Take the Monkey and Run (3 page)

I didn't see anything else of interest in the small space and had decided to move on to the bathroom when a soft
meow
sounded from a few feet away.

Coco, moving as only cats can, leapt from the loft to land on the back of the sofa, then hopped down and walked toward me.

I opened my thoughts to the cat and knew an instant later what she wanted.

Dinner?

Though I could tell she wasn't very hungry, I obliged. Finding her food in a cabinet, I filled her bowl and knelt to give her a pet.

I ran my hand down her back and smiled. It was as if I'd kick-started a motorcycle, the purrs were so loud.

“Hey, Coco,” I murmured, figuring I'd go ahead and chat with her now. She was calm and only mildly distracted with eating.

I hadn't been lying when I'd told Anya it can be tough to get specific information from an animal. I can't just access their mind in a way that lets me scroll through their memories like you can do with photos on your phone. Something has to trigger it. Finding the trigger is the hard part.

As I watched the cat eat, I was hit with a flash of inspiration and decided to try something I hadn't done before.

Clearing my thoughts with a couple of slow breaths, I pressed into the cat's mind.

Coco was munching away happily. I used the contented feeling of a full belly as a guide. I thought of warmth and safety and tried to conjure up the idea of family. Thinking of my own mother's hugs helped.

Suddenly, I felt like I was in a pile of purring fur blankets and realized Coco was remembering her littermates.

Who else is there?
I asked.

Mamere
, the cat answered.

I was going to need more than that.

Can you show me?

She did, though it wasn't the most detailed or helpful series of images.

I saw a pair of worn bedroom slippers. Bunny slippers,
actually. A section of wrought-iron fence. Tall, bright green blades of grass.

I could hear the buzz of an insect and the muted sound of a woman's voice.

I started to push for more but Coco's mind had jumped to Veronica. I saw the young woman smiling down at the cat.

“She's beautiful, Mamere,”
Veronica said in the vision.

Suddenly, there was another abrupt shift. Coco's thoughts leapt out of the memory and landed in the present. I blinked the room back into focus and glanced around to see what had distracted her, but saw nothing obvious.

“What?” I asked, looking back at the cat.

She didn't answer. Ears twitching, Coco's attention was zeroed in on the far upper corner of Veronica's living room.

Cats will do that sometimes—stare at nothing. Almost as if they're seeing ghosts, and who knows, maybe in some cases they are, but usually their attention is drawn by something more tangible—a moth fluttering against a window or the scrabbling of a rodent in a crawl space. Difficult for human hearing to detect, but for a cat?

Easy.

Sometimes my ability gives me an advantage, even over cats. Coco knew something was in the tree outside—she just wasn't sure what it was. I knew exactly what was creeping closer to the apartment, and I can promise you one thing—it was no rodent.

“What the . . . ?”

Frowning, I stood and moved to the wall, like I'd suddenly developed X-ray vision and could see through it or something.

After a moment, I stepped back and looked through the high window at the branches of a tree.

A little face peered back at me.

A monkey.

A capuchin, if I know my monkeys—and I do.

“Where did you come from?”

I refocused my thoughts and gently reached out with my mental feelers to get a read on the animal.

Skittish. But not upset or frightened. There was something odd about him. Or, more accurately, his mind.

It seemed to be pulsing. The hum of his brain fluctuated like the rise and fall of an ocean wave.

Interesting.

I wondered how long the little guy had been hanging around—pun intended.

More important, I wondered if he'd seen anything of interest regarding Veronica. I pulled an image of the woman to the front of my mind and presented it to the monkey.

The oddest thing happened. The mental picture of Veronica I'd shown the monkey flickered and froze. Then everything went blank. Another image flashed in my mind, too quickly to make out what it was.

It flickered and stabilized, but I still couldn't make it out. After a second, I realized why. The scene was polarized—like a 35 mm film negative.

The reversed colors made it hard to make sense of what I was seeing. I could make out two people, one male, one female.

Then, as abruptly as it had changed before, the colors went back to normal.

I pulled in a sharp, surprised breath. Because not only did I recognize Veronica, but I also knew the man. Shocked, I tried to absorb what the monkey had shown me.

Veronica being grabbed from behind by a tall, powerfully built man. I might not have recognized his bearded face had I not seen it less than an hour before.

Logan.

“Logan.” I growled the name, not sure if I was more angry with him for jerking me around or myself for trusting him.

My sudden spike of temper startled the monkey, and the scene disappeared in a flash of white light so bright I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut, which, of course, did no good.

The light was in my head. There was no escaping it.

Hissing out a quiet curse, I turned when I heard the front door open.

“I was just finishing up,” I said, straightening.

“Are you all right?” Anya asked.

“Fine. Just a headache.” I sensed the monkey was moving away. I really needed to follow him. For one, it was too cold for a capuchin to be overnighting outside and I wanted to make sure he got home. For another, I wanted to dig more into what he'd seen.

When had Logan grabbed Veronica? What more had the monkey witnessed?

“I'm very sorry,” I said, trying not to sound as shaky as I felt. “But I don't have anything to tell you.”

“You mean you couldn't communicate with Coco?” Barry asked.

“Not in the way I needed to. I'm sorry, but Coco couldn't tell me where Veronica found her.”

“Maybe you could come back tomorrow and try again?” Anya asked.

“You're here through the weekend, after all,” Barry added.

The tone of his voice made it clear what he thought of my services.

Fine by me. I just wanted to get out of there.

The monkey was still moving through the tree. I had to go before he was too far away for me to follow.

“I could come back,” I said as I eased toward the door. “But I don't think I'm going to be much use to you. Coco might recognize where she came from if she went there, but getting that from her without more to go on is going to be very hard.”

“If we find more information, would you be willing to try again?” Anya asked.

I didn't want to agree, but a part of me felt guilty. Not because I wasn't offering any helpful information. I wasn't sold on the idea that Anya was really Veronica's sister. But she had paid for my flight and hotel.

“Let me think about it. If I can come up with another angle that might work I'll let you know.”

The gleam I'd noticed earlier in Barry's eyes turned into a cold glint.

“Let me give you a ride back to your hotel,” he offered.

“No thanks. I'll enjoy the streetcar ride.”

“Are you sure? It's not safe to wander—you could end up in the wrong neighborhood.”

“I can take care of myself.” I kept my tone light but knew I was projecting a pretty clear “back off” vibe.

I'm not the greatest martial artist—that's my sister's forte—but my get-lost-or-lose-an-appendage look has worked on both man and beast. In my experience, the only people who ignore the warning are too crazy to notice or too cocky to care.

I was pretty sure I knew where “Dr.” Barry fit.

The guy was nutty as squirrel poo.

I wasn't hanging around to see just how deep his crazy went. “I fed Coco, so you don't have to worry about that,” I said as I walked out onto the landing. “I'll call if I think of anything more.”

I rushed down the stairs as quickly as I could, but the monkey had me at a disadvantage.

Which is usually the case. At least if you're trying to catch a monkey with nothing but your wits and charm in an area full of huge trees.

Something had caused the monkey to speed up. In fact, he seemed almost frightened.

Two-hundred-year-old live oaks are like monkey superhighways. The little guy was out of sight before I managed to make it out of the gate.

The odd, pulsing hum of his mind began to fade. I ran faster. The thick soles of my boots clapped hard against the concrete. If I didn't pick up the pace, I'd lose him.

It wasn't so much that I couldn't keep up, more that we were traveling on different planes. The monkey zipped through the trees, unhampered by things like fences and buildings. He cut through backyards and zigzagged over houses, while I had to pause, determine a direction, run, change direction. Pause. Repeat.

The only hope I had to slow the mad monkey dash was to get close enough to form a mental connection. I was pretty sure I could calm him down if—

Honk!

A car screeched to a stop a few feet away from me.

I blinked at the gesticulating driver, stunned at my own stupidity.

Running after an animal was nothing new to me. But running out into traffic? I needed to get my head on straight.

I waved an apology at the driver, who had decided to lay on the horn again.

Of course, by the time I reached the sidewalk and gathered my wits enough to look for the monkey, he was long gone.

Crap.

No monkey and, thanks to the fact that I hadn't been paying attention, no clue where I was. At least I could remedy the latter problem.

I reached into my coat pocket for my phone and its trusty GPS, but came up empty. I searched the other pocket. Nothing.

Had my phone fallen out somehow during the chase? I patted the back of my jeans and, finding nothing, slid my hand into my right-hand coat pocket again, which was the last place I remembered putting the phone. My fingers brushed over a stiff piece of paper.

I felt my teeth clench in frustration. I knew what the piece of paper was before I pulled it out to look at it.

A card, blank except for a phone number printed on one side. I glared at the paper.

Logan.

Another perfect example of why I shouldn't have trusted him.

He was a pickpocket.

I remembered he'd promised to explain everything. But what good was a phone number if I didn't have a phone?

Flipping the card over, I found a time—seven p.m. that night—and an address written on the other side by hand.

Okay, so he'd slipped the card in my pocket to tell me where and when to meet—but why would he take my phone?

How was I going to figure out where I was?

“Calm down,” I muttered to myself. People had managed to survive without smartphones until very recently. I myself had only acquired my iPhone in the last few months.

How quickly man is hobbled by technology.

Squeezing my eyes closed for a moment, I pulled in a slow breath and tried to relax my shoulders as I let it out. I was just going to have to make do without a phone until I met up with Logan.

If
I met up with him. For all I knew he was setting me up to kidnap me, like he had Veronica.

Okay, like he
might have
kidnapped Veronica. I only saw him grab her. I didn't see what had happened next.

With a final calming breath, I pushed thoughts of Logan out of my head. I had one source of information on what had happened to Veronica—the monkey had seen something. To find out what, I had to find the monkey.

I looked around the street, but before I could decide on a direction, I noticed a flyer stapled to a light pole. On it was a black-and-white photograph of a capuchin monkey.

At first I thought it was an “if found” poster, similar to the ones you might see for a dog or cat, and thought I'd be able to contact the monkey's owner, but when I got close enough to read the text, I found it was more like a wanted poster.

It read:
H
AVE YOU SEEN THIS
MONKEY?
R
EPORT SIGHTI
NGS TO THE
A
UDUBON
Z
OO.

A phone number was listed in bold letters. I reflexively reached into my pocket to retrieve my phone, then cursed inwardly when my finger touched Logan's card.

The bottom of the flyer was fringed with tear-away tabs printed with the phone number. I peeled one off and put it in my pocket.

At least I could call later.

I wondered if the zoo were merely assisting with the efforts to catch the monkey, or if he had actually escaped from the park.

The question reminded me of something I'd seen on the streetcar's local-attractions map—the Audubon Zoo was in Uptown, probably not far from where I was. Maybe even within walking distance.

I looked around for some indication of where I should go and noticed a sign for a Laundromat across the street. The place was busy and I figured the patrons would know the neighborhood, so I jogged over to ask for directions.

As soon as I stepped inside, I stopped in my tracks. Now I understood why the place was so busy. There was a full bar to one side and a pool table and dartboard to go with the washing machines.

“Not used to seeing a bar in a Laundromat?” someone asked from my right.

I turned to see a woman with a basket of clothes wedged under one arm.

“Uh, no.”

“It's kind of a local thing.” She shrugged and took a sip from the bottle of beer she held in her other hand.

“You're from the neighborhood?” I asked.

“Sure am.”

“Could you tell me how far it is to the Audubon Zoo?”

“It's right up the road. Keep going that way.” She pointed with the bottle. “You'll run right into it.”

I thanked the woman and was happy to discover she was right. I made it to the zoo's entrance in less than fifteen minutes.

Following the map I'd been given at the front gate, I headed toward the monkey exhibits. Even in January, the zoo's landscaping was lush and green. Palm trees ringed a giant water fountain featuring life-sized elephants spraying water from their trunks.

It made me think of a Disney World ride I'd been on when I was a kid. All the animals were statues made to look lifelike. As you can imagine, it confused the heck out of me.

Back home in Ponte Vedra, where I shared a condo with my sister, I often walked on the beach to clear my head. I also took walks around the Jacksonville Zoo.

I didn't have time to indulge in a relaxing stroll today, though. I needed info on a monkey. Soon, the map brought me to what I was looking for.

Primates. A small troop of capuchin monkeys lounged in the last rays of the setting sun.

Looking around, I cast my senses around the area, but found no trace of the little escapee.

Focusing on the small troop of monkeys in front of me, I considered the best way to inquire about the capuchin I'd seen, but couldn't think of a way to phrase the question. I hadn't gotten a good enough look at the monkey back at Veronica's to use his image to ask if he'd escaped.

I settled for scanning their emotions and thoughts and looked for signs of distress, worry, or longing—anything that might indicate a member of their troop had gone missing—but found nothing more than a mild case of indigestion.

I can't say I was very surprised. There was something about the little monkey that didn't jibe with this group.

For one thing, the monkey I'd been following had a distinctly different feel to his mind. Which was interesting. I rarely encountered such a pronounced difference in the same species. It was something I'd have to ponder later. Right now the bigger question was, if he hadn't escaped from here, where had he come from?

With a sigh, I turned away from the capuchins and started to wander.

Believe it or not, being around a large number of different animals fills my mind with a gentle, white noise. It helps me relax and think. Which was exactly what I needed to do. I decided to try to put everything that had happened in perspective. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy much time to reflect because before I'd reached the next habitat, a man's angry voice sounded from the path to my right.

“As a representative of the Fleur-De-Lis Homeowners' Association, I demand an answer.”

“I just explained to you, sir,” a woman answered, sounding exasperated.

I eased around the corner to see an old man, vibrating with indignation. He reminded me so much of my crotchety neighbor, Mr. Cavanaugh, that I had to blink a few times to make sure it wasn't him. They shared the same pinched, wrinkled, liver-spotted face and perpetually affronted attitude.