by Betty Webb
His face resumed a more genial expression. “Say, why don’t you drop by the Tequila Sunrise tomorrow. A diver’s coming over to scrape the hull and that’s always fun to watch. Frieda will be glad to see you.”
Frieda was his gorgeous but jealous wife. Ordinarily, she would be hovering at his side, fending off forays from other women, but as I looked around the big room I didn’t see her anywhere. “How is she?”
His face shut down again. “She’s not feeling well, so I left her back on the Sunrise.”
Promising to stop by the boat around noon, I made my escape. I arrived back at the zoo in the middle of lunch—the keepers’, not the animals’. After changing into my uniform and stashing my funeral attire in my locker, I went into the employee lounge where the other keepers gossiped near the snack machine.
A hoofed-animal keeper wanted to know if Barry Fields had been fired yet, and a reptile keeper asked if Zorah would be able to make bail, which was certain to be enormous. When I replied in the negative, I received several frowns. Because my name was Bentley, most people believed I was rolling in money, but unlike many of my friends, I was no trust-fund baby. I hadn’t emerged from my divorce with much, either. People tended to forget that when Michael and I married, he and I were both college freshmen. His parents—who believed that their son should made his own way—had never helped us out, so for most of our ten years together, we’d struggled to make ends meet. The Bentley name notwithstanding, if it weren’t for the Merilee, I’d probably wind up sharing government-subsidy housing with the other zookeepers. Or worse, living with my mother.
“Believe me, I’d loan Zorah the money if I had it. But I don’t.” I couldn’t let them, or the Feds, know about that Grand Cayman account, the one I’d sworn never to touch.
Jack Spence, taking a break from the bears said, “You could borrow against your inheritance.”
It was all I could do to keep from slapping my knee and laughing. Thanks to my mother’s greatly improved financial status, I might come into money one day—if she didn’t fall prey to some European gigolo. At present, though, I couldn’t see myself asking her for Zorah’s bail money on the strength of any possible inheritance and told Jack so in the strongest of terms. I also reminded him that she loathed the idea of me working at the zoo and would turn me down flat.
“You could use your boat as collateral.” This from Manda DiBartolo, who lived in a two-bedroom apartment with three other keepers. They commuted to work in an old Volkswagen van that broke down on a regular basis.
Miranda may have given me a solution to my conundrum. There was no way the creaky Merilee could serve as collateral for the kind of money I’d need to front bail but I doubted the other keepers realized that. “Oh, my gosh, you’re right! Why didn’t I think of that earlier?”
A collective sigh around the room.
I made some quick calculations. “Let’s see. Zorah’s arraignment is on Monday, and after I find out what the bail’s going to be, I’ll make a few calls and see if I can scare up a loan. Yes, you’re absolutely right. The Merilee’s the answer.”
Before anyone could see through my lie, I hurried away.
When I arrived at Tropics Trail, I found the anteater sulking in the holding pen. For such a solitary animal, she seemed to miss her admiring crowds.
“Lucy lonely? Or is her tummy upset?”
She swung her long nose toward me, walked slowly over to the chain link fence that separated us and emitted a plaintive rumble, which I took as a yes. Giant anteaters have a six-month gestation period and since we’d inseminated her in late November, sperm courtesy of a studly anteater at the Phoenix Zoo, she was due any day. Given her bad temper, I worried that the smaller living quarters might have a negative impact on her mental health, and quite possibly, her physical health as well.
To comfort her, I peeled a banana, mashed it in my hand, and edged up to the fence. That blue tongue snaked out of her long snout and she began to lap up the mush.
“Yes, banana is goood, Lucy loooves banana. I wish Lucy could talk because then she’d tell me what happened the other night. She’d tell me why Grayson died in her enclosure. And who shot him.”
Animals know how to listen, and they’re cheaper than a psychiatrist. I’ve heard Zorah confide her worries about her nephew to a frilled lizard, and I once heard Miranda tell a koala how worried she was about an upcoming mammogram. Male keepers tended to confine their soliloquies to cars. Jack Spence was always bragging to Samson and Delilah, the black bears, about the restoration work he was doing on his ‘76 Chevy Malibu. Samson, being male, appeared the most interested.
So I didn’t feel at all foolish about discussing Grayson’s murder with an anteater. “Was there some kind of fight, Lucy? Did he fall into your enclosure after he was shot, or did he jump in, trying to keep from getting shot? Probably the former, since he was so afraid of animals.”
Lucy bobbed her head. In agreement? Or in ecstasy over the banana?
I tried to picture Grayson as he’d looked before I found him in the enclosure. Short, rotund, always smiling. Non-offensive, non-confrontational, almost non-there. Aster Edwina’s cruel assessment of him was at least partially accurate. Yet according to Roarke, Grayson’s manipulative behavior had almost overturned the great Gunn Trust.
“Oh, Lucy, regarless of what he was up to, he deserved better. Yes, I feel bad about him, but most of all, I’m worried about our friend Zorah. She’s still locked up in that jail cell when all she wants is to come back to the zoo and be with her lizards and tigers. And with you, my sweet girl.”
Her blue tongue snaked out again for the last lump of mashed banana. Giving a final grunt, she backed away from the fence.
“The sheriff thinks she’s a murderer, but he doesn’t know her like I do. So we need to find out who really did it, don’t we?”
Lucy didn’t answer, just sneezed, blowing banana mush all over my uniform.
Chapter Eight
Sunday was swab-the-deck day on the Merilee. After finishing the top deck, I went below and vacuumed the tiny salon’s blue indoor-outdoor carpeting and even tinier fore and aft cabins. I followed with a serious polish of the teak cabinets and other fittings. This tired me more than a morning spent cleaning up after the squirrel monkeys, but I enjoyed caring for the Merilee. I’d fallen into her ownership after a minor miracle.
When Dad absconded with Bentley, Bentley, Haight, and Busby’s millions, the Feds confiscated everything we owned: the house in Old Town, the paintings, the eighty-four-foot schooner, the Rolls, the Jag, my mother’s furs and jewelry. One G-man tried to take away the doll I’d been clinging to as they swept through the house, and only the intervention of a soft-eyed agent prevented the outrage.
I grew up believing we’d lost everything except for my mother’s hidden stash, but when I returned to Gunn Landing from San Francisco, Albert Mazer, Dad’s old poker buddy, visited to relay some stunning news.
“You own a boat at the harbor,” he said as soon as my mother left us alone. “I’ve kinda held it in escrow for you.”
The story he told both shocked and pleased me. To escape Caro’s eagle eye, my father had secretly bought the Merilee to use as a base camp for poker parties and less wholesome gatherings, transferring the title to Mazer so my mother couldn’t trace the boat. Over the years Dad paid the Merilee’s repair bills, slip fees, and other expenses that came with owning a diesel-powered party boat. The understanding was that if something happened to him, Mazer would fess up and sign over the boat to me.
“The Merilee’s not perfect,” Mazer had said, handing me the pink slip and keys. “Her engine needs work, the teak needs revarnishing, the hull needs scraping. You won’t like the decor, either, since it’s kind of, er, male. But she’s all yours, and if you ever get tired of living with your mother...” Here, a peek over his shoulder as if he feared the gorgon lurked nearby. “...the boat has a liveaboard permit. All I need to do is put your name on it.” Which he promptly did.
I had never been so happy or so lacking in space. Although theoretically the Merilee, at thirty-four-feet long and eleven-point-eight-feet-wide at the beam, offered almost four hundred square feet of living space, most of that was taken up by decks, bulkheads, the galley, and various fittings. I once estimated there was less than twenty feet of actual walking-around space in my home. Boat living isn’t for claustrophobes.
By the time I finished cleaning and doing my laundry at the harbor’s laundromat, the morning fog had burned off, revealing a sky so bright and pure it stung my eyes. Once more I wished my boat had sails so I could take her out beyond the breakwater and hear nothing other than wind and gulls. But beggars can’t be choosers.
I stowed the laundry away and made my bed with fresh-smelling dolphin-print sheets and matching comforter. Chores finished, I glanced at my watch and found it already past noon. Time to take Roarke Gunn up on his offer to visit the Tequila Sunrise.
In contrast to the southern end of the harbor, where big salmon trawlers butted up against humble craft such as the Merilee, the Tequila Sunrise lay berthed at the northern end in the area reserved for yacht club members. The Northies were wealthier, and never worried about rising slip fees or the cost of decent booze, and this fostered an undercurrent of class warfare. Not today, though. When I stepped aboard the Tequila Sunrise, Frieda, Roarke’s blond wife, handed me a Sunrise Special: a Mimosa comprised of fresh-squeezed oranges, Mumm’s, and a dash of Grenadine.
She gave me an insincere air kiss. “Roarke says you should drop by more often.”
Her lack of warmth didn’t surprise me because she loved her husband almost as much as Jeanette had loved Grayson, and viewed every woman as competition for her man. Given her considerable beauty, I could never figure out why.
I contented myself with a politic reply. “You folks are so frequently away.”
Several times a year Frieda and Roarke sailed to Puerto Vallarta, where they partied with an informal armada of similarly wealthy friends. Ordinarily, they would be there now, but the danger that the Trust might be broken kept them in the harbor. They were making the best of their canceled plans by fixing the common problems that plague sea-going vessels. Today’s project was scraping the Tequila Sunrise’s wooden hull free of barnacles. Left to themselves, barnacles would reproduce and soon cover the hull in a colony weighing hundreds of pounds, creating a drag on the boat. Worse, the pesky crustaceans might bore right through the hull.
Frieda, more gorgeous than ever in a black thong bikini, looked me over carefully. “Been working out?” The acerbity in her voice increased my discomfort.
“Just shoveling sh..., um, stuff.”
“That’s right. You’re a cage cleaner at the zoo.” Meow.
“No cages. Each of our animals is housed in a large enclosure that resembles its natural habitat.”
“Why not leave the in the wild in the first place?”
Good question, complicated answer. “That would be ideal, but what with forest clearings and civil wars and such, the animals’ natural habitats are shrinking. There’s also the continued poaching of endangered wildlife, which doesn’t help.”
She took a sip of her drink, which appeared to be pure orange juice. Hard-partying Frieda on the wagon? How odd. “Pass laws against killing them, then.”
“There already are such laws, but we’re talking international treaties, and with those, enforcement is always the problem. The U.S. can’t order an African farmer not to kill the endangered cheetah preying upon his goats. The farmer would rather see every cheetah on earth dead than let his children starve. Furthermore...”
Realizing I was becoming agitated about the seeming hopelessness of it all, I changed the subject. “I take it Roarke’s down with the diver?”
My old friend loved to watch divers scrape away barnacles with their putty knives, but having tried it once myself and resurfaced with bloody knuckles, I found the process less than enthralling.
She nodded. “He waited for you but got impatient and dove in about ten minutes ago. If you want to let him know you’re here, they’re on the port side. Jump on in.” Her expression told me she’d prefer I didn’t. Why, oh why, was she so insecure?
There was no way I was going to jump into the greasy harbor after taking my shower so I resigned myself to wait. Fortunately, almost as soon as I’d sat down in one of the deck chairs, Roarke, wearing full scuba gear, climbed out of the water. After Frieda helped him out of his wet suit, she began rubbing him down with a towel, almost like a medieval servant for her master. I couldn’t help but notice how well-matched the two were, at least physically. Both were tall and pretty enough to be models. Next to them, I felt short, flat-chested, and dumpy.
Now stripped to a red Speedo, Roarke gave me a friendly up-and-down. “Hey, you’re looking fit, girl. Frieda, top off Teddy’s drink.”
She threw me a nervous glance, but he kissed her shoulder, her eyes softened.
Love could be so painful.
I set down my half-finished Mimosa and tried to look as unattractive as possible, which isn’t hard to do when you have mud-colored freckles and hair the color and texture of an old copper scouring pad. “No thanks. I can’t stay long. Too much to do around the Merilee.”
Roarke nodded sagely. “People don’t own boats. Boats own people. Frieda’s always complaining that I spend more with the Tequila Sunrise than with her.”
He probably did, because her obvious insecurity had to come from somewhere.
“I couldn’t agree more. Before I get back to the Merilee, maybe you could tell me more about the Trust? It might have something to do with Grayson’s murder.”
At his astonished look, I added, “I know, I know. I’m not a relative and none of this is any of my business, lp s you said after the funeral, the Trust business has been all over the newspapers lately. You wouldn’t be telling me anything that’s not already been printed somewhere.”
Actually, I was kind of related to the Gunns. In the late eighteen hundreds, a Bentley great-great aunt had married a Gunn, but they’d produced no children, and that distant connection wasn’t close enough to make me a partner in the Trust. Damn.
His astonishment faded. “You’re right. Everybody knows pretty much everything now, right down to the dollar amount.” Frieda handed him a Mimosa and he gave her an absent-minded peck on the cheek. He eased himself into a deck chair and stretched out his long, golden legs. They seemed to take up half the deck. “Ah. You want to know which of my relatives I can implicate in his death, thus gaining a larger share of the Trust for myself?”
“I didn’t mean...”
“Of course you did, but so what? Frankly, I think that big zookeeper friend of yours probably did kill him, but if you believe she’s innocent, I might be wrong. You always were a good judge of people, which is why you prefer to be with animals.” He chuckled. “Anyway, here’s the skinny on the Trust. With Grayson out of the way the anti-Trust faction will probably fall apart, and good riddance to it. The whole thing is nonsense.”
He paused to take a sip of his Mimosa, pat Frieda on her perfectly shaped fanny, then continued.
“The amount of money the Trust controls has never been a secret. As the newspapers insist on reminding everyone, about one-point-eight billion is invested in corporations ranging from software manufacturers to fast food chains. There’s also the land itself, twenty-five hundred acres of zoo pastures, and vineyards located outside of the Coastal Initiative’s no-build boundary. Wouldn’t the developers have a field day with those! As it stands, t
he income is divvied up among fifty-five of us, which includes thirty-eight adult voting members, so we manage comfortably on our monthly dividend checks. Hell, when heirs live up at the castle, they don’t even pay rent! You know what they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“Then why would anyone want to break the Trust?”
“Hubris. Pride. Whatever word for silly-ass over-confidence you want to use. Most of the anti-Trust people are in their twenties and they have stars in their eyes about overseas investments. I’ve heard a couple are flirting with the Saudis. Ha! They’d be better off consulting the I Ching. As for Grayson, he was wily enough to bring the anti-Trust coalition together, but believe me, he was no financial genius. He was in way over his head. Local real estate deals are one thing, foreign investments another.”