The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (7 page)

“And there wasn’t much meat on the gazelle?”

“That evil little dog of yours would have a hard time making a
meal of it,” Randall said. “But try telling Lanahan that. He's filed charges. Won’t listen to reason. That's why we’d appreciate it if you let us know if he shows up here—he's got to sooner or later, right? To do something about the animals.”

I opened my mouth to explain how unlikely it was that Patrick Lanahan would show up to reclaim his animals, and then thought better of it. Chief Burke wouldn’t appreciate me spilling the beans. Especially not to someone who might be a suspect. Or at least the brother of one suspect and the uncle of another.

“I hate to think of that miserable bastard ruining Charlie's future,” Randall said.

“Surely once Chief Burke investigates the charges it will be all right? Charlie will be cleared.”

“We can’t count on that,” Randall said. “And we sure as hell can’t count on it happening in time.”

“In time for what?” I asked. But just then Vern appeared, and Randall frowned and shook his head, as if to warn me against continuing the conversation in front of Vern. Since Vern seemed his usual calm, unflappable self, I didn’t want to rock the boat. Randall and I both pretended to be keenly interested in the cage of rodents.

“Pasture fence is fine,” Vern said. “Anything else we should do before we head off to Flugleman's?”

“She's got some hyenas she wants moved,” Randall said. “You want us to take these rats out back, too?”

By the time we reached the backyard, Montgomery Blake had rounded up Michael and several of Chief Blake's officers and cajoled them into hoisting the hyenas’ cage onto some kind of wheeled chassis—probably another piece of leftover farm equipment from one of the sheds. He greeted us with enthusiasm.

“More new arrivals!” he exclaimed, and strode over to look at the cage with an energy that belied his age. “Aha! Acouchis!”

“Geshundheit,” Randall said.

“No, that's their name,” Blake said, peering into the cage. “The acouchi. South American rodent. Note the greenish sheen of their fur.”

“It's supposed to look like that?” Randall said, crouching down beside Blake. “I just thought they had mange or something.”

I sat down on the back steps, leaving Blake to enthuse about the acouchis to his new audience. Before too long, he’d recruited the Shiffleys to his moving crew, and the hyena cage went slowly rumbling off toward a more distant part of the yard.

The chief joined me on the back steps to watch it go.

“You tell anyone whose body we have down there and what happened to him?” he asked.

“No, not even the Shiffleys, who appear to be quite knowledgeable about crossbows.”

“Lot of people around here are.”

“I had no idea it was legal to hunt with a crossbow.”

“Used to be illegal unless you were disabled,” the chief said. “General Assembly opened it up to everyone in 2005. Makes for a longer season—there's an early bow season before the regular hunting season begins. And they say crossbows are easier than regular bows. Lot of people taking up crossbow hunting these days.”

“Lanahan file charges against many other crossbow hunters?”

The chief didn’t answer, and from the expression on his face, I decided not to push it.

“You expecting any more animals?” he asked.

“I hope not. Why?”

“Truck just pulled up by the pasture,” he said, and went inside.

He didn’t have to sound so smug about it. I decided to stroll down to the pasture. Maybe give the latest animal dumper a piece of my mind.

Chapter 11

Since there was still a murderer on the loose, I looked over the lanky, jeans-clad new arrival carefully before I got close. He didn’t appear to be carrying any animals, or, for that matter, a crossbow. He had parked his pickup truck by the fence and had gotten out to look at the llamas. He had propped his forearms on the top rail of the fence and was leaning on them, shoulders and head drooping dispiritedly. The llamas were humming softly at him. “Can I help you?” I asked.

“Probably not,” he said. He turned around, revealing a face so lugubrious it made his body language seem upbeat. “I’m Jason Savage. Caerphilly Animal Welfare.”

He stuck his drooping right hand in my direction diffidently, as if most people turned up their noses at the thought of touching it.

“Great to see you,” I said. I grabbed the hand and shook it briskly. The Animal Welfare Department! Why hadn’t I thought of calling them already?

“Um...thanks,” he said, frowning at his hand as if I’d done something to it—which was ridiculous; I hadn’t been trying to imitate the Montgomery Blake death grip.

“You’ve come to take away the animals, I presume,” I went on, trying for a tone of businesslike regret.

“People aren’t usually that glad to see me,” he said. Oops— perhaps I’d sounded too eager.

“Well, most people probably aren’t putting the welfare of the animals above their own selfish interests. I understand that you’re only doing your job. We’ve got the rest of them up at the house.”

“More llamas?” he asked, sounding anxious. “No, that's all the llamas. But we’ve got penguins, hyenas, and some kind of rodent, last I looked.” “Oh, Lord,” he muttered.

“We’ll miss them, of course, but we have to think of the animals. We haven’t really got enough room to take care of them.”

“You’ve got a lot more room than we have,” Savage said. “Count your blessings.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It's a small county. We’ve only got a small shelter. We can’t house more than a dozen dogs or cats at any one time, and that's if some of them get along well enough to share a cage.”

“Can’t you call a neighboring county?”

“Most of them are calling all the time, trying to dump animals on us,” he said. “I might be able to take some of the smaller animals if I can get rid of a few dogs. You wouldn’t like a beagle or two, would you? Got some very nice beagles.”

“Thanks, but the last thing we need right now is a puppy.”

“Oh, they’re not puppies,” he said. “Full-grown beagles. They’d be—let's see—three years old now. Housebroken. Fully trained. Raised them myself from puppies.”

“At the shelter?”

“We don’t have much turnover,” he said. “I’d recommend taking all four—that way they’d entertain each other much of the time.”

“All four?”

“Or how about a collabrador?” he suggested, no doubt sensing my lack of enthusiasm for beagles. “Nice collie-lab mix. Probably has good herding instincts—get along well with your llamas.”

“We have enough dogs,” I said. “And they’re not our llamas. Are you telling me there's nothing you can do?”

“When we’re full up, like now, what we usually do is get one of the nearby farms to take the overflow. Since they’re already settled in at a farm, I don’t see any reason to worry about them.”

“That's it? You’re not going to do anything about our animal problem?”

“I’ll go up to the house and check on the other animals,” he said, pulling a small notebook out of his pocket and beginning to scribble in it. “You said penguins, hyenas, and what?”

“Some kind of sniveling rat,” I muttered. I confess, I was hoping he’d take it personally, but he just nodded and jotted something in his notebook.

“I’ll check them out and let you know if you need to do anything differently for their welfare.”

With that, he turned and trudged toward the house. Great— not only was the Animal Welfare Department not going to take any of our unwanted animals, but now it was going to nitpick how we took care of them. Shaking my head, I turned back to lean against the fence as he’d been doing. Maybe contemplate the llamas until I calmed down a bit.

And contemplating the llamas was curiously calming. Though I was a little annoyed that they’d stopped humming.

“So how come Mr. Savage from the animal shelter gets humming and I don’t?” I said aloud.

“Maybe they like you,” Michael said. I started slightly when I realized that I’d been so focused on the llamas that I hadn’t noticed him coming up to lean on the fence at my side. “Apparently
humming can be a sign that they’re unsettled in some way,” he added.

“Oh, if that's the case, far be it from me to unsettle the llamas.” “Unless it's a mother llama humming to her cria,” Michael went on.

“Her what?”

“Cria. Baby llama. And you know the whole thing about them spitting on people?”

“Yuck,” I said, taking a couple of steps back from the fence. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Don’t worry,” Michael said. “They usually spit only at each other—it's part of establishing the pecking order. If a llama's been properly socialized, with other llamas, he’d spit on a human only by accident, if the human got in the middle of a llama fight. Or maybe if he was really mad at the human.”

“So how do we know these llamas have been properly socialized?”

“They haven’t spit at anyone yet. Tried to kick Spike when he got into their pasture, but that's perfectly understandable.”

“And if I told your mother you’d said that, do you think she’d take Spike back?” Spike was technically Michael's mother's dog, though we’d had him on semipermanent loan ever since her allergist had recommended a trial separation.

“I expect she’d sooner take one of the hyenas,” Michael said. “They’re smarter than dogs, you know.”

“Hyenas?”

“Llamas. The Peruvians have been breeding them for intelligence for centuries. Basically, they eat the stupid ones.”

“I’ve been at parties like that,” I said. “So you’ve been reading up on llamas?” The idea alarmed me. Since childhood, I’d known that bringing home stacks of books on a topic was a danger sign that a new enthusiasm had seized Dad. By the time I’d recog
nized the same symptoms in Michael, it was a little too late to change how I felt about him.

“Well, not yet,” Michael said. “There hasn’t been time. But Blake's been telling us all about them.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “I can hear him from here.”

We both turned and glanced back at the house. Randall and Vern Shiffley, along with several of Chief Burke's officers and a handful of my relatives, were gathered around something in the middle of the lawn. Blake, standing on a picnic table bench, was lecturing his makeshift student body.

“Officious old goat,” I muttered, turning back to the llamas.

“You don’t seem to like Dr. Blake much,” Michael said. “Any particular reason?”

I was opening my mouth to protest that I liked Blake just fine when I suddenly realized it would be a lie.

“No, I don’t,” I admitted. “Don’t ask me why. I’ll watch myself. Be extra polite to him and all that.”

“Odd,” Michael said. “That's just what your mother said a minute ago. She doesn’t seem that keen on him, either.”

So it wasn’t just me! I felt a surge of relief.

“Well, after all, he's spoiling Dad's fun, or hadn’t you noticed?” I said. “Dad's usually the one who gets to give the wildlife lessons.”

“That's why you dislike him?”

“I don’t Jislike him,” I said. “But I don’t trust him. What's he doing here, anyway? Why isn’t he off in the veldt or the tundra or the bush somewhere, rescuing something in front of a camera?”

“Supposedly, he's here to rescue the Caerphilly Zoo,” Michael said. “Not sure whether he's going to donate the money Patrick needs or find him some other donors or maybe take over the zoo—your Dad was a little vague on what Patrick is expecting. Or maybe it's Patrick who's being vague. But whatever it is,

sounds like a good idea to me. Soon as Patrick shows up and they can work things out, our animal problems will be over and we can move full speed ahead on The Plan.” “I wouldn’t count on it,” I muttered.

“You haven’t changed your mind,” Michael said, looking ashen. At his tone, all the llamas stopped grazing and lifted their heads to stare at us. “We’ve got the license and the plane reservations and—”

“No, I haven’t changed my mind, and there's no threat to The Plan,” I said, raising my voice slightly to be heard over the humming of the llamas. “But I wouldn’t count on Montgomery Blake solving all our animal problems anytime soon.”

“Why not?”

“How long has Blake been in town?” “A few days—why?”

“Blake shows up, Lanahan goes AWOL, and the next thing we know, Dad's digging up bodies in the basement.”

“Bodies! Have they found more than one?”

“No, just the one,” I said. “But one's enough. I gather Chief Burke hasn’t announced whose body it is.”

After a moment, Michael's face turned from puzzlement to dismay.

“You think it's Patrick Lanahan's?”

“I’ve seen it, remember?” I said. “I had to drag Dr. Smoot into the basement. It's Lanahan all right.”

“Damn,” Michael said. “He seemed okay, Patrick. Your father's going to be pretty upset. He’d been spending a lot of time with Patrick, working on the zoo. And what happens to the zoo? It could take a while to sort that out.”

“Let's just hope Lanahan was organized enough to make a nice, straightforward, uncontestable will. One that spells out quite clearly what happens to the zoo and the animals.”

Michael burst out laughing.

“Patrick?” he said. “Organized? You really didn’t know him that well, did you?”

“So much for that hope.”

“Seriously, if he’d been at all organized, things would never have gotten so bad at the zoo to begin with, and we wouldn’t have all these animals underfoot.”

He was looking rather resentfully at the camels. I thought the camels were getting a bum rap—after all, so far they hadn’t been any more trouble than the llamas. But I didn’t expect him to blame the llamas, who were humming gently and wearing expressions of warm sympathy and heartfelt regret.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure Dad and the rest of the family can take care of the animals till we get back.”

Michael frowned slightly. No doubt it was dawning on him that if Dad was capable of trying to stash a baker's dozen of penguins in our basement while we were still in residence, there was no telling what lunacy he might commit if we left the house undefended for two weeks while the denizens of the Caerphilly Zoo were still homeless.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said.