Guarded (21 page)

Closing the door behind her, Dev waited to see where she’d sit. His bedroom was twice the size of hers. It had a small round table with two leather-padded desk chairs near the sliding glass door. There was of course, his king-size bed, which she promptly walked straight past to get to the chairs.

Damn shame.

While she sat down, he opened the slider a crack to let some fresh air flow. The sound of ocean waves rolling against the shore and the scent of the cool, salty night air washed through the room.

Dev clicked on the small lantern-style lamp on the table and turned off the overhead lighting, reducing the glare in the room. He hadn’t done it for the romantic effect, but Shells, bathed in the combination of moonlight and the soft light of the lamp, was definitely erotic.

He claimed the chair across the table from her and waited.

Shelley bent her head sideways, revealing her long swanlike neck.

Swanlike neck? Since when do necks turn me on?

She smiled at him.

Oh, now.

The combination of her innocently seductive smile and her silky throat did a number of things to his cock, not the least of which was making it go rock hard.

“So.” He cleared his throat. “Did you work on your notes this afternoon? Think of anything new?”

“I was kind of distracted helping Jules. But I did think of something just now.” She set the pad she’d brought into the room on the table and pushed it toward him. “While writing down what I’d seen at the zoo, it hit me. Yesterday, Cristos told you that Miah ate one of her cubs. That was completely untrue. Miah never harmed a single one of her cubs.”

“You sound pretty certain.” He searched the table for his own notepad before realizing he had left it and the pen on his nightstand. He crossed the room, collected them and the wine bottle and glasses, then sat back down. “How can you be so sure?”

“Do you normally keep wineglasses in your bedroom?” Shelley stared pointedly at the stemware, red brows arched.

“Not really. I brought up a glass and the bottle tonight before remembering I’d left one in here from a few nights ago. I fell asleep before I had a drink.” When she continued to stare at him with a dubious expression, he tapped on her yellow college-ruled paper with his pen. “You were telling me you were certain Miah didn’t eat her young.”

Shelley’s brow relaxed. “Right. Well, Miah’s a tiger, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she’s a tiger, but I don’t see how that explains anything.”

“Lying is a human condition,” Shelley said, eyeing the wine bottle. He couldn’t tell if she wanted some or wanted it to go away. Curious, he pushed it closer to her. Shelley paused for three heartbeats, lifted the bottle, and poured herself a glass. Taking a hearty sip, she grinned. “Heaven.”

“I thought you didn’t drink?”

“Not as a rule. But my migraine’s gone and after today . . . Well, a good wine is worth a slight dulling of animal-empath senses from time to time.” She grinned and sipped again.

Dev picked up his own glass and drank. “You were saying about tigers?’

“Huh?” Shelley blinked then nodded. “Lying is a human condition. People lie to each other all the time. They lie to themselves more. Animals do not. When a dog steals food off the kitchen table, it might cower and hide from its owner, but it doesn’t deny the theft. And the monkeys on St. Kitts in the Caribbean might take your beer and drink it, but they don’t pretend they’re not drunk. It’s only humans who lie.”

She stared at him earnestly; her wide guileless blue eyes looked at him imploringly. And he wanted to follow her train of thought but hadn’t made the connection yet. “So some people lie.”

“Not some.
All
people lie. Animals do not.” Shelley took another mouthful of wine and said, “Animals are incapable of telling a lie. They see the world for what it is, be it dangerous, beautiful, or deadly. And when they communicate with me, they wing images into my mind. Sometimes I have to figure out what they mean because an animal cannot reference what it has never seen. Still, what they tell me or show me through their mental pictures can only be the truth.”

“Okay, some humans lie. Not
all
, but we’ll save that discussion for later.” Dev held up his hand when Shelley opened her mouth, presumably to argue. “You mentioned that Cristos was wrong about Miah killing her first litter. Why do you believe that?”

“Because I asked Miah about it when I first heard the rumors,” Shelley said, as if that alone would satisfy his curiosity.

“And?”

Shelley took a swig of wine, downing half the glass. She set the stemware back on the table. “When I asked her about the first cub, her memories were fuzzy, which was really odd. Tigers have better memories than humans. She should have remembered everything clearly, but she didn’t. The images she sent were scattered and blurry, like looking at an old photograph through a dirty pane of glass.

“I think she was drugged. I can’t prove it, unfortunately. But it makes the most sense. If she were drugged, even for sedation purposes, her memory could be impaired. Hazy. Plus, this happened at night. Dr. Kessler wouldn’t have done anything with her in the middle of the night. Not without documenting it somewhere. His memory has holes, but he wasn’t nearly as confused then as he is today. I told you he hired me in part to help at the zoo? Well, I think he suspected something was wrong but didn’t trust his memory.”

Interesting.
Dev jotted down notes about the vet and the tiger. “Have you noticed any change in the animals since you’ve been in Elkridge?”

“Yeah.” Shelley gave him a small smile. “It’s been better. I’ve been keeping a closer eye, not just on Miah but on all the animals in the zoo. And then there’s Reyna.”

“The zoo owner’s daughter?”

“According to the town gossip, before her mother died last year, Reyna hadn’t set foot in the zoo in two years. Now she’s there all the time, but makes no effort to hide her hatred of the zoo or the town.”

“Really?” Dev jotted that down on his notepad.

“Yep. Rumor mill claims she ran off to New York right out of high school. Left Payne Munro behind so she could be an actress or something. Anyway, she returned for her mother’s funeral last year. Eddy talked her into staying in town. Reyna took back up with Payne—except for those few days when he’d asked me out.

“Folks say that Eddy built the zoo for his wife. Those animals meant more to her than her own children.”

“Nice.” Dev penned that note too. “So what—Eddy just stopped caring for his wife’s animals after she died?”

Shelley frowned, setting the glass down. “No, the way I heard it, he fell apart. They say he
was
a recovering alcoholic. When a drunk driver killed his wife, Eddy fell off the wagon into a fifth of whiskey. He hasn’t come out of the bottle yet.”

So would that drive the man to slowly get rid of his wife’s animals one by one? Could be motive. Or it could potentially clear him if he were simply too drunk to commit the crimes.

Dev sipped his wine and noted his questions on his pad. He glanced up to find Shelley trying to read his paper upside down.

“Honestly, I don’t think Eddy could do anything to the animals, not intentionally,” she said. “When Cristos left the tortoise cage partially open and one got its head wedged in the chain-link fence, Eddy cried in relief when—after I put eight stitches in the reptile’s neck—I told him the tortoise would be okay.”

“I won’t take him off my list yet, but I will move him to the bottom of the list of probable suspects.” Dev put a star next to Eddy’s name. “Do you think Cristos left the gate open intentionally?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think he cares enough about the zoo to want to harm the animals. But I could see him trying to sell them. He’s always looking for an easy paycheck. Since I’ve known him, he’s had six jobs, lost every one, opened a failed e-Bay store to sell zoo merchandise, and even tried to start a zoo-friend hotline.”

Dev paused in his note-taking and glanced up. “Zoo-friend hotline?”

“For the incredibly cheap price of $29.95, you too can have Miah the tiger call your son or daughter and wish them a happy birthday in tiger-ese.” She rolled her eyes. “He spent God knows how much money on advertising and didn’t make ten dollars.”

“How would you know what the tiger was saying in tiger-ese?” Dev asked, then amended. “Okay, you would know, but how would the rest of us know?”

“Ding, ding, ding. People in town asked the same question. And he didn’t even bother to use a real tiger voice. The one person who called said it was obviously Cristos on the other end.”

Dev shook his head and reviewed his notes. “Back to Reyna. What else can you tell me about her?”

“Not much. She’s into shoes, Deputy Munro, and hates the zoo, the town, and me in equal measure.”

“Would you say she hates the zoo enough to make the animals disappear?”

Shells tapped her chin with her finger. She had the most adorable little dimple there. The kind that begged to be licked.

“No, that would require Reyna to get her hands dirty,” Shelley said, unaware he’d been fantasizing about using his tongue to trace the indent in her chin. Dev shifted slightly in his seat to hide his growing erection.

“Or getting someone else to do it. Since she’s finally wrangled an engagement ring out of Deputy Munro, I don’t see her risking her relationship on a few tigers.”

Dev glanced at his notes again. So far they’d discussed the owner, his children, and the deputy. “What about the other staff members at the zoo? Tomás, for instance.”

Shelley went very still. Slowly, she said, “Tomás would never hurt Miah or her cubs. I know it looked like he was on Reyna’s side, but he’s got his hands full with Beau. Nope, he couldn’t have had anything to do with what’s wrong in zooville.”

“Are you sure? Selling tigers on the black market could definitely help him financially. Having kids is expensive.”

Shells shook her head vehemently. “Nope. You’re wrong. It’s not Tomás. He was the one who alerted me to the situation at the zoo in the first place. My first day there, he showed me into the reptile house so I could see how overcrowded it was. He also told me about his suspicions that Miah had been drugged around the time her first cub died.”

“Tomás told
you
? Why didn’t he go to Dr. Kessler or the USDA himself? Why did he wait for you to do something?” Dev set his pen on the pad and folded his hands.

Shelley’s pink tongue peeked out between her teeth and moistened her lower lip. “He couldn’t. He told the first person he trusted what he thought was happening. Me. Tomás didn’t go to the authorities, because he didn’t want to risk losing his job. He’s trying to gain legal custody of Beau.”

“You told me that.” And wasn’t that a fucked story. Man’s trying to adopt his own kid. “Why should that stop him from getting custody?”

“Tomás is afraid if he doesn’t do what Reyna says, she’ll have him fired. She’s already had the former zoo manager and two other caretakers booted in the past five months. If he loses his job, he could lose his petition to gain custody of Beau. So you can see why he wouldn’t want to risk it.”

Dev picked his pen back up. “Understood. As long as he has nothing to do with the missing animals, I see no reason to make trouble for him or Beau. The kid seemed sweet.”

“He is.” She nodded. “Thank you, Dev. Now about the zoo. Most of the people in the town barely go there anymore. So I can’t think of anyone else who would come into contact with the animals on a regular basis. If you want to know about the animals, though, I can tell you lots.”

Sure, why not.
“Okay, start with the tigress. What did Miah tell you about her cubs?”

“I thought I was never going to get to tell you.” Shelley’s entire face lit. “She showed me pictures of her looking at the cubs. I think she heard a noise because she stared at the front door of the tiger house before getting up to investigate. She stepped outside and she jolted. Like something struck her in the neck or the side. She went back to sit with her cubs, all
five
of them. The smallest, Shanti, was hungry and wanted to nurse again. She cleaned him as he fed while his brothers and sisters slept. When he’d finished, she tried to stand but nearly fell on her cubs. The room spun and went dark. She kept trying to lift her lids, but all I saw were hazy shadows. Ooh, right before she fell, she pawed at her nose like she smelled something.”

“Can’t you identify the scent?”

“No, only sights translate to my head. Think Charlie Chaplin and silent movies.” She pretended to stab an invisible dinner roll with her pen and make it dance.

Dev grinned at her impression of the classic Chaplin move. “Go on. So you can’t hear or smell what the animals do. Only see what they see.” He paused then asked, “Does that mean you only see the images in black and white?”

She nodded. “If those are the only colors the animals see, then yes. Lucy sees three colors—black, white, and red. But tigers can also see green, blue, and sometimes red—when Miah sends me a mental picture, it’s pretty vivid.”

“What happened next?” Dev glanced to see what he’d last jotted down. “You said the room started to spin and get dark.”

“Right,” she said, tapping that dimple on her chin again. “The next thing Miah saw was sunlight. Shanti was gone and so was Anna, one of the girls. Miah searched all over the house, then the yard. She saw Cristos and Eddy coming up the trail and Tomás down by the monkey house. And . . . that’s it.”

“You’re sure. She didn’t see who came into the tiger house and stole her cubs?” Dev asked, penning the last of the notes. When Shelley didn’t answer him, he glanced up.

“Please tell me you believe me. I can’t exactly go to Deputy Munro with this. Everyone in town agrees I’m gifted with animals, but I don’t think they’d be quite so keen on me if they knew the animals could actually communicate with me.” Her eyes were warm and her cheeks flushed. A brilliant smile seemed to light her from within. “I mean, people do lots of things in front of their pets, like hide money and jewelry, meet with illicit lovers, surf porn.”

“Whoa, the animals tell you all that at the clinic?”