by Maddy Hunter
“We’ll ind our tour in the riptile house, where you’ll come face-to-face with poisonous dith adders, tiger snakes, and man-eating saltwater crocs,” Graham said dramatically.
“Hey!” Bernice shook a small paper sack at Dick Stolee. “Get this on your camcorder. I bet the folks at Channel Six can use it on the ‘Senior Doings’ segment of their noon show.” She dipped her hand into the sack and held out a palmful of feed to a furry little marsupial with a face like Bambi.
Dick sprinted into position. “This is Bernice, feeding a kangaroo.”
“Get right profile shots,” she instructed him, as a second kangaroo joined the first. “It’s my best side.”
“If you’ll follow me.” Graham raised his arm and pointed left. “Our first stop will be around the first bend in the footpath.”
As tour guests trailed dutifully behind him, three larger kangaroos loped toward Bernice, crowding around her legs and stretching to their full height to reach her paper sack. “Shoo! Go ’way.” She angled the sack over her head to protect it, but the ’roos were smart enough to recognize the mother lode when they saw it. Kangaroos suddenly charged in from everywhere, six more, eight more, clambering over each other to knock the feed bag out of Bernice’s hand. “Help!” she screamed.
Dick Stolee moved closer to the foray. “Here’s Bernice, rethinking her plan to feed the kangaroos. You have any last words, Bernice?”
“GET THESE DAMN THINGS OFF ME, YOU STUPID SH—” The paper sack flew from her hand. As the creatures pawed and wrestled to reach the seed and grain inside, Bernice’s head of wire whisk hair disappeared within a sea of fur. Dick stopped recording.
“I’ll make a copy of this for you, Bernice,” he hollered at the place where her head had disappeared. “But I’ll warn you now, if Channel Six airs it, you’re gonna get bleeped.” He trotted off after the crowd on the footpath; I rushed toward the coffee shop.
“Bernice?” I called as I circled the perimeter of the animals.
Her hand popped up like the self-timing stick in a Butterball turkey.
“Hang on! I’ll…I’ll get you out.” Having no idea what else to do, I let fly a whistle that was shrill enough to shatter aquarium glass. “Move it!” I bellowed, clapping my hands. I whistled again, nearly deafening myself. “Shoo,” I yelled. “SHOOOO!”
“I’ll hilp you if you promise not to whistle again,” Lola Silverthorn called from a distance. She raised a sack of feed into the air and gave it a noisy shake. “Come and git it, you bloody little scamps.” She upended the sack, emptying the contents onto the ground like chicken feed.
The pack stampeded toward it, leaving Bernice behind in a minefield of fresh kangaroo droppings. I stared at Bernice; I stared at my new breathable mesh aqua loafers. Euw. I tiptoed through the obstacle course and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?”
She scowled at me as she brushed grit from the seat of her pants. “Don’t think this won’t appear on your evaluation. You have some nerve, taking old folks to a place where they can be trampled to death. If Erickson doesn’t fire you, I’ll want to know why.” She grimaced at her hands. “I need a moist towelette. Where’s Margi?”
“Who’s the whinger?” Lola asked, as Bernice strutted off.
“Oh, she’s just an overly exasperating member of my group of seniors.” I expelled a relieved sigh. “Thanks for helping out. I’m Emily, by the way, and I owe you one.”
“No worries.” Lola ranged a long look after Bernice. “Nice boots. There’s a bunch of old folks that’s slapped on lither today. What are they? Some kind of geezer biker dudes?”
“Actually, your husband raised the alarm about poisonous insect and snakebites yesterday, so my guys are addressing the problem by wearing boots. They won’t earn any points for style, but you can’t fault their common sense.”
“Jake’s always trying to scare people. The ratbag.” Her gaze drifted over to him as he inspected the inner rim of the trash barrel that sat outside the gift shop entrance.
“Do you know what he’s doing?” I asked.
She tousled her already shaggy locks. “What he always does; he’s lookin’ for spidehs, and he knows all their hidin’ places—lidges, windowsills, eaves, potted plants, trash containers, the undersides of picnic tables. What’s it gonna be, Jake!” she screeched at him. “Are you gonna join the tour or keep your hid stuck in that trash bin all morning?”
He looked our way, his face a scrambled jigsaw of butterfly sutures that made the Frankenstein monster look good by comparison. He tossed Lola an unfriendly “Leave me alone” gesture, adjusted the tilt of his bush hat, then swaggered off toward the restrooms.
“Tin minutes ago he was apples,” she complained. “Now look at him. All cheesed off. Acts like he’s a picnic short of a sandwich most of the time. He needs drugs, but he won’t have nothin’ to do with doctors.”
“Why is he looking for spiders?” I asked, backtracking.
“’Cause he collects thim. I bit he has the largest poisonous spideh collection in Murwillumbah. Maybe in all New South Wales. I bigged him to collect something harmless like beer cans or Elvis memorabilia, but nooo. His bugs are his life.”
And to think my mother had gotten weirded out about my brother’s collection of belly button lint. “Are his spiders dead or alive?”
“He collects thim alive, but a lot of thim ind up did. Then he mounts thim. If he knew what he was doing, they’d all be did, and we’d be rich, but I’m not gonna hold my brith. The last time he was tisting chimicals, he accidintally mixed ammonia with bleach and nearly inded up brain-did. ’Course, with Jake, brain-did would be a step up.”
I was sure this would all make perfect sense if I could figure out what she was talking about. “Out of curiosity, what’s Jake’s line of work?”
“Pist control.”
Pissed control? “Is that like anger management?”
“Pist control,” Lola repeated. “He exterminates household pists. Spidehs. Ants. Roaches. Owns his own company: Bug Be Gone. But what he’s workin’ toward is producin’ a lemon-scinted supeh chimical that’ll kill all the creepy crawlies in one fill swoop. If he can mass-produce it, he’ll be able to retire, then I can stop frittin’ about the ones that go missin’.”
I waited a beat. “The pists go missing?”
“All the time.”
“But…aren’t his pists poisonous?”
“’Course they’re poisonous. He don’t want thim if they’re not. But the little containers he has for thim don’t seal like they should because Mr. Pooh For Brains buys the cheap ones.” She grabbed her head with both hands. “Why do you think I had that argy bargy with him last night? The fool lit the ridback he found yisterday escape and he niveh bothered to till anyone on the bus. I keep pounding it into his hid, when you lose the didly bugs, you gotta do the courteous thing and till people.”
I’d never suffered a panic attack before, but my sudden inability to breathe reminded me there was a first time for everything. “Jake was carrying a poisonous spider around with him yesterday?”
“Not all day. He says the buggeh wint missing sometime after lunch.” Lola knuckled her fist on her hip, the Ann Landers of Aussie advice. “Don’t pay no mind to anything Jake ever tills you. Like I say, he likes to give blokes a fright. Ridbacks are more scared of you than you are of thim.”
“Wanna bet?”
“They’re not gonna bite you unliss you git your fingahs tangled in their wibs.”
I swiped a hand down my arms, chasing away phantom sensations that felt suspiciously like spiders. “What if he finds more redbacks today? Is he going to take them on the bus with him?”
Lola’s glossy red mouth pinched in irritation. “He can’t very will mail thim back to Murwillumbah, can he? The postal authority has real pain-in-the-arse rules about sindin’ didly critters through the mail.”
“Well, he can’t take them on the bus. What if another one escapes?”
“I told you! They’re no
t gonna hurt anyone!”
“Tell that to Claire Bellows!”
She reacted as if she’d just been sucker-punched. Taking a step back from me, she locked her arms beneath her eye-popping bosom and glared at me, a look that would have been truly frightening if her cleavage hadn’t migrated to her chin. “Are you accusin’ Jake of killin’ that woman?”
“He let a deadly spider escape! How do you know she didn’t die as a result? He told us himself a redback might have killed her; he just never said he was the one who let it loose!”
She paused a half second to study me, shrewdness creeping into her eyes. “If this is the thanks I git for hilpin’ you out of a jam, you’ll be on your own nixt time.”
“You can’t let Jake take any more insects onto the bus.”
“And who’s gonna stop ’im? You?”
“Henry will stop him. I bet he won’t appreciate learning that one of his passengers—”
Lola’s forefinger catapulted into my face. “You breathe one word of this to Hinry, and it could be the last word you ever breathe. Jake don’t like people rattin’ on him. No tillin’ what he might do if someone spills the beans. He can be so unpredictable. Like I told you, a picnic short of a sandwich.” She looked me up and down as if she’d like to squish me. “See you ’round.” She stormed off down the footpath, her wilderness boots clacking like the whole Russian army.
Yup. I guess you could say she was a little passive-aggressive.
Chapter 6
By the time I caught up with the group, they were leaving the wooded area that surrounded the Tasmanian devil pen and heading toward a glade teeming with kangaroos and ducks.
“The chain-link cage up ahid isn’t a batters’ cage,” Graham announced. “It’s where we house our widge-tailed eagles, which are found everywhere in Australia, can fly for ninety minutes at a time, and often soar to altitudes of two thousand meters, which is more than a mile straight up. Their wingspans can reach two-point-five meters, which is over eight feet. Their most noteworthy characteristic—”
I grabbed Nana’s arm and pulled her out of the crowd. “We’ve got problems.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” she said, hauling Tilly along with her.
The odor hit me in the face as the crowd passed us by. “Oh, my God. What’s that smell?”
“Bernice,” said Nana. “The koala peed on her.”
Tilly clucked disapproval. “The handler warned us that we shouldn’t touch the animal anywhere around its face because that makes it agitated. So naturally, when it was Bernice’s turn to hold the little feller, she tried to pinch its cheek.”
“She didn’t know that ‘agitated’ meant ‘go potty’,” said Nana.
I tented my hand over my nose. “That is so foul.”
“I’m told it’s even worse when it dries,” said Tilly, “so we took up a collection to buy her a new T-shirt at our next stop.”
I regarded them proudly. The group might have its differences, but when the chips were down, they could really demonstrate a wonderfully generous spirit with each other. “That’s so nice of you guys.”
Tilly disregarded the compliment. “Our hearing might be on the skids, but there’s nothing wrong with our noses. It comes down to basic survival.”
“You gotta convince Bernice to dump the smelly shirt,” Nana pleaded with me.
“We can’t have people inhaling those fumes all the way back to Melbourne,” said Tilly. “It could make them sick.”
“But she’s gonna put up a fuss, dear, ’cause she’s wearin’ her monster truck shirt, and that’s her favorite. No way you’ll ever get her to trash it.”
I looked skyward, searching for the little black cloud that was hanging over my head. “I’ll see what I can do about Bernice, but in the meantime, do me a favor and get the word out to the group to avoid Jake Silverthorn at all cost. Tell them not to stand near him, eat at the same table, or sit by him on the bus. Especially not to sit by him on the bus.”
Nana sidled close to me. “Did he get peed on, too?”
“No, it’s just that—” I swallowed the end of my sentence, knowing I’d only frighten them by telling them about the escaped redback and Lola’s threat. What if they let it slip to Henry? Would that put them in the crosshairs for Jake’s insanity, too? I needed to be smart about how I handled this, and blabbing the situation to the immediate world didn’t seem the way to go right now. I needed to think about protecting people, not causing panic. “I got it straight from Lola that Jake likes to peddle fear. Look what happened after his little lecture yesterday.” I dipped my gaze toward their feet, putting Tilly’s boots on freeze-frame. “Good God. You could puncture someone’s lung with those things.”
Tilly leaned heavily on her walking stick as she swung her foot out in an uncharacteristically girlish pose. “They spoke to me, Emily. I’ve never had footwear speak to me before. Do you think they’re too over-the-top?”
Black leather? Steel spikes? Silver spurs? Oh, God. “They’re you,” I said kindly. “And who would have thought they’d look so good with madras?” Suppressing a little shudder, I returned to the problem at hand. “Back to Jake. If you hang around him, he’ll fill you with so much fear, you’ll all be donning body armor, so do yourselves a favor and just stay away.”
Nana offered a little salute before craning her neck for a look around her. “Where’s your young men, dear? I thought they was supposed to be smotherin’ you with attention.”
“I’m beginning to think it’s a case of bait and switch. Last time I saw them, they were posing for Guy; then all three of them disappeared from the face of the earth. Go figure. You two better catch up to the rest of the group. Looks like there’s some kind of demonstration going on at the eagle cage.” I nodded toward the Tasmanian devil pen. “Good exhibit?”
Nana shrugged. “We didn’t see nothin’, dear. We heard some fierce crunchin’ from the cave, but he stayed holed up the whole while. David’s gonna be mighty disappointed. He wanted me to take a picture of a Tasmanian devil on account a that’s his favorite character on the Cartoon Channel. You know what come as a big surprise, Emily?”
“Tasmanian devils are shy?”
“The good programmin’ on the Cartoon Channel.”
I yanked my Canon Elph out of the side pocket of my shoulder bag. “Well, we can’t disappoint my nephew. Now that the crowd’s thinned, maybe he’s come out of hiding.”
Approaching the pen from the tree-lined footpath, I discovered the area was deserted, save for Heath Acres and the thousand-year-old woman who stood arm in arm, studying something behind the chain-link fence. The pen was the size of a one-car garage—an ecologically engineered jungle of trees, shrubs, rocks, hollowed-out logs, and a nifty cave built into a mountainous pile of dirt. I didn’t see any furry creatures running around, but I slowed my steps when I heard a loud and unsettling CRRRRRUNNNCH crunchcrunch. Euw. It sounded like a garbage disposal grinding up chicken bones.
But it wasn’t.
It was a Tasmanian devil devouring its lunch.
“He came out of hiding,” I rasped, transfixed by the sight of this broad-headed, small-eyed, piglike marsupial gnawing through the skeleton of a creature who’d been lower in the feed chain. He was black with fur, had pink vampire bat ears, and sported pointy teeth that smacked of the “Big Bad Wolf.” I swallowed with difficulty. “What do you suppose he’s eating?”
“Another exhibit,” said the crone.
I stashed my camera back in my shoulder bag. Stuffed toy was looking like a really good idea for David.
“They look ferocious,” said Heath, “but they’re inept killers. If not for roadkill, the Tasmanian divil would probably go the way of the Tasmanian tiger. Total extinction.” Looking my way, he doffed his Akubra hat and smiled. “I’m Heath. This is Nora.”
“Emily.” I returned his smile. “You probably see animals like this all the time.”
“I live inland, so what I mostly see are desert rats and scorpions
.”
Inland? “You live in the Outback?”
“I live in South Australia—a little place called Coober Pedy. Have you seen Mel Gibson’s Mad Max movies? The third flick was filmed near Coober Pedy, so if you remimber the desolate scenery with its scrubby saltbushes and dried-up watercourses, you git a fair picture of the town.”
What I remembered about Mad Max was how well the terrain conformed to the apocalyptic images of a post-nuclear war landscape. The featureless desert. The unbearable heat. Kinda like Las Vegas without the casinos. “Why do you live there?”
His smile broadened. “Opals.”
“Rabbits,” said Nora, conversing with the Tasmanian devil through the chain-link fencing. “I’ve eaten rabbits. But you’ve gotta skin’ ’em first, else the fur gets stuck in yer teeth.”
Heath placed a cautionary hand on her shoulder. “Not too close, luvy.”
Nora’s behavior suddenly seemed as unnerving as Jake Silverthorn’s. I shifted my attention back to Heath. “Coober Pedy is a big mecca for opals?”
“The biggest. It’s the richest opal field in Australia. If a man can brave the heat, tolerate a skyline of brick and corrugated iron, and doesn’t mind living like a mole most of the time, he can earn a decent crust.”
“Ferrets,” said Nora, wagging her finger at the animal. “I’ve eaten ferrets. But I didn’t like ’em much. Too stringy.”
“Tell you what, luvy.” Heath coaxed her gently away from the pen. “We should catch up to the other gists and let the Tazzy finish his meal in peace. Does that sound like a good idea? You don’t want to miss the saltie, do you?”
She twisted around, confusion clouding her brilliant blue eyes. “Where’d everyone go?”
“They’ve gone on to the nixt exhibit. Come on. Maybe Imily will walk with us.”