Fine-Feathered Death (11 page)

Plus, I intended to produce a strategy memo to pass along to Brian O’Barlen and his T.O. clan, to suggest how best to salvage the Vancino situation.

I was surprised to find the firm parking lot as car-filled as on weekdays. When Lexie and I entered, no receptionist greeted us, but as I approached my office, I found that most firm attorneys and paralegals were present that day. So much for eschewing company. At least, when Elaine saw me, she confirmed that I could sit in on her session with Polly Bright.

Leaving Lexie inside my digs, I ran into senior citizen attorneys William Fortier and Geraldine Glass in the kitchen getting coffee as they pretended to ignore the big bird occupying the cage in the middle of the floor.

Gigi’s schtick today was to moan mournfully. Had she picked that up by listening to Ezra’s last gasps? I shuddered at the thought, even as I tried cheerfully to ignore her, too, while bantering with the older attorneys.

“Does that creature have to stay here?” demanded Geraldine right in Gigi’s presence. Geraldine had curly brown hair and a thick neck, and constantly wore reading glasses clipped to the end of her nose.

“Yes,” I asserted firmly. “She’s had a hard time, losing her owner that way, and at least for now she needs to be in familiar surroundings.”

“Gigi want a cracker?” chirped plump and well-preserved William as he stuffed a sliver of English muffin between the cage bars. Gigi barely eyed it before grabbing it in her sharp, black beak and making short shrift of it—then returning to her sorrowful sounds.

“She could at least say thank you,” Geraldine said with a sniff, then slipped from the kitchen holding her coffee mug.

Borden was in his office, and I shot the breeze with him for a short while. “I’m going to suggest that T.O. put together a dog-and-pony show to wow the Vancino opposition,” I told him. “Anticipate their every complaint and address it first, like noise, parking, upscale businesses and residents the development will attract, mitigation measures to propose to the city to secure building permits—such as low-income housing units—everything. Once the plans are complete, we’ll let the media meddle in it, too. Obtain as much public opinion on our side as possible. Then, if we go to trial, we’ll insist on a jury, and most members will have seen a discussion of the best points about the project in the papers.”

“Will that work?” Borden asked.

“Who knows? But we’ll also make it damned clear that even as T.O. tries to accommodate VORPO’s reasonable requests—assuming there are any—they’re ready to commit a fountain full of money to fight. Of course, they’re willing to use it as sums for settlement instead of enriching their attorneys. Money sometimes works where words don’t.”

Borden grinned his agreement. “Sure, but
we’re
their money-hungry attorneys, so let’s not toss away those fees too fast.” He frowned. “The police have questioned me a lot, Kendra, about how well I knew Ezra. I thought I knew him well. I liked him. I told the detectives that, but they seem to think I could have killed him.”

“It’s their job to think that anyone who knew a victim could have killed him,” I assured the senior partner. “They’re probably not serious about you. Unless . . .” Okay, I had to ask. As I’ve said, circumstances over the last few months had set me thinking like an amateur sleuth. “Was there any animosity between Ezra and you? Anything the cops could latch on to as a motive for you to have murdered him?”

Borden’s eyes grew horrified behind his bifocals. “Of course not.” He hesitated. “Although . . .”

“Although?” I prompted.

“I gently suggested to Ezra that he act a little nicer to people around here. He responded by telling me I could either let him be or rely on my own stable of clients to keep everyone busy.”

“It sounds as if he’d have left willingly if you’d told him to. I don’t see that as a motive for murder.”

“Me, neither.” Borden’s shoulders visibly relaxed beneath this day’s Hawaiian shirt. He even sent me one of his lopsided smiles.

I didn’t suggest that it
would
have been a motive for murder if he’d decided to keep Ezra’s clients while dumping his difficult personality by disposing of him more direly.

Back in my office, I spent the next hour at my computer listing scenarios, both logical and inane, petting Lexie as she lay beneath my desk, and trying to tune out the creepy cries that Gigi continued to make in the not-so-distant kitchen.

At ten o’clock, I told Lexie to stay and shut her again inside my office. My feet started sidling toward the kitchen.

Polly Bright was already there. So was Elaine. And Gigi, too. Instead of moaning, she was once again issuing ear-splitting shrills.

“Should we go someplace else to talk?” suggested Elaine.

“For a few minutes,” Polly agreed. Pale, plump, and poised, she was clad once again in bright, flowing colors—turquoise slacks and a loose blue-and-magenta blouse, with a long yellow scarf wound around her artificially red hair and trailing down her back. “And then, if you want me to try to help Gigi, I’d like to spend time alone with her. She needs an application of parrot psychology, but I may need to startle her first to get her attention.” The brilliant smile she sent my way seemed to double her double chin. “Something like your singing the other day.” Smiling back, I shepherded her toward the former bar. Elaine joined us, and we all sat at a booth, each nursing a cup of coffee, though Polly had brought her own black mug wrapped in plastic that she extracted from her tote and jammed full of our java. Since it was Saturday, Elaine was dressed somewhat casually for her: dark brown slacks and a beige sweater with small green and pink flowers forming a pattern across her chest. A lacy blouse collar peeked out at her neck.

I had to ask. “Can you describe macaw psychology for the layperson in twenty-five words or less, Polly? I mean, Gigi was screaming even before she saw Ezra killed. Is there something wrong with her?”

Sadness seemed to shadow Polly’s face, and she fastidiously folded the napkin that she had wrapped about her cup. “Only that Ezra bought her for all the wrong reasons.”

“Like?” I prompted, not even attempting to hide my impatience.

“Well, I met Ezra briefly a few weeks ago because I’m a friend of Bella Quevedo’s, a lawyer with the firm Ezra used to work for, Jambison & Jetts. I helped Bella train her wonderful Amazon parrot, Pinocchio. Bella told me she’d dated Ezra for a while when she joined the firm a couple of years ago—but she wound up marrying a partner, Jonathon Jetts.” Polly’s frown forced the ridges of her pudgy eyebrows nearly together. “There was bad blood between them, you know—Jonathon and Bella on the one side, and Ezra on the other.” She shook her head. “When I heard about what happened to Ezra, well . . .” Her words wound down, and she took a serious sip of coffee.

“Well what?” I had to ask, confused as to how this related to Ezra’s purportedly ill-conceived acquisition of Gigi.

“Well, I shouldn’t have said anything. As I mentioned, I’m a friend of Bella’s. But . . .”

She wouldn’t meet my eye or Elaine’s, though Elaine and I stared at each other.

“Are you trying to not say that you think Bella or Jonathon might have been Ezra’s murderer?” I blurted.

“I didn’t say that!” Polly exclaimed indignantly. And then she wilted a little, while still studying her coffee cup. “But . . .”

Though she didn’t finish the thought, her “but” spoke tomes.

Chapter Ten

SNAIL-SLOW, I PRIED from semireluctant Polly the little that she knew, with Elaine uttering encouragement as we bided our time in the booth.

Polly proclaimed that Pinocchio was the epitome of Amazon parrots, and his owner, Bella, adored him. A noted corporate lawyer in her late fifties, Bella had joined the Jambison law firm a year ago, which was when she’d met both Jonathon Jetts and Ezra.

Why she’d decided to date Ezra, Polly hadn’t a clue. She herself hadn’t met Ezra till near the end of the saga. By then, Bella had broken up with the irascible older guy and taken up with Jonathon . . . enough of a take-up to wind up marrying, a month ago, the stable, somber lawyer who was five years her junior.

Which I found interesting in itself. Jonathon Jetts had been here hollering at Ezra the day before he died—allegedly for stealing firm clients but I’d bet good ol’ ordinary male jealousy skulked behind it. Jetts, a murder suspect? Sure. I’d make sure he was high on the investigating detectives’ list, though from my previous dealings with Ned Noralles, I imagined Jetts was already there. But above or below Jeff?

I definitely questioned Bella Quevedo’s taste. She’d taken up with irritable and irritating Ezra, then dumped him for the dumpy Jonathon. Maybe Jetts had a heart of gold when he wasn’t picking apart a former law partner, though the way Polly spoke of him suggested he pinched pennies till they fused together.

I posited that Ezra had remained angry over losing Bella. Perhaps his rage was a major reason for his being forced into retirement. He obviously didn’t depart easily.

Plus, from what Polly proclaimed, he’d made it clear he would outdo both Jonathon and Bella. That was when he’d sought out a bird of his own, not long after their nuptials. And not just any old pet of the parrot family. No, if Bella had a nice but relatively common Amazon, then he would acquire something even bigger and better: a macaw.

Aha! Here at last was Polly’s elucidation of why she considered Ezra’s purchase of Gigi inappropriate.

Ezra had started with scant research, though, and ended up begging Bella to introduce him to her bird expert for help after already adopting Gigi. Polly had pretty much disliked the guy on first sight and hated being in the middle of the mixed-up relationships involving her friend Bella.

“But I felt sorry for poor Gigi,” Polly said with a sigh. That was why she agreed to provide a lesson for the mature and partly trained Blue and Gold Macaw. She snorted. “Ezra didn’t know the first thing about macaws. He was angry that poor Gigi didn’t talk as much as Pinocchio and what she did say wasn’t an imitation of his grumpy old voice.”

From what Polly said, although macaws could be loving and learned lots of tricks, they weren’t the speech mavens of the parrot family. With patience, some could be taught to speak, and they even occasionally sang. “But they’re simply not Amazons or African Greys when it comes to skills in speaking or repeating things they hear,” she finished.

“Not even when they hear it in an emotional situation?” I had to inquire.

“Well, like people, every bird is different. Certainly some macaws might pick something up in a crisis. But Ezra wanted a bird who’d outdo Bella’s in everything, including speech. He might have been happier with a bird more similar to Bella’s—smaller, too, like Pinocchio. It is simply too bad that he did not seek expert advice first. Had he asked, Bella might have introduced us sooner, and I have studied the parrot family for so many years that I am known absolutely everywhere as . . . well, no matter. At least he did one thing right: choosing a Blue and Gold over, say, a Hyacinth Macaw.”

“Why is that better?” I asked in follow-up, as I figured she wanted me to.

“Hyacinths are even larger and noisier,” she responded. “And many have worse dispositions. Of course, they’re as individualistic as humans, but on the whole Blue and Golds are fairly even tempered. Some people even refer to them as the golden retrievers of the macaw family.”

“How do you propose to help Gigi calm down?” Elaine asked.

“I have techniques to try,” Polly said. “Trade secrets.” She smiled. “As I said, I’ll startle her if I have to, but I’ll use a kinder and calmer approach first, talking to her, and even bribing her. I’ve brought some veggies along to tempt her with. Of course, I washed and sliced them myself.” Still seated in the booth, she reached into her large tote bag and extracted plastic containers that held green peppers, carrots, and celery.

She stood. “Gigi, here I come.”

And a good thing, since the macaw’s moans still resounded through the office, a lot more audibly once we exited the bar.

 

I HIED MYSELF back to my office, where Lexie seemed pleased to see me. I sat again at my computer and started tossing my proposed T.O. strategy onto it. I virtually vomited my ideas out first, intending to refine them later before passing them along to my client in memo form.

My cell phone sang, and I opened a drawer and reached into my purse for it. The readout told me it was Jeff.

“Hello,” I said stiffly.

“We need to talk, Kendra,” he said. Before I could tell him to chew on whatever he wanted to say and choke on it, he continued, “But not now. Ned Noralles has been asking a lot of questions of people who know me—neighbors, my employees . . . Althea was so incensed that she used our usual legitimate resources and a few that aren’t to run a search on Noralles.” His tone contained a grin, but it vanished with his next words. “I’ll show it to you sometime, but right now I need to really dig in and try to find the SOB detective a better suspect than I am. Can I come talk to you about it?”

I wasn’t eager to see Jeff, not even to discuss my own home security issue, but after having been the subject of a Noralles top-suspect list, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. “Sure,” I said. “I’m at my office, and a few other people are here today. Some knew Ezra better than I did—Borden, for one, and Elaine Aames. Maybe you can chat with them and get ideas. Oh, and there’s always his pet macaw and her trainer to talk to.”

“The bird. Right. Well, I’ll be right over to speak with anyone with information.”

I still hadn’t told him Darryl’s talking bird theory of murder investigations. Maybe it was just as well.

Being interrogated by a P.I. with an important agenda of his own might rob Gigi of any progress Polly might make in calming the macaw down.

 

JEFF ARRIVED HALF an hour later. I knew that because Lexie told me, leaping around frenetically and digging at my closed office door. I opened it, and she ran out, circling Jeff and clearly searching for his Akita.