Jaguar Hunt

by Terry Spear

  So they hadn’t left the other condoms for the staff to find. David was glad about that.

  “Oh, and just so you know,” Nate said, “we paid your fine for helping us out with Joe Storm.”

  “My boss would have paid it,” David said.

  “Yeah, but the JAG branch shouldn’t have to. So we paid it,” Alex said.

  “Thanks,” David said.

  The boys shared looks, and then Nate said, “We wondered if you could teach us how to knock someone out the way you did Joe, in case we ever have trouble with a dude like him in the future.”

  Before David could answer, Tammy said, “No. Messing with someone like that would likely get you killed.”

  They looked at David as if waiting for his opinion. The boys couldn’t genuinely believe he’d go against what Tammy had said. Not when he knew she was right and he wanted to return to bed with her and hold her close the rest of the night.

  “She’s right, guys. Do you have anything else you want to discuss with us that will help with finding the cat or learning who took her from you the first time?”

  The boys shook their heads.

  “Let’s call it a night,” David said. “You sure you’re going to be safe leaving here on your own?”

  “Yeah,” both said at the same time. They went outside and gave the T-shirts and shorts back to David, then shifted and took off. Their car had to be parked nearby. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he heard the car engine roar and the vehicle retreating down the street.

  David returned to the house and locked the door.

  “So what did you gather from that little exchange?” Tammy asked, setting the empty cookie plate and glasses on the tray.

  “More is going on than meets the eye. I don’t think they’re telling us everything.” He eyed the empty cookie dish. “Did you have to give them the rest of the cookies?” he asked as he helped Tammy carry the dirty dishes to the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher.

  “They’re growing boys.” She patted David’s stomach. “You have to watch that you don’t end up looking like Santa Claus.”

  He grabbed her up and tossed her over his shoulder.

  She squealed in surprise and laughed. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting some exercise while I take my bag of Christmas toys to bed. I can’t tell you how much I’m going to enjoy unwrapping them to make sure the presents are all still there.”

  Chapter 25

  The next morning, David called his boss first thing to inform him that the jaguar had been stolen from the boys. He glanced up to see Tammy examining his keys on his key ring as she joined him. He hadn’t realized he’d left them on the dining table.

  Not a happy director, Martin growled, “If they had turned the cat over to the Service, she would be safe now and back at the zoo.”

  “The last time the boys turned the cat over to the Service, she ended back at the circus.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Martin said. “Don’t remind me.”

  David was certain whoever was involved would pay big-time. After he and Martin finished talking, Tammy and David planned to head over to the circus grounds.

  “Why do you have so many keys?” she asked, handing them over to David. “I have my house key to the front and back doors, car keys to my car doors and trunk, and that’s it.”

  “Looks like I have a few I should have gotten rid of a while back.”

  She raised her brows as she climbed into his car.

  “They don’t belong to anything any longer.” Hell, he hadn’t even realized he still had the extra keys. Just never thought about it until he saw Tammy puzzling over them. One was to his old girlfriend’s place. Two belonged to Quinn’s sister, Olivia.

  He eyed the keys. One was to her house and another to her car. Then he noted the one to his safety-deposit box, recalling she had signed the signature card so she could access it if she wanted to. He had never put anything in it. Had she?

  Tammy had grown quiet and was leaning on the door, her head resting against the window.

  In the time that they had been working together, he’d noted she was definitely a morning person. Very talkative. Until now. This morning, she had barely said anything to him even after she had a cup of hot green tea and a bagel, only giving her boss a brief call to inform him of the missing cat, until she’d asked David about the keys. Then she had zoned out again.

  “Rough night, huh?” he asked.

  She cast him a wicked smile. She was just as much to blame for their making love half the night as he was. He smiled back. He wanted a repeat performance tonight, but they’d have to take a catnap—separately—if they were going to manage it.

  They arrived at the circus grounds a half hour before a free preshow time when circus-goers could get autographs from performers on the arena floor. But they couldn’t get in until the circus actually opened its gates. Without a warrant to look around, they had to use finesse in learning what they could.

  As soon as they gained entrance, the smells of food—roasted peanuts, cotton candy, turkey legs—and animals—lions, tigers, elephants, a bear, and dogs—swirled around them on the hot Texas breeze.

  Three huge yellow-, red-, and blue-striped circus tents dominated the grassy field. Beyond that, what looked like a trailer park had been set up to accommodate the performers.

  Somewhere back there, they would also have the animals that they used in the performances in cages or tied up.

  “This way, folks.” A couple of what David thought looked like the bouncers in the jaguar shifter club motioned to him and Tammy to enter one of the tents.

  “We’ve come to see the owner about a missing jaguar. We’re trying to track it down for him. Is Cyrus Wilde available to talk to us?” David asked.

  “Mr. Wilde had family business to attend to. He’s in Madison, Wisconsin,” the man said. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a circus tent and the name of the circus screen-printed across the front, and he had wild, curly red hair.

  “What about the manager?” Tammy asked.

  The man jerked his thumb toward a trailer mostly hidden by the tent, a sign displayed on top saying, OFFICE. “He’s in there. Didn’t hear anything about a missing cat. I’m sure Randy would have told us to be on the lookout for you.”

  “We only just tracked down that the cat had been stolen from here. Thanks.” David touched Tammy’s back with a silent message to move before the guy changed his mind and said they couldn’t bother the manager.

  She quickly stepped out. The two crossed the grassy area and were promptly stopped by a clown with a red rubber nose, white face paint, enormous red-painted lips, and a bright orange curly wig. “This area is for performers and staff only.”

  “Out of my way,” Tammy said to the clown with a stern voice and an even sterner expression. “You don’t want to be a casualty. Do you?”

  The guy looked at David as if confirming she spoke the truth. He smiled and shrugged. “Bad clown experience,” he guessed.

  David hurried to join her as she continued on her way to the manager’s trailer.

  “So you had a bad experience with a clown?” David asked Tammy.

  “When I was about ten, my parents took us to a carnival. A clown whipped flowers out of a hat too close to me and gave me a bloody nose.”

  “Hell, I would have killed him.”

  She smiled. “You wouldn’t have needed to. I hit him between the legs of his baggy clown pants—just an automatic reaction. He cried real tears. But I didn’t feel bad. I had a bloody nose that hurt like the devil, and my mother was ready to shift and bite the guy. Both my brothers stomped on the clown’s oversized shoes before he fell to the ground in pain.”

  “If I ever go to a Halloween party with you, I’ll know what not to wear,” David said.

  She chuckled. “You can go as Tarzan.” She smiled as
she looked down at his body as if just imagining him wearing a loincloth. Damn, if her gaze didn’t stir things up.

  He took her arm and walked faster before he got into some significant trouble.

  When he knocked on the manager’s door, a gruff-sounding man shouted, “Come in!”

  David exchanged looks with Tammy.

  “Sounds like he’s having a bad day,” she whispered.

  David nodded and opened the door.

  The dark-haired man looked up at them and stopped shuffling through papers at his desk. “Who the hell are you?”

  “We’re here to speak to Cyrus Wilde.”

  “He’s had family issues. He’s not here right now.”

  “Okay, well, we’ve been told a jaguar is missing from your circus. We’ve been trying to track it down for Cyrus.”

  “He said nothing about this to me. When was this supposed to be? I’ve only been the manager here for a month.”

  David thought that odd. Wouldn’t everybody know about the missing jaguar? Even if the man hadn’t been there but a month. Especially if the circus had stolen it back from the boys recently. And even odder, Martin had talked to Cyrus just a couple of days ago, and he never mentioned that he wasn’t at the circus. “It was originally stolen a year ago,” David said.

  Randy let out his breath and waved at the grounds. “You can ask some of the staff if you want. But we have a lot of turnover with the employees. Not sure who all was here back then. A couple of clowns, I think.”

  David gave Tammy a look. If anyone had to question a clown, he’d do the talking.

  “And the owner, of course, was here.” Randy motioned to a picture of a man standing next to the lion’s cage—the same man who had bumped into Tammy as he was headed into the police station. He’d smelled like a lion and was wearing a handlebar mustache. He must have liked the big cats. Maybe worked with them some.

  “He was at the police station a few days ago,” David said. “Did that have to do with the stolen cat?”

  The manager shook his head. “Brand-new popcorn machine. Someone stole it.”

  David wasn’t about to give up on the manager yet, even if he hadn’t been here when the owner claimed the cat was first stolen. The circus had to have some documentation showing the cat had been here at one time. “Have you got any pictures of the jaguar performing? Dated pictures?”

  Randy eyed his messy office with papers scattered everywhere—floor, table, desk, an old musty-smelling tweed couch, and shelves. “This is the mess I got when I first started working here. With having to manage the show, I don’t have time to sort through this disaster area.”

  David glanced at posters of the current show that hung on corkboard. Four metal file cabinets stood against one wall. “Maybe something in one of the filing cabinets.”

  “I don’t know what the previous manager’s filing system was, but there aren’t any labels on anything. Nothing filed alphabetically, numerically, nothing.” He went to one of the cabinets, opened a drawer, fumbled through some file folders, closed the drawer, and proceeded to do the same with the others.

  Files were meant to organize things, David thought. Why have them otherwise?

  “Well, hell, I can’t find anything. If there are any documents concerning the cat, my guess is they’d be in one of these cabinets,” the manager finally said.

  “Do you mind if we look?” David asked.

  “We wouldn’t even mind straightening the files up for you if it would help,” Tammy quickly offered.

  The manager stared at the cabinets and then shook his head. “The owner would have to okay it.”

  “You think that pictures of the cat might have been misplaced or stolen?” David asked.

  “Misplaced? Sure. Stolen, I wouldn’t think so. Thrown out? Maybe. If it happened last year, that’s a long time ago,” Randy said.

  Missing pictures, posters, or anything related to the jaguar seemed a little too convenient. If he and Tammy could have looked at a photo of the cat, they could compare the rosette pattern with the cat’s pictures from the zoo and try to get a match. The only other way to confirm the owner’s story was to get the cat to perform. But for that, they needed the jaguar.

  “Feel free to speak with anyone who isn’t working on getting ready for the next show.”

  “Thanks,” David said, pausing at the door. “Was the other manager let go? Or did he quit?”

  “Fired. After some sloppy business dealings, fraternizing with some of the female entertainers on the job and the like, Cyrus fired him. He wanted to make sure I kept my hands off the women. Or the men. I’m a happily married man, so no issues with me there.”

  “So Cyrus canned him.”

  “Yeah. You don’t work, you get fired. He told me he should have gotten rid of him earlier than that. The guy thought he was a real Casanova. Had the women all scrapping over him. Bunch of damn cat fights going on constantly. That’s what Cyrus said. He only mentioned it to me because he wanted to make it clear to me that he wouldn’t tolerate that crap from me or anyone else he hired for this position in the future.”

  “The former manager’s name?”

  “Joe Storm.”

  David and Tammy exchanged looks. Why did Joe’s name keep coming up in the conversation?

  “Thanks,” David said. “We’ll ask around.”

  As soon as they were far enough away from the manager’s trailer, David called Martin. “The manager claims he doesn’t know anything about a stolen jaguar. He’s only been working here a month. Can you have one of our people check and see if there were any police reports showing the owner had reported a stolen jaguar?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “We’re going to see if we can find anyone on staff who was here last year and ask around. But also, new news. Joe Storm was acting manager, probably between the time he lost his JAG job and got hired as the bouncer for the shifter club.”

  “Why was he fired from that job?”

  “He was playing Casanova.”

  “Typical. I’ll let you know what I learn about the police report. Out here.”

  The sweet smell of cotton candy and cinnamon-scented churros filled David’s nostrils. An elephant trumpeted in the background; people were laughing, talking, and shouting; and carnival music playing overhead as he noticed Tammy speaking to a woman in leotards and a tutu who looked like she might be part of the permanent staff with the circus. He hurried to join her.

  “Yeah, Joe was cute. But nothing with him was permanent. He was with one woman and then another. He had a real reputation. I don’t think he was doing his job much, so he got fired.” She motioned to a guy in tights. “That’s one of our aerial acrobats. He had a run-in with Joe.”

  “Yeah, what’s up?” the guy asked, joining them.

  “They want to know about Joe Storm.”

  “I was dating the tightrope walker and aerialist, Mindy, and he started hitting on her. It didn’t matter to him if some other guy was seeing the lady. He didn’t bother the married ones, though. But he sure pissed off some of the guys.”

  “Do either of you know anything about a jaguar in one of the shows?” Tammy asked.

  “I don’t know anything about them. I mean, yeah, I’ve seen the elephants and the dog lady with her prancing mutts. Got an allergy to cats, so I stay away from them,” the guy said.

  The girl shrugged. “The animals smell. On a hot day, they make my eyes water. I don’t go anywhere near their cages. My show is first, so I’m gone before the animals make a mess of things. Sure the clowns run around scooping up the poop, but still…” She shuddered dramatically.

  “Thanks,” Tammy said, sounding exasperated.

  She and David waved down another woman, who smiled at them. “You want my autograph?”

  “Uh, well, yeah, sure. What do you do at the circus?” Tammy a
sked, fishing the circus brochure out of her pocket.

  “Trampoline and bars gymnast,” the girl said, signing her name across the front of the brochure.

  “How cool,” Tammy said, and David was thinking of Tammy being an aerialist on the cable in Belize, except she hadn’t had any safety line.

  “Actually we’re looking into a case of a missing jaguar and wondered if you knew Joe Storm?” Tammy asked.

  “Joe,” the girl said, suddenly all dreamy-eyed. “If he could’ve stuck with me, I would have settled down with him. Real sweet temperament. But he’s just not the settling-down type. I’ve got to run, but…” She cast an interested glance in David’s direction. “Did you need my autograph?” She smiled so sweetly that he suspected she would like to give him her telephone number, too.

  “Uh, yeah, sure.” He noted the annoyed look Tammy gave him. But what could he do? They had to keep up appearances.

  The girl signed his brochure.

  “What about the jaguar?” Tammy asked.

  “I don’t remember anything about a jaguar. They have tigers. Really got to go.” She smiled again at David, and it was a lot friendlier than the smile she gave Tammy. And she’d taken longer to sign his brochure than Tammy’s.

  Tammy yanked it out of his hand before he could read it. “With all my heart. Love, Zelda Younger,” Tammy said in a really sweetly annoyed way and then in a darker, “she-cat is pissed” tone of voice, “and she left a phone number.”

  “Maybe she gave it to me in case I wanted to call her to discuss Joe or the jaguar.”

  “Right.” Tammy tossed the two brochures in the trash.

  He chuckled.

  Tammy didn’t know what to think. Why was it that everywhere they went, Joe Storm was involved? And why couldn’t they confirm any sightings of the jaguar? She gave David another irritated look. “You didn’t have to smile so much at her. No wonder she gave you her phone number. I’m surprised she didn’t give you her address.”

  She wasn’t sure why David’s response was irritating her so much. Maybe all this talk of Joe was just riling her up.