Hummingbird Salamander(18)

I pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. With the way inflation had spiked, who knew how much it would be worth in a month.

“I just have a few questions. Not really about the envelope.”

He looked at me. Pity or distaste. At what? Me playing amateur detective?

“I have to serve customers again soon,” he said. But he pocketed the hundred.

“You’ve seen me in here a thousand times, right?”

A pause before he nodded, as if it was a trick question. Let’s call him “Clove,” because I’m tired of typing “he.”

“And you’ve seen a lot of other people in here around the time I’m in here who are regulars, too?”

“Yeah.” With a “So what?” subtext.

“Any of them stop coming around the last month or two?”

Clove thought about that a moment. “I think so. I think some of the regulars dropped off. There’s a new coffee shop down the road.”

“Any of them women?”

“Some. Maybe.”

“Any of them look like this?”

I slid Silvina’s photo across the table. Not a great shot, a little grainy and ten years old, but close enough.

Clove picked up the printout. Exhaled, inhaled. Was he more nervous now? Put the photo down.

“Took a moment. She wore dark sunglasses a lot and had blond hair, but I think that’s the same face.”

Silvina, disguised. From me or whoever pursued her? Or just hiding from the light?

“How often did you see her?”

Again, Clove paused, reset.

“I can’t say when she stopped coming in, or if she has. I just know I haven’t seen her in a while. I couldn’t say how long, though. A lot of people come in here.”

“Was she ever in here when I was in here? If you remember.”

“She always came in the morning. Early. So, yeah, she would’ve been in here.”

Was it excitement or fear that spiked the adrenaline?

“Did she have a favorite spot to sit?” I asked.

“Oh, I dunno. Maybe.”

“Are you saying she took her order to go instead?” Old trick with clients: put words in their mouths they had to react to, dislodging information.

“No.”

“Then where did she sit?”

He pointed over my shoulder.

I swiveled to look, turned back to Clove. “That table there? By the window?”

Clove nodded.

I felt for a moment like I was back in the river by the farm, drowning. That I would be stuck in that moment forever.

But I managed to ask, even though I couldn’t breathe, “How long has she been coming in?”

“Off and on? A year, maybe.”

I was sitting in my own favorite spot.

According to Clove, for a year before her death, Silvina had come to the same coffee shop and sat in the best place to watch me. Without me noticing. Never striking up even a casual conversation.

“Did you peek?” I asked him. Random interest. Maybe I wanted to punish him. I was leaning in, invading his space.

“What?” Clove’s expression suggested pornographic thoughts.

“Did you peek? At what was in the envelope?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that.” As if I’d accused him of a serious crime.

“Not even a little, tiny peek?” Tempted to share the message, ask his opinion. But that would be further contamination. What if men in a black SUV pulled up later and asked him questions from this same seat?

Clove shook his head. Grim-faced. Hands clenched in his lap.

Time to put him out of my misery. On a hunch, I took out the photo of Langer Allie had given me.

“One last question. Do you recognize this man?”

“No, never seen him.” No hesitation.

“Fair enough.” Skeptical.

But my sin was worse than disbelief.

My sin was the thought that Langer would’ve been in disguise, too smart for the man in front of me to notice.





[25]


The nests of the hummingbird are another miracle. They occur high in hemlock, Sitka spruce, western red cedar, Douglas fir. The birds are so small that the needles act like branches, and the nests, skillfully woven, are only three centimeters across.

S. griffin uses its bill as a crochet hook to incorporate lightweight lichen, moss, and downy plant material into a hammock for her young. Nests are attached to the needles with cobwebs. One or two uniformly white eggs are incubated in the nest for several weeks. The female coats each egg with a bacteria-rich fluid she excretes, which protects her brood from harmful diseases that can colonize the young as they emerge from the eggs. The baby’s beak—a fraction of the size of a human baby tooth—cracks open the shell, and the hatchling immediately seeks nutrition from the mother, which she dutifully provides through regurgitating flower nectar and protein-rich insects.



The young spend less than a month in the nest. In that short time, they must grow and learn critical behavior from the mother. At month’s end, they fledge and prepare for their ten-thousand-kilometer migration to a land unknown.

Or had. For many thousands of years. Now they were so rare the one in my locker was worth upward of a quarter of a million dollars. To the right collector.