The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery)

by Jessie Bishop Powell

  I hated the man, but we needed the money. We didn’t argue. Where Natasha’s name had largely been shielded from the news of the pornography ring, the sanctuary’s had not. A few pictures of our monkeys in lewd shots had been leaked. We lost funders almost daily for the month of June, and when things stabilized in July, we had to make some hard decisions. We already only employed three people besides Lance and myself. Everybody else was a volunteer. We needed to cut one salary. Rather than let go any of the hands we desperately needed, I fired myself.

  For the present, I was formally a volunteer. It made no practical difference to day-to-day operations. Lance and I were both still in charge. But it was a slice to our personal finances, and those university courses were something of a godsend.

  And there was something else. I didn’t think the sanctuary would ever recover to the point of being able to pay me again. Lance and I needed to keep the added income. Ironweed U was advertising Art’s position for the following fall. Once someone was hired to replace him, the need for part-time faculty to teach his courses would evaporate. If the wrong person got hired, someone with a different pet project, the university’s desire to fund the sanctuary might also evaporate, and besides Stan Oeschle and his personal fortune, Ironweed U was our largest source of money.

  The solution seemed simple to me. I loved to teach. I wanted Art’s job. But Lance and I had long ago agreed we were field researchers, not teachers to be trapped into semester schedules. I didn’t think he would like it when he found out I was applying.

  CHAPTER 4

  Dear Nora:

  Why am I the only person who can do anything around here? My husband and kids will hardly lift a finger. Help!

  Worked to the Bone

  Dear Worked:

  Hire an expensive housekeeper and present the bill to your family. Then take yourself for a spa weekend. Repeat as necessary.

  Nora

  Half an hour later, I jerked at a knock on my open door.

  “Sorry.” Bryan, Travis’s partner, shifted from foot to foot in the hall.

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m jittery and distracted. Here, come in. I didn’t expect to see you so quickly.” I shifted some books encroaching on the couch. Because it had been here longer than the current doorway, that particular upholstered nightmare would only be coming out in pieces. It had automatic priority over my need for space. Natasha’s complete unwillingness to sleep on it was testament to its age and condition. If I got Art’s job, my first official act would be to evict both the sofa and my current officemate, even if the former had to be removed one axed-up piece at a time and the latter bribed with gourmet coffee.

  Bryan didn’t answer my implied question. Instead, he began reshelving titles. “Lance can’t keep those things in order, can he?”

  “I guess I’ve already made room for you one too many times. You know where all of them go.” Lance’s and my shared office at the old house worked because it was at least four times this size. Even at our old house, the room had been twice as big as this cramped hole in the university wall. But we were part-timers, and it was something of a coup to score Art’s old office, which was considered large by departmental standards. Technically, we were not entitled to the bigger spaces afforded our fulltime colleagues, but nobody else wanted to clean up Art’s mess or deal with his files. The tradeoff was Lance and me having to share everything here, even the desk, like a couple of teaching assistants. Still, there were certain tasks best accomplished at school, and completing syllabi and writing out assignments seemed to be among these, since paper was at a premium at the center and the department offered free printing in exchange for timely submission.

  I hated to come in after Lance had been here. He was untidy at best, downright sloppy at worst, and the desk brimmed with his stacks of papers and inexplicable notes. I always swore half the reason he and Art had gotten along so well was their mutual disregard for anything resembling organization. I’m hardly a neat freak myself, but I can keep a desk cleared. I can put away my books when I’m through using them.

  Bryan finished his work as my personal librarian. “Saw you on the news.” He didn’t quite manage to keep the curiosity out of his voice. “Pretty freaky stuff.” He sat.

  “And now the kid’s social worker wants to place the kid with us, but you may not print that.” And why won’t that idea leave me alone? Bryan was one of the two editors of the Muscogen Free Press, and the only reporter I would even consider talking to about this morning’s adventure. He had done wonders to keep the sanctuary’s name held in high regard, at least in the county.

  “With you and Lance?” His question held personal, not professional, interest.

  I resumed my work at the keyboard. “What is she thinking?” And what am I thinking?

  “A couple of people she knew nothing about would be perfect for the kid because you happened to find him, naturally.”

  “She knows about us. Knows too much about us. She’s the one who wouldn’t leave us alone when we were taking classes for Natasha.”

  “The Orangutan Lady?”

  Bryan and Travis had listened to me rant about Merry for most of the summer. They were interested in our progress through social services because they were considering an adoption from foster care themselves. They had been working with a private agency for nearly three years and were no closer now to parenthood than when they started out. The foster care system was looking better and better to them.

  But even within the system, there was a delay for a couple hoping to adopt an infant, as they were, and they had already been through a home study with the private agency. Our rapid and tumultuous experience with Natasha hadn’t given them much confidence in the system. For the present, they were planning to stay the course and keep waiting.

  “What did she say?”

  “You don’t want to know. It was racist, now I think about it, though at the time, all I noticed was how offensive it was about the little boy’s mind.”

  “You going to report her?”

  “I’m going to talk to somebody once I’ve calmed down. Officer Carmichael heard the remark too, and I want to get his take.” I hit enter three times and typed my name into my document. “You have a minute to proofread something?” Bryan’s sharp editor’s eyes were exactly what I needed now.

  “Sure. Travis is going to be embroiled with the department chair for at least the next thousand years.” He glanced at his watch. “At this rate, our lunch date is going to be tomorrow.” It was already one o’clock, and the biology chair was notorious for last-minute demands, making lunches nigh on impossible for his employees. One of Travis’s chief complaints since taking the job was his schedule as a salaried employee. He’d been hourly at his former jobs, and the lack of guaranteed breaks irked him.

  I hit print and retrieved my sheets. Art’s personal printer was another advantage of the university office. “Thanks for the help.” While he read and red-lined, I checked on Natasha. Travis had left her in the care of a graduate assistant, another semi-friendly face who didn’t seem to care one way or the other that the sleeping girl behind her was tossing and talking. “Don’t,” Natasha said. “She’s only sleeping.”

  “Tasha,” I called.

  She twisted, but didn’t wake. “No! . . .”

  “Natasha.” I patted her arm.

  “Get off of me!” She jumped to her feet, then jerked her head from side to side, her arms held in a defensive pose. As quickly, she collapsed to her seat, gasping for breath like she’d been running. “It’s you,” she said. “Thank God, it’s only you.” She lowered her forehead to her palms.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I saw the EMT . . . when Mom died . . . purple . . .” She shook her head, clearing it, and said, “Yeah. Can I lock myself in the conference room and call Trudy? I remembered something.”

  Natasha never wanted to talk to me about the things she remembered. Stan said she never talked to him, either. Perhaps she confided in Gert, but I don
’t think so. The memories came to her jaggedly, in nightmares and waking flashbacks. When she volunteered at the primate center, I often heard her talking in a low voice to Chuck, our resident male orangutan, who we had captured after he saved us all in June. I wondered if she was telling him about the things that made her shudder and cry out in her sleep, and clam up and pull away while waking. Without fail, if she felt something was significant, she rang the FBI agent.

  “Let me make sure it’s not where the chair has Travis cornered. If it is, you can use my office. Otherwise, it should be fine.” The conference room was empty when I looked in, but the stink of rotting food emanating from the departmental fridge and its unofficial pantry in the cabinet to one side made both of us gag. “Trash can.”

  Shirts pulled over our noses, we dashed in with the can from the hall and emptied both the pantry and the fridge. I nearly pitched the fresh lunch Travis would probably not be enjoying, but Tasha swiped it back at the last second. Lacking anything to scrub with or any cleaning liquids to employ in such a project, I was prepared to unplug the fridge and leave the door open to let it air to the room. But Natasha saw a can of disinfectant spray on the top shelf. “Help me push the big table over there, and I’ll reach that,” she said.

  In fact, the top shelf was so high above her head she ultimately fumbled around until the can fell out, bounced on the table, then landed on the carpet, its trigger depressed, and noxious lemon scent spewing straight up. “I got it! I got it!” I aimed it in the pantry and fridge. I jammed the nozzle, but it went on spraying. “Now what do I do with it?”

  “Get rid of it before it smells as bad as the food!” Natasha jumped down.

  “Where?” I threw it in the sink.

  “Not there!” She grabbed it back. “Get it out of the room.” She popped it in the garbage still fizzing. “Help me out, Noel!”

  We tied off the bag to a hissing chorus. “Shouldn’t it run out soon?”

  Natasha grabbed the brimming trash can on the far side and dragged it backward across the carpet. “I don’t know. It felt almost full.”

  I shoved with her. As we forced the lid down atop the overfull bag, the chair’s voice drifted down the hall. “Get the ad out there,” he grumbled, doubtless hassling Travis. “I want to interview for this position on the conference circuit this January.” Their footsteps echoed down the hall, headed for us and our smelly mess. Here he was talking about the job I wanted and about to come upon me manhandling a fetid, whooshing container that probably, now I considered the problem, contained his lunch.

  Natasha seemed to have reached a similar conclusion. “What do we do?” she mouthed to me.

  “Run! Hide!”

  “Where?”

  “My office.”

  We scurried around the corner as the chair asked, “What in thunder is that smell?” By the time he demanded, “What’s wrong with the trash can, Travis?” we were scooting in my door. Bryan perched on the couch arm, one of my red grading pens in one hand, my CV and cover letter attached to a clipboard on his lap.

  He didn’t look up. “What’s the commotion?”

  Natasha leaned into the door, clicking it gently shut. I snatched up my phone and dialed the desk. When Travis picked up, I said, “The noise in the trash is an overzealous can of lemon spray. It may overwhelm the other smells. Your lunch is the only one I didn’t pitch.” Then I hung up. “I guess you’ll need to use my office,” I told Natasha. “I’m thinking the conference room is out.”

  “Is Travis free?” Bryan handed over my papers. “I bled all over these. All the mistakes are nitpicky stuff, but a letter-perfect document will stand out. You have no idea how many reporter applications the Press gets from people who can’t spell or put a sentence in the right order.”

  “Maybe you could do a series about it.”

  “I don’t want to mock . . . but Nora could! Get your mother to call me later, will you?”

  “What’s Next, Nora?” was one of the Free Press’s most popular columns. It had started as a series of sewing tips years ago, when Bryan’s parents ran the paper. Back then, it was called “Tell Me More, Lenore,” and questions traditionally ended with, “Please help or send thread.” Over the years, it had blossomed into a more general column as people started to send in a broader range of questions. Now, it seemed nothing was off limits. Hence, the updated name. Mom responded to queries about everything from sex to lawn maintenance. Muscogen County had a love for the outré, and Lenore Rue’s column was one of the first sections people turned to when the paper hit their doorsteps once a week.

  Occasionally, Mom stepped out of her assigned role to editorialize or satirize something. “It does sound right up her alley.” I followed Bryan out of the office and shut the door behind us to give Natasha privacy. “I can imagine Nora would have tons to say on the topic.” Although she was a seamstress by trade, Mom had grown up the child of a single mother in the 1950s, and she and my Nana had lived under the community’s constant scrutiny. She might be making up for her straight-laced childhood in other ways, like badly dyed hair, living in a house that used to be a funeral home, and writing a sometimes racy advice column, but Mom had the diction and grammar of an English teacher. She would enjoy a chance to take aim at some of her pet peeves.

  “I do want to talk to you about this morning,” Bryan said more quietly. “But I don’t want to print anything that could make trouble.” Although he appeared to be the least aggressive reporter in the business, Bryan had a way of putting people off guard and extracting far more information than speakers ever meant to give him. But he was also ethical, and on our side here, and not only because Stan was one of the newspaper’s major funders.

  “You don’t go to press for a few days, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Give us another day to get moved in, and we’ll have you guys over for dinner with the detective. I’m not promising gourmet fare; we’ll probably order in pizza from the Marine, but it would give you a chance to talk to all of us at once.”

  “Noel, I love you!” He planted a big kiss on my cheek right as Travis came out of the office.

  “Honey! Cheating on me!” Travis said in mock horror.

  “It’s not what you think. I mean, I love her, but I don’t love love her. I don’t. . . .” He paused, then untangled his verbal web by kissing Travis on the lips. “See? Cheeks are for friends, lips are for families. Let’s go to lunch.”

  “You know I can’t. I’ve got a dozen syllabi to make fifty copies each of, and . . .”

  “Of course you can!” Bryan interrupted Travis’s spiel. “You’re salaried. Nobody is watching you punch the clock.”

  “The chair is watching everything I do. Besides, I brought my lunch.”

  “Technically, I did, too. Let’s go anyway. If you want, we can sashay past his office arm in arm . . .” Travis and Bryan were about the least sashaying couple I knew.

  “I’d like to, but I’d rather get home on time tonight, and he wants me to revise his ad for Dr. Hooper’s position. He wants somebody with a different specialty to bring new ideas to the department.”

  My heart sank. Travis rolled his eyes. Bryan patted my back. Travis had known I was applying for the job ever since it came open, and if Bryan hadn’t already, editing my cover letter had surely clued him in. “Don’t worry about him,” Travis said. “The rest of the committee won’t go along with it. They like the ad exactly as it’s written. I have to compose something for them to reject to humor him. Come on! Half of them expect you or Lance or both of you to apply for it. You’re a shoo-in.”

  “I wish I felt so sure. Listen, Lance doesn’t know . . .”

  “You haven’t told him? What if he wants to apply, too?”

  “You know something I don’t?”

  “No . . . no, but it seems . . .”

  “Noel!” Natasha came pelting down the hall. “Where’s your cell phone?”

  “In my pocket, why?”

  “Call Lance back. He’
s been trying to get hold of you ever since he got to the sanctuary.” I pulled out the phone. Predictably, I had it silenced. I had missed ten calls. “He rang the office,” she went on. “And he wants to know if we can get a ride out to the sanctuary.”

  “What? Why?” I fumbled in my haste to dial. Naturally, Lance didn’t answer. “Is something wrong?”

  “I think so. He sounded rushed. He said something about catching the little termites before they got into more mischief.”

  “The what? Bryan, can you . . . ?”

  “You bet, but I want an exclusive on whatever it is . . . as long as it won’t mess you guys up.” He turned briefly to Travis. “You. Me. Tomorrow. Lunch,” he said. “And the chair can go to hell if he tries to interrupt.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Dear Nora:

  My neighbor’s cat gets out of his house and uses my yard as a litterbox. The neighbor refuses to believe this is happening, even when confronted with direct evidence. What can I do?

  Pooped

  Dear Pooped:

  Get a dog.

  Nora

  “Don’t open that!” Lance slammed the barn door as I tried to come in through the back.

  “Hey!You nearly mashed my fingers.”

  “Should have warned you.” He opened the door a crack and rapidly ushered Bryan, Natasha, and I through.

  “Good thing we’re all thin. What’s the . . .” Something brown shot by my ankles and connected with the door as Lance threw himself backward once more. It ran back the way it had come, brushing me again on its way past.

  Natasha screamed and jumped as it latched onto her.

  “What was that?” Bryan demanded.

  “A monkey,” I said. “A rhesus macaque. The more relevant question is, what’s it doing in here?”

  Natasha screamed again. The monkey shimmied up her body and sat on her head, yanking her long brown hair as it chittered insults at Lance. “Ow!” The barn rose in a symphony of answering simian screeches and screams.