Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

  That explained the minty smell.

  The woman continued. “I took the rings off before she started. I remember because she had a hand-shaped holder to put them on. It was covered in red velvet. Very kitschy.”

  I pointed out the obvious. “Maybe you left the rings at the salon.”

  She shook her head emphatically. “No. I specifically remember the girl reminding me not to forget my rings when she finished. I know I put them back on because they slid on really easy with the lotion on my hands.”

  Again, I pointed out the obvious. “If they slid on easily, they could slide off easily, too. Maybe they fell off somewhere.”

  She gasped and covered her mouth, her eyes darting wildly around. “They could be anywhere. The court. The clubhouse. My car. I cut across the grass after I parked. Oh, Lord! I might never find them!”

  Despite the member having wrongfully accused her of stealing the rings, the woman with the salt-and-pepper hair offered to help the lady search for the rings. The assistant manager also agreed to help.

  At that point, the situation was more of a treasure hunt than a police matter. I handed the tennis player my business card and wished the trio luck. “I hope you find them.”

  TWELVE

  FINDERS KEEPERS

  Brigit

  Megan led her outside and away from the place where the humans were hitting the balls around. Brigit was disappointed she hadn’t had a chance to chase any of the balls. Next to chasing down a suspect, playing ball was her favorite sport. She was way better at it than those humans. They kept missing. Maybe they should try using their teeth instead of those weird stringed sticks.

  But at least Brigit had come away with a ball. While the humans had been staring at the screen in the office, she’d lain down next to a bag that the woman who smelled like peppermint had placed on the ground. Despite the overwhelming scent of mint, Brigit’s skilled snout was also able to detect the telltale scent of rubber that told her there were tennis balls in the bag. She’d stuck her nose through the top, pushed the zipper further open, and snatched a ball. Nobody had complained. She wasn’t even sure they’d noticed. But really, wasn’t anything on the floor fair game for a dog? Sure it was. Everyone knew that was the rule. If nothing else, she had pawsible deniability.

  THIRTEEN

  THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL

  The Poacher

  It was so damned cold outside he couldn’t feel his toes or his nose. He didn’t know why the owners of the tree lot even bothered keeping the place open. Christmas was in four days. Anyone who hadn’t bought a tree yet wasn’t going to buy one at all. Besides, the only trees left were small, sparse, and dry. They’d make lousy Christmas trees. The only thing they’d be good for was firewood. To hide their decrepit condition, the boss had handed him a case of flocking spray and told him to cover the trees with the fake snow.

  While the lot’s owner watched television, drank whiskey, and kept warm in his RV, the Poacher was out here like an idiot in a Santa hat with a plastic sign that read ALL TREES 50% OFF! He’d tried spinning the thing like his boss told him to, but the sign had gone as haywire as a helicopter hit by enemy fire. It whirled into traffic, nearly causing an accident. After riding half a block on the windshield of a pickup truck, the sign had blown off and promptly been run over by a city bus, another pickup, and some hipster in a Prius with a handlebar mustache, a flannel shirt, and five cat decals on his back window. The Poacher had risked his life retrieving the sign from the road, wiped the tread marks off as best he could, and settled for moving the sign left to right in his hands.

  A rattling sound came from the RV and his boss stuck his head out the window. “Don’t just stand there!” he hollered. “Trying dancing or something!” He slid the window shut with a slam.

  Dancing? What did the guy expect? The only dancing the Poacher had ever done was at the high school prom, pressed up against Vicki during a slow song with his hand cupped over her butt cheek. But if that asshole wanting dancing, the Poacher would give him dancing.

  He started by doing his best impersonation of Kevin Bacon in Footloose, and segued into Napoleon Dynamite. When he was done with that, he went full-on John Travolta, starting with the pointed disco finger from Saturday Night Fever, moving on to a Grease montage, attempting a one-person two-step à la Urban Cowboy, and ending with the dance he’d performed with Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, making a V with his fingers and sliding it past his eyes while shaking his butt. The warden in charge of movie night had been a huge Travolta fan. The Poacher had seen every one of his movies at least three times.

  When he tired of the Travolta shtick, he grabbed a couple cans of flocking spray and danced around, shaking them. The metal balls inside gave off a clankety-clank as he shook the cans. Cars slowed as drivers tried to get a better look at him. A couple honked, and one issued a wolf whistle out his window. “Shake it, baby!”

  The burner phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He was moving so fast he hardly noticed at first. He stopped and closed his eyes, both grateful and ashamed.

  He pulled the phone from his pocket and jabbed the button to take the call. “Yeah?”

  Two minutes later, he hurled the sign toward the RV like a Frisbee. As the sign slid under the vehicle, he climbed into his pickup and started the engine.

  His boss poked his head out the window again. “Where in the Sam Hill do you think you’re going?”

  The Poacher ripped the Santa hat from his head and tossed it out the window. “I quit!” Not that it much mattered. The job was scheduled to end in four days anyway. He punched the gas and roared out of the lot.

  FOURTEEN

  MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO, MONKEY SOMEHOW LEAVE THE ZOO

  Megan

  Just three days until Christmas. Fort Worth was in a festive frenzy, people rushing around to find last-minute gifts, exchange cookies, and stock up on groceries for their holiday meals. It was mid-afternoon and Brigit and I were working another swing shift. It was also freezing cold outside, the temperatures dipping into single digits once the wind chill was factored in. Mother Nature seemed intent on torturing north Texas today, sending gusts of wind that whipped your exposed skin and threatened to topple anyone out in the weather.

  Good thing I’d worn a pair of thermal underwear under my uniform. I’d also brought along a fleece-lined police-dog vest for Brigit. With any luck, she wouldn’t need it. I had no intention of performing any unnecessary foot patrol today. We’d stay in our warm patrol car, thank you very much.

  As we waited at a traffic light near the TCU campus, the wind whistling around the cruiser, dispatch came over the radio. “Got a report of a missing monkey at the zoo. Who can respond?”

  So much for staying in the car. I finagled the mic from its holder and let dispatch know the crack team of Megan Luz and Sergeant Brigit were on their way. “Officer Luz and Brigit responding.”

  As we aimed for the zoo, my mind went in a million different directions. A monkey is missing now? What are the odds the macaws and the monkey escaped on their own? Has the zoo staff been negligent again, or is someone stealing these animals? If so, who and how? Have I been right to be suspicious of Landis?

  I parked the cruiser, attached Brigit’s leash, and dressed her in the vest so she wouldn’t get cold. Together, we trotted to the front gate, partly to keep warm, partly to hurry things up. There, we found Sharon Easley, the zoo director who’d fired Danny Landis. She wore a tan parka trimmed with faux fur along with her khakis today. Standing off to the side was the same security officer who’d escorted Landis to the gate after his termination. He paid me no mind. His attention was focused on those leaving the zoo. Janelle watched from her ticket booth. We exchanged nods before I turned to Easley.

  The director gave me a quick rundown. “The primatologist on duty noticed one of the colobus monkeys was missing when she went to feed them an hour ago. We had a full count of five at closing last night, but there are only four in the enclosure now. She says it’s the
male who’s missing, an eighteen-year-old monkey named Sarki. The security records for the card reader show that the only people who entered the enclosure since last night were one of our veterinarians who was checking on a female with a dental issue and the keeper who reported the monkey missing.”

  “And you suspect foul play.” It wasn’t a question, really. She’d summoned law enforcement so she must’ve thought something criminal had taken place.

  “It seems that way. The hyacinth macaws have already disappeared, and we can’t see how the monkey could have gotten out of the exhibit on its own.”

  When I’d first been paired with Brigit, she’d used several of my shoes for chew toys, and subsequently defeated nearly every security measure I’d taken to protect my remaining pairs. She had also surreptitiously stolen a tennis ball from the woman’s bag at the country club. She held the thing as far back in her mouth as she could, covering it with her jowls. I hadn’t noticed until we’d returned to our cruiser and she dropped it in her enclosure. I decided to let her keep her loot. By that point, it was soaked in dog saliva and the woman probably wouldn’t want it back. Besides, it would be embarrassing to admit my trained partner had committed misdemeanor theft right under my nose. Yep, animals could be clever, crafty, and downright devious when they wanted to be. Of course these zoo professionals knew that as well as I did. In fact, exhibits were designed to take every potential escape route into account and eliminate them. And if one monkey had somehow managed to escape, why hadn’t others escaped, too? Theft seemed the more likely explanation.

  “I’d like to take a look at the exhibit and speak to the veterinarian and primatologist.” I also realized it would be a good idea to call the station and speak to one of the detectives. A stolen monkey was unusual, a much bigger matter than the usual petty theft or home burglary. A detective would want to come out and take a look, too.

  While Easley used her walkie-talkie to summon the primatologist and veterinarian to the exhibit, I used my phone to call the station.

  Detective Hector Bustamente took my call. “What’s up, Officer Luz?”

  I gave him a quick synopsis of the situation. A monkey named Sarki had gone AWOL. No means of accidental escape was immediately evident. Given that the pair of macaws had already gone missing, theft was suspected. There definitely seemed to be some monkey business going on.

  “I’ll be right there,” Bustamente said.

  Ten minutes later, the detective met me, Brigit, and Easley at the zoo’s entrance. Bustamente was a seasoned investigator whose careless appearance was at odds with the careful consideration he applied to his work. He had thick lips, round cheeks, and a winter coat that was snapped closed over his chest but hung open over his midsection. The sides couldn’t quite meet across the roll of flesh he’d accumulated over years spent sitting at a desk, pondering clues and evidence.

  We strode quickly to the exhibit, stopping at a viewing area. Given the frigid weather, there were no visitors at the overlook, only the zookeeper and veterinarian, who stood side by side, staring into the habitat, their elbows nearly touching. They turned our way as they heard us approach, and Easley made quick introductions all around. The keeper was a petite woman in her mid to late thirties. Her Italian lineage was evidenced by her dark hair, olive skin, and name—Camilla Bellafiore. The veterinarian, Greg Geer, was a tall, fiftyish guy with a lean runner’s build, a shiny balding head, and eyeglasses in fashionable blue plastic frames.

  Camilla’s brown eyes were bright with worry. “We can’t find Sarki anywhere. I don’t even want to think what might have happened to him.”

  Greer cringed in a sign of agreement. “I wish I’d realized he was gone when I was here earlier examining Zawadi. We could’ve started our search sooner.”

  Their concern for the animal entrusted to their care seemed genuine. I could only imagine the panic I’d feel if Brigit were missing. The mere thought made my skin prickle.

  My eyes scanned the exhibit. While it did not have a covering like the aviary to keep animals from escaping out the top, all of the trees inside were contained on an amorphously shaped island of sorts that slanted down on all four sides into a wide, deep gulley. The outer walls of the gulley were high, smooth, and straight, seemingly impossible for this small breed of monkey to climb. At the back of the enclosure stood a mock rock wall, similarly designed with smooth surfaces to be unclimbable. A dark, discolored streak about four feet wide bisected the wall, indicating where a man-made waterfall coursed down the surface in warmer weather. The water had been turned off today, probably due to the risk of the pipes freezing and breaking.

  The remaining four colobus monkeys perched on limbs in the center of the stand of trees. They were a beautiful species, mostly black with white tails and white fur encircling their faces. They were also a small species, only slightly longer than human infants at birth. While some of the other animals didn’t like the cold, these monkeys didn’t seem to mind the winter temperatures. Not surprising, I supposed. The informational display on the viewing deck noted they were native to both coastal and mountainous regions in Africa, including Kilimanjaro.

  Although it certainly appeared the monkey had been snatched, we nonetheless needed to explore all possibilities to definitively rule out whether the animal had simply absconded on its own. Tarzan used vines to move around the forest. So did Mowgli from The Jungle Book. They’d learned from monkeys, hadn’t they? And all sorts of vines and climbing plants grew wild in Texas. Poison oak. Mustang grape. Honeysuckle. They spread easily, helped along by birds who ate their seeds and berries, depositing them elsewhere at the end of the digestive process. While the back wall of the colobus monkey enclosure was smooth, it was built with vertical angles to give it a more natural appearance. Not all of the faces were visible from where we stood.

  I turned to the keeper. “Could some kind of vine have grown along the back wall?”

  “I looked the enclosure over carefully,” Camilla said. “There’s no vegetation Sarki could have used for climbing. No growths or damage that would allow him to get a foothold, either.”

  Looked like he hadn’t climbed it like a rock wall, either.

  Bustamente turned to Camilla. “How far can these monkeys jump?”

  “A long way,” she said. “Up to fifty feet from a tree. They bounce off the limbs, use them like trampolines. But this enclosure is designed so all of the trees are more than fifty feet from the outer boundary.”

  After taking another sweeping glance around the enclosure, the detective asked, “How long has Sarki lived here?”

  “More than a decade,” Camilla said. “I’ve worked here ten years and he was already living here when I started.”

  The detective’s head bobbed as he mulled over the information. “Is there any reason why he’d try to make a break now? Has anything changed recently? Has there been some type of threat, or maybe something outside the habitat he’d find particularly enticing?”

  “Nothing I can think of.” She looked up at Greer. “What about you, Greg?”

  I noticed she’d said “Greg,” not “Doctor Greer.” Though it was common for colleagues to be on a first-name basis and forgo formal titles, I wondered whether the two might have a personal relationship.

  When the detective turned his gaze on Greer, the veterinarian affirmed Camilla’s assessment. “I’m not aware of anything, either.”

  Bustamente gestured into the habitat as he posed another question to the keeper. “How do you get in there to feed them?”

  “There’s a staff door around back,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

  Camilla led our assorted parade on a downward-sloping path around the side of the enclosure. She stopped at a six-foot wooden privacy fence with a sign on the gate that read ZOO STAFF ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. Like Danny Landis, Camilla wore a staff ID card on a lanyard around her neck. She swiped her card through the secured-access device and the lock opened with a click. The rest of us followed her through. Camilla stepped ba
ck to the gate to ensure it had latched.

  We stood in a small concrete courtyard that was enclosed by a wooden fence and contained only a seasonally decommissioned snow-cone stand parked to the side. Camilla headed to a heavy iron gate set in a brick wall at the back.

  Rather than risk frightening the monkeys, I ordered Brigit to sit and stay by the snow-cone stand, giving her a head ruffle to show I appreciated her obedience. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Camilla led us through the iron gate into an enclosed walkway flanked by brick walls. Glass skylights had been installed in the roof to provide natural lighting in the space.

  I pointed up. “Has anyone checked the skylights?”

  “Yes,” Easley said. “None are loose.”

  It had been a long shot, anyway. The glass panels would be heavy to lift. A small monkey probably couldn’t do it on his own. Besides, he would have only made it this far if he’d found his way past the interior gate at the far end of the passage.

  As we made our way down to the end of the walk, Camilla gestured to the doors on either side. “The left door leads to the storage area where the monkeys’ food is kept. The door on the right leads to an exam room where the vets treat them. There’re also small cages where we put the monkeys when they’re sick.”

  She opened each door and gave me and the detective a glimpse inside. The storage room contained a refrigerator stocked with spinach, kale, and other dietary staples for this species of monkey. The space on the right contained an examination table topped with Formica, storage cabinets, and several tall cages.

  Bustamente pointed to the cabinets, which had old-fashioned key locks built into them and were large enough to house a small monkey. “What’s in there?”

  “Medicines and medical supplies,” the vet said.

  Bustamente cocked his head. “Mind if Officer Luz and I take a peek?”