The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (21 page)

I surrendered the computer chair as Lance returned to try to find the rest of the conversation chain in Art’s center e-mail. That search petered out quickly, and it became clear that Art either had never provided the sanctuary e-mail address or that he had continued the conversation by phone.

The best we could find was a series of urgent and mysterious e-mails between Art and Stan that broke off around the time the orangutans arrived Friday morning. Stan was upset about missing “the big reveal” because Gary had not yet left the country due to his mother’s fall. Stan thought he and Gert might need to leave Natasha alone immediately after the adoption hearing to stay with Gert’s sister.

“I didn’t know Gary was Stan’s nephew,” I said. “I knew they were related, but I didn’t realize his mom was Gert’s sister.”

“Me neither.” Lance shook his head. “We should have, though, if we’d thought about Gary’s mom and Gert’s sister both having MS. Stan’s not even related to Gary, and it would have been an odd sort of coincidence for two people in his life to have it. I think it’s relatively rare.”

“Yeah. Gary never talked about his mother much, though.”

“True. Or not to us, anyway.”

“Yeah.” We both got along better with Sally. “Funny Stan didn’t say anything about it when we saw him at the court house.”

Lance shrugged. “I want to know what this ‘big reveal’ was.”

“I bet either Stan or Rick knows,” I said.

“Art’s nephew? Why?”

“When Art can’t find a grant, where does he turn, every time?” I didn’t wait for Lance to answer. “Stan. And when has Stan ever said no. He’s building an enclosure, Lance, and Rick’s always been his go-to builder.”

“Was. He
was
building an enclosure.”

I sighed and bit my bottom lip so I wouldn’t cry. I tried to remember if Stan had acted in any way in the know about the orangutan when we mentioned it to him yesterday morning.

Stan could be fairly disinterested in the center. He and Art went way back, and he willingly funded our work, but in fact, we were just one of the only local millionaire’s projects. He liked to play philanthropist, and any number of charities and even businesses could thank Stan Oeschle for saving them with money. Ironweed U had an Oeschle Building that he had been the largest donor for constructing. When no bank wanted a part in Hannah’s Rags, thanks to the state of downtown Ironweed at that time, she had gone to Stan for a start-up loan. He darted from interest to interest, enjoying each as it suited his pleasure. So he might not have known much about progress after he signed the check.

I remembered last year when we acted as intermediaries between the roadside zoo in Indianapolis and the Ohio Zoo. In that case, the orangutan turned out to be an illegally smuggled animal, part of a small network of illegally traded exotics. Art had enthused to everyone for
days
about our role in shutting down what he termed a primate mill, even though several species of animals were involved. Stan’s praise had been lukewarm at best until one afternoon he saw footage about it on the news and suddenly realized the importance of what Art had done. I wondered if this wasn’t a similar case, where Art’s tendency to wax eloquent had simply caused the man to stop listening. I hoped not. Or he would surely be feeling terribly responsible right now.

“The board!” I said. “We haven’t called the board!” We hadn’t spoken to Stan at all since yesterday. What a mistake. I needed to call him now, or we were sure to wind up discussing Art’s death at the wedding. And even if Stan and Gert were taking care of Gert’s sister, other board members would be coming.

“It’s OK,” he said. “I talked to Gert Oeschle last night while you were getting that deputy’s hat back from the spiders. She was distracted, but she said she’d talk to Stan. I’m sure that’s all we can do.”

Lance shifted out of e-mail and instead tried to hunt up anything relevant about Aldiss Carmichael. Returning to the paperwork on the desk, I said, “None of this explains why Art told people he was going out front yesterday, when he was clearly going out back. And why was June so relevant? Because Gary and Sally would be graduated and the semester over? Surely that wouldn’t keep Art from taking care of an animal. It’s unethical, Lance. It’s
unethical
what Art did.” The words made me want to cry again. “Why would he leave a couple of animals,
suffering
animals, and not call the authorities?”

“Noel, June is relevant because of the wedding. Art planned . . . whatever this was . . . for us.”

“That makes it
worse
!”

“Look. What if he thought they had decent conditions? All the e-mails said was that the male was bored, not that it was filthy.”

“Why would Art think that? This guy is talking about getting arrested! Art would have known why he was afraid of that.”

“People don’t get arrested for animal neglect,” Lance said. “They get fined. They get arrested for theft.” He pointed me once more to the computer screen. “I knew I’d heard the name before,” he said.

I looked up at the screen and saw a headline: EARLY REPORTS OF ORANGS INCORRECT.

As I started to read, Lance added, as if the computer could hear him and correct the words on the monitor, “The word is ‘orangutan.’ ”

Earlier this week News Nine told you about the Michigan animal sabotage. New information in the case has now come to light. At this time, most animals are accounted for, having been put down by Michigan or Ohio police or captured by staff from the Ohio Zoo. This newspaper has also learned that there are not orangutans unaccounted for as was previously reported. Caretaker Aldiss Carmichael confirms that there were never orangutans in the collection.

I stopped reading. “Okay,” I said, “so he lied and there were orangutans after all?”

“Exactly.”

“So Art might have thought Ace had a place to keep them and got tired of doing it.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Lance said.

At the very least, I preferred this image of Art to the one that suggested he would leave an animal suffering because of his academic duties or some secret grand plan. The Art I knew would have abandoned everything to save a primate in danger. But I wondered how much I really knew about Art anymore. If he thought the animals were stable, then yes, he might have done it exactly that way, delaying the situation until he could give it his full attention and pull off something flashy. Especially with Gary and Sally’s graduation to consume him. And double especially if he meant to surprise us.

“OK, then let’s go down the library and see if we can get a phone book and hope Aldiss Carmichael has a listed number,” I said.

“I don’t think we need to go about it quite that way,” Lance said.

“What do you mean? You can’t think we can drive to Michigan today. That’s at least two hours away. It’s already noon. Two hours both ways, plus trying to find the guy? We’d miss the wedding, and Marguerite would be furious.”

Lance smiled and shook his head. “Is she the only one?”

“No, of course not. Mama, and Daddy, and Nana would feel terrible. And there would be all the people we’d let down . . .” I trailed off. Lance’s smile broadened as he kept shaking his head.

“Do you know,” he said, “that the first time I saw you, you were having some kind of an argument with an undergraduate?”

“No,” I said. “But I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”

“I think you were a teaching assistant. It may have been one of your students. You were making your point like that, listing detail after detail, all circling around a central idea.”

“Oh-kay?” I couldn’t understand how this got us any closer to finding Aldiss Carmichael. I was pretty sure I’d never had him in any class of mine.

“I thought you were beautiful.” He took my hand. “And I remember when Bub did
that
to you.” Lance fell momentarily silent and pulled me over to him by the hand he had taken. He put his lips to my knuckles and wrapped his free arm around my waist. “I was alone with you in the hospital. You know, I was afraid your family would pull in around you. That they wouldn’t let me come near. Especially since it was
my
brother who had put you there.” He was rubbing my hand back and forth across his upper lip, making me realize he hadn’t even had time to shave before he took off for the center in the morning.

“But they didn’t,” he continued. I couldn’t follow his train of thinking, but I couldn’t interrupt him either. “They wanted me to be there. They saw me as your research partner and someone who had tried to help you. And I was alone with you when you came around.”

I remembered that. Lance was the first person I saw when I opened my swollen eyes two days after Alex battered them shut. (Technically, I got the broken nose because my head was getting pounded against my knees from the back.) At the time, I felt as mortified as I had when the spider monkeys stole my shirt. But now, I thought that if anyone had to be present in my life in that moment, I wanted it to be Lance. My parents spilled into the room soon after, but I would never forget his wide, sad eyes looking at me, unaware for a moment that I was looking back. “How does that put us in touch with Aldiss Carmichael?” I asked.

“It doesn’t,” he said. “I’m saying that all those people you listed aren’t the only ones who would be unhappy if we didn’t get married.
I
would be heartbroken.”

“Oh, Lance.” I let him hold me now, tugging my hand loose from his to wrap both arms around his neck and lean into his chest. “I’d be so sad, too.”

“Good,” he said. “Then we won’t go to Michigan. But that wasn’t what I meant anyway.”

“Then what did you mean?” I asked without lifting my head off his chest.

“Come on,” he said, reaching behind me for the car keys he had tossed onto the desk. “We have a police detective to interrogate.”

“Just because Ace has the same last name as Detective Carmichael, you can’t assume they’re related. For all we know, Ace is a white guy.”

“No,” Lance said. “The first thing I found when I searched ‘Ace Carmichael Ohio’ was his social networking profile, including a picture. And he’s got a brother named Drew.”

Detective Carmichael was Andrew. That significantly increased the possibility that the two men were related. “But Lance, that doesn’t prove
anything,
” I said. We left the office and headed up the stairs. The finished basement was a definite plus of our small house.

“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t prove a thing. And Drew didn’t have a picture on his own social networking profile, plus he had privacy settings turned a lot stronger than Ace. But Detective Carmichael said yesterday that Art had been in driving
him
crazy ever since last October, right? Why?” We left the building and hurried to the truck. “We both knew he’d been lobbying the sheriff’s department to develop a program for the appropriate sedation of exotic animals. But isn’t it unusual that he picked the department’s junior detective?”

“Detective Carmichael said Art got shunted to him.”

“I don’t think that was a coincidence. Last night, why else did Carmichael stay so much longer than any of the other police? Everybody but him was gone within an hour. I think he stayed from a sense of personal responsibility.”

“He said as much.”

“I think his sense of responsibility is a lot greater than we imagined.”

It made sense, but I couldn’t decide whether I wanted him to be right or wrong as we rode to the sheriff’s building. And I feared that the personal responsibility might extend beyond dropping the orangutans. What if Ace Carmichael had killed Art?

We found Detective Carmichael in his office. He invited us in without asking for an explanation.

Lance began, “Do you by chance have a brother named Aldiss?”

The detective didn’t ask us to leave. He didn’t ask how he could help us, either. In fact, he didn’t say anything. We sat in hard folding chairs across from his desk while he remained standing on the other side. We all looked at each other without speaking. That was how I knew Lance was right. Perhaps it was how Lance himself knew it.

The detective began with a question. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to hand your brother’s name to your supervisor? I’m off this investigation, have been ever since I recognized that truck in your video last night. I can push paper, but not much else, because my brother represents a conflict of interest.”

Without hesitation, Lance said, “Do you know how hard it is to go looking through your brother’s apartment for the bloody evidence?”

“Excuse me?” Carmichael raised an eyebrow.

“What?” That was me, but I knew what Lance meant. After Alex attacked me, prosecutors had forced him to a plea bargain in the criminal case by presenting evidence of his abusive tendencies. They had a shirt with blood on it. Not mine. Not even Nicole’s. The blood was from Alex’s first fiancée. I never knew until now how they got the shirt, but the woman who owned it was more than willing to attest that it had belonged to her. I had never seen it myself, though I learned later that Alex kept it on a closet shelf.

I had wanted him to deny it. And at the same time, I wanted it to sink him. But the woman hadn’t pressed charges at the time. It wasn’t really salient to my case. Rather, it was good emotional leverage to keep the whole thing from going to trial. Alex swore he kept the shirt as a reminder of his own capacity to do harm. I thought it was a trophy.

Now I knew Lance was the one who went and got it. “How did you know about it?”

“Nicole told me. She found it when she was living with him.”

“I’m sorry?” Detective Carmichael had raised both eyebrows.

Lance briefly explained what had happened. The detective whistled. “That’s about seven kinds of trespassing on your part.”

“I had the key. Alex asked me to get him some clothes. I found the shirt.”

“Ah.”

“So to answer your question, I know what it feels like to turn your brother in. But you’re the cop. Not us.”

“Exactly,” Carmichael said. “And I know precisely why my boss needs to know my brother’s name, but I’m not sure why
you
do. I don’t even know where he lives. I see him at my dad’s a couple of times a year, and we don’t talk on the phone. I knew he worked for the zoo, and I knew he’d been caring for a couple of the apes, but I didn’t know he was involved in any of this until I saw your security video yesterday.”