The Peacock's Poison

by Ruby Loren

  Barnaby had seen me walking past and had roped me in to talk to Sara about the animal welfare suggestions I’d put forward, and why the enclosures were structured the way they were. I’d been pleased when she’d listened and hadn’t said anything against it. She was hardly dripping the praise onto us, but when I’d finished my spiel, Barnaby had given me a smile and a nod, which I assumed was a good sign.

  I couldn’t see how anyone could fault what the team had done so far. I’d been one of the biggest doubters around when I’d found out what Auryn had done, but I’d been proved wrong. The number of visitors to the zoo was a clear sign of their success and things were only getting busier as we approached Christmas. I’d only heard whispers of the numbers who’d booked in advance for tomorrow’s arts and crafts event, and there were more expected to just turn up on the day, too. If those whispers were to be believed, it would be the busiest day that Avery Zoo had experienced… perhaps ever!

  I sighed into my pillow. It was too bad that I didn’t want to go.

  14

  Bad Decisions

  I’d known that the arts and crafts day was going to be an exceedingly busy day at the zoo, so it should have been obvious that someone would do something to try to ruin it.

  Diane had picked this particular day to make a comeback and was standing just beyond reception, shouting that people should be paying her for the privilege of visiting the zoo. On my way to intercept her, I heard a couple of older ladies mutter to one another that they thought it was performance art, and were the judges expecting modern paintings?

  As one of the judges myself, I knew I wouldn’t be judging anything that didn’t exhibit artistic ability very highly. Far too much reliance was put on big ideas, executed with a few careless scraps of paint and no real skill. I would be looking for work by people who had honed their craft and had captured the animals they’d chosen to paint, draw, craft, or sculpt, in a way that showed off their spirits, or said something to me that spoke of beauty. Abstract art seldom did that, although I was willing to keep an open mind. My pick was going to be something skilful, that much I knew. I wondered what the other judges would think and was reminded all over again that Tiff was one of them. What a mess!

  As a result of that, I wasn't in the best frame of mind to talk to Diane. She was reminded of the zoo’s lenience when they’d chosen not to prosecute her for damaging property and freeing the penguins, and now she was causing a public nuisance. My frayed temper must have shown through, as she was even a little apologetic when I steered her off down a side corridor towards the staffroom.

  “Have you considered the DNA test?” I said, hoping that this could all be sorted out before Diane became a permanent ‘performance art’ feature of the zoo.

  “I can’t afford it,” she said.

  “You don’t need to pay! Auryn will get a kit and pay for the test. You just have to say you’ll do it, and he’ll get it. You rub the swab in your cheek, or something, and then it’s done and you’ll have your proof.” One way, or another, I thought.

  “I don’t trust him,” she said.

  I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. “How about if Auryn gets the test, does his part, and then passes it on to you, so you can do yours, and you get to send it off yourself?” I tried.

  She thought about it for a moment. “Maybe that.”

  “Great!” I said, trying not to dance around on the spot and punch the air. We were getting somewhere at last!

  I bid Diane a farewell and sent a text to Auryn about what had just happened. He hadn’t said anything about getting a DNA test, but I didn’t see why he’d mind. After all, if she really was a relative, I’m sure he wouldn't begrudge her anything she was due. It wasn’t going to be half the zoo as expected, but there would no doubt be support payments, or something like that. I shook my head. I was out of my depth there. Hopefully Claudia was a decent financial advisor and would have a better idea than I did.

  One crisis dealt with, I walked out into the bright sunshine and followed the crowd of easel holding, wool carrying, and pencil twiddling artists, ready to immortalise the zoo’s animals.

  “This is brilliant!” Barnaby said, coming up behind me.

  “It’s better than I ever expected,” I confessed.

  “I probably shouldn’t admit it, but this is the most successful Christmas event that the company’s ever run. Not that Sara will ever stop picking holes in things,” he said with a rueful smile.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to be talking to a proper audience in half an hour’s time,” I said, feeling a ball of nerves start rolling around inside of me.

  “You’ll do brilliantly. I did some research into what you do, and your comics are brilliant. Auryn was right to suggest having you and Tiffany speak.” He shook his head. “Honestly, I’m amazed you’re both still working here.”

  “We love our jobs,” I said, automatically pairing myself with Tiff.

  “I don’t mean to pry, but who was the man that was here yesterday? A lot of people are wondering…” He tilted his stylishly grey and dark head at me, and I tried not to feel too scrutinised.

  “What are they saying?” I said, dryly. I thought I already had an idea or two.

  “People seem to think that you’ve found a really nice man. Well done,” he said.

  I giggled before I could help myself. What he really meant was that people were saying they couldn’t believe I’d managed to snag someone as gorgeous as Jordan.

  “I hate to spoil the illusion, but Jordan is my literary agent,” I told Barnaby.

  His dark eyebrows shot up. “You’re signed? Your comics are being published… I mean… in a book way?”

  “Sort of. I’ve signed with Jordan’s agency, but no decision has been made on the books yet. Auryn said he’d hint about a deal being on the table if anyone pushed to know what makes me qualified to lead the seminar, but I don’t think he had to. People seem to be most interested in my audience building and crowd funding.” I bit my lip. Even though I’d done my best to do everything I could to prepare a ‘how to’ just the way I’d done everything, I was worried that people would think it was useless information. I still felt like an imposter occasionally, and today was definitely one of those days.

  “You should add that in to your speech. People will love it,” he reassured me.

  “I suppose I’ll finish with it,” I said, sounding as uncertain as I felt about the wisdom of signing a traditional deal and probably losing my webcomic.

  “You are going to have to sound more enthusiastic about it than that, though,” Barnaby told me with a sideways smile.

  “What will you do after all of this is finished?” I said, gesturing to the Winter Wonderland.

  “I usually take a holiday and then, would you believe, we get started recruiting clients for the next year. Every year, we try to do things bigger and better, and every year we move up, as far as clients go.” He suddenly looked worried. “Not that Avery Zoo isn’t a wonderful place!”

  I smiled and waved a hand. “Avery Zoo is not exactly a huge attraction on the map, we all know that.”

  “Shouldn’t you be prepping for your presentation?” Sara said by way of greeting.

  I opened my mouth to say ‘should I?’ and then closed it again.

  “I should probably go…” I said, turning towards the play barn, which had once more been taken over for an event. Not only did I have the regular nerves to cope with, I also had a best friend who probably hated me, and the ghost of Jenna’s unsolved murder hovering over my shoulder. That was the real reason I’d intended to leave the setting up until the very last minute. I hadn’t wanted to hang around in the barn and have to look at the place where I’d last seen Jenna, lying on the platform with foam around her mouth and clothing strewn everywhere.

  “Good luck,” Barnaby said, and even Sara gave me a smile, albeit a frosty one. I reflected that the queen of ice persona suited her job very well indeed.

  The crowd was larger t
han I’d ever anticipated. The organisers had worked out that the barn could hold a couple of hundred people, but once the chairs were all out and everyone was packed in, there were still people cramming in along the edges.

  I scanned the crowd, hoping to see some sign of Tiff, who was supposed to be speaking half an hour after me about her successful Etsy business. We’d even planned that I’d come up and tell everyone how Tiff had suggested I add my comic panels to Etsy and how successfully they’d sold. I assumed that little feature was definitely off.

  I pushed my glasses higher up my nose, reflexively, and stared down at my notes. It will be over before you know it, I promised myself and clicked the remote, pulling my first presentation slide up onto the screen.

  It went better than I’d expected.

  When the time came at the end for me to take any questions, the ones asked were intelligent, and it seemed to me that I must have done a good job and not missed too many things out.

  Then Tiff walked in. My eyes were unable to look anywhere else but at her, whereas hers were firmly glued to the ground. She hunched against a wall near the back and didn’t look up. I was forced to ask the person who’d just asked me a question to repeat it again.

  When the time came for me to draw the seminar to a close, there was a huge round of applause, which somehow made me feel much worse now that Tiff was there. I smiled as best as I could and thanked the audience again for being so wonderful. Then, I left the barn speedily as possible. A glance at my phone told me I’d run over time, which must be why Tiff had been forced to come in whilst I was still talking.

  I shut my eyes and leant up against the outer fence of the play zone. So, now I knew where I stood. Tiff looked like she wanted nothing to do with me.

  “I’m such an idiot,” I said aloud, still with my eyes shut.

  “I thought it was pretty good, the part I heard, anyway.”

  I opened my eyes and found Auryn was standing in front of me.

  “When did you get in?” I asked, I hadn’t seen him there at all.

  “Hmm, right about when they all clapped.” He grinned sideways. “I suppose that doesn't qualify me to judge. They were either clapping because you were really good, or because they were relieved it was over.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” I said, but I managed to smile.

  I opened my mouth and shut it a couple of times, before I realised I didn’t have anyone else to talk to. Now Tiff was giving me the silent treatment, the only person I was especially close to at the zoo was Auryn.

  “Tiff walked in at the end of my presentation. She didn’t even look my way,” I confided.

  Auryn looked troubled. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, making me feel even worse.

  “None of this is your fault, I want you to know that. I shouldn’t have done what I did. I knew what Tiff felt for you.” I sighed. “If I’d wanted to avoid this, I should have made a different decision a long time ago, but things were different then,” I mused and then hoped Auryn wouldn’t interpret that too favourably. I was walking on ice that could crack at any moment, and I had no idea what lurked beneath in my dark lake of unexplored feelings.

  “Hey, can you do me a favour? I need to grab some stuff from my office and take it across to the new place. The office was actually okay after the fire. I suppose there is some benefit to having ridiculous wood panelling after all.” He pulled a face.

  “You can change it when you remodel the office space,” I told him.

  “With Lawrence firmly back in retirement, there should be a minimised risk of it happening again.”

  I nodded. “Although, he wasn’t the one who set the fire,” I reminded Auryn. The old man may be rude and mean to his own family, but the will was proof enough that he wanted the best for Auryn. There was no way Lawrence would have ever done anything to harm the zoo.

  I still couldn’t help but wonder if Lawrence’s family members all had airtight alibis. Would Claudia have told them they were out of the will? I thought so. The perceived loss of a large inheritance could definitely drive some people to murder.

  I frowned. It still didn’t make sense, unless the family had given up all hope of him ever changing his mind. I tilted my head. Perhaps they had. But if they were willing to kill him, I’d have thought they would be willing to force him to change his will before they did it.

  Maybe they did? I thought as I walked along the path with Auryn. If a second, more recent will turned up, I would re-evaluate my views.

  Auryn opened the door of his office and I walked in, grateful that the smell of burned plastic wasn’t so strong in here. This room smelt the same way it always had, aged and a little musty, but with some hidden warmth that only came with the years.

  Auryn sat down on the chair behind the desk and indicated I should sit, too. My heart jumped a little as I realised this wasn’t the simple grab and carry mission Auryn had claimed. He clearly wanted to talk about something.

  “Madi, I just wanted to say sorry for the position I put you in after the funeral,” he said, far more formally than I’d ever heard him sound. “I shouldn’t have pushed you. And to then say what I did was unforgivable.” His face lined with worry. “Can we still be good friends? I know you don’t feel the same way I do, and that’s okay…”

  “That’s not…” I hesitated. What had I just been about to say? “I don’t not feel the same way about you,” I said slowly, using some truly terrible English to get my point across. “I just need some time, Auryn. I’ve been hurt recently, and now I’m not sure if I trust my own feelings.”

  Our eyes met and his grey pair seemed to sparkle.

  “Are you saying there’s a chance?”

  “Auryn!” I said, exasperated. He had to know that I did have some fairly strong feelings for him. I didn’t let any old person roll around with me in the straw! I wasn’t sure whether to be offended, or not. “I didn’t exactly push you off me, did I?” I settled for saying - and grumpily, too.

  Auryn grinned. “I knew it!” he said, standing up. “I know you haven’t said anything, etcetera, etcetera… but you’ve still made my Christmas.”

  I stood up too, feeling hopeless and, admittedly - a little happy.

  I thought he was about to take the few steps around the desk to close the gap between us.

  I was about to…

  Actually, I didn’t know what I was about to do, which was the most worrying thing of all.

  Fortunately, I never had to find out. We both heard something falling off onto the floor, deeper inside the offices.

  “Is anyone else supposed to be up here?” I asked Auryn.

  He shook his head. “No, it’s dangerous to walk around because of the fumes. Also, the structure where the fire was still hasn’t been fully tested. Although the arson specialists thought it was okay.” He saw my expression and shrugged. “This office is probably fine. Look at it, even poison smoke and fire can’t beat ancient wood panelling.”

  I poked my head out of the office door and looked further inside the stained and damp open plan area.

  Nothing moved.

  “It could have just been something moving by itself,” I muttered, but I didn’t believe it. Something big had fallen, and it sounded like it had come from further inside the building, where the side rooms and other individual offices were.

  Auryn and I crept along the damaged carpet, being as quiet as we could. Every room we passed, we looked in at the window, but there was nothing. After what felt like forever of moving along at a snail’s pace, we stopped outside Jenna’s office. I nodded at Auryn and we both stepped out and looked through the window.

  The man inside the office dropped the laptop he’d been holding.

  “Officer Ernesto, what are you doing here?” I asked, as if I didn’t already have a pretty good idea.

  “I was… just going over some more evidence, in case we’d missed something,” he said, entirely unconvincingly.

  “Without your uniform on?” Auryn looked sceptical.


  “What were you looking for?” I asked him, deciding to put Officer Ernesto out of his misery.

  His face crumpled. “It was only after she was gone that I realised I truly loved her. She said she thought I was different and special. We were going to give it a really good go,” he said, and sounded like he actually believed it. With Jenna’s track record, I wasn’t as sure, but who knew? Perhaps fate had been cruel enough to let Jenna find her perfect match right before she was killed.

  I tried to look understanding. “I understand you’re upset, but…”

  “There might have been some videos,” he said, and then immediately turned scarlet.

  I nodded. I’d thought it would be something like that. “They weren’t on her phone?” I asked, knowing that the police still had it.

  “No, we used a camera attachment for her laptop to record it straight onto there.” He looked up, still blushing. “I made sure I was there when they went through it all. I was hoping I could ask them to delete anything of me without looking too closely.” He cleared his throat. “None of the videos were there and we only made them the other…” His bottom lip wobbled a little. “They weren’t there. She said they were special and she’d never get rid of them. They were our memories.”

  I frowned at the laptop lying on the floor. “Where do you think they went?”

  “I thought that maybe there was a folder the police overlooked. Maybe she hid it in an online cloud, or something.” He shook his head. “I’m not the most technical guy ever, but they’ve got to be somewhere.”

  “Can you think of anywhere else she might have saved the videos? Everything we found in her office is here, and I’m sure the police found anything similar in her apartment when they went through that.”

  Ernesto shook his head. “It wasn’t there. They found the camera thing in the apartment, but it just films, it doesn’t save anything. I don’t know where they could be.”

  He looked at the laptop, and I recognised the expression of someone who’s just had a dawning realisation. “Did you find a hard drive?”