Penguins and Mortal Peril: Mystery (Madigan Amos Zoo Mysteries Book 1)

by Ruby Loren

  “Pretty good! I’ve made sales on Etsy and everything. I never thought anyone would buy them…” She trailed off and I smiled.

  Tiff designed some fantastic, fiction inspired maps of the world that the online fandoms had gone nuts for.

  “Maybe one day…” She paused and we exchanged a smile. It was a long running joke between us that maybe one day we’d both be able to quit the day job. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if either of us would quit, even if our hobbies made enough for us to live off. We both loved our jobs (most of the time) and what was better than doing what you loved? Having a successful hobby was just the cherry on the cake.

  “Anyway, I’d better get going and serve up dinner to the menagerie,” I said with a smile and waved to Tiff as we parted ways.

  My mind strayed back to what she’d said about people noticing my friendship with Auryn, but I couldn’t bring myself to take it seriously. It would be super obvious to anyone who observed for more than a passing moment that we weren’t anything other than friends. Still… a smile lifted my mouth for a second. It was unusual to find myself the subject of envy.

  The late afternoon into evening passed without much incident. I observed that the penguin posse I was currently responsible for had started picking at the hole in the side of their pool again. It was getting larger by the day and water was slopping through it into the hollow space between the walls. I made a mental note to pass the news on to Morgan, so he could hopefully get someone out to fix it. I’d done patch-up tasks before, but I was less than enthusiastic about this one. I thought that was fair, considering that a zookeeper had died presumably trying to fix that very hole. One of the builders busy making a mess of the capybaras’ new enclosure could jolly well do the job.

  “Enjoy, little Pingus,” I said to the small flock of Humboldt penguins, who flung themselves into the water after the fresh batch of fish I’d just lobbed in. I hesitated for a moment, staring through the water at the place where I’d seen Ray lying with his head caved in. Around me, I could hear the sounds of excited children, watching the last feed of the day and batting their hands against the underwater viewing window - despite notices specifically asking them not to.

  My mind floated through all of the different conversations I’d had and I wondered if Ray's death might just be the start of things to come.

  I hoped not.

  “Good day, Madi?” James, the keeper in charge of rodents and small mammals strolled in to the storeroom as I was washing up the penguins’ buckets.

  “The usual. How was yours?” I asked, taking the opportunity to smile at the other keeper. James was something of an enigma. He was in his twenties with neat dark hair and a face that he managed to keep pale year round - despite the amount of sun exposure we zookeepers experienced. His unusual complexion was further set off by his eyes that were so dark brown, they were nearly black. It had given rise to a few people calling him the zoo’s resident vampire. While I knew that was nonsense, James was undeniably strange at times. Like the majority of the zookeepers I knew, he loved the animals he specialised in and had once told me that he’d decided to become a zookeeper because his parents had never let him have the pets he wanted as a child. He’d brought every single rat and mouse he could lay his hands on into the house. I could only imagine what his poor parents had been through.

  He’d told me all of that during one of his exceedingly rare chatty moments. James liked to keep himself to himself. He had a way of gliding through the zoo without attracting any attention and he had even been called out on not attending staff meetings, when in fact he’d been standing at the back all along.

  “My day was okay, thank you for asking. I heard you found poor Ray. I hope you’re doing okay,” he offered and I tried to hide my surprise at his sentiment.

  “I’m fine. I just wish that there didn’t have to be a body to find,” I said, and looked quickly at James, wondering if that had made any sense at all.

  “I hear you.” He ran a finger across one of his dead straight eyebrows - a gesture I found odd to do whilst thinking. “I just hope everything blows over soon. There’s not a good feeling here, is there?” He said, and then slipped away out of the door without waiting for a response.

  I stood there thinking about his cryptic words for a moment before shaking them off. As I said, James was an enigma.

  Even though it was clocking out time, I decided to take a stroll down to the cat barn. I’d managed to feed them earlier in the day, but hadn’t seen any sign of the pregnant cat. This time, I did my best to creep around the corner and even saw two of the younger cats scrapping playfully on the dusty floor, but there was still no sign of the black cat with the white socks. I shrugged it off. Feral cats liked to move around. She might have managed to haul herself off on a hunting trip, or perhaps she’d just decided that the barn wasn’t the place to have her kittens after all. Only time would tell. For now, I’d just have to keep an eye out for her.

  I walked back through the food storage warehouse and into the ‘backstage area’ of the zoo. The sun was dipping in the sky, bathing the zoo in a beautiful pinky orange light. I smiled and decided to walk back to the entrance the visitors’ way. It always soothed me to see the animals begin their nightly routines - whether that meant waking up, or going to sleep.

  I’d just passed the meerkats when I heard footsteps. Technically, everyone should be on their way home by now, but there were occasionally a few of us who stayed later to finish up little tasks. Maybe it was a reaction to knowing what had befallen Ray when he’d stayed back after hours, but I pressed myself flat against the wooden poles that ran up the side of the meerkats’ enclosure. The footsteps came closer. I briefly wondered how foolish I’d feel if someone caught me acting so strangely, but the steps passed by. The walker was being careful, but the heavy work boots he was wearing did nothing to muffle his steps. I found myself looking at the back view of a well-muscled man with a tribal tattoo peeking from beneath his sleeve. It was Lowell, the new builder I’d asked about earlier that day.

  As soon as he rounded the corner, I discovered I’d been holding my breath. I let it out and breathed normally for a couple of seconds, wondering if what I’d just seen was in any way significant. Sure, people stayed late at the zoo, but not usually builders. They were brought in for a limited number of hours a day - unless the work was especially pressing - and they would be paid overtime to stay. But matters that were deemed ‘pressing’ were only ever emergencies, where there was a good chance the zoo could get sued, or reported to health and safety authorities if the problem wasn’t fixed quickly. There were no current projects that fit that bill.

  I realised I couldn’t think of a single good reason why Lowell might be creeping around the zoo after hours. Which in my mind left only bad ones.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Pointing Fingers

  My pencil skated across the page as I sketched out an expansion on one of my storyboards. I reflected that it was lucky I had so much material drawn out in rough to use, as finding that ‘funny’ inspiration wasn’t likely to happen this week. I frowned and focused on the knitted brows of the pompous zoo manager, who liked to boss everyone around, before his schemes would humorously fall apart and result in slapstick disaster for him. The character of Mr Masters, the manager, wasn’t based on anyone in particular. It was more an amalgamation of anyone who’d annoyed me that week. This was my petty writer’s revenge.

  I paused for a moment to open my email inbox and look at the five new messages I’d received, all with my comic’s title as the subject of the message. I could already see from the email previews that none of them were rude, negative, or angry. On the contrary, it sounded like they liked my work. I was fully intending on replying to all of the emails, just as soon as I’d got over the initial excitement that people were actually writing to me. Those five emails were just today’s offering. Yesterday I’d had four messages, and the day before that, six!

  I clicked to my webcomic’s dashboard
and looked at the stats, noting that the number of visitors was steadily increasing. Ever since I’d done a little research into what it took to start your own online comic and how to get readership, I’d seen people saying that you started slowly and then once you got a few readers, you’d soon find your readership double and then quadruple as word spread like a virus.

  Starting the comic was the hardest part. I’d done it for the love of it, just because I enjoyed making up the story lines and drawing them. When I’d been featured on a webcomic site and a few people had visited, that had been great. Now things were starting to take on a life of their own. I’d even seen one of my panels shared on a Facebook page, dedicated to people who took care of animals.

  That had been when I’d started to worry about what would happen if anyone at the zoo found the comic. I hastily clicked to the ‘about me’ page and deleted the unwise photo of myself.

  There.

  My secret was hopefully safe, although the little voice in my head reminded me that nothing truly disappeared once it had been posted on the internet. My photo could already have been shared far and wide without my knowledge. I might currently be the face of any number of ‘Russian wives’ advertisements, although I sincerely doubted it. It was far more likely that any pirated picture of me would be used for a campaign that featured ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos. Unless it was an advert for the results of eating too much chocolate, my photo would not be the ‘after’ image.

  I opened the first email and realised it was yet another request for prints of the comic to be sold. I nudged my glasses back up my nose and made a mental note to ask Tiff all about Etsy. Perhaps I could open up a store and see how it went.

  My gaze drifted down to rest on the page in front of me where the squirrel monkeys were in the process of escaping again. I smiled darkly at their deceptively adorable faces. Few people realised they were probably the most vicious animals at the zoo. This time, in the comic world of Monday’s Menagerie, the squirrel monkeys had found a child’s plastic spade and were currently digging their way beneath the zoo in another doomed bid for freedom. While I would be surprised if Avery Zoo’s squirrel monkeys managed to use a child’s spade to dig their way out, I wouldn’t put the idea of digging to freedom beyond them. They were as devious as animals came and seemed to escape with regularity. Even so, Tom, the keeper in charge of primates, still refused to try any of the changes I’d suggested making to their enclosure. I sighed, thinking back to the equally frustrating encounter I’d had with him earlier in the day. With some people, you always knew you were fighting a losing battle. But it had never put me off trying.

  I clicked on PhotoShop and put the final touches to a comic I’d half coloured in. I tilted my head, giving it one last check for spelling and grammar, before I saved it as a png and uploaded it to the comic. I had a brief moment of satisfaction when I pressed ‘post’ and decided to reward my small achievement with an evening hot chocolate. Living alone as I did, no one else was going to celebrate it, so it was down to me to highlight these moments.

  Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to have a boyfriend that lived with me. I’d had longish term relationships before, but that had been years ago and none of them had felt right enough to move to that next stage of living together. That was probably why they’d all fallen apart.

  I’d thought about getting a pet too. My mother had long wanted a grandchild, and as an only child, all of her hopes rested on me. For now, I knew she’d be lucky to have a grand-cat or a grand-dog, with my lack of boyfriend finding abilities.

  I stirred my hot chocolate, watching the darker threads of chocolate mingle with the milk. Did I want a boyfriend right now? I thought about it and decided I probably didn’t. Things were infinitely simpler without another person to consider and it wasn’t as if anything in my working life was simple. I had more than enough to occupy myself.

  I reassured myself that this was of course the only reason I wasn’t already married with two and a half kids.

  I smiled and walked up to my bedroom with the hot chocolate. I’d decided to spend the rest of the evening chilling out with whatever fantasy book I could lay my hands on. Perhaps I’d start The Hobbit again and travel that world, or maybe I’d choose one of my guilty pleasures - post-apocalyptic adventures. I knew some people thought they were silly, but I loved the edge-of-your seat action, when the protagonist ran from the giant horde of zombies. I also figured the more I read, the more likely my zombie action plan would be completely foolproof, when the time came.

  I selected a book and slid beneath the covers, switching my mind off from all of the happenings of the day.

  ***

  The entrance to the zoo was full of people the next morning. As there was still half an hour to go before the zoo opened, it was definitely unusual.

  I got out of my car and made my way towards the throng. My heart jolted. I wondered if someone else had been found dead. I squashed the thought and decided to find out the answer before jumping to conclusions. It wasn’t long before angry voices reached my ears and I assigned the loudest voice to Colin, the zookeeper who took care of the equine and hoofed animals at the zoo.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had made him so angry.

  Colin’s car - a rather ancient, black Mercedes parked right outside the zoo - had been vandalised. Someone had taken a can of red spray paint and written ‘Murder Farmer’ on the bonnet of his car. There was another bright red slogan across the side doors that sneered ‘Cattle Killer’. I looked at the words and a memory from long ago resurfaced.

  “I was here all night looking after Louisa and her calf and this is what I get when I come out here in the morning to drive home for some sleep! We all know exactly who did this. Now I want to know why the hell no one is doing anything to stop them?” Colin was shouting at the top of his voice with his finger outstretched towards the small group of people, who’d already started to drift in and hang around the gates. A few of the animal rights activists raised their placards and cheered when they heard Colin shouting, which hardly helped their case.

  I caught Morgan rolling his eyes, although I wasn’t sure if it was at Colin, or the group of animal annoyances. I still failed to see how marching around outside a zoo helped save animals.

  A police car swung into the car park and a couple of officers got out. I vaguely recognised them from the penguin pool crime scene. They greeted Colin and began asking him the usual questions. He loudly berated the lack of CCTV in the car park, threatening to personally install his own in future. Then he flung accusations around but the protesters either didn’t hear, or ignored him now that the police were there. The fun was over. The group of people who’d gathered by the car sensed it too, as they began to dissipate and walk away.

  I stayed for a few moments more, looking at the writing on the car. A past incident, which had occurred the last time the zoo had attracted more than their fair share of protesters, rose in my mind.

  Danny Emeridge had been the last apprentice zookeeper that the zoo had taken on, before Auryn had decided that his future lay with the family business. He was the sort of guy that no one had a bad word to say about and despite his apprentice status, he’d worked as hard as any keeper.

  That was before it had happened.

  He’d been walking across the car park when they struck. Danny had stayed late, so no one was around to see. I’d found him an hour or so later and had called an ambulance and the police. They’d saved his life, but he’d never returned to the zoo.

  The people who had done it to him went unpunished. It was another open case that everyone knew would never be solved. There had been rumours though, a lot of rumours. The animal activists had finally taken a step too far - they’d attacked one of us. People at the zoo had demanded justice, but the activists had closed ranks and allegedly nothing further could be done. The case had been dropped and eventually the protesters had drifted away, leaving the zoo in peace… until now. I wondered if the
police had bothered to look into that past case and note the similar circumstances that tied together Danny’s attack and Ray’s potential murder. I thought about bringing it up with them, but found I simply didn’t want to get involved. It was time for the police to do their own detective work and if I could avoid being dragged through those past memories again, that would be a big plus.

  After a dramatic start to the day, the morning turned out to be a quiet one. It was Tuesday and for some reason the general public had chosen to be elsewhere. A few families on their summer holidays milled around, but it was nice to have a day’s rest from the usual summer holiday bedlam. I always counted down the days until school started again.

  I wasn’t a children hater. I thought children were great. It was more their parents that I had a problem with, or more specifically, a particular sort of parent. When you saw parents drop their kids over fences, or when kids banged on the glass of enclosures and ran wild, generally making the experience unpleasant for other families, I always bore witness to the kind of adult I didn’t like. They were usually busy chatting to their other half, or oblivious on their phone while all of this was going on.

  I blinked away the negative thoughts and tried to go back to appreciating the relative quiet of the zoo. I’d just finished tidying up the fennec foxes’ enclosure when I saw Tiff waving at me through the glass.

  “Hey,” I said, when I’d walked back around. I suddenly noticed she wasn’t alone. A girl wearing the pale green shirt that marked zoo volunteers and temporary staff was stood next to her. She had brown, shoulder length hair, that swung in a straight sheet and dark brown eyes. There wasn’t a scrap of makeup on her face and there was a definite tomboy air about her. This was a person who I suspected didn’t give a damn about what anyone had to say about the way she looked.