The Koala of Death (14 page)

At a table across the room sat Melanie Gideon, owner of the Captain’s Inn, the nautical-themed bed and breakfast that had won so many awards. Melanie was deep in discussion with Fred himself, probably trying to cadge his recipe for bouillabaisse.

When my eyes drifted back to Bronson, I waved.

As he always did when he was seen with someone famous, Bronson smiled and waved back.

Joe scowled. “That guy sure lives up there where the air is rare, doesn’t he?”

“No kidding. Last week he was in here with the Secretary of Defense; the week before that, Oprah. A month ago, it was Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt. At the same time! He takes them cruising on his yacht, the
Lady B Good
.”

Joe’s scowl grew deeper. “Don’t those people have their own boats?”

Did I detect a hint of jealousy? Excellent! “Just birds of a feather, flocking together,” I murmured, nuzzling his neck. “Anyway, you’re cuter than Brad and more masculine than Clint.”

With that, we returned to murmuring sweet nothings over our eggs ranchero, but as soon as the waitress took our plates away, our idyllic morning almost fell apart.

Joe waited until she’d disappeared behind the swinging door to the kitchen, then leaned over the table and said, “I’ll ask again. What were you doing at the jail last night?”

We hadn’t let the waitress take our coffee cups away, so I was able to stall for time by taking another sip of hazelnut decaf. “I told you, just visiting a friend.”

“Just ‘visiting’?” As he mimicked my voice, he made a face. “Teddy, I don’t want you mixed up in the Kate Nido case.”

Not liking being told what to do—I’d had enough of that from Caro over the years—I said, “I’m not ‘mixed up’ in anything, Joe. And I wasn’t the only zookeeper visiting poor old Bill, by the way. Robin Chase was there, too.”

“You understand that visitors’ conversations are videotaped?”

“Of course.”

“Then you know what your questions sounded like.”

Another sip of hazelnut decaf. I sloshed the liquid around in my mouth for a few seconds, then swallowed and took a deep breath. With as much time killed as possible, I answered, “I was curious, that’s all.”

“Since I never insult your intelligence, please don’t insult mine. Remember what happened last time you involved yourself in a murder investigation?”

“I found the
right
murderer is what happened.”

Joe sighed and ran his hand through his thick black hair. The disarray made him look sexier than ever. “I love the way you summarily dismiss three attempts on your life.”

“There were only two real attempts. The other one was faked.”

Hands through the hair again. “Have you ever heard of ‘magical thinking’? Just because you think someone’s innocent doesn’t mean he is. Mr. McQueen’s phone records indicate…Well, I can’t discuss those, Teddy, but believe me, he had M.O.M.”

The seeming non sequitur set me back. It had never occurred to me that after Joe’s father died so many years earlier, his mother would finally embark on a new love life, and with a much younger man. An Australian, at that. “You mean to tell me that Bill and your mother…?”

This scowl out-scowled all the previous ones. “Get your head out of the gutter, Teddy. M.O.M. is an acronym for means, opportunity, and method. Bill had them all.”

“A woman having a love life is ‘gutter’ material? If that’s so, what about you and me?” Now I was really mad.

“I didn’t mean…”

“Yes, you did.”

The waitress, a pretty blonde, interrupted our glaring contest by asking if we wanted a refill. I said no. Joe held out his cup. “To the brim.”

She smiled at him. Much too warmly, I thought. “For you, Sheriff, anything.”

My frosty stare didn’t scare her away, so holding out my own cup, I snapped, “I changed my mind. More for me, too.”

Unsmiling, she dribbled a few more drops in my cup, which didn’t even bring it to the halfway mark, then with a flick of her hips, sashayed away.

Joe’s voice roused me from my jealous funk. “No arguments, Teddy. Back away from the Nido investigation before you get hurt.”

Furious, I put my cup down and crossed my arms across my chest. “Let’s see. The zoo trusts me to take care of the wolves, the tigers, and even help out with the rhinos from time to time, but you don’t think I’m up to conversing with a human being.”

“Not the
murderus humanus
subspecies, I don’t, no.”

“Bill’s not a murderer,” I snapped. “A cad, but not a murderer.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Then why aren’t I smiling?”

“Teddy, if you don’t stop messing around in this case, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll…I’ll…” He stopped, baffled.

There’s nothing sweeter than a baffled cop, so I blew him a kiss. “I thought so. You’ll do nothing, because as long as I don’t break the law, there’s nothing you can do. And I don’t break the law, do I?” I decided to keep quiet about my evidence tampering on Kate’s boat.

Joe stared at me for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face. Then he leaned across the table, took my hand, and kissed it. “I’m doomed.”

I blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re impossible and I love you anyway.”

The next time the waitress came by, he demanded she fill my cup to the brim.

Earlier, after a much friendlier squabble, we’d decided to take his children to the zoo for the afternoon. At first he’d hung back, saying that for me, it would be too much like work, so why not take them to the Monterey Bay Aquarium instead. I’d stuck to my guns and by one o’clock, we were all munching cotton candy from the zoo’s Gumdrop Gorilla’s Candy Emporium. Eight-year-old Antonio, who looked just like his blue-eyed, black-haired father, handled his cloud of blue fluff well, but three-year-old Bridget, who bore a heart-rending resemblance to her deceased mother, got more cotton candy on her face than in her mouth.

I fared little better. To the children’s glee, my frizzy red hair kept springing forward and draping itself across my own blue goo, so much so that I gave up and tossed the remainder into a trash receptacle.

After the children had glutted themselves on empty calories and we’d wiped them down, we braved the crowd at Friendly Farm, where Antonio rode a docile pony around in a circle and Bridget fed a chicken. We had our pictures taken by a zoo photographer while we sat astride various mounts on the Endangered Species Carousel. Joe chose a dragon (very endangered); me, a snow leopard; Bridget, a roly-poly panda; and Antonio, the South China tiger, which he advised us, was already extinct in the wild.

“How did you know that?” I asked, shocked. Most adults couldn’t tell a South China tiger from a Sumatran, let alone an eight-year-old.

As we rode round and round to the music of the calliope, he answered, “Dad bought us a book about endan…endan…”

“Endangered,” Joe said softly.

“Endangered animals,” Antonio finished up.

I gave the boy a kiss on the cheek, then leaned over from my snow leopard and gave Joe a one-armed hug. “A gold star for you.”

Joe grinned. “If I’d known you’re react that way, I’d have fessed up earlier. Can I have another hug if I admit that last week I contributed twenty dollars to Bowling for Rhinos?”

“But did you?”

“Call me George Washington, because I cannot tell a lie.”

He got his extra hug.

“You’ll get better than that if you pledge a matching twenty during the marathon for the No-Kill Animal Shelter.”

A wink. “Oh, I might be able to arrange that.”

Now aware that our little group included a budding zoologist, I led them to the giant anteater’s enclosure. By the time we arrived, three-year-old Bridget had already fallen asleep in the wagon Joe had rented, but Antonio was delighted when Baby Boy Anteater climbed off Lucy’s back and scampered across the compound. When Lucy caught up with him, they both flopped down on their sides and scrabbled at each other with their feet in Lucy’s favorite game, “Let’s Box And I’ll Let You Win.”

“Cool,” Antonio said.

When the boy moved further along the fence to get a better look, I glanced down at sleeping Bridget. So peaceful, so innocent. So like her mother.

“Have any leads turned up yet on Sonia’s killer?” I asked Joe. Only three months after Bridget’s birth, Joe’s wife—an assistant prosecuting attorney—had been found shot to death in her car near the I-5 off ramp. Her killer had never been identified.

Joe shook his head. “Not a thing.”

“How are you…?”

“I’m handling it, Teddy. I…” His face changed. “Antonio’s coming back. Say something happy.”

I’d led enough school tours through the zoo to know what would sound happy to an eight-year-old boy, so I said, “Hey, Antonio, did you know that a giant anteater is the only animal in the Amazon rainforest who can bring down a jaguar? The anteater rises up on its hind legs, and when the jag attacks, the anteater rips its belly open with its four-inch talons and scatters jag guts all over the place.”

While Joe stared at me aghast, Antonio clapped his hands and said, “Waaaay cooooool!”

I had just started to tell him more fascinating facts about anteaters when Joe’s cell phone rang. After glancing at the caller ID, Joe stepped off the pathway and into the brush, but I could hear him using his official voice. “Yes, Deputy.” Silence for a moment, then, “Give me the details.” A longer silence, ending when he said, “Oh, hell. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes. For now, keep them in separate rooms.”

When he came back he apologized, then hustled us toward the zoo’s exit. “So much for my day off. Ordinarily I’d take you back to the
Merilee
, but there’s an emergency, and I need to meet two deputies at a crime scene. It’s a domestic turned ugly.”

“They’re calling you out on a
domestic
?”

“It’s…complicated.”

Knowing he wouldn’t say anything else, I let the matter drop.

As we walked along, he said, “I have to get the kids back home, but what about you? I can either deposit you at the jail—I know how much you like to hang around there—or you can visit Mom until I’m done, which might take up to an hour. Maybe two.”

Colleen and I had always gotten along well, so I almost agreed, but I knew what a cop’s life was like. What at first looked like a one-hour call might turn into eight, which would leave me stranded in San Sebastian, fifteen miles from the harbor and my own babies. Checking my watch, I saw it was two-fifteen.

“Slow down a sec,” I said, digging my cell out of my handbag. “Give me enough time to make a call.”

After my brief phone conversation, a bemused Joe left me sitting on a bench at the zoo’s entrance while he shepherded the kids across the parking lot. Feeling a bit bemused myself, I sat back and waited for Caro.

Fifteen minutes later, when I climbed into the silver Mercedes next to Mr. Trifle, the first thing Caro said was, “What’s wrong with your ear?”

I was getting tired of hearing about my ear. “It’s just a scratch.”

“But…”

“Drop it, Mother.”

“
Caro
.”

“Drop it,
Caro
.” But I smiled to take out the sting, because the only thing worse than an over-protective mother was a mother who wasn’t protective enough.

Borders established, we drove along comfortably enough for a while with Mr. Trifle sitting in my lap. When she’d called and told me about today’s appointment in San Sebastian, I’d had a good laugh. But now, with the Chihuahua dressed like my mother in a silk Chloe jacket and matching beret, I didn’t find it so funny. Something needed to be done about the poor dog, and quickly. But was taking him to see a dog psychic the solution?

As we entered the San Sebastian city limits, I broke the silence. “Caro, are you
sure
you didn’t know Kate Nido? Not even casually?”

She took her eyes off the road long enough to stare at me like I’d lost my mind.

“How many times do I have to tell you, I didn’t know the woman.”

“You’re sure?”

“Theodora, you’ve become such a nag.”

The idea that I might be turning into my mother silenced me, but I remained uneasy. I might not have known Kate all that well, but she had appeared to have a rigorously logical mind. She must have written
Tdy’s mom noz
, for a reason, but for now, the meaning of that Post-it note remained a mystery.

The small city of San Sebastian is crowned by San Sebastian Mission, which perches on a hill overlooking the business district. Founded in 1798 by Padre Bautista de Sosa, the Mission has withstood earthquakes, fires, locusts, and other natural disasters. Now it endured yet another invasion: tourists. As Caro maneuvered her silver Mercedes SL along Main Street, she had to contend with rentals from Enterprise and Avis dueling for parking spaces at the bottom of the hill. The narrow road leading up to the Mission had been closed to traffic two decades earlier.

“I hate tourists,” she grumped, as a teal-colored Chevy Cobalt cut her off.

“Our ancestors built the ships that made tourism possible. And our family rich.”

“Wealthy, Teddy.
Rich
is so vulgar.”

“No kidding.”

She shot me a look. “Are you insinuating that I’m…?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Mother.”

“
Caro
!” she barked.

“Whatever.”

As we drove along the street, I spotted a lavender storefront decorated with a mural that featured dogs and cats romping happily together. The sign on the door read,
SPEAKS-TO-SOULS, ANIMAL PSYCHIC.
The same words were emblazoned on a lavender cargo van parked just down the street.

“There’s a parking spot right in front of the store, Caro.”

“Place of business,” she muttered. “
Store
is so…”

“I know—vulgar. Better grab that spot before the black Accord does.”

After shooting another dirty look toward her insolent daughter, she successfully beat the Accord to the parking spot and angled the big Mercedes in. Before we exited the car, she straightened the beret on Mr. Trifle’s head, expertly avoiding his snapping teeth. At that moment, I decided that if Speaks-to-Souls couldn’t help him, I would kidnap the poor animal and find him a sane home before Caro lost a finger.