Derby Divas (Zoe Donovan Mystery) (11 page)

Ellie frowned. “Is it supposed to be this hard?”

“No, it’s supposed to be easy, but if you want my honest opinion, I think you’re making it hard. Zak and I should never have found each other. I didn’t even like him, and I certainly wasn’t trying to make things happen with him. They just did. I promised to help you and I will if you want me to, but I really think you should just let nature take its course.”

Ellie took a sip of her what by this point must be tepid coffee as she appeared to be considering my suggestion. I watched as a myriad of emotions crossed her face. I knew she was struggling with th
is whole thing, and while I wanted to understand, I was having a hard time getting to a point where I could empathize with her urgency.

“
Nature is slow,” Ellie decided. “I want a baby now.”

“See, that
’s exactly what I’m afraid of. You aren’t looking for a life partner but a man to have children with. I honestly feel like you’re setting yourself up for heartache.”

I
was sure Ellie knew I was right about this, but I didn’t think she wanted to acknowledge the fact that sometimes important things operated on their own timetables.

“So maybe I should just skip th
e man and get right to the baby, like I was going to do before you talked me into trying to find a man to have a baby with.”

“No
.” I sighed. “That is not what I’m saying at all. Have you considered a puppy?”

“A puppy?”

“Yeah. Having a puppy to practice being a mother with is actually a good idea. You miss spending time with Hannah and you’re trying to replace what you had with her, but having a baby will be hard. You won’t be able to come and go like you do now, and you certainly won’t be able to work the long hours that are required to get a new business off the ground. Please think about what I’m saying.”

“I don’t mind
hard, and a puppy is not a baby,” Ellie insisted. “By the way, where is your puppy?”

“Charlie is with Zak and Scooter. What I meant was that a puppy would be easier than a baby
, yet it would still provide companionship. Having a baby on your own isn’t going to be as easy as you think.”

“
Other people do it,” Ellie said.

“Sure, but most single parents really struggle.”

I could see that try as I might, I wasn’t getting through to a woman who had already made up her mind.

“
What about Jeremy? He’s raising Morgan on his own and he seems to be doing fine.”

Ellie had a point. Jeremy did seem to be doing fine
, but he had a lot of help from friends and neighbors.

“Do me a favor and talk to Jeremy about it.
Really
talk to him, and get him to tell you the good and the bad. If you still want to have a baby on your own after talking to him, I’ll help you.”

“Oh
, all right,” Ellie reluctantly agreed. “I don’t think he can say anything to change my mind, but if my talking to him will make you happy, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you
. I appreciate that. Now about that puppy . . .”

Ellie laughed. “Let me guess
: you have some little darling who needs a home and you’re trying to work your mojo on me so I’ll adopt him or her?”

“No, I don’t currently have a puppy I
’m trying to place, but a puppy would provide you with a friend to come home to.”

“I thought I was going to be coming home to you and Charlie. Did you forget that I’m moving in with you until I find a place?”

Actually, with everything that had been going on, I
had
temporarily forgotten.

“Of cou
rse I haven’t forgotten,” I assured her. “I’m very excited that you’re going to be staying with us. I just meant that you might want to adopt a puppy after you find a place.”

Ellie looked at me skeptically. We’d been friends too long for me to try to pull something over on her and we both knew it.

By the time I got to the Zoo
, it was after nine, and I had to leave by 10:45 to meet Ellie, so I needed to get focused if I was going to get anything done at all. The first round of the derby was that afternoon, so I doubted I’d be back once I left. As I pulled up to the log building that was designed to house both wild and domestic animals, I smiled. I smile every time I pull up to the large building that I love. There had been a few people in my life who hadn’t understood my total commitment to the animals with which we share the earth. I’m not sure why I decided to commit my life to rescuing and rehabilitating these wonderful creatures, but doing it gave me a feeling of contentment that I was certain nothing else could replace.

“Okay, fill me in,”
I instructed Jeremy the moment I walked in the door. He was feeding the baby raccoons that had been dropped off the previous weekend. “I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time this morning.”

“How about you fill me in first
?” he suggested as he used an eyedropper to complete his task. “I heard Pandora Parker isn’t dead after all.”

I quickly
explained what I knew to Jeremy, which wasn’t a lot at that point. “Hopefully, something will happened today to give us a little focus. Right now, there are just too many possibilities to make sense of the whole thing.”

“Like what?”
Jeremy wondered as he returned the baby raccoons to the cage closest to the office, which was where we’d decided to keep them. They really were cute little things, although I wondered what had become of their mother.

“Like whether the fact that Pandora was drugged and the fact that her car was tampered with are related.”
I began sorting the mail on my desk as we talked.

“Aren’t they?”
Jeremy asked as he returned to my office.

“
Not necessarily.” I tossed a flyer for commercial dog food into the trash. “I know it seems like they must be, but the more I think about it, the less certain I am that the two things are connected at all.”

“If they aren’t
, you have two bad guys,” Jeremy said. “Seems unlikely.”

“Maybe
, but the drugging and the car tampering aren’t the only strange things that had to occur for everything to play out the way it did.”

“
What do you mean?”

I sat down in my desk chair and faced Jeremy
, who had taken a seat in one of the folding chairs I’d placed along one wall for prospective animal parents to use while they filled out the paperwork I required.

“Someone drugged Pandora
and
someone tampered with her car. If Pandora was the target of the tampering, why drug her, thereby ensuring that she’d be too messed up to drive? If the intended victim of the tampering was Pepper, whoever did the tampering would have had to have had reason to believe she would take Pandora’s place in the race, but both Pandora and Boomer felt that her doing so was very out of character.”

Jeremy frowned as he appeared to consider the situation.

“Okay, I can see how things aren’t really lining up,” Jeremy decided. “Any suspects?”

“
Dezee’s actions seem suspicious in nature, although as of the last time I spoke to Boomer and Pandora, he’s still missing. No one can imagine where he got off to. He didn’t take his car or his things from his room, so they’re operating on the assumption that he didn’t just leave.”

“
It does seem like if he was guilty and wanted to get gone, he’d take his stuff with him,” Jeremy agreed. “I guess the whole thing
is
pretty murky.”

“
It really is. So back to my question: what has been going on around here?”

“
Winnie called,” Jeremy began. “She’s all settled into her new place but wanted to check on Bella. I told her she was very happy in her new home, but I think she wants you to call her.”

“I will an
d she is. Happy in her new home,” I clarified. “What else?”

“One of the bears we released last fall was found digging through one of the
Dumpsters in town. Fish and Game want to relocate her to another area, since she’s returned to the scene of the crime more than once, and they wanted to know if we could keep her until they can arrange a relocation. I told them yes, and she’s currently napping in the big-cat cage because we still have the Anderson fire cubs in the cub cage.”

“Sounds like you did exactly what I would have. Go on.”

“Tiffany and I have been stopping by the campground where they’re doing the cleanup of the contaminated groundwater. During our conversations with the crew working on the project, we’ve learned that they suspect the contamination came from a broken sewer line rather than deliberate dumping, as we originally suspected. The thing is, just cleaning up the water in the campground isn’t going to do any good in the long run unless they can find the leak, so we could be looking at a lengthy process. Salinger closed the campground, which caused quite a stir with the owner and the campers, but to be honest, the area is beginning to take on an unpleasant stench, so I’m betting the campers would have been making other arrangements anyway.”

“I’ll bet. It really is t
oo bad the whole thing had to happen during the summer. It’ll be hard for the campground owner to make up his losses if he doesn’t have the right insurance. I guess we should be looking for other sick animals. If the water is coming from the sewer and there’s a leak, we might find other locations where the sewer water and groundwater have mixed and risen to the surface.”

I hated to think about the wide
-range damage such a scenario could cause. The dead squirrels in the campground had been discovered quickly because the deaths had occurred in a highly populated area, but if there was contamination in a less-populated location, there could be a lot of victims before the problem was discovered.

“The guys from the public utility district
are going to work on tracking down the leak, but it would be best if we could find the source of the toxic chemicals.”

“The meth lab,” I concluded.

“Exactly. Salinger is pretty occupied with this murder case, so I’m thinking the meth lab is going to take a backseat.”

Jeremy wasn’t wrong.

“You remember my friend Spike?”

“Yeah
.” I nodded. Spike was a member of the metal band Jeremy had belonged to before his daughter was born.

“Well
, he used to dabble in certain forms of illegal stimulants.”

Knowing what I knew about Spike
, I wasn’t surprised.

“He
told me that there’s a guy in the area who’s known for producing a significant quantity of the stuff. He has some kind of degree in chemistry and when he couldn’t find a decent job, he decided to become an entrepreneur.”

“Entrepreneur?”

“The term fits,” Jeremy insisted.

“Yeah
, I guess it does. Go on. I’m assuming you’re pulling up to a point?”

“No one knows where this guy gets his product
, but Spike thinks he has a lab in one of the wilderness cabins near Grainger’s Peak.”

“The wilderness cabins aren’t hooked up to the sewer system
, so a lab in one of the cabins wouldn’t be causing the problem we’re having.”

“True
,” Jeremy said, “but Spike says the guy is a real environmentalist.”

I frowned. A drug dealer with an environmental conscious?

“Anyway, Spike’s theory is that he’s producing the stuff in one of the cabins and then disposing of the waste in the sewer.”

“Have you told Salinger?”

“Not yet. Spike didn’t want me to reveal how he knows about this particular lab. I was thinking I might take a hike out there to see what I can see. If I find a cabin that I suspect may contain the lab, I’ll let Salinger know.”

“No way,” I insisted. “Snooping around looking for a meth lab is dangerous. I’m going to tell Salinger about the cabin theory and let him look into it. I won’t mention either you or Spike.”

“Okay,” Jeremy agreed somewhat reluctantly.

“You have Morgan to think about. She needs you
, so don’t be a hero.”

“I said I’d let you handle it.”

“Good. Hopefully, Salinger will look into it right away. In the meantime, if other animals start turning up dead, let me know.”

“I will.
”

“And if Spike is involved with this chemist in any way
, you might tell him to keep a low profile.”

“Spike is clean now
, but I’ll give him a heads-up. By the way, I heard your mom and dad are getting married.”

“They are
, but how did you know?”

“Your dad called me. He said you suggested I provide the music
, and he wanted to be sure I could play something other than metal.”

“I’m sorry
. I was supposed to talk to you about it, but with everything that’s happened . . .”