Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

  Leaving her temporarily in their custody, Brigit and I returned to the dressing room. Various clothing was strewn about the floor. Stashed under a wadded fleece pull-over was a variety of security-tag removers. The girl had likely ordered them online. Just as the security business was booming, so was the business in security-defeating devices. We went back out and I showed the gadgets to the men before turning to the girl. “Didn’t steal anything, huh?”

  I grabbed a bag from the cashier for the evidence and retook possession of the suspect. She kept her head down to avoid the condemning looks of other shoppers as I led her to the door.

  A clerk folding sweaters at the front glanced down at the polka-dot sweater she had just added to the display and eyed the girl. “Did she pay for that top?”

  The sweaters on the stack were the same as the one the girl was wearing.

  “Are you kidding me?” I snapped. Trying to steal more items right under my nose? The nerve! I turned to the salesclerk. “Got one of those sweaters in a small?” Nobody could fault me for shopping while I was stuck waiting for an officer to take this little lawbreaker off my hands.

  Minutes later, my backup arrived in the form of my former partner, the rusty-haired, foulmouthed Derek Mackey. Without a word, he took custody of the girl, now dressed in her own clothes. I’d swing by the station to fill out her booking paperwork once I paid for Gabby’s sweater. All in all, it was a productive night.

  NINE

  FEATHERY FAKERS

  Brigit

  The treat she’d been fed at the mall had been delicious. But Brigit couldn’t understand why there were so many artificial birds along the sidewalk. When she’d first spotted the big swans, she thought she’d be in for a fun and noisy chase, like when she ran after the ducks and geese at the pond in the park. But then she realized these birds weren’t moving. She confirmed with a sniff that the birds were nothing more than Styrofoam, glue, and old feathers long since plucked from other fowl. Boring!

  At least she’d had some fun trailing that girl. Her quarry had made it extra tough by zigging and zagging through the parking lot like a rabid squirrel, then turning back the way she’d come, leaving a second scent trail on top of her first. Of course even with the tricky tactics, the teen had been no match for Brigit and her nifty nose.

  Dogs 1, humans 0.

  TEN

  BAD DAY

  The Poacher

  “You’re gonna be good this time. Right, Daddy?”

  His daughter’s words echoed through his head as he lay on the hard floor in his sons’ bedroom, a sleeping bag that smelled suspiciously like cat piss for his bed. The morning sun peeked around the crooked miniblind in the dusty window as guilt puckered his belly. He’d tried to be good. He really had. As usual, it just hadn’t worked out.

  He still hadn’t told Vicki he’d been fired. He couldn’t take that look of disappointment on her face, the “I told you so” she was sure to dish out. He’d wanted to prove her wrong, to prove to himself that he could hold down a good job without screwing it up. He couldn’t even tell her that it wasn’t his fault he’d been fired, that he’d been wrongfully accused. She’d never believe him.

  His parole officer had suggested he apply for jobs farther out of the city where there would be less competition, maybe make some cold calls. In the meantime, he’d found the Poacher another job, this one at a Christmas-tree lot. The work was part-time, temporary, and paid only minimum wage plus tips. Not many people tipped him, even when he got scratched and covered in sap tying the trees to the top of their cars. Cheapskates. He’d hoped to give Vicki and the kids a good Christmas with lots of presents, but there was no way he could even pay half the mortgage and bills on what he earned now, let alone his truck payment. He didn’t want to think what he’d have to do if he didn’t find a better-paying job soon …

  Oomph!

  His older son had jumped down from the top bunk and landed on his stomach like an anvil. The gut that had been puckering in guilt now exploded in pain. If the Poacher could draw any breath, he would’ve screamed in agony.

  “Sorry, Daddy!” the boy said as he climbed off the Poacher. “I forgot you were down here.” With that, the kid traipsed out of the room, leaving his father to writhe in pain, wondering if something inside him had ruptured.

  A moment later, Vicki came to the door to rouse their other son from the bottom bunk. Grimacing against the raw tenderness of his bruised belly, he forced himself to sit up on the floor. He gave her his best smile. “Good mornin’, gorgeous.”

  “I quit my job last night,” she said, getting right to the point and making no attempt to work up to the big news.

  “You what?” He felt as if he’d taken another sucker punch to the gut. But surely he hadn’t heard her right. Vicki had worked the dinner shift at the restaurant the night before, covered for a coworker. With dinner tickets being higher than lunch tickets, it had been a chance to put a little more money in her pocket. He’d already been asleep when she got home.

  “I quit,” she repeated, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorjamb. “A customer tried to play grab-ass with me at closing time. The manager wouldn’t do nothin’ about it, so I walked out.”

  As much as the thought of another man touching his woman would normally enrage him, the emotion that overtook him in that moment was pure panic. “Can you take it up with the owners? See if they’ll do something about it?”

  “What’s the point?” Vicki snapped. “I’m sick of waitressing anyway. People are rude and demanding, and they treat servers like dirt.”

  It felt as if hands had wrapped around his throat and were squeezing the life out of him. He could barely get words out, and when he did they sounded shrill. “What’re you gonna do?”

  She shrugged. “You’re making good money. I figured I’ll take off through Christmas and New Year’s, look for a new job after the holidays. It’ll give me some time to spend with the kids and catch up on things around the house.”

  He knew he should be honest with her then, tell her what had happened, that he’d lost his job and couldn’t support them on his measly earnings from the seasonal gig at the tree lot. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  He knew what he had to do. He had to take care of his family. He had to be bad again.

  ELEVEN

  CHRISTMAS BALLS

  Megan

  It was half past one o’clock in the afternoon on the last Saturday before Christmas. My gift shopping was done, but the macaws still hadn’t been located. The story had quickly become old news, buried under a barrage of holiday parades, sales, and performances. But I still hadn’t forgotten the birds. Maybe it was silly to be so concerned about Fabiana and Fernando. After all, there were plenty of humans in bad situations, too. But having another species for a partner had taught me that, whether our outsides were covered in skin or fur, we weren’t that different. At heart, we all simply wanted food, shelter, and comfort. Surely the same applied to creatures with scales and feathers, too. If the birds hadn’t been stolen and sold, they were probably hungry and scared, looking for somewhere safe to nest.

  I hadn’t planned to take Brigit to the zoo today, but when we stopped at the adjacent Forest Park so she could stretch her legs and relieve herself, she tugged on the leash and pulled me toward the entrance.

  “Okay, girl,” I told her. “We’ll go visit your animal friends.”

  Janelle and I exchanged waves as Brigit and I made our way past the ticket booth. The weather was brisk but sunny, and the zoo was bustling with parents and children excited about their upcoming vacation from work and school. I wouldn’t be getting a vacation. Brigit and I were scheduled to work Christmas Day. But at least I’d be able to spend Christmas morning with my family.

  As Brigit and I made our way past the giraffes, a father bent down next to his adorable gap-toothed daughter, who looked to be seven or eight years old. She wore a black-and-white coat with a panda face and ears on the hood. She gaped up at the
creatures while her younger brothers sat one in front of the other in a double stroller, their focus entirely on the soft pretzel they were sharing.

  When a giraffe opened its mouth to snatch a leaf from a tree, the girl looked up at the man and tugged on his sweatshirt. “Hey, Daddy. How come their tongues are purple?”

  “I don’t know, squirt.” Her father shrugged. “Maybe they ate grape popsicles for breakfast.”

  She giggled. “That’s not right! Let me look it up on your phone.”

  The father reached into his pocket as we continued past them.

  A smile curved my mouth. I’d been an observant and curious young girl like her once, trying to understand the world around me. Of course my childhood stutter had kept me from asking too many questions, but it didn’t keep me from getting the answers. I spent quite a bit of time in the library or online, looking up information. I was still a curious person, a good trait for an aspiring detective. But, fortunately, barring a rare occasion, my stutter had abated.

  A squeal came from the older boy in the stroller. “Ew! It’s pooping!”

  I glanced back to see that the giraffe who’d been feasting on leaves was now dropping a load of small pellets similar to the scat left by rabbits. Of course these droppings had much farther to fall than the ones produced by bunnies. Like Danny Landis, I now knew more about animal excrement than I truly cared to.

  As Brigit and I walked on, dispatch came over the radio, looking for a unit to respond to a call from Colonial Country Club, which sat directly across University Drive from the zoo. Apparently there was some type of disagreement taking place at the tennis courts. I pressed the button on my mic to let dispatch know my partner and I would take the call.

  “Let’s go, girl!” I called down to Brigit.

  With a call of “See you next time!” to Janelle, the two of us jogged out to the parking lot and climbed into our cruiser for the short drive across the street. I started the engine and waited, my eye on my side mirror, as a couple with a stroller passed behind my car. Hold on. Is that Danny Landis?

  I unrolled my window and called out to the man’s back. “Mr. Landis?”

  The man turned around. Yep. It’s him. He handed something to the woman. “I’ll meet you at the gate,” he told her before walking to my window.

  I gestured to the zoo. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as everyone else,” he said. “Taking my family to the zoo. They gave me a bunch of free passes when I was hired here. Might as well use ’em up. Can’t afford to take them anywhere else. You know what a movie costs these days?”

  “An arm and a leg.” If you added butter to your popcorn, it could also cost you an artery. “At least you won’t have to scoop poop today,” I offered, trying to help him look on the bright side.

  He issued a mirthless chuckle. “I suppose there’s that.”

  I raised a hand in good-bye. “Have a good time.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he replied as he backed away from the cruiser.

  As I watched him walk away, the same old thought haunted me. Had Danny Landis stolen the valuable birds? I wished I could figure it out, put my suspicions to rest.

  The lot behind me now clear, I backed up and headed to the exit, gunning my engine to make it across all four lanes of University Drive. As we curved down Colonial Parkway, my gaze moved up to the bare trees. A plastic grocery bag was stuck in one of them. Two squirrels chased each other up another. An old nest sat vacant in the crook of a third, waiting to see if its former occupants might return in the spring to raise another brood. But there were no hyacinth macaws sitting on the limbs, waiting to be rescued.

  While Colonial Country Club was most widely known for hosting an annual PGA tour, the club also offered thirteen tennis courts, ten outdoors and three indoors. The outdoor courts would be lighted come dusk for evening play. To celebrate the season, the perimeter fence around the courts sported a festive garland with red bows placed every six feet or so, affixed to the chain-link exterior.

  As Brigit and I approached the courts, the telltale sounds of tennis being played met our ears. The thwock of a ball being served or returned, the thomp as it bounced off the court, the grunts of exertion and cries of delight and despair as players either returned a difficult ball or missed it. My partner’s ears perked up and her tail wagged. Like these tennis players, Brigit loved to chase the fuzzy yellow balls.

  “Sorry, girl,” I told her. “This isn’t playtime.”

  From outside the first court, a woman wearing tennis shoes and a black Nike warm-up suit raised her arm and snapped her fingers to flag me down, the way an impatient customer might signal an overworked server. “Over here, Officer!”

  The woman’s short hair was dyed a stylish but unnatural reddish tone, akin to an oaky cabernet. A tennis tote sat at her feet, the handle of a racquet sticking out of the specially designed pocket on the side. Two other women stood nearby. Both were club employees. The tall, thirtyish Latina wore pumps, dress pants, and a blazer embroidered with the club’s seal on the breast pocket. The other was a sturdy fiftyish white woman with salt-and-pepper hair. She wore work boots, work pants, and a jacket embossed with the same seal.

  As we stepped up, a faint scent of peppermint met my nose. Maybe the wine-haired woman had tennis elbow and used one of those mint-scented pain creams to treat it. I looked from one of the women to the other. “Someone called for assistance?”

  The woman in the warm-up suit raised a hand to her shoulder. “That was me.” Her fingers were tipped in a festive holiday manicure. The base was white and featured green holly leaves with red berries. “I just finished playing a couple of tennis matches. I always take my rings off when I play and I put them in this pocket.” She bent down and opened the tote to show me a small zippered pocket sewn inside. “When I was done, I went to get my rings but they weren’t there.” She pointed to the woman with the salt-and-pepper hair. “She had been working around the courts and moved my bag. I hate to sound accusatory,” she said, doing just that, “but I don’t see who else could have taken them. Nobody else was around.”

  The story was similar to Nan Ishii’s. Déjà vu. I turned to the accused.

  Before I could even ask, she said, “I didn’t take anything.” Her voice contained a calm control that the firm set of her jaw told me was forced. “I only moved her bag so I could reattach a bow. Some of them had come loose.” She cast an annoyed glance at the club member. “I requested that she move the bag herself, but she told me to do it.”

  The woman gave a derisive but dainty huff. “I was in the middle of a game.”

  My focus shifted to the woman in the blazer. She raised her palms slightly as if to say I don’t know what happened or what to do about this.

  “You’re a manager?” I asked.

  “Assistant manager,” she replied.

  I glanced around, noting security cameras mounted on the tennis clubhouse, which sat near the courts. I gestured to them. “Can we take a look at the video footage?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Security will have to set it up, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  I cast a glance at the older woman who’d been accused. She didn’t object, nor did she appear worried in the least. In fact, she appeared to be gloating. She didn’t do it. While I couldn’t claim to be an expert in psychology, I had studied criminal psych at Sam Houston State University as part of my criminal justice degree. If this woman was guilty, she’d be making excuses or at least displaying signs of anxiety. She did neither.

  Twenty minutes later, the three women, Brigit, a male member of the club’s security team, and I were gathered around a large monitor in the assistant manager’s office inside the clubhouse, watching the footage. On the screen, the maintenance employee walked up to a droopy piece of garland and attempted to reattach the loose bow from the outside of the court. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get her hands through the mesh far enough to secure the back. She proceeded to open the entrance to the court
s and slunk along the fence, doing her best not to interfere with the game being played on the court a few feet away. As she reached one of the loose bows, she looked down at the sport bag leaning against the fence directly below it. Her head turned toward the players as she waited for an opportune time to address them. When one of them missed a ball, she called out to them. The woman with the cabernet hair called something back, and the staff member reached down, took the handle of the bag, and lifted it, moving the bag a few feet farther down. She immediately turned her attention back to the bow, secured it, and circled around the bag to fix another bow near the far end of the court. When she finished, she walked out of the court, still sticking close to the fence, but never again touching the bag. She returned to the tall gate and exited.

  The employee looked directly at the tennis player and raised a brow that said, You going to apologize for wrongfully accusing me, bitch?

  To her credit, the woman did, her face blushing nearly as red as her hair and her eyes bright with bewilderment. “I’m so sorry! I just didn’t think there was any other explanation.” She looked up, as if trying to force a memory to appear. “I mean, I had them on when I got here, didn’t I?”

  “We can look and see.” The security guard restarted the footage, this time beginning as the woman arrived to play. Though we could see her retrieve her balls and racquet from the bag, at no point did she appear to remove any rings.

  “Oh, no.” Her hands moved to her cheeks. “Where did they go? What did I do with them?”

  I attempted to help her train of thought move along the track. “Where else have you been today?”

  She removed her hands from her face. “I did some Christmas shopping and then I got a mani-pedi.”

  “Did you take your rings off when you got your nails done?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “The girl gave me a hand massage with peppermint lotion.”