A Pocketful of Eyes (5 page)

She jumped when she saw the eye in his hand. It was around a size 4, she thought, yellowish green with a strange-shaped pupil, like an eye for a lizard. Adrian Featherstone frowned, slipping the eye into his pocket.

‘You’re one of the casuals who was working with Gus, yes?’ he asked.

‘I’m Bee. I’m just here over the summer to help with the Fauna exhibit.’

Featherstone nodded briskly. ‘Good. Obviously Gus will no longer be able to supervise you, and the Head Preparator is up to his waist in beached dead whale on the south coast.’ He made a disgusted face. ‘He won’t be back for at least a week, so the preparation work will now have to be overseen by me. However, I’m sure you’ll understand that I’ve plenty of other work on my plate, and won’t have time to hold your hand. I trust that Gus taught you enough to work independently.’

Bee nodded.

‘The exhibition plans are here.’ Featherstone indicated the red lever-arch folder that had always sat on Gus’s desk. ‘I’ll check on your progress when I can. If there are any problems you might be able to find me in my office; otherwise, my assistant will know where I am. And could you communicate all of this to your colleague, when he graces us with his presence?’

Bee nodded again, and Featherstone stood and left the room, an unpleasant odour of expensive aftershave and rotten apples lingering behind him.

Bee sat at her desk and picked up her watch from where she’d left it on Thursday night. She strapped it on her wrist, observing three things:

1. The clock on the wall seemed to have been fixed, as it was now showing the same time as her watch: 8:58 am.

2. Gus’s smartcard wasn’t on his desk, although Bee supposed anyone could have removed it the previous day.

3. Bee did not like Adrian Featherstone one bit.

At 9:22, Bee’s phone rang. It was her mother.

‘I just wanted to check on you,’ she said. ‘Back at work, after . . .’

‘I’m fine,’ said Bee, still wondering exactly what it was about Adrian Featherstone that made her skin crawl.

‘Good, because I’ve got something to tell you. Remember how I went to D&D on Friday night?’

‘Yep,’ said Bee, tracing her finger along the edge of the desk. Was it just the greasy hair and general grottiness of him? Or was there something else?

‘Well, the most incredible thing happened, and I wanted to tell you over the weekend, but I wanted to be sure.’

‘Really?’ Bee hadn’t really ever spoken to Featherstone before. She’d always dealt directly with Gus. He’d spoken a few times at staff meetings about the upcoming Flora and Fauna exhibition, but his monotonous English accent had made Bee zone out.

‘Gavin assumed corporeal form!’

‘What?’ Bee wondered how long Featherstone had worked at the museum. She remembered one of the tour guides mentioning he hadn’t lived in Australia long. And that he used to do something else. Not conservation.

‘Gavin! We were on this mission that involved hunting down a band of Black Warlocks. And one of them cast a spell that turned Gavin into a human!’

‘So Gavin’s not a Celestial Badger anymore?’ Gus hadn’t liked Featherstone either. He’d once referred to him as a ‘poncy weasel bastard’.

‘No, he’s a real live human who’s now joined our party. Except his name is Neal, not Gavin.’

In fact, Bee had never seen Featherstone in the taxidermy lab before. She couldn’t remember ever having seen Gus and Featherstone speak to each other. And Gus had refused to attend staff meetings.

‘Anyway,’ said her mother. ‘We kind of . . . hit it off. And he called me this morning to ask if I’d like to have dinner with him tonight, after I finish teaching.’

‘Great,’ said Bee.

‘So I’m afraid you’ll have to fend for yourself again. I’ll leave you some money for pizza.’

‘Okay,’ said Bee absently. ‘Wait, what? Gavin the Celestial Badger is taking you out to dinner?’

But Angela had already hung up.

By the time Toby arrived at 9:47 am, Bee had nearly finished her possum, and was sewing up the skin around the neck with tiny neat stitches the way Gus had shown her.

‘I have to talk to you,’ said Toby. He sat on his swivel-chair and rolled it across the floor until it bumped against Bee’s.

‘The Head Conservator is supervising us now,’ she told him.

‘Adrian Featherstone?’ asked Toby, frowning slightly.

‘Have you met him?’

‘Not properly, but I know who he is.’

Toby looked as though he was going to say something else, but didn’t.

‘We have to finish the taxidermy stuff ourselves,’ said Bee. ‘It shouldn’t be too hard, though – there’s only about another six animals to be done. Also, I think my mother is dating a badger.’

‘Bee,’ said Toby, slowly. ‘I have to tell you something, but you have to promise not to get mad.’

Bee put down her needle and thread. ‘What have you done?’

‘Wait, did you say your mother is dating a badger?’ said Toby. ‘Is that young-people slang for something weird and deviant?’

‘No,’ said Bee. ‘A real badger. Or a Celestial Badger, although to be honest I’m not quite sure what that means. But what did you do?’

‘Is that even legal?’

‘What did you
do
?’

‘I went into Akiko Kobayashi’s office, and I told her I needed to talk to someone about Gus.’ Toby looked proud. ‘I put on quite a performance, with real tears and everything. And when she got up to get me a glass of water, I stole this.’

He laid a manila folder on Bee’s desk. ‘It’s Gus’s human-resources file.’

‘You
promised
,’ Bee said, dismayed. ‘You
promised
you wouldn’t get involved!’

He held up a hand. ‘Remember,
you
promised not to get mad.’

‘I didn’t promise anything.’

Toby grinned. ‘Come on, you’re a little bit impressed, aren’t you? Aren’t you?’

She was, a little. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to know what’s inside?’

‘No.’

‘Really? Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. I don’t want to know.’

‘Come on,’ said Toby with a sly look. ‘I know your type. You wanted to be Nancy Drew when you were little, didn’t you?’

Bee said nothing.

‘Didn’t you?’

‘No,’ said Bee. ‘I hate Nancy Drew. She’s too perfect. She’s all prim and pretty and can cook and sew.
And
she can fly a plane and change a tyre and fix a flawed distributor.’

Toby raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s quite a list of achievements,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know what a distributor is. Let alone how to tell if one is flawed.’

‘I wanted to be Trixie Belden,’ admitted Bee.

‘Who?’

‘Another girl detective. She lived in upstate New York and had adventures with horses and missing diamonds. She had a club with her friends and she hated doing chores and she was bad at maths and she didn’t like her curly hair.’

Toby grinned. ‘Well, this is your chance to be Trixie Belden. Take on the case, Bee.’

Bee scowled at him and turned back to her possum. She didn’t want to be Trixie Belden. Trixie Belden was for little kids. If she were going to be any detective, she’d be Stephanie Plum from the Janet Evanovich books. Someone adult and sophisticated. Definitely not Trixie Belden.

She didn’t want to be a detective at all.

Really.

Bee counted silently to herself, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. When she got to forty, she opened her eyes and turned around. Toby was still there, his chair up against hers, the manila folder in his hand.

‘Fine,’ she said crossly. ‘Give it to me.’

He chuckled as he handed it over. Bee opened the folder. There were copies of Gus’s payslips, his contract, dated five months previously, and a photocopied CV. She examined the CV. It was very short – a single page listing one previous employer, Nathan Brothers Funerary Services. Bee turned the paper over, looking for something else. Surely Gus must have worked as a taxidermist before? At other museums?

‘What do you think?’ asked Toby.

Bee didn’t reply. She read the CV again.

‘Bee?’

‘I didn’t know his surname,’ she said. ‘We worked together for nearly five months and I didn’t know his surname.’

Toby didn’t say anything, just put a warm hand on Bee’s shoulder and squeezed.

‘There’s no address,’ said Bee. ‘Nowhere in this file is there an address. Just a mobile number.’

Toby took his hand off Bee’s shoulder and dug in his pocket for his phone. ‘Read it out,’ he said.

Bee did so, and Toby punched in the number and held the phone to his ear. He listened for a moment, then hung up and put it back in his pocket.

‘Generic voicemail.’

Bee leaned across her desk and switched on her PC. She hadn’t used it much since she’d been working at the museum – just occasionally to google something or look up pictures of animals to check the width of their cheeks or the angle of their hind legs. When she had logged in and her desktop had appeared, she opened Firefox and went to the online phone directory. There was no record of Nathan Brothers Funerary Services. Bee tried
G Whittaker
, and got thirty-two results in Victoria.

‘Wait,’ said Toby, looking over her shoulder. ‘You should search for A Whittaker. Surely Gus is short for Angus.’

‘We’ll try both,’ Bee said, tapping at the keyboard and pulling up a second list. She hit Print.

The printer whirred and hummed. Toby turned to Bee. ‘I did a good detectiving, huh?’ he said. ‘Stealing the file?’

‘Not bad,’ said Bee, grudgingly. ‘But you’re no Watson.’

‘Oh, come on! I
cried
in front of Kobayashi. Surely that makes me a
little
bit Watsony.’

Bee shot him a sidelong glance. ‘You know how I told you about Occam’s razor?’

Toby nodded.

‘It’s named after a medieval friar called William of Ockham. He went to Oxford University but never finished his degree, and people called him
Venerabilis Inceptor
. That’s what I’m calling you, until you earn your Watson stripes.’

‘Venerable Interceptor?’

‘Vener
abilis
In
cep
tor. It means Worthy Beginner.’

Toby laughed. ‘You and I should join some kind of random trivia club.’

Bee pulled the two lists from the printer tray. She kept the list of G Whittakers and passed the A Whittakers to Toby. ‘Call them tonight,’ she said. ‘We have to know more about Gus.’

Toby took the list with one hand, put the other on her knee and leaned in to look carefully at her, his eyes very blue behind his black-framed glasses. ‘Seriously? You want to do this?’

Bee took a deep breath. Toby seemed to feel very comfortable about putting his hands on her. Bee wanted to be aloof and brush his hand away, but found that she couldn’t quite manage it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I want to do this.’

She wasn’t sure if she was talking about investigating Gus’s death, or something else.

‘HELLO?’ SAID A WOMAN’S VOICE
on the other end of the phone.

‘Hi,’ said Bee. ‘This may sound like a strange question, but do you have an elderly relative called Gus?’

There was a pause. ‘Gus? No. I have a son called Gary. Who is this? What are you selling?’

‘Sorry to bother you,’ said Bee. ‘Thanks.’

She hung up and crossed the thirty-second name off the list. Her mobile pinged.

No luck. –Toby

Maybe Gus was from interstate? Maybe he didn’t have any family. Or maybe he had changed his name. Or used a fake one.

Bee heard footsteps on the porch and looked up, expecting to see her mother come in the front door. But she didn’t. There were voices outside, low voices, and the occasional laugh from Angela.

Bee wondered what a Celestial Badger looked like once it had taken on human form.

The talking stopped, and Bee couldn’t hear anything. She pulled a face. Was her mother
making out with the Badger
? What if she invited him in? Bee hurried into her bedroom, closing the door and climbing into bed without brushing her teeth.

She listened carefully as the front door opened and closed, but she didn’t hear any more voices, and only one set of footsteps walked into Angela’s bedroom. Bee breathed a sigh of relief.

Toby was late again on Tuesday morning. Bee had a lizard propped up on a series of blocks as she carefully inserted pins in its face to keep its eyes open and its mouth in the correct shape for freeze-drying. The lizard looked like an acupuncture patient.

Bee contemplated Gus’s empty desk. How could a man just disappear? It was as if he had never existed, and only her memory and a one-page CV were left.

Or were they?

Bee pushed her chair away from her desk and rolled over to Gus’s. His desk may have been cleared, but Bee couldn’t believe she hadn’t looked in his drawer. She pulled it open, her heart thumping.

The drawer contained the following:

• Two scalpels, sizes 3 and 4

• Six scalpel blades, sizes 10–22

• Scissors, both bull-nosed and fine-pointed

• Fine-pointed forceps

• Electrical-wire cutters

• A box containing various needles, curved and straight

• Dressmaking pins

• Assorted balls of string, cotton and fishing wire

• A yellow canvas tape measure

• Metal wire of varying thicknesses

• A white chinagraph pencil

• A small box of nails

• Bead glue

• A lump of paraffin wax

• A box of acrylic paints

• Three small paintbrushes, tied together with a rubber band.

Bee sighed. Nothing even remotely clue-like.

‘What exactly are you hoping to find in there?’

Bee jumped. Adrian Featherstone was standing in the doorway to the taxidermy lab, his eyes slitted in suspicion.

‘Scissors,’ said Bee, swallowing. ‘Mine are blunt.’

Adrian Featherstone didn’t reply, and Bee realised he must have already gone through Gus’s drawer before she’d seen him yesterday. But why? What had he been looking for? Had he found it? Did he think that Gus had been murdered as well?

Adrian peered at her face as if he were looking for something. ‘You didn’t notice anything . . . out of the ordinary, did you? Before Gus died?’

Bee shook her head. Actually, there were a number of things she had noticed that were out of the ordinary, but she wasn’t inclined to share them with Adrian Featherstone. He was the most suspicious thing she had encountered yet.

‘Gus was a good friend of mine,’ Adrian Featherstone said, taking a step towards Bee. ‘A very good friend. I simply don’t believe he would kill himself. So if there’s anything you noticed that you think would help shed light on his death . . .’

Bee’s eyes widened. ‘You think someone killed him?’

‘No, no,’ said Featherstone, looking suddenly uncomfortable. ‘No need to be so melodramatic. I just wish I could understand
why
he did it. Did he ever mention anyone to you? Any friends or family?’

‘He never mentioned
you
,’ said Bee blandly. ‘Shouldn’t you know about his friends and family? Given that he was such a
very good friend
?’

Adrian Featherstone looked as if he wanted to shake her. Something was going on here. Bee was about to press him further when Toby arrived, apologising loudly for his lateness. He grinned at Featherstone.

‘Hi Adrian,’ he said, affecting a matesy drawl. ‘It
is
Adrian, right? I’m Toby.’

Adrian Featherstone regarded him with cold eyes. ‘I’m off to a board meeting,’ he said to Bee. ‘If you have any questions, or if there’s something you’d like to talk about,’ – he paused rather tackily for effect – ‘I’ll be back after lunch.’

He left the room.

‘Is
he
on the list?’ asked Toby. ‘Because that man is the very definition of the word
suspect
.’

Bee nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He’s on the list. I think we need to poke around his office a bit.’

They waited until midmorning, when Bee was sure Adrian Featherstone would be in his board meeting. Then they made their way over to the Conservation Department, where they were stopped by a pregnant conservator with very straight blonde hair and a cold smile.

‘He’s not here,’ she said. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ Her tone suggested that it was unlikely.

‘There’s a folder we need to collect from Adrian’s office,’ said Toby with a smile. ‘He said he’d leave it on his desk for us.’

The conservator raised her eyebrows. ‘He didn’t say anything to me about—’

‘We’ll only be a minute,’ said Toby. ‘By the way, I really like that blouse.’

The conservator gave him a flat, unimpressed look, but waved them towards one of the offices. ‘Good luck finding anything in there,’ she said disapprovingly as she went to the handwashing station.

The office was small and very untidy in comparison with the rest of Conservation. Books and folders and papers were piled against every wall, and Bee could barely distinguish the desk. She appraised the room, noticing:

• Three apple cores, in various stages of decomposition

• One dead cockroach

• Five used coffee cups, two of them containing unpleasant mould specimens

• One green Natural History Museum hoodie, tangled in the wheels of Featherstone’s desk chair

• A small pile of nail clippings on the edge of the desk

• A bottle of cheap whisky, badly hidden on top of the bookshelf

• A book entitled
Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions and Other Many-Legged Creatures
with seven watermelon-coloured Post-its stuck in between various pages.

‘Wow,’ said Toby. ‘It’s like a homeless person lives here. Without the smell of stale urine.’

Bee spotted a crumpled bath towel in a corner. ‘It looks like he sleeps here sometimes,’ she said.

‘Hmm,’ said Toby. ‘I don’t need a spider sense to figure out that this guy is as dodgy as hell. So what are we looking for?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Bee. ‘Anything that gives us clues about him or what his connection was to Gus.’

She gazed around the room, feeling a little overwhelmed. What
was
she looking for?

Toby nodded towards a framed case of butterflies on the wall.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘A Monarch. These little guys fly over six thousand kilometres in a year – from Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico and back again.’

‘Fascinating.’ Bee rifled through the contents of Adrian Featherstone’s desk drawers, then turned her attention to his in-tray.

‘It
is
fascinating,’ Toby said, pressing a finger against the case. ‘My grandfather used to collect butterflies. They’re always chasing the warm weather. They can’t fly if their body temperature is less than thirty degrees Celsius. That’s why the butterfly house at the zoo is so warm.’

Bee sighed. She’d found nothing. She went to examine the pinboard on the wall.

‘Did you know that butterflies taste with their hind feet? Incredible creatures.’

Bee moved closer to the pinboard, then removed a small square of newspaper.

‘Bee?’

Bee ran her eyes over the cutting, her heart hammering. She felt as though every single hair on her body was standing erect.

‘Bee?’ Toby touched her arm, making her head snap around.

‘We have to get out of here,’ she said. ‘Something very strange is going on.’

Before Toby could object, she grabbed his hand and dragged him out of Adrian Featherstone’s office.

‘Did you find it?’ asked the conservator.

‘Um,’ said Bee. ‘No.’

‘Perhaps we should call his mobile,’ said the conservator, reaching for a phone.

‘No, no, that’s fine,’ said Bee. ‘I don’t want to interrupt his meeting. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.’

Back in the Catacombs, Bee took the scrap of newspaper out of her pocket.

‘So what’s the big find?’ asked Toby, peering over her shoulder.

Bee smoothed the paper. It was a short article accompanied by a black-and-white photo, clipped neatly from a newspaper. The photo was of two men, standing side by side near a tree. The man on the right held a shotgun, and the other carried three dead rabbits tied together by the back legs. The man with the gun was grinning, and the other, taller man was looking away from the camera, down at the ground. Although the paper looked quite new, the photo had clearly been taken a long time ago – at least thirty years, judging by the clothes and haircuts.

‘Is that . . . ?’ Toby leaned forward.

Bee nodded and pointed to the caption.

Scientist and Museum Benefactor William Cranston with his assistant, Gregory Uriel Swindon.

The taller man was unmistakably a young Gus.

Toby whistled. ‘Gregory Uriel Swindon. Gus. But who’s the other guy?’

Bee’s hands were trembling. ‘William Cranston. I asked you about him on Friday. He sponsored the Red Rotunda. I saw him in there on the morning before Gus . . .’

William Cranston’s pale eyes sparkled in the photo. Even in black and white, she recognised those eyes. Although they hadn’t been sparkling when she’d seen him in the Red Rotunda.

‘You saw him
in
the Red Rotunda? In the same room where Gus died?’

Bee nodded.

‘What’s the article about?’

‘Cranston being in hospital,’ said Bee. ‘Some kind of pancreatic cancer, I think. It was the first time he’d been seen for years. It sounds pretty bad. This quote from his doctor makes it sound like he was definitely going to die.’

‘But he didn’t.’

Bee looked at the top corner of the article. ‘It’s from early last year,’ she said. ‘So no, I guess he didn’t.’

‘Did Cranston look sick when you saw him? Like a man who’s dying from cancer?’

Bee shook her head. ‘He looked fine. Sad, but healthy.’

‘And Gus was his
assistant
. Wow. So is this Cranston guy a suspect now?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Bee. ‘But even if he is, it still doesn’t answer the most important question.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘What was this article doing pinned up in Adrian Featherstone’s office?’

That evening, Bee took the clipping home with her and laid it on the desk in her bedroom.