Never Murder a Birder

by Edie Claire

  “Well, look at it this way,” Bev said, patting Leigh’s hand. “Whichever of those kids is guilty, that one has those diamonds right now. And as soon as they skip town, or try to, we’ll know exactly who it is. Then you’ll be in the clear, honey.”

  “It’s not the guilty one I’m worried about,” Leigh admitted. “It’s the innocent ones who think I’ve stolen their inheritance. And ‘innocent’ is a relative term. We still don’t know what happened to that CFO. Or why they were all so convinced I had anything to do with Eva in the first place, when she looked nothing like me!”

  “It doesn’t matter at the moment,” Warren insisted, attempting comfort. “All that matters is that you’re safe. The Rangers are going to be watching you every second, and the Finneys know it. They should also know that no matter what your involvement was with Eva, they stand zero chance of getting either their diamonds or their money back now. If you had — or still had — what they wanted, you would not be working with the Texas Rangers.”

  “I… suppose,” Leigh agreed with hesitation. His words made sense. But she was reluctant to ascribe any sense to the Finneys when none of their actions thus far had been based on it. She envisioned herself walking around Port Mesten with millions of dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds hidden in Bev’s floppy beach hat, and she laughed a little. “Seriously, can you imagine me as a diamond trader? Me in my wrinkled capris and my plastic beach sandals and my—”

  Leigh stopped talking as the image blossomed in her mind.

  Gucci shoes.

  She stood straight up at the picnic table. “I remember!” she cried out loud. “I know where I saw Eva Menlin!”

  Chapter 21

  Dawn was still hours away, but the great blue heron was hungry. He flapped his giant wings and turned his keen eye to study the wetlands below. The clear skies and full moon were to his advantage; with luck he could spot some scale shine and secure an early breakfast. He steered his course over the familiar waters that had been most bountiful in the past, but saw nothing to spark his interest. Yet in the distance… what was that?

  The bird changed direction. He flew toward the tiny, bobbing point of light that appeared on the mud flats. Its appearance intrigued him; it presented possibilities that his hunger demand he investigate. Still, he sensed a need to proceed with caution. As he neared the apparition, he climbed higher in the sky where he could view it from a safe distance.

  His vision trained in, and his interest dissipated. The light was coming from a human. It wasn’t normal to find a human here, in this place, in the dark hours.

  The heron was not generally bothered by humans. He considered them primarily a nuisance. Over the years he had become an acute judge of which human behaviors were associated with danger and which were not. But predictability was a critical part of that calculation, and any actions outside the norm were inherently suspect.

  He flapped his wings and rose still higher. He would not hunt in the wetlands tonight. There would be better, less stressful options.

  He flew out of the preserve, crossed the highway, and headed down the coast. The heron surveyed the ground continually as he flew, always on the lookout for sparkles of interest. The pattern of light normally visible in his night hunting grounds was well known to him, and variations of traffic and building lights were part of that pattern. Therefore, the cluster of flashing red and blue lights that appeared around the large beach house below did not disturb him. He had seen such a collection of lights before, at other locations, and they were of no consequence. That other sparkle, however… the tiny glint of bright orange that reflected up from the small, glowing pool of water behind the house… that was very interesting indeed.

  The heron descended a bit. He took a closer look.

  Eureka.

  His brain had no need to recall specifics. He knew only that he associated this location with food. He landed on the ground about six feet from the artificial koi pond, then immediately began a safety check. The flashing red and blue orbs were only part of the display here; bright spotlights lit up the yard and the deck, and light shone inside the windows of the house as well. Many humans were about, moving in and out of the big house and the other buildings, too. There was talking and some yelling. Human tension in the air, for certain. But none of the people paid any attention to the heron, and none were currently in the immediate vicinity of the koi pond.

  No problem.

  The heron approached the small pool on foot, one long leg at a time. When he was three feet away, he stopped short. His eyes had caught a shape on the water that sparked an instinctive alarm. He froze in place and studied the image. He watched and waited for it to move, poised for flight in an instant if necessary.

  More yelling in the house. Car engines starting up.

  The bird was not concerned with the noise, all of which was distant. The shape of the object still bothered him, but it was bothering him less and less as time went on. He had experienced something like this before, and that memory was not associated with danger. He took a step closer. The object did not move. He took another step.

  Eventually the heron drew close enough to the object that his remaining wariness evaporated. He could sense now that it was not alive. He raised a claw and plunged into the water, scattering the fat and sluggish fish whose brightly colored scales were reflected so beautifully by the underwater lighting.

  Gulp.

  The human chaos around the bird continued, but as long as no person approached, he remained unconcerned. The vaguely familiar taste was delectable.

  Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.

  Was that all? The heron looked behind him. No. One more glint of gold.

  The last remaining koi darted underneath the floating plastic alligator head that Bruce Finney’s third wife had installed when she restocked the pond the day before. The heron craned his neck a little.

  Gulp.

  Chapter 22

  When Leigh opened her eyes, it was still dark outside. Despite the purring cat on her ribcage and the promise of a lazy Saturday to sleep in with her husband, she had spent a restless night, and now she was both awake and thirsty. She picked up the lump of Snowbell and transferred her to Warren’s chest without either mammal seeming to notice. Both the purring and the snoring continued.

  She folded back the covers, slipped out of bed, and crept into the kitchen. After settling herself at the table with a glass of juice and a slice of the cranberry bread that Bev had wrapped up for their breakfast, Leigh heard herself sigh into the silence.

  This would all end soon. It pretty much had to, didn’t it?

  The lead investigator on the case had sat across from her at this very table mere hours ago. Unlike most investigators, he had seemed quite pleased with her. She’d gotten the impression, although he never came right out and said it, that her involvement in this fiasco — such as it was — had provided crucial evidence of a link between the Finney sibs and the murdered diamond trader. Janelle had not brought up the name of Eva Menlin in the laundromat, but Leigh had, and Janelle had not disputed the connection. The very fact that all four of them had been pursuing Leigh was significant.

  Being considered helpful to an investigation, for once, was nice. But it didn’t stop all the unanswered questions in Leigh’s mind from tormenting her. Which of the Finney children had murdered poor, innocent Stanley? And Eva? Was it the same person who had murdered the CFO? Did more than one sibling do it? Could it be all of them? And still the nagging question that had started it all — why had the diabolical foursome ever believed that Leigh was Eva in the first place? She took a bite of cranberry bread and tried to think. The lead investigator, nice as he was, did not seem as impressed as Leigh had hoped he would be at the triumph of her otherwise-slowly-dying-from-old-age memory.

  So, you say you remembered having seen Ms. Menlin before at some point?

  Yes! I saw her in the Corpus Christi airport. In the luggage claim area. We must have been on the same connecting flight from Houston.
<
br />   I see. Did you speak to her? Did she approach you?

  She did. She claimed I had picked up her suitcase by mistake. But I hadn’t. It was a very distinctive suitcase, so I thought that was odd at the time.

  The investigator had tapped his pen thoughtfully on his note pad. Did she handle your suitcase in any way? Could she have slipped something inside it?

  Leigh chased down the bread with a sip of juice. The detective’s question had disturbed her. It disturbed her still. She had told him that it wasn’t possible, that the whole exchange had lasted only a few seconds and that Eva’s hands had been in view the entire time. He had seemed skeptical, but hadn’t belabored the point. In fact, Leigh was surprised when he let the matter drop. He had seemed to be in a bit of a hurry.

  But she could not stop thinking about those few seconds with Eva, replaying them endlessly in her mind. How she wished she had waited around to see if the well-dressed diamond trader really did have an identical suitcase! If not, then she must have had some purpose in interacting with Leigh. What if Eva had planted something in Leigh’s bag? Something that snooping Sharonna had removed two days later? Had Leigh actually been in possession of millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds for nearly forty-eight hours without knowing it?

  No way.

  If Sharonna Finney had taken the diamonds, why was she still hanging around asking dumb questions about Leigh days afterwards? Why had she not left town? And why would anyone have needed to kill Eva?

  Leigh took another bite of cranberry bread, this time a giant one. Carbs helped her think. She still didn’t see how Eva could have unzipped the suitcase and put anything inside it. But, sleight of hand was always possible. Magicians were trained to do it, weren’t they?

  She closed her eyes and pictured the scene again. Eva had put her left hand on top of the suitcase. That one was too far from the zipper to do anything. But her right hand was more on the side. With that one she could have—

  The phone!

  Leigh nearly choked. She grabbed her glass and took a drink. Eva had had a cell phone in her right hand. There was no way she could have held the phone and unzipped the case and put something inside with just five fingers. But she could have done something else, couldn’t she?

  After Eva had relinquished the bag, she had admitted she was wrong and said she was sorry. She had thrown both hands up in the air and backed away. The phone was still in one of them. She could easily have angled the screen, punched the side button, and snapped a close-up, straight-on picture.

  A picture of Leigh!

  “That’s it!” she cried out loud. She jumped up and ran into the bedroom. “Warren!” she said with a shake. “Wake up! I figured it out!”

  Her husband awoke with a start, his pupils dilated with angst. As he took note of the smile on her face, he gradually relaxed back into his pillow. But when his gaze focused forward, he stiffened again. “Why is there a cat on me?”

  “She has to be on somebody,” Leigh answered. “Listen, are you awake?”

  Warren glanced at the darkness outside their window and blinked. “I am now.”

  “Eva Menlin knew I didn’t have her suitcase,” Leigh announced. “She created a distraction so that she could take a picture of my face. A picture, Warren. Somehow or other, she got my picture to the Finney sibs and told them I was her. Or she was me. Or that I was the one who would set up the meeting. Don’t you see?”

  He raised up on his elbows. Snowbell rolled downhill a little, but after a slight repositioning, she dozed off again on his midsection. Warren stared at Leigh for a moment, but then his face dawned with understanding. “That does make a weird sort of sense. If she knew what she was getting into with the Finneys, she would want to be in control of the circumstances of that meeting. Otherwise any of the four could try to approach her individually before the group handoff and bargain with her, or threaten her, or worse.”

  “Exactly,” Leigh agreed. “And you know they were watching for her to show up in town, too. What better way to protect herself than to send them out after a decoy?”

  Warren nodded. “You’re right. It’s brilliant, actually. She could send out your picture and say, ‘Here I am, I’ll be getting in touch, but don’t call me, I’ll call you.’”

  “That must be what she did!” Leigh exclaimed. “If she told them not to approach the woman in the picture, it would fit perfectly with the Finneys’ reactions. Think about it. Russell came up to me on the beach expecting me to talk to him. But when I didn’t, he backed off like he realized he’d overstepped. Bruce followed the rules a little better, at least at first. Sharonna didn’t follow them at all — she searched my room hoping to steal the friggin’ diamonds for herself! And at the office Janelle followed me outside because she thought I was trying to initiate contact!”

  “All that makes sense, except one thing,” Warren said. “How could Eva know you were going to be hanging around Port Mesten, specifically? Getting off a plane in the Corpus Christi airport means nothing. You could have been headed anywhere.”

  “That’s true,” Leigh considered, deflating a little. “But she didn’t have to send a picture of somebody they’d necessarily run into.”

  “No,” Warren argued. “But it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well. Didn’t Bruce say something about ‘you’ promising contact within three days? My guess is that Eva wanted to spend at least one full day in the area herself, incognito, getting a feel for where and how she could arrange the handoff of the diamonds. Ensuring her own safety would be a delicate operation. A diamond trader’s professional reputation is their livelihood, so the Finneys could be assured that a pro at her level wouldn’t rip them off. But she couldn’t be assured of the same.”

  “No,” Leigh said heavily. “She could not.”

  “She was probably aware that the FBI was closing in, and that the Finneys would be antsy. There’s no telling if she knew that the CFO had been murdered when she arrived — at that point his body would have been in the ocean, but not yet washed ashore. Maybe she suspected the worst. Maybe he had been the one who hired her; clearly, they used some go-between. Whatever made her nervous, having a local decoy was a godsend. It kept all four Finneys spinning their wheels while she was free to roam around undetected.”

  Leigh blew out a breath. “I was her patsy.”

  “Yes,” Warren said sympathetically. “But why you? How did she know?”

  Leigh concentrated until it came to her. “The Silver King!” she said triumphantly. “We were talking about it when we got off the plane, remember? I don’t know what we said or exactly where we were, but she could have been eavesdropping on the jetway or in the halls or right next to the carousel — it doesn’t matter. All she had to hear was Silver King or anything about Port Mesten and she’d know she’d found her mark!”

  Warren nodded. “You’re absolutely right.”

  Leigh felt a chill. She walked around the bed and crawled back under the covers again. “So… do you think Eva ever called that meeting?”

  Warren was quiet a moment. “No, I don’t think she did. Her return flight was for Wednesday night. She must have intended to hand off the diamonds by then.”

  “Stanley was murdered sometime around dawn on Thursday,” Leigh thought out loud. “I think he saw Eva’s murderer trying to dispose of her body. But she could have been killed anytime on Wednesday, and the murderer was just waiting until dark. Maybe he had trouble finding a likely spot, seeing as how throwing a body in the ocean had just been shown to have its drawbacks.”

  “You called the murderer ‘he,’” Warren noted.

  Leigh nodded. “I don’t see how Janelle or Sharonna either one could have chased down and strangled Stanley. He might have been old, but he wasn’t weak. If either of the women is guilty, they weren’t alone. It’s a shame it rained so hard, or we would have known from the footprints how many people were involved.”

  Footprints. The thought seemed to strike a chord, but when Leigh’s phone buzzed o
n its charger in the kitchen, the idea morphed into a wisp and evaporated into her mental fog. That was happening entirely too often these days.

  “Let it go,” Warren said with yawn. “It’s just a text. We don’t have to get up for hours yet. If it’s an emergency, they’ll call.” He reached out to pull her in, but Leigh’s curiosity was piqued. She slipped out of bed and strode into the kitchen.

  Her phone screen glowed with the light of a text from Bev, who had even less reason than Leigh did to be awake at this hour of the morning.

  Attention Birders! We will have an emergency meeting of Team Stanley Saturday morning at 9:00am SHARP. Established members only: NO exceptions. Critical updates must be shared! Dire consequences must be prevented! ABSOLUTE SECRECY IS IMPERATIVE. TELL NO ONE. DELETE THIS TEXT!

  Leigh stared at the message, her brow furrowed. What the hell?

  Chapter 23

  When Leigh and Warren entered the door of the Grande’s Community Center this time, they were dressed for a summer afternoon in Death Valley. The morning was warm already, and given the tone of the meeting notice, the windows were certain to be shut tight again.

  “Well, hey there, you poor dear,” Bonnie greeted Leigh with her usual melodramatic drawl. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m all right.” Leigh smiled back at her and Sue both, wondering at their continued concern over her mental health when they had been the ones to stumble upon a uniquely grisly crime scene just yesterday. They were unaware of Leigh’s depth of experience in unintentional corpse viewings, but their own constitutions were still remarkable. “What about you? Are you two all right?”

  Sue waved off the concern. “I feel for the woman’s husband of course,” she explained. “But as for the rest, well… circle of life, as they say. Did you know it’s a regular funerary practice in Tibet? They call it ‘sky burial.’”

  “The way they see it, the vultures perform a valuable service,” Bonnie chimed in.