Big Game (28 page)

“Good work.” Dad gently lowered me to the ground.

We all then went to Mom's office, where Dad plugged the memory pack into Mom's computer and accessed the footage he'd shot the night before. It had a time stamp at the bottom, beginning at five p.m. The orangutans were eating dinner, big platters of fruits and vegetables.

Dad started fast-forwarding.

The orangutans on the screen began to move at superspeed, polishing off their food and preparing for bed. Orangutans in the wild often make large nests out of leaves and branches. The ones at FunJungle did the same thing with burlap bags. At seven p.m. a keeper came in to check on them, and by seven thirty the apes were all asleep.

They stayed that way until five a.m.

“Look!” Mom said.

Dad slowed the footage down to normal speed.

While all the other orangutans were still asleep, Pancake was on the move. He emerged from his burlap nest and looked around furtively, like a kid who was planning to raid the cookie jar. Then he shimmied up the bars to the top of the exhibit.

“Can you zoom closer on him?” Mom asked.

“Give me a sec.” Dad shifted the mouse around and zoomed in on Pancake. The lights were dim in the room, but not completely dark, simulating a moonlit night in Borneo. We could barely make out what Pancake was doing.

Close to the ceiling of the exhibit, the orangutan had hidden some objects atop one of the horizontal bars. He carefully picked them up and slid back down.

“My goodness,” Mom said. “He really is a smart one. The keepers probably only search the floor of the exhibit for things that shouldn't be in there.”

“They never look higher?” Dad asked.

“Would
you
have thought to look up there?” Mom replied.

Dad considered that a moment, then admitted, “No. I guess not.”

“What's he have there?” Kyle asked.

“Looks like a stick,” Mom said.

Sure enough, Pancake had a thin stick, about three feet long. It had most likely come from one of the trees in his exhibit, but he'd obviously taken great care to select it. It was about as straight and thin as a stick could be. Pancake was examining one end of it. There was a small glob stuck there. Pancake prodded it with a finger, then yanked it off, placed it in his mouth, and chewed on it for a bit.

“What's that?” I asked. “Gum?”

“I hope not,” Mom said. “The keepers certainly wouldn't let him have any. But it's always possible that some tourist let a piece fall into the exhibit. Or maybe they threw it in, thinking it would be funny if the orangs got it.”

“Or maybe it's tree sap,” Dad said.

“Could be,” Mom agreed.

Pancake took the stuff he was chewing from his mouth and tested it again. Whatever it was, it certainly appeared to be sticky. Pancake seemed pleased with its adhesiveness and put it back on the end of his stick once more.

“Look at him,” Mom said, impressed. “He's making a tool. For the longest time, humans thought we were the only animals intelligent enough to do something like this. It wasn't until women like Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas began observing great apes in the wild that anyone realized they could be as smart as we are.”

Pancake held up one more object that had been hidden at the top of the exhibit. It was about the size and shape of a playing card.

“That looks like a FunJungle ID card,” I said.

Mom peered closer at the screen. “It certainly does. How on earth did he get one of those?”

“Oh no,” Kyle said quietly.

We all turned to him. He seemed startled that he'd even spoken out loud and now grew embarrassed.

“Is that
yours
?” Mom demanded.

“Maybe,” Kyle said, so softly we could barely hear him. “I lost my ID card a few days ago. I figured I'd dropped it somewhere, but I
was
in with the orangutans right before it disappeared, so maybe Pancake swiped it from me.”

“I'll bet that's the case,” Mom said. “He's quite the little thief.”

On the screen, Pancake affixed the ID card to end of the stick with the gum. Then he held it out through the bars of the cage. With his arm fully extended, holding the stick straight, he could get the ID card in front of the electronic pad, six feet away.

The gate to the exhibit clicked open.

Pancake quickly snapped the ID card off the end of his stick, as he'd need it to get back into the cage, then took the stick back up to the top of the cage and hid it again. After that, he slipped out of the cage, shut the gate behind him, and tucked the ID card into his mouth.

“He's storing the card in his
mouth
?” I asked, surprised.

“Orangutans don't have pockets,” Mom replied. “The best thing they have is their mouths. Look how big his lips are. He could store a couple whole oranges in there.”

None of the other orangutans had woken as Pancake exited the exhibit. Now Pancake climbed the outside of the cage to get to the air-conditioning vent and went to work on the screws.

Dad zoomed in to watch him there. “Holy cow,” he said. “He's using his fingernail to unscrew them.”

“Doesn't that hurt?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” Mom said. “His fingernails are much thicker and tougher than ours are.”

“That is one smart ape,” Kyle stated.

“Okay,” Mom said. “We know how he got out. Now we have to find him.” She grabbed her crutches and started for the door.

The rest of us followed her. Kyle's coat was slung over the back of his desk chair. As he grabbed it, he knocked something off his desk. It tumbled to the floor with a crack. “Aw, nuts,” he muttered. “I am not having a good day.”

I came around the desk to see what the object was. It looked like an abstract sculpture about the size of a coffee mug. I couldn't tell what it was supposed to be, except that it was lime green and had now broken in half, leaving a lot of green dust on the floor.

Kyle bent to clean it up, but Mom said, “We can deal with that later. Right now, let's find Pancake.”

Kyle sadly stuck the two pieces of the green thing in his jacket pocket and followed us out the door.

“Pancake raided stores selling desserts before,” Mom said as we raced through the halls of Monkey Mountain. “So he's probably doing it again. I think the candy store and the ice cream shop are still closed for repairs. What's left?”

“There are two other ice cream shops,” Dad said. “One out by SafariLand and one by the Polar Pavilion.”

“There's another candy store near Carnivore Canyon,” I recalled. “And a bakery, too.”

“We'll cover a lot more ground if we split up,” Mom suggested. “I'll do the Polar Pavilion; Jack, take SafariLand. Kyle and Teddy, head toward Carnivore Canyon. If you find Pancake, do not try to capture him yourself. He's a wild animal. Call security and then call me.”

“Okay,” I agreed. We exited Monkey Mountain, and Mom and Dad veered off in different directions.

Kyle and I stayed together as we headed toward Carnivore Canyon. Although I was supposed to be thinking about Pancake, I couldn't get the object that had been on Kyle's desk out of my mind.

Something about it struck me as important, although I couldn't figure out what.

“What was that green thing you just broke?” I asked.

“The mold for Bababoonie's teeth.” Kyle pulled the pieces out of his pocket and showed them to me. “Doc made it last night before the operation.”

I examined it as we hurried through the park. The green mold looked somewhat like a small brick, nice and square on one side, while the other side showed the indentations of the baboon's teeth and even the ridges in the palate at the top of its mouth, as though the big monkey had bit into it. “What's it for?”

“To make the fake tooth for the one Doc had to replace. The tooth had to be sculpted out of porcelain—and it had to be exactly the size of the old tooth so it fit into Bababoonie's mouth. So Doc did exactly what a dentist for humans would do to make a new tooth. First he made this mold of Bababoonie's teeth.” Kyle pointed to the indentation of the baboon's canine tooth. It was much bigger than the others, indicating that the tooth was a spike nearly two inches long. “Then he heated the porcelain until it was liquid and poured it in here. When the porcelain hardened again, it looked exactly like the original tooth.”

“What's the mold made of?” I asked. “Clay?”

“It's actually something called dental alginate. It's some kind of plaster that hardens really quickly. This set in about five minutes, so Doc didn't have to wait too long to make the tooth. Pretty cool, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Doc didn't need it anymore, so he said I could keep it.” We arrived at Carnivore Canyon. The candy store was one way, the bakery the other. Kyle split off from me. “Let me know if you find Pancake!”

“Wait!” I called, holding up the mold. “Don't you want this?”

“Not anymore!” Kyle called back. “It's broken! Just chuck it!” He disappeared around a clump of landscaping.

I continued on toward the bakery, though my attention was riveted on the broken mold in my hands. The outside of it was smooth, but on the inside, where it had broken, it was rough and flaky. I used my thumbnail to scratch off a bit.

The feeling reminded me of something. . . .

There was a loud clatter ahead of me. It sounded like a dozen pots and pans being dropped on a hard floor. I looked up to find I was almost at the bakery.

And I wasn't alone there.

Exactly like at the candy store and the ice cream parlor, the front window had been smashed in. A large trash can lay on the floor inside.

With the window gone, it was easy to step right into the bakery. All the glass cases that had held cakes and other pastries had been broken into. Sometimes the glass had been punched out. Sometimes the doors had been ripped off. Pancake had gone to town on the baked goods. He'd apparently tried to taste everything. Cakes had craters bitten into them. Pies had handfuls scooped out of the middle. The floor was littered with half-eaten doughnuts, beheaded cupcakes, and gutted éclairs.

Behind the main counter, a swinging door led to the kitchen, from which the sounds of pots and pans being banged around continued. Pancake was still there.

I pulled out my phone, intending to call my mother.

Then I noticed something else on the floor. A chocolate cupcake with neon pink sprinkles. I picked it up.

The pink color triggered a memory. Suddenly, I realized what the mold of Bababoonie's teeth had reminded me of. I remembered feeling something like it before.

Instead of calling my mother, I ran a search on my phone for “pink dental alginate.”

A lot of information about it came up—along with hundreds of images. Not only did dental alginate come in pink, but that was apparently the most popular color. A bright bubblegum pink.

It was exactly the same color of the little bit of mud I'd found in Rhonda's paddock two days before. Only now I realized it wasn't mud at all.

Understanding descended on me. All the questions that had stumped me over the last few days now had answers. Everything suddenly made sense.

I knew who had been shooting at Rhonda.

Pancake was no longer a priority. There was plenty of cake left, so he probably wasn't going anywhere soon.

But I was going to have to move fast to stop the poacher.

I started to dial my phone.

A hand clamped on my arm.

Large Marge spun me around to face her. She had a knowing grin on her face and dangled a pair of handcuffs from her finger. “Looks like I caught you red-handed this time, Teddy,” she said. “You're under arrest.”

“I didn't do this,” I
told Marge.

“Sure you didn't,” she sneered. “You're just sitting here at the scene of the crime, surrounded by half-eaten food, with a piece of red-hot evidence in your hand.” She snatched the pink-sprinkled chocolate cupcake from me and held it in front of my nose. “This time I've got you and you're not getting away.”

“Marge,” I said. “I know who the rhino poacher is, but we're running out of time. If you let me go—”

“Shut your trap,” Marge interrupted. “I'm not falling for that hooey. I'm not as big an idiot as you think.” She clapped one of the handcuffs around my wrist.

“Marge, look around you!” I argued. “Do you really think I ate all this food by myself?”

“Maybe.”

Obviously, using logic wasn't going to work. So I went with plan B.

I stomped on Marge's toe as hard as I could.

I'd hoped that the sudden pain would make her release my arm. Instead, it only made her scream like a banshee right in my ear. And then she got mad.

“You little toad!” she snarled. “You're in for it now!” She tried to grab my other wrist and cuff it while I did my best to get away.