by Ruby Loren
I was saved from thinking of a good reply to that when her phone beeped.
“Oh, Harry’s just texted back. He’s one of the keepers. Apparently this morning he’s hoping to oversee the structural reinforcements of the big cat enclosures - something which he says he fully approves of, by the way.” Amanda looked a little sheepish.
“That’s okay, I can see the keepers on a less busy day. Now, just remember I am here to help you, and I can help best when I know what is going on,” I said seriously, looking straight into Amanda’s eyes. “So, it would be brilliant if you have a schedule of when every animal is arriving, just so I’m able to check everything’s okay and is up to the high standard I know Mellon Zoo will be upholding.”
“Of course. I will make that my absolute priority. It will be in your inbox in the next ten minutes,” she promised before excusing herself on other business.
I watched her walk back around the elephant enclosure.
Had I really seen that flicker of alarm in her eyes when I’d asked to know what was going on?
Laurel Cottage was the kind of pretty house that made me think of the rural villages featured on postcards. Despite the January gloom, there were primroses out along the neatly paved pathway and even the sign, carved into cherry wood, looked warm and inviting.
I wasn’t sure the occupant of the cottage would be.
I reached out and pressed the doorbell, hearing it chime merrily inside. A while later, I heard someone come to the door.
“Who is it?” a voice called out.
“Hello, is that Mrs Kendal? My name’s Madigan Amos. I’ve been sent here by the owners of Mellon Zoo to give our thanks and to answer any questions you may have about what we’re doing with your family’s property.” I noticed the peephole in the centre of the door and raised the basket of biscuits I’d brought with me as a peace offering/bribe.
After a tense moment’s hesitation, the door swung open and I found myself face to face with the toughest little old lady I’d ever seen. Often when people grow old, their sliding skin accents the kindness in their eyes. That wasn’t the case with Mrs Kendal. She looked like a bulldog with a penchant for running into walls.
“May I come in?” I asked, wanting to double check.
“Come in,” Mrs Kendal said, before barking ‘Shoes off!’ a second later.
I walked through into the living room, which was upholstered entirely in purple so dark it was almost black. Pictures of kittens adorned the walls and there were figurines and stuffed cat toys everywhere. Intriguingly, there were also several bottles containing unidentified pickled items. Dried sticks and leaves hung from the eaves making the room look like an old apothecary.
“So, you’re a cat lover! Do you have a pet cat?” I asked, hoping for a nice safe opening gambit.
“Heck, no! Animals are far too messy. I just like to look at them,” the old woman said. “Tea?” she enquired and I said yes please.
I left the biscuit hamper on the table and a minute later, Mrs Kendal reappeared with two cups of tea.
“What’s all this about the old farm then?” she asked. Beating around the bush with smalltalk apparently wasn’t her style.
I took a sip of my tea without looking at it first. It tasted like dishwater. I glanced down and wondered if Mrs Kendal was one of those terrible people who had the misplaced belief that a teabag could be used multiple times. I also suspected that the milk had been added first.
I set the cup down on a kitten coaster and tried to focus on something that wasn’t the horror-mug of tea… or the strange things in the pickle jars.
“As you know, the property was sold for development,” I began.
“Yes, yes… better than it rotting away,” Mrs Kendal said. I found I admired her stoic attitude. “I suppose they’re building flats, are they?”
“No Mrs Kendal, they’re opening a zoo.” She must have missed it when I’d explained where I was visiting from. Perhaps the biscuits had been what had done the trick after all.
“A zoo?”
“One very similar to the plans your family set out. You’d be amazed by the progress that’s been made since work began in January. They’re already putting the animals in!”
“Oh,” the old lady said, looking flummoxed. “I figured they’d find a way to build something on it all. The barn and cottage are still there, aren’t they? Will anyone be living in them?” she asked, and I didn’t miss the pain in her eyes.
“They’re both in good shape and have been well-preserved,” I told her, opting for the easy truth first. “I’m not sure if anyone will be living there,” I said, knowing better than to divulge what was actually being done with the barn.
“That’s something at least.” She smiled faintly at the ghost of a memory. “They’d just got round to decorating the place after all the work they’d done with the new roof and the garden area.” Mrs Kendal shook her head. “I remember Molly worked so hard on it while Art wasn’t doing so well. That didn’t mean he kept his nose out of it, of course. She was so angry when he had that concrete laid outside for a ‘proper parking space’. Art loved animals, but he was no eco-warrior.”
“Would you like some more tea?” the woman asked, suddenly snapping out of her reverie.
“No thank you,” I said, diplomatically. “They had a son, didn’t they?” I wondered if I was pushing my luck, but Mrs Kendal didn’t seem to mind.
“Yes, Matthew. He was a good lad, but a bit wayward as teenagers often are. At least he had fun on his gap year, from what I remember. He was supposed to be at the local university, but he preferred to spend as much time as he could anywhere but there! He was at home when they all disappeared. Theoretically, he’d caught a bug that was going round, but it was plain as day he wanted to skip his lectures to spend more time with Rosalie, his girlfriend. She was a little older than him and already a fine landscaper. The pair met when she was helping the family out at their old place up in Wales. I’m not sure how Matthew managed to attract her attention, but they’d been together for nearly three years when the family went missing. She’d come down to help out with some landscaping bits and bobs for the eco-project. Poor Rosalie. She’d driven back to Wales on the night it happened, just missing whatever awful thing happened to Matthew and the others. I know she felt terrible about that, especially having lost my grandson.”
“That’s awful,” I said, meaning it. “So, you’re from Wales originally?”
The old lady nodded. “Close to Newport. It’s nice there, but it’s not for me any more. My sister still lives somewhere around those parts. The family moved down here so they could take care of Art’s mother in her failing health - and then Art, when the same horrible disease struck him - but it’s become my home, more than I’m sure it ever was for them. It’s funny how the world does things like that, isn’t it? I never expected I’d be living out my years in England with hardly a trace of my roots left to me.” Mrs Kendal smiled, and I noted that she really didn’t have a noticeable accent.
“I’m sure it must all come back when you visit your sister,” I said.
“Oh, Audrey and I have never got along very well. Separate countries is what’s best for us.”
“Well, I should probably be going. I just wanted to let you know what’s being done with the property. It’s nice to have closure, isn’t it?” I said unthinkingly and then bit my tongue.
After years of probably dealing with the same sort of mindless words, Mrs Kendal didn’t even flinch. “You’ll let me know if you find them, won’t you?”
“Of course. I’m sure you’d be the first person to be called after the police,” I reassured her before I took my leave of the cottage and Mrs Kendal.
As I walked down the quaint garden path, I thought about what I’d learned. Mrs Kendal had stayed living near to her missing family for all these years, but even she believed that her family were dead. I knew it was the logical conclusion after the number of years that had passed by, but there was something else. S
he thought they might still be somewhere on the property, just waiting to be discovered.
I wondered why she would think that they'd died there and not elsewhere? I got into my car and started the engine, trying, and failing, to not overthink this.
It was no use. I’d spent all of this time trying to work at Mellon Zoo whilst deliberately ignoring the Abraham family’s disappearance, but I wanted to know the truth with a fierceness that surprised me. Perhaps it was born of being lied to for so long by Lowell and the people he was involved with. I wanted to find out a truth - any truth - and the missing family just happened to be something I could focus on.
I realised it was time I found out what happened the night the Abraham family disappeared.
6
Bluff and Bluster
In spite of my fresh resolve to find out about the past of Mellon Zoo, I didn’t manage to find a spare moment to look into it. Instead, my time was taken up by the publishing company, who pushed me in front of people who asked me questions, put makeup on my face, and took lots of photos. One such photoshoot had been planned to include real animals, but I’d vetoed that. The only animals used in shots were the candid images of Lucky and me, when one team had visited our house and promised not to flash their cameras in his face. Lucky, to his credit, took the whole fame thing in his stride. But then, cats have never needed fame to bolster their already giant egos.
There were just a couple of days to go before Valentine’s Day and regretfully, I hadn’t been in contact with Auryn, beyond a couple of text messages and a call. I wondered if he was planning anything for the 14th, or if I should be the one planning something. After all, Auryn and I had never really believed in following the rules.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t even able to dwell on those concerns for long. In-between the publicity train, which also included a much higher workload of comics, I was working at Mellon Zoo. The animals were arriving thick and fast now, and as I was sure was always the case with new zoos, there were a few hitches.
So far, nothing terrible had happened. A few of the avian members of the zoo had immediately found a hole in their eco-enclosures, but, fortunately, they’d been Indian Runner ducks, and there’d been more of a chase than a flap getting them back.
Also, the elephant enclosure interior had been smashed.
Had the exterior not been shored up, it would have been a disaster. As far as I could tell, the elephants hadn’t been trying to breakout, or even been in a bad mood. Judging by the rub marks on the cleverly cut eco-mesh and hardwood, one of the larger ones had been scratching an itch and had probably leant a little too far into it. Fortunately, because of the strong outer fencing made with reinforced, non-shine glass, the loss of the eco fence panelling had meant repairs needed to be made rather than a full scale disaster declared.
I’d asked permission to show my friend Tiff around Mellon Zoo, under the guise of getting her opinion on how the zoo would be for someone who wasn’t as concerned with every little problem regarding the animals’ habitats as I was - but who also had a good knowledge of zoos. It was supposed to be another inter-zoo goodwill policy. Amanda had agreed and I was waiting for Tiff on the crest of the hill overlooking the car park.
She met me at the top and we looked down over the zoo together.
“It looks incredible,” she said.
I nodded. I’d thought it looked amazing back when it had been little more than a shell, and now, minus a few animals, the zoo was on the cusp of being finished.
“That’s the cottage where the woman who found them gone lived,” Tiff said and then looked down below at the zoo again. “And that’s the barn.”
“It is,” I said, interested by her opinion. I suspected it would be the same with most of the visitors, especially the locals. Sure, they’d appreciate the zoo, but the mystery of the Abraham family would draw their attention. It will also draw their cash, I thought, thinking of Mellon Zoo in terms of a competitor for Avery.
The investors knew it, too. After all, wasn’t that exactly why they’d done everything they could to preserve the barn exactly as it was, thrown in a few spooky props, and called the whole thing a ghost tour? It was cheap, and it was crude, but it would probably work. And that worried me.
There was more than one reason to look a little deeper into the mystery of the missing family.
There was a meow from down by my feet. A small paw patted my leg.
“Good boy, Lucky,” I said, bending down and giving him a cat treat.
“How’s the training going?” Tiff asked.
In preparation for any future adventures, I’d been doing my best to train Lucky to recall, as well as ensuring he was happy both on the lead and riding on my shoulders. He’d taken to it incredibly well, probably showing the tough-feral side of his genes in his ability to adapt and survive anything that was thrown at him. All through January, I’d been working on his training at Avery Zoo (much to the amusement of pretty much everyone) but I’d only just started bringing him to Mellon, now that all of the big construction and animal-moving was pretty much done.
“It’s going well. He’s not tried to argue with any of the big cats yet,” I said with a smile.
“Makes me wish I’d trained my cats, but to be honest, even my dogs run wild,” Tiff said with a sigh. Tiff had a habit for taking in waifs and strays. They might not be the best looking bunch, or even the best behaved, but I knew she loved them and wouldn’t change them for the world.
We walked down into the zoo and Tiff first marvelled at the design and then the animals themselves before finally commenting on my own efforts.
“I think people might take it for granted, but I know it makes Mellon an exciting zoo to walk around. You’re not staring at animals sleeping - well, unless they’re supposed to be nocturnal - they’re always busy. Having special times when toys are thrown in, or activities are initiated, is a great idea. I know you’ve done all of that at Avery, but it is a bit different with animals this size, isn’t it?” she said, nodding towards the gorillas.
I knew what she meant. Servals and capuchins were wonderful animals, but when you compared them with tigers and gorillas, they did fall a little short on ‘wow factor’.
“Do you think we’ll be okay?” Tiff asked. I knew exactly what she meant.
“I think so,” I said, willing myself to believe it. “Avery is established, and with Auryn in charge, there’s never a dull moment. You know what the events calendar looks like for this year - it’s stuffed!” I hesitated for a second. “There’s also the comic.”
Tiff’s eyes sparkled. “Don’t pretend to be modest. From what I’ve seen, you’re about to be more famous than J.K.Rowling!”
“I hope not,” I said, meaning it fervently. I would be thrilled if the publicity did result in a boost in business for Avery Zoo, but I liked my life the way it was. I didn’t want to become a celebrity.
“It’s all going to be fine. All we need to do is figure out a way to take these guys out,” Tiff said, with a glimmer of amusement in her eye.
“Don’t go saying things like that, you never know who’s listening around here,” I said, meaning it as a slight against Lowell.
The smile dropped from Tiff’s face. “Madi… don’t take this the wrong way… but you know the people dressed in black who keep popping up?”
“Yeah, the security in place to stop these supposed animal vigilantes from breaking in and trashing everything.”
“Uh-huh. This is going to sound crazy, but I swear all the time we’ve been walking through the zoo, I keep seeing them talking into their mouth pieces out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I look their way, they aren’t looking but… I know what I saw,” Tiff said and then shook her head. “Are you in some kind of trouble, or something? It feels like everyone here is watching your every move.”
“Perhaps they’re watching you… the scout for the rival zoo!” I said, trying to make it into a joke.
Tiff managed a weak smile, and to my relief, she let
the topic slide. “Perhaps I didn't hide my crowbar and can of spray paint well enough.”
I changed the subject onto the Abraham family - how had that become the safe topic? - and Tiff and I continued our trip through the zoo as if she’d never voiced what I’d feared all along. That all of this was something to do with me.
How’s that for paranoia? I thought when I waved Tiff goodbye. I still had a few things to do at the zoo that day including finishing and filing my progress report. Tiff and I had walked around all of the animals, but there were a couple of things I’d noticed, like a broken branch on a tree and some damp leaking out from behind glass, that I thought needed a second look.
“Fancy walking, Lucky?” I said to the black and white cat, who’d been good as gold all the time Tiff and I had walked around the zoo. I thought he preferred shoulder rides to walking. I only hoped he didn’t grow too much more, or it was going to be a challenge for me to hold him up there and for him to find the space to sit.
“Down you get.” Tiff’s strange observation still weighed heavily on my mind. What did it mean? The security team were there to do a job. Perhaps that just involved reporting on anything and everyone in the zoo.
They kept walking past, I suddenly thought, remembering several occasions when we’d been in the more distant parts of the zoo only to have one of the security team members ‘patrol’ by. The reasonable part of my brain wanted to put it down to training exercises, or even the team practicing surveillance on me because they had nothing better to do. But the other possibility nagged me. What if this was something to do with me? Something that Lowell had never told me?
“What do you think, Lucky? Am I nuts or what?” I asked the black and white cat.
But Lucky wasn’t there.
“Lucky?” I called, but there was no answering meow. To my horror, I remembered that we’d been doing recall exercises, and I hadn’t put him back on the lead. Why had he chosen now to run off? I rustled the packet of treats in my pocket, hopefully, but there was no sound from nearby. The sun was beginning to set on Mellon Zoo and I could see or hear no sign of my pet cat.