The Penguin Who Knew Too Much

by Donna Andrews

  His face was also a lot more expressive than those of the older Shiffleys. His lips moved from time to time, though from a distance I couldn’t tell if he was mumbling the words to a song under his breath or cursing quietly. And after observing him for a few minutes, I realized that his expression didn’t vary much. Most of the time, he wore a glum look of abject misery. Occasionally he’d frown, and even more rarely, when he made a particularly good shot, a swift, triumphant smile would flicker across his features.

  So was this the face of a careless but essentially well-meaning young man who’d accidentally shot an exotic animal, or the face of a cruel and deliberate poacher? More important, was it the face of a lucky young man feeling a combination of relief and guilt because Lanahan's death had had ended a persecution that threatened his future? Or a ruthless killer who’d made his own luck with the very crossbow he was holding?

  I waited till he put down the bow and walked over to the target to retrieve his bolts before stepping out into the clearing.

  “Practicing for anything in particular?” I asked.

  How annoying that my dramatic entrance went completely unnoticed, thanks to his trusty iPod. I watched as he pulled the bolts out of the target, and then, when he turned to walk back across the clearing, he noticed me and jumped a foot.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, detaching himself from his headphones.

  “You do realize that if you miss that target, you could skewer anything or anyone who happens to be passing back there?” I asked.

  “It's posted no trespassing!” he said. He sounded fierce, but his face looked scared.

  “Oh, and that makes it all right to shoot passersby?” I said, gesturing at the gash on my cheek.

  “It's posted,” he said, but from the way he hunched his shoulders slightly I could see he was backing down.

  “And I heard a suspicious noise over here and came to investigate,” I said. “What if you’d been a poacher? If I spotted a poacher on your father's land, what would you want me to do— ignore it?”

  “If you spotted a poacher, smart thing to do would be run away as fast as you could,” Charlie said. “You don’t want to mess with those guys.”

  “Good point,” I said. “I’ll tell your uncle Randall he should have warned me about that while he was showing me the back way into the zoo.”

  The mention of his uncle seemed to reassure him a little, as I’d hoped it would. He nodded, and stood, slouched, looking as if he wished I’d go away.

  “You should put a bandage on that,” he said, looking at my cheek.

  “Do you have one?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll probably live,” I said.

  He hunched his shoulders again. I fished in my pocket and found a tissue. I used it to blot my wound while Charlie shifted from foot to foot.

  “So you’re keeping in practice for the hunting season?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Just letting off steam, really,” he said. “I mean, everything's so screwed up now.” “Like what?” “Like my scholarship.”

  “That's right,” I said. “Your uncle Randall told me about that. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Except with everything that's happened they’ll probably take it away.”

  “What do you mean by ‘everything that's happened’?”

  “You haven’t heard about Mr. Lanahan from the zoo trying to get me arrested for shooting one of his animals? I thought the whole town knew.”

  “I hadn’t until yesterday, when your uncle told me something about it.”

  “Yeah,” he said, kicking at a tree root. “And the people from the university weren’t too happy about the whole thing. I thought it would be okay once Chief Burke refused to charge me with anything, but then it seemed like the university still might take my scholarship away because of Mr. Lanahan suing me. That doesn’t seem fair!”

  “No,” I said. “But colleges are like that—they hate bad PR. My fiance teaches at Caerphilly College, and I’m beginning to realize that anything I do to get myself in trouble could hurt his career.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “So I guess when they hear I’m a suspect in a murder, that’ll kill it for sure.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “Being a suspect isn’t so much a problem—we’re all suspects. Getting arrested wouldn’t be so good. Mainly it's getting convicted that would really mess up your football career.”

  “It could happen,” he said gloomily. “I mean, Chief Burke's a good cop, don’t get me wrong, but he's a city cop. Doesn’t know beans about hunting or crossbows or anything.”

  “Not many people do,” I said. “Why hunt with a crossbow, anyway?”

  “It's more challenging,” he said. “Just as challenging as with a bow and arrow, in spite of what all the purists say.” “Purists?”

  “Lot of bow-and-arrow hunters look down on crossbows. Say there's no skill involved, which is bull. Or that it's not fair because crossbows have a longer range, which isn’t really true, either.” His voice had risen, though he sounded more upset than angry or threatening.

  “How far you can shoot an arrow or a bolt in target practice doesn’t mean anything,” he continued. “They’ve both got about the same effective range when you’re hunting—maybe forty yards max. And when they talk about crossbow hunters not making clean kills, that just—”

  “Chill!” I said, backing away slightly. Clearly Charlie hadn’t yet acquired the typical Shiffley imperturbability. “I’m not arguing with you. Just asking.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It's just that I get in a lot of arguments about this with the traditional bow-and-arrow guys. Like the people over at the Sherwood Archery Range. Bunch of yuppies from the college, really. No crossbows allowed.”

  “Which is why you’re practicing here in your own woods.”

  “Well, there's a range over in Clay County that allows crossbows, but it costs as much as the Sherwood place does for nothing more than a big field. Cheaper and easier to practice here.”

  “Show me how it works.”

  He looked surprised for a second, and then shrugged. “Sure.”

  As he loaded the crossbow and demonstrated how to hold it, I was astonished at the transformation. With the crossbow in his hand, Charlie was a different person. More confident, more articulate, and even slightly taller, since he stopped slouching and stood up straight when holding his weapon.

  The crossbow surprised me, too. I was expecting something sturdy and wooden—a mechanical version of Robin Hood's longbow. Instead, Charlie's crossbow looked as if you’d sawed off the front foot or so of a rifle and replaced it with a small bow stuck sideways at the end of the truncated barrel. Everything was metal or some sort of composite material.

  “Want to try it?” he said.

  I hesitated for a moment, then took it, trying not to show how uneasy it made me.

  “Don’t point it at anything you don’t want to shoot,” he said.

  “Like a firearm; right,” I said. I noticed that he was keeping a careful eye on the crossbow. I’d gone to watch my cousin Horace take his annual marksmanship test once, and the range master had shown that same watchfulness around the shooters, even though they were all law enforcement officers and theoretically trained in handling firearms. A reminder, just in case I needed one, that this odd plastic-and-metal contraption was a lethal weapon, not a toy.

  Charlie corrected my grip on the bow and guided my fingers to the trigger. I lifted it and looked for a sight, then realized that it had a little telescopic sight mounted on top. I peered into the sight and moved the bow a little, and the distant target appeared, startlingly distinct. I could see how many deep scars and holes the bolts had left in it.

  I tried to imagine how it would look to have something alive in the scope. I couldn’t summon the image of a deer—they vanished from my mind as rapidly as they would flee through the woods if they’d spotted us. But I could call up Patrick Lan
ahan's face and figure easily. Too easily, in fact.

  “Just pull the trigger,” Charlie said. He didn’t sound impatient. Just calm and reassuring, as if he’d talked a hundred new-bies past their fear that the crossbow would explode if they pulled the trigger.

  “Okay,” I said. But I waited a few seconds until I could banish Lanahan's face from my mind and saw only the battered wooden target. Then I pulled the trigger.

  The surge of power that followed surprised me—that and the loud thunk as the bolt struck the target.

  “Good shot,” Charlie said. I’d hit one of the rings, the third from the center.

  “Accidental, I’m sure,” I said. “And the telescopic sight makes it pretty easy.”

  “Not as easy as you’d think,” he said. “That's another thing the bow-and-arrow hunters are always on about. How unfair the sights are. Still takes a good eye. You want easy—try this.”

  He took the crossbow from me, set it down on the ground, and twirled a couple of screws a few turns until he could remove the telescopic sight. He placed it carefully in a nearby canvas case, pulled out another, slightly different piece of metal, and screwed it into place atop the crossbow.

  “Check this out,” he said, handing the crossbow back to me.

  I aimed at the target again. The new scope seemed a lot like the old—maybe with a little less magnification. Then Charlie touched something on the sight and a little red dot appeared on the target.

  “Laser sight,” he said. “Aiming for idiots.”

  “So you don’t use this too often?” I said. As I moved the crossbow, the little dot moved with it, darting across a tree trunk, disappearing into a tangle of shrubbery, and then reappearing on the next tree trunk.

  “Never for hunting, actually,” he said. “But it's pretty cool for paintball. Psyches your opponent out. Guy thinks he's safe in the bushes, and then he looks down and sees that little red dot on his leg and splat!”

  He laughed. I managed a weak smile in response, but I kept seeing the little red dot dancing across Patrick Lanahan's chest.

  “Want me to reload it for you?” Charlie asked.

  “No thanks,” I said, handing him the crossbow. “I should be getting back. Give me five minutes to get back to my car before you start up again, will you?”

  “Okay,” he said, nodding.

  I still set off at a slight angle rather than straight past his target. And I set a brisk pace, all the while wondering if I was stupid to trust him or stupid to worry.

  Still, I was glad when I reached the car, clicked the door open, and sat down. Then I jumped up again with a yelp that was more surprise than pain. I pulled the crossbow bolt out of my back pocket and tossed it into the backseat before climbing in again and slamming the door closed.

  I didn’t start the car immediately. I pulled out the first-aid kit I kept in the car, did a more thorough job of cleaning the blood off my cheek, and applied a bandage. And all the while I was listening to hear the thunking start up again.

  Charlie waited a lot longer than five minutes. Probably more like fifteen. He wasn’t a stupid kid. And when you came right down to it, he was rather likable.

  Neither of which ruled him out as a murderer. And it definitely wasn’t just Vern and Randall who blamed Lanahan for endangering Charlie's football scholarship. Charlie had the same idea.

  I sighed with exasperation. I hated thinking that such a likable kid might be a murderer, but nothing he’d said or done ruled him out. I needed to check him out.

  Chapter 29

  When I came to the intersection with the main road I turned left, toward Caerphilly, rather than right to go home. I had quite a few unanswered questions about Charlie Shiffley, and for that matter about Patrick Lanahan and Montgomery Blake. I thought I could find a few answers online, and I didn’t want to wait until my nephew, Kevin, arrived to get our computers in working order again.

  I left my car in the shade of a huge oak in the parking lot of the Caerphilly Library and strolled inside. Ellie Draper, the librarian, was reading to a group of rowdy toddlers in the children's room, so I waved at her and headed for the computer area. Luckily, it was at the other end of the library, but the din from story hour was still clearly audible. Of course, the noise level was probably the reason that only one of the library's two public-access computers was occupied. I snagged the other.

  The cut on my cheek was throbbing a bit, so I muttered a few uncomplimentary things about Charlie Shiffley and went to check him out in the online archives of the Caerphilly Clarion. Lots of headlines from the sports section. Apparently Charlie was the mainstay of the high school football team—article after article credited him with scoring the winning points and beating school records that had stood since the fifties. My knowledge of football would fit nicely in a thimble, so most of the technical stuff was incomprehensible to me, but both local sportswriters seemed to agree that Charlie was something special—more than just this year's star athlete. Much rejoicing in print when Virginia Tech showed the good taste to offer him a football scholarship. Nice human-interest article, painting Charlie in a positive light—a B student, quiet and well-behaved. Active in the 4-H club. Spent his spring vacation volunteering on the Gulf Coast with Habitat for Humanity. The very model of a modern high school athlete. Nice picture of him surrounded by a dozen or so proud members of the Shiffley clan.

  Nothing about the unfortunate slaying of Lanahan's stray antelope, though. Maybe the Clarion didn’t want to tarnish the local hero's halo.

  I Googled him, and found much the same information, plus a lot of Virginia Tech football fan sites discussing his high school record and college prospects in mind-numbing detail. So much for the scoop on Charlie.

  I returned to the Google search page, typed in “Patrick Lana-han,” and got thirty-nine thousand entries. The first twenty didn’t seem to have anything to do with our zookeeper. I tried again, adding “Caerphilly” after Lanahan's name, and hit pay dirt.

  First in the queue was the Caerphilly Zoo's Web site. I should have looked for that in the first place, I thought as I clicked the link. Maybe I could find out about Lanahan and get a list of the animals in the zoo at the same time.

  The home page had a large picture of Lanahan clowning around with a chimpanzee. I winced as I wrote, “Chimpan-zee(s)?” at the top of a blank page in my notebook. I had the feeling chimps were high maintenance and dangerously mischievous.

  Lanahan looked much as he had when I’d seen him in our basement. He had a little more hair in the photo, and looked a lot more animated, but it was definitely the same guy I’d seen. I shook my head and moved on.

  Unfortunately, the site was reticent about precisely what animals lived at the zoo. Pictures of all kinds of exotic species decorated the pages, but most of the photos hadn’t been taken at the Caerphilly Zoo—I could tell from the elaborate enclosures and lush vegetation. It was mostly a puff piece to get people to come to the zoo. Not useful for my purposes.

  Lanahan's biography was more informative. Apparently his father had made a fortune in the chicken-farming business before selling out to one of the large national chicken-processing companies. Patrick had received his Ph.D. in wildlife science from Virginia Tech fifteen years ago, and then five years back he’d used part of his inheritance to establish the Caerphilly Zoo. Nothing about what he’d been doing in the intervening ten years. Perhaps none of the positions he’d held were sufficiently distinguished to grace the resume of the executive director of the Caerphilly Zoo.

  Of course, in the current job market, a lot of Ph.D.'s ended up driving cabs and flipping burgers. I Googled his father's name and came across an obituary from seven years ago. Okay, that fit. The old man dies; Patrick gets his hands on the family fortune, and two years later, the Caerphilly Zoo is born. Allowing for the time needed to probate the will and hunt down a suitable tract of land, that sounded perfect.

  And five years to run through his inheritance and find himself and his charges at the brink o
f bankruptcy.

  I printed out a couple of pages from the site, just in case, but I had a feeling I’d exhausted the information to be found online about Lanahan.

  Unlike the Caerphilly Zoo, the Clay County Zoo didn’t have a Web site. I did find an address, though, and checked one of the mapping sites to make sure I knew how to get there if need be. It wasn’t hard—there were only three roads in Clay County large enough to have state route numbers, and luckily the zoo was on one of them. Not far from the courthouse, by the look of it, and I knew how to get there, thanks to Michael's and my sneak visit to get the marriage license.

  I sighed, and tried to wiggle into a more comfortable position. But the library's computer chairs weren’t designed for long-term comfort. Perhaps that was deliberate. The computers were supposed to benefit as many patrons as possible, and the chairs helped ensure that no one monopolized them. Already I could see an elderly man sitting at a nearby table, glancing up from his magazine from time to time to frown at me and look pointedly at his watch.

  I returned to Google's main search page and typed in “Montgomery Blake.”

  The first entry was Blake's own Web site. I decided to check it out.

  It was much as I’d expected. Reports on what the Montgomery Blake Foundation was doing to preserve the environment on six or seven continents. Pictures of Blake with birds, animals, and reptiles of all kinds—presumably grateful members of species that were considerably less endangered as a result of his efforts. Though most of them didn’t look particularly grateful. The snow leopard cub was trying to sink his tiny, sharp fangs into Blake's hand. The monkey's bare teeth suggested that he was planning a similar attempt. The ten-foot snake draped like a stole around Blake's shoulders had lifted its head and turned it toward Blake, and was gazing at his face with calm,