Death of a Songbird (13 page)

“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 backward 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.

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.”

“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 Jitters 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.