The Anteater of Death (6 page)

He closed his eyes in ecstasy.

I stuck my finger through the mesh and scratched his white chest. “Yes, a sweet, sweet, sweet bird.”

“Boom-boom-boom
!” Double-wattled cassowary.

I gave his breast a final scratch. “You had me at ‘Hello,’ handsome.”

Followed by his anguished shrieks—White-crowned forktail—I hopped back in my cart and continued on my rounds.

***

Four hours later, tummies fed and offal shoveled, I was taking a break in the staff lounge when I saw the sheriff heading up the path. The other keepers grinned at me but I tried to ignore them.

“Thought I’d catch you here,” His warm smile made things worse.

Behind him, a keeper pretended to play a tiny violin. My former relationship with Joe Rejas had always been fodder for zoo gossip.

“Yep, this is where I am every day around this time, unless someone murders someone.”

The minute the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. The phrase was an old zookeeper’s joke, meant to describe the carnivorous behavior of some of our charges, but in light of Grayson’s death, it sounded in terrible taste.

“What is it you want, Sheriff?” I emphasized his title, thus alerting the eavesdroppers that this was no personal visit.

“We need to speak in private.”

I surrendered to the inevitable. “Let’s walk over to the ocelots. They sleep all day so they don’t collect much of a crowd.”

When we reached Raoul and Elena, they were sacked out under a greasewood bush in the corner of their habitat. I led Joe to a shady area, and we settled ourselves on a bench.

“My break ends in five minutes. After that, I need to give the orangutans some fresh palm fronds. They use them to make hats.”

He blinked. “Orangutans
sew
?”

“They drape the palm fronds over their heads to keep off the afternoon sun.”

Regaining his composure, he said, “Here’s what new information we have. The medical examiner says the victim probably died somewhere around midnight Monday night. I’ve tried to find out who else was missing from the funder at that time but no one seems to know. Or they’re claiming they don’t.”

He handed me a piece of paper. On it was a list of names that with only one or two exceptions, were people I knew.

“They’ll be more open with you, so I’d appreciate it if you’d find out who was where at what time. That includes zoo staffers who worked the party.”

I waved the long list at him. “You want me to talk to all these people?”

He nodded.

Not happy, I stuffed the list in my pocket. “I don’t feel right about this. Anyway, it’ll be next to impossible to find out who was where because at least half of them were wearing anteater costumes.”

When he began to laugh, Elena opened one yellow-green eye and hissed. Satisfied she’d frightened him, she went back to sleep.

Keeping an uneasy eye on the ocelot, he said, “I heard about those crazy costumes. Whose idea was that?”

“Zorah thinks it was Barry Fields’ but she’s wrong. Decisions like that are made by the Zoo Guild president, which is most often Jeanette. Because of her migraines, she didn’t run for election last time so Nancy Selby took over. And boy, did she run riot. When the zoo received three kangaroos last August, Nancy made everyone who worked the party wear kangaroo costumes. The keepers kept tripping over their tails and spilling drinks, so our liquor bill was enormous. When the zoo brought the maned wolves up from Bolivia in February, it looked like the days of costumes were over because there’s no such thing as a maned wolf costume. But Jeanette, who was feeling better at the time, was able to find some dog…”

“I’d better talk to her again,” he interrupted.

“No!” Jeanette had enough grief in her life right now without him breathing down her neck. “She was long gone from the party by the time Grayson was killed. Tell you what. After I walk Bonz this evening, I’m paying her a visit, so I’ll ask a few questions. As you pointed out, she’ll feel more relaxed with me. Not that I’m going to make a habit out of this sort of thing. I’d prefer you do your own detective work.”

His smug smile showed that I’d played right into his hands. “Report back to me tonight. You remember my home number?”

I hadn’t dialed it in fifteen years, but he was right. A woman never forgets her first love. Or his phone number.

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, unless you count the man in Monkey Mania who was bitten while trying to grab one of the squirrel monkeys by the tail, or the toddler who ducked under the rope at Down Under and was knocked over by a passing wallaby.

Before leaving for the day, I visited the anteater again and hand-fed her a crushed banana through the links of the holding pen fence.

“My poor girl’s lonely, isn’t she?” This was mere zookeeper blather, because in the wild, giant anteaters were solitary creatures, pairing up only at mating time.

Lucy seemed to appreciate my attentions and rumbled
mmm-mmm-mmm
at me while her blue tongue flicked in and out of her long snout as it carried banana mush to her toothless mouth. Once the banana disappeared she leaned her hairy side against the fence, so I stuck a couple of fingers through the mesh and scratched at her.

In order to keep an animal’s behavior as natural as possible, zookeepers are warned against establishing close personal relationships with their charges, but few obey the directive. Considering everything that had happened, I needed to remind Lucy that she did have at least one friend left, so I kept up my crooning while I dug my fingers more deeply into her coat.

She continued to respond. “
Mmm-mmm-mmm.”

“Yes, Lucy, I know you’re worried. But your Teddy is doing what she can to keep you right here in Gunn Landing.” I kept on scratching and talking until she grew bored and trundled off, snuffling along the holding pen floor for more grubs.

Or perhaps searching for another ant-covered corpse.

***

As soon as I arrived back at the
Merilee
and took care of my own animals, I showered and changed into civilian clothes. After grabbing the bouquet of white and pink wildflowers I’d picked from the side of the road on my way home from the zoo, I headed inland to Gunn Castle.

In contrast to William Randolph Hearst’s light-filled San Simeon a hundred miles to the south, the castle was gloomy and medieval, with six towers, a crenelated roof, and a row of archers’ windows. I’d never enjoyed my childhood visits here, but I had to admit that the dour architecture and the moldy smell of centuries-old stone walls was only partially the reason.

Quarrelsome as children, the Gunns had grown even more argumentative over the years, especially now that the Trust and its possible dissolution had driven yet another wedge among them.

The castle wasn’t a happy place but its setting was spectacular. The private lane leading up to the hilltop castle was lined with towering eucalyptus trees, some of them a hundred years old. Stretching for almost a thousand acres behind the castle was the famous vineyard with its undulating rows of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Syrah, and Grenache grapes.

As a child, I’d sometimes hitched a ride up there with older friends. While they visited the Gunns, I’d snuck out to the vineyard. Lying flat on my belly, I mooched along the rows, picking off ripe grapes and popping them into my mouth. On what turned out to be my final sortie, Aster Edwina herself caught me and, in the accepted custom of the day, tanned my bottom with a riding crop. When my abashed friends had delivered my sniveling self home to tell my sorry tale to my mother, I expected sympathy. To my disappointment, she merely told me to stay out of the Gunn vineyards. Years later, I discovered that as soon as she’d banished me to my room, she’d driven up to the castle and popped Aster Edwina in the nose with a roundhouse right.

To Aster Edwina’s credit, she hadn’t called the sheriff—Joe’s father—but ever since, relations between the two had been frosty.

Fortunately, the old woman never held her sore nose against me. When I arrived at the castle, the housekeeper led me past the immense drawing room where members of the family were having a suspiciously cheerful-sounding gathering, and into the castle’s mahogany-paneled library. Aster Edwina put down the book she had been reading—Machiavelli’s
The Prince
—and greeted me with a smile.

“How kind of you to visit, Teddy. My niece will be pleased.” She took the wildflowers and told the housekeeper to have one of the maids put them in water.

When we were alone, Aster Edwina touched my cheek with a spindly hand. “My dear, you must learn to wear a sunhat while working outdoors. You look positively scalded.”

Judging from the youthful portrait hanging over the mantle, she had never been beautiful, but with her upswept snowy hair and military-straight back, she exuded a dignity that made mere beauty seem irrelevant. Her eyes were the same dark blue as the ocean from which her shipping magnate father had made his fortune, her dark eyelashes lending them fathoms of depth. Even her wrinkles, accrued through eighty-plus years of industrious living, only added to her stately presence. Yet she had never married and I suspected why. An eagle of a woman, she’d probably terrified prospective suitors.

“Thank you for your advice on my complexion. I’ll remember it in the future.”

Her smile made her look ten years younger. “You were always such a polite child. I’m so glad you came back to us. Both Michael and San Francisco were wrong for you. I told your mother that at the time.”

“Oh, I, ah…” I didn’t want to go where I feared she would go.

“Caroline didn’t listen. Michael’s family had all that lovely money, and that sort of thing matters to people like her. I guess she didn’t know they were stingy, and wouldn’t give either of you a cent.”

Like my mother had done so many years ago, I was tempted to punch her one, but now she was too old to hit. Remembering Lucy and Carlos and all the other animals at the zoo, I clenched my teeth and took it.

Oblivious to my ire, she continued. “It’s hard for these old families to lose everything like Caroline’s did, so you must forgive her when she does things that seem incomprehensible to you. She’s trying to protect you from the pain she suffered growing up poor.”

“Caro’s family was never poor.” My visit was already turning into a debacle and I hadn’t yet seen Jeanette.

“The Pipers weren’t eating-out-of-trash-bins-poor, no, but very much so compared to their friends. Why do you think your mother pursued those silly beauty titles so fervently? To catch a rich husband, of course! Which she did, although that didn’t last, did it? After your father absconded with all that money and the government seized everything, she had to move in with her brother. I grieved for you, dear, truly I did. Your uncle’s quite the sot.”

I wondered why she couldn’t see the steam rising from my ears. “Uncle Bob’s dried out and we got our house back.”

“Only because after divorcing your father, Caroline immediately married that fool of a Mallory boy. I had an eye on him for poor Jeanette, but your mother beat me to it. No flies on Caroline! As soon as they returned from their honeymoon she talked him into buying the house and putting the title in her name. Your mother is something, child. You must be proud of her.”

Fearing that if Aster Edwina continued in this vein any longer there would be yet another murder in San Sebastian County, I derailed her trip down Memory Lane. “Ma’am, I’m not here to discuss my mother’s matrimonial adventures. I came to convey my condolences to Jeanette.”

She picked up the small silver bell on the long library table and rang it. One of the maids, whom I suspected of eavesdropping, promptly entered with my wildflowers in a stoneware vase. I guessed they didn’t rate one of the castle’s many Mings.

“Show Miss Bentley to Miss Jeanette’s room, Rose, then come back immediately. That fire’s going out.”

I looked over at the fireplace, noting that the blaze was already so high it threatened to set an entire shelf of leather-bound first editions on fire. I decided that Aster Edwina simply didn’t want the maid to overhear whatever the grief-ridden Jeanette might blurt out. Like tyrants everywhere, she preferred to do the blurting.

In testimony to old stone’s acoustic properties, I could hear sobs before we were halfway up the staircase to Jeanette’s suite. The castle had twenty-two bedrooms, but now that the anti-Trust Gunns had found other living arrangements, many went unoccupied. Jeanette and Grayson had used the general exodus as an excuse to move into the Reynolds Suite, so-named for the portrait of the Duchess of Marlborough by Sir Joshua Reynolds hanging on one wall. The Duchess was dressed in white but sported a pink sash, and it was this sash which had inspired Jeanette’s clumsy attempt at decorating.

This evening the Duchess looked sickly in the dim light, but not half as sickly as Jeanette, who lay slumped on an upholstered pink chaise by the fireplace. Her pink peignoir, the exact shade of the Duchess’ sash, also matched the silk hangings on the canopied bed. Even the ice pack Jeanette pressed to her head had been covered in the same pink silk. But the half-empty bottle of Junipero Dry Gin that stood open on the floor next to the chaise wasn’t pink. Since I could see no glass anywhere, I could only surmise that the new widow was drinking straight from the bottle.

Without opening her eyes, she said, “Rose, I told you. No visitors.” Her voice sounded hoarse.

“Miss Aster Edwina told me to bring Miss Bentley up, Ma’am.”

Jeanette opened her eyes. They were so red they appeared to be bleeding. “Teddy? Is that really you?”

I leaned over the chaise and took her hand. “Please accept my condolences. I brought you flowers but Aster Edwina kept them downstairs.” Behind me, I heard the door close softly as the maid left the room. I could only hope that she followed Aster Edwina’s orders and went straight back to the library.

Jeanette grasped my hand tighter. “My darling is gone!”

To relieve the pressure, I sank to my knees. “Yes, I know. And I’m so sorry.” With her husband’s lack of height and too-generous stomach, he hadn’t exactly resembled Prince Charming, but she had loved him and that was the only thing that counted. “Is there anything I can do for you?”