Denny started the van moving, but I had time to kick another dent in the side panel.
I was never going to get any useful information out of him.
Driving home to feed the dogs before dinner with Marcie, I thought about what Denny believed. Denny believed that the world was run by a black-hearted conspiracy of billionaire capitalists who would lose their fortunes if hemp were ever legalized, that marijuana brought him closer to the spiritual center of the cosmos, that spirulina algae would keep him healthy regardless of what else he ate or drank or smoked. He’d been wrong about computer viruses destroying civilization, wrong about women not caring how often a guy bathed, wrong about water boiling faster if you left the lid off the pot.
He agreed with me that something was fishy about Rick’s death. That troubled me considerably.
Chapter Sixteen
Dinner with Marcie was a mess, both of us anxious and off balance. Thanks to the state I was in after talking to Denny, I’d forgotten to deposit the insurance check. I could almost feel it in my wallet, vibrating from unidentifiable emotions. The food at the Thai restaurant was good, as always, and the conversation went a little better after we’d eaten our ginger beef and green curry. Never again would I discuss anything important on an empty stomach.
When I suggested that Rick might have been murdered, Marcie didn’t laugh or try to pack me off to a therapist. Instead, she went quiet.
“Marcie, there’s something else.”
“What?” Her hands were fists on the table.
“Denny has the same suspicions about Rick’s death. Denny’s theories are always cracked. Plus, his working hypothesis is that I did it. It’s too confusing.”
She relaxed a little. “I can assure you, his theories are not your biggest problem. Nobody takes them seriously, not even him. It’s a hobby. It’s the way he processes.”
“He takes this one seriously. No one can tell me why Rick came up to the zoo. I need to talk to him—he’s got to know something about Rick’s last few days because Rick was staying at his place. He sincerely believes I might be a killer and I want to strangle him every time I see him. So I want you to be there.” Marcie was the only candidate: Denny and I both knew and trusted her, she was calmer than either of us, and she was good at clarifying emotional situations.
Marcie picked at her food and seemed to be thinking it over. Finally she said, “I set you up. At the dog show. I talked you out of blaming Rick for all your problems. You started asking questions at the zoo and the bad stuff started happening. You better not get killed because I’ll never forgive myself.”
Her conclusion was that I had to quit the zoo immediately. Dodging with a vague promise to resign soon and take the L.A. job if it was offered, I got back to Denny. Would she mediate?
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll invite him to dinner and we can all talk.”
That’s when I realized I was probably putting her in harm’s way, and the conversation deteriorated again into self-recrimination and ultimatums. We reluctantly agreed there was no point in going to the police without more information. Over fortune cookies that contained quips but neither valuable advice nor useful predictions, we decided to go ahead with inviting Denny to dinner. That settled, we limped our separate ways, exhausted. Still, it felt like progress.
I called the people who wanted to buy the truck and put them off until the next weekend. I had enough on my plate, and I didn’t need the money anymore.
Tuesday morning, I deposited the check on my way to work. At the Commissary, I found the note I’d left for Diego folded over my time card, with the answer to my question added at the bottom in his careful printing, the name of the keeper who had the night shift the night Rick died. No surprise—I’d been told before, but had forgotten, as I’d failed to remember so much since Rick died.
I walked into the Penguinarium and forgot all about it again.
Calvin was in a near-tizzy. He was too deliberate to achieve a genuine tizzy, but he was as close as he was ever likely to be. “Gol-durned raccoon got in the aviary. Lousy cheap fencing. Killed one of the nene babies. It’s still in there; can’t find its way out. I’d like to shoot the son of a B,” he ranted while ransacking the storage closet. So much for taciturn.
The three hatchlings weren’t exactly babies anymore. They were full-sized, nice looking geese in gray and buff with black heads and bills.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Where in Sam Hill is my catch pole?” He gazed around the kitchen, flushed and agitated. “I need to noose that forking varmint and haul him out before he kills every bird in there. Then I’d like to throw him in the river with a brick tied to him. Or kick his little behind out on the freeway at rush hour.”
My, my.
I stood in front of Calvin to get his attention. “Do you have a catch pole? I can go get one at Felines if you want.”
He focused on me briefly. “I used to have one, then Arnie or somebody borrowed it and never put it back. Maybe it’s at Bears. I’m going to get a lock for that closet and never loan anything again as long as I live. Beans-and-rice-on-Friday. I got to fix that mesh or we’ll have every raccoon in the state in there.” He started toward the door, presumably to head for Bears.
I was still working on the beans and rice as I stepped in front of him again.
“Calvin, Felines has a catch pole. I’ll go get it. You pretend you aren’t swearing and meet me at the aviary.”
He flinched.
I loped off to Felines and found Linda outside picking up the cougar yard. She didn’t protest at my brief explanation, which I took as permission. The pole was in the kitchen, mixed in with the nets; I trotted back.
Calvin was standing inside World of Birds near one corner, glaring upwards. I looked up at the trunk of the artificial tree he indicated. A little masked face peered at us from about ten feet up, mostly hidden by the trunk and a branch. “It’s a youngster,” I told him.
“Get it out, or it’s not getting a day older.”
I’d never actually used a catch pole, aside from a brief practice session on a fat old possum during my early training. The possum hadn’t minded, since he was quite tame and eating dinner at the time. The little raccoon was smaller but a lot more agile than Pa Possum and she was clearly contemplating climbing higher. If she made it all the way up the trunk, I’d never be able to reach her.
Superb starlings—that’s their name—swooped down to perch near me, flashes of iridescent blue and chestnut. They had food on their mind and weren’t worried about the intruder. The nene parents, on the other hand, rushed me, hissing with their heads held low in threat posture, pecking at my boots. “Hey, I’m the good guy,” I told them. “Calvin, I need a ladder.” The other birds were hidden in foliage or crammed into far corners, except for the little Hottentot teals, who paddled about in the stream unconcerned. They should have been worried; a raccoon that could handle a young nene could munch them right up.
Calvin went off obediently. I moved away from the perpetrator to take the pressure off, in hopes she wouldn’t climb any higher. The nenes followed, hissing like teakettles. “Back off. I know what I’m doing,” I lied.
Calvin brought a stepladder, still muttering, and we set it up. He seemed willing to let me handle the varmint side of bird keeping, so I shooed him out of the way, and climbed up. I was careful not to look at the raccoon, although I didn’t fool her any. She knew I was after her. I teetered on the top step, the one labeled Do Not Stand Here, and adjusted the loop of lightweight cable at the business end of the pole. The cable ran through the pole and out the other end. I knew the theory—stick out the pole and loop the cable over the critter’s head and one foreleg, then tighten by pulling on the cable at the far end. At my end of the pole, the cable had a loop with a plastic handle for me to pull on. The catch pole was supposed to allow controlling the animal without choking or injuring it.
I got my balance and took a
quick pass at the raccoon. She scooted around the trunk, evading the loop, and climbed up another few feet. I climbed down, moved the ladder, and tried again. Same result. The culprit looked like she was planning a jump to the next tree over, which would put her into dense foliage.
“Calvin, you stand here,” I ordered, placing him so that the raccoon couldn’t move away from me without moving toward Calvin.
I climbed back up the little ladder and positioned myself, hoping that the third time was the charm. Calvin surprised us all by winding up and hurling half an orange from a food tray, beaning the kid between the ears. The raccoon nearly lost her grip and I swooped in and got the cable around her neck and one—no—two forelegs. The cable was around her middle, behind the front legs. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but it didn’t look dangerous for her. I snugged it tight, but not too tight, and hauled her down the trunk, her claws scrabbling frantically as I teetered on the ladder. She fell the last couple of feet and whipped around to bite anything nearby. I clambered down, knocking over the ladder and further inciting the parent geese. I towed the littlest outlaw out of the aviary as she screeched raccoon death threats at me.
“Get a box or something,” I said. Calvin grabbed an empty garbage can and dumped it on its side. Together, we wrestled the kid inside and stood the can upright. Then I let some slack into the cable and eventually we got it disentangled from the raccoon. The youngster was hissing and growling savagely, but she didn’t look any the worse for wear. Calvin rounded up a hand truck, clapped a lid on the can, and hauled it off, promising to release the raccoon in some scrub forest on his way home. I went back into the aviary and collected limp fragments of goose, blocking the hostile parents with a feed bucket.
Calvin came back and we set to work fixing the hole in the mesh fence, kneeling on damp ground in the drizzle. A vivid Mexican green jay supervised from a nearby branch. The other small birds weren’t coming out of hiding, not yet. “Millions of dollars for the zoo and it all goes to new animals. Nobody gives a goldurn about the animals we already have,” he muttered, pounding a metal stake viciously.
“You could bring it up at the next staff meeting,” I suggested. “Put a little heat on Mr. Crandall.”
“I have talked myself blue in the face. This happens every blessed year—we lose something to rats or raccoons or possums. They’ve got all kinds of holes under the perimeter fence. This aviary needs replacing, but we got to have fancy exhibits for brand new stuff like clouded leopards.”
How could anyone be blind to the glory of having clouded leopards? I contemplated various responses, but they weren’t going to mean a thing to a bird keeper.
He unrolled a scrap of heavy hardware cloth and I tugged on two corners to help straighten it out. “You’d think Wallace would care about the perimeter fence,” I said. “He has to get the Children’s Zoo yard resurfaced because of water damage from the vandals that got through a few weeks ago.”
“He should care, but the truth is, Sam and I walked the fence the next day and couldn’t find where those kids got in. Usually you can always tell. They cut a hole or smash down the bushes. We didn’t find a hole big enough for a person, even a skinny kid.” Calvin flattened the wire carefully and bent the edges back to eliminate sharp points. “I wonder who that was and what they thought they were doing messing around at the kids’ zoo.”
He started fastening the patch over the hole the raccoon presumably used. “A new perimeter fence is next on the schedule after the Asia exhibit is up, but I haven’t heard boo about new bird construction. They better start planning, or I’m going to the city council about it.”
I handed him pliers and baling wire as needed, a familiar role from working with my father on house projects. “Um, while we’re planning better bird exhibits, can we ask for shift cages for the eagle and the other raptors?”
“You bet your Great-Aunt Fanny. I told Wallace to get us a way to manage that eagle properly or ship her to someplace that can.” He spoke with heat and looked up to see how I reacted.
I nodded and had the sense to keep quiet.
Calvin finally straightened up, stretching his back to indicate we were done. “You did a nice job lassoing that thing.”
I almost dropped the pliers.
“I expect you weren’t a bad cat keeper,” he added.
That left me flummoxed. Was he saying I was good with cats, but crappy with birds? I gathered up tools and scraps of wire and followed him back to the Penguinarium.
At lunchtime, I looked around the café. The person I wanted wasn’t there. I walked through the steady rain to Felines. A few seconds standing and listening in the hallway told me that Linda was cleaning the small cats. I said hi to Raj and the leopards and sat down in the kitchen. Linda had made changes. The Gary Larson cartoons were gone. A framed poster hung from a nail, a still life of luscious yellow pears and droopy purple flowers. Two beautiful hand-built cups with an iridescent blue-green glaze sat by the sink.
Linda came in after a few minutes, sturdy and cheerful in her uniform. She’d cropped her chestnut hair even shorter and added a third earring to her right ear. “Hey, good to see you. Where’s your lunch?” She pulled hers out of the fridge, a bowl of cottage cheese covered with chopped fruit. It looked like parrot food.
“I’ll stop by the café later. Part of Rick’s life insurance came. I can’t figure out what to do with it and thought I’d ask you.”
“Put it in the bank. Should I make coffee? Was it a lot of money?”
“Coffee would be good. The glaze on the cups is wonderful.” I pulled out a chair and sat down. “It’s only the first installment, but it’s a lot. For me, anyway. It’s in the credit union.”
“I’m working on bowls to match the cups. Why don’t you buy a house?” She activated the coffeemaker, another new feature—I’d always used a cone. She sat down opposite me.
I fiddled with the cup. “Don’t know if I could afford that in L.A. Houses are for millionaires down there.”
“The L.A. job is for real?”
“Not yet.”
“I can see why you’d want a fresh start, but I would really miss you. You’re the one person who helped me out when I was new. I haven’t forgotten those first months.”
“You don’t need any help. You know what you’re doing.” Still, it was good to hear.
Linda settled in to her lunch. “Wish I could afford a house. With a nice garage or basement for a kiln.”
So much for the amiable windup. Time for the curve ball. “Linda, you worked the night shift the night Rick died, right?” I watched her open face go cautious.
“Yeah. Diego asked for the night off. His daughter starred in a musical at her high school, one of the brides for seven brothers. He wanted to go on opening night. I didn’t mind doing Diego the favor and the money was nice, but night work half kills me. Sorry, bad choice of words.” She eyed me warily. “Everyone knows all this. I told the police and Wallace and…everyone.”
Linda got up and poured the coffee. She pulled crummy low-fat milk out of the fridge.
I added milk and sipped. Not too bad. “I got sent home after my interview and I wasn’t paying much attention. I’m trying to piece it together. So when were you here that night?”
“I punched in at 4:00 PM and out at 12:30. I got back at 7:30 AM for the day shift. I was supposed to work Primates; I walked by the lions. You know the rest.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You want to know if I saw anything that night. The police asked me, and Wallace asked me, and Mr. Crandall asked me, and Denny asked me, and I told them all no. You asked me twice when you first came back. Remember? I didn’t see a damn thing, not until I saw the body first thing in the morning. I don’t think Rick showed up until after I’d left.”
I nodded. “I wondered how the schedule had worked. Diego said you were on that night, but I saw you in the morning. Pulling your jacket over Rick.” We were both silent for a minute.
Li
nda’s eyes went unfocused. “The lions were wild for days. They looked at me like they’d finally figured it out and we couldn’t fool them any longer. Creepy.”
I thought about what the lions had figured out and shivered. “You never mentioned that before.”
“I shouldn’t have now. They’ve calmed down. Spice’s training is back on track.”
“Linda, I have to ask you this. Did Rick come to the zoo to meet you that night?”
Linda’s eyebrows went up and she stared straight at me, green eyes wide, a spoonful of chopped banana halfway to her mouth. “Meet me? Oh. As in ‘show up for reasons of sweaty passion?’ Oh, Iris. No, he didn’t do any such thing. If he had, it sure wouldn’t have been with me. You can let that one go.”
“Why not you?” I asked stubbornly. “You liked each other. You’re not in a relationship.”
“Well, I didn’t. He didn’t, at least not with me. It didn’t happen. For one thing, I was too busy and too beat.” She looked at me with pity and dismay.
When I didn’t nod acceptance, she jabbed at her cottage cheese uncomfortably. “Iris, hello? Have you ever known me to have a boyfriend? Look at me.”
“How would I know about your private life? You never talk about it.” She waited. I did look at her. “I never understood why you whacked off that fabulous red hair. Most women would kill for it. Guys love…” I wound down to silence.
I’d known Linda for over two years, trained her on Felines. She was my best zoo buddy, her and Hap. And I hadn’t known…“Okay. You’re telling me you’re gay.”
“Queer as a three dollar bill. Don’t feel too left out—I didn’t figure it out myself until a couple of months ago.” She was still waiting, those green eyes steady on my face.
“What?” Lord, I could be dim. “Hey, I’m not going to demand my socks back and scream if you touch me. Relax.”
She didn’t, not quite. “You don’t have to go announcing anything.”
Night Kill Page 15