The Anteater of Death

by Betty Webb

  I was certain Frieda would agree. But that was a different woman, a different broken heart. If I wanted to stay alive, I had to keep this one talking. “Did you confront Grayson about Kim?”

  A spiteful smile. “Of course, just before I shot him. He told me that if I loved him, I’d understand, that Kim was his last chance for a normal life!”

  The rage in her voice convinced me to change the subject.“How did Barry know...?” How best to say that you murdered your husband.

  “He saw me slip away from the administration building that night, right after I came back from ... from doing what I did. I’d thrown that silly anteater costume on the pile with the others, but he didn’t figure out what it meant until the next day, after...” Her eyes welled again.

  “He was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?”

  “The man had no morals. No one’s going to miss him. Did you know that only eight people showed up for his funeral?” She laughed through the tears raining down her face. “At least Grayson drew a nice crowd. How many people were there? Fifty? Seventy-five?”

  Where was that park ranger?

  “I loved him, Teddy. I loved him!”

  Horribly enough, I believed her. Her grief was real. So real that for too long it had blinded me to the fact that Grayson hadn’t been anything like an anglerfish at all, someone so attached to his woman that he’d lost his individuality. He was more like a Mexican gray wolf, faithful most of the time, as long as it served his purposes. Godiva’s terrible attack, first on Hazel and then on Cisco, had brought that realization home.

  “You shoved Kim off that curb in Carmel, didn’t you?”

  More laughter. “Puppet Girl had it coming. Lucky for her that SUV had good brakes. Otherwise, she’d be road kill.”

  When Jeanette’s attempt at killing her rival failed, she turned on her own mate. Just like Godiva. “How did you know Zorah had a gun in her desk?”

  “Just lucky, I guess. I’d already made up my mind to kill him, but I was going to use this one...” I tried not to flinch when she waved it at me. From this angle, the thing looked like a cannon. “It’s one of old Edwin’s. You’ve probably seen it hanging in the drawing room a million times. Aster Edwina keeps the collection in perfect working order.”

  “But you didn’t use it. You used Zorah’s.”

  She looked at her great-great grandfather’s gun like she’d never seen it before. “Oh. Right. A few days before ... before I did it, I was down at the zoo, hoping to catch Kim alone. I had this gun in my handbag, and I was going to ... You know what I was going to do. Anyway, I couldn’t find her in the auditorium. When I looked for her in the administration building, there was Zorah, acting peculiar about something in her desk. She got a call about some animal and left, so I looked in the drawer and there it was. She all but gave me that gun!”

  As distraught over Grayson’s unfaithfulness as Jeanette had been, she had recognized the advantage of using a weapon that couldn’t be traced to her. I remained confused about one thing, though. “The night of the fund-raiser, you faked your migraine and left, but you returned later. How? No one saw your car.”

  “That’s because I didn’t drive. You’ve been up to the castle often enough to know how isolated it is up there, especially at night. An elephant could stomp around outside and nobody would notice. I slipped out the back, whre there’s never anyone around after dark, took the short cut through the vineyard, and entered the zoo through the employees’ entrance. And before you ask, yes, I know all the lock combinations. You guys should change them more regularly. Otherwise some disgruntled employee could get in and do some damage.”

  Here she was, about to blow my brains out, but she could still spare a thought for the zoo’s welfare. What dedication.

  “After getting in, I put on the extra anteater suit I’d ordered—yeah, I was the one who ordered them—and waited in the shadows until Grayson went to the little boy’s room. When he came out, I lifted up the mask and told him I had something to show him over by the anteater’s enclosure. The lions were roaring that night, making so much noise that I knew no one would hear ... Grayson ... He...” She gulped. “He never suspected a thing.”

  Like everyone else, he had mistaken her passivity for stupidity.

  “I didn’t know ... I didn’t know shooting him would hurt so much!”

  Hurt who so much? Her? Or Grayson?

  “Oh, Teddy, he made the most horrible noise! And he didn’t die right away. He ... He tried to run away, but I got in front of him and was going to shoot him again, to put him out of his misery like you do a badly injured animal, but he climbed over the enclosure fence. I guess he thought he’d be safer with Lucy than with me. Or maybe he thought he could hide down there. When he hit the moat he went under the water for a minute, and I thought he was finally dead, but then he crawled out and...” Her sobs were horrible to hear.

  Something occurred to me. Here I was, hoping to stall Jeanette until the night park ranger came by to rescue me. But under ordinary conditions, the rangers weren’t armed, and Jeanette might shoot him, too. If I wanted to stay alive without getting someone else killed in the process, I’d have to help myself.

  But how? Running and hiding was out of the question, because other than the brushy area directly behind her, Tropics Trail stretched straight and broad for approximately twenty yards in both directions. The Trail might be lined with palms, but until it hooked around to the west for the spectacled bear exhibit, it contained no ground foliage dense enough to hide in. As for rushing Jeanette, she stood a good ten feet away from me. I’d be dead before covering half that distance.

  Her next words convinced me I had little time left. “Too bad you had to be so nosy, Teddy. And so stubborn. I hoped that after I hit you over the head that night down by the harbor you might back off, but you didn’t. Now I have to do what I need to do.” Her voice, once jittery with adrenaline, flattened to a dull resolve. Animals displayed this behavior just before they attacked.

  I tried one last appeal. “You don’t have to kill me, not really. What Grayson did, cheating on you when you loved him so much, a jury will consider that a crime of passion.” But not Barry’s murder, they won’t.

  She looked at me with distain. “You always did underestimate me, even in Monopoly. I am so tired of people—especially you—thinking I’m stupid.” She leveled the pistol and squinted one eye.

  I raised my hands and tried to act panicked—not difficult, given the circumstances. “Oh, God, Jeanette! Please don’t shoot me! I swear I won’t tell anyone!”

  Then, hoping that for at least a second she’d pay more attention to my words than my actions, I spun on my heel and—practice making perfect—vaulted cleanly over the fence into the anteater’s moat.

  As I splashed down, I heard a gunshot and the bee-whine of a bullet flying past. Knowing there was nothing else I could do, I dove again beneath the water’s surface and stroked hard for the other side. This moat wasn’t as deep and nowhere near as wide as the bears’, but by the time I reached the bank, two bullets had penetrated the water, missing me by scant inches. My plan was to head for the thicket by the banana tree, and after that—if Lucy let me—use the broad-leafed cover to hide in while I crept toward the holding pen, through it, and out the pen’s rear gate. Once I reached the narrow trail used by the keepers, heavy brush would cover me all the way to the administration building, where I would barricade myself in the windowless employees’ lounge and phone for help.

  But as I sloshed ashore on the other side of the moat, Lucy rushed to meet me, and the growl that issued from her throat wasn’t friendly. Enraged at this intrusion, she reared to her full height, long talons flashing. Would she do to me what she had done to Grayson’s body? With despair I realized I might not survive long enough to put the rest of my plan into action.

  To gain time, I said in the cooing tone I normally used with her, “Does my Lucy want a banana?”

  The growl faded into a querulous rumble. The red glo
w of anger in her eyes softened.

  “Banana, Lucy! Banana!”

  After taking a half-hearted swipe at me, she dropped to all fours. When I repeated the magic word, she ducked her head and flicked out her blue tongue.

  “Snort?”

  Grateful tears cleared the moat water out of my eyes. “Yes, Lucy loooves banana!” One baby step at a time, keeping my eyes on those horrible talons, I backed us both into the shadowy protection of the banana tree thicket where bullets couldn’t find either of us. She followed closely, rumbling her greed.

  Although it seemed like an eternity, only seconds had passed since I’d jumped into the moat. Jeanette, apparently recovered from her shock that I would dive into what looked like certain death, snapped off a couple more rounds. When they missed, she howled in fury. No stranger to the zoo, she knew that if I reached the back trail, her chances of catching me in its deep undergrowth weren’t good.

  So she did exactly what I’d done. Emboldened by my safe passage across the anteater’s enclosure, she vaulted over the fence.

  When she splashed down in the moat, Lucy swung her head around.

  I reached the holding pen. Put my hand on the gate. Started working the combination lock. Saw the fire extinguisher in the corner. The shovel. The rake.

  I was no longer weaponless.

  Behind me, the anteater made threatening noises. I wasn’t safe yet, so I kept talking, kept maneuvering the lock. “Banana for Lucy. Soft, mushy banana.”

  The last tumbler fell into place. The lock opened.

  Jeanette screamed.

  Lucy stretched to full height again, talons slashing. This time, Jeanette was the object of her ire. Lucy slashed at her hand, knocking the gun into the foliage.

  “Run back to the moat!” I screamed. “She hates water!” Too late. Talons sliced through the air again. Connected.

  With little more than a sigh, Jeanette went down.

  It could have ended right there. For a moment, a very brief moment, I was tempted to escape through the holding pen, leaving Jeanette to Lucy’s mercies. After all, hadn’t she killed two people and tried to kill me? Instead, I dashed into the holding pen, grabbed the rake, and without caring for my own safety, rushed to Jeanette’s side. When I reached her, I saw blood seeping through her shredded blouse. The anteater towered over her, talons flexing.

  I gave Lucy a poke with the rake. “No!”

  Those baleful eyes turned toward me again. A hiss.

  “I said, ‘No!’”

  She looked toward the holding pen, then at me. Her blue tongue flickered.

  “Squeak?”

  Lucy really wanted that banana.

  Keeping an eye on the anteater, I grabbed Jeanette by the foot and dragged her into the safety of the pen. As Lucy hissed her frustration, I slammed the gate and screamed for help, hoping the ranger was somewhere nearby.

  I heard no answering voice. Just the wind rushing though the trees, an owl’s hoot above, an annoyed lion’s roar from Africa Trail. The ranger was probably down there, making certain no mischievous teenagers had snuck into the zoo.

  Wondering if my cell phone would work after all the abuse it had taken, I fished it out of my pocket. As I started to punch in 9-1-1, it rang.

  More out of reflex than anything else, I answered.

  Joe’s warm voice came over the line. “Hi, there, Teddy. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Two days later Joe and I stood hand in hand on the tarmac of the San Jose International Airport, watching as a large crate stamped GUNN VINEYARDS: THE BEST OF THE WEST was loaded onto the Gunn family’s Lear jet.

  “Come kiss us goodbye,” my mother said to me, smiling. She was clad in cream-colored linen, her hair freshly tinted. She’d gained back a whole half-pound since my father talked her into quitting the Strawberry/Carrot Diet.

  “What, kiss you and Aster Edwina?”

  “No, silly.” She winked.

  “Oh.” I snuck a sidelong look at the serene countenance of the Gunn family doyenne, who didn’t seem at all disturbed that her grand-niece—who was fine, except for a few scratches on her hand and a superficial shoulder wound—now lay handcuffed to a bed in the San Sebastian County Hospital, facing double homicide charges. But why should Aster Edwina be bothered? The fleet of attorneys she’d hired had all but guaranteed that if convicted, Jeanette would spend her time in a mental hospital, not in prison doing someone else’s laundry. After all, Jeanette was a Gunn.

  “You understand that I can’t know anything about this,” Joe said, as my mother started for the plane.

  I smiled as I leaned closer to him, inhaling his cologne. I would never let anything separate us again.

  With my mother’s back to us, he snuck me a quick kiss, then whispered, “Hurry up and say goodbye. Just the thought of who’s on board makes my handcuffs twitch.”

  I left him behind on the pavement and followed my mother and her unlikely co-conspirator up the plane’s stairs.

  While Aster Edwina settled herself in one of the leather club chairs with her well-thumbed copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince and began to underline various passages, Caro led me toward the seating banquettes in the rear of the plane.

  “It’s hard to believe she’s doing this for you, what with Jeanette under arrest and all,” I said. “You two don’t even get along.”

  A dismissive wave. “She said something about us old families having to stick together. Besides, she always had a thing for your father.”

  Crusty old Aster Edwina and Dad? Well, he always could charm birds out of the trees. Even the harpies.

  Lifting the seat cushion off a banquette, Caro said, “Say goodbye to your father.”

  Dad lay in the storage compartment underneath the banquette, dressed in a golf shirt and broadcloth slacks. Not Iceland, then. From his prone position, he waggled his fingers at me. “Your mother ordered me to order you to quit your job. Oh, and also to break up with that nice boyfriend of yours.” Then he smiled his wonderful smile. “I told her you never listen to me.”

  “You’re right.” I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

  “Kiss Al goodbye, too.”

  I frowned. “Al Mazer? He’s going to wherever you’re going?”

  Dad shrugged, not an easy thing to do when you’re lying in the bottom of a hollowed-out banquette. “Since he purposely flubbed that hit on me, he has to get out of town, too.”

  My mouth flew open. “Hit? Do you mean to tell me Al works for Chuckles?”

  My father had the decency to look abashed. “Not any more. he has after he was assigned to my, um, case. Talk about an ethical problem! It’s a sad day when duty to your employer dictates you do one thing, but friendship dictates you do another. Al told me he’d always liked working for Chuckles, who—money laundering and rubouts aside—is an excellent employer. He even gives freelancers like Al complete insurance coverage, which in this day and age, counts for something. Now go give Al that kiss.”

  Caro lifted up the cushion on the facing banquette. Al Mazer lay beneath.

  I didn’t kiss him. “You shot at my father, you creep.”

  He looked contrite. “I made certain I missed. Believe me, I’m a much better shot than that. Your father was never in any danger and neither were you. Not from me, anyway.”

  “You scared me!”

  “Sorry about that. I did what I could to make up for it, though.”

  It was all I could do not to grab Aster Edwina’s copy of The Prince and bash him over the head with it. “Are you nuts? How can you ever make up for shooting at someone?” I could still remember the whine of those bullets before they splashed into the water by the Merilee, so much like the sound other bullets had made as they flew by me as I swam for my life in Lucy’s moat. I never wanted to hear anything like that again.

  He reached up and grasped my hand before I could snatch it away. “Remember how worried you’ve been about the Merilee not being able to make that trip to
Dolphin Island?”

  “Don’t you dare offer me blood money!” I yelled.

  From the interior of the other banquette, my father called, “Pipe down, Teddy. Al understands that you have this silly thing about ethics.” The way he pronounced the word raised my ire even further.

  Al gave me a sheepish grin. “You know Maxwell Jarvis? The guy who registered the complaint about the liveaboarders? When you get back to the harbor, you’ll find the complaint’s been withdrawn.”

  “You threatened Maxwell?” I didn’t have to feign my outrage. “What, you left a dead horse’s head on his pillow?”

  “That’s unnecessarily harsh.” Dad again. “Al merely suggested to Mr. Jarvis, who by the way is deeply invested in some -questionable holdings himself, that he find another harbor for his own yacht since Gunn Landing so offends his sensibilities. He also pointed out that if Mr. Jarvis didn’t withdraw his complaint, the Securities and Exchange Commission would soon receive a letter, attached to photocopies and notarized statements.”