The Anteater of Death

by Betty Webb

  But I didn’t judge the radicals harshly because sometimes they had a point. A necropsy proved that the red pandas died from rat poison which accidentally made its way into their food, and that the elephants, although elderly, probably would have lived longer if they’d been given larger quarters and a better exercise regimen.

  In a bid to counteract the ensuing bad publicity, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association had asked several zoos to open themselves to inspection by a committee of independent veterinarians from the National Academy of Sciences. To our horror, the Gunn Zoo had been chosen as one of them.

  For several weeks, it seemed no one could go anywhere in the zoo without tripping over a vet collecting feces or staring up some mandrill’s snout. Like my fellow keepers, I had breathed a sigh of relief when they finished their study and left, but now we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop: their report.

  I tried to keep the concern out of my voice. “That’s interesting, especially since the visiting vets were so close-mouthed about their findings. God knows I could never get a peep out of any of them, and I certainly tried. Did Grayson tell you how he was able to snag a copy of the report before it was released?”

  She shook her head. “For some reason he was very secretive lately, which upset me, because normally he and I told each other everything.” This propelled her into another bout of weeping.

  Secretive? Old anglerfish Grayson, a man so attached to his wife you couldn’t tell where he left off and she began?

  “Before he was mur ... ah, died, did he ever mention any other meetings he might have had with Barry Fields? Or with Dr. Kate?”

  Kate Long was the zoo veterinarian. If the zoo didn’t look good on the report, her neck would be on the chopping block, and since she had an invalid husband and three young children, I doubted she would mount that chopping block without a fight.

  Jeanette shook her head again. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Another thing. Were you the person who decided to put the staff in anteater costumes?”

  “We planned everything so long ago that it’s hard to remember. I ordered the costumes, I remember that, because getting so many anteater costumes was a real bitch, but I think Barry was the person who made the original suggestion. Or maybe it was ... let’s see. We had this big planning session and everyone was talking at once, suggesting this and that. The costume thing had pretty much run its course after the kangaroo debacle, but no one listened to me. What difference does it make?”

  I shrugged. “An anteater costume with its long nose and thick hair would make a good disguise for anyone who might be up to something.”

  She began crying again, more softly this time. I kept kneeling there on the floor, holding her hand. When her tears diminished, she took another swig of gin. “I don’t understand. Why would anyone want to hurt him?”

  “Weren’t you two part of the group that wanted to break up the Gunn Trust?”

  She blinked at this seeming change of subject but answered anyway. “Of course. It’s the only possible position. Unless the Trust is broken, Grayson and I will remain under my great-aunt’s thumb.” Will remain. She spoke as if her husband were still alive. “As Great-grandpa Edwin’s last living child, Aster Edwina holds the controlling interest. I’m only fourth generation, and with those niggardly dividend checks I’ve been receiving, Grayson and I can’t afford to strike out on our own. Not if we want to have a decent standard of living, we can’t.”

  Her face changed. “Oh. That’s right. He’s dead.” Through renewed sobs, she wailed, “What am I going to do without him?”

  Thirty years old, married for ten years, and she had only recently decided to cut the Gunn apron strings. I’d always viewed her relationship with her husband as neurotic, but today I felt nothing but pity. Love can put a woman through hell, can’t it?

  “It’s never easy after a loss, but you’ll begin a new life. Like I did after Michael left me.”

  Her mouth dropped. “Oh, Teddy! You call what you have a life?”

  ***

  When I arrived home at the Merilee, I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, poured myself a glass of Riesling and went out on the back deck to watch seagulls dive into sunset-colored water. Their cries accompanied the splashing of waves against the Merilee’s hull, and from further along the dock, I could hear a woman’s gentle laughter, a man answering in a low tone. Further out in the harbor an otter broke the surface.

  Smiling in anticipation, I made a quick trip to my small galley refrigerator and took out a dock-fresh herring I’d picked up earlier at Fred’s Fish Market. I returned to the back deck, took a sip of my Riesling, and settled myself into the deck chair I’d liberated from the Gunn Landing town dump. DJ Bonz jumped up, curled next to me with his head on my belly and promptly went to sleep. Miss Priss followed, kneading a place for herself across my thighs. She slapped a quick paw at the herring, so I tapped her nose.

  “No, greedy. It’s not for you.”

  My muscles ached from the hard physical labor I’d put in, but it was a comforting ache, a tangible reminder of an honest day’s work. While the gulls swooped down to grab fish foolish enough to stay near the water’s surface, I breathed in the salty air, marveling at how well it went with Riesling and peanut butter.

  I smiled, at ease with myself and the world. “This is the life, isn’t it, Priss?”

  The cat stared at me through her one good eye. While she couldn’t answer, her smug look told me she agreed.

  I was mulling over my great good fortune to be living here, when my cell phone rang. Annoyed, I took it out of my pocket and checked the caller ID screen. Joe.

  Pittypat, went my heart.

  “Is this a professional call or personal?” I asked him.

  “Either. Or.” Behind him, I could hear the TV tuned to something with a laugh track. One of his children begged to be allowed to stay up for a few more minutes to finish the show. In an exasperated voice, he said, “Hold on,” and put the phone down.

  For about the three-thousandth time I wondered what my life would have been like if I’d ignored my mother’s edict and run off with him, as we’d once planned to do. We would have our own family by now. I would never have met Michael.

  Or lost my faith in love.

  Once the background noise subsided, Joe returned to the phone. “Kids. They drive you crazy and still you love them. Let’s get business out of the way, first, shall we? What did you find out at the castle? When I went up there, they’d lawyered up, especially Aster Edwina. Jesus, what a piece of work she is.”

  Fluffalooza barked on the other end of the line, and Bonz cocked his head. Seeing no nearby threat, he went back to sleep.

  “Teddy?”

  “You wouldn’t need a spy if you read the newspapers.”

  “I subscribe to three papers, Ms. Smartypants, and read everything from the front page to the obits. Especially the obits. What’s your point? If you have one.”

  “The Gunn Trust is the point. Grayson’s death may shift the Trust vote. I doubt if his wife will continue the fight without him.” Which was excellent news for the zoo.

  A grunt. “Are you saying the Trust might stay intact now?”

  “Draw your own conclusions. I’m going to hang up.”

  “Not yet!”

  The otter, who from the white tuft of fur on her side I identified as Maureen, had made it all the way to the dock and was swimming from boat to boat, nosing around for handouts. She’d reach the Merilee in seconds.

  “Teddy, why wasn’t your mr at the fund-raiser?”

  Maureen poked her nose up less than three feet from me. I tossed her a herring. “Sweets for the sweet.”

  “Stop talking to whatever animal you’re talking to and answer.”

  There’s nothing I hate more than having people order me around. “If you want to know why Caro wasn’t there, ask her yourself.”

  “There’s a scary thought. As long as we’re on that subject, how man
y keepers missed the big do?”

  “Ask Zorah Vega. She was supposed to keep track of everyone, but I do know there were supposed to be something like a dozen keepers present.”

  “I’ll do that. In the meantime, how well do you know Kim Markowski?”

  “Our education director?” Out of sheer surprise, I opened up. “We’re not close. She’s always looking for volunteers for some goofy new program she’s setting up so I try to stay out of her way. Why?”

  “She wasn’t at the fund-raiser, either.”

  I frowned. “She should have been, because that kind of thing is her job. She was scheduled to give a puppet show about the anteater.” Then I remembered what I should have remembered earlier. “Scratch that. Zorah told me Kim broke her ankle Sunday, so I’m sure it was too painful for her to get out and about yet. And with a cast, there’s no way she could have fit into an anteater suit.”

  “How’d she break her ankle?”

  He sounded so suspicious I laughed. “The way I heard it, she was in Carmel shopping and fell off a curb. You know what that town’s like, nothing but boutiques, hills, and fog. I imagine the curb was slippery and she wasn’t watching where she was going. Kim’s always been clumsy. Last winter she broke her wrist just banging into a door.”

  A splash caught my attention. The otter wanted another herring. With a grunt, I eased my dog and cat off my lap and headed toward the galley, phone to ear. “Look, I’m pretty busy here. Furthermore, this whole idea of playing Spy-on-My-Friends is making me uncomfortable. So goodbye.”

  I pressed OFF and selected another herring from the fridge. The intrusions into my peaceful evening continued. As soon as I settled back into my chaise to watch the sunset, the cell rang again. This time it was my mother, her voice grim with determination.

  “Teddy, I can’t get the idea of what that anteater did to Grayson out of my mind, and the dangerous turn your life has taken. Someone told me you’re actually feeding wolves, for heaven’s sake! You need to know that I’ve made an appointment to see the zoo director tomorrow and I’m going to tell him that if he wants the zoo to continue receiving my annual donation—which runs five figures, by the way—he’ll terminate your employment immediately.”

  For some time now I had been expecting Caro to pull a stunt like this so I was prepared. “How are things going with Cyril Keslar, of the Montecito Keslars?” Her prospective Husband Number Five.

  Too bad she couldn’t see my smirk. “If you tell the zoo director to fire me, I’ll tell the sheriff where you hid Dad’s money. That’ll screw you with your boyfriend, who’s as upright as he is rich.” One good blackmail attempt deserves another.

  A gasp. “How ... how did you know about the money?”

  I didn’t answer.

  My discovery of the whereabouts of Dad’s big haul had come about entirely by accident. Before being shipped off to Miss Pridewell’s Academy, I had wandered into Caro’s bedroom one day as teens are prone to do, and hunted through her dresser drawers for her silk camisole. I didn’t plan on wearing it under my clothing. Instead, I had a Madonna-style outfit in mind that was certain to shock my teachers and elicit the envy of my classmates, sort of a teenage two-fer.

  Imagine my own shock when, hiding under the camisole, I found a letter from my disgraced father, postmarked five years earlier from Costa Rica, where he’d fled to avoid prosecution. After several paragraphs apologizing for the shame he’d brought upon his family, he told Caro how to access a Swiss account where he’d stashed part of the money he’d embezzled from Bentley, Bentley, Haight, and Busby. Paper-clipped to the letter was a statement from a bank in the Bahamas, where my mother had shifted some of the money for her own purposes.

  Appalled by my threat, she shrieked, “I’d go to jail!”

  This was working better than I’d hoped, not that I’d ever follow through on my threat. “Don’t worry. The Feds will probably put you in one of those country club prisons, the kind Martha Stewart was in. Or should I call the lady by her jailhouse name, ‘M-Diddy.’ Big Bertha, your cellmate, might dub you C-Diddy. Wouldn’t that be cute? I promise to visit every Sunday, that is, if I don’t have to move out of state to find a job at another zoo. Maybe Miami’s Metrozoo, although that is a long way off, and I’d only be able to visit you a couple times a year.”

  Dark mutterings from the other end of the line. “All right, all right. I’ll cancel my appointment with Barry Fields.”

  “How considerate.” Before I stabbed the OFF button, one final word from Caro leaked through. Because the phone was several inches away from my ear by then, the word was faint, but I think what she said was...

  “Brat!”

  ***

  I arrived at the zoo early the next day to take my regular Thursday pleasure walk through Down Under, but halfway there saw several keepers running full tilt toward Africa Trail. One slowed for a moment to yell, “It’s Makeba!” then sped up again.

  With a whoop, I chased after them.

  Half a mile and four twisty turns later, I rounded the thick stand of banana trees at the side of the large pasture we’d dubbed the Veldt to see that the tip of a tiny hoof had emerged from the birth canal of Makeba, our Masai Giraffe. In the manner of giraffes in the wild, she remained standing up. Trying not to breathe too loudly, I joined the hushed crowd of keepers gathered to watch the birth.

  The zoo’s veterinarian lived in a house at the far eastern end of the zoo with her family, and for all intents and purposes was on call twenty-four hours a day every day. When a possibly difficult birth was imminent she sometimes camped out on the sofa in her office, or in a sleeping bag near the animal’s night quarters.

  Nature, having its own timetable, ignored the vet’s plans. Makeba was giving birth on hard dirt instead of in the hay-cushioned birthing stall where we’d planned to move her. Instead of blissful privacy, she was surrounded by keepers and other giraffes. Nearby stood her mate, all eighteen-feet-eight-inches of him, and next to him, Makeba’s closest female friend, who would—if everything went according to plan—serve as nanny to the newborn. In contrast to the giddy keepers, Makeba stood quietly.

  As another tiny hoof pushed out of Makeba’s birth canal, I heard the sound of a zoo cart. Dr. Kate.

  She hadn’t combed her wild black hair, and had thrown a lab coat over her pajamas. Like everyone else, she kept her voice low. “Anyone know when this started?”

  Zorah shook her head. “One foot was already out when I arrived, and that was about five minutes ago. Now I see shins.”

  Some of the concern left the vet’s face. “Good. She’s going fast. The feet are pointing down, which means the baby’s coming out head first. I want this exhibit cordoned off until the baby drops and we can herd them into the night house. The fewer gawkers the better.” With that, she radioed the head park ranger and told him what was needed.

  By the time the rangers arrived with yellow tape and sawhorses, the calf’s shins had fully emerged and we could see a pair of knobby knees. Then...

  The tip of a tiny snout.

  “Head down! Head down!” Although Zorah kept her voice so low that it was little more than a rasp, her big body bounced up and down in excitement. “Good to go!”

  So far. Sometimes a baby giraffe was born with its long neck bent backwards along its sides, which presented a problem for the mother. Makeba’s calf was doing it the right way, with its head out and down, protected between two long front legs. The critical moment would come when the calf dropped six feet to the ground and landed on its head and vulnerable neck. Unable to withstand the drop, some calves died at this stage, which was nature’s way of ensuring that only the strong survived.

  While the clock ticked on and the birthing process continued, the noise level in the zoo increased. The baboons screamed their hunger. So did the lions.

  Once or twice I saw an expression of guilt sweep across a keeper’s face when she heard her own charge complain about an empty belly, but no one moved. Sometimes an emergency
with one animal screwed up schedules with the others, but it did them no harm. Meals in the wild weren’t served by the clock, either. My own Lucy would be angry, but after she ate her first helping of termite-sprinkled Monkey Chow topped off by a banana for dessert, she’d recover.

  “Look at the neck! It’s so perfect!” Zorah, for whom the giraffe was a personal favorite, almost clapped her hands, but restrained herself in time.

  Yes, the calf’s neck was perfect. So were the feet, which hung in the air below Makeba’s birth canal, as well as the head dangling between them. The calf’s eyes were still closed, which meant nothing. Sometimes the baby had to hit the ground before it awoke to the world. Its horns were nowhere to be seen, either, just two small nubs from which they would emerge in a few days.

  “Here come the shoulders.” Dr. Kate’s whisper was so ragged that I took my eyes off the calf for a second and looked over just as she snapped open her emergency bag. From its shadows, I could see the silver gleam of something sharp.