by Betty Webb
When I arrived at Tropics Trail, Lucy was so busy pacing from one end of her enclosure to the other that she hardly gave me a glance.
Although long fur hid her belly, it seemed to have grown much larger in the two days I’d been gone. Her pacing worried me, too. Now that she was out of the small holding pen she should have settled down, but except for that one brief moment of joy on her first day of freedom, she remained anxious. Perhaps, since her baby was due within the week, she desired a more suitable place to give birth than her old bamboo-covered dog house. With that in mind, I hopped back into my cart and went to pick up more hay. I’d toss a few flakes into her enclosure and let her figure out how to arrange them. Regardless of species, most females preferred to do their own decorating.
Within minutes of my heaving the hay over the back fence, she started fluffing it around, raking it this way and that. When she’d created a large hump a few feet behind her doghouse, she plopped down in the middle and rolled around for a while, manipulating the hay into a giant anteater-sized bed. Once she appeared to get stuck on her back, but finally managed to right herself. With a satisfied grunt, she backed off and began sucking termites from a faux log.
By the time I made it to the wolves’ enclosure, I found a crowd gathered near their outer fence. To the noisy delight of several teenagers, Cisco and Godiva were joyously mating as the other wolves watched with varying degreeright he interest.
Not everyone was pleased. A harassed-looking mother approached me and begged, “Please do something. I drove the kids all the way up from Carmel to teach them about endangered species, and now...” She pointed to a small group of six intrigued children, whose ages ranged all the way from toddler to middle-schooler.
Our animals’ public sexuality was a common cause of complaint. These days, few people are raised on ranches or farms and therefore don’t understand that animals had no concept of privacy or shame. I tried explaining the facts of zoo life to the woman, but she didn’t get it.
“Put them back in their den until they stop.”
“If I tried that, ma’am, I’d get my hand bit off. Cisco doesn’t like to be interrupted during his, ah, romantic encounters. But here’s a thought. Mexican gray wolves mate for life. It might be a good lesson to teach your children, that lifelong marriage—even among animals—remains a possibility in this promiscuous old world.” Although not all that common, I’d begun to believe, remembering promiscuous old Michael.
“So there’s nothing you can do?”
“How about...?” I tried to think of an animal guaranteed not to indulge in public mating behavior. Not the monkeys, that was for sure. Or the happy capybaras. But there was one animal whose sexual behavior was as pure as a cloistered nun’s. “Our anteater might be a nice animal for your children to visit. She doesn’t have a boyfriend, and she’s only a few yards away on Tropics Trail. If you want, I’ll walk you over there.”
A frown. “Are you talking about the animal who killed that poor man? Some life lesson that would be!” She gathered her children and pulled them away from the wolf exhibit. With a glare, she headed toward Africa Trail, where I’d seen the giraffes mating a few minutes ago. I was tempted to run after her with a warning, then decided to let the Africa Trail keepers deal with her. One thing was certain. By the end of the day, her children would know they hadn’t been delivered via stork.
I was ready to go around to the back of the wolves’ enclosure to portion out their meal when I heard an unwelcome voice.
“Ah, spring, with love in the air.”
Barry.
He sidled up to me, and slid an arm around my waist. “How’s my girl today? Feeling all better? You look like you could use a good steak dinner.”
Before I could escape, Jack Spence picked that moment to drive up the pathway in his cart. The last thing I wanted was for the other keepers to get the idea that something was going on between the zoo director and me. I tried to move away, but Barry tightened his grip.
“I have to finish up my chores here, so if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to work.”
Too late. Jack’s cart screeched to a stop right in front of us. “Hi, Teddy! How’s your head? And, uh, Barry, what are you...?”
Oh, hell. When Jack wasn’t telling the spectacled bears about the restoration he was doing on his ’7Chevy Malibu, he gossiped with humans. Soon everyone at the zoo would suspect that my relationship to the zoo director was something other than professional.
I tried to make the situation seem innocent. “Mister Fields stopped by to see how I was feeling. Didn’t you, sir?” I punctuated the question with an elbow to his ribs.
Barry either didn’t get it or refused to. Hugging me closer, he said, “My girl here sure took a big knock on the head, didn’t she?” He then proceeded to make matters worse. “I stopped by to see her yesterday, you know, at her mother’s estate in Old Town. Such a beautiful place! I took along a dozen long-stemmed roses. Nothing’s too good for my girl.”
My girl. His fixation on the phrase did not bode well. All the keepers hated him, and if they thought we’d hooked up, they’d hate me right long with him unless I told the truth. Yet how could I? The real reason behind our dinner “date” would eventually get back to him and he’d take his revenge by penning Lucy up again.
I wrenched out of his clutches and moved closer to the wolves’ fence, hoping that his recent encounter with the monkeys would make him nervous about getting too close to animals. It worked. Seeing one of the wolves cast a slant-eyed glance his way, he hopped back into his own cart. Then he drove a final nail into my coffin.
“Now, I don’t want my girl to work too hard!”
After Barry blew me a kiss and drove off, Jack Spence gave me a dirty look.
***
The day grew increasingly difficult. Regardless of my morning’s bravado, my endurance began to wane and several times I was forced to sit down and catch my breath. At noon, I braved the stares of the other keepers in the employee lounge as I took an extra-long lunch break. My worst fears about Jack’s addiction to gossip were confirmed.
“So you and Barry hooked up, huh?” This from Miranda, the Down Under keeper.
“No, we didn’t ‘hook up.’ I had dinner with him, that’s all.” I couldn’t even look at Zorah, whose frosty expression hurt the most.
Miranda wouldn’t let it go. “We thought you had better taste.”
I was saved from trying to answer the unanswerable with the arrival of Kim Markowski. The education director announced that she wanted to use us as a test audience for a quick run-through of her revised puppet show, now titled Little Red Riding Hood and the Giant Anteater.
Eager to get the spotlight off myself, I volunteered to help set up the small stage. The new puppets weren’t finished (the anteater looked like one of the beaky old codgers on The Muppet Show), but she explained that she was taking a puppet-making class once a week in San Francisco.
“By the time the show debuts, they’ll look more professional,” she said. Then, to my surprise, her eyes teared up. “Grayson paid my tuition. Wasn’t that a kind thing to do?”
A murmur of assent around the table. Zorah remained silent. She still hadn’t forgiven him for not appointing her as zoo director.
Once Kim began the show, I found myself drawn to the tale of an innocent anteater accused of killing and eating Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. After a brief investigation, Little Red discovered that the anteater was simply hiding Grandma to keep her safe from Mr. Wolf. In a stirring climax, the anteater yanked the sheepskin off a nearby “sheep” to reveal Mr. Wolf himself. Demonstrating a less pacific temperament than the peaceful anteater, Miss Hood whacked him with a shepherd’s staff.
Gratified that the idea I’d given Barry had been so successful, I cheered with the rest of the keepers when the wolf ran howling into the forest, chased by the valiant Hood. After Kim took a few bows, the keepers drifted back to work. I stayed behind to help her take the puppets back to the cart.
As we worked, I told her what a great job she’d done.
“I can’t take all the credit,” she replied, her long-lashed eyes bright. “Barry gave me the idea. He said the plot came to him in a dream.”
“Really!”
“I didn’t know he was so creative. Did you?”
“Can’t say I did.”
As she drove off, I realized that our zoo director’s ethics made the Big Bad Wolf look saintly.
***
By the time the zoo closed for the day and the last visitor straggled out the gate, I was exhausted, but at least the bald spot on my head had stopped throbbing. After the events of the past couple of days, the prospect of a peaceful evening on the Merilee couldn’t have been more desirable.
At first, the reality lived up to the dream. As I watched Jack Hanna cavort with a wallaby on Animal Planet, my pets curled up next to me. The only blot on the evening came when—for the first time ever—I locked the salon hatch. Except for that, the evening passed without incident, although Animal Planet grew too fuzzy and I switched over to a rerun of something named Magnum. The guy playing the private detective was cute, but the plot didn’t seem as realistic as those on Law & Order. Or maybe life in Hawaii wasn’t as rough as in Manhattan. After the program was over, and the fog had enfolded the harbor in its soft embrace, I sank into bed.
Although exhausted, I couldn’t sleep and lay listening to the tide whisper against the Merilee’s hull. I tried to empty my mind of its chaos by picturing a soft gray blankness. It didn’t work. Since nature abhors a vacuum, more disturbing images crowded in: Grayson’s ravaged corpse; Jeanette caressing his old suit; Zorah’s face shadowed by iron bars; the lines of pain around Joe’s eyes when I told him we needed to put our relationship on hold.
Defying doctor’s orders, I went to the galley and poured myself some wine. Once back in bed, I propped myself up on the pillow next to where Priss now lay snoring and tried to organize my thoughts.
With the exception of Zorah and Dr. Kate, most staffers had come in contact with Grayson only on those rare occasions when he attended the zoo’s fund-raisers. How could they have a motive to kill him?
Dr. Kate’s refusal to discuss the independent vet study worrie me. Not only that, but according to zoo gossip, she had once crossed swords with Grayson over the ever-increasing expenses involved in keeping our animals well-fed and healthy. Yet would anyone murder a man over the rising cost of hay?
Moving my focus outside of the zoo, I reviewed a different group of suspects.
Most of the pro-Trust Gunns benefited from Grayson’s murder because it effectively ended attempts to break the trust and disperse its funds among the heirs. Now the Gunns would receive their dividend checks in perpetuity. With an increasing sense of discomfort, I remembered Roarke’s timely arrival at my side seconds after I’d been mugged. Speaking of the Gunns, what about Henry and Pilar? Something had been nagging me about that conversation, something that didn’t make sense.
Nothing came, so I let it go, deciding to revisit the conversation later. One thing was for certain. The Trust was administered by a firm in the City, which probably meant that another drive up there might be wise, even if I had to take a day off work. I groaned aloud at the thought, making Bonz open his eyes and look around. When no action toward his food bowl was forthcoming, he fell back asleep. Priss never stirred from her place on the nearby pillow.
The pillow.
Where only a few nights earlier Joe...
I resumed staring at the Merilee’s low ceiling.
Why did life have to be so complicated?
Chapter Seventeen
The next day brought no enlightenment. Hoping to turn my mood in a more positive direction—and to distract myself from my head’s throbs—I lingered at the anteater enclosure. With no visitors nearby to make me feel self-conscious, I told her how pretty she was. “Such a fluffy tail! Such marvelous black and white markings! Lucy is the queen of giant anteaters!”
She pointed her long nose at me and grunted in what I imagined was agreement.
“Not only are you more beautiful than any giant anteater alive, but you’re a wonderful decorator, too. That nest you made for your baby is exquisite. Would you like to come down to the Merilee and decorate for me? I have a sea-animal theme going, but I’m not adverse to incorporating an anteater motif. Do you think I could find the right fabric? Anything’s possible.” If I had the money. In reality, if I had enough money to redecorate, I’d also have enough to overhaul the motor. Which I didn’t. A successful trip to Dolphin Island in order to keep my boat berthed at the harbor remained impossible.
Wrong train of thought. Instead of getting my mind off my problems, I was reminding myself of them. Time to get back to work.
“See you later, Lucy. I’m going to look in on the capybaras. They’re—”
An arm snaked around my waist. “How’s my girl? Feeling better?”
Barry. As impeccably groomed as ever, the afternoon sun made his perfectly styled hair glow in the morning light. He looked almost handsome, if you were nearsighted.
I stepped out of his grasp. The only thing good about this situation was that Tropics Trail was deserted, and no one would witness his overtures. “Hey, don’t...”
He closed the distance between us and drew me back to him. “There’s no point in denying the chemistry between us.”
In an attempt to set some relationship parameters, however belatedly, I began to peel his hand away one finger at a time. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
His smile made him look like a hungry dingo lying in wait for a juicy wallaby. “Anytime’s the right time when a man’s in love.”
“Listen, Barry, you’re not in love...”
Before I could finish, he jerked me toward him so hard that I had no chance to pull away before his carnivorous mouth clapped onto mine. Desperate, I freed my hand, grabbed a fistful of hair, and yanked.
To my horror, the top of his head came off.
As I goggled at the hair in my hand, he snatched it back. “Give me that, you ... you...”
A chorus of laughter from a zoo cart emerging around the bend snapped me out of my shock. I looked at the zoo director’s gleaming bald pate, then at the flap of hair I’d removed, and understood. I hadn’t scalped him, merely lifted off his toupee.
Trying my best to dial down his anger, I said, “I didn’t mean to do that.”
Barry slapped me.
Hard. With the back of his hand.
Without thinking, I hauled off and slugged him in the nose. Blood spattered my uniform.
He drew back his own fist.
While Lucy hissed in alarm, I danced out of Barry’s reach. He started after me, but brakes squealed and the cart of zoo workers tumbled out and ran toward us. Even Kim, crutches under her arms, hobbled along as best she could.
“That’s enough, you two!” Dr. Kate yelled, waving a clipboard. She looked like she would use it to swat the next person who made a hostile move.
Not being entirely stupid, I raised my hands in the universal signal of surrender. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
Nearby, the anteater hissed louder. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her rise to her full height of five feet and extend those long talons, looking every bit the Code Red animal she truly was.
Ignoring her, Barry unclenched his fist, his eyes glittering with hate. “Miss Bentley, you’re fired. Your ass better be gone by the end of the day.”
He stuck his toupee back on his head and walked away.
I was trying to shake the dizziness away when the others reached me.
“Are you all right?” Zorah put a steying hand on my arm.
I clenched my eyes shut, then opened them again. Better. “I think so.”
“Your concussion. Is it...?”
Yes, my head hurt like blue blazes, but that wasn’t what made me feel so miserable. “Did you hear? He fired me!” I wanted to bawl.
“He can’t fire yo
u,” she snapped. “He grabbed you first, and even if you over-reacted with that toupee-pulling stunt, his response was way over the line. If you’re sure you’re okay I want you to fill out a grievance complaint. Don’t worry. You have witnesses.”
Jack Spence made it clear where his sympathies lay. “Regardless of the provocation, management can’t go around hitting keepers,” he said. “Aster Edwina’s gonna have a fit if he gets us in trouble with the law or the EEOC.”
Aster Edwina. I’d forgotten she remained the final arbiter of all things zoo, so maybe my situation wasn’t as bleak as I feared. She’d always preferred animals to people.
“You saw everything?” I threw a glance at the anteater. With the director’s departure, she’d returned to all fours and no longer looked dangerous. But the continued hissing wasn’t a good sign.