The Koala of Death

by Betty Webb

  “Ms. Bentley, approximately what time did you leave Gunn Zoo?” Joe said, in a chillingly neutral voice. He was taking notes, too.

  With a wary eye on the tape recorder, I answered, “At the usual time. Just after six.”

  “And you went straight to Mr. Liddell’s boat?”

  “First I fed Miss Priss and walked Bonz. Then I went to see Heck, um, Mr. Liddell.”

  He didn’t look up from his note pad. “That would be at about what time?”

  “Maybe five minutes before 9-1-1 received my call. Maybe three. I wasn’t checking my Timex, and you know darn well that conversation was time-tagged.”

  “Describe your movements yesterday, say, from two-fifteen until this morning.”

  “You mean after our trip to the zoo with the kids?”

  He didn’t look up, but I saw the tips of his ears turn red. “Just answer the question, Ms. Bentley.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Joe, don’t tell me you think I killed that poor old man!”

  His next few words proved why he refused to look at me. “In a murder investigation, no one is above suspicion, Ms. Bentley.”

  Swallowing my anger, I gave him a rundown on yesterday’s activities. Visiting Heck and promising to help him clean the filthy My Fancy. Surfing the Internet and finding The Tasmanian Devil. Going with Caro to visit Speaks-to-Souls in San Sebastian. I did skip, however, the more ridiculous details of the doggie séance.

  “That’s your vacuum cleaner on Mr. Liddell’s boat?”

  “Yes.” I knew better than to ask for it back. The vacuum cleaner, along with My Fancy and everything on it, would soon be joining Kate’s Nomad at the county impound lot. Then I remembered something much more important than any old vacuum cleaner. “Joe, Heck’s cats. They can’t be left on the boat.”

  “Animal Control’s on their way.”

  Here was the problem. Building on the San Sebastian County No-Kill Animal Shelter was months away from completion, and in the meantime, strays were being housed at the county pound. And due to overcrowding…Well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Tell Animal Control to turn around. I’ll take the cats.”

  He turned his attention away from his note pad and looked me full in the face so I could see the disapproval on his own. “You can’t be serious, Teddy. There must be a dozen cats on that boat, and the Merilee’s too small for the animals you already have.”

  “Seven.”

  “What?”

  “Seven cats. And there’s more room on the Merilee than you think.”

  Theoretically Merilee offered around four hundred square feet of living area, most of which was taken up by decks, bulkheads, the galley, and various fittings. I’d once estimated that there was less than twenty feet of actual walking-around space. But crowded cats were better off than pound cats. I’d find them good homes, beginning with zookeeper friends who had proven to be soft touches for needy animals. Come to think of it, Zorah was down to three cats. She had room for at least two more.

  Joe’s voice interrupted my kitty placement plans. “If you want to bring in more animals, I can’t stop you, but you’re cra…” After a glance at the tape recorder-wielding deputy, he looked back down at his note pad and changed the subject. “Right. Let’s talk about Ms. Cushing. Didn’t you once tell me she and Mr. Liddell hated each other?”

  “You must’ve heard me wrong.”

  “How about Ms. Cushing’s relations with Kate Nido? Any problems there?”

  That question made me wonder if Joe was beginning to doubt his case against Outback Bill, but any joy I might have felt was replaced by a new concern for Linda. The last thing she needed was to take up residence in the San Sebastian County Jail.

  Joe’s official voice pulled me back from my worries. “Ms. Bentley? You didn’t answer my question. How did Ms. Cushing get along with Ms. Nido?”

  Oh, Ms, Ms, Ms. He sounded like a beehive. “They were the best of friends.”

  Apparently he didn’t see my fingers crossed behind my back, because he then proceeded to ask me about Heck’s and Kate’s relations with everyone at Gunn Landing Harbor, including the harbormaster.

  “We all get along great.”

  “Yeah, you’re just a ‘Kumbayah’-singing bunch. Anything else you can tell me that might be pertinent to the investigation?”

  Now that the roughest part of the questioning was over, I opened up and told the tape recorder everything Heck and I had talked about the night before, leaving out Heck’s comments about my mother and her car, of course. I also didn’t tell Joe the probable reason for Kate’s animosity toward Walt MacAdams. But now, after Heck’s murder, I felt duty-bound to confess that I had been hiding something. Well, not actually hiding, just not being completely open, and those were two different things, weren’t they?

  “Ah, Joe, have you read Kate’s blog?”

  “Sure. It being within my jurisdiction, I read that zoo stuff all the time. Besides, it makes a relaxing departure from all the heavy material on LawOfficer.com. By the way, I’ve got an article in there this month about the new reactive skin decontamination products. You should read it.” Belatedly remembering the tape recorder, he cleared his throat. “What does Koala Kate’s Outback Telegraph have to do with anything?”

  “I mean Kate’s other blog, The Tasmanian Devil.”

  He looked up, his eyes narrowed so much that I wondered how he could see through them. “Are you telling me that Kate Nido had two different blogs?”

  “I just found out myself.” My voice was so tiny that even I could hardly hear it.

  His eyes narrowed even further. “Tell me everything.”

  With a sigh, I started in.

  ***

  By the time Joe left—after escorting me over to My Fancy to pick up the cats—I couldn’t tell if he was angry with me or merely disappointed. I was left alone on the Merilee with a boatload of furry angst.

  “Dog, cats, can’t we all just get along?”

  Miss Priss, recovered enough from her fright to bristle with indignity at this multi-cat invasion of her turf, stood on the galley counter and yowled her displeasure. Fluffed out to twice her size, her one remaining eye stared daggers down at the newcomers. They weren’t happy, either. Three stood mewling in distress on the steps leading up to the hatch, while the other four found comfort behind cushions in the triangular-shaped sleeping quarters at the bow.

  Bonz stared at them all in stupefaction. “More cats?” his expression seemed to ask. “They’re gonna steal my food!”

  After shutting up my own outraged pets in the aft bedroom and leaving Heck’s cats to make peace with their new environment, I headed over to the Tea 4 Two with a pot of freshly-brewed tea. I found MaryBeth just stepping off the boat. The look the harbormaster gave me was as dour as Joe’s. “Don’t stay too long, Teddy, and for God’s sake, don’t ask her any questions. She’s had to answer too many already.”

  For a fleeting moment, I wondered if Linda’s story matched mine. But why wouldn’t it?

  While MaryBeth headed toward her office at the northern end of the harbor, I called across to Tea 4 Two’s hatch. “Linda, it’s Teddy, with a pot of tea. Permission to come aboard?”

  “Yeah.” She sounded soggy.

  The tidy Tea 4 Two was a far cry from the slovenly My Fancy. A Catalina 30 that was almost the twin of MaryBeth’s, it was a sloop-rigged boat that had almost worn itself out from thirty years of sailing up and down the California coast. Last year, after unexpectedly coming into a small inheritance, Linda had repaired the keel, installed a new mast, and refurbished the interior with sea-blue carpeting and color coordinated appointments. She’d spiffed up the teak fittings, too, so much so that the interior looked like it had just left the showroom. Now she seemed oblivious to her splendid surroundings. Accompanied by her faithful German shepherd Hans, she sat in the galley, huddled into a blanket.

  “It’s all my
fault,” was the first thing she said.

  Survivor’s guilt. I had a touch of it myself. As I set down the teapot on the galley’s Formica table, I responded, “There’s no way you could have done anything.”

  She shook her head. “I heard it, Teddy. Only at the time I didn’t realize what I was hearing.”

  When I sat down next to her, Hans licked my hand and whined. He was worried about her, too. “That’s impossible,” I said, pouring us both some tea.

  “Around one in the morning I heard someone walking along the dock, but I didn’t pay any attention. I figured it was just Sam Grimaldi sneaking someone over to the Gutterball for a midnight screw.”

  Linda had just confirmed my own suspicions about the Grimaldis’ marriage. Doris was the one with the money and big house, while Sam had youth and a boat. Since it was impossible that Doris didn’t know what was going on, the two had probably come to some sort of “modern” understanding. “Maybe you did hear Sam.”

  Linda shook her head again, this time so hard that I feared she would hurt her neck. “No. A few seconds later, I heard someone rap against a door. Then I heard it open and somebody whispering. It didn’t sound like Sam. Then everything went quiet and I fell back asleep.”

  “Did you tell the sheriff?”

  “Of course. But I could have stopped it, Teddy.” A tear trickled down her furrowed cheek.

  I’d brought tissues, so I handed her one, then poured us both some tea. Like me, she took hers black. After making certain she’d taken a sip, I said, “Look, Linda, if you’d gone over there, you’d have been killed, too. Do you really think that you’d have been allowed to live if you’d gone barging in?”

  At the shocked look in her eyes, I softened my tone. “You would have done that if you’d believed Heck was in danger, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course!”

  “Which means you had no inkling of what was going down. So don’t you ever feel guilty. There was nothing you could have done.”

  “But…”

  “Drink some more tea, Linda.”

  Some of the old spirit flooded back into her ravaged face. “I’ve already had so much tea I’m about to float away. MaryBeth got two pots down me before she took off.”

  “Decaffeinated, I hope.”

  “Do I look like a decaffeinated kind of gal?”

  I was about to apologize for casting aspersions on her honor when she said, “The sheriff says you’re keeping Heck’s cats on the Merilee until you find them good homes. Thank you for that, and I’m sure the old fart—wherever he is now—thanks you. In case you’re wondering, as ratty as they look, they’re all in good health. Since Heck didn’t have a car, I was the one who took them to Dr. Wypath, that vet over in Castroville. They’ve all been neutered and are up to date on their shots. To make it a little easier for you, I’ll start you off by taking two.”

  “Two cats?” I looked at the massive Hans, who appeared oblivious to her offer. “But what about Hans?”

  Hearing his name, the German shepherd raised his shaggy head. From where I was sitting, it looked as big as a Mexican gray wolf’s. His teeth were almost as big as a wolf’s, too.

  Linda must have noted my concern, because she said, “Oh, don’t worry about Hans. He’s always liked Spike and Estelle, but he has no time for any of the others.” At my blank expression, she added, “Spike’s the short-haired gray, Estelle’s the calico. They’re a couple.”

  Just like Linda and Heck. “I can take one, myself. No more, though, because as you know, I already have…”

  “Bonz and Miss Priss. Might I suggest little Toby? He’s the white part-Siamese. Has a bit of a mother complex from being weaned too early. Priss can give him all the mothering he missed.”

  Priss had never come across to me as the motherly type, but I was willing to try it. The more boat babies, the merrier. “Toby it is, then.”

  Casting off the blanket, Linda stood up. “Great. Let’s go get Spike and Estelle.”

  We trooped over to the Merilee, where Heck’s cat herd had pretty much taken over the entire boat, with the single exception of the aft bedroom, where from behind the door, the outraged Miss Priss continued to yowl.

  Unfazed, Linda said, “Toby will calm her down.”

  If she didn’t kill him first. But I had sense enough not to voice my thoughts. “We’ll see.”

  It wasn’t too hard separating Spike and Estelle from the herd. After a few nervous hisses, they allowed Linda to scoop them up and carry them over to the Tea 4 Two, me following with two cans of cat food and an empty coffee can I’d filled with kitty litter. As soon as she released the cats, Hans walked over and nuzzled Estelle. She purred. He did the same to Spike, but Spike just stood there in stoic silence. Then the three, led by Hans, trooped into the aft sleeping quarters where they all curled up together on Linda’s blue blanket.

  “That’s surprising,” I said.

  For the first time since we’d found Heck’s body, Linda attempted a smile. “Things aren’t always what they seem.”

  I set the cat food down on the galley sink and poured the kitty litter into the cardboard box she’d found under the sink. “You’re going to need a litter tray.”

  Her smile disappeared. “I’ll pick one up in the morning on the way to the funeral home. Heck doesn’t have any family, so it’s up to me to make arr…arr…arrangements.” After clearing her throat, she continued more steadily. “Speaking of arrangements, what’s the holdup with Kate’s funeral? She wasn’t here long, but she was one of us. All the liveaboarders want to attend.”

  I explained the problems the police were having finding Kate’s father. “They’ve called every nursing home in the Oakland area looking for an Alzheimer’s patient named Nido, and there don’t seem to be any.”

  “Have you considered that ‘Nido’ might not be his last name? Heck once told me that when Kate was seventeen, she had a big falling out with her father and ran off and married some kid from San Francisco. Apparently it didn’t work out, because she was back on the Nomad less than a year later. Maybe she never took her maiden name back. Some women don’t. After they go to all that rigmarole of changing their maiden names to their married names on their drivers’ licenses, Social Security cards and other stuff, they don’t want the trouble of doing it all over again.”

  “That would be pretty rare, don’t you think? Especially these days.”

  A bitter laugh. “You think so? Well, I wasn’t born with the name ‘Cushing’, Teddy. That came courtesy of a marriage when I was old enough to know better. And don’t bother asking about it. That’s a part of my life I simply won’t discuss.”

  We never know as much about our friends as we think we do, do we? Moving beyond my surprise at Linda’s secret past, I admitted that her theory about Kate might be correct. “Did Heck ever mention Kate’s husband’s name?”

  “He…” She gulped, then recovered herself. “He just said once bitten, twice shy, and that was why she had trouble sticking to one man. Myself, I think it might have had more to do with the way he said she was raised, with her dad bringing all those girlfriends onto their boat and none of them ever staying more than a few months. When you’re raised around revolving door relationships, that’s what passes as normal for you.” She sighed. “Oh, well. Thanks for the tea.”

  I know when I’m being dismissed, so I left her with a new menagerie to comfort her through the long, lonely night.

  When I returned to the Merilee, I discovered that the yowl-fest I’d left behind had diminished in energy. From behind the aft bedroom door, Miss Priss muttered imprecations at the invaders, but the other cats were silent. To help them feel at home, I set out several saucers of cat food. One by one, they crept forward and began to eat. Toby was easy to spot. He was the smallest, a pale enough cream color to pass for white, and with a less wedge-shaped head than a full Siamese. Within seconds he let himself be bullied away from his saucer by a larger cat.

  Later, after I’d hand-fed Toby at
the table so that the feline bullies couldn’t take his food away, I retired to the aft bedroom, where I found Miss Priss so angry that she refused to let me pet her. Instead, she stalked to the corner of the bed and lay there in a huff.

  Believing it would help me keep my mind off Heck’s murder, I stayed up half the night to write the Tiger Teddy column for the zoo’s blog. It dulled my unhappiness, but never quite made it disappear. At three I finished the blog and sent it to Zorah via email. Then I turned in, with Toby curled against my left side, Miss Priss at my right, and DJ Bonz at my feet. Snug and warm, my three babies and I drifted off to sleep.

  My dreams were not good.

  In the worst, it was late at night. I was walking along the dock toward the Merilee when I saw a man and two women floating face down in Gunn Landing Harbor, wires wrapped around their necks.

  As the incoming tide nudged at them, the three bodies slowly rolled over to stare sightlessly at the moon-lit sky.

  Kate.

  Heck.

  And me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Zorah was already in her office when I clocked in at six the next morning. A blank note pad was positioned in front of her, pen at its side. Unlike myself, she looked like she’d had a good night’s sleep. Then again, she’d only heard the news about Heck on KTSS just this morning, while getting ready for work.

  Concerned, she said, “You need to get off the Merilee, Teddy. It’s too dangerous. Stay with your mother until they find out who’s been doing this.”

  When I shook my head, she added, “Oh, yeah. I forgot that you and your mother don’t always get along. Too bad. She’s a nice woman. Generous to the zoo, too. Tell you what. You can come stay with me. I don’t have much room, but the couch makes into a comfortable bed. You can even bring your dog and cat.”

  I thanked her for her kind offer, but turned her down, explaining that the Merilee was my home and I wasn’t going to be driven from it. “By the way, what are you doing in the office so early? What happened to the perks of management?”