The Koala of Death (29 page)
This time there was no doubt that she heard me. “Isn’t it nice to run into family? Thank you for letting me know where the drinks are.” She turned to her daughter. “I’m dying for a Budweiser. How about you?”
“Parched.” Alyse’s eyes danced with mischief.
At my disapproving frown, Josie added, “Like myself, Alyse is older than she looks. Twenty-two, as a matter of fact. Come, dear.” Hooking her arm around her daughter’s, Josie headed straight for the drinks window.
When they neared Aster Edwina’s table, I held my breath. At first it looked as if the two might pass by without her noticing, because Sam Grimaldi was still talking to her. Unfortunately, he moved off just as Josie and Alyse arrived alongside the table.
Aster Edwina gave the two an idle glance and began to say something to her chauffeur. Then she stopped, her mouth open.
The color drained from her face.
Josie smiled and leaned over the table. I’m no lip-reader, but I’d swear she said, “Hello, Mother.”
The plastic wine glass Aster Edwina had been holding dropped from her hand and rolled across the carpet. When Caleb leaned over to pick it up, she grabbed him by the shoulder and whispered into his ear. Nodding, he helped her out of the booth, and with a spindly yet protective arm around her waist, ushered her out the door.
She never looked back.
Registration closed at eight, just after Zorah came in from the parking lot, staggering under the weight of the hopper that held the bulk of the raffle tickets. I added my collection, then helped her carry the hopper over to the proper table. Official duties done for the evening, I walked over to the lanes to find out whom I would be bowling with. To my chagrin, I’d been paired at lane thirty-nine with Myra Zebrowski, who had never apologized for her behavior at Caro’s party.
“Hope you can bowl better than the loser I was paired with last year,” she said.
“Which loser was that?” I asked, choosing a bright orange bowling ball that matched the color of my hair.
“Robin.”
I resisted the temptation to drop my bowling ball on her head. “Then you’re out of luck. I’ve only bowled once in my life, and that was one game when I was fourteen. If I remember correctly, my score was somewhere in the low fifties.”
“Then that’s two years in a row I have a snowball’s chance in hell to get the Best Team trophy. Why couldn’t you have done everyone a favor and stayed home?”
Women like Myra irk me to no end. In front of men they act all sweetness and light, but with women—who exist for them as nothing more than competitors—they set free their Inner Bitch.
I refused to rise to the bait. “You go first. Maybe I’ll learn something.”
“As if.” With a sneer, she hefted her personal bowling ball and approached the lane. With a fluid motion, she sent the ball rolling straight down the alley. As it neared the pins, it hooked slightly to the left. Pins went flying until only one remained.
“Rats,” she grumped.
I rose to take my turn but she ordered me to sit back down. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Don’t you know
anything
? I get another chance.”
“Sorry.”
She picked off the last pin with ease. “
Now
it’s your turn.”
I did my best, but my pretty orange ball went straight into the gutter. The same thing happened on my second attempt.
“Jesus,” Myra moaned.
“Sorry again.”
The rest of the evening’s four games—or were they called
sets
, as in tennis?—pretty much went the same. Myra knocked pins down, I left them standing. During the second game I saw Josie and her daughter take up position in the lane next to ours. I waved, but Josie appeared too distracted to notice. Her daughter waved back. From the number of pins they proceeded to knock down, I figured they were no strangers to bowling alleys.
Two lanes away, Bill bowled expertly with Buster. Further along, Jack Spence bowled with Robin Chase. They both looked like relative beginners, although neither approached my level of ineptness.
The event grew even more interesting during the third game, when Aster Edwina’s chauffeur walked back into the bowling alley, handed a note to Josie, then left again. After a brief glance, Josie put it in her pocket, and resumed bowling. Her expression was so blank I couldn’t guess at the note’s content. A plea for forgiveness? A bribe? A demand to leave town? Deciding to mind my own business for a change, I resumed bowling.
“Last chance,” Myra finally said, signaling that the night’s humiliation was at end. “Try not to screw up again.”
By then, my aim had shown improvement, and the orange ball knocked over two pins.
“My, my. Only eight to go,” Myra sniped.
When the orange ball knocked down four more, I gave a loud cheer. Josie and Alyse applauded for me, as did Buster.
“Beer frame!” Buster shouted, and told the waitress to bring me a brew.
Myra was less enthusiastic. “Oh, wow. That brings your game score to forty-three.”
Once I stopped jumping up and down in triumph, I asked, “What’s yours?”
“Two sixty-five.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
She stared at me in disbelief.
A few minutes later, the last ball had been bowled and Zorah, through a microphone, announced it was time to award the prizes.
You know how these things go. The smaller prizes were handed out first, starting with the Snuggie, which went to a delighted zoo volunteer. Park ranger Lex Yarnell won a year’s free bowling at Lucky Lanes. After that came more gift certificates, the elephant’s painting, various pieces of animal jewelry and statuary, and other animalesque odds and ends. As each prize was collected, the winner’s ticket was put back into the raffle hopper. Then came time for the bowling awards.
“Best Male Bowler, with the high game score of two eighty-seven, goes to Outback Bill!” Zorah announced to cheers. “Step forward, Bill, and collect your very own rhino dung trophy!”
With a swagger, he did, but he made certain Zorah returned his ticket to the hopper.
“The next trophy, for Best Female Bowler, goes to Myra Sebrowski, with a high game score of two sixty-five!”
The cheers for Myra were nowhere as loud as those for Bill as she simpered up to claim her prize.
“The trophy for Best Bowling Team, with a combined high game score of five hundred and thirty, goes to the mother/daughter duo of, um, do I have this right? Ms. Josie Speaks-to-Souls and Ms. Alysa Speaks-to-Souls?”
“That’s us!” Alysa whooped. “Gimme the dung!”
To a chorus of laugher, Alysa ran forward and clutched the rhino dung to her chest as if it were solid gold. When she returned to her mother, she received another award: a maternal kiss on the cheek.
While I was thinking about mothers and grandmothers, the microphone squawked. Zorah silenced it with a shake, then said, “That’s not the end of the awards, folks! Tonight we’re going to initiate two new trophies. The award for Most Successful Money-Grubber goes to Teddy Bentley, who—boasting several millionaires among her many acquaintances—raised in excess of $34,000 for Bowling for Rhinos! Teddy is the person who talked Aster Edwina into donating that wonderful African safari for two that we’re all so excited about, a trip that accounted for raffle ticket sales throughout our great state of California. Because of Teddy’s shameless money-grubbing, the Gunn Zoo will now be contributing more than $67,000 to the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya. Let’s hear it for Teddy!”
To a loud chorus of cheers, I rushed forth and scooped up my beautiful trophy. Rhino dung looks so nice when it’s bronzed.
When the crowd settled down again, Zorah said, “The award for Most Successful
Non
millionaire Money-Grubber goes to rhino keeper Buster Daltry, who raised the sum of $12,257.56 by going from door to door throughout San Sebastian County spreading the word to households, offices and schools about the rhinos’ plight. And, I would like to add, he personally bought $100 worth of raffle tickets for himself.”
“Way to go, Buster!” someone yelled, as the rhino keeper blushed. “Bet you’re going to be living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next month!”
“Get up there and get your bronzed shit, mate,” Bill ordered, giving his bowling partner a good-natured shove.
The cheers increased as Buster clomped his big feet forward to receive his trophy.
When the hysteria died down Zorah picked up two pencils and drummed them on the table in an inexpert but rousing take on “Ruffles and Flourishes.”
Knowing what was coming next, the room fell quiet.
After stashing the pencils in her pocket, Zorah picked up the mike again. “Time to award the big prize we’ve all been waiting for, an all-expenses-paid, two-week African safari for two—
two
people, mind you—
two!
to Mother Africa, where two lucky people will gaze upon elephants, rhinos, giraffes, big cats and all the other wonderful animals that roam the veldt. Are you ready, folks?”
The loudest cheers of the evening erupted from the crowd.
“All right. As you know, we’d planned for Aster Edwina to pick the winner, but an emergency came up and she needed to leave.”
The crowd
awwwed.
“So I brought in a substitute. For this final best-of-all prize, and to assure you that there’s no fishy business afoot, the long arm of the law will now reach into the hopper and pull the winning number.”
To my delight, Joe emerged in full uniform from the back of the crowd and jostled his way to Zorah. At his appearance some people cheered again; a few others booed. I guess it all depended on how traumatic their experience with the long arm of the law had been. Since Joe looked so dangerous and sexy in his uniform, I delivered a wolf whistle. He winked back.
As Joe turned the crank on the hopper, Zorah used the pencils as drumsticks again.
“Turn! Turn! Turn!”
shouted the crowd.”
Joe kept turning and the crowd grew louder.
I had no horse in this race, myself. If I won, it would be disastrous public relations situation for the zoo, so I’d given my tickets to others. Joe, who had earlier purchased twenty tickets from me as I’d stopped by the police station on my way to Lucky Lanes, had done the same.
Some people were more deserving of good fortune than others. But Luck was a fickle lady, as was proven every time a divorce attorney won the Powerball.
“Pick it! Pick it! Pick it!”
everyone screamed.
Experienced at crowd control and the riots that sometimes broke out when excited people lost their common sense, Joe stopped the roll mid-crank. The tickets slid to a heap at the bottom of the hopper. Turning his back, he reached behind him, fumbled the wire gate open, and after rustling through the tickets for a few more excruciating seconds, pulled one out.
Joe looked at the ticket for a second, then said, “Want to know the number?”
“Read it! Read it! Read it!”
He grinned, enjoying the chance to make people happy for a change.
“One five oh…”
People scanned their tickets. Several tossed them with disappointed expressions.
“two…”
More tickets were tossed.
“seven…”
Even more tickets hit the floor.
Perhaps I imagined it, but I thought I heard an indrawn breath.
“…three.”
“Say again?” A voice from the back, too choked up to be readily identified as male or female. Heads turned toward the voice as Joe reread the number.
“One-five-oh-two-seven-three.”
A long silence, then—
“Oh, my God, I won!”
It was Buster Daltry.
It took six of us more than two hours to clean up Lucky Lanes and its parking lot. In the celebration that had followed Buster’s win, people ripped up score sheets and rained them down on him like confetti. After being doused with beer, the big man was hefted on the shoulders of other big men and paraded around the bowling alley like a king, then out the double doors and into the parking lot, where the other ticket buyers roused themselves out of their collective funk long enough to congratulate him.
The cleaning crew, comprised of me, Robin, Helen, Bernice, and Haylie and Mark Hewitt, was now one short. Buster had planned to help out before Fate intervened. After his royal progress through the parking lot, he’d been carried down the street to the Amiable Avocado, where he was working his way toward a world-class hangover.
“I’m glad Buster won, aren’t you?” Robin said, sweeping up the last scrap of paper into a black garbage bag.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, and I say that without irony,” I answered. “Let’s hope he gets to see both black and white rhinos, not that I could ever tell the difference. And elephants. Buster loves elephants.”
“Maybe he’ll see cheetahs on the run. And a lion pride. With cubs.” She sounded wistful.
Poor Robin. After Bill and Myra had treated her so shabbily, I had been secretly rooting for her. To get her mind off her losses, I said, “Well, this is it. All that’s left is to take this stuff out to the Dumpster.”
For the next few minutes we hauled bag after bag, until Sam Grimaldi declared the job finished. “A professional crew couldn’t have done better,” he said.
He ushered us out the door, and while we climbed into our vehicles, stayed behind to lock up.
With the exception of the block where the Amiable Avocado is located, the small city of San Sebastian is pretty much deserted after midnight. My journey through town would have gone faster, but I hit every red light between the main drag and the turnoff to Gunn Landing. The lights were long ones, too. I didn’t mind, because the city’s strict zoning regulations kept the heart of San Sebastian authentic, so with my window down to admit the fresh night air, I enjoyed the picturesque view.
Renovated adobe buildings erected in the mid-1800s reflected the area’s Spanish influence, with adobe storefronts connected to each other by tiled archways. The city had its share of statuary, too, and I drove by life-sized bronzes of Horace Bentley, my paternal great-great-great-grandfather; Abraham Piper, my maternal great-great-great grandfather; and the infamous Edwin Gunn, from whose loins sprang the indomitable Aster Edwina. The real star of the city came at the intersection of El Camino Real and Via del Sosa, where stood a floodlit, life-sized bronze of Padre Bautista de Sosa, the Spanish priest who had founded San Sebastian Mission. As always, I gave the padre and the trio of adoring Indian children at his feet a salute as I drove by.