The Anteater of Death (17 page)

Talk about a motive for murder.

A wave of guilt washed over me. What was I doing, suspecting a sick man’s wife, the mother of three children, of murder? But Zorah hadn’t killed Grayson, and since Joe was so firmly convinced of her guilt, I had to do something about it no matter how much my actions displeased him. Or even myself.

After stuffing termites into the enclosure’s last log, I walked back to the holding pen where the anteater, having finished her banana, waited anxiously.

“I need to talk to Dr. Kate again, Lucy.”

“Grunt!”

Holding the safety board carefully between us, I released her back into the enclosure. Then I blew her a goodbye kiss, and exited through the pen’s back gate.

***

Late in the afternoon, I stopped my cart in front of the Andean spectacled bear exhibit, where a boisterous crowd had gathered. In the bear pit fifteen feet below, Willy, the smaller of the two bears and who’d been at the zoo for less than a month, had backed himself into a clump of bamboo. Despite keeper Jack Spence’s urgings, he refused to emerge. The reason for Willy’s timidity soon became apparent. Francine, the large female we hoped he’d eventually mate with, paced back and forth along the bamboo’s perimeter, growling threats. She obviously resented having to share her enclosure with a relative stranger.

Despite the cute white-outlined black patches across their eyes that gave the species its name, the bears were more dangerous than they appeared. Topping out at almost four hundred pounds, a female could remove a male’s eye with a casual swipe from her paw. Given the chance, a male would return the favor.

I climbed out of the cart and stood next to Jack at the fence. The fence’s security was increased by a steep-sided drop into the bear’s island-like enclosure that was surrounded by a deep, twenty feet-wide moat. Spectacled bears can swim, but unlike polar bears, prefer not to.

“Has he tried to mate with her yet?” I asked Jack. May was breeding time at the zoo and most of the animals were getting it on with enthusiasm. Except for the bears.

A rangy six-plus feet in height, Jack towered above me, but his expression was that of an anxious mother at an inner city playground. “Are you kidding? At this point he’s just trying to survive. Francine’s mean as a grizzly.”

Spectacled bears are on the Vulnerable Species list and few zoos own a breeding pair. Since Willy’s introduction to the exhibit wasn’t going as well as we’d wished, I worried that the zoo might have to resort to a sperm bank, a risky proposition since animals needed to be anesthetized during artificial insemination. The anteater had undergone the procedure with great success, but spectacled bears didn’t have a good track record with anesthesia. Sometimes they simply forgot to breathe.

Jack knew this, which probably accounted for his strained expression. After I’d commiserated with him a while, he said, “Say, could you stick around for a few minutes? I haven’t had my lunch yet, and my stomach’s about to gnaw through my spine. But I’ve been afraid to leave them alone together. As long as Francine’s acting this way, someone should keep an eye on her.” He lowered his voice. “That noisy crowd’s not helping.”

Zoos do get people excited, so crowd control is always an issue. Today, parents and their laughing, shrieking children strained against the fence around the bear’s enclosure, but I wasn’t too worried. The four-foot high fence, built of reinforced concrete painted to look like thick wood logs, could hold back an elephant. A clear Plexiglas barrier between the “logs” ensured that no one could slip through and fall into the moat below.

I looked at my watch. Three o’clock and Jack hadn’t eaten yet. No wonder he was so thin. “Go ahead. I’ll watch them until you get back.”

“I’m already gone.” He climbed into his cart and took off.

Just as he disappeared around the bend toward the snack bar, a mother with more enthusiasm than sense lifted her kindergarten-age son and sat him on the top rail of the fence, right above a sign that warned
Do Not Sit Or Lean On Fence.

“Hey! That’s a fifteen-foot drop!” I called, hurrying toward her.

The woman looked annoyed. “I have a good grip on him.”

Not good enough, apparently. Before I could reach her and snatch the child back, he twisted forward to get a better look at the bears. And he twisted right out of his mother’s “good grip.”

The boy fell.

Fifteen feet.

Straight into the moat.

He landed with a screech and a splash, then disappeared briefly underneath the scummy water. A couple of seconds later his head broke surface and he began to dog-paddle. Unfortunately, he aimed toward the bear’s “island,” the shore of which sloped down to the moat.

Both Francine and Willy—who had emerged from the bamboo—waddled to the edge of the moat and watched him, noses twitching. The male appeared merely curious, but I didn’t like the look on the female’s face, nor the way her ears flattened against her enormous head. Jack was right; she was one mean bear.

The crowd’s screams dwarfed the mother’s, who tried to struggle over the rail after her son. Two Hispanic men hauled her back.

“Bears in there, miss!” one cried, while the other studied the moat carefully, as if preparing to dive in after the child.

“No!” I shouted to him, then took one precious second to grab my radio and scream a “
Child in spectacled bear pit!
” warning to the park rangers. Before the Hispanic man could act and perhaps get himself killed, I took a deep breath and vaulted over the fence.

Like the boy, I landed in the middle of the moat and sank below the surface. For a moment I continued plunging straight down through the dark green nothingness, but my descent was stopped by the moat’s concrete bottom. A shiver of pain shot through my heel as it touched down, but I ignored it and headed back toward the surface. As my head entered the sunlight, I shook the water and offal out of my eyes. Immediately I saw the boy, swimming in the wrong direction for all he was worth. Within seconds, he would reach the bears.

As if eager to embrace him, Francine reared up on her hind legs, arms open wide. Her teeth flashed a murderous smile.

Spitting out moat water, I struggled toward the child. “Stop! Don’t go near her! Swim to me!”

He either didn’t hear or was so eager to get out of the filthy water that he ignored me. Like so many zoo visitors—including his foolish mother—he probably thought Francine was no more dangerous than an overgrown teddy bear. But I knew better. That two-legged stance of hers meant only thing. If the child reached shore, he was dinner.

The realization lengthened my stroke and I surged forward. Mere inches before the boy reached Francine’s welcoming claws, I caught him by the collar and dragged him away. Enraged, Francine lunged. She was so close that I could feel the air move as her horrible claws swept by. Finally aware of his danger, the child screamed. This only enraged Francine further, and for a moment it appeared she would jump into the moat after us.

But then Willy, darling little Willy who had retreated all the way into the bamboo again, began to bawl in distress. Francine turned to see what was wrong.

Suddenly debris rained down on the bears and I took a moment to look up. The two Hispanic men were bombarding the bear pit with rocks and soft drink cans. Their aim was so good that a Diet Coke bounced off the female’s nose. The boy momentarily forgotten, Francine snapped at the air.

Breathing a prayer of thanks for the distraction the men were providing, I tucked the boy’s head into the crook of my left arm in classic lifeguard fashion and back-stroked toward the steep enclosure wall.

“Let go!” the child screamed, and bit my arm. “Want Mommy!”

My arm, now imprinted with two rows of tiny teeth, began to bleed, but I didn’t release my grip although my arm now hurt as badly as my heel.

“Stay calm,” I urged. “I’ll get you back to her.” I’d read stories where lifeguards had to knock flailing swimmers unconscious in order to rescue them, but I didn’t have the heart for that.

So he bit me again.

“Stop biting!” I snapped, hoping I sounded parental.

Apparently I didn’t, because his teeth clamped down on me once more. “Mom!” he screamed.

As he opened his jaws for another munch, Jack Spence leaned over the fence, dangling a rope. “Grab on!”

I did.

Aided by the two other men, Jack hauled us up, the child first, me a soggy second. As I floundered onto the asphalt like a landed trout, Zorah and three park rangers brandishing rifles came tearing up the path in a zoo cart that was trying its best to speed.

“Is the kid okay?” Zorah called, jumping out of the cart and running toward us.

I was too busy vomiting up dirty moat water to answer, so Jack did. “He’s fine. But do me a favor and shoot his idiot mother.”

Zorah bent down and brushed a lily pad away from my face in order that I could vomit better. “You all right, Teddy?”

“Just peachy.” I heaved again. Throwing up at the zoo was becoming a habit.

Within minutes the boy was whisked away by ambulance, trailed by his lawsuit-threatening mother. The two Hispanic men disappeared into the crowd. The rangers drove me to the First Aid station, where they patched up my bleeding arm and pronounced my heel merely bruised. They gave me a tetanus booster (forget the moat water; human bites are
really
nasty) while Barry, summoned from the administration building, hovered nearby.

“Are you sure you’re okay? That moat, God knows what’s floating around in there! I’ve given the order to have it cleaned more often.”

I waved his concern away. “How’re the bears?”

He scowled. “As if I care. The legal ramifications…”

Jack, who with Zorah had followed me to First Aid, interrupted. “The bears are fine. Willy’s hiding in the bamboo again and Francine’s enjoying a snack of strawberries and beetles.”

He’d said the wrong thing.

I leaned over and vomited up more scummy water.

***

As I stepped out of the shower in the zookeeper’s locker room, my cell phone rang. A glance at the display revealed my mother’s number. She seldom called me at work, so I guessed that word of my afternoon’s adventures had already gossiped its way to Old Town.

Not yet ready for
that
kind of trouble, I turned the cell off. Then I changed into a clean uniform and returned to my duties.

***

By the time the zoo closed for the day, I was sore and exhausted. I hungered for the comfort of the
Merilee
, but determined to find out more about that independent vet study, I summoned enough energy to visit Gunn Castle. Aware of my bedraggled state, I drove around the back to the castle’s more secluded rear entrance. As it so frequently had been during my teenage years, the heavy oak door leading to the stables and other outbuildings was unlocked. I slipped in, relieved that no servants lurked nearby.

I found Jeanette dressed in the same tatty old peignoir, lying on the bed with one of Grayson’s suits laid out next to her. Her face almost as gray as the suit, she stroked and murmured to it as if her husband remained inside. Uncomfortable with the intimacy of the scene, I froze in the doorway.

Seemingly oblivious to my battered condition, she threw me an imploring look through tangled strands of greasy blond hair. “His suit still smells like him, Teddy. Do you know how long that will last?”

“I don’t know,” I answered softly, not getting too close, so that any residual whiff of moat scum wouldn’t reach her.

She pressed her nose against the suit’s shoulder. “I had his cologne blended especially for him at one of those San Francisco scent shops. Maybe I’ll order a few more bottles, make sure I don’t run out.”

Although there was no alcohol on her breath, she smelled pretty much like I had after emerging from the bear’s moat. When had she last bathed?

“You need to start taking care of yourself. Shower. Get out of the house.”

She shook her head. “Why?”

“It might help take your mind off things.” My advice was inadequate, but it was the best I could do.

“That’s what Aster Edwina keeps telling me.”

For once I found myself agreeing with the old harridan. Although Jeanette and I had never been close after that Monopoly slap-down, it hurt to see her like this. For her sake, I summoned up some enthusiasm. “Listen, tomorrow’s Sunday and I have the whole day free. Let’s do lunch somewhere!”

“There’s food here.”

I tried again. “We could drive down to Carmel and troll the boutiques! A new pair of shoes might lift your spirits.”

“I don’t want my spirits lifted. All I want is to stay here with my husband.” She began caressing the suit again, this time south of the waistline.

I felt like a voyeur. She needed professional help, not my clumsy words of comfort. Before I left, I’d suggest a round of therapy, but first I needed to ask a question that had been preying upon my mind.

“Did Grayson discuss the independent vet study with you?”

“The what?”

“That report written by the vets from the National Academy of Sciences. Knowing how involved you used to be with the zoo’s day-to-day business, I figure he must have talked to you about it.”

She shook her head. “Not in any depth. With the Trust and everything, there was a lot going on before…” She gulped.

I phrased my next question carefully. “Yes, I understand. But the study might contain a clue about what really did happen that night. Is there any chance Grayson made a copy?”

Her proud smile showed I’d hit pay dirt. “He copies everything. When it comes to the zoo or anything else he does, he’s very meticulous.”

I didn’t like the sound of that present tense. “Yes, he
was
meticulous,
wasn’t
he, Jeanette? Did he leave it around here, perhaps? In his desk? If you tell me where, I could go look…”

At this, she half-raised herself from the bed, one of the suit’s sleeves clutched to her breast.
“You’re not touching his things!”

Alarmed by the venom in her voice, I drew back. As I knew full well, she could pack a punch. “Sorry. I just wanted to…”