The Penguin Who Knew Too Much

by Donna Andrews

  “That's a matter of opinion,” Mother said, inhaling her potpourri.

  “If they were staying longer, perhaps we’d worry about their hygiene,” I said. “But this is just temporary, remember?”

  “That's true,” Mother said. Her expression brightened.

  “But why can’t they stay?” Eric said. “They’re perfectly happy here.”

  “They’re not our penguins, remember?” I replied.

  “I’m sure they’d be much happier somewhere else,” Mother added. “In a real zoo.”

  “Or back in the Antarctic where they originated,” I said. “I expect they find the Virginia summers rather warm.”

  Mother sighed in sympathy and fanned herself a little more briskly.

  “Oh, no,” Eric said. “They like it here. Dr. Blake says if they were back in the Antarctic they’d get eaten. By killer whales and leopard seals. He said there's nothing a leopard seal likes better than a fat, juicy—”

  “Speaking of Dr. Blake,” Mother said, loudly. “Have you made any progress in figuring out who killed poor Patrick?”

  “Is that a non sequitur, Mother?” I asked. “Or merely a subtle way of conveying your suspicion of our eminent visitor?”

  “I’m sure you’ll find out, dear,” Mother said.

  “I’m working on it,” I said. “Meanwhile, when our helpful legions of family movers have finished with the unpacking, could you steer a few of them to the side yard, to deal with all those holes the Sprockets have been digging?”

  “Deal with them how?” Mother said. “Your brother was suggesting—”

  “Aunt Meg, look,” Eric called. “The penguins are fighting.”

  Chapter 25

  “Oh, no, dear,” Mother said. “The penguins aren’t really fighting. I’m sure they’re only pretending.”

  Rob, who’d been taking a sip of his lemonade, spluttered and snorted most of it out again, and had to be pounded on the back.

  No, the penguins weren’t fighting. Apparently this was their mating season. One penguin—presumably male, though I suspect only another penguin would really know or care—had scrambled atop another penguin. He flapped his stumpy banded wings furiously. He paddled his tiny feet as if trying to outrun an army of leopard seals. And he trilled and cooed with impressive ardor. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be accomplishing anything.

  I couldn’t tell whether the female penguin was sabotaging his efforts in some way or whether he was merely overexcited and inept, but he kept falling off. Sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, occasionally backward, and once, rather spectacularly, forward, giving himself a painful-looking bonk on the head. In his defense, I noted, the female was almost perfectly round and her wet feathers looked rather slippery. For that matter, the male penguin was fairly round and slippery himself.

  So maybe he wasn’t all that effective, but I’d give him an A+ for persistence. And while the other penguins seemed completely uninterested in the spectacle, Rob was literally rolling on the ground, uttering the occasional shriek of laughter when he got his breath. Spike seemed to be having a great time barking at the whole thing, but Eric was watching with a puzzled frown on his face.

  “What is he doing to that other penguin?” he asked.

  “Meg, dear,” Mother said, giving me a look that clearly told me to do something before Eric asked any really embarrassing questions. So far, Mother had always successfully delegated the job of explaining anything birds-and-bees related to someone else, and she clearly wanted to keep her record intact. And I had absolutely no desire to explain hot penguin sex to Eric.

  “I’m going back to the zoo to snoop around some more,” I said. “But I don’t want anyone to know I’m there, so if anyone asks, cover for me, okay?”

  As I’d hoped, this distracted Eric slightly from his fascination with the penguins.

  “That's nice, dear,” Mother said.

  “Of course, I’m probably going to have to crawl under the fence or pick the lock in the gate or something.”

  “Shouldn’t you take someone else along,” Mother suggested.

  “To, um... “

  “To serve as lookout? Who—Rob? He’d just fall asleep or something.”

  “I could help, Aunt Meg,” Eric said.

  “Hurry up, then,” I said, looking at my watch. “I want to get this over with as soon as possible. Mother, while I’m gone—”

  “Deal with the holes in the yard,” she said, nodding.

  “Maybe we’ll see the SOBs again,” Eric said as he picked up Spike and headed for the house.

  Maybe I should have explained that remark to Mother, but I just left her with her mouth open and followed Eric.

  I thought perhaps I’d lose Eric to the side yard, where some of the smaller cousins were using the trenches as the setting for a giant water-gun battle. But after a few curious glances, he turned his back resolutely on the fray and scampered on ahead of me to the car.

  As we neared the zoo entrance, I slowed down and scanned the road to my left until I spotted what I hoped was the dirt road Randall had drawn on his map.

  “I thought we were going to the zoo,” Eric protested when I turned down it.

  “We’re sneaking in the back way,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, settling back in his seat. He didn’t protest. He didn’t even ask why. Was that a bad sign? Was he picking up too many misguided notions from his mystery-mad grandfather?

  Or for that matter from his nosy aunt?

  I shrugged, and studied the landscape by the side of the road.

  Obviously, one of Lanahan's major expenses when he set up the zoo had been the fence—an imposing ten-foot-tall chain-link barrier. But either he hadn’t gone for top-quality materials, or time and the elements were hard on fencing. In several places, trees had fallen on the fence, taking down a section or two, and the repairs didn’t look sturdy. Perhaps he’d been running out of money when he made them. In one place, someone had sawed off and removed a six-foot piece from the middle of a fallen tree, just where it crossed the fence, but repairs hadn’t yet begun—the fence had merely been propped up here and there with stakes. In another place, an even larger tree was still lying across the fence, flattening it nearly to the ground.

  Randall Shiffley was right. Any reasonably enterprising antelope who wanted to leave the Caerphilly Zoo could eventually have found a large enough gap in Lanahan's badly maintained fences. Assuming, of course, that he could escape whatever inner enclosure Lanahan had provided to keep the antelopes from trampling the tourists. For all I knew the whole zoo could be in as ramshackle a state as its outer defenses. At any rate, I didn’t think Eric and I would have a problem sneaking in, and neither of us leaped nearly as well as the average antelope.

  The farther we went, the more rugged the road became. Eventually, it dead-ended in a small clearing. I saw a “Posted: No Trespassing” sign ahead—presumably the beginning of the Bromley fiefdom—and the zoo fence took a ninety-degree turn and continued off into the woods to our right.

  I turned the car around and headed back. I parked near the spot where the tree still lay across the fence, and Eric and I used its trunk to walk across into the zoo as easily as if someone had built us a bridge. And when Eric picked up Spike to carry him across, Spike didn’t even try to bite. Clearly I needed to talk with my sister, Pam, about Eric's need for a dog of his own.

  I’d brought a small compass, in case we needed to blaze a path through the woods to the main part of the zoo, but after we’d stumbled a few feet through the underbrush, we came across a well-beaten trail. We turned right, more or less at random, and after five minutes of walking we came across an intersection with a signpost. An arrow pointing back the way we’d come showed that we’d been following the perimeter trail. To our left, another trail would take us to the lake. If we continued the way we were going, according to the sign, we’d arrive at the front gate. And even if we were tempted to stray from the paths, a five-foot fence ran alongsid
e both the lake and front-gate branches—presumably a fence that normally enclosed the zoo's less lethal residents.

  “Cool!” I said. “We’re on the right heading.”

  Eric looked at me with mild curiosity, as if surprised that there could be any doubt. Obviously he had way too much confidence in my sense of direction.

  After a few minutes, we reached a more open area and spotted a series of signs bearing the names and photos of the absent residents. From the positioning of the signs, it looked as if Lana-han had kept all the ungulates in one big enclosure, which meant the creatures shouldn’t be too unhappy with their temporary quarters in Dad's pasture.

  And had I really mispronounced “ungulates” when talking to Ray Hamlin, or was it possible that he didn’t know the word? Of course, I only knew it from hearing Dad and Dr. Blake toss it around while talking about our accidental menagerie, but if I could pick it up that easily, couldn’t Hamlin? Did he have any knowledge of zoology? And if he didn’t, what qualifications did he have to run a zoo?

  I reminded myself to worry about that later. Meanwhile, I pulled out my notebook and began taking notes. Llamas—well, we knew that already. Camels—check. Buffalo. Giraffes. No information on how many he had of each, but at least we knew what species to look for.

  Apparently he’d kept the large flightless birds in the same enclosure with the hoofed animals. I spotted a sign for ostriches, and then one for rheas. The ostrich sign noted that “Ostriches are economically the most important species of ratite.” I deduced that “ratites” was the jazzy scientific term for large flightless birds, though I made a mental note to check that with Dad before using it in front of Dr. Blake. I had gotten the impression that Blake considered me an intellectual lightweight, and I kept feeling the need to remind him that I wasn’t a total idiot.

  Eric soon tired of the empty cages and became impatient. So when we found Lanahan's office—a small prefabricated shed with a power line running to it and a “Zoo Administration” sign over the door—we didn’t linger long. I rattled the doorknob, but not surprisingly it was locked. I peered through the windows and then moved on, looking for something to entertain Eric.

  I lucked out when we hit the koi pond. Eric began amusing himself by dropping leaves onto the surface of the pond and watching the fish come up to investigate them. I suspected their interest in leaves meant that the koi were getting more than a little peckish. I made a note to find out what koi ate and draft someone to bring a supply of it out to them once a day or so, before they all either died or turned to cannibalism. Though perhaps it was too late on the cannibalism angle—the pond contained some awesomely huge koi.

  “Don’t let Spike fall in,” I said, and headed back to Lana-han's office. Eric's occasional shouts of laughter and Spike's more frequent barking reassured me that they were happily occupied.

  I spent a longer time peering in through the windows, and took some photos with my digital camera. Then I pulled out the screwdriver and dental picks I’d brought along.

  The year I was twelve, Dad had taken a sudden interest in burglary—probably inspired by reading a few too many of Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr books. He spent the entire summer trying to learn to pick locks. He always liked to involve a child or two in these educational experiments, and since Rob was too young to be trusted with sharp objects, and my older sister, Pam, considered herself too sophisticated for the project, I spent much of my summer learning along with him. Dad had proved a singularly inept burglar, but I’d gotten good enough to handle reasonably simple locks. I’d kept his burglary tools, just in case. And luckily, Lanahan's door didn’t have a complicated lock. I set to work.

  Of course, I’d gotten out of practice. One of the drawbacks of living honestly, or at least being organized enough that I rarely misplaced my keys. I poked and prodded for about fifteen minutes without much success, but at least I was beginning to get my burgling skill back. From time to time, I could hear Spike barking in the distance, as he and Eric continued to explore the zoo.

  Victory! I glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then opened the door and slipped inside.

  Lanahan obviously wasn’t a minimalist. The office was chock-full of every kind of clutter: books; office supplies and equipment; foods, both human and animal; assorted veterinary supplies; toy animals in various sizes; framed photos; enough rocks, branches, dried flowers, leaves, shells, and other bits of nature to fill a museum.

  Every kind of clutter except one: paper. Lanahan's desktop was completely paper free. Not too weird—he could have been one of those people who insist on clearing their desk at the end of every day. If I cleared my desk, I’d only lose the contents for the next six months, but some people found it useful.

  The desk drawers and the file cabinet were unlocked, but they contained no files, only a few empty green hanging folders. But I found several boxes of manila file folders, the top one half empty, so he must have done filing at some point. And the stack of green hanging folders was overflowing, as if someone had piled up two or three boxes’ worth on top of the open box. Putting them back after emptying them, perhaps?

  So much for finding files to help me with the animals.

  I considered the possibility that the chief had hauled away all of Lanahan's papers for analysis, but that didn’t sound like his usual procedure. He had so little room down at the station that he wasn’t prone to hauling off huge wholesale lots of evidence. He’d examine everything in place, then lock it up and go away again. If there had been anything to examine.

  I went outside again, and spotted four industrial metal trash barrels. I went over and peered inside them, one after another. No papers. Plenty of drink cans, paper cups, candy wrappers,

  soda bottles, empty cigarette packs—the usual detritus you’d pick up if you were cleaning up after the public.

  Four trash barrels, and an indentation for a fifth. Not a clean indentation, but a blurred series of overlapping rings, as if the trash barrel had been picked up and put down in much the same place a few hundred times. Each of the remaining four trash barrels was surrounded by a similar set of rings.

  And ten feet away was another indentation, this one sharper and surrounded by a slightly scorched area of grass.

  At a guess, someone had been burning papers in a trash barrel and then taken the barrel away. Unless I was jumping to conclusions. I’d have to find a way to test my assumptions. Maybe pretend to Horace that I already knew all about the missing files.

  Spike's barking interrupted my thoughts. Not that he hadn’t been barking intermittently the whole time I’d been snooping in Lanahan's office, but this sounded rather frantic. He’d probably smelled the lingering scent of some animal large enough to make an hors d’oeuvre of him and was boldly issuing challenges to an empty, echoing cage. Silly dog. Eric had brought him; I’d let Eric deal with him.

  I had squatted down to study the area of scorching around the trash barrel when Spike's barking hit a new pitch, with a sort of yelping note.

  Chill, I told myself. He's with Eric. Eric's a reasonably sensible kid—he’ll call for help if something's wrong. “Aunt Meg! Help!”

  I abandoned Lanahan's office and took off in the direction of Eric's cry.

  Chapter 26

  Eric's voice and Spike's bark seemed to be coming from some place I hadn’t been yet, near the back of the zoo. I raced over a small rise and found myself trotting downhill toward an enclosure that was larger and much more elaborate than any I’d seen so far. A short outer fence kept visitors six feet away from a tall inner fence. Inside the inner fence was a ten-foot vertical drop down into the main part of the cage. Opposite me, the ground rose in a series of concrete terraces that were supposed to look like naturally sculpted rock and failed miserably. In two places, large clumps of jungle plants almost hid the cavelike openings in the concrete, though the camouflage would have been more effective if they’d bothered to plant clumps anyplace other than right in front of the cave mouths.
/>   Welded to the outer fence was a sign that said “LION (Panthera leo).” And then below that, “Reggie.”

  No wonder Spike was barking so fiercely. He’d found his way unerringly to the cage occupied, until recently, by the largest, most dangerous animal in the Caerphilly Zoo. He’d probably gotten so frustrated at not receiving any answer to his challenges that he’d fallen in out of pure exasperation. And Eric had fallen or climbed in after him.

  I scrambled over the outside fence and peered through the bars of the inner barrier. Yes, Spike and Eric were both standing at the foot of the sheer concrete wall, gazing up at me. They didn’t look hurt by their fall. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” Eric said. “But hurry! What if he comes out!”

  I was opening my mouth to remind him that the zoo was empty when a low, rumbling noise echoed through the cage— much like Spike's growl, but three or four octaves lower. It seemed to be coming from one of the openings in the concrete wall at the opposite side of the cage.

  Great. A lion in the den. One who probably hadn’t been fed since Patrick's death.

  “Try to shut Spike up,” I said as I looked around for some way to rescue them.

  “I’ve tried,” Eric said. “He just bites me and barks even louder.”

  He sounded scared. Hell, he sounded as if he were hanging by a fingernail over the edge of hysteria, and I understood just how he felt.

  Nearby I spotted a coiled garden hose. Just the thing! I ran over, grabbed it, and raced back to the cage. “Aunt Meg, hurry!”

  “I’m lowering a rope,” I said as I tied one end of the hose to the bars. Then I flung the hose down into the cage. “That's a hose,” Eric said.

  “Pretend it's a rope,” I said. “Can you pick Spike up and hold on to it?”

  “I can’t even reach it.”

  I peered down. Unfortunately, the hose I’d found wasn’t a normal-length hose. It was a mere stump of a hose. Eric was jumping up, trying to reach the end of the hose, but his best efforts were still a foot short.