by Betty Webb
While the director mulled this over, Sheriff Rejas spoke again. “Here’s what we’re willing to do. We’ll keep the zoo closed until noon, then cordon off Tropics Trail for the rest of the day. That way, the man’s death won’t cut into your gate receipts too deeply.”
Fields missed the barb. “It’ll cut them by half!”
Ignoring him, sheriff turned to me, his frosty eyes warming. “Teddy ... ah, Ms. Bentley, perhaps you’ll show me what you were doing when you discovered the body? Without entering the exhibit again, of course.”
Relieved that my long-ago boyfriend had decided to keep our interaction on a professional level, I led him and his deputies back to Lucy’s enclosure and ran through my movements. “I didn’t notice the man until I...” I motioned to the bucket and broom I’d dropped on the way out of the exhibit. “...until I started cleaning.”
“Did you touch the body?”
I averted my eyes from the ongoing action under the banana tree. “When he didn’t wake up I poked him with my broom. He still didn’t move so I pushed the brush aside. That’s when I saw that he didn’t have much skin left. Especially on his face.” I swallowed hard.
“What did you do then?”
“Got sick.”
“Teddy, that’s not what I meant.”
Back to first names. Not wanting to let our personal history sidetrack me, I said, “Sheriff Rejas, I’m not sure what I did then. It’s horrible, finding someone clawed to pieces.” I breathed deeply. “After I finished upchucking, I radioed the park rangers. And the head keeper.”
Zorah, who had followed us, looked up expectantly.
Joe ignored her. “When you called in the emergency, did the park rangers respond immediately?”
“As soon as they finished their Earl Grey and crumpets.”
He shot me a look. “No point in getting smart, Ms. Bentley. I’m just doing my job.”
“Yes, they showed up within seconds. With first aid kits and rifles.”
He glanced into the enclosure, where the crime scene photographer was packing up his camera equipment. “Has the anteater attacked anyone before?”
“Her former keeper, whom she didn’t like. But Lucy didn’t kill him, merely scratched him on the leg.” As far as zookeepers were concerned, anything less than twenty stitches was a scratch, and he’d only required nineteen.
The photographer backed out of the enclosure, looking as sick as I felt.
Oblivious, Joe resumed his questioning. “What do you think brought on the attack?”
“It could have been anything. Merely intruding into her territory might have set her off. She doesn’t even like it when I enter, and she’s used to me. A stranger would be taking his life in his hands.” Oops. The dead man certainly had. “Do you know who he is, ah, was? I couldn’t tell from his face.” What was left of it.
Joe leaned toward me, lowering his voice. “I don’t want this to get around yet, but his driver’s license indicates that he’s Grayson Harrill. The deputy I sent up the hill to notify his wife radioed me a few minutes ago that e collapsed. Her doctor’s with her now.”
My nausea returned, but at least not to the retching point. “Oh, Joe, you can’t let Jeanette see him like this!”
“We’ll make the official ID from dental records. The condition he’s in, it’s the only thing possible for now. We can confirm with DNA later.”
Grayson’s wife was the great-great-granddaughter of Edwin Gunn, the zoo’s founder. Jeanette—who’d been my roommate at Miss Pridewell’s Academy—was a voting member of the Gunn Trust, the organization which ran the zoo.
Now I was more alarmed than ever on Lucy’s behalf. She was just an anteater being an anteater, and as such, blameless in the attack. But I doubted that the billion-dollar Gunn Trust or its insurance carriers would interpret her actions in such a benign manner. Regardless of her popularity with our zoo visitors, the Trust could order her traded to another zoo. Even worse, they might follow Barry Fields’ advice.
Grasping at straws, I said, “When you get through questioning everyone, it might be worth your while to find out what Grayson was doing up here. He wasn’t all that cuddly with animals.”
Joe frowned. “Isn’t he one of the Zoo Guild members? Like his wife?”
“Sure. So’s my mother and she doesn’t even own a cat. A lot of the Guild members see community service as their civic duty, others perform it for political reasons. Sure, the majority of them like animals. Grayson did, too, at least in the abstract, but he didn’t care for close encounters with them. You should have seen his face a couple of weeks ago when someone stuck an adolescent saki in his arms for a publicity picture. He looked at the poor little thing as if it were a bomb ready to explode.”
“Adolescent saki?”
“Small white-faced monkey. Weighs about a pound.”
“If he was uncomfortable with animals, why did he spend so much time at the zoo? People have told me he was here almost every day.”
“That’s because he’d taken over for his wife. As one of the Gunns, she did a lot of office-type stuff around here besides her Guild work, but her migraines, which she’s suffered from for years, started getting worse, so he jumped in to fill the breach. He’s always been good about helping her. And it kept him busy.”
“Didn’t he have a job?”
“He dabbled in real estate. Some, anyway. Other than that, I guess his job was being Jeanette’s husband.”
“Sounds like a kept man.”
A harsh epitaph, and unfair. Grayson worked harder for Jeanette than most men did at their nine-to-fives. In my mind, I could see his round, eager face turned toward her, anxiously awaiting her next request. Not my idea of the perfect husband, perhaps, but as they say, it takes all kinds.
“You’re being unfair. He didn’t just sit around counting Jeanette’s money. If the zoo needed anything, from a gross of paper clips to new plantings for the cheetah exhibi he was our point man.”
“I’ll take your word that the victim earned his keep.”
We were both silent until I asked, “What’s going to happen to Lucy?”
“Since the San Sebastian County Animal Shelter doesn’t have suitable quarters for a giant anteater, we’ll have to leave her here until ... Well, until the zoo makes up its mind.”
Which meant that the anteater’s ultimate fate lay in Barry Fields’ insensitive hands.
Unless I could prove Grayson was responsible for his own demise, Lucy was doomed.
Chapter Three
About an hour later, the sheriff finished interviewing everyone and released us. The earthly remains of Grayson Harrill were taken away to wherever earthly remains go, and soon afterward the crime scene techs departed.
Lucy remained distraught. Despite my efforts to soothe her, she paced back and forth along the holding pen fence, hissing like a snake. She wanted back into her big enclosure, but on the zoo director’s orders she stayed off-exhibit. Perhaps permanently.
Having done all I could for her, I hopped into my electric zoo cart and continued my rounds. Next stop was Monkey Mania, the quarter-acre open-air exhibit where fifteen squirrel monkeys mingled freely with zoo visitors. I’d fed the monkeys first thing in the morning, but because of the unfortunate event in Lucy’s enclosure, was late cleaning out their night quarters, a series of room-sized cages hidden amid the brush behind the exhibit itself. As I hosed down the last cage, I heard an all-too-familiar voice.
“Teddy, I need to talk to you!” My mother.
I froze, hoping she wouldn’t see me. With everything that had happened, I wasn’t ready to deal with her.
“Did you hear me, Theodora? I know you’re in there because I can see that red hair of yours through the leaves!”
So much for avoiding her. I turned off the hose and waded through the troop of monkeys that had assembled outside the night quarters door, hoping for an extra handout.
“Sorry, guys, no more Monkey Chow until five.”
Marlon, t
he big Alpha male—if a two-pound monkey can be said to be big—snuck his hand into my pocket hoping to find a tasty worm. When his hand came up empty, he shrieked at me in outrage.
“Told you so, Marlon. Now go entertain the kiddies.”
For once Marlon did as he was told and led his troop away from the cages and onto the exhibit’s gravel path. A tour group, noisy third-graders bussed up from Monterey, thirty miles south, cheered as the monkeys gamboled among them for several yards before taking to the trees. Having struck out with me, the monkeys began foraging, looking for leaves, beetles, and small birds. An omnivorous species, they weren’t fussy.
“Theodora! I’m waiting!”
“Coming,” I muttered, as I emerged from the brush.
Today Caroline Piper Bentley Mallory Huffgraf Petersen, looking at least a decade younger than her fifty-two years, was dressed in a fuchsia Lanvin dress offset by a silver Fendi handbag and fuchsia-and-white polka dot Ghesquiere pumps, an outfit hilariously out of place in a zoo. Since she usually dressed appropriately, the outfit confused me until I remembered that one of her favorite charities, the San Sebastian County Library Guild, had been slated to hold its monthly luncheon today. Why was she here, not there?
She wrinkled her nose. “You stink, Teddy.”
“Taking care of monkeys will do that to you.”
As if to lead me away from my life of grime, she took me by the arm, then immediately let go as if something from the scorpion exhibit had stung her. “What in the world?”
“One of the monkeys crapped on me before I could move out of the way.”
With a cry of distaste, she opened her purse, hauled out some tissues and wiped a brown spot off her hand. “You don’t have to live like this. Now that one of these nasty creatures has killed someone, you need to resign immediately. In fact, I want you to come home with me now.”
Normally she behaved as if we were pals, not mother and daughter, but today she’d slipped back into the over-protective mother who’d driven me crazy throughout my teens. Ignoring her demands, I started up the winding pathway toward the exit, giving her the alternative to stay behind with my furry friends or follow me.
She chose the latter. “Didn’t you hear me? If you really want to work, God knows you don’t have to, we can find you another job in...”
“Please don’t tell me you skipped your luncheon to start that again.”
My job at the zoo had been an ongoing source of dissension ever since I’d left my teaching job in San Francisco. No compromise was possible. She didn’t like the idea of a Bentley cleaning up after anyone, especially monkeys. I didn’t like the idea of being trapped indoors all day with homo sapiens. Not that I have anything against homo sapiens.
Mother gave her hand a final flick with the tissue and handed it back to me instead of tossing it on the path. At least her work on the Zoo Guild, another of her organizations, had taught her that much.
“Since you ask, dear, Jeanette Gunn-Harrill was supposed to be our speaker today, but when we learned what happened to poor Grayson last night, we decided on a quick meeting to discuss what we could do for her. We wound up ordering flowers from La Jolie Jardiniere. Not lilies, too clichéd, but something sleek and comforting.”
She waited for me to say, “That’s nice.” So I did.
“Look, I know you love your job, but I’m afraid you’ll get hurt. You’re my only child, for heaven’s sake!”
One of the squirrel monkeys scampered across the walkway in front of us, carrying her baby on her back. Catching sight o a pink bead on her metal neckband, I identified her as Zsa Zsa, a first-time mom. Because first-borns rarely survive in the wild, their inexperienced mothers frequently being unable to cope, I’d prepared myself to hand-raise the baby. My caution proved unnecessary. Zsa Zsa loved her baby and if she had a flaw as a parent, it was in being over-protective. Gee, who did she remind me of?
“Mother, I’m perfectly safe here.”
“I’m sure that’s what Grayson thought before the anteater bit him. And don’t call me ‘Mother.’ It’s too age-specific. You know I prefer ‘Caro.’”
“Anteaters have no teeth, Caro. She clawed him.”
“Horrible!” Her hair, makeup and manicure were flawless; only the quiver of her collagened lower lip marred the perfection. That, and the slight pinky-orange tint her skin had taken on since she’d begun the La Jolla Strawberry/Carrot Diet a month earlier.
“It’s time for you to rejoin the real world, Theodora, maybe go back to teaching.”
Real world? This, from a woman who at a size three thought she was too fat?
I looked around at the playful monkeys, listened to their birdlike calls blending with the nearby kookaburra’s cackles and the roar of the snow leopard six exhibits over. On the soft westerly breeze I could smell the Pacific, that liquid Eden populated by dolphins, whales and otters. If this wasn’t the real world, I didn’t know what was.
“I hated teaching. Besides, my teaching certificate has expired.”
“You don’t have to teach. You can...” Caro had never worked a day in her life, so her career advice tended to lack substance. “You can open a boutique.”
“I’m not interested in clothes.”
“How about an art gallery? I’ll front the money.”
“Gunn Landing already has more galleries than the tourist trade can support.”
“Go back to school! Study law or something.”
“Living with Michael soured me on the law.” I wouldn’t wish my ex-husband’s hours on my worst enemy. Not even him.
“How about medicine? You’re smart. You could be a doctor.”
The urge to laugh returned. I had never been a good student, frequently nodding off from sheer boredom, ditching classes to ride my horses, guessing my way through tests. I’d achieved my bachelor’s in biology and afterwards, my teaching credentials, by the skin of my teeth, so the idea of attempting medical school, even if one would accept me, was beyond ludicrous. All I wanted was to be outside in the sun and the rain and the fog and whatever the Central Coast climate threw at me. I especially wanted to be outside with animals. Like my Lucy.
Which reminded me of something that had been bothering me. “You were at the Zoo Guild fund-raiser last night. Wasn’t Jeanette there, too?”
Caro topped, a strange look on her face. “Of course she was, at least that’s what I heard. They say she left early, without Grayson.”
“What do you mean, ‘they say’? You don’t know for sure?”
“I wasn’t at the funder. Something came up.”
My mother hadn’t attended the fund-raiser? Civic-minded to a fault, she never missed any Guild function. For now I let it pass. “You’d think that when Jeanette noticed her husband didn’t make it back home, she would have called the police. Or did she? The sheriff didn’t say anything like that.”
As my mother stood there, one of the monkeys, an adolescent male named DiNiro, ran across her foot in pursuit of a dragonfly. She jerked her foot back as if the monkey were a snake.
“Ugh. Does it have fleas?”
“Probably. Did Jeanette and Grayson have a fight or something?”
“Don’t be silly. Those two never fought.”
She resumed walking toward the exit, eager to escape the free-range wildlife and return to the domain of human beings. Two more monkeys ran by, giving her a wide berth.
I hurried after her. “Jeanette never went anywhere without Grayson, so why’d she leave early? And later, how could she possibly not notice he wasn’t in bed with her? They do sleep in the same bed, don’t they?”
“I never asked.” As we reached the exhibit gates, where another group of school children waited for their turn to walk among the monkeys, she halted again. “Why are you so interested in Jeanette’s comings and goings? You went to school together, but you’ve never had two minutes to spare for her since then.”
“Just curious, that’s all.”
She put her hand up, keeping
me from opening the door and ushering her out of the exhibit. “Teddy, you’re not a curious person now, and you weren’t a curious child. You never cared for anything other than your horses or going out on some boat. In fact, you were so uncurious that I used to worry about you.”
Used to? “Caro...”
“Oh, all right. I heard that halfway through the funder, Jeanette came down with one of those awful migraines of hers, so she left. Once she arrived home, she took enough medication to zonk her out for the duration. When the police showed up this morning she hadn’t come around yet, and they had the devil of a time waking her. My maid heard that from her maid, you understand. I wasn’t snooping or anything.”