Read Online Death of a Songbird by Christine Goff - Free Book Online

I?”
    “You saw the bird,” Cecilia prompted.
    Dorothy swatted her sister’s arm.
    “Well, she did.”
    “And it flew,” Lark said, “so I tried tracking it with the scope. Unfortunately, the height was set for Rachel, and I swung the dam thing too far to the left. That’s when I saw the killer stab Esther.”
    “Oh my!”
    “Were you able to identify him?” Gertie asked.
    Lark rubbed the edge of the table. “I didn’t get that good a look. He was wearing a mask, with some lettering on it—”
    Gertie leaned forward. “What kind of lettering?”
    “You’re beginning to sound like Crandall.” Lark closed her eyes and tried visualizing the scene. “There was an E and a Z… that’s all I’m sure of.”
    Dorothy raised her hand for permission to speak. “Do you remember how many letters there were?”
    “Four. I’m sure there were four.”
    “Absolutely positive?” Cecilia asked.
    Lark made a face. “I’m fairly certain. There may have been five, but—”
    “No,” Rachel said. “You were right the first time. There were four.”
    “How would you know?” Gertie asked. “Lark was the one looking through the scope.”
    “Because, I wrote the letters down.”
    Lark’s stomach flip-flopped. She uncurled her legs and sat up. “You did?”
    “Yes, don’t you remember? You told me to take notes while you called out the markings on the bird we spotted. I thought it was sort of odd when you blurted out those letters, but I jotted them down in your field book anyway.”
    Lark grabbed Rachel’s arm. “Where’s the book now?”
    “Upstairs,” Rachel said, disengaging her arm and scooting out from behind the breakfast nook table. “I carried it up from the peninsula. I must have shoved it in my pocket when I checked Esther’s pulse, because I found it after I got home. I’ll get it.”
    While she went to retrieve the notebook, Dorothy claimed possession of her seat. “So what happened next?”
    “Dorothy,” Cecilia said. “Don’t be such a vulture.”
    “Well, it’s not fair to stop in the middle of a story.”
    “Nothing happened,” Lark said. “I yelled for Rachel to call nine-one-one, then we ran up from the lake and found Vic holding Esther in the parking lot.” Lark hugged herself, rocking back and forth in her seat. “Rachel checked to see if Esther was breathing, but she was already dead. Then Crandall arrived.”
    “Oh, you poor thing,” Dorothy said.
    Cecilia draped an arm across Lark’s shoulders and patted her arm.
    Rachel rejoined them, cracking open the notebook. “E, Z, L, N. Does that mean anything to anyone?”
    They all looked at each other, then shook their heads.
    “Elk something or other,” Dorothy suggested.
    “What could the Z stand for?” Rachel reached for a sheet of scratch paper. “Zoo, Zebra—”
    Cecilia perked up. “How about Zen?”
    “Oh, please,” Gertie huffed. “We could spend all day trying to decode those letters.”
    She had a point, thought Lark. Decoding the Z limited their choices, but, if the letters were initials, they could still stand for anything.
    “Poor Esther,” Dorothy murmured.
    Gertie snorted. “She’s not the only poor person in this room.”
    A shocked silence followed. Everyone stared at Gertie.
    “I’m only stating the truth.” Gertie tugged at the cuffs on her shorts. “I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”
    A shrill note had crept into Gertie’s voice, and she ended on a wail that jolted Lark up out of her seat. Gertie was worried about money.
    Lark tapped her watch face. “I don’t know about we , but I’m going to call the attorney, then Crandall. He’ll want to know about the letters, and he told me the Warbler could be reopened in the next couple of days. Whose job that will be depends on what the partnership agreements say.”
    The women followed her into the family room en masse, crowding around while she looked up the attorney’s phone number. Lark backed them off a respectable