The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (12 page)

“Easy, easy. One thing at a time. I’ve been going back and forth with the high school headmaster about whether you ought to be promoted to be a freshman. It’s time to get your granddad involved there. Then you’ll be up with your friends, and they can shield you.”

“But it’s my friends who found out! And Gram and Granddad don’t
know
! I mean, they
know
, but they don’t
know
know . . .”

“And we don’t have to tell them. I’m going to tell Stan the same thing I’ve been telling the headmaster for the last two weeks. You’re smart; you’ll catch up; we’ll get you more tutoring if you need it; and if your friends are good ones, it won’t matter what they know. How did Emily act when you talked to her?”

Natasha gulped. “Worried,” she finally admitted.

“Not judgmental? Even a little?”

She shook her head.

“See? I’ve met a couple of your friends. They’ll stick with you. You need to be with them where you’ll feel safe at school. It will give Stan something he can do for you, honey.”

“Yeah, okay, but I’ll probably be expelled for violating the moral code once this gets around.” She exploded into another crying fit.

“I wouldn’t put it past them, but I’ll leave it to Stan.” I patted her back. “How many copies of this thing do you think there are?”

“I don’t know. At least two. Layla had to have copied it.”

“I need to talk to her mother, and to Ryan or Eric’s . . . both, I suppose. What about Christina?”

“You
can’t.
Then I’ll never live it down.”

“Tasha, it sounds like Layla is in enough hot water already. If I offer her mother the chance to keep from having charges added, don’t you think she’d listen? And if Ryan and Eric’s parents understand what their sons are facing—if you want to talk about who is in violation of the school’s moral code, I think you should start there—I’d have to imagine they’d cooperate. I assume they go to school with you, don’t they? What about Christina, honey? Is she in on this or not?”

“Emily says Christina was in another room. She was pissed when she found out. What good could it do? How could it change anything? It’s already out there, Noel!”

“It’s out there, but on a limited scale. Possibly it will turn up over the course of the trial anyway. Possibly Trudy and Darnell already have a copy and haven’t asked you about it. We won’t bring it up with them until they ask. And it makes a difference because I’m going to tell Layla and those boys if every copy they know of isn’t in my hands by tomorrow afternoon, all three of them will be charged as part of a federal investigation. Believe me, it will carry some weight.”

“You’d . . . you’d blackmail them for me?”

“Absolutely, honey.” I tried not to think about what I was agreeing to. Trudy and Darnell were too intense with Natasha. They had plenty of information in their investigation. She didn’t need to be pushed on any other points. “We’ll get this taken care of, and things will be fine. Trust me, okay? I’m right, and I’m telling you the truth.”

Dear Nora:

I tried what you suggested. I got a dog. But it won’t chase the cat, and now they’re both dropping dung in my yard. Now what?

Pooped

Dear Pooped
,

In that case, stay inside lest you become the next member of the family who needs to cop a squat in the great outdoors.

Nora

It was midday before I got to the primate center the next day. Lance had snagged a ride with one of our volunteers so I could have the truck. I had to first find Natasha’s high school headmaster at home on a Saturday, then finagle him into a helpless position sure to make Stan proud when he finished the job by phone later in the afternoon. Then I needed to negotiate with Eric and Ryan’s parents and meet them at their homes to soundly humiliate their sons and get back the offending material. Against my own better judgment, I followed this up by taking Natasha along with me to meet Layla’s mother.

It turned out to be Layla’s Aunt Ivy who met us, along with Layla herself. “Do you have any idea how much
trouble
I’m in?” Layla demanded, her voice sounding nothing like a fourteen-year-old girl and everything like a thirty-year-old woman. I no longer had trouble believing this was the person I spoke with when William vanished. “And I was only trying to
help.
”

“Why did you pretend to be somebody else?” Natasha refused to come in until I tugged her arm. Ivy led us to an L-shaped couch.

Layla studied her shoes. “I didn’t figure you’d want to talk to me.”

“You’d have been right, but I’d have taken the call, idiot.”

“No name-calling,” I said to Natasha between gritted teeth.

She brushed me off with a wave. “Do you know how hard my granddad has worked to keep everybody from knowing about me and those films? It’s about the only thing holding me together. It’s . . .”

“Lucky you.” Ivy had her arm around Layla’s shoulders. “Layla never even showed in one, and she can’t get into that school because everyone knows about her mother.”

“Ohhh.” Understanding settled on Natasha’s face. “That’s . . . I’m so sorry.”

“Not all of our grandparents can own the whole county,” Layla added. “You know that’s why those girls hang out with you, don’t you? Because Stan Oeschle has more money than God.”

I was afraid this would unsettle Natasha, who had spent the morning running through a list of people who she couldn’t possibly face. But she said, after only a beat of silence, “Yeah? Then why weren’t they my friends last year when I was stuck in seventh grade? Everybody knew who my granddad was then, but they all thought I was some kind of stoner and stayed away from me.”

I wanted to steer the conversation back on track before the quarrel could get any worse, but Layla’s face suddenly reddened, and she jumped up. “You get everything you want because nobody knows the truth.”

“Do you want to know the truth?” Natasha was up too, right in Layla’s face.

“Easy, Tasha.” I stood up and took one of Natasha’s arms, but she shook me off.

“
My
mom’s dead. How’s that for truth? I take four kinds of anti-anxiety medication, and I have nightmares anyway. I can’t talk to anybody on the phone without making sure,
double-sure
, they’re who they say they are. I can’t go anyplace Lance and Noel don’t check out first because I’m so afraid of my great-aunt sending somebody after me. My cousin tried to
kill
me in June, Layla. Granddad nearly got killed trying to save me. And Aunt Gretchen poisoned my grandmother so bad she’s still having muscle problems. She may never get out of the nursing home. Still jealous?”

“Girls!” Ivy maneuvered between Natasha and Layla, and she shoved them in opposite directions. “Sit down. Both of you. You asked to come here for a reason, Natasha. Layla, would you
please
get her that disc so she can
leave
?”

Layla, who had thrown herself down onto a couch when ordered to sit, did not initially stand. “Yeah. Okay.” She finally slouched off toward her room.

When she had gone, her aunt turned to me. “Look Mrs. . . . Dr. Rue,” she said. I had been pulling the professor card all morning to get people’s attention. There are times when it pays to have a title in front of my name. “I know we aren’t in a position to ask any favors, but Layla is in a horrible spot right now because of what she did. She’s a good kid. We’ve been trying to shield her for the last five and a half years, and she’s gotten nothing but bullied. She doesn’t think through her actions all the time, and it . . .”

“If she’s so nice, where did she get a copy of that thing in the first place?” Natasha demanded.

“Your stupid cousin.” Layla tossed a CD case into Natasha’s lap. From the cover, I would have guessed it held useless health and exercise tips. It was generic green and showed a woman in a warm-up suit. The title
Physical Education 101
was printed across her middle. It was the kind of box liable to hold a weight loss video. It had the look of something a college professor might assign.

“He gave it to me about a year ago when he figured out I lived here. He wanted me to put it around then, but I wouldn’t do it. But I kept it because . . . I don’t know . . . I guess I wanted ammunition if you ever did something to me.” Layla flopped back on the couch, her passion deflated.

“Why would
I
do something to
you
?”

Layla flipped her hair and rolled her eyes. “As if you didn’t know.”

“I
don’t
know,” said Natasha. “Obviously.”

“Your mom’s dead,” Layla taunted. “Why not live with your dad? Why not go to the—”

“This conversation is pointless.” I interrupted them before their argument could devolve into violence. “Tasha, we have what we came for, and Layla’s aunt has given us her word nothing like it will ever come out of this house again. We need to—”

“Wait. Please, sit down.” Ivy beckoned to the couch again. She was perched on the edge of an armchair. Layla started to say something. “Layla, hush a minute, child.” She turned, not to me, as I had expected, but to Natasha. “We aren’t in a position to ask you favors,” she repeated. “And Layla’s attitude probably doesn’t make you want to, but I think it would help us out an awful lot if you would tell those federal agents Layla didn’t mean any harm. She didn’t, you know . . . not with the phone call, anyway. She’s . . .”

“Yeah,” Natasha interrupted. “I can. For what good it will do. Mostly, she ought to tell them everything she knows about everyone she
knew
when we were kids. It’s probably why they’re pressuring her anyway.” She stopped talking to Ivy and looked directly at Layla. “I left your name out of my list for a
reason
when they were asking me what other victims I knew. I figured you didn’t want to be having to explain your whole life to a bunch of people you’d never met. And for your information, I don’t even know who my dad
is.
”

Layla seemed ready to speak, but Ivy was glaring daggers, and the girl kept silent.

We rode out in moody silence, the disc from Layla and the one ultimately recovered from Eric’s dresser tucked in my glove box. On my way to the center, I settled Natasha in with Emily and Christina (who was horrified the whole thing had happened at
her
sixteenth birthday party) to figure out what kind of damage control they could do as a group.

It was eleven o’clock before I got to Midwest Primates, and I opted for the back gate rather than the front. I hadn’t been down to see our resident orangutan, Chuck, in what felt like ages, and, since he was directly responsible for saving Natasha’s life when Gary tried to kill her, he was on my mind this morning.

“Morning, Ms. Noel!” Drew Carmichael’s brother Ace was the volunteer who worked most closely with Chuck. He was, in fact, the man who had dumped the orangutan on our doorstep back in June in deplorable health. Although he had a poor relationship with his brother and a deep suspicion of officers of the law in general, Lance and I liked him.

Frankly, Chuck needed Ace. He had rescued the animal from the same mismanaged Michigan zoo whose enclosures we bought at auction. The zoo had been closed when two disaffected zoo employees released all of the animals into the wild, where Michigan and Ohio police had killed most of them to protect human populations. Ace thought his options were to hide the big orangutans or place them in mortal danger. He had meant well by Chuck and that zoo’s other orangutan, Lucy, but he had lacked both the resources to care for the animals and the common sense to hand them over to those who could help until it was almost too late.

Now, he spent at least part of every day with Chuck. Lucy, who had become pregnant in Ace’s care, was still in the Ohio Zoo with our friend Christian Baker. She was hand-raised herself, and had no idea how to parent, but she watched her infant with a surrogate each day and allowed her keepers to pump milk for its bottles through the enclosure’s mesh. Christian had hopes of reuniting mother and child, though those hopes waned every day Lucy showed no interest in the baby.

For his part, Chuck was thriving in our care, though I worried about loneliness. Orangutans don’t typically live in large groups in the wild, but they don’t eschew all contact with others of their species, either. Still, Chuck loved Ace and associated the keeper with forbidden treats and good music. He was allowing Ace to slowly cut off the fecally encrusted dreadlocks hanging over his entire lower half.

I tucked my keys into my pocket. “How’s everything in this part of the world?” Because Art had added the orangutan enclosure as a surprise wedding gift to Lance and me (one that we had promptly donated to the sanctuary, as I’m sure Art intended us to do), it was separated from the rest of the enclosures by a large swath of forest. There was an unoccupied mall in the adjoining site. Stan had gifted it to Art, who had given it to us along with the orangutan enclosure. We had no idea what to do with it.

“It’s all good down here.
Now.
” To my surprise, it was Lance who answered.

“Hey, thought you were up at main,” I told him.

“I came down to get some stuff done and wait for Rick.”

When Art added the orangutan enclosure, he also put in a much-needed administration building. Lance and I maintained an office in the barn, but we had shifted most of our actual paperwork to this part of the sanctuary. “Why are you waiting for Rick? What do you mean, anyway, that everything is okay down here
now
? Was it less than okay before? Is everything not okay someplace else?”

“Noel, the monkeys were out again this morning.”

“What? Why didn’t you call me?”

“You had enough on your plate.” Lance’s right hand had worked its way up to the top of his scalp, where it was tracing whorls in a bald spot I knew well. His left hand drummed on the handheld radio clipped to his belt. He looked like nothing so much as a giant ape himself. I wanted to kiss him.

I focused instead on what he had said. “What do you mean the monkeys were out? The rhesus macaques?”