by Dave Daren
“I like him,” Joowon said. “You are like me, except not quite so much with the...” he rubbed his chin, in a gesture to my facial hair.
I rubbed my artfully grown stubble. “You don’t like my beard?” I asked, with a hint of self-consciousness.
“You look like a college boy who drinks all night, and then goes to class with no shower,” he said and he mimed a drinking motion.
“Well,” I laughed at his brutal honesty. “No worries. I went to class sober and showered.”
“Good to hear,” Joowon smiled, and put his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s talk of other things. I see that dinner is ready.”
I caught Vicki’s gaze and shot her a quizzical look. She just rolled her eyes and put the salad on the… table? A dining table was actually a new addition to our furniture collection. We had such a small dining area anyway that, on the rare occasions we ate at home, we ate at the bar, or on the couch, or occasionally in bed even. But now, we had a four piece dark wood dining table crowding our kitchen area. Vicki must have picked it up as a last minute purchase for her mom’s sake.
“Looks great, honey,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. I’ve always hated pet names, and I never called her that before. But the whole night felt so fake, it felt appropriate. There were also white linen napkins with napkins rings, and a full table place setting for four people. None of which I knew we had. I rubbed my neck and tried to act natural despite this feeling of being slightly out of place in my own home.
“Thank you,” Seoyon said as we all sat down. “So we heard there is a tiger?”
I laughed and launched into an embellished story about the tiger that left our guests roaring with laughter. The whole time, however, I did notice Vicki seemed to be quieter and on edge. She seemed uncharacteristically somber in the presence of her parents. I wasn’t sure what to make of all that.
We chatted over coffee for a while, and then they announced they would head back to their hotel. They were staying at Rose Glen, a luxurious but rustic themed bed-and-breakfast a few streets over.
“Rose Glen is one of Sedona’s best-kept secrets,” I said. “In the tourist season, it books up pretty fast. You have to get on a waiting list.”
“This is what we hear,” Seoyon said. “It is beautiful.”
“It is,” I said. “They like to do weddings there, too.”
“Weddings?” Seoyon said. “Oh, how sweet.”
Joowon cleared his throat and looked away. I could tell from his posture that he was thinking that if Vicki and I got married, there was not a chance in hell it would be at Rose Glen. Relax, I thought. I’m with you all the way.
They said their goodbyes and left in their rental car. Once Vicki and I were alone, we cleaned up after dinner, and I asked her why she was so quiet.
She sighed and rinsed a coffee cup. “You got further with them in two hours than I have in twenty-five years.”
I wiped down the counter. “That’s not true. I only seemed to have gotten in their good graces because I just don’t care.”
She laughed and turned on the dishwasher. “That’s what I love about you,” she said turning to face me. “Nothing scares you. You can walk into any situation and come out on top. Me, I have to try harder.”
I sighed and pulled her close. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. In fact, I seem to remember you bonding with my family pretty quickly when you first met them. “
“Yeah,” she snickered. “That’s because your parents are actually...likeable.”
I laughed. “So are yours!”
“You want to trade?” she said.
I laughed. “It’s been a long day. Let’s call it a night.”
We went to bed and tried to return to normal with our binge watching phase. Last month it was Mad Men. Now it was Game of Thrones. We were only on the second season because I had never seen any of it, much to Vicki’s dismay.
“How did you miss this entire phase of pop culture?” she mused.
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I guess I was busy making partner.”
“Touche,” she said.
I fell asleep after about half an episode. But in my defense, those are some long ass episodes.
In the morning, she opted to stay home and show her parents around town. This was fine, our workload was light right now.
“How long are they planning to be with us?” I asked her.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I thought I’d take mom shopping, and maybe we can take them both hiking tonight?”
It was the first thing in the morning, and that sounded like the worst idea ever.
“I love hiking and outdoors,” I told her. “But there is a time and place for that. And the end of a long workday is not it.”
“Come on,” she said. “It will be fun. They would have a much better time with you there.”
“Let’s table that discussion,” I said, a note of sarcasm in my voice.
“What a pretentious L.A. thing to say,” she laughed.
“L.A. dies hard,” I said as I kissed her. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“See you,” she said.
I drove to the quarter mile to the office, and AJ was already there.
“Morning,” I greeted her as I walked through the door to our small firm’s office space.
“Good morning,” she said. “How was it with Vicki’s parents?”
“You know, the appropriate amount of ass kissing and old family bullshit,” I said.
“Ah, yes,” she said. “I remember that all too well from when I met Landon’s family.”
I laughed when I thought about what Landon’s family must be like. My mental image included tinfoil and an underground shed full of stockpiled canned goods.
“So,” she said. “We’ve had some interesting new items come up.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “There’s a whole controversy on the blogosphere about Alister’s death.”
“Really?” I asked as I took a sip of my fresh cup of coffee. “What kind of controversy?”
“There are rumors that he was murdered,” she said.
I looked at her quizzically. “There were about two dozen witnesses, Vicki and I included. He fell off the zebra plain and simple. There was no murder.”
“Well,” she said. “People are saying that the zebra was drugged.”
“Drugged?” I asked. “By whom?”
“Anyone of the eccentric characters that thought they stood to gain,” she said. “Since they didn’t gain, it spreads suspicion on all of them as to why Alister distrusted all of them so much in the first place.”
“He distrusted them because they are all spoiled and selfish,” I said.
“True,” she said. “But people are speculating that maybe there was more to it.”
“So,” I said. “What is the evidence of the drugged zebra rumor?”
“First of all, a number of crime blogs are mentioning that Alister spent over a million dollars taming that zebra,” she said.
“Wow,” I said. “How would they know that?”
“Because it’s virtually impossible to domesticate a zebra,” she replied. “They are aggressive, unpredictable, and don’t respond well to humans. So he flew in dozens of award winning animal trainers over a ten-year period domesticate that zebra. Once it was safe, he would enter it in show competitions and win prizes.”
“That’s impressive,” I said. “But what does that have to do with a potential murder?”
“Because,” she said. “In all of those competitions, the zebra did that jump flawlessly. There had to have been another reason why the jump threw Alister.”
“Just error,” I said. “Maybe the zebra was unfamiliar with the territory, or it was a slightly off angle. It could be anything. Besides, didn’t you say they are unpredictable?”
“Well,” she said. “Alister and the zebra practiced that jump for weeks before the party. They don’t think he would have fallen
. And then, there’s the thing with Khan.”
“The tiger?”
“Yeah,” she said. “The tiger escape, mixed with the zebra debacle points to some foul play.”
“I do think there was some foul play with the tiger escape,” I said. “But not with the zebra or Alister’s death.”
“Well,” she said. “There’s a whole movement to investigate the zebra for poisoning.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Even if the zebra had been drugged, it would have passed through its system now. We’re not dignifying this rumor.”
“It wouldn’t be worth dignifying,” she said. “If Shannon O’Brien wasn’t in on the theory.”
“Does this woman ever stop?” I groaned. “Let me guess, she’s blaming Mila and Emily.”
“She’s not speculating,” she said. “But she is commenting on all the blogs saying it’s possible.”
“Okay,” I said and checked my phone.
E-mails were popping into my inbox right and left. Earnie wanted to confirm a meeting time with the board of trustees, since they had settled on a time next week, they wanted me to weigh in. Jasmine replied to an adjustment I had made to her tour rider.
Perry McGrath forwarded me a conversation between him and an Earth Market representative. We had real clients, with real cases. We needed to give them our time and energy, not chase down weird zebra conspiracy theories.
“We’re not going to take that seriously,” I said. “I am, however, interested in how the tiger escaped.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Now how exactly did that happen?”
I told her about the back gate, front gate incident Manuel had relayed.
“That’s all we know at this point,” I said. My pocket buzzed with a call. I pulled it out and glanced at the screen. It was Earnie.
“Hey,” I said after I accepted the call. “How’s your morning treating you?”
“Well,” he said. “I got a call from the insurance adjuster. They want to meet us at the mansion and go over the tiger escape.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We were just talking about that.”
“I’d like to go out there now,” he said. “Can you meet us?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
I gathered my things to head out to the O’Brien mansion. After considering it a bit, I decided maybe I was being too flip with the zebra rumor.
“Find out how this zebra could have possibly been drugged,” I said as I turned to AJ. “I think the whole thing is a crock. But we want to stay one step ahead of the crazies, just in case this actually makes it to the inside of a courtroom.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said.
“And I don’t care if you have to watch ten hours of Animal Planet,” I said. “Find out everything you can about zebra behavior. How they act and don’t act. Even if it hadn’t been drugged, we’ve got a zebra on our hands. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”
She held up a folder from Thomas’ collection. “I’m already one step ahead of you. I’ve got an appointment to drive out and meet with Dr. Paulson, the O’Briens’ vet in Flagstaff.”
I nodded. “Good thinking. I’ve got to go meet with the insurance adjuster. That should put to rest some of these rumors. We’ll rendezvous this afternoon.”
She winked. “Got it.”
I headed out the door to drive out to the O’Brien mansion. This was getting to be a familiar route. I tried to put together a timeline of when the tiger escaped and who would have been at the mansion. Mila and Emily were definitely high on my suspect list. They were disgruntled and in my office just hours before I got the call about the tiger. This is just the sort of thing they would do. But, since all the O’Brien siblings were in town, I had my eye on them, too.
I arrived at the mansion, and Earnie’s Porsche was already there. The housekeeper let me in, and I made a mental note that that was another person on Alister’s payroll I needed to reconcile with.
Manuel we would be keeping on, but once we got the mansion ready for sale, the housekeeper was going to have to go. I wondered what other kind of household staff were employed.
I met Earnie in the great room. He was standing around with Manuel and a large man who was wheezing and coughing.
“Henry,” Earnie said when I walked up. “Glad you could make it out.”
“Thanks for calling, Earnie,” I said, and I nodded toward Manuel. “Good to see you again, Manuel.”
Manuel nodded back, and we shook hands.
“Henry, this is Harry Wendell from Southwest Insurance,” Earnie said.
I nodded toward the large man and shook his hand. “Henry Irving,” I said.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
Harry weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds and every move he made was labored. He wore thin rimmed glass and khakis and a maroon sweater with a blue collared shirt underneath. He carried a clipboard and a fairly cheap digital camera, and he looked like he had never learned to smile.
“So,” Harry said. “We’ve gone over the incident report, and I’d like to look at the damage to the enclosure.”
“Of course,” Earnie told him and motioned toward Manuel. “Manuel, why don’t you take us all back?”
“Sure,” he said. Manuel wore his typical green uniform shirt that I now noticed was emblazoned with some sort of logo for the O’Brien zoo, and blue work slacks.
Manuel seemed to be a fairly decent chap, hardworking and smart enough for his job. But in the room with Earnie, Harry, and me, I had rarely seen a man look that uncomfortable.
Manuel took us in the golf cart out to the tiger enclosure. He rambled the whole way about the safety of the enclosure and then just started to talk nonsensically about the different animals he took care of. From what I could tell, there was the zebra, two tigers, and two giraffes.
“Then,” he said as he drove our silent party, “Mr. O’Brien did have some peacocks. But, they died two years ago.”
“Are you the only one who works the zoo?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I started as the janitor for the zoo. We had Irma who ran the zoo. She was really good, and she taught me everything I know. But then she got a job in San Diego. Mr. O’Brien never hired anyone to replace her.”
We wound back through the lush gardens, and it occurred to me there was probably a gardener I would eventually have to lay off as well. I sighed. This was turning out to be a much bigger headache than I expected.
Manuel rambled on to Harry, which I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Harry was trying to find reasons not to reimburse us the hefty fine from animal control. A loose lipped zookeeper could give him all the information he needed. We drove down a grassy hill and passed a landscaper with a leaf blower who nodded as we went by.
“What are we looking at in household staff?” I asked Earnie quietly.
“Three,” he said as if he were already following my train of thought. “We’ve got Elena, the housekeeper, Manuel the zookeeper, and Blair the chef. Phil, the driver, was meaning to retire at the end of the year, but he left after the funeral.”
“What about the gardener?” I asked.
“That’s contracted through a landscaping service,” he said. “We’d have to cancel the account.”
I shook my head. “Let’s keep it until the house is sold, then offer their services to the buyer. As for the chef and the housekeeper, let’s start putting together some very generous severance packages. The zebra can afford it. Have it ready to propose at the meeting next week.”
He just nodded, and his face looked sad.
“Is that not something we can get done?” I asked.
He had a faraway look on his face. “No, it’s just a shame. We’re dismantling this man’s empire.”
I shrugged. “He set it up this way. If it were up to me, I’d leave it all intact, but for whose benefit? I don’t want to lay off anyone any more than they want me to, but he didn’t want to keep this going after he went. So, this is what we
have to deal with.”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
We arrived at the tiger enclosure, and Manuel passed the entrance we had gone to the first time. He took us off the pathway to a deserted area behind a stone wall that looked to be about fifty feet high. We were sandwiched between the wall and branches and brush.
Manuel squeezed the cart past the landscaping, and the branches scraped by us. I picked leaves out of my clothing and grimaced when the foliage hit my face, looked up, and noticed curved barbed wire at the top of the wall, like in a prison.
“How big is their enclosure?” I asked.
“Well,” he said. “It’s a large piece of property for the tigers to live. We have half an acre sectioned off by this wall. There is a pond for them to use, and places for them to climb. When the enclosure needs to be cleaned, there is a way to get them on one enclosed portion, while I clean the other side and vice versa.”
“Half an acre? How do you feed them with that much space?” I asked.
“Tigers are very intelligent animals,” he said. “They need lots of stimulation for their minds. So, it helps if you put their food in places where they can work for it. Like in trees and from poles. Otherwise, they get bored, and you don’t want to have a bored, restless tiger.”
“Right,” I said. “A bored tiger might think about escaping.”
“That, or finding someone to eat. Someone, meaning me,” he laughed.
We stopped at an old overgrown area. Algae grew along the sides of the wall like slimy green paint and microscopic insects hovered above the muddy ground.
Earnie and I followed Manuel’s lead, stepped out of the cart, and picked our way through the sinking mud. I tried not to think about how expensive my shoes were and what I was doing to them. I wasn’t going to be that guy. Harry mainly stayed put in the cart and took notes. Manuel pointed to the wall.
“This is the back door,” he pointed.
I looked closer and I could see the hinges now. He pointed to the knob on one end. It was clearly brand new.
“See,” he pointed at the old one laying nearby. “I replaced the knob for safety. But when I came in that day, this door was wide open. It had to have been late at night or early in the morning. I left late that night, because I had to clean Neptune’s enclosure, and he wasn’t cooperating. So, it put me behind schedule. I checked on the tigers before I left and I remember them both being there.”