“What happened?” Cricket asked again. “You look wiped out.”
I took a deep breath. “Billy happened. Billy told Danny. Danny told Heather.”
She let out a soft whistle. “That was quick.”
Then from down the hall Gary shouts, “Hey, Cricket! A contact of mine in India wants to know if you guys are eligible for marriage!”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious! Come here!”
Cricket looks at me like, What do you think? And since anything’s better than sitting there stressing about the impending doom that is my life, I get up and head for the dungeon.
Sure enough, there’s a posting from some guy named Pryze that says, These wilderness women are eligible for marriage, yes? I have mansion in India. Will pay transport.
Cricket grunted and said, “Will pay transport? What are we, cows?”
I snickered. “Some guy named Pryze—like he’s a real prize? What a joker.”
Gary turned to face me. “Oh, he’s for real. He’s on here all the time.”
“But how do you know he’s not really a guy named Harry from Santa Martina? He could be living on Broadway at, say, the Heavenly Hotel.”
Gary turned back to the monitor. “You get to know these guys after a while. Pryze is for real. And he’s loaded. He bought a marsh fritillary from a guy in Wales for almost six thousand pounds—which is like ten thousand dollars!”
“What’s a marsh fritillary?” I asked.
Cricket rolled her eyes. “A butterfly. What else?”
“For ten thousand dollars? What is it, luminescent? Gold?”
“Actually, it’s very ordinary-looking,” Gary said. “A lot like the common monarch butterfly. But the population of the marsh fritillary fluctuates madly, and right now it’s real low.” His shoulder twitched in a halfhearted shrug. “Bad investment, if you ask me, but he paid it, and he’ll pay a lot more than that for a four-eyed viperwing.” He eyed his sister. “Which is why I’m investing my time in this, okay?” He scrolled through the last few postings in the chat room, then grinned at Cricket. “Hey, too bad it’s not the old days when the men bargained off the women. I could probably get big bucks for you, you wilderness woman!”
Cricket snorted. “Thanks a lot. And it was the other way around, wasn’t it? It was the girl and a dowry.” She turned to me. “Right?”
But I was thinking about the marsh fritillary and the four-eyed viperwing . . . rare flying creatures that a guy in India was willing to pay small fortunes for.
“Gary? Can you do a search for condor and will pay?”
Cricket said, “Huh?” but Gary’s fingers rattled like a hail shower across the keyboard. “Forty-five thousand hits,” he said. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for a reason someone would go out and bait a condor. I mean, if someone’s willing to pay ten thousand dollars for a little butterfly, there’s got to be someone out there willing to pay a million for a condor.”
“But it’s illegal to own a condor!” Cricket said. “You’d get thrown in jail.” She shook her head and muttered, “What Grayson Mann said about those developers makes a lot more sense.”
“I’d agree with you, only what we saw in the woods does not mesh with that theory. Plus, it seemed really small-time.”
She shrugged. “Maybe they hired a small-time guy.”
“Like a condor hit man?” I asked.
She laughed. “I don’t know! What do I know?” She shrugged. “Could be, right?”
I couldn’t help laughing, too. “I guess so. But remember what Gary said about the dodo?”
Gary nodded. “A dodo would be worth a bundle.”
“So let’s say the condor is like the present-day dodo—”
“But it’s not!” Cricket cried. “The condor is not extinct; it’s coming back.”
I eyed her. “Well, if you believe the developer angle, then it makes sense that they’re out to kill them all.”
Gary was back, rattling his fingers across the keyboard. “Man. That is one chilling thought.”
Cricket gasped. “All the condors on earth are either in a cage or wearing a transmitter. They could slip them poison in the zoos! They could track down every one in the wild!” She started for the door. “I’ve got to call Quinn!”
I grabbed her by the arm. “Do not call Quinn.”
“Why not?”
I decided to go for a half-truth. “Because he’s good friends with the professor, and there’s something about that guy that I don’t trust.”
She quit pulling for the door and looked down. “I don’t like him, either. And I have no idea why Quinn does.”
“But the good news is, I really don’t think someone’s out to kill all the condors on earth or even in the area. I think maybe someone like this Pryze guy wants one for their collection.”
Gary had been checking sites and different combinations of words for the search engine. “There are cleaning companies and golf products and construction equipment and medical companies using the Condor label . . . and there are lots of sites about the condor recovery.” He scrolled up to the top of the page. “Locally, the most relevant ones seem to be the Vista Ridge Lookout site and the KSMY site.” His fingers flew across the keys. “Here’s the Vista Ridge site.”
Cricket shook her head. “That’s mostly just an educational site.”
“Click there,” I said, leaning over Gary’s shoulder and pointing to a contacts link.
A window opened that showed a picture of the Lookout. It had a letter that started Dear Friends of the Condor and went on to ask people to donate time, equipment, and especially money.
One of the links in the sidebar next to the letter was Condor Information Contacts. So I pointed to it and said, “How about here?”
A page opened with pictures of six people—one from the Audubon Society, one from the Ornithology Club, the Webmaster-slash-intern, and then pictures of three people I knew: Quinn, Pointy Nose Prag, and Robin.
“Robin’s on the site?” I asked. I skimmed the description, which cited all the work she and her Scouts had done repairing and maintaining the Lookout.
“She deserves to be,” Cricket said. “She works up there every chance she gets.”
I thought about this a minute. “Does she always take Bella with her?”
“I think sometimes Bella stays at Gabby’s.”
Gary was getting impatient. “Want to go somewhere else?”
I said, “Hang on,” and read the descriptions for Quinn and the professor. Quinn was a zone biologist for the Forest Service, condor archive manager for the Natural History Museum, and dedicated to “the reconstruction and maintenance of the Vista Ridge Lookout, the ecosystem, and the condor.”
Not much new there.
The professor’s section listed all his degrees and awards and then tried to make him sound like a nice guy by adding “this celebrated raptorphile has played a pivotal role in the success of the Lookout project by bringing volunteer interns under his wing. A fan of the backwoods, he often roosts in the wild near his feathered friends.”
Not much there, either.
Then something about the whole page hit me. “There are e-mail links for all of these people.”
“Yeah,” Gary said. “So?”
“So if somebody was interested in contacting any of them or if they wanted to set up a meeting with any of them, it’d be easy.”
Cricket’s eyebrows went up. “You can’t really think one of them might be behind this.”
“All I’m saying is that if someone wanted to contact somebody about condors in this area, these would be the people to e-mail.”
“Seen enough?” Gary asked, and before I could answer, he’d clicked over to the KSMY site. “Hey, there’s a video stream of the condor story. You want to see?”
“Yes!” I leaned over his shoulder again and watched Grayson Mann come to life. There was the whole pre-story about condors, footage of Quinn and the professor a
t the Lookout, footage from a helicopter of the canyon where we’d hiked, the bellybutton caves, and then more of Grayson yakking away in front of the Lookout at sunset, trying to look like a rugged mountain man in hiking boots, a long-sleeved Pendleton, and a bandanna scarf. His hair, though, was anything but rugged, and the closing part of the last segment was so Vegas. “. . . So don’t let the sun set on this magnificent creature. Anyone interested in volunteering at the Lookout or contributing to the Condor Recovery Fund can simply go to our Web site at KSMY dot-com and click on Condor Story. This is Grayson Mann reporting live from Vista Ridge Lookout.”
I guess it was more the delivery than the actual words—the deep, rich voice, the stressed syllables, the e-nun-ci-a-tion . . . but he’s always like that. Even when he’s asking you to help save an endangered species, what he’s really saying is, Am I wonderful or what?
Anyway, when the video stream was done, Gary found the Condor Story link and clicked on it, and it took us right to the Vista Ridge Lookout home page.
“Hmm,” I said. “So anyone who saw the story on the news is directed to the Lookout site and would contact Quinn, Prag, or Robin.”
Cricket scowled. “I don’t like this line of reasoning. I think we should give it a rest, unpack, and take Robin’s stuff back to her.”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
But Gary kept typing. “I’m gonna ask my butterfly contacts if they know any bird collectors.” Then he muttered, “Or maybe I can find a black market thread.”
I turned around. “A black market thread?”
He snorted. “Not that half the Internet isn’t really just a black market anyway, but—”
“Wait a minute,” I said, going back to the computer desk. “Can you look up something else for me?”
“Sure!” He gave me a smile, and it struck me as more kidlike than teen. Like he was genuinely happy.
“Can you look up horse rentals in the area? Like what’s the nearest one to Chumash Caves. Is there a way you can find that out?”
Before I knew it, Gary had a short list, complete with phone numbers and addresses, and a map to go with it. “This would be the obvious choice,” he said, pointing to the location of a place called Trail Riders. “It’s the closest, plus most of these others look like they rent stable space or are part of a country club.”
“Awesome. Can you print that out?” I asked.
Again, that smile. “You bet!”
When I had the hard copy, I told Gary, “Thanks!” and headed for the kitchen phone.
Now I just had to figure out who I was going to pretend to be.
NINETEEN
I sat down at the Kuos’ kitchen table with a pad of paper and a pencil. “What are you doing?” Cricket asked as I scribbled down notes.
“Shhh,” I said. “Thinking.”
I have to hand it to her—she was quiet. And when I was as ready as I was ever going to be, I took a deep breath and held it for a minute, trying to relax.
It didn’t help a bit.
No, the only way I was going to be able to get my heart beating normally again was to just pick up the phone and do it.
So I punched in the number, and when someone on the other end answered, “Trail Riders,” I tried to sound full of confidence as I said, “Yes. My name is Ulma Willis and I’m a marshal for the United States Department of Fish and Wildlife. With whom am I speaking?”
“Uh . . . Thomas Becker, ma’am.”
“And you work there in the capacity of . . . ?”
“I’m the owner, ma’am. You sound like there’s a problem.”
I kept my voice low and professional-sounding. “There is, Mr. Becker. From witnesses we have interviewed, it appears you rented a horse to a condor poacher.”
“I . . . I don’t know anything about that, ma’am.”
“Hmm. Well, the rental date would have been last Wednesday or Thursday. It was a chestnut mare, probably returned on Friday, quite late in the day.”
“Oh! I know who you’re talkin’ about! He took out Cherry Blossom on Thursday.”
My pounding heart doubled in speed. The pencil was shaking in my hand. “Who, Mr. Becker?”
“He was a foreigner, ma’am.”
“Oh?”
“Well, I assumed he was a foreigner. He didn’t seem to speak English.”
“So what did he look like? Height, weight, distinguishing features . . .”
“Uh . . . not real big. Just average-sized. No moles or scars or nothin’. Clean shaven. If I remember right, he was wearin’ jeans and a brown T-shirt, sunglasses, and a cowboy hat.”
“What about identification, Mr. Becker? Surely you don’t rent your horses without identification.”
“He didn’t seem to understand about the ID, ma’am.”
“How convenient,” I snorted. “So you want me to believe that you rented one of your horses to a man who didn’t speak to you and didn’t have ID.”
Silence.
“Mr. Becker. The perpetrator is a condor poacher. I think the courts could find you at least tangentially culpable for what’s happened if you can’t come up with a more credible accounting than this.”
There was a second of silence and then he blurted, “I let him have the horse because he left me a thousand-dollar cash deposit.”
“Ah,” I said. Like, Oh, boy—you’re in trouble. “You didn’t find that unusual?”
“He was a foreigner, ma’am! I thought it must just be the way things were done in his country.”
I harrumphed, just like an adult. “Really, Mr. Becker.” Then I said, “Surely there’s a form you have your customers fill out?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well?”
Gary had come into the kitchen and was sitting next to Cricket, listening to every word. And when he heard me ask about the form, he grabbed a pencil and scribbled a phone number and Have him fax it on my pad of paper.
I nodded at him and smiled, while Mr. Horsey Becker rustled through some papers, then said, “I have it right here!”
“I need you to fax that to me right away.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
So I gave him the number, then said, “Did you happen to notice what this man was driving?”
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry. He had a small daypack with him; that was it.”
“When did he return the horse?”
“That’s the other thing, ma’am. The horse returned itself.”
“How’s that?”
“She just wandered in on her own. We found her waiting at the barn on Friday night.”
“So your foreigner didn’t pick up his one-thousand-dollar deposit?”
“No, ma’am,” he mumbled.
“I see. And you’re afraid I’ll require you to turn it over to the Department?” Before he could answer, I said, “We don’t want to deprive you of your windfall, Mr. Becker. Perhaps if you just faxed us that paper and were willing to answer further questions . . .”
“I’ll fax it right away! And call me anytime.”
“Very good.”
When I got off the phone, Cricket and Gary just stared at me. Then Gary said, “Tangentially culpable? How’d you come up with that?”
I shrugged. “Just heard it somewhere.” My face felt flushed, and my heart was still beating fast. I laughed, “What a trip,” then told them everything I’d learned.
When I was done, Cricket jumped up and said, “We need to tell Quinn!”
I grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back into her seat. “Quit running to Quinn, okay?”
“Yeah,” Gary said. “I’m with Sammy.” He eyed his sister. “I can’t stand that dude—thinks he’s so smooth.”
“He does not! He’s—”
I put my hands up. “Forget Quinn. We need to think.”
Cricket seemed to relax a little, so I went on. “Whoever the horse rider is probably parked off the road somewhere so that no one would be able to describe his vehicle, then loaded and unloaded from there. And
there must be big money involved in this because you don’t abandon a one-thousand-dollar cash deposit unless you’re making a lot more, right?”
They both nodded, and Cricket said, “Which supports the developer theory, Sammy.”
“True. But it also supports the theory that someone could get a lot of money for a condor.”
Gary stood up. “I’ll check the fax. Maybe that’ll tell us something.”
Less than a minute later he was back with a paper in his hand. Cricket and I swooped in to see, and there in big, bold letters was a name we both recognized.
“Vargus Mayfield!” Cricket gasped.
“But why would he fill in his real name? He could’ve put Joe Smith.”
Cricket nodded. “You’re right.” Then she added, “Or Dennis Prag.”
I laughed. “Right.”
“Do you think all this other information is bogus?” Gary asked. “Like this address and phone number?”
I looked at the paper, then dialed Information.
Now while I’m asking for the phone number and address for Vargus Mayfield, the doorbell rings, and when I get off the phone and turn around, there’s Casey, standing in Cricket’s kitchen.
“Hey,” he says with a grin. “I tried calling, but the phone’s been busy.”
Gary snickers, but in an amused way. “She’s been burning up the line. This girl and a phone are a dangerous combination.”
“Don’t I know,” Casey says with a laugh.
I blush and try not to fall back into freak-out mode while Cricket says, “Casey, meet my brother, Gary. Gary, this is Casey—one of the guys who helped us bring Marvin home.”
They shake hands and do all that hey-dude-what’s-up stuff while Cricket asks me, “What did you find out?”
“Someone did their homework,” I tell her. “The information’s right.”
“So if it’s not Vargus, it’s got to be someone who knows him.”
I nod. “Looks like.”
She hesitates. “Are you sure it’s not Vargus?”