The Only Clue

by Pamela Beason

  Her eyes glittered with gathering tears. “This is probably all my fault. I was haranguing Ty about money for Jenny, and now he’s going to end up in jail and Jenny’s going to end up without a father.”

  “Has he called you?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve tried him a bunch of times, but all I get is voicemail.” A tear spilled down her cheek and she pressed the towel to her face. “Damn him.”

  Finn’s cell buzzed. Finally, it was Grace. “Sorry,” he said. “I need to take this.”

  Heather nodded. He held the phone to his ear.

  “Hi, Matt. I called to find out what you’ve been up to. You’ve been sort of out of touch lately.” Grace sounded worried.

  “I’m sorry. Your voicemail box wouldn’t take any more messages, and I’ve been a little busy. Where should I start...” As Heather pulled the towel from her face, she left a smear of green under her eye. He tapped his own cheek and then pointed to hers.

  She looked at the towel, folded it carefully to expose a clean spot, and then wiped the peas from her face. “You’re so nice to me,” she said.

  The temperature of Grace’s voice took a sudden nose dive. “Where are you? Who are you with?”

  “Um.” Had he explained to Grace anything having to do with Tony Zyrnek and Heather and Leroy and Pinder? What could he say in front of Heather?

  A timer on the oven dinged. Heather stood up. “Apple cinnamon muffins coming right up!”

  “It’s this case—” Finn began.

  “It’s alright, Finn. We made no promises to each other. I know I’ve been nothing but trouble to you.”

  “Grace—”

  “It’s okay, I understand.” She hung up.

  Shit. Now he’d have to drive out there and explain everything to her.

  * * * * *

  By evening, Grace was unable to stand sharing the close quarters of her trailer with her parents any longer. The sky was predicted to remain clear for a few hours and the winds had died down, so she moved them all to the courtyard table outdoors for a picnic dinner of takeout chicken, potato salad, and iced tea. Kanoni amused herself with somersaults on the sparse lawn and attempts to steal food from the table. Neema was again alone in the barn enclosure, sulking as she watched the sunset from the top of the net. Grace was tempted to climb up there with her.

  “Did you know that Richard Riverton is head of the Psych Department at Stanford now?”

  Grace clenched her jaw. The intimation always seemed to be that she should have followed his successful route through academia. “Yes, Mother. You’ve told me that several times.”

  “Richard asks about you all the time,” her father told her.

  “And you’ve told me that.”

  Matt Finn drove up, parked beside the barn, and pulled himself slowly out of the driver seat. Grace couldn’t decide whether she was happy to see him or not. His clothing was a strange combination and he had a bandage on his jaw. As he crossed her yard, he was noticeably limping.

  She tamped down a surge of initial sympathy. He’d obviously been working on something other than trying to find Gumu in the last few days. And he’d sounded normal enough this morning as he was exchanging sweet nothings with some other woman.

  Her father waved a hand in Matt’s direction, then turned back to Grace.

  “I got this email from Richard yesterday.” Her mother thrust a piece of paper toward her. When Grace refused to take it, Maureen pulled it back. “I’ll read it to you.”

  When did her mother have time to print out an email message, and where? At the library? Or did Matt let her parents use his computer at home?

  “Dear Maureen,” her mother read. “I would be thrilled to welcome Grace to my staff. We could find an opening for her to teach psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, semiotics, and perhaps experimental psychology. I’m sure the Modern Language Department would also welcome her expertise in general linguistics and sign language acquisition. Have her contact me to discuss.”

  “He signs it ‘Fondly, Richard,’” her father finished.

  Thrilled to welcome her? It had been a long time since anyone in academia had been even mildly interested in her. The reluctance of most educational institutions had to do with the cost and complexity of the gorillas’ upkeep and, as both her parents had so painfully noted, the somewhat questionable ongoing scientific goals of her sign language project.

  Yes, she was sought after as an occasional lecturer. But no institution wanted to take on Dr. Grace McKenna and her gorillas. Richard’s offer would have strings attached, too, strings pulled by her mother, and possibly her father, too. She pictured herself as a wooden puppet prancing across a cardboard stage.

  “You see, you do have alternatives, Grace,” her mother summarized. “You don’t have to accept...”—her gesture included the barn enclosure and the surrounding trailers—“...the status quo.”

  Her father chimed in. “You can make a change. You do have a place to go.” He tapped the piece of paper with an index finger. “Richard says you will be welcome on his staff.”

  It did sound tempting. She could almost see the white light beckoning at the end of the black tunnel, the exit from this nerve-racking media storm, an end to the ongoing money and public relations program. The monkey—well, the apes, to be correct—lifted off her back. A different life. A serene and well-respected career.

  She gazed up at Neema’s hunched form silhouetted against the sunset. Sadness and guilt warred with a painful longing in her brain, and she almost hated her parents for inflicting this torture on her.

  Her mother touched her forearm. “You know Richard always loved you, Grace.”

  * * * * *

  As Finn lurched slowly toward the picnic table, trying not to put too much weight on his bad leg, he heard the McKennas talking about how Grace didn’t have to accept the current state of affairs. It sounded like her parents were urging her to take a position elsewhere. Did they think he couldn’t hear them? Did they think he wouldn’t care?

  Given the current political climate in Evansburg, Finn couldn’t blame her if she wanted to move to greener, more accepting pastures. But who the hell was this Richard, who had “always loved” Grace?

  Damn, he didn’t want her to go. Why were women always leaving him? God, his leg was throbbing again. And his face felt like he had a third-degree burn.

  When he finally arrived at the picnic table, Grace said only, “Where have you been?”

  Charles’s greeting was only slightly more welcoming. “Good God, man. What happened to you?”

  “I tackled a burglar last night.” Finn wiped a hand across his sweaty brow.

  Grace made a face. “Right. A burglar. And then what happened after that?”

  Maureen squinted at her daughter. “Gracie?”

  Grace was clearly stressed out. Finn realized he’d never told her about connection between the ketamine and the burglary ring. He looked at her. “I’m making progress on finding Gumu.”

  Grace looked down at her plate. “The County Council is making progress on throwing me under a bus. The college called me twice in the last two days.”

  She sounded like she thought he should have been able to prevent that. Squeezing onto the picnic bench beside her, he wrapped his arm around her. Her shoulders stiffened under his arm. Clearly she was in a bad mood after misunderstanding his conversation with Heather. How could he set things right?

  He faced Maureen and Charles. “No matter what happens,” he told them, “With or without gorillas, Grace will always have a place right here in Evansburg. With me.”

  Grace turned to look at him, her lips open in surprise. He winked at her, then reached for a chicken leg from the platter on the table.

  He’d surprised everyone, including himself. Was he inviting her to move in with him? Was he offering to marry her?

  “I’m not your job, Detective Finn. You don’t have to rescue me. Did it ever occur to you,” Grace said in a low, gruff tone, “that maybe I don
’t need your pity? That I might not want to stay in Evansburg with you?”

  He didn’t have a snappy comeback for that.

  Chapter 20

  The next morning, Sierra and Caryn intercepted Grace when she emerged from her personal trailer. The two young women were way too chirpy for the early hour. She usually appreciated their enthusiasm, but sometimes the exuberance of youth was simply exhausting to be around. The aftereffects of the three glasses of wine she’d swilled down last night didn’t help, either.

  Before she could ask, Sierra reported, “Jon and Brittany are watching the front gate, we fed Kanoni, and we put food and fresh water out for Neema.”

  “Did she eat anything?”

  They both shook their heads.

  Damn. Neema hadn’t eaten for days. Were there anti-depressants for gorillas? Would Neema have to be sedated and force-fed? Grace wanted to collapse onto the ground and cry.

  “We have a present for you, Boss.” Caryn pointed to a large wire-mesh pen sitting on the grass in the courtyard. It was approximately six feet long and four feet wide and maybe two feet tall. Two ends of the wooden frame sported handles, and one also had wheels.

  “It’s a portable chicken pen,” Sierra informed her. “See, you can flip down the wheels.” She pulled up on the handle and then flicked one down beneath the box. “And then you can pull it to a new spot. It’s designed for sustainable poultry grazing.”

  She flipped the wheel back into its upraised position and set the pen back down on the ground, then looked expectantly at Grace.

  They thought she wanted to raise chickens? Weren’t a suicidal mother gorilla and a neglected baby and a traumatized marmoset enough to handle for now?

  Maybe the two young women simply wanted to distract her from her troubles. She roused herself to say, “Thanks. I’m sure poultry would really like it.”

  The ARU girls shot perplexed glances at each other. Then Caryn told Grace, “We borrowed it for Pepito. Let the poor little guy outside for a change, since he seems to be stuck here for now.”

  “Ah,” she said, finally understanding. “It’s perfect! Go get him.”

  They eagerly slipped into her trailer and emerged a minute later, Sierra clutching the marmoset against her chest with both hands. When released into the portable poultry pen, Pepito eagerly scampered around, exploring the grass and springing from one side of the enclosure to the other, chattering with excitement.

  The ARU girls were right, she’d kept Pepito cooped up in a cat carrier inside her personal trailer for far too long. Neema and Kanoni had been taking up all her time. Kanoni had also been overly enthusiastic about playing with the miniature monkey, so she’d separated them before Pepito bit the baby gorilla and Kanoni flattened the marmoset like a bug.

  She’d left eight voicemail messages, but Pepito’s owners, the Constellos, still hadn’t responded. What the heck was she going to do with a marmoset if they never did? Maybe she could get Matt to locate them. As if she felt like asking Matt a favor now.

  She was mortified about the way she’d treated him last night. He didn’t deserve that. He was in trouble at work because of her. She was the stinking albatross around his neck. She’d been dragging him down since she met him. He deserved a better life. He deserved to be happy. Maybe that other woman could make him happy. She’d tell him that.

  Caryn barred her way again. “We have another surprise for you.”

  Grace allowed herself to be led into the staff trailer. The kitchen and living area were cluttered, but she saw nothing unusual. Sierra and Caryn looked at each other, their eyes shining, bursting with eagerness. Caryn was somehow telepathically elected to deliver the news.

  She said, “We got him, Grace.”

  Gumu? Her heartbeat doubled. They had Gumu?

  No, she realized with a pang of disappointment, that couldn’t be true. It was too quiet. If Gumu had been back, the whole staff would have woken her up to tell her. They’d be celebrating big time.

  Sierra took her hand and towed her through the small living area toward the closed bedroom door. “Careful,” she said, her hand on the knob. “He’s shy.”

  They stepped into the dark room. Caryn turned on a small clip-on lamp attached to the top bunk bed frame. And there he was, huddled into a blanket wadded into the corner on the lower bunk—the bonobo she’d left behind in the Smiths’ workshop. His arms and legs were drawn up to make himself as small as possible; his eyes were large and wary. A shiny stream of mucous dripped down his lip from his nostril.

  “They had him locked in an outhouse in the wheat field,” Sierra said from the doorway. “We might not have ever found him, except for this crazy guy camping in the woods who told us there was an alien in there.”

  “An outhouse!” Caryn echoed, her voice outraged.

  “Did anyone see you?” Grace asked. It felt like a question one criminal would ask another.

  “Only the crazy guy, and he was ... well, bonkers.” Caryn made the traditional spiraling motion near her temple. “He thought we were with the government.”

  “The three of us wore black and crawled through the wheat,” Sierra explained.

  Three of them. That meant that Jon had been in on it, too. ARU strikes again.

  “How’d you know the bonobo was still there?” Grace asked. The police certainly hadn’t bothered to check.

  Sierra lifted a shoulder. “He’s valuable. We figured it was a good bet. Took us a while to search all the buildings, though.”

  She envisioned them slipping in through open windows in the dead of night.

  “I didn’t hear that,” Grace told them.

  Both girls grinned, and they all turned to gaze at the bonobo.

  From a cold, dark, ear-splitting auto repair shop to a cold, dark, smelly outhouse. Grace wondered what the poor creature had endured before ending up at the Smiths. “It looks like he might be sick.”

  “The vet says it’s just a cold, but he got a shot of antibiotics just in case,” Sierra contributed.

  “Which vet?” Grace asked.

  Sierra looked to Caryn, who chewed her lip. Neither was willing to say the vet’s name. So it was a veterinarian loyal to the ARU cause.

  “We’ll be super careful to wash before going anywhere near Neema or Kanoni,” Caryn said.

  Sierra sat gingerly on the bottom bunk, at the opposite end from the little ape. Pulling an apricot from her sweatshirt pocket, she held it out toward the bonobo. “We knew you’d understand, Boss.”

  Various threads of thought tangled themselves in Grace’s head. She was happy to see the bonobo saved from Tim Smiths’ Palace of Animal Torture. She wasn’t sure that she was glad to see the poor creature on her property.

  The timid ape’s gaze flashed from the fruit to Sierra’s face several times. Finally, he sprang forward, snatched the apricot from her fingers, and leapt back to his corner to eat.

  “We’re calling him Bo,” Sierra said.

  “What do you plan to do with Bo?” Grace asked with some trepidation. The tiny marmoset was easy enough to hide, and she knew where it rightfully belonged. Keeping a rambunctious bonobo was a lot more problematic. Her gorillas might very well consider this smaller cousin a territorial threat. The County and the Department of Agriculture were already on her case, and they didn’t even know she had two stolen simians on her property.

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Caryn quickly reassured her. “We’ll make sure he ends up in a good home.”

  Sierra rested gentle fingers on Grace’s forearm. “We wanted you to see that he got out. Thanks to you.”

  “I never saw a bonobo here.” Grace backed out of the room. “I didn’t hear any of this.”

  They followed her out, closing the door quietly behind them. When she turned, they were smiling. It wasn’t appropriate or boss-like, but Grace couldn’t help smiling back.

  * * * * *

  An hour later, Grace carried Kanoni into the barn enclosure, determined to give Neema another
chance to start eating and care for her baby. Leaning against the fence, she watched Kanoni try to play with her mother, scampering and rolling in the dust and then leaping and rebounding from Neema’s back. In the past, Kanoni’s behavior would have inspired either a game of chase or a gruff rebuke. Today, Neema sat hunched over, absorbing the blows of her baby’s feet with no reaction. After a few minutes of this one-sided diversion, Kanoni gave up on gaining Neema’s attention. She found a short twig in the dirt, and began to poke it at every object she found like a little boy with a pretend sword. When she poked it at Nest, the calico cat swiped a paw at the twig, and the two animals played together for a few minutes until Kanoni decided it would be more fun to whack Nest with the stick. The cat dodged around Neema to hide.

  Neema disconsolately sat on her rump a few feet away from the food shelf, where flies buzzed around the uneaten fruit and bread. The gorilla slumped, round-shouldered. She seemed to be studying her toes. Overhead, perched on the roof mesh, a crow eyed the scene, squawking and trying to judge his chances of stealing a snack. Nest rubbed against Neema’s foot, and the gorilla pulled the calico cat into her lap and then cradled her against her chest. The crow dove through the roof mesh and hopped closer. Perching on the edge of the rope net, it turned its head sideways to study the gorilla and cat with a beady eye.

  Neema rubbed her cheek against Nest’s velvety head, and for a moment, Grace had a spark of hope. Maybe the gorilla was returning to her former self. But then Neema set the cat on the ground and pushed her gently but firmly away. The cat leaned against Neema’s foot, rubbing and purring, but when it got no further response from the gorilla, it strolled to the food shelf to investigate its contents.

  The crow, apparently deciding his snack was in danger, dive-bombed the cat with a raucous squawk. Nest cowered, flattening herself to the ground.

  Neema pounced. One second the gorilla was collapsed in near catatonia, and the next she had crumpled the crow’s wingtip in her right fist. The bird flapped its free wing, screeching as it pecked at the gorilla’s hand, its feet clawing for purchase against Neema’s arm and leathery chest. The thick fingers of the gorilla’s left hand closed around the bird’s head. Its cries changed to higher-pitched, more desperate shrieks of terror. Then there was a snap, followed by silence as the crow went limp.