“The houbara bustard,” Danny said, as though he couldn’t believe this was his life.
“Yes, whose big claim to fame is being falcon food, right?”
“Right,” Danny agreed.
“So Napa has falcons. Lots and lots of falcons. Apparently it’s, like, a tiny-house business—”
“Cottage industry,” Josh supplied.
“Whatever. It’s a tiny-house business to supply falcons to the wineries so the falcons can keep the crows away from the grapes. It’s billed as very eco-friendly, because, you know, if a falcon catches a crow, it eats it, and the other crows get very afraid. So many of the wineries employ falconers to keep their stock from getting eaten, but some actually have falconers in-house. There are even a couple that have falcon tours, and it’s all very Wild Kingdom, where the falconer comes out and lets the falcon land on someone’s hand and people get excited because a bird that’s one-hundred-percent predator isn’t eating their eyeballs. So if the bald-turkey boner bird is the focus of all this, odds are good so are falcons, and the wineries in Napa are where you find people who want falcons, so there you go.”
There was silence, followed by reluctant applause.
Grace spread his arms, stood on the back of the couch, and took a bow. “Thank you. I am not just decoration.”
Then he did a backflip off the back of the couch and probably would have stumbled into the wet bar, but Hunter caught him.
“But you are an attention sponge,” Hunter said, teasing. “Well done.”
Grace gave him a dazzling smile and then apparently got lost in his eyes while Danny called the group to attention.
“So, wineries in Napa,” Danny said, sounding surprised and impressed. “Good. Hopefully that, with our other information, can help narrow things down a—”
“I can help us find which winery,” Chuck said, sounding surprised himself.
“Holy God.” Danny indicated the rest of the room and sat back, folding his arms over his chest in a classic listening pose.
“I couldn’t have until Grace went,” Chuck said. “Danny, could you flash the slides I sent?”
“Sure, sure. AV geek is my calling,” Danny muttered, putting up pictures of an oversized F-350 on the screen.
“It’s a good one,” Chuck said with a wink. “Unlike this vehicle, which is a waste of gas, a waste of space, and a waste of good metal.”
“Monster trucks aren’t your thing?” Lucius asked dryly.
“No. No, they’re not,” Chuck said. “Michael, tell them why we don’t like monster trucks.”
“For one thing, they suck for the environment,” Michael said. “And you can smell the ozone they emit. In a closed venue, it can seriously affect your lungs. But worse than that, they’re inefficient. They’re supposed to be all about the torque and the power, but I can get more torque out of a basic F-150, because by the time you put the tires and all that chrome on them, it cancels out most of the power. All they’re good for is crushing other cars and sort of bouncing along on top of them. It’s entertaining, but it’s also loud and wasteful, and I am not a fan.”
“You do Texas proud, little buddy,” Chuck said, nodding. “There were two sets of tire tracks in addition to Matteo’s Jaguar. We figured one to herd him and one to stop him and force him into the cliff. The one that was supposed to stop him did not have standard tires—the treads were far too wide, and it seemed to skid an awful lot for a hot road, even if there was sand. I figured with the width of the wheelbase, it would be a specially modified chassis, and with the type of tire, one of these eyesores. Thanks to Lucius and his guy Linus, who helped me hack the satellite feed in the area since Stirling was busy, we narrowed it down to a couple of monster trucks. There are a number of events out in Napa, so there were more modified chassis and oversized wheelbases than you might think, but there are a couple of wineries that sponsor some of the events out there, and many of them have their own monster trucks.”
“Do they have their own falconers?” Felix asked, sounding excited by the possibility.
“That would be your job,” Chuck said, touching the point of his finger to his nose. “But I’m telling you, we’ve got that as a lead.”
“Well done!” Danny said. “I’ll start looking—”
“On it,” Stirling told him without looking up.
“Of course, my boy, but you have other information to share with us, don’t you?”
Stirling did look up at that. “Yes,” he said, “I do. But I think Carl needs to tell us what happened, ’cause I’m telling you, he did some James Bond class shit to get this info.”
All eyes focused on Carl. “You all heard that at the dinner table,” he said modestly. “But I think there were a couple of things you missed in all the excitement over a change of clothes and a toolbox.”
“Do tell,” Danny said, cocking his head curiously.
So Carl went on to talk about how Ginger Carlson had turned into Satan incarnate when he’d mentioned the case—and the houbara bustard—during their conversation and had dropped enough information about Mandy Jessup to make Carl want more. He talked briefly about getting the file, laughing when Stirling asked, “So, would you like me to trace this leak back to that Foster guy so your firm can nail him to the wall for embezzlement?”
“Absolutely,” Carl said. “I think that’s poetic and perfect. But I need to give you all some background on Mandy Jessup, the investigator who disappeared in Mexico around the same time Matteo di Rossi was killed.”
“What was she like?” Michael asked curiously.
Carl gave a sad shrug. “Sweet kid, actually. We flirted. She was originally in reception, then she worked her way into research, and then she took a very fine mind and went into investigations. She was… earnest,” he said after some thought. “She really did want to do the right thing. I remember after I came back from Wales….” He and Danny met eyes, and Danny gave a crooked smile. “Anyway, I came back, and she was the only person at the firm who knew I’d taken the time off to clean up. She was really the only kind word I had here in the States. When I went back to Europe to get that car-smuggling ring, she provided all of my intel, both tries, and she was sort of a one-person cheerleading squad. I told her I’d be the one to help her for her next assignment, and she said it was a deal. Then she disappeared when I was undercover. By the time I got back, her trail was stone cold. I was furious, but it was done. She was lost.”
Stirling made a soft noise, and Danny pulled up a picture of her from six years ago. She’d been in her twenties then, with a sweet heart-shaped face, round cheeks, and curly hair pulled back into a ponytail.
“That’s her last ID picture,” he said.
“But not her last picture period,” Stirling told him. “This was in Ginger Carson’s files from three years ago. I think, if you look at the mountains in the background, it was taken slightly north of San Diego.”
“Three years?” Carl asked, obviously startled. “So she could still be alive?”
“It’s very possible. Look at her.”