The Anteater of Death (7 page)

“Sit with me and maybe Aster Edwina won’t come back in. She’s been…She’s been…” She trailed off and began to sob again.

Aster Edwina had probably been paying regular visits to her room, demanding that she buck up, pull herself together, keep a stiff upper lip, and all the rest of that insensitive claptrap. But my old friend had never been made of such stern material.

In many ways, she and Grayson reminded me of deep sea anglerfish. Upon finding a mate, the male gives his lady love a bite, attaching himself to her like a pilot fish to a shark. Unlike the pilot fish, the male anglerfish never lets go. Little by little he dissolves until his skin and internal organs fuse with the female’s and the male no longer exists as a separate entity. Technically a parasite, he has truly become one with his mate. After a while he dies, but the female, still connected to him, lives on.

As if Grayson was biologically attached to her, no one ever saw Jeanette without him. He took her shopping, he waited in the car while she visited friends, and at the castle dinners I had attended, he sat so close to her that their elbows touched.

“There’s nothing you or anyone can do. My life is over.” Her tone was dull.

Fearing Jeanette was at risk for suicide, I put my arms around her and began to list all the beauties remaining in the world: sunrises, sunsets, birds, otters, the Pacific lapping at Gunn Landing Beach. I babbled on until she pushed me away.

“You are every bit as crazy as Aster Edwina says you are. I don’t care anything about that stuff—
you
do.”

At least she was talking. “Tell me what you care about.”

“Grayson.”

“Besides him.”

She lowered the ice bag to her temple, then grabbed the gin bottle by the neck and took a long drink. Ever the polite hostess, she held it out toward me. “Want some?” When I shook my head, she took another slug and set it back down. “What do I like? I never really thought about it. Well, I like winter. There’s not as much ragweed then. Ragweed kicks up my migraines.”

“Winter, good. How about skiing? You like to ski.” Oops. Before they’d become so insular, she and Grayson used to ski St. Moritz every winter. “What else?”

“Horses?” She picked some lint from her pink peignoir. “Grayson and I rode together every morning until their dander started setting off my migraines.”

Noting that she had always been a bit plump, I tried something else. “How about Lobster Newburg? Beef Wellington? Fritos?”

“Lobster Newburg was Grayson’s favorite dish. He wasn’t a beef person. And he said Fritos had too much salt, that they weren’t good for me.”

It was hopeless. She referenced her husband at my every suggestion, so I decided to just go ahead and ask my questions. “The night of the fund-raiser, why didn’t Grayson come back to the castle with you?”

Her brain was so muddled with grief that she actually answered. “He said he needed to talk to the zoo director about something so I drove home alone. Difficult as that was. You know I always liked to have him with me.”

She was as dependent on Grayson as he was on her. More so, lately. “The conversation with Barry Fields couldn’t wait until the next morning?”

She screwed up her blotched face, which made her look plainer than ever. “He said it couldn’t wait. Something he’d heard about, the…what was it? Oh, that independent vet study. He’d just received a copy of the preliminary report.”

I failed to control my gasp. Fortunately, she was too far gone in her misery to notice.

After several high-profile animals, including two red pandas and three Asian elephants, had died at a high-profile zoo, some of the more radical animal rights groups had begun lobbying for all zoos to close down and return their animals to the wild. The fact that most zoo animals are born in captivity and could not fend for themselves did not sway them. The radicals believed that as soon as animals smelled fresh African tundra or pure Amazon River water, instinct would take over and they would revert to type.

More likely, the animals would starve to death.

But I didn’t judge the radicals harshly because sometimes they had a point. A necropsy proved that the red pandas died from rat poison which accidentally made its way into their food, and that the elephants, although elderly, probably would have lived longer if they’d been given larger quarters and a better exercise regimen.

In a bid to counteract the ensuing bad publicity, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association had asked several zoos to open themselves to inspection by a committee of independent veterinarians from the National Academy of Sciences. To our horror, the Gunn Zoo had been chosen as one of them.

For several weeks, it seemed no one could go anywhere in the zoo without tripping over a vet collecting feces or staring up some mandrill’s snout. Like my fellow keepers, I had breathed a sigh of relief when they finished their study and left, but now we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop: their report.

I tried to keep the concern out of my voice. “That’s interesting, especially since the visiting vets were so close-mouthed about their findings. God knows I could never get a peep out of any of them, and I certainly tried. Did Grayson tell you how he was able to snag a copy of the report before it was released?”

She shook her head. “For some reason he was very secretive lately, which upset me, because normally he and I told each other everything.” This propelled her into another bout of weeping.

Secretive? Old anglerfish Grayson, a man so attached to his wife you couldn’t tell where he left off and she began?

“Before he was mur…ah, died, did he ever mention any other meetings he might have had with Barry Fields? Or with Dr. Kate?”

Kate Long was the zoo veterinarian. If the zoo didn’t look good on the report, her neck would be on the chopping block, and since she had an invalid husband and three young children, I doubted she would mount that chopping block without a fight.

Jeanette shook her head again. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Another thing. Were you the person who decided to put the staff in anteater costumes?”

“We planned everything so long ago that it’s hard to remember. I ordered the costumes, I remember that, because getting so many anteater costumes was a real bitch, but I think Barry was the person who made the original suggestion. Or maybe it was…let’s see. We had this big planning session and everyone was talking at once, suggesting this and that. The costume thing had pretty much run its course after the kangaroo debacle, but no one listened to me. What difference does it make?”

I shrugged. “An anteater costume with its long nose and thick hair would make a good disguise for anyone who might be up to something.”

She began crying again, more softly this time. I kept kneeling there on the floor, holding her hand. When her tears diminished, she took another swig of gin. “I don’t understand. Why would anyone want to hurt him?”

“Weren’t you two part of the group that wanted to break up the Gunn Trust?”

She blinked at this seeming change of subject but answered anyway. “Of course. It’s the only possible position. Unless the Trust is broken, Grayson and I will remain under my great-aunt’s thumb.”
Will remain.
She spoke as if her husband were still alive. “As Great-grandpa Edwin’s last living child, Aster Edwina holds the controlling interest. I’m only fourth generation, and with those niggardly dividend checks I’ve been receiving, Grayson and I can’t afford to strike out on our own. Not if we want to have a decent standard of living, we can’t.”

Her face changed. “Oh. That’s right. He’s dead.” Through renewed sobs, she wailed, “What am I going to do without him?”

Thirty years old, married for ten years, and she had only recently decided to cut the Gunn apron strings. I’d always viewed her relationship with her husband as neurotic, but today I felt nothing but pity. Love can put a woman through hell, can’t it?

“It’s never easy after a loss, but you’ll begin a new life. Like I did after Michael left me.”

Her mouth dropped. “Oh, Teddy! You call what you have a
life
?”

***

When I arrived home at the
Merilee
, I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, poured myself a glass of Riesling and went out on the back deck to watch seagulls dive into sunset-colored water. Their cries accompanied the splashing of waves against the
Merilee
’s hull, and from further along the dock, I could hear a woman’s gentle laughter, a man answering in a low tone. Further out in the harbor an otter broke the surface.

Smiling in anticipation, I made a quick trip to my small galley refrigerator and took out a dock-fresh herring I’d picked up earlier at Fred’s Fish Market. I returned to the back deck, took a sip of my Riesling, and settled myself into the deck chair I’d liberated from the Gunn Landing town dump. DJ Bonz jumped up, curled next to me with his head on my belly and promptly went to sleep. Miss Priss followed, kneading a place for herself across my thighs. She slapped a quick paw at the herring, so I tapped her nose.

“No, greedy. It’s not for you.”

My muscles ached from the hard physical labor I’d put in, but it was a comforting ache, a tangible reminder of an honest day’s work. While the gulls swooped down to grab fish foolish enough to stay near the water’s surface, I breathed in the salty air, marveling at how well it went with Riesling and peanut butter.

I smiled, at ease with myself and the world. “This is the life, isn’t it, Priss?”

The cat stared at me through her one good eye. While she couldn’t answer, her smug look told me she agreed.

I was mulling over my great good fortune to be living here, when my cell phone rang. Annoyed, I took it out of my pocket and checked the caller ID screen. Joe.

Pittypat, went my heart.

“Is this a professional call or personal?” I asked him.

“Either. Or.” Behind him, I could hear the TV tuned to something with a laugh track. One of his children begged to be allowed to stay up for a few more minutes to finish the show. In an exasperated voice, he said, “Hold on,” and put the phone down.

For about the three-thousandth time I wondered what my life would have been like if I’d ignored my mother’s edict and run off with him, as we’d once planned to do. We would have our own family by now. I would never have met Michael.

Or lost my faith in love.

Once the background noise subsided, Joe returned to the phone. “Kids. They drive you crazy and still you love them. Let’s get business out of the way, first, shall we? What did you find out at the castle? When I went up there, they’d lawyered up, especially Aster Edwina. Jesus, what a piece of work she is.”

Fluffalooza barked on the other end of the line, and Bonz cocked his head. Seeing no nearby threat, he went back to sleep.

“Teddy?”

“You wouldn’t need a spy if you read the newspapers.”

“I subscribe to three papers, Ms. Smartypants, and read everything from the front page to the obits. Especially the obits. What’s your point? If you have one.”

“The Gunn Trust is the point. Grayson’s death may shift the Trust vote. I doubt if his wife will continue the fight without him.” Which was excellent news for the zoo.

A grunt. “Are you saying the Trust might stay intact now?”

“Draw your own conclusions. I’m going to hang up.”

“Not yet!”

The otter, who from the white tuft of fur on her side I identified as Maureen, had made it all the way to the dock and was swimming from boat to boat, nosing around for handouts. She’d reach the
Merilee
in seconds.

“Teddy, why wasn’t your mother at the fund-raiser?”

Maureen poked her nose up less than three feet from me. I tossed her a herring. “Sweets for the sweet.”

“Stop talking to whatever animal you’re talking to and answer.”

There’s nothing I hate more than having people order me around. “If you want to know why Caro wasn’t there, ask her yourself.”

“
There’s
a scary thought. As long as we’re on that subject, how many keepers missed the big do?”

“Ask Zorah Vega. She was supposed to keep track of everyone, but I do know there were supposed to be something like a dozen keepers present.”

“I’ll do that. In the meantime, how well do you know Kim Markowski?”

“Our education director?” Out of sheer surprise, I opened up. “We’re not close. She’s always looking for volunteers for some goofy new program she’s setting up so I try to stay out of her way. Why?”

“She wasn’t at the fund-raiser, either.”

I frowned. “She should have been, because that kind of thing is her job. She was scheduled to give a puppet show about the anteater.” Then I remembered what I should have remembered earlier. “Scratch that. Zorah told me Kim broke her ankle Sunday, so I’m sure it was too painful for her to get out and about yet. And with a cast, there’s no way she could have fit into an anteater suit.”

“How’d she break her ankle?”

He sounded so suspicious I laughed. “The way I heard it, she was in Carmel shopping and fell off a curb. You know what that town’s like, nothing but boutiques, hills, and fog. I imagine the curb was slippery and she wasn’t watching where she was going. Kim’s always been clumsy. Last winter she broke her wrist just banging into a door.”

A splash caught my attention. The otter wanted another herring. With a grunt, I eased my dog and cat off my lap and headed toward the galley, phone to ear. “Look, I’m pretty busy here. Furthermore, this whole idea of playing Spy-on-My-Friends is making me uncomfortable. So goodbye.”

I pressed OFF and selected another herring from the fridge.

The intrusions into my peaceful evening continued. As soon as I settled back into my chaise to watch the sunset, the cell rang again. This time it was my mother, her voice grim with determination.

“Teddy, I can’t get the idea of what that anteater did to Grayson out of my mind, and the dangerous turn your life has taken. Someone told me you’re actually feeding wolves, for heaven’s sake! You need to know that I’ve made an appointment to see the zoo director tomorrow and I’m going to tell him that if he wants the zoo to continue receiving my annual donation—which runs five figures, by the way—he’ll terminate your employment immediately.”