5 Big Bunny Bump Off (9 page)

I was sorry my dad had decided he wasn’t going to be able to act as Mom’s birthing coach but thrilled to have the opportunity to do so myself. We’d gotten a late start, though, and while Mom was due to deliver in less than two weeks, we still had several classes to complete. Anyssa had agreed to let us attend the Monday class as well as our regularly scheduled Wednesday one so we might be able to catch up and gain all the information we needed for a painless and stress-free birth. The Monday class was held in the morning, and the clientele for that session was quite a bit different from the evening one. For one thing, the women tended to be younger. A lot younger. I recognized several women I’d gone to high school with, including the little sister of one of my closest friends. I hugged her and congratulated her on her impending delivery, all the while wondering what sort of insanity would make a twenty-year-old honor student want to be a mother at such a young age.

“Do you know if Anyssa has
ever had any children?” Mom whispered to me as I massaged her belly and encouraged her to breathe.

“I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that she keeps talking about our bodies as temples and birth as a spiritual experience, but not once has she mentioned hemorrhoids, gas, or stretch marks.”

I laughed. “I guess she does have an idealized approach to the whole thing
, but I’ve heard good things from some of the women I know who have taken her class.”

“She talks about breathing slowly as our bod
ies release our offspring, but I seemed to remember quite a bit of screaming as the doctor had to pry you from your comfy napping place.”

“
Mine was a difficult birth?”

“
It was. The doctor joked about the fact that you were snug and cozy and didn’t seem to want to come out into the cold, hard world.”

“Maybe Harper won’t have the separation issues I did,” I teased.

“Here’s hoping,” Mom said as she turned onto her side as instructed.

“Did you take classes
before I was born?”

“No. The home for
rich unwed women my parents sent me to embraced a more traditional approach.”

“Tradition
al?”

“Drugs. Lots and lots of beautiful drugs.”

“Do you plan to use drugs with this birth?”

“I’m hoping not to
, hence the class.”

Mom stiffened.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Just a twinge.”

“Have you been having a lot of twinges?”

“A few
,” Mom admitted.

“Maybe Harper will come early.”

“She can’t come early; we still have four more classes.”

I giggled. “I don’t think she cares about classes.
Was I early?”

“Actually,” Mom rolled to
the other side, as instructed by the group leader, “you
were
early. Five days early, if I remember correctly.”

“If Harper comes five days early
, she’ll be born before Easter. Maybe we should get her an Easter basket just in case.”

“She’
d only be a day or two old. She won’t care about a basket,” Mom pointed out.

“Maybe not
, but it
will
be her first Easter. She really should have one.”

Mom sat up as the class
finished. “Harper is lucky to have a big sister who thinks about these things. We’re going to make a good team: you and me, and your dad.”

“I think so too.”
I hugged Mom. “How about we go and look at baskets now, before I take you home? Just in case.”

“I’d like that
.” Mom squeezed my hand. “That is, if I can figure out a way to get up off the floor.”

I stood up and helped Mom to her feet. “Is it hard for you to talk about my birth?” I
asked.

Mom slipped into the sweatshirt she’d worn over her tank top. “Sometimes. I
t was a very confusing time in my life. I loved and missed your father, but my parents had me convinced we couldn’t be happy. And as much as I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t ready to be a parent, when I held you in my arms after you were born, I knew I loved you and you’d always be a part of me. I even considered changing my mind and keeping you.”

“So why didn’t you?”

Mom shrugged. “I would have been a terrible mother. I
was
a terrible mother,” she reminded me. “I knew in my heart that your dad would do a better job than I ever could. Still, the day they came to take you from me was the hardest one of my life.”

“Dad would have let you be part of my life,” I pointed out.

“I know. But I was young, and not a strong woman. Being near you but not being able to be with you hurt too much, so I left. I’m pretty sure I’ve regretted my decision every day since then, but I figured I’d made my life and all I could do was make the best of what I’d made.”

“You won’t leave with Harper?” I voiced the concern that had been nagging at me since
I first found out my flighty mother was in Ashton Falls.

Mom took both
of my hands in hers and looked me directly in the eye. “I won’t leave with Harper.”

By the time we finished shopping it was getting late. I dropped Mom at the house she was now sharing with Dad and headed back to the Zoo to check on things. Jeremy was on the phone when I walked through the door, but he waved me over as I entered the building.

“No problem,” I heard him say. “Zoe or I will be there in less than fifteen minutes.”

“Be where in fifteen minutes?” I asked.

“Ther
e’s been an accident on the highway. One of our mama bears was hit by a car. She didn’t make it, but she left behind a cub in need of rescuing. The man who called said he climbed a tree and won’t come down.”

“Has
Fish and Game been called?”

“The man said they
’re on their way, but he wanted one of us to be there after what happened to that cub last fall.”

“I’m on my way.”

There’d been a similar situation last fall, and the guy from Fish and Game had handled things badly, and the baby had ended up dying. Residents in the area had been outraged, as they should be, and had begun calling us directly. The problem with that was that before we’re allowed to take custody of large wildlife, the animals must be transferred to us officially by the public agency. Most times the transfer is painless, but every now and then we get a Fish-and-Game employee who decides to make things difficult. Which was why I was relieved to see that the person waiting for me was someone I had worked with before, Colin Brady.

“I thought you were going to retire after the first of the year
,” I greeted him.

“I intended to
, but I had a bit of a financial setback,” Colin replied.

“
Well, I for one am glad you’re still around. Some of these new guys don’t know what they’re doing.”

“I hear yah.”

“He’s a little one,” I commented as a cub who couldn’t weigh more than ten pounds peered down at me through the tree branches.

“Yeah, it’s a
shame what happened to his mama.”

“It seems like those bear
-crossing signs we installed two years ago haven’t slowed folks down at all,” I commented.

“Everyone seems to be in a hurry nowadays,” Colin agreed. “Guy who hit the mama didn’t even stop
, despite the fact that the impact sent the car spinning into the adjoining lane. Luckily, a motorist coming from the other direction saw what happened and called it in.”

“You gonna tranquilize
him?” I asked as I looked up into the tree at the tiny little bear cub. It broke my heart that the little guy would have to begin his life in the pen at the Zoo rather than in the forest with his mom. Taking care of orphaned babies was a large part of what Jeremy and I did, but with each new arrival my heart ached just a tiny bit more.

“I kinda hate to tranquilize the little guy
while he’s still up in the tree, given his size. I’m afraid he’ll fall and be injured in the process, but he’s pretty skittish, so I don’t know that we have an option,” Colin said.

I looked at the body of the mama
bear, which had been pulled to the side of the road. The thought of the beautiful animal suffering such a senseless death brought tears to my eyes, but I realized she could be there for her cub one last time. “Why don’t we try luring him down?” I suggested.

“Luring him
?”

“Here’s my idea,
” I began.

Colin and I dr
agged mama’s body to the base of the tree, then hid out of sight. When the cub climbed down to join his mother, Colin tossed a net over him. Once he was trapped, we worked him into a crate, and I took him back to the Zoo while Colin dealt with the mama.

My heart was hea
vy as I drove toward town, but I knew that the little guy would be safe with us, and have the best chance for a normal life when he got a bit older. Jeremy and I took our guardianship of the wildlife entrusted to our care very seriously. We’d undergone hours of training and had access to the most comprehensive support network in the industry. Our goal was to care for the wildlife in such a way that they could be reintroduced into the wild as soon as possible.

“He all settled in?” I asked Jeremy two hours later.

“Snug as a cub in a rug,” Jeremy assured me.
“I thought I’d hang out here a while, just to make sure he does okay with his new situation, but you can go on home.”

“Thanks
. I’m sure Charlie is wondering where I’ve gotten off to.”

“I
was surprised to see he wasn’t with you when you came in.”

“I couldn’t take him to the birthing class
, and then Mom and I did some shopping. I really only intended to stop by for a minute to check on things and then head home. Hopefully, Zak got my message and went by to let him out. See you in the morning?”

“
Yeah, I’ll be in early. We’re supposed to take delivery of those coyote pups from the valley by eight o’clock.”

“I’ll try to come in early as well.”

Zak called as I was heading home and informed me that he had gotten my message and had taken Charlie with him to pick up takeout for dinner. He estimated that he’d be back to my place shortly after I arrived, but he was aware of my unpleasant task that afternoon and offered to keep things warm if I wanted to shower and change. I hate to admit that I cried in the shower. Okay, I sobbed. I always cry when one of our beautiful bears are so needlessly slaughtered. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but the truth of the matter is that the loss of our wildlife is something I’ll probably never get used to, no matter how long I do this job.

“So how did your lunch with Alice go?” I asked as I joined Zak in the kitchen
as he was pouring some wine.

“Fine
.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me on the top of my head. “Are you okay?”

“I will be.” Leave it to Zak to see through my attempt
to control my fragile emotions. “So about the investment scam . . . ?”

“Alice was
unable to give me a list of men and women who lost money due to Blakely’s bad advice, but, surprisingly, Megan answered the e-mail I sent yesterday.”

“
Any names pop?” I wondered.

“I went through the
list Megan sent and eliminated all but four; many of the investors were from out of the area.”

“Just because
some of the investors didn’t live around here doesn’t mean they didn’t do it,” I pointed out.

“True
, but we have to start somewhere, and the four people who live in town seemed the best place to start.”

“And
the four that were left?”

“Carson Worthington, Nick Benson, Phyllis King,
and Dirk Pendleton Junior.”

“Dirk? Odd he didn’t mention it.”

“What’s odd is that he knew he’d be on the list but gave us Megan’s contact information anyway,” Zak said.

“Carson Worthington is your friend
, isn’t he? The one who owns the house Dad and Mom are buying?”

“He is. I doubt he did it
, since he really is an all-around nice guy, but I suppose in all fairness we should keep him on the list until we can eliminate him.”

“
And I doubt Nick or Phyllis did it,” I pointed out. Nick is a retired doctor and Phyllis a retired teacher, and both are longtime residents of Aston Falls and members of the book club Pappy and I belong to.

“
None of the four stands out as a real suspect,” Zak agreed.

“So what now?”

“We should see if we can check out everyone’s alibi just to be safe. I’ll contact Carson and Dirk, if you want to talk to Nick and Phyllis.”