The Llama of Death

by Betty Webb

  Resistance being futile, I nodded glumly.

  Zorah beamed. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Teddy.”

  On the way back to my car I checked my cellphone. Still no calls from Joe, not that I’d expected one, but I had received a tweet from Sssybil.

  “Open up that Golden Gate, Sssan Francisssco here I come!”

  ***

  The county clerk’s office didn’t open until ten, so I decided to spend Thursday morning cruising the Internet, looking for information on the people working the Faire the night Victor was killed. Deciding it would be best to get the easiest out of the way first, I started with zookeeper Deborah Holt. We’d been good friends for a couple of years now, and I was certain she had no guilty secrets.

  Which showed me how wrong you can be about your friends.

  The first hint Deborah had a less-than-pristine past came from her Facebook page, where one of her posts raised my eyebrows. “Deer Woman better watch her step around my husband. I’ve got a Black Belt in karate and know how to use it.”

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know who Deer Woman was, but Bambi and the reptile keeper? On second thought, why not? Deer Woman had bedded just about every other male in San Sebastian County, and Phil Holt was good looking in a string-bean sort of way. After a few more minutes of looking into Deborah’s background, I found something even more startling. Twice during her college years at San Francisco State, she had been arrested for attacks on other women, each time for the same reason: jealousy over a man. In both cases the criminal charges were dropped, but her second victim took her to civil court and was awarded twelve hundred dollars in damages.

  The information so startled me that I decided to postpone snooping on my other friends. Besides, Bambi remained alive and well. Victor Emerson was the victim, not San Sebastian’s blond husband-snatcher.

  ***

  As it turned out, getting a complete list of Victor’s sham marriages at the county clerk’s offices was much harder than cruising the Internet. The stern-looking woman at the Information Desk told me in no uncertain terms that if I had a name she could help me, but that I would need a warrant to get a comprehensive list of all the marriages Victor had performed. Since I wasn’t an officer of the law, she added maliciously, I wouldn’t be able to get said warrant. My appeal to her better nature fell on deaf ears, possibly because she had no better nature. I left the San Sebastian County complex disappointed.

  Working with dangerous animals had taught me to always have a backup plan, so after visiting Caro at the jail—she was impossible as ever—I headed north to Victor’s wedding chapel. Located on a county road a couple of miles outside San Sebastian city limits, it sat well back from the highway. The chapel was so surrounded by trees and high shrubbery that an elephant could be standing on its porch and no one passing by on the highway would notice. Perfect.

  I rolled my Nissan to a stop between two flowering rhododendron bushes, which made the little truck effectively disappear from the highway. After slipping on a pair of latex gloves, I walked over to the chapel, which was little more than a white wooden rectangle with a steeple stuck on top. It wasn’t as tacky as I had imagined. The paint was sparkling and the deep green shutters flanking the flower-boxed windows gave the plain building the countrified charm that had appealed to so many San Sebastian County couples.

  The trailer behind it, half-hidden by more rhododendrons, was a different story.

  When I parted the bushes and stepped closer, I saw that the single-wide displayed rust along its seams, and the cement pad underneath was crumbling. The tatty curtains in the windows looked like they hadn’t been washed in years. The trailer’s small yard, surrounded on all sides by brush and rhododendrons, fared somewhat better, leading me to believe that Victor had spent most of his time outside, where two Walmart lawn chairs nestled together behind a small barbeque pit. Growing closer, I could smell the remains of past fires.

  But I wasn’t here to snoop into Victor’s domesticity or lack thereof. What I was after would be found in the chapel. Accordingly, I turned my back on Life With Victor and approached the chapel again. Its front and back doors were sealed by police stickers, but after a quick walk-around, I found an unlocked window. After dragging one of the lawn chairs underneath it, access proved easy.

  Victor had only been dead for five days but the chapel’s interior already signaled neglect. A cobweb stretched across a latticed arbor and dead flowers drooped from two dusty vases. I had last been here to perform maid-of-honor duties at Caro’s latest wedding, and remembered that Victor had brought the wedding registry down from the pulpit. The registry was still there, which I guess must have been its usual spot, but a quick flip through the pages revealed marriages only as far back as April.

  After a brief search in the office, which was much less sparkling than the chapel’s public area—I found several more registries in a battered file cabinet. They were big fat books, the oldest stretching back to the time the chapel had opened for business. I dropped them carefully out of the window, then followed. I closed the window behind me, and carted the lawn chair back to where I’d found it. No point in advertising my presence.

  Once the marriage registries were safe in the Nissan, I turned my attention to Victor’s rusting trailer again. It would be a shame to have driven all the way out here without at least taking a peek, so I walked over and tried the door. Yellow-taped and locked. I had no luck with the windows, either, so I gave up and drove home, content I had already found what I needed.

  ***

  Back at the Merilee, Miss Priss hissed a complaint while the Chihuahua joined DJ Bonz in a loud welcome home chorus.

  “I’m glad to see you guys, too,” I said. “Want walkies now or later?”

  Not waiting for an answer—dogs never say “later” to walkies—I snapped on their leashes and we set off, the tiny Feroz easily keeping up with my terrier’s three-legged hops. Because the evening fog hadn’t yet rolled in, Gunn Landing Park was more crowded than usual and not only dog owners were availing themselves of its amenities. Some liveaboarders were cooking dinner on the charcoal grills. Others had formed a pickup basketball game on the small asphalt court. Among the ball players I recognized reptile keeper Phil Holt and Judd Sazac, one half of the battling Sazacs. Howie Fife cheered them on from the sidelines, his over-protective mother nowhere in sight. After the dogs had done their business, I walked over to join him.

  “How’s the ankle, Howie?”

  “Still sore, but I’ll be okay by the weekend. Enough to play the court minstrel, anyway. All I have to do is sit on a cushion at the Royal Pavilion and sing ‘Greensleeves’ and stuff like that.”

  That surprised me. “You sing?”

  “Sure. And play the lute. Dr. Pierce made me learn last semester so I could play Feste in Twelfth Night. I liked it so much I learned a bunch of other Renaissance-type songs. Want to hear one?”

  Without waiting for my answer, he sang in a surprisingly sweet counter-tenor, “O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear! Your true-love’s coming, that can sing both high and low.” Then he stopped, blushing.

  I was stunned. “Why, Howie, that was beautiful! You sound like you’ve been singing all your life.”

  The blushed deepened. “I have, actually. My dad taught me.”

  “He’s a singer?”

  “More of a producer, but he…”

  “Howie!” Ada Fife’s sharp voice cut across the park. She was standing by the first row of picnic tables. “Dinner’s ready!”

  Howie’s face turned from red to white. “Oh, God, forget what I just said, okay? I’m not supposed to…Uh, gotta go!”

  As he started away from me I could see that his limp was almost gone, but by the time he reached his mother it had returned full force.

  Interesting.

  A tug on the l
eash reminded me I had not come to the park alone. Feroz was scrambling his little legs in a vain attempt to reach a piece of blackened hamburger held out by a woman at a sizzling charcoal grill, swigging something red from a wineglass. Bambi, looking considerably less frenetic than at her party. Not only less frenetic, but even glum.

  “Behave!” I told the Chihuahua. “That’s not on your diet.”

  Bambi—I almost smiled when I remembered she’d been dubbed Deer Woman by my friend Deborah—gave me a half-hearted smile. “A little Kobe beef never hurt anyone, especially a dog.”

  Thus speaketh a non-dog-owner. “You baste it with anything?”

  “Tequila. Some tabasco.”

  “Like I said, not on his diet. Feroz’s digestion tends to be iffy, if you know what I mean, and that can be a real problem on a boat. By the way, why are you cooking out here? Having problems with the Runaround’s galley stove?”

  She took another sip of wine. “I just didn’t want the boat smelling like grease for the next month, because I’m putting it up for sale.”

  “Why? The Runaround is such a lovely craft.”

  “If you’re not the seasick type. Frank Turnbull was going to take me out for a sail on the thing this morning but I lost my breakfast before we made it out of the harbor, so I’m sticking to dry land from now on. This’ll be the first thing I’ve eaten all day.”

  She gestured at the picnic table heaped with lettuce leaves, sliced tomatoes, mayonnaise, catsup, pickles, onions, an open bottle of Gunn Vineyards 2006 Merlot, and several Dixie cups, the better with which to drink a six-pack of Diet Coke. Quite a spread for a dinner-for-one.

  “Why don’t you join me?” she asked. “Willis Pierce was supposed to stop by but I just got a call from him saying that something came up at the college and he can’t make it, so I’ve got more than enough here. And I’d kind of like the company. I’m feeling lonely.”

  That a woman like Bambi could be lonely surprised me, but I guess it happens to all of us at one time or another. I had felt unsettled myself since Joe had left for Virginia. Still…I declined a burger, but having an ulterior motive, sat down at the picnic table anyway, the dogs settling themselves at my feet.

  “You might talk me into some of that merlot,” I said.

  “That’s fine, but on the way here, I managed to break the other wineglass.”

  “A Dixie cup’ll do.”

  “Talk about a waste of good wine,” she grumbled, taking a swig from her glass.

  I could have said the same thing about the expensive Kobe beef she had cremated, but only watched while she slapped a thick black patty on a plain white bun and slathered it with condiments. When she sat across from me, I noticed something else. She wore as much makeup as usual, but the thick coating of Erase couldn’t hide the dark circles under her eyes, and the whites around her eyes were veiny and pink. Allergies can be hell.

  Testing the waters, I said, “Shame about Victor, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He performed your marriage ceremony to Max Giffords, didn’t he?”

  “Fat lot of good that did.”

  Did she mean because the marriage had so quickly ended in divorce, or had she somehow learned that her marriage was a sham and that she might now be called upon to return the hefty settlement she’d received? I decided not to ask. “You two were pretty close. Bet you miss him.”

  She put her burned burger down before tasting it and took a deep drink of merlot. “Why would I miss Max? He was such a troll.”

  “I meant Victor Emerson.”

  Another gulp of merlot. “Oh. Victor. He was a close friend so of course I feel bad.” She actually looked it, too.

  “You two dated for a while, right?”

  She slammed her wineglass down so hard the stem snapped off. “You’re disgusting, Teddy!” To my astonishment, she reached across the table, snatched the Dixie cup from my hand, and tossed it to the ground, splattering poor Bonz with red wine.

  I know when I’m not wanted, so I escorted the dogs back to the Merilee.

  Once the animals were fed and I had washed the merlot off Bonz’s white and brown coat, I put Adele on the CD player and began looking through Victor’s marriage logs. In the first book, besides the couples I already knew about, I recognized the names of the mayor, two sheriff’s deputies, several members of the San Sebastian City Council, various workers at the Faire, Caro’s new maid, a few zookeepers, and a large chunk of the harbor’s liveaboarders.

  How many of them had attended one of the medieval weapons demonstrations? Maybe all of them. I closed the book and started on the second.

  Halfway through I found two names that made me gasp in disbelief.

  Chapter Ten

  Friday at the zoo was relatively uneventful. No more animals escaped and the elusive Sssbyl still hadn’t bitten anyone. She was stirring up trouble, though, because she bragged in her morning tweet that she’d breakfasted on a litter of baby rabbits. This outraged a local member of PETA, who sent out an answering tweet of her own, “@PetaGrrl—Sssbyl shld remember some folks eat snakes. Vegans rule!” Not missing a trick, Sssybl tweeted back, “@Sssbyl—Vegansss R yummy 2!”

  While working with the animals during the day, I tried to keep my mind focused on them, but it was hard. Victor Emerson had been dead for less than a week and the inept Elvin had done little to solve the case. Granted, the names I found in Victor’s marriage registers opened up a new area for investigation, but would it be enough? If only Joe were here! He would know what to do. But he was still somewhere in the wilds of Virginia with Homeland Security, unreachable by phone or by Internet.

  I spent the rest of the day feeling lost and lonely, and by the time I clocked out I had made myself thoroughly miserable.

  Determined to fight my way out of bleak mood, I filled the evening with a longer-than-usual visit to the San Sebastian County Jail, where I discovered that Caro had a new manicure. This time the couleur de jour was Starstruck Orange Glitter.

  “Isn’t that a bit gaudy for you?” I asked.

  She sniffed. “It’s from a line called Prison Chic, which is highly appropriate considering my situation. But let’s not waste our time discussing something as trivial as color. The jailhouse grapevine says Elvin Dade is trying to frame me for Victor’s murder. Is that true? If so, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry.” No point in telling her yet that half the people in San Sebastian County, including Wynona Dade, had motives to kill Victor, too. For my own reasons, I wanted to wait until the media broke the story.

  “I’m already worried, Teddy. You don’t think I killed him over that stupid Anne Boleyn thing, do you?”

  “Of course not. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Unless the fly hurt me. “Not to change the subject or anything, but does Soledad Rodriguez get many visitors?”

  “Why do you care? It’s not like you’re friends or anything.”

  “I thought it would be a nice gesture to get to know my mother’s cell mate, so I brought this.” I held up the box of Whitman’s Sampler the guards had allowed in.

  “You’re giving chocolates to Soledad instead to me?”

  I flashed the other box. “For you, Caro, nothing but Godiva.”

  The cranky tone disappeared. “In that case, I find your gesture toward Soledad very kind.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  Bribes work. A half-hour later I was facing the leader of Demonios Femeninos through the Plexiglas partition while she eyed the Whitman’s Sampler. Soledad Rodriguez wasn’t as young as I’d expected, probably her late twenties. Maybe her hard life aged her early. Like many gang-affiliated women, she had shaved her eyebrows and drawn them back with thin black lines. Her full mouth wore no lipstick, just a brown penciled outline that mirrored her stark brows. The overall eff
ect was more than a little frightening, which was probably why she’d adopted it.

  She pointed a long black nail toward the candy and in a thick Spanglish accent said, “’Bout how many pieces of chocolate are in there? I can’t have some and not share with my chicas.”

  I looked at the Sampler, which the guard had promised to lift over the barrier at the end of our visit. “It’s the forty-ounce box so I’d guess seventy? Eighty?”

  “And you just giving them to me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Even when I don’t know you?”

  “You’ve been nice to my mother.”

  “But you still want something. What?”

  “Huh?”

  She crossed her arms and the sleeves of her orange jump suit slipped up, revealing a tattooed female devil. “You heard me, Rojo.”

  “Rojo?”

  “Red. What you want from me?”

  Maybe it was my imagination but it seemed like the longer we sat there, the thicker her accent became. With her fierce appearance and defiant manner, she reminded me of Del Malinga, the zoo’s Brazilian jaguar no one could get near. Not that anyone wanted to.

  “I need information, Soledad.”

  “You want me rat out one a my chicas, Rojo, get your skinny ass gone before I come over this screen and whop it.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to rat out one of your chicas, Soledad. And my ass isn’t skinny, but thanks anyway for the compliment. Now let’s look at the situation. You’re in here awaiting trial for murdering Duane Langer, right?”

  “So?”

  “What I want to know is, did you really murder your husband?”

  For a very brief moment shock erased the ferocity on her face. Then she recovered. “You crazy! That white Viking Vengeance dude not my husband.”