Sacrifice of Buntings by Christine Goff

realized that gave her a motive for murder.
    “Them too,” Sonja said.
    “Ma’am,” the redhead said. “I know this is a difficult time, but begging your pardon, could I recommend something a little more subtle than black? There is this nice neutral shade called Bare Maximum.”
    “Whatever,” Sonja said. “Although it’s not much of a mourning color, is it?”
    The Lucy Bell shot a horrified glance at Rachel.
    “I’ll try it,” Rachel said, handing back her color wheel. “I normally go with red, but then I’ve never had a Lucy Bell pedicure before.”
    “I don’t see what’s wrong with black,” Sonja said. She lifted a sports bottle and took a deep draft, then leaned her head back again. “Did you ever wonder why doctors always tell you to drink water? Whatever climate you go to, it’s the same. If you go to Arizona they say, ’Drink lots of water. it’s a dry climate, and you’ll lose body fluids.’ If you go to the coast they say, ’Drink lots of water, it’s a humid climate, and you’ll lose body fluids.’ Where can you go where you don’t lose body fluids?”
    “You’ve got me there.” Rachel glanced at the sports bottle. She had a sneaking suspicion the liquid inside it wasn’t water. Well, people dealt with serious loss in different ways.
    “What were we talking about?” Sonja asked. “Oh, yes, how Paul was an idiot. Let me count the ways.”
    Rachel’s pink-smocked Lucy Bell lady began sawing away at Rachel’s heels with a file. The sensation was not unpleasant—in fact, it tickled. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and concentrated on what Sonja was saying.
    “He couldn’t get ahead. He always let people take advantage of him. You could always count on Paul to be on the side that got shafted.”
    “I was under the impression he’d done pretty well,” Rachel said. “He seemed to be well respected.” Or had she already said that? She thought she had.
    “Oh, sure. He and his trust fund did fine. Inherited money is always a mistake. It makes you soft, afraid to stand up for yourself.”
    This didn’t sound like the Paul Becker that Rachel had seen insisting on being the Saturday keynote speaker. It didn’t sound like the people she knew who’d inherited money, either.
    “He always opened his big mouth too early, jumped on the wrong bandwagon,” Sonja continued. “Of course, he would eventually realize it, then backpedal. Like flipping on that land trade.”
    “I thought he was against it.” If he was for it, that might change the suspect list.
    “He was against it,” Sonja said. “But then, after he went out with Chuck, he was all for it.”
    “Chuck Knapp?”
    “The filmmaker.”
    Now Rachel knew who Becker had gone birding with, but she still didn’t know what their great discovery in the swamp was. She wondered if he’d told Sonja. “Did they find something out there?”
    “I’ve got no idea,” Sonja said. “Did I mention that Paul was an idiot? Given enough time, he probably would have flipped back. That was his nature, wishy-washy. But he ran out of time.”
    Rachel thought about that as the Lucy Bell lady at her feet delivered an excellent massage. Wishy-washy, Sonja had said. He would have flipped back, but he ran out of time. Maybe that was the point?
    “Speaking of backpedaling,” Sonja said. “This is not to say that Paul wasn’t excellent at the one thing he did well. Do you know he had spotted more birds than anyone in the history of the world? At that, he was supreme.” She took another swig from her sports bottle. “He was better than anyone. He was a hell of a lot better than that boss of his, that’s for sure. It’s just a very odd thing to be really good at, don’t you think?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve been working hard to get better at it myself,” Rachel said. She watched as the Lucy Bell ladies rubbed cinnamon-scented foot cream into her feet and Sonja’s.
    “Of course you’d be one of them.” Sonja sounded