Songbird Cottage

by Barbara Cool Lee

  The rest of the papers were more mundane. A copy of Ramona's will, which said nothing about the property, the letter outlining the agreement between Senior and Ramona. That was about it.

  So all she had to do now was prove that she was the daughter of Genie Smith, who was the daughter of Eugenia Johnson, and the cottage would be hers.

  She pulled out her own well-worn folder and looked through all the papers. Miss Sparrow's name was on the top note. Well, it wouldn't prove her right to the property, but she'd start there.

  She did a search of obituaries for women named Sophronia Johnson.

  And she found it, easy as that. Only one person with that unusual name met the criteria. Sophronia Johnson had died in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, from complications of influenza.

  She read through the notice, finding that it confirmed what she already knew: Miss Sparrow was her great-grandmother, and had been predeceased by her husband, the school teacher who Zelda said had taken odd jobs at Pajaro Bay's cannery.

  The obituary for Miss Sparrow was extensive, and confirmed much of what she already knew. It even mentioned the film where she'd met Zelda. And her dress shop in L.A., Tinsel Town Dressmakers, had the same name as Birdie's shop in Pajaro Bay. The obit said Sophronia left behind an only child, a daughter, named Eugenia "Birdie" Johnson. Birdie was an only child, and Robin's own mother had been as well, so that meant no cousins.

  It was possible Birdie's husband, her biological grandfather, had relatives, but they would not be eligible to inherit the cottage. She tried another search on Mr. Lewis Smith, and found hundreds of results. Adding in Los Angeles didn't narrow it down enough. She would have to learn more details about him before she'd be able to track him down.

  It was only for her own closure that she even needed any more info. Even if she was able to find more relatives in the future, that wouldn't affect her right to Songbird Cottage.

  She printed the page on Sophronia Johnson and added it to her collection of family obituaries with a sigh of disappointment. She had a family, but all of them were dead. The closure was there, but it didn't make her feel better.

  But she had the proof to make a legal claim to Songbird Cottage. Her mother, Genie Smith Walker, was the only child of Eugenia Johnson Smith, the original owner of the cottage. All the other searches she was doing to fill in her family tree had no bearing on the legality of her claim. She was the only surviving heir. This was all Senior said would be necessary to claim the cottage as her own. That part of the puzzle was solved.

  But how was any of this connected to Junior's horrible death? If at all?

  She looked through the file about Songbird Cottage that Senior had given her. In the end, the story was so simple, really. In his case notes, he wrote that Ramona wanted her best friend's child to inherit the cottage, but didn't want the village's notorious gossip central to find out about it—and wanted to be sure that her own greedy brother couldn't get his hands on the property.

  So Senior had put the Songbird Lane property into the Thackery firm's name, with a letter in the file promising it would only be turned over to the true heir of Birdie Johnson.

  Ramona put in a stipulation that Senior would get a fee for finding the heir, and as far as the records showed, he had made a good-faith effort to fulfill her wishes.

  But because Robin's own mother, Genie Smith, been placed in foster care after Birdie's death, the records were sealed, and the trail dead-ended without anyone ever finding Robin's mother, and through her, Robin herself.

  So Senior had held onto the property for all these years, with it caught in limbo, waiting for an heir to show up to claim it. He had been caught in limbo himself: he promised to keep the whole thing a secret, so he couldn't tell anyone he was looking for the heir, but how was he going to find the heir, if the private detective failed to? He just had to hope the heir would work it out somehow and reach out to him.

  And she had. On paper now Robin had a clear trail from grandmother to mother to her. That's all she needed to clear up the case.

  She reread the note about the finder's fee. Senior had been so honorable that he refused to sell a property he legally owned, even to save his own life, because he had vowed to keep his secret promise to his dead client.

  Robin realized she could pay the finder's fee to Senior, and by adding a little interest for all the years he'd held on, the fee would cover his medical expenses. In that way, Junior's desire to help his father would be fulfilled. And Senior could be thanked for his integrity toward her family.

  She flipped through every page in the Robles inheritance file. But that's all there was. No secret documents. No hidden stipulation that would motivate someone to lie or cheat.

  Or murder.

  Junior had made a mistake in listing the Songbird Cottage for sale. He hadn't known about the secret agreement his father had made, or why his father had stubbornly refused to sell a piece of property in the firm's name, even when they were so broke they couldn't afford his cancer treatments. But none of this gave any motive to kill Junior. The only person mad that Songbird Cottage was being sold was Senior, and he was obviously not a suspect in his beloved son's murder. Could Junior's death be related to some other matter the firm was handling? Or even just be random chance?

  Robin opened up her laptop again. She referred back to the simple one-page report the detective had given Senior, where he explained that the daughter of Eugenia Johnson was impossible to find because of the sealed foster system records.

  She typed the detective's name into a Google search. If this guy—she glanced back at the file—Frank Guerrero—was still alive after all these years, he might be able to offer some ideas, some way for her to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, to figure out why her mother brought her to the village all those years ago.

  Google search led to a lot of different hits under his name alone, so she narrowed it down: Frank Guerrero, Detective.

  The result she got wasn't surprising. After all, Frank Guerrero had been hired to find her mother over 25 years ago. So the news that he had died wasn't exactly shocking.

  But the article in the San Francisco Chronicle made her stop and stare. Then read through the story again.

  And then a third time. Slowly.

  Frank Guerrero, a detective from San Francisco, had died in a random, unsolved break-in at his office.

  He'd been shot in the back.

  With a .38-caliber gun.

  On Friday, March 6, 1992. Which was eight days after her mother had died.

  When she was shot in the back.

  With a .38-caliber gun.

  In a random break-in at her home.

  She spent an hour staring at the screen, clicking through research on how bullets could be identified and matched to bullets from other crimes. All of it leading nowhere.

  She was surprised to find out that there was no big database like something out of CSI, where bullets from random crimes hundreds of miles apart were automatically matched together to solve unsolved cases.

  The two random killings of two random people in two random cases in two unmotivated ways 25 years ago had never been connected by anyone.

  Until now.

  Two people with ties to Pajaro Bay were shot with .38-caliber guns in unsolved, random break-ins. One week apart, 25 years ago.

  And Junior?

  Junior had been shot in the back.

  In a random break-in at his office.

  She called Captain Ryan and left him a message detailing what she had figured out. Maybe he would be able to find out if the bullets in all three cases matched.

  After she finished the long, rambling message to Ryan, she hung up.

  She started to text Dylan about what she'd learned, but then decided to call him. But then again changed her mind, grabbed the file off her desk and headed over to his office at Los Colores business court to talk it over.

  Robin parked her car in front of the entrance to Los Colores. She headed past the fountain to
Dylan's real estate office.

  "Hi," she said to his assistant, Patrick.

  "He's at the place he's flipping in Wharf Flats," Patrick told her when she looked around the office for him.

  "Oh," she said, deflated. She'd have to head over there.

  "Wait!" Patrick said when she turned to leave.

  She came back. He handed her a paper. "Would you give him this? Dylan asked me to research the other bidder on the Songbird property. I just got the info."

  "Oh. Thanks," she said. "But it doesn't matter any more. The property is… um… part of an inheritance. So it won't be sold on the open market."

  Patrick nodded. "Okay." He shrugged and took the paper back from her. He threw it in the recycling bin. "It was kinda odd, though…," he muttered to himself.

  She walked out the door.

  Then came back in. "What was odd?"

  "Just who was bidding. Didn't make sense."

  "What didn't make sense?"

  He retrieved the paper from the bin and handed it to her.

  She smoothed it out on the desktop and looked at it. "Pajaro Bay, LLC. What's odd about that? It's common for people to use limited liability corporations to buy land."

  "Sure."

  "So what's so odd? Do you know who's behind the corporation?"

  "Nope. But I know they own the property next door."

  "You mean the strawberry farm? That makes sense." She realized she'd never actually asked Ava Kelly if she might be bidding on the property to expand their farm. It was a bit disappointing that she'd gushed about them being neighbors and friends while bidding against her, but Ava hadn't talked to Robin before she put in the initial offer, and she may have been embarrassed to tell her once Robin revealed how much the cottage meant to her.

  Robin crumpled the paper in her fist, threw it back in the recycling bin, and tried hard not to feel betrayed. There was nothing nefarious about Ava wanting the land, she told herself, trying to believe it. Well, Ava would be disappointed now that the property was off the market but—

  She realized Patrick was still speaking. "Yeah. It was weird under the circumstances," he was saying.

  She pulled herself back into the present, and what he was talking about. "What was weird under the circumstances?" she asked.

  He walked over to the big map of Pajaro Bay on the wall of the office.

  She followed him over.

  He pointed to the place where the strawberry field, gray to mark it was outside the city limits, fronted on the Pacific Ocean. "The farm is over here, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "And the highway is over here." He pointed to the ribbon of the Coast Highway.

  She shrugged. "So?" She pointed to the cottage's four acres, which stood between the field and Highway One. "If they buy this, they'd have a bigger field. They can expand their farm."

  "That's not the weird part," he said.

  "What is?"

  "Let me show you." He went back to his desk, hit a button on the computer, and a page chugged out of the printer next to it.

  He came back over to where she stood, looking at the map.

  He handed her the second paper. It took a minute for her to realize what she was looking at.

  Coastal Development Permit Application….

  "So?" She said. "You can't even sneeze near the ocean without getting the Coastal Commission's approval."

  Then she looked from the map to the printed page. Then back again. Then her finger traced the path of Songbird Lane, all the way from where it dead-ended in the strawberry field, back to Highway One.

  "But that's impossible," she said, and Patrick nodded.

  "It is, isn't it? Like I said, weird."

  "No," Robin said. "You don't understand. She has baby avocado trees."

  He looked confused, and she didn't even try to explain. She pulled out her phone to call Dylan. It went to voicemail and she left a quick message asking him to call her right back, that she was going to look at the cottage property again.

  "Do me a favor?" she asked Patrick when she hung up.

  "Sure," he said.

  "Keep trying to reach Dylan and tell him to meet me at Songbird Cottage. Right away. Make sure you get through to him. There's no cell service out there and I really want him to see this."

  She heard him agree as she was running out the door toward her car.

  Chapter Twenty

  Robin stopped her car after she turned onto Songbird Lane. She lowered the window and looked at the sign. It was faded paint on wood. Not a normal street sign at all.

  She drove down the bumpy dirt road to the parking spot by the gate.

  Ava's truck was parked there, blocking the way. The truck's door was standing open. The warning chime kept beeping to remind the driver that they had opened the door and left the key in the ignition.

  But there was no one there to hear it.

  And Robin could see why.

  The gate, and the gully-washed path beyond it, was gone.

  Something had gouged out a path up the hillside, tearing through the rusted gate, and the overgrown bushes, and leaving behind a six-foot-wide swath of bare dirt in its wake.

  Robin took off in the wake of the cleared path, her feet sinking into the dirt and making it hard to run.

  When she got to the field at the top of the hill, she could see the gouged path continued across the field and over to the spot where the little apple tree had stood for some fifty years.

  Now Ava's big orange tractor stood in that same spot, the wreck of the old tree crushed under its heavy tires. Its motor was roaring and the ugly racket of it echoed across the grassland.

  Ava was in the truck cab when Robin got there. She was crying and pushing at the controls to the tractor.

  Robin shouted at her but Ava didn't hear her.

  Finally Ava turned the key and there was a sudden silence as the motor ground to a halt.

  A slow creaking as the tree trunk collapsed under the tractor was the only sound. Even the birds had been silenced by the reign of terror the tractor had brought to the peaceful meadow.

  "What are you doing?!" Robin shouted again, and this time Ava turned.

  Her face was red and streaked with tears, but she said nothing. She slowly climbed down from the tractor and stood there next to it, shaking.

  Robin wanted to shake her, but didn't. She balled her hands into fists at her sides and repeated, "what are you doing?"

  "What?" Ava said, and Robin realized she was in shock.

  Ava sank down against the tractor's front tire, covering her back in dirt, but didn't seem to notice.

  "Why didn't you tell me?" Robin asked. "All that stuff about baby avocado trees and a legacy for your kids, and you just planned to turn the farm into a big profit making eyesore."

  "What profit? We barely make ends meet." She said it in a distracted way, as if Robin wasn't really getting through to her. She stood up, pushing away from the tire she'd collapsed against, and began carefully dusting herself off. "I… I don't understand."

  "That makes two of us," Robin said. "What are you doing out here?"

  "I… I have to get the tractor out of here. I'm sorry for the mess," she added meekly.

  "Ava, why did you plant the avocado trees?"

  "Huh? For the avocados. I told you. They'll give us a second product for the farmers markets." She was fiddling with the tractor key again, and Robin reached past her to take it out of her hand.

  Ava put her hand up to push the hair back from her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt across her face.

  "Why would you plant trees if you were going to build a resort on the strawberry field?" Robin asked.

  "A resort? Are you nuts?" Ava asked, shaking her head. "We would never do that. And we couldn't. How could we? We'd never get a permit to do that."

  "You could if you applied to the county authorities." Robin waved the paper Patrick had given her. "Pajaro Bay LLC put in an application for a waiver to build a resort on the strawberry field p
roperty."

  Ava shook her head again. "You've got it all wrong. You have to go through the orchard to get to the strawberry field."

  "Not just the orchard, Ava."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You have to go through Songbird Lane. That little dirt path would have to be turned into a wide, paved road that tour busses and fire trucks could use or you'd never get a permit to build."

  "I suppose so." She seemed in shock. "We wouldn't put a road through my avocados," she muttered. "Not my little trees."

  "Ava," she said firmly. "You still don't get it."

  "What?"

  "You don't own Songbird Lane."

  "Of course not," she said, fussing with the tractor and only half listening. "The county does." She held her hand out for the keys, but Robin didn't give them to her.

  "No, the county doesn't. Songbird Lane is a right of way."

  She shook her head. "So what?"

  "So it's legally part of this parcel. Part of the four acres Junior put on the market just days before someone shot him in the back."

  "What are you talking about? Wait—you think I shot Junior? Why would I do that?"

  "To hit the jackpot. To make a fortune off that farm by turning it into million dollar condos. Condos that need a legal road to get to them before you can get approval from the county to build. Buying this property is the only way you can make your blood money off the farm."

  She cried out, "I don't want million dollar condos! I want my mother's farm!"

  Her despair was genuine, and it finally penetrated Robin's anger.

  She asked, more gently, "Ava, why did you plow down my mother's apple tree?"

  "I didn't do it. I found the tractor here." She looked down at the crushed tree.

  Robin nodded. "I just figured that out. Where's your father?"

  "My dad? He—" She stopped. "I don't know. I saw him heading down Songbird Lane with the tractor, and I got in the truck to follow him. But now I don't know where he went."

  "This just happened? So he's here?"