Songbird Cottage

by Barbara Cool Lee

  "Yeah. 'Oh' is right. So I called Junior to talk it over. At first I just wanted to tell him the property is worth a higher price. But then the offer came in, so I wanted to explain about the property value, and the bidding war, and all that."

  "And what did he say? Did he explain why he wouldn't answer your questions?"

  "That's the point. I can't get in touch with the guy. I've been trying since yesterday. And he's ducking my calls. And then I ran into Senior, and he acted like he was going to break Junior's neck for listing the property."

  "Okay," she said. "I guess that explains the breaking and entering."

  He held up something that shone in the moonlight. "It's not breaking and entering if you have the key. The lease says I have the right to enter the offices at any time."

  "I suppose I shouldn't point out that in every lease agreement I've ever written up, the clause says you can enter the property with a legitimate reason—and wondering why Junior is avoiding you is not a legitimate reason."

  "A possible roof leak that might damage the office is a legitimate reason," Dylan pointed out.

  "It's not raining, Dylan."

  "It could." He looked up at the cloudless sky, where the stars glimmered against the velvet blackness. "Theoretically, it could rain."

  "Theoretically," she said. "Dylan, I'm not usually one to break the rules."

  "Okay," he said.

  Then she said, "But this once I will. I want to know how that cottage is connected to my family and why they're keeping it all a secret. So lead the way, 007, and let's get this over with."

  Dylan unlocked the door to the Thackery office and ushered Robin inside.

  He had tried to make it light, but he was scared to death. He was sure there was something wrong. Junior's silence was puzzling, and the odd fire at the cottage had been disturbing, but it was the encounter with Senior that had really shaken him up.

  He'd known the old man since he was a kid. He was a jolly guy, despite his health concerns. And Dylan had never seen him less than proud of his son, Junior. But his anger—no, rage—at Junior made no sense. And the fact that no one would explain it had him worried.

  Okay, he thought as he flicked on the light switch and looked around the cluttered office. Maybe he was being paranoid. Maybe Robin wasn't actually being threatened. Maybe he was reading too much into all these odd things that were happening.

  "Why don't you check out the file cabinet," he said, gesturing to the two metal cabinets against the wall. "I'll look in the back office."

  "I still feel weird about this," Robin said. "These are legal documents."

  "We're not stealing anything," he said, knowing he was making an excuse. "We're just looking."

  "What for, exactly?" she asked.

  "Who Junior contacted about Songbird Cottage, for one thing."

  She pulled at one of the file cabinet drawers, and it slid open. "Not locked," she said.

  Dylan went over to the closed door to the back office. He tried the knob, but it was locked.

  "Nothing here I can make sense of," Robin said. She shifted to the desktop, which was strewn with papers. "Robles-hyphen-Stockdale," she said, holding up a file folder.

  "What about Robles-hyphen-Stockdale?" he asked, pausing in his search through his key ring for the master key to the interior offices.

  "That's what the label on this folder says."

  "So?" There it was. He held up the shiny, rarely used key for the inner offices of Los Colores.

  "It's empty," she said. "But it had held a thick file. The bottom of the folder is all creased from holding about a ream of paper."

  He swung the door to the inner office open and flicked on the light switch.

  "I don't see anything here," she said. "I'll come in there and help you search."

  "No," he said quietly. "Don't come any closer."

  But she came forward and saw what was on the floor of the inner office before he could turn her away and hold her close.

  While she sobbed on his shoulder he pulled out his phone and made a call. "Yeah," he said softly to the dispatcher who picked up the line on the first ring. "I want to report a murder."

  Chapter Eighteen

  "So what exactly were you doing in the Thackery office at this hour?" Captain Ryan Knight was asking Dylan a short time later.

  Robin stood next to them in the courtyard of Los Colores, huddled in the navy wool pea coat Dylan had brought her from his office. She'd had dinner with Ryan and Camilla only last weekend, but her best friend's husband was a different person now: professional, businesslike… and angry about the murder committed on his watch.

  It was still night, though Robin had no idea how much time had passed since they'd called the police. The moonlight on the glossy tiles made them lustrous in the dimness, and the fountain bubbled away cheerily in front of them, an odd counterpoint to the scene.

  She watched numbly as Junior Thackery's body was carried down the stairs and over to the police van waiting on the street outside. She'd overheard the police say they were taking the body to the county morgue for an autopsy, though it hardly seemed necessary. There was absolutely no question about what had killed him. She would never forget the sight of his body, like a crumpled toy, face-down on the floor, shot in the back.

  Her own mother had died like that. She had been shot in the back, and once Robin had found out the truth, the story haunted her sleep for months.

  How many times had she woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, images filling her mind of her mother, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, all alone with no one to save her?

  But this was the first time she had ever seen the reality of a dead body, and now she couldn't help placing her own mother's face into that horrible scene.

  "You're shaking," Dylan said. He pulled the pea coat closed across her chest and buttoned it. "I need to get you home."

  "You haven't answered my question," Ryan said.

  "Well," Dylan said slowly. "Technically, I own the building, and can enter any of the offices at any time."

  "Don't technically me, Dylan! I don't care if you are a Madrigal, you have to answer my questions. You had no business being here in the middle of the night, and you know it." He looked from one of them to the other. "And what's with the black clothes, and the flashlights? You seem to think this is some sort of a game you're playing. A man is dead."

  "Later," Dylan said shortly. He put his arm around Robin's shoulders. "I'm taking her home. She's in shock."

  Ryan stepped in front of them. "No. Now. This is a murder investigation. I need answers."

  "You don't think we had anything to do with this?" Robin asked.

  "Of course not," Ryan said. "He died hours ago. But you need to tell me exactly what happened. And you need to do it now."

  So they stood there in the dark courtyard, Robin shivering in the heavy wool coat, and Dylan explained it all. About the odd real estate listing of a secret, unfinished Stockdale cottage. About Senior's strange reaction to the news. About Junior's evasiveness when asked about the owner. About the spontaneous fire at the cottage. About everything.

  "Do you have any reason to believe the fire wasn't just an act of nature?" Ryan asked at that point.

  Dylan started to answer, but Ryan interrupted him. "I said any reason, not your wild imagination."

  "No," Dylan said reluctantly. "I don't have any evidence, if that's what you mean."

  "That's what we're dealing with here," Ryan said. "Reason. Logic. Evidence. Not a spy novel. So go on with the rest of the story. I know you're not done."

  So Dylan did. He glanced over at Robin when he got to the part about why Robin wanted the cottage so much.

  But Robin just nodded for him to continue. Ryan was Camilla's husband, and she was sure he knew the whole story already anyway.

  So Dylan went into that part, too. About how her mother had been in the cottage years ago, and about how a picture of her grandmother was found there.

 
"And that's everything," Dylan finally said.

  "You'll have to come down and make a statement." Robin saw the metallic gleam as he glanced at his watch. "But you can do that in the morning."

  He turned to Robin. "Is that everything?"

  She nodded. "That's all of it." She glanced at the police van, which was pulling away from the curb. "Except that we came here because we couldn't get Junior to talk to us, and so we were sure he was hiding something."

  "But you don't know that."

  "No," she said. "We don't actually know that. But someone had to be hiding something, or he'd be alive now."

  "Why are you so sure his death is about you? I'm sure he handled other cases."

  "You think it's unconnected?"

  "There's absolutely nothing in what you said that would motivate someone to kill him. So yeah, I have a little trouble believing it's connected."

  "But—"

  He put a hand up. "But we will investigate thoroughly. And we'll find out who did this, and why."

  Then he turned to Dylan. "And you will go home, and stay out of this. And stop acting like you're some kind of private eye on a case."

  He stalked away, but they could hear him muttering about amateurs and black clothes and idiots getting themselves in trouble.

  In the glowing sunshine of a Pajaro Bay morning, Robin sat slouched down in the passenger seat of the Jeep while Dylan drove.

  It had been a rough night, and now, after some fitful sleep, Senior Thackery had asked them to stop by. So they took Dylan's battered Jeep to visit the little ranch house on a side street facing the high school.

  When they arrived, Dylan came around and opened the car door to let her out, an old-fashioned courtesy he'd never done before, but he seemed to sense that she was feeling a bit fragile after the night they'd had, and was acting solicitous.

  "I don't want to do this," she said as they walked up the cement path through the rose bushes to the front door.

  "Me, either. But he asked to see us, and we deserve whatever yelling he does. We messed up big time. Whatever's going on, it's no joke. It's my fault—"

  There she put her hand in his. "We did it together. And we aren't responsible for what happened to Junior. We just have take our lumps."

  Mrs. Thackery opened the door and greeted them warmly. "Thank you for coming," she said, ushering them inside.

  Robin couldn't help automatically assessing the house. A modest ranch, filled with memories of an active family, with school pictures, knick-knacks, and well-worn rugs that had felt the bare toes of kids who forgot to wipe their feet after playing in the backyard pool.

  Mrs. Thackery led them out the big sliding glass doors to the pool and its bordering grassy lawn. A pair of elderly black Labs dozing in the sun out there hadn't bothered to lift an ear at the sound of the doorbell.

  Sitting at a patio table next to them was a very old man, a man centuries older than he had been the last time Robin had seen him.

  He had a big file in front of him on the table. Unopened.

  They said hello, and Mrs. Thackery offered them coffee or sodas, which they both declined. She waved them into chairs opposite her husband.

  "Stay," he said softly when she turned to go. "You never knew this and should hear it, too."

  He was a frail, old, blind man, lost and forlorn.

  Robin steeled herself for his anger, prepared herself to accept it stoically, but what he said took her completely by surprise.

  "I didn't know you were African American," were his very first words to her.

  "What?" she couldn't help blurting out.

  "I'm blind, you see. I compensate, but I didn't know."

  Robin and Dylan looked at each other, and then at Mrs. Thackery, who just shook her head.

  "I don't understand, Sir. What difference does it make?"

  "Birdie Johnson was African American. And I remember the pictures of her, what she looked like. When I last talked to Junior—" his voice cracked, and he took a deep breath before continuing— "he said you were bidding on the property and really wanted it badly because of a family connection."

  "So he did get my messages," Dylan muttered. "I told him that."

  "I asked him what you look like, and he said tall, willowy, strikingly attractive. I should have put it together."

  "Put what together?"

  He pushed the file folder toward his wife. "It should be on the top page."

  His wife opened the file and read the top page. Then, with wide eyes, silently handed it to Robin.

  She read it. It was a letter, from Ramona Robles Stockdale, to Samuel J. Thackery, Senior. It was dated December of 1991.

  "She gave you the Songbird Lane property?" Robin said after reading it.

  "She knew the grapevine in Pajaro Bay. It can be vicious, as I'm sure you knew. And she knew her brother Elias. He was a mean old coot."

  "A jerk," his wife said shortly.

  "So she had a plan to get around all that, and as her attorney, I didn't necessarily agree, but I respected her wishes."

  "Then you knew about my mother—about Birdie Johnson's heir."

  "Of course," he said. "It's all in the letter."

  "What?" Dylan asked.

  Robin handed him the letter and he read it. "So Ramona Robles Stockdale was Birdie Johnson's friend," he said when he finished reading it. "And she got the property when Birdie died in 1967. She knew that Birdie had a child out there somewhere."

  "Right," Senior said. "But she didn't trust her family to follow her wishes, so she wanted a way to quietly hold back the property from her estate, and see that it went to Birdie's heirs, not her own."

  "So she gave it to you."

  "Not gave," he said clearly. "Asked me to put it in my own name, and then to find the heir to Birdie Johnson and pass the property to her, without her own relatives finding out and contesting it."

  "So why didn't you?" Robin asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "Didn't you even look?"

  Dylan put a hand on her wrist and she realized what Senior was dealing with, and that made her ashamed of her anger.

  But he took her question at face value, and answered it plainly. "I hired a private detective to look for her. But she had been taken into foster care, and the records were sealed. He couldn't find a trace of her."

  He pointed to the file folder, and his wife shuffled through it. "There should be a report from the detective in there." Then he put his hand over his wife's and she stopped shuffling papers. "It doesn't matter. When the subject came up in the last couple of days, I was so mad that Junior—" his voice broke there, and he had to pause before continuing. "Junior had gone behind my back and listed the property for sale without discussing it with me."

  Mrs. Thackery leaned forward to look at Robin. "He wanted to help with the medical bills. He had no idea he was stealing from your family. We would never have—"

  "No," Senior said firmly. "We would never have taken your inheritance for personal gain." His pale, unseeing eyes filled with tears as he looked in her direction. "Please know that, Miss. It's my fault, not his. I should have told him about it. I took the promise I made to keep Ramona's secret too far. I should have told him. But you see, I didn't know what to do when the detective failed to find your mother—she is your mother, isn't she?"

  "Genie Smith Walker," Robin said. "Eugenia Birdie Johnson's daughter. Yes. She was my mother."

  "Do you have a birth certificate or something to show it? If so, we'll get it all straightened right up."

  He waved his hands over the file, as if washing his hands of it. "All of this, I… I lost track of it after all these years. I let Junior—" the voice broke again. "I let him handle things, but I never explained what this file was about and he never looked into it."

  Again that unseeing gaze pinned her down, making her uncomfortable. "If I had known you were African American, I might have at least asked if there was a connection. I remember the pictures of your grandmother."

&
nbsp; "—There are pictures?" Robin asked.

  "Oh, yes. They're in the file. You can take the file. The whole thing." Again he washed his hands of it. "And we'll do the property transfer as soon as we have the proof."

  Robin's heart sunk. "Proof? All I have are the fact that my grandmother's obituary said she had a daughter with my mother's name born on my mother's birthday, and then my mother died the day I went into foster care."

  Senior leaned back in his chair and contemplated it for a bit. Then he said firmly. "That's enough. I'm sure it's enough. You gather what you have and I will have Jun—" he stopped there, and broke down into sobs.

  Mrs. Thackery put an arm around her husband. With her other hand, she pushed the file folder toward Robin. "You get the papers you have, and we'll get the legal documents signed for you."

  Robin and Dylan stood up to leave.

  Then Dylan asked the question both of them were thinking of: "But what does any of this have to do with Junior's death?"

  Both Thackerys looked up at him in shock. "Captain Ryan said he was killed in a random break-in. What could this have to do with it?"

  "Nothing," Dylan said. "I'm sure it's nothing."

  They left them to their grief.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dylan dropped Robin off at Hector's garage, where she picked up her repaired car.

  She drove back to her office. She went in, sat down at her desk, and opened up her laptop.

  She ignored all the emails staring at her. It was impossible to focus on work right now. She needed answers to what was going on.

  Where to begin? She opened the manila folder Senior had given her. It was filled with precious info about her family.

  She went immediately to the photographs. These were snapshots from the same era as the one she'd found in the cottage. There was a flyer for Tinsel Town Dressmakers, and also a copy of Birdie's obituary just like the one she'd found.

  One additional bit of info was her mother's birth certificate, showing her birth date, and location as the Pajaro Bay free clinic. The checks in the boxes marked "deceased" by Lewis Smith and Eugenia Johnson confirmed what she knew. But the tiny footprint inked on the form gave her a chill. Those little toes had been her mother's.