The Penguin Who Knew Too Much

by Donna Andrews

  “Good job,” Rob said, joining me. “Although if I were you, I’d have made them put the dirt back.”

  “I just wanted them out,” I said.

  “Got that point.”

  “When Mother's finished with the visiting relatives, I’ll get them to fill in the trenches.”

  “Hey, why waste all that digging?” Rob said. “Wouldn’t take that much more effort to put in a pool.”

  “I just want the yard back.”

  “Suit yourself,” Rob said. “I’m going to see what Dr. Smoot is up to.”

  Randall and Vern Shiffley returned and began roping off the entrenched area with yellow caution tape. And not a moment too soon—a small convoy of cars and SUVs had pulled up and begun to disgorge another flock of cousins. Most of them were carrying covered dishes, all of them were gawking up at the newly painted house, and none of them, of course, were watching their feet. If not for the Shiffleys’ efforts, the trenches would have taken a heavy toll on the guest list and the supply of provisions. But after milling about aimlessly exclaiming over the trenches for a few minutes, they all wandered toward the front door or took the long way to the backyard, around the far side of the house.

  Vern nodded absently and strode off toward the edge of the yard, where he pulled out a cell phone and turned his back. Randall came over to stand by me.

  “That should take care of it,” Randall said. “Nobody could miss all that hazard tape.”

  “You underestimate my relatives,” I said. “And how wild tomorrow's party will get.”

  “Tomorrow's party? You mean today's party won’t get all that wild?” he asked, indicating the swarms of relatives setting up in the yard.

  “This is tomorrow's party,” I said. “They’re getting an early start on it.” He nodded.

  “By the way,” I said, glancing over to make sure Vern was still absorbed in his phone call. “You said that you couldn’t count on Chief Burke clearing Charlie in time. In time for what?”

  Randall hesitated for a few moments and glanced at Vern.

  Chapter 23

  I controlled my impatience and waited for Randall to speak.

  “Charlie's a smart kid,” he said finally. “Good at math. College material. Wants to be an engineer. And he's a good athlete, too— Virginia Tech offered him a football scholarship, so he can go without racking up a lot of debt. Only they hadn’t quite signed the contract when Lanahan started making such a stink about his damned gazelle, and the college has been backpedaling.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “I can understand how they feel,” Randall continued. “I wouldn’t want a kid around who could deliberately steal that gazelle and shoot it out of pure meanness. It was a stupid mistake, yes, but a mistake. Charlie wouldn’t hurt a fly, only the longer the stink about the gazelle went on, the less the college people seemed to believe that.”

  “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem anymore,” I said. “I gather Chief Burke wasn’t ever that keen on trying to prosecute Charlie—no real evidence. With Lanahan gone, the whole thing will probably drop.”

  “Yeah,” Randall said. “But if you think the college doesn’t want a sneak thief and a poacher, how do you think they feel about a suspected murderer?”

  “Surely they don’t really suspect Charlie?”

  “No more than anyone else who knows how to use a cross bow,” he said. “But no less, either. So we need to get this murder investigation wrapped up as soon as possible.”

  “I’m sure Chief Burke is doing his best,” I said. “He’ll find out the truth.”

  “Someone has to,” Randall grumbled.

  Why did people always look at me when they said things like that?

  “I thought you were going over to the zoo to count cages or something,” he said.

  “I did,” I said. “But there was an animal-rights protest going on, so I decided to come back after they were gone.”

  “After they’re gone? If you mean the SOB people, they’ve set up camp there, you know,” Randall said. “I heard they were planning to stay there all summer, and without Lanahan to make a fuss, odds are they will.”

  “Oh, great,” I said. “So much for getting into the zoo anytime soon.”

  “You could sneak in the back way,” he suggested. He paused to grab a small fallen branch and snap off a six-inch-long stick. Then he squatted beside a small patch we’d apparently missed when sowing grass seed and began scratching in the dirt.

  “Here's Lanahan's property.” He marked out a rough rectangle in the middle of the dirt patch. “Front gate's here—” two slash marks across one of side of the rectangle “—and here's the road to town—” a long line that disappeared into the grass.

  “Okay,” I said. I had squatted down beside him, the better to see the map, though my ankles were already wobbling.

  “Here's Vern's land, and our cousin Duane's,” he said, marking two smaller plots along one side of the zoo—the left side, looking from the road. “You see a small dirt road leading off into the woods a little ways before you go to the zoo gate?”

  “I think so,” I said. If it was the same dirt road I was thinking of, I’d made a mental note of its location, wondering if it might offer a back way into the zoo if the Save Our Beasts protesters were still marching there when I returned.

  “That marks the property line between Lanahan's land and Duane's,” Randall said. “And farther back, between Lanahan's and Vern's.”

  “Check,” I said. Nice of Randall to help me out—but I found myself wondering if he had some ulterior motive in showing me the back way to the zoo.

  “All this belongs to the Bromleys,” he said, indicating the area behind and to the right of the zoo with broad sweeping strokes of the stick, as if indicating that the Bromleys’ rolling acres continued well into the grass and possibly beyond the barn. “Tim-berland. Pines for pulpwood. And old Jase Bromley doesn’t rent out the hunting rights.”

  “Annoying, I’m sure.”

  “Wasn’t a big problem, long as we had Uncle Fred's farm,” he said, in a suspiciously innocent tone. “But if there's no hunting there, how come we hear gunshots sometimes?”

  “Poachers?” I suggested.

  “Could be,” he said. “But right here's where Charlie shot that fancy gazelle,” Randall said, jabbing the stick into the ground.

  I studied the spot he indicated. It was clearly on Vern Shif-fley's land, but near the point where his land, Mr. Bromley's, and the zoo grounds all met.

  “When it happened, we first thought the gazelle had wandered over from the zoo property. There's a fence, but Lanahan never bothered much about keeping it in repair. But then we remembered the strange goings-on at Bromley's. And Bromley's fences have been falling down for years. There's stretches where there isn’t even a fence between Vern's land and Bromley's. Just Bromley's ‘Posted: No Trespassing’ signs, and most deer don’t pay much attention to those.”

  “But what would the gazelle be doing on Mr. Bromley's land in the first place?” I asked. My wobbling was getting worse, and I almost fell right in the middle of the Bromleys’ acreage, so I put a hand down to steady myself.

  “You ever heard of canned hunting?” Randall asked.

  “Not until recently.”

  “There you go,” Randall said, as if that solved everything. “You think Lanahan was running canned hunts?” Randall nodded.

  “And he was doing it on Mr. Bromley's land,” I continued. “So there wouldn’t be any evidence that animals were being killed on the zoo property.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “With Mr. Bromley's cooperation?”

  “That I wouldn’t know.”

  Or maybe just didn’t want to say, since Mr. Bromley, unlike Patrick Lanahan, was from an old local family.

  “Whether Mr. Bromley knows or not, this gives him a possible motive for the murder,” I said.

  “Motive, yes,” Randall said. “But no opportunity. Broke his leg about ten d
ays ago, and last I heard he was still in the Whispering Pines Nursing Home being rehabilitated.”

  “Okay, then he's out, but plenty of people around here disapprove of canned hunts. The Save Our Beasts people, and maybe Montgomery Blake.”

  “Hell, we disapprove of them,” Randall said, shaking his head. “Most real hunters do. We hunt for sport and to put meat on the table, not just for trophies. What's the sport in shooting an animal that has no chance of escaping? And most of those clowns don’t aim for the head or the vitals—they aim for someplace that won’t spoil the trophy, which means that the animal dies a slow, painful death. You ask me, these game ranches should be outlawed, and if Lanahan was involved with that, I’m not sorry to see him go. But we wouldn’t try to kill him over it. We were just trying to sic the law on him.”

  “Sic the law on him? You mean you reported your suspicions?”

  Randall nodded.

  “Chief Burke didn’t do anything?” I asked.

  “He's been trying,” Randall said. “But I don’t think a city fellow like him knows how to go about it. He had that deputy of his, young Sammy Wendell, skulking around the woods, trying to catch whoever was doing it.”

  “And Sammy didn’t have any luck?”

  “You ever heard Sammy crashing around in the woods? No self-respecting poacher's going to hang around long enough for Sammy to catch him. Besides, Bromley's land is half in Caer-philly County and half in Clay County, and the Clay County sheriff has a peculiar lack of interest in the whole problem. I’ll give Burke one thing: he works hard and he's honest.”

  By my count, that was two things, but I just nodded and studied the map some more, to make sure I had the location of the convenient dirt road firmly in mind.

  And my mind was busily turning over the implications of what Randall had said. Which seemed to confirm what I’d learned from the film student. While Lanahan, the improvident zookeeper, might be annoying, it was hard to imagine anyone killing him. But Lanahan, mild-mannered zookeeper by day and evil organizer of canned hunts by night—he’d probably have a whole pack of people after him.

  If there were canned hunts, and if Lanahan was involved. After all, given what had happened with his nephew Charlie, Randall might not be the most impartial judge of Lanahan's character.

  Meanwhile, Vern had finished his phone call. He looked our way, and Randall, with a nod of farewell, went over to join him.

  I studied the map for a few more minutes, than scuffed the dirt till I’d erased it. I wasn’t sure why—after all, I had Chief Burke's permission to visit the zoo, or at least his grudging tolerance.

  But it occurred to me to wonder what the chief thought of the accusations against Lanahan. I went into the house to see if the chief was still occupying our dining room or if he’d been displaced by some new four-legged arrivals.

  Chapter 24

  I found the chief still ensconced in the dining room, though he’d moved the table he was using as a desk so it wasn’t directly beneath the chandelier where the sloth was hanging. Sloths, actually; now there were two of them. Dad and Montgomery Blake were also there, haranguing the chief about something. Rather, Blake was haranguing and Dad was standing by, with an anxious expression on his face. The chief looked even more irritated than he usually did in the middle of a case, so I decided to see if interrupting him would help.

  “I have some information for you,” I said, joining the trio. “Did you know that the Save Our Beasts people have been picketing the zoo?”

  “Save Our Beasts?” the chief echoed.

  “It's an animal-rights group,” Blake said.

  “I guessed as much,” the chief said. “But which one? What with the college and all, we have several of them operating in town. I hope they’re not nutcases who think we should let the wolves and grizzlies roam freely in their original habitat, whether or not there are thousands of people living there now.”

  “I think these nutcases may have a legitimate beef,” I said. “They think Lanahan was arranging canned hunts.”

  “It's an outrage!” Blake boomed. “No civilized society should tolerate it. The very idea—”

  “Cut the editorial,” the chief said.

  “How can you condone this barbarous behavior!” Blake shouted. Despite his advanced age, he had a good, strong orator's voice. Through the window, I could see people outside in the yard looking up to see what was wrong.

  “I’m not condoning anything,” the chief said, interrupting Blake. “I spent thirty years trying to keep the good citizens of Baltimore from slaughtering each other. It's left me with a strong repugnance toward violence of any kind. And a strong respect for the law—”

  “Canned hunting's illegal in this state,” Blake said.

  “And Lanahan was innocent until proven guilty,” the chief said. “My officers searched every inch of the zoo grounds, looking for evidence of wrongdoing. And when we couldn’t find any, I called state game wardens and U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents in—they couldn’t find anything either. So either Patrick Lanahan was a hell of a lot smarter than any of us, or maybe the rumor was just that—a rumor.”

  “So this has nothing to do with Patrick's murder,” Dad said with a sigh.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” the chief said with narrowed eyes. “Regardless of whether Lanahan was a saint or a sinner, anyone who's all fired up about how he treated animals has a definite motive for his murder.”

  With that, he stomped off.

  “He means me, of course,” Blake said. “Won’t be the first time I’ve been persecuted for my beliefs.” He strode off, head high.

  “Pretentious old goat,” I muttered. Unfortunately, I didn’t mutter softly enough.

  “Meg!” Dad exclaimed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But Blake really gets on my nerves for some reason.”

  “He does good work,” Dad said. “Really he does.”

  But his tone sounded ambivalent. Was he still worrying about whether Blake was a fake? Or was I, perhaps, not the only member of the family who was starting to find Blake hard to take?

  I strolled outside. It occurred to me that now might be a good time to talk to Blake—while he was still worked up about the canned hunts, and perhaps not as much on his guard as usual.

  But I lost him in the crowd—how many relatives had we invited, anyway, and were they all going to show up a day early? I made my way to the side yard, where, thanks to the trenches, it was a lot quieter. I ducked under the yellow tape and stepped over half a dozen of the trenches until I stood in the middle of the side yard. I decided I liked the vantage point. I could see more newly arriving cousins trotting up the road from their increasingly distant parked cars. I could see the growing swarm who had already arrived setting up food and drink in the backyard. And they could see me, and we could wave back and forth at each other, but it was peaceful out here in the trenches, and if anyone tried to sneak up on me, I’d see him a long way off.

  Luckily no one did except Michael, who appeared at the edge of the yard and, after glancing curiously at the trenches, began making his way across them to where I stood.

  “Giant moles?” he asked.

  “Close,” I said. “Sprockets. Searching for their long-lost and presumed suspiciously dead great-uncle Plantagenet.”

  “Edwina's late husband, the botany professor? I thought he’d disappeared while on an orchid-collecting expedition to the Amazon.”

  “That's the Sprocket party line, but apparently a dissident minority think he's buried in our basement.”

  “Then why are they digging out here?” Michael asked, studying the excavations.

  “Police won’t let them in the basement,” I said. “I assume they’re warming up for an attempt to tunnel in. So how's the unpacking going? You’re not overdoing it, are you? Do you need my help?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We have more than enough help. We’ll have everything unpacked, assembled, and put away long before nightfall.”

  “And
we’ll be six months finding our stuff,” I said. “But never mind.”

  “By midday tomorrow they’ll all be having so much fun they won’t notice when we sneak away.”

  “By midday tomorrow they wouldn’t even notice if the house got up and walked away,” I said. “If you don’t need me, I’m going to find Mother and put her in charge of organizing a work detail to fill in the trenches. Though Rob suggested maybe we should just dig some more and plan to put in a pool.”

  “A pool,” Michael said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked around at the trenches with greater interest. “That's an interesting idea.”

  “Just tell the relatives what you want,” I said. “Meanwhile, after I talk to Mother, I’m going back to the zoo.”

  “Is this a detective mission or an animal-welfare mission?”

  “It's a saving-Meg's-sanity mission,” I said, giving him a quick kiss. “Later.”

  I found Mother with Rob and Eric, down at the penguin pond. Eric was plastered against the chicken-wire fence, avidly absorbing every detail of the penguins’ behavior. Mother was standing upwind, holding a sun parasol over her head and a small linen bag of Rose Noire's potpourri to her nose. Rob was sprawled in Dad's lawn chair, sipping lemonade.

  “I’m sorry, Eric,” Mother was saying. “But the penguins can’t stay forever.”

  “But see how happy they are here,” Eric said.

  “I can’t imagine anything would be happy living in a stench like that,” Mother said, shuddering. “Meg, isn’t there something you can do? Bathe them, perhaps?”

  “Mother, they spend all day swimming,” I said. “They don’t need bathing.”

  “Perhaps if the water were cleaner,” Mother said.

  “It's a pond,” I said. “How are we supposed to clean it?”

  “I think they like the smell,” Rob said, strolling up. “Just stay upwind and it's fine.”