The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (18 page)

“Never for hunting, actually,” he said. “But it's pretty cool for
paintball. Psyches your opponent out. Guy thinks he's safe in the bushes, and then he looks down and sees that little red dot on his leg and splat!”

He laughed. I managed a weak smile in response, but I kept seeing the little red dot dancing across Patrick Lanahan's chest.

“Want me to reload it for you?” Charlie asked.

“No thanks,” I said, handing him the crossbow. “I should be getting back. Give me five minutes to get back to my car before you start up again, will you?”

“Okay,” he said, nodding.

I still set off at a slight angle rather than straight past his target. And I set a brisk pace, all the while wondering if I was stupid to trust him or stupid to worry.

Still, I was glad when I reached the car, clicked the door open, and sat down. Then I jumped up again with a yelp that was more surprise than pain. I pulled the crossbow bolt out of my back pocket and tossed it into the backseat before climbing in again and slamming the door closed.

I didn’t start the car immediately. I pulled out the first-aid kit I kept in the car, did a more thorough job of cleaning the blood off my cheek, and applied a bandage. And all the while I was listening to hear the thunking start up again.

Charlie waited a lot longer than five minutes. Probably more like fifteen. He wasn’t a stupid kid. And when you came right down to it, he was rather likable.

Neither of which ruled him out as a murderer. And it definitely wasn’t just Vern and Randall who blamed Lanahan for endangering Charlie's football scholarship. Charlie had the same idea.

I sighed with exasperation. I hated thinking that such a likable kid might be a murderer, but nothing he’d said or done ruled him out. I needed to check him out.

Chapter 29

When I came to the intersection with the main road I turned left, toward Caerphilly, rather than right to go home. I had quite a few unanswered questions about Charlie Shiffley, and for that matter about Patrick Lanahan and Montgomery Blake. I thought I could find a few answers online, and I didn’t want to wait until my nephew, Kevin, arrived to get our computers in working order again.

I left my car in the shade of a huge oak in the parking lot of the Caerphilly Library and strolled inside. Ellie Draper, the librarian, was reading to a group of rowdy toddlers in the children's room, so I waved at her and headed for the computer area. Luckily, it was at the other end of the library, but the din from story hour was still clearly audible. Of course, the noise level was probably the reason that only one of the library's two public-access computers was occupied. I snagged the other.

The cut on my cheek was throbbing a bit, so I muttered a few uncomplimentary things about Charlie Shiffley and went to check him out in the online archives of the
Caerphilly Clarion
. Lots of headlines from the sports section. Apparently Charlie was the mainstay of the high school football team—article after article credited him with scoring the winning points and beating school records that had stood since the fifties. My knowledge of football would fit nicely in a thimble, so most of the technical
stuff was incomprehensible to me, but both local sportswriters seemed to agree that Charlie was something special—more than just this year's star athlete. Much rejoicing in print when Virginia Tech showed the good taste to offer him a football scholarship. Nice human-interest article, painting Charlie in a positive light—a B student, quiet and well-behaved. Active in the 4-H club. Spent his spring vacation volunteering on the Gulf Coast with Habitat for Humanity. The very model of a modern high school athlete. Nice picture of him surrounded by a dozen or so proud members of the Shiffley clan.

Nothing about the unfortunate slaying of Lanahan's stray antelope, though. Maybe the
Clarion
didn’t want to tarnish the local hero's halo.

I Googled him, and found much the same information, plus a lot of Virginia Tech football fan sites discussing his high school record and college prospects in mind-numbing detail. So much for the scoop on Charlie.

I returned to the Google search page, typed in “Patrick Lana-han,” and got thirty-nine thousand entries. The first twenty didn’t seem to have anything to do with our zookeeper. I tried again, adding “Caerphilly” after Lanahan's name, and hit pay dirt.

First in the queue was the Caerphilly Zoo's Web site. I should have looked for that in the first place, I thought as I clicked the link. Maybe I could find out about Lanahan and get a list of the animals in the zoo at the same time.

The home page had a large picture of Lanahan clowning around with a chimpanzee. I winced as I wrote, “Chimpan-zee(s)?” at the top of a blank page in my notebook. I had the feeling chimps were high maintenance and dangerously mischievous.

Lanahan looked much as he had when I’d seen him in our
basement. He had a little more hair in the photo, and looked a lot more animated, but it was definitely the same guy I’d seen. I shook my head and moved on.

Unfortunately, the site was reticent about precisely what animals lived at the zoo. Pictures of all kinds of exotic species decorated the pages, but most of the photos hadn’t been taken at the Caerphilly Zoo—I could tell from the elaborate enclosures and lush vegetation. It was mostly a puff piece to get people to come to the zoo. Not useful for my purposes.

Lanahan's biography was more informative. Apparently his father had made a fortune in the chicken-farming business before selling out to one of the large national chicken-processing companies. Patrick had received his Ph.D. in wildlife science from Virginia Tech fifteen years ago, and then five years back he’d used part of his inheritance to establish the Caerphilly Zoo. Nothing about what he’d been doing in the intervening ten years. Perhaps none of the positions he’d held were sufficiently distinguished to grace the resume of the executive director of the Caerphilly Zoo.

Of course, in the current job market, a lot of Ph.D.'s ended up driving cabs and flipping burgers. I Googled his father's name and came across an obituary from seven years ago. Okay, that fit. The old man dies; Patrick gets his hands on the family fortune, and two years later, the Caerphilly Zoo is born. Allowing for the time needed to probate the will and hunt down a suitable tract of land, that sounded perfect.

And five years to run through his inheritance and find himself and his charges at the brink of bankruptcy.

I printed out a couple of pages from the site, just in case, but I had a feeling I’d exhausted the information to be found online about Lanahan.

Unlike the Caerphilly Zoo, the Clay County Zoo didn’t have a Web site. I did find an address, though, and checked one of the mapping sites to make sure I knew how to get there if need be. It wasn’t hard—there were only three roads in Clay County large enough to have state route numbers, and luckily the zoo was on one of them. Not far from the courthouse, by the look of it, and I knew how to get there, thanks to Michael's and my sneak visit to get the marriage license.

I sighed, and tried to wiggle into a more comfortable position. But the library's computer chairs weren’t designed for long-term comfort. Perhaps that was deliberate. The computers were supposed to benefit as many patrons as possible, and the chairs helped ensure that no one monopolized them. Already I could see an elderly man sitting at a nearby table, glancing up from his magazine from time to time to frown at me and look pointedly at his watch.

I returned to Google's main search page and typed in “Montgomery Blake.”

The first entry was Blake's own Web site. I decided to check it out.

It was much as I’d expected. Reports on what the Montgomery Blake Foundation was doing to preserve the environment on six or seven continents. Pictures of Blake with birds, animals, and reptiles of all kinds—presumably grateful members of species that were considerably less endangered as a result of his efforts. Though most of them didn’t look particularly grateful. The snow leopard cub was trying to sink his tiny, sharp fangs into Blake's hand. The monkey's bare teeth suggested that he was planning a similar attempt. The ten-foot snake draped like a stole around Blake's shoulders had lifted its head and turned it toward Blake, and was gazing at his face with calm,

reptilian interest, as if trying to determine if he was edible. Or perhaps he was recognizing a soul mate.

A sudden wave of nostalgia hit me. Many of my fondest childhood memories were of Dad strolling into the kitchen or the living room holding a wild creature, dead or alive, to give us an impromptu biology lesson. Mice, voles, shrews, snakes, snapping turtles, rabbits, and bats from the backyard or the nearby woods, and an apparently endless supply of slightly flattened possums plucked from the highway. Most of the live animals would be trying to escape or to bite Dad—sometimes both at once—and invariably, if Mother was home, Dad's lectures would be punctuated by shrieks of “Get it out! Get that thing out of my house! Now!”

Once Dad had rounded up the largest possible audience— preferably all three kids plus any stray cousins or neighbors visiting that day—he’d adjourn to the backyard to continue his lesson, which invariably ended with someone taking a picture of Dad with his catch, followed by a trek to the woods to bury the dead animals or release the wild animals at a safe distance from any busy roads.

Apparently Montgomery Blake enjoyed similar amusements with the far more varied and exotic creatures he found in his travels, with the added advantage of a full-time professional camera crew.

But as I clicked and moused my way through Blake's Web site, I couldn’t see any indication that he’d previously taken an interest in any small-town zoos.

Perhaps Patrick Lanahan had acquired an unusual specimen— some rare exotic or endangered animal hiding in plain sight among the more ordinary llamas and penguins. Once I finally got an inventory of the zoo's animals, I’d try to find out.

I was about to leave the site when, near the bottom of one page, I noticed a link to the Anthony Blake Memorial Fellowship. His father, perhaps? At any rate, it seemed like the first bit of personal information on the site, so I clicked the link.

“Checking up on our distinguished visitor?”

Chapter 30

I started, and turned to find Ellie Draper, the librarian, looking over my shoulder. As usual, her ensemble combined formality and practicality. She wore a conservative gray suit with a long, pleated skirt. A purple silk scarf tied around her neck added a note of color, as did her purple running shoes.

“Trying to see if he's really a suitable associate for Dad,” I said. “Am I the only one who finds it a little strange for a world-famous naturalist to show up here in Caerphilly, worrying about the problems of a dinky little private zoo?”

“No, I have a suspicious nature too, but I think we’re in the minority,” she said. “Most proud Caerphilly residents are probably wondering what took him so long.”

“So what do you think he's up to?”

She pondered for a few moments.

“Securing his legacy, perhaps?”

“He's got his foundation for that.”

“Maybe he's decided he wants a more tangible legacy,” she said.

“He could endow a building someplace,” I suggested. “The college is always looking for people willing to buy it a building.”

“Yes, but so many people have buildings. He's a big name— maybe he wants something bigger. The Montgomery Blake Zoological Park. The existing zoo isn’t that large, of course, but he
could be hoping to buy up some of the surrounding land and expand it.”

“Yeah, that sounds like his style,” I agreed. “Of course, that's assuming Patrick Lanahan was cool with turning his creation into Blake's legacy. What if he wasn’t?”

“That might be something Chief Burke would find interesting,” she said, with her usual enigmatic smile. Then she glanced at the screen and frowned slightly. “Then again, you do have to feel sorry for Blake. Losing his only son to cancer, and then his only grandson to that tragic accident.”

I glanced back at the screen myself. The Anthony Blake Memorial Fellowship was given each year to the most deserving graduate student in zoology, conservation, or wildlife studies at Virginia Tech, where Blake himself had received his doctorate. Okay, so maybe he really was a zoologist, though I wouldn’t take it as gospel till I’d checked with someone at Virginia Tech.

I skimmed the paragraphs on eligibility for his scholarship and how to apply, but the last paragraph seemed more relevant. Blake had created the scholarship after Anthony, the grandson, died in a car accident a few days before he was due to receive his Ph.D. in wildlife management from Virginia Tech.

“Only grandson or only grandchild?” I asked aloud. “Blake could be the old-fashioned kind of guy who wouldn’t care nearly as much about descendants who can’t perpetuate the family name.”

“Possibly,” Ms. Ellie said, chuckling. “But apparently the boy was his only grandchild as well.”

“And how do you happen to know so much about Montgomery Blake?” I asked, raising one eyebrow at her.

“I have a suspicious nature, remember?” she said, returning my raised eyebrow. “I did my homework. Looked him up when he came to town.”

Was she implying I had been remiss in not doing the same?

“I only found out yesterday he was here, when he showed up on our doorstep,” I said, trying not to sound too defensive. “The move and all. How long has he been around?”

“About a week, that I know of. He's installed down at the Caerphilly Inn.”

“Damn,” I said. “If he’d just given Patrick what he's been spending on his hotel, the zoo would probably be out of debt by now.”

“Are you finished with that?” Ms. Ellie said, gesturing at the computer.

“I will be after I see what I can find about Anthony Blake's tragic death.”

“You won’t find anything about that online,” she told me. “It was fifteen years ago. I’ve got printouts from the microfilm. Why not come look at them, and give poor Mr. Hughes a chance to track his stock portfolio?”

I collected my printouts, yielded my seat to the impatient senior citizen, and followed Ms. Ellie through the door marked “Staff Only.”