the pile. A tag marked “Jitters Coffee Company.” On the back, Esther had written in chicken scrawl: “Hold for pickup.”

  “By who?” Teresa asked.

  “By whom.” The woman’s voice startled them all.

  The light shattered, plunging the room into darkness.

  Lark leaped to her
feet as the door came down with a clang and the deadbolt slid into place.

  “Jan?” Buzz asked. Was he asking because they were just speaking of her or because he thought he’d recognized her voice?

  “No,” Lark said, matter-of-factly, everything suddenly falling into place. “It’s Katherine.”

  “How did you guess?” With more than two words spoken, the birdlike voice was hard to mistake. Or did she mean how did Lark guess it was she who killed Esther and Paul.

  “Your voice gave you away, but the pieces all fit. Paul told me how tirelessly you’d worked to increase the wealth of the Migration Alliance.” Rachel’s comments about the state of William Tanager’s estate came flooding back. Like Katherine’s father, he was a renowned ornithologist, and his family was broke. “That’s because the family money was running out, wasn’t it?”

  “Let’s face it, even a famous ornithologist is little more than a glorified professor. My father had lived on my grandfather’s money, as did his brothers and sister. Suffice it to say, the family resources were stretched thin.”

  “So you saw an opportunity to make a lot of money and partnered up with Norberto. A little hypocritical, don’t you think?”

  “The coffee was being sun-grown anyway. Actually, I thought it deliciously ironic that proceeds from its sale were being used to help stamp out its production.” She laughed. “Of course, you can imagine my surprise when it wasn’t Norberto who showed up for the conference. Luckily, no one was the wiser.”

  Lark heard the sound of the padlock clicking shut. Fear at being locked inside washed over her. With the windows blackened, no light from outside penetrated the small room, and Lark groped her way closer to the door, the only source of fresh air.

  “But why kill Esther Mills?” Buzz asked.

  “She had no choice,” answered Lark. “Esther had discovered that the Jitters coffee was mixed half and half. Half shade-grown, half sun-grown. And that Norberto was shipping the tainted coffee to the States. Jan Halloway knew nothing about it.”

  “When Esther told Paul she planned to blow the lid off the Jitters operation, I knew the trail would eventually lead back to me.” Katherine didn’t move outside the door. “I wore the mask in case someone saw me and surprised her in back of the store. We were about the same size, but I was in much better shape.”