Yet I forgot all about Louis Santoro’s bad taste the moment I stepped outside.
His backyard was filled with exotic animals. The first one I spotted was a peacock wandering around the immense property. Behind a chain-link fence in the corner was a pair of ostriches. Other birds were housed in tall, circular cages. I wasn’t much of an ornithologist, so I couldn’t identify them. But I noted that most had gorgeous plumage or other distinctive physical characteristics, such as unusual beaks or colorful crests that made them intriguing to watch.
But Santoro collected more than birds. An ocelot paced back and forth in a cage, while a chimpanzee, also behind bars, gazed out at me mournfully. He reminded me of a prisoner who had never figured out what crime he’d committed. Other cages contained additional primates. I recognized some from my trip to the zoo, including the gold lion tamarins with their fiery red-orange fur and the tiny pygmy marmosets.
It took every last ounce of control I possessed not to react.
I cleared my throat, hoping Santoro would assume that allergies, not emotion, were responsible for my sudden bout of congestion. Then again, he didn’t seem the least bit interested in me.
“So which one’s the latest delivery?” I asked, sounding as matter-of-fact as I could.
“This one, over here.” He walked me over to one of the cages. Held captive inside was a squirrel monkey, huddled in the back corner.
At least I thought it was a squirrel monkey. It was hard to be sure, since the poor creature looked so different from the squirrel monkeys I’d seen at the zoo. Those had been full of energy, happily swinging from vines and chasing around like maniacs. This little guy, however, looked too terrified to move.
“I’ll just leave you to do whatever you gotta do,” Santoro said breezily. “You can get to your van from here, so there’s no reason to come back into the house.” Suddenly looking nervous, he added, “There’s no extra charge for this, right?”
“It’s part of the deal,” I assured him.
As I watched him walk back into the house, I fussed with the stethoscope and the few other basic tools of the trade I’d brought along for show. I had no intention of going anywhere near that unfortunate little monkey. For one thing, I know my way around primates about as well as I know my way around motorcycles. I hadn’t opted to take any courses in exotic animal medicine in school, and I simply didn’t feel qualified.
Besides, I had no way of knowing if this monkey was diseased. It was also likely that he’d make a run for it the moment I opened the door of his cage—or do his best to tell me how he felt about his situation . . . with his sharp little teeth.
Instead, once I was sure Santoro was out of sight and out of earshot, I leaned over so I was as close to the monkey as possible. Blinking away the tears stinging my eyes, I whispered, “Don’t worry, little one. We’ll find a way to get you out of here.”
I couldn’t wait to get away from Louis Santoro’s compound, which seemed as creepy and depraved as the island of Dr. Moreau. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t geared up to make another stop, one that I knew might take me out of the flame and into the fire.
I had to confront Ben.
Now that I knew the truth about his business partner, I needed to find out if he was involved too. It was difficult to believe, since like me, he was a veterinarian. He had spent four years at college and another four in vet school, preparing to spend his life taking care of animals. That meant improving their lives, not harming them.
Then again, people changed. Especially when money was involved.
My blood was close to the boiling point as I pulled up in front of Ben’s house. I slammed the door of my van so forcefully that I swear the plastic flowers on the porch quivered.
But as I marched toward the front door, I realized I had to calm down. Confronting Ben while I was in such an enraged state wasn’t exactly the best way of fostering honest communication. So before ringing the doorbell, I took a few breaths, meanwhile reminding myself that I was doing this for Erin.
“Jessie?” Ben said as he opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
His eyes looked clouded. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was simply surprised to see me—or if he’d been hoping that I’d leave him alone.
“Ben,” I said evenly, “there’s something I need to talk to you about. Something kind of . . . sensitive.”
All the blood drained from his face. “Something about Erin?”
“No. At least not directly.” I hesitated. “Can I come in?”
“Uh, sure.” He moved aside, but his face still reflected uncertainty.
I waited until we were sitting in the living room before I began. Once we’d both settled in the exact same spots we’d been in the last time we’d spoken, I said, “I actually wanted to talk to you about your business partner.”
“Donald?” he asked, sounding confused.
I nodded. “Ben, how much do you know about him?”
He sat up a little straighter and squared his shoulders. “I know that Donald works hard and that he’s committed to making our stores a success. I also know that he’s always been fair with me. In fact, I feel pretty damn lucky to have gone into business with him. I mean, look at this place, Jessie. It’s a palace. Do you think I could have gotten any of this without a shrewd, knowledgeable guy like Donald working with me?”
I felt as if I was treading in dangerous waters here. “Okay, so the two of you have done well in the pet store business. But what about any other . . . business endeavors he might be involved in?”
“I’m afraid I’m not following.”
I studied him carefully, trying to figure out how much he knew. And trying to decide just how honest to be with him.
After all, I was well aware that he and I were alone in the house—and that he might have already committed one murder. And he could have killed his wife precisely because she’d confronted him with the exact same information I was now planning to confront him with.
I leaned forward and pinned him in my gaze. “Ben,” I said in a soft, gentle voice, “you and I went to vet school together. We both spent four years of our lives learning how to care for animals. I have to believe that anybody who worked that hard has to be truly committed to looking out for their welfare.
“Donald Drayton, on the other hand, is a businessman,” I continued. “His perspective is completely different from yours and mine. I don’t know him personally, but I’m sure he views what you’re doing in an entirely different way. I can’t imagine that he—”
“You know, don’t you,” Ben said flatly. It was a statement, not a question.
“I don’t actually know anything,” I replied. I was trying to keep myself from falling into a trap. Especially one I’d created myself.
“But you have your suspicions.” An odd smile played at his lips. “I can’t imagine what you must think of me, Jessie. At the very least, I’m sure you feel I’m not the same person I was when we knew each other at vet school.”
His comment startled me—and not only because my impression of him back then had been that he was a shallow, if likeable, party boy. And given what his former friend Jack Krieger had told me about him cheating on the pharmacology final in order to graduate, I now thought even less of who he’d been in vet school.
I certainly wasn’t about to admit that now though.
“Ben, people don’t change,” I insisted. “Maybe some things about them do, but fundamentally, they stay the same. At least that’s what I believe.”
I wanted to appeal to the good in him, or at least the part of him that wanted to appear to be good.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said in a hoarse voice, breaking eye contact and instead staring off into space. “At least, not directly. All I did was provide them with the best medical care I could. Sometimes they contracted diseases I couldn’t identify. And sometimes I didn’t have access to the right drugs. They don’t all make it, but damn it, I do my best.”
I remained silent. I wanted him to go on—even though his words were making my temples throb and my stomach wrench.
“Donald’s been doing it for years,” he continued in the same dull voice. “He started long before I came on the scene. That was after I met him at a dinner the chamber of commerce held so local business people could meet each other. I went alone, since Erin had to work late at the zoo that night. Don and I happened to sit at the same table, and when he found out that I was a veterinarian, he seemed really interested. He told me he was thinking of opening a chain of pet stores, but that he was looking for a partner who knew something about animals.
“What happened next was kind of strange. It was almost like he started cultivating me. Working on me, you know? Like, he kept inviting me to play golf and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He even had Erin and me over to his house for dinner a few times. She couldn’t stand his wife, of course. She thought she was a complete airhead. In fact, she used to refer to her as Silicon Barbie.
“But I was flattered. I could see how high on the hog the guy was living. The idea that he wanted somebody like me to go into business with him totally impressed me. He didn’t even expect me to put that much money in, at least compared to what he was investing.
“In fact, Donald didn’t seem to expect much from me at all. He kept saying that he thought that having a veterinarian as a business partner would lend credibility to the venture. That the banks would like it, the customers would trust us, that kind of thing.”
He paused to take a deep breath. “Honestly, Jess,” he said, finally looking me in the eye, “it wasn’t until I’d signed on the dotted line and was already committed that I found out what was really going on.”
“And what exactly is that?” I asked quietly.
“Donald Drayton deals in illegal animals,” Ben replied, sounding pained. “The pet stores are just a cover for what he really does. He smuggles them in from Africa and Southeast Asia and anyplace else with animals that there’s a market for. Sometimes he sells them to people he finds through our stores, but he has plenty of other ways of finding buyers.
“As for the real reason he wanted me as his business partner, I didn’t find that out until after I was too far in to get out. That was when he told me the real reason he’d worked so hard to get me involved—he’d been looking for a way to keep sick animals who arrive in this country from dying.” Smiling coldly, he added, “ ‘Cutting his losses’ is the way he phrased it.”
I didn’t react, since I didn’t want him to see how horrified I was by what he was telling me. “What about Erin?” I asked. “What did she—”
“Nothing!” he cried. “Erin had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. She didn’t even know about it. I swear, Jessie. I did everything I could to keep the truth from her. And I know for sure that she never found out.”
Shaking his head, he gasped, “It would have killed her.”
Maybe, I thought, still watching him closely and wondering whether he was sincere or just putting on a performance. Or perhaps something went wrong and she did find out—and that was what killed her.
Suddenly Ben’s entire demeanor changed. The muscles of his face tightened as, in a hard voice, he said, “Now that you know about this, you can’t tell anybody.”
I just looked at him, thinking, How can I not tell? Do you really think I could live with the knowledge that someone I know is involved in activities that are so deplorable, not to mention illegal?
Of course I was going to turn Donald Drayton in, even though I swore up and down that I had no intention of doing so. Ben too.
But not yet. First, I had to find out if when Erin was in the same position I was in now, one of them had decided that she, too, needed to remain silent.
Chapter 16
“The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”
—Robert Benchley
As I snuggled with Nick on Betty’s comfortable couch that night, I was glad this was one time he’d agreed to help me with a murder investigation. But while the research he’d done on Donald Drayton’s finances had been valuable, it was nothing compared to having him as a sounding board.
Even if he wasn’t exactly pleased when I told him I’d taken a field trip to Louis Santoro’s compound.
“Jessie, I thought you promised you wouldn’t do anything dangerous!” he exclaimed.
“I was never in danger,” I assured him. “Santoro was completely convinced that I work for Drayton.”
Just like Ben Chandler, I thought grimly.
“Besides,” I went on, “now I’m certain about a really important piece of the puzzle. I know for sure that Donald Drayton is involved in the illegal animal trade. If Erin found out, that could have been the reason she was murdered. Somebody, probably Drayton, wanted to keep her quiet.”
“So he’s your number one suspect?” Nick asked.
“He’s certainly high on the list,” I replied. “But it’s also possible that her husband killed her for the very same reason.”
I had to admit that Ben had sounded sincere when he’d told me that Donald had talked him into going into business with him without being honest about what his business really was. He’d also sounded pretty convincing when he’d insisted that Erin never found out anything about it.
But that could have just meant he was a good actor.
“I have to consider Ben a suspect,” I continued. “If Erin discovered the truth about their business—which seems highly likely given the notes on that cocktail napkin—the possibility of her going to the police would have been just as threatening to Ben as it was to Drayton.”
“Good-bye swimming pool and Sub-Zero freezer,” Nick muttered. “Hello jail cell with the bed attached to the wall. For a lot of people, that would be a good enough reason to kill.”
“But then there’s Dr. Zacarias,” I noted. “As far as I know, she doesn’t have anything to do with the illegal animal trade. In fact, she’s dedicated her life to animal conservation. But that doesn’t mean she’s above acting in a less than ethical manner when it comes to furthering her own career. At least, if I believe what Walter told me, not to mention what I observed for myself. From the things she said about Erin, it’s hard to believe we were talking about the same person.”
Thoughtfully, I added, “I also know that Dr. Zacarias was at that fund-raiser. She told me she helped plan it, that it was a huge success.”
“In other words, she might not have been smuggling animals, but there are plenty of other things she could be guilty of,” Nick commented. “And if Erin found out she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing, that could have given Dr. Zacarias a reason to kill her.”
“Right.” I sighed. “Then there’s Walter. Not only was he part of a love triangle, he might also have believed Erin was pregnant. His role as the jealous lover could certainly have motivated him to kill her.”
“He’s also someone we know is comfortable around scorpions,” Nick added. “I’d say that earns him an especially high spot on your list of suspects.”
He was silent for what seemed like a very long time. By the tension in his forehead, I knew the wheels in his head were turning.
“What about someone who doesn’t have such an obvious motive?” he finally asked.
“Like who?”
“I was thinking of Erin’s sister.”
“I thought of her too,” I said. “She seems more distraught than anybody about Erin’s death. But it has occurred to me that it could simply be an act. For all I know, she could have come to me with those notes from the fund-raiser as a way of getting me to look closely at everyone but her. She might have worried that Erin told me more over the phone than I’d let on.”
“A good reason for her to go out of her way to throw you off,” Nick mused.
Now it was my turn to remain silent for a long time. But the wheels inside my head were turning as hard as Nick’s had.
“I can’t help thinking that Walter knows m
ore than he’s telling me,” I finally said. “Nick, I’m positive that he was lying about being at that fund-raising event. At first, I wasn’t convinced that the notes Erin made on the cocktail napkin that night had anything to do with her murder. But now that I know what most of her scribblings meant, I’m convinced that something happened at that dinner. Maybe even something important enough to get her killed.”
But aside from Dr. Zacarias, Walter was the only other person I knew who’d been there. And of the two of them, he was the only one who’d been willing to talk to me.
Which meant he was not only on my list of suspects, he was also on my list of last resorts.
I made a point of going to Walter’s house the very next day. This time, when he opened his front door and saw me standing there, he didn’t look the least bit surprised.
“Come on in, Jessie,” he said with resignation.
“Walter, I need your help,” I began, launching into my pitch as soon as I sat down on the dusty brown couch. “You strike me as the one person who knows more about what was going on with Erin right before she was murdered than anyone else—including her own husband.”
Since I’d clearly gotten his attention, I paused long enough to take a deep breath. “The more people I talk to and the more questions I ask,” I continued, “the more I keep coming back to that fund-raiser. I have to know what went on that night. I believe something significant happened—something that’s the key to Erin’s murderer.”
I stared at him beseechingly, wondering what else I could say that would motivate him to tell me what he knew.
Instead, he sank into the soft cushions of the couch beside me and buried his face in his hands. “I was afraid it would come to this,” he said softly.
“Walter,” I said firmly, “tell me.”
When he finally looked up, he shook his head slowly. “It all started a few months ago, when I was working at the zoo. I was there to make their computer systems work better. That meant looking through all their files to figure out what belonged where. That’s when I found out that Annalise Zacarias really is as unethical as people say.”
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