by Dave Daren
“What time was this?” I asked.
“Around nine that night,” he said.
“What time did you come in that morning?” I asked.
“Seven a.m.,” he said. “I noticed around eight that Khan was not here, because usually they both come when I hang the meat on the tree.”
“So between nine p.m. and eight a.m. the tiger escaped,” I said.
“Is this area covered by surveillance footage?” Harry asked. “According to our records there was a full camera system installed in 2012,” he said.
Harry was noting everything down on a clipboard and snapping photos of the wall. I looked around and didn’t see security cameras.
“Nothing was installed on this side of the property,” Manuel said. “There is nothing back here but brush and wall, and any thief that wants to break in, would surely have done his research enough to know what is on the other side of this wall.”
“A built in security detail,” Earnie laughed.
Harry frowned and scribbled this information down.
“Yes,” he said. “And like I said, I don’t even use this door. I mean, why would I come back here?”
He gestured toward the branches and shrubs that had us penned in. I flicked some sort of insect off my sleeve.
“How did you find out that this door was opened?” Harry asked.
“Once Khan was escaped,” Manuel said. “I got Sher into a crate, and did a thorough inspection of the entire enclosure, and then I finally saw the open door. I took a picture of it.”
He pulled out his phone and showed us a photo of the open door from the inside. It was a useful piece of information, but proved nothing.
“Could you send that to me please?” Harry asked him.
Manuel sent the photo over talking as he did. “But I didn’t even have a key to that door.”
He put the phone away, and bent down and picked the old knob up. “And from the looks of it, no one else did either.”
We looked at the knob, and it was clear. The lock had been jimmied.
Someone wanted those tigers to get out.
Chapter 10
“But who?” AJ asked when I got back to the office. “And why?”
“Probably one of the usual suspects,” I said as I put my bag down and flipped open my computer.
“I could see the O’Brien’s and the girlfriends playing dirty, but this is too dirty, even for them,” my young investigator said in confusion. “It put people’s lives at risk.”
“That’s what they wanted,” I said. “If they can prove the trustees are incompetent, then in their minds, it will somehow change the will and get them to become trustees.”
“And then they would get the checkbooks…” AJ trailed off.
“It’s ridiculous, but then, we’re not dealing with completely rational people here.”
“That’s an understatement,” she said with a laugh.
“The more I get to know these people,” I said. “The more I understand why Alister did what he did.”
I pulled up the asset lists Cindy had sent us. The board meeting was right up on us, and I needed to get my facts straight. Getting rid of the zoo was our top priority, but it wasn’t the only priority.
I wanted to get a PowerPoint together showing every asset he had, and our suggested plan of action for liquidating it. This would streamline the entire process, and in the end, make getting rid of the zoo more efficient. I started sorting through the assets by type-- properties, vehicles, cash, stocks, and organizations such as the zoo.
“Yeah, but a zebra, though?” AJ said as if she had been thinking about it for a while.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” I thought better of the comment and looked up from the computer to give her my full attention. “So we have that the escape happened somewhere between the hours of nine p.m. and eight a.m. We need to find out where each of the O’Briens were during that time.”
“I did,” she said. “According to Twitter, Shannon left for New York after the will reading. She even posted shots of her at some kind of Justin Bieber record release party that night.”
“Bieber, huh?” I smirked.
“And that surprises you?” AJ asked.
“No, unfortunately, it doesn’t,” I snickered. “So where were Emily and Mila that day?”
“According to Facebook,” she said, “they were at a memorial service in Tucson. They were both speakers, and there is YouTube footage of them speaking. They also posted shots of themselves in the hotel. They left before Manuel and got back into town after the tigers had escaped.”
“What social media has done to crime investigation,” I mused. “I think you need more work. You spend too much time on Facebook.”
“It’s a brave new world out there,” she said. “You should try it.”
“I detest social media,” I said. “It’s a junk platform for insecure narcissists to brag about leading lives they don’t actually lead.”
She laughed. “Insecure narcissists, huh? And how else would you classify the O’Briens?”
“You do have a point there,” I said. “So Mila and Emily were in our office about the time Manuel called me,” I went through my phone log. “That was at ten. But he said he knew the tigers were missing at around eight.”
“Maybe he spent two hours going crazy trying to handle it himself before he called you,” she said. “The point is, Mila and Emily wouldn’t have driven back from Tucson that early. So they couldn’t have let the tiger out.”
I nodded. “So that leaves Gareth and Daphne. Do we have alibis for them?”
She laughed. “You wouldn’t believe this. Hold on.” AJ clicked away on her laptop for a minute and then flipped it over to me. She had it opened to a story in The Herald with a shirtless Gareth dancing on a table at a bar. The headline read Copper Mogul’s Disgraced Son Arrested in Bar Fight.
The story claimed that Gareth reacted to the will reading by drowning his sorrows at a dive bar named Last Call. After running up an exorbitant tab, he decided it was a good idea to engage in unsolicited karaoke and dancing.
When a half drunk rancher kindly reminded him that this was an after-hours bar in Sedona Arizona, and not a Chippendale’s in Las Vegas, Gareth punched him. My suspicion was there quite a bit more to the exchange, considering that half-drunk ranchers in bars rarely remind anyone of anything kindly, particularly as it relates to topless men of ambiguous sexual orientation.
But in any event, Gareth was promptly returned the courtesy, with a nice blow to the nose. When the rancher’s friends got involved, the bartender tried to break it up. The cops got called, resulting in both Gareth and the rancher spending the night in jail.
“Well,” I said. “I guess Gareth has an alibi for the tiger escape.”
“I’d say so,” AJ agreed.
“What about Daphne?” I asked. “Is she capable of… anything?”
AJ and I looked at each other.
“No,” we said in unison.
“Besides,” I said. “Daphne didn’t get cut out of the will. She wouldn’t really have a motive.”
“So who let the tiger out?” AJ wondered aloud.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Let’s create a visual timeline of the incident, and where all the O’Briens were. We also need to find out about anyone else who might have had access to the tiger enclosure, like household staff and such. Find out where they all were.”
“Got it,” she said.
“What did you find out from the vet?” I asked her.
“Nothing pertinent, really,” she said. “It turns out, she only came out a few times to treat Neptune. I got all those records, and it doesn’t appear there’s anything relevant. She also had a specialist in San Diego she referred him to from time to time. I have the number.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s sounding like a dead end. Let’s let that angle simmer for a while.”
“Got it-- Oh, by the way,” she said. “The representative from the wildlife
sanctuary in Tucson is coming to look at the zoo tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow?” I asked. “That was fast.”
“Yep,” she said. “I told him about the escape and how it was important to rush the donation.”
“Thank you for all your work on this,” I said. “Let’s get these tigers out of here.”
I pulled out my phone and shot Earnie a text about meeting the Tucson zookeeper tomorrow. He knew the estate inside and out, and I wanted to include him in all the decisions.
AJ got to work creating a tag board on the O’Briens and the tiger escape while I spent the next several hours working on the PowerPoint. As I created lists and spreadsheets, the overwhelming amount of information that we had been gathering started to organize in my head. I also created a slide addressing the issue of household staff. I sent Earnie an email asking where he was on the severance packages.
AJ left around five, and I stayed for another hour, working until my head hurt. I finally decided to go home and take a break. I arrived home to find the Park family gearing up for a sunset hiking trip.
“Hey,” I said as I walked in.
Joowon and Seoyon were talking to each other in animated Korean, and from the looks of the mess in the living room, they were arguing about the hiking boots they had just bought. Vicki shot me a strained look of relief.
“I missed you today,” I said and pulled her close.
She moaned softly, and I kissed her. “I missed you too,” she said.
“You’re going all the way to the red rocks?” I asked as I pulled back.
“No,” she said. “We’re just going up to the nature park. It’s a nice hike for an evening.”
“Yeah,” I said, heading to the bedroom and the shower. “You guys should have a nice time--”
“Oh, no,” she interrupted me. “You’re not getting out of this, mister.”
I sighed. I need to work more on that PowerPoint, and I was looking forward to the quiet of the evening.
“Vic, I have so much work to do,” I groaned.
She stared me down.
“I’m not getting out of this, am I?” I asked.
“Nope,” she smiled.
“Fine,” I said. “Just let me change. You owe me.”
“No, you owed me,” she corrected.
“So we’re even now,” I agreed.
“No, you still owe me,” she laughed. “Your debt to me is very, very deep.”
“I feel like I’ve been bamboozled.” I kissed her on the cheek and then went into our bedroom to change.
I changed into athletic shorts and an old UCLA shirt I still had lying around. Considering the main reason for the Parks’s stateside visit was a lecture at a University of California campus, I figured it couldn’t hurt to remind them I was an alum.
After the comically exhausting attempt to coordinate an outing with a bunch of headstrong people used to bossing everyone around, myself included in that indictment, we finally made it out to the nature reserve park.
It was a small recreation area, but had long winding trails for hiking, jogging, and biking. The spring weather was beautiful, and the perfect time for an evening stroll. I was so wound up from work and still had so many facts and figures rolling around in my head though, I had to force myself to notice the nature at all.
“I can see why you like it here,” Joowon told me with a whistle. “Sedona is certainly something.”
“It is, isn’t?” I sighed. After my brief excursion to Los Angeles, I became more aware of how happy I was to be here and how ready I actually was to embrace small town life.
He looked around the park, stuck his hands in his pockets and asked me about property values in the area. I didn’t know much, honestly. Vicki and I had moved so quickly, we were actually renting, with the intention of buying when we finally had a chance to shop. But, given our schedule, that seemed to be never.
“Are you thinking about moving out here?” I asked.
“It might not be bad to have a vacation home here,” he said.
“I think that Vicki would really like that,” I lied mischievously.
Joowon gave me a look, and I smiled sheepishly. Halfway through the hike, I started to understand Vicki’s family. They had switched primarily to English for me, and I was grateful for that. But Joowon spent most of the hike teaching me Korean.
“Anneyeong,” he said. “Means hello or goodbye.”
I repeated the word until he was happy with my pronunciation.
We walked over a wooden footbridge where a shallow creek bubbled below.
“You are a quick learner,” Joowon told me.
I didn’t tell him that I had actually learned the word from a Netflix comedy show called Arrested Development, in which an adopted Korean kid is mistakenly thought to be named Annyeong for the entire series. I didn’t think that would play well.
As we returned to the trail, a dusty gravel path paved through a tree-lined forest, a raven flew overhead and called out to its colleagues, who responded from somewhere within the woods.
Joowon went on to teach me other Korean phrases, and I tried my best to mimic them. He and I lagged a few feet behind Vicki and Seoyon, who were in their own conversation, of which I overheard bits and pieces.
“But there’s so much opportunity here,” Vicki said.
“Of course it looks like opportunity,” Seoyon said. “Because you have no real career. You are throwing the best years of your life away in this dump town.”
Joowon continued, “If you want to say, ‘Nice to meet you,’ you can say, ‘ban-gap-sum-ni-da’.”
“Ban-gap-sum-ni-da,” I repeated.
He corrected my pronunciation, and I tried again.
“I do have a career,” Vicki continued. “It’s more of a career than I had in L.A.”
“Well, that’s not saying much,” Seoyon said. “You were two steps from McDonald’s in that paralegal job.”
“That is not true, mother!” Vicki shot back. “Being a paralegal is a legitimate, respected career. In some ways, it’s more difficult than being a lawyer.”
Joowon rambled on about the difference in the way Korean words are stressed versus English words, and how it is a completely different language structure.
“See, in English,” Joowon said. “The stress of the syllable can change its meaning. It’s not like that in Korean.”
“Well, regardless, look at you, Vicki,” Seoyon said. “You are twenty-five. The years of your life are passing like sand, the best ones are already gone, and you don’t even have a family yet. Soon you will be thirty. And then what? You will be still here? Chasing tigers and writing wills for cactus farmers? What kind of life is that, Victoria? That is not what I raised you to be.”
My blood started to boil at the conversation in front of me, and I wanted to jump in, so I contemplated my response. I somewhat wondered if Seoyon’s choice to have the conversation in English was so that I could overhear it. Joowon seemed oblivious to their exchange and determined to teach me Korean.
“Now,” he said. “To say ‘thank you,’ you would say. ‘kam-sa-ham-ni-da.’
I shook my head off my preoccupation and tried to zone in on the word. “Kam-sa-ham-ni-da,” I said.
Joowon laughed. “You are doing great. What other words should you learn?”
I grinned and thought about the one that was on my mind these days.
“Tiger,” I said. “How would you say tiger?”
“Ho-rang-i,” he said.
“Ho-rang-i,” I repeated.
Joowon laughed with pleasure. “See, it’s easy, yes? So simple.”
“I guess it is,” I said.
“But it’s the life I want, mom,” Vicki said.
“The life you want? Your brother just delivered a lecture at a medical conference in New York,” she said. “Your cousin is an executive at Google, and your other cousin--”
“I know this, mother,” she said. “She’s one of Anna Wintour’s--”
; “Top executives,” they said in unison, but with different tones.
“And what are you?” Seoyon asked. “Small town junior lawyer playing house?”
By then, Joowon gave up trying to pretend that their conversation wasn’t happening. He went after Seoyon in rapid Korean, and his wife turned around and replied back.
Vicki just rubbed her forehead. I caught her eye, pulled her close to me, and saw her eyes were brimming with tears.
“Hey,” I said. “Look at me.”
She just looked away.
“Look at me,” I insisted, and she finally turned to me.
“You are successful,” I said. “You are brilliant. Don’t listen to her.”
“You are doing exactly what you want to do,” I said as I wiped a tear from her face. “You are smart enough to work for Anna Wintour. You could if you wanted to. But, do you want to?”
She smiled. “Hell, no.”
“See?” I said. “That’s why you don’t work for her, or at Google, or anywhere else. It’s not because you can’t.”
“You’re right,” she laughed.
“And if they can’t see that,” I said, “then who cares what they think?”
She drew a deep breath, and I knew I hadn’t sold her on that last point, because she definitely did care. Seoyon came up to us, and I eyed her with suspicion and anger. She spoke to Vicki very gently in Korean for a moment. Then they hugged, laughed, and they put their arms around each other. We continued the hike in calm contemplative silence. There was nothing more that could be said. Or at least, that should be said.
As we continued our lap of the park, my phone buzzed with a text. Earnie could meet the Tucson zookeeper tomorrow, and he wanted to know if it was an inspection or if he would actually be picking up the animals.
I texted him back that it was an inspection.
He replied he was still working with the accountant on what they could do on the severance packages.
“You are working on a big case, yes?” Joowon asked me.
I shrugged. “Somewhat. We had a very wealthy client pass away last week. We are settling his estate. But, it’s turning out to be a lot more complicated than we expected.”