The Anteater of Death

by Betty Webb

  Zorah whispered, “Lean closer, Teddy.”

  I leaned forward until my forehead touched the bars.

  “It belonged to my nephew, Alejandro,” she whispered. “I took it away from him.”

  She seldom talked about her family, but I knew it was large and that they lived in Castroville, a few miles away. “How did your nephew get a gun?”

  “Stole it, probably.”

  I’d heard rumors about her nephew, none of them good. “Don’t tell me he handed the gun over peacefully.”

  “Hardly. A couple of weeks ago I dropped by my sister’s house and she was out, but Alejandro let me in to wait. He’d been in his room, I guess, because the door was open and I could hear music. That rap stuff’s rank, you wouldn’t believe what they say about women. They actually call them...”

  “I know all about the ho’s. Get on with it.”

  “Sorry. Anyway, at some point he excused himself to go to the john and I decided to turn the damned CD player off. When I went into his bedroom, there was the gun on the bed, half-covered by a sheet. Alejandro didn’t need any more trouble, especially not gun kind of trouble, so I grabbed the thing and took off. I intended to throw it of the end of the harbor breakwater, but when I got there, a busload of tourists were tromping around looking at the elephant seals. So I drove home and stashed it under my mattress. Last week, when I figured the beach would be deserted, I transferred the gun to my truck, intending to dump it on my way home from work. But...” Her voice faded away.

  “Are you telling me that you kept that gun in your truck all day? In the employee parking lot?”

  She shook her head furiously. “I’m not stupid. You know how hot cars get when the windows are closed and they’re sitting in the sun all day. I don’t know much about guns, but I know there’s gunpowder in them, and I was afraid if the truck got too hot, the gunpowder might explode. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t keep the truck’s window open. So I took the gun inside with me.”

  “You brought a gun into the zoo?!” That was a firing offense.

  “Not near the animals! For safety’s sake, I putit in my desk drawer and covered it with papers so no one could see it.”

  Open-mouthed, I stared at her. Zorah’s desk, which had no locking drawers, was situated in the administration building near the time clock used by hourly employees. Worse, everyone knew she kept her desk filled with office supplies, so zookeepers—even though they weren’t supposed to—always were rifling it. She couldn’t have found a more public place to “hide” the gun if she’d tried.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Teddy! It didn’t seem dumb at the time.”

  Nothing ever does. “Okay, I think I can figure out the rest. By the end of the day, the gun was gone.”

  She gave me a weak smile. “Gee, how’d you guess?”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “How could I? Could you see me telling that stupid new director that the gun I’d brought illegally into the zoo, the gun that I’d stolen from my nephew who’d probably stolen the gun himself, had just been stolen by somebody else? Oh, ha. I went home and worried, that’s what I did.”

  The white woman in the cell next to Zorah’s stopped mumbling and sat staring into space. The quiet was so loud I almost wished she would start yelling again.

  “I hate to ask you this, but at any point did you think to wipe your fingerprints off the gun?”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “Why would I do that?”

  Why? In case someone took the gun out of your desk, used it to murder a man, then tossed it in a spot where the police might find it, that’s why.

  Having learned everything from her I could, I stood up. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll make those calls as soon as I get home and try to fix you up with a good attorney. In the meantime, is there anyone you want me to call?”

  “My family already knows where I am. And thanks to your damn boyfriend, the whole zoo does, too.”

  “Ex-boyfriend. Emphasis on ex.”

  “Whatever.” She resumed staring at the floor.

  With nothing more to be gained, I left. On the other side of the cell block door, Deputy Guiterrez gave me a shame-faced look. “Busted. I don’t think the sheriff’s mad, but he does want to talk to you.”

  Forcing myself to act as nonchalant as if I visited my friends in county lockup every day, I headed for Joe’s office.

  Before I could sit down he said, “I noticed that you’ve wearing your uniform, too.”

  I looked down at my khakis and boots, realizing for the first time that we were dressed alike. The only difference was that his breast pocket sported a badge, and mine an embroidered zebra.

  “I didn’t have time to change.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Khaki looks great with that red hair of yours. Listen, don’t think I bought all that stuff about the tigers. You always were a lousy liar. What did Ms. Vega have to say?”

  “C’mon. You know better than that.”

  He flashed that marvelous smile. “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  Why did I think he wasn’t just talking about Zorah? I looked around his office, a Spartan room furnished in fake wood and fake leather. Along with a slew of family photographs, several certificates and degrees hung on the wall, including one from U.C. Davis.

  “I didn’t know you received your master’s,” I said.

  “In police science, yes. How about you?”

  “Bachelor’s. And my teaching certificate.”

  He frowned. “You always said you’d go for a Ph.D. in animal husbandry. What happened?”

  Since he knew quite well that Michael had happened, I didn’t bother answering. Instead, I studied the photograph of his wife and children. “Joe, I’m so sorry about Sonia.”

  When he nodded, a lock of glossy black hair fell over his forehead. I wanted to reach across the desk and brush it back, but we were long past that.

  “Thank you. You sent beautiful flowers. And a nice card. I appreciated that.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come down for the funeral, but...” No point in explaining that I’d just caught Michael cheating for the first time, and had been busy trying to save my marriage. “Do you have any leads?”

  “No.”

  Three years earlier, Joe’s wife had been found slumped over the steering wheel of her car in the emergency lane of the I-5, a bullet in her head. No one had ever been arrested.

  “I wish...” I stopped. There was no point in saying what I wished, so I changed the subject. “What’s your case against Zorah?”

  He straightened some papers on his desk. “At ten tonight KGNN will report that we found the murder weapon tossed into the bushes behind the zoo’s Wings of Flight exhibit, with Ms. Vega’s fingerprints all over it.”

  “Based on that you arrested her?”

  “That, plus the threatening letters she sent the victim, and the fact that she was at the fund-raiser. Oh, yeah, and because by all accounts she disappeared for a long stretch, right around the time of the murder. So there you have it: motive, means, opportunity.”

  It sounded too pat to me. “Most of the zoo staff, including her, were wearing anteater costumes, so how could anyone tell whether she was around or not?”

  “Hers had a tear in the shoulder. She’s kind of, well, large, and as the night went on, the tear got bigger and bigger, to the point where she tacked it together with a safety pin. She was hard to miss, which everyone did when the bartenders rut of gin. Are you aware how much your rich friends drink? Money sure doesn’t buy happiness, does it, just better booze. Anyway, the caterer wanted her to fetch another bottle of gin from the supply he’d left in the administration building. It was locked up tight, and she had one of the keys. When no one could find her, Barry Fields had to trot all the way back there to open up. Fields—who I heard had been sniffing around some recently-divorced socialite—wasn’t pleased.”

  “But Grayson...”

 
; “He was the one who drank the last drop of gin and wanted more. But by the time Fields fetched a new supply, he’d disappeared, too.”

  I tried to remember what I’d learned from watching Law & Order reruns on my thirteen-inch TV set. “If Zorah shot him, wouldn’t there be gunpowder residue on her costume? And on her hands?”

  “Normally, yeah, but after the fund-raiser the suits got tossed together into a pile in the staff lounge. The next morning someone dumped them into the big sack provided by the rental place. There’s residue on several of the suits, not only your friend’s. As for her hands, gunshot residue is easier to scrub off than most people realize. She’s smart enough to know that.”

  Which means her hands had been free of the stuff. “Sounds like a weak case to me.”

  I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “Not to me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Since the autopsy on Grayson turned out to be relatively straightforward—he was in good health, except for being dead—the county medical examiner released the body in time for a Saturday funeral service. Having ensured that my morning shift would be covered, I followed the long line of cars from the San Sebastian funeral home through the iron gates of the private cemetery where generations of Gunns had been laid to rest.

  The cemetery perched on a low hill near the back of the Gunn estate. To the east, the terrain dropped sharply until it flattened into the artichoke fields that stretched all the way across the old Bentley ranch. Due west lay the Pacific Ocean, from here a thin blue line.

  The view would have been perfect if not for the housing development to the northwest marching down Bentley Ridge toward Gunn Landing. The tract had been built in the early seventies, before the California Coastal Initiative forbidding new development on the Coast went into effect. Now the original houses were being bulldozed one by one to erect gaudy McMansions for new Silicon Valley money.

  To Aster Edwin’s displeasure, Grayson himself had brokered some of the deals.

  The funeral service wasn’t bad, as funeral services go. One time Jeanette seemed to realize where she was and loosed a long howl of grief, but her great-aunt quieted her. After the minister intoned the last prayer, everyone filed by the closed casket for a final nod at the mahogany. Then a chauffeur half-dragged, half-carried Jeanette to a waiting limo.

  “Interesting, don’t you think?” Joe’s voice made me jump.

  He watched while the chauffeur pothe limp woman into the limo’s back seat, next to Aster Edwina. I shook my head. “God knows what’s going to happen to her now. She was never strong.”

  “I wasn’t talking about her.”

  “Then who...?”

  A group purr of expensive car engines signaled the Gunn exodus. The cars crept forward slowly, headed for the castle and the funeral brunch. I repeated my question. “Who were you talking about?”

  “Barry Fields. The Gunns. A fascinating assortment of emotions.”

  True. The anti-Trust Gunns looked bereft at the loss of a vote; the pro-Trusters looked positively thrilled. In contrast, the zoo director acted as if he’d lost his best friend, which could be the case since he’d owed his job to the victim’s sponsorship. His future with the zoo was now in doubt.

  Joe must have read my mind. “I’ve heard through the grapevine that Mr. Fields’ job isn’t all that secure. Is he about to get fired?”

  “I hope so. But it won’t happen before this Trust thing is settled. If the Gunns let him go now, the board would have to replace him immediately. But with whom? The most qualified applicant is in a jail cell, remember?”

  Below us, the limos wound slowly along the gravel road to the castle. Bidding Joe goodbye, I jumped into my Nissan pickup and followed them, intent on finding out whatever I could. Zorah hadn’t killed Grayson, I was sure of that.

  Which meant someone else had. Someone I probably knew.

  If Joe couldn’t find out the truth, it was up to me.

  ***

  The funeral reception took place in the castle’s drawing room, where I’d once played Monopoly with Jeanette. Furnished with an assortment of antique settees and chairs worth a king’s ransom, the silk-covered walls boasted a Rubens, a Turner, and two Monets. These treasures were almost overpowered by the large display of old Edwin Gunn’s hunting rifles and pistols that he’d collected before he’d had a change of heart and began saving animals instead of killing them. So many glittering weapons hung on the walls that the room could have done double-duty as an arsenal. As a child, I’d sometimes suspected that Jeanette had chosen this room to play Monopoly in because of its sheer intimidation value. I almost always won, anyway. Once, when I had bankrupted her within a half-hour, she’d slapped me hard across the face.

  Today my old Monopoly adversary slumped on a settee rumored to have once belonged to Czar Nicholas.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, hugging her.

  She didn’t hug back, just gave me the vacant stare of the over-medicated. Having performed my social duty I made a wide circle around Barry, who brown-nosed by the Turner, and joined my mother and Aster Edwina by the fireplace. Instead of flames, the hearth burst forth with bouquets of gardenias and mums.

  “A lovely funeral, Aster Edwina,” I complimented her. “The minister said nice things about Grayson.”

  Possible only because the good reverend never met him. Grayson was a spineless man.”

  Caro raised her salon-plucked eyebrows. “He had redeeming qualities, Aster. Most men do.” I could almost hear her add silently, When they have money.

  Before Aster Edwina could make another disparaging comment, I threw in, “I can’t think of anyone who ever had an unkind word to say about him.” Other than you, I wanted to add, but didn’t. “He took his duties at the zoo seriously.”

  “And he dressed beautifully,” my mother added.

  This elicited a true smile from Aster Edwina. “Jeanette had his suits hand-tailored in London. The girl has lovely taste.”

  Remembering that garish pink boudoir, I agreed anyway, which earned me a pat on the cheek. “You are a polite child.” With that, the old lady left us to circulate.

  “At least you’re dressed appropriately,” Caro said, eyeing me up and down. She wore a chic smoke-gray silk shantung—Vera Wang, I guessed—with a matching cloche that had a whisper of a veil. She looked like a cover girl for Funerals Today.

  Knowing I looked much less chic in my all-purpose black dress, I smiled feebly, then seized my chance. “Ah, Moth ... Caro, why weren’t you at the Zoo Guild fund-raiser?”

  She stared at me for a moment. “Something came up. Say, I hear you called Tommy Prescott.”

  Word gets around quickly in small towns. Tommy, a childhood friend from Old Town, was now an up-and-coming San Francisco criminal defense attorney. The fact that he’d agreed to become attorney of record for Zorah Vega, pro bono, of course, had leaked out quickly.

  “A zookeeper makes a nice change from his standard roster of pimps and politicians,” I explained. That wasn’t the real reason he’d had taken the case, though. When I called him, I reaffirmed my promise not to tell anyone that when he and I were kids, I’d seen him steal a silver snuff box from the castle’s drawing room. He’d later traded it for a dime bag of pot.

  I gave my mother a final wave and headed for the door. Before I made my exit, I spotted one of Jeanette’s cousins sipping sherry in front of the Rubens.

  Roarke Gunn didn’t pretend grief. “Yeah, it’s a tragedy, blah blah blah. Condolences accepted, blah blah blah.” Like most of the Gunns, he was blond, tall, big-boned, tanned, and fit from years of sailing on the Tequila Sunrise, his seventy-five-foot custom schooner. Great lovers of the water, he and his wife actually lived on the Sunrise, turning up their noses at the land-locked castle.

  “Why did you dislike Grayson so much, Roarke? You were hardly ever around him.”

  His perfect teeth flashed. “I hate all real estate brokers as a matter of principle. But I’ll say this for the guy, at least he didn’t
leech off Jeanette too much. He worked, more or less.”

  This sounded promising. “Yes, he did. Furthermore, I don’t think Zorah Vega killed him and I want to help her. Do you kyone else who might have...” I left the question hanging.

  He picked it up. “...wanted to kill him? Surely you jest. Eighteen people that I know of, all of the Gunn Trust holdouts.”

  “Aren’t there twenty-three of you voting to keep the Trust intact?”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.” He gave me a mean smile. “I know you saw Grayson as some easygoing guy who lived only to please his wife, but he was more complicated than that. Don’t forget that he was the person who brought the anti-Trust coalition together in the first place. With the little weasel working his wiles, we pro-Trust folks were becoming an increasingly soft number.”