The Anteater of Death (3 page)

“Since the San Sebastian County Animal Shelter doesn’t have suitable quarters for a giant anteater, we’ll have to leave her here until…Well, until the zoo makes up its mind.”

Which meant that the anteater’s ultimate fate lay in Barry Fields’ insensitive hands.

Unless I could prove Grayson was responsible for his own demise, Lucy was doomed.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

About an hour later, the sheriff finished interviewing everyone and released us. The earthly remains of Grayson Harrill were taken away to wherever earthly remains go, and soon afterward the crime scene techs departed.

Lucy remained distraught. Despite my efforts to soothe her, she paced back and forth along the holding pen fence, hissing like a snake. She wanted back into her big enclosure, but on the zoo director’s orders she stayed off-exhibit. Perhaps permanently.

Having done all I could for her, I hopped into my electric zoo cart and continued my rounds. Next stop was Monkey Mania, the quarter-acre open-air exhibit where fifteen squirrel monkeys mingled freely with zoo visitors. I’d fed the monkeys first thing in the morning, but because of the unfortunate event in Lucy’s enclosure, was late cleaning out their night quarters, a series of room-sized cages hidden amid the brush behind the exhibit itself. As I hosed down the last cage, I heard an all-too-familiar voice.

“Teddy, I need to talk to you!” My mother.

I froze, hoping she wouldn’t see me. With everything that had happened, I wasn’t ready to deal with her.

“Did you hear me, Theodora? I know you’re in there because I can see that red hair of yours through the leaves!”

So much for avoiding her. I turned off the hose and waded through the troop of monkeys that had assembled outside the night quarters door, hoping for an extra handout.

“Sorry, guys, no more Monkey Chow until five.”

Marlon, the big Alpha male—if a two-pound monkey can be said to be big—snuck his hand into my pocket hoping to find a tasty worm. When his hand came up empty, he shrieked at me in outrage.

“Told you so, Marlon. Now go entertain the kiddies.”

For once Marlon did as he was told and led his troop away from the cages and onto the exhibit’s gravel path. A tour group, noisy third-graders bussed up from Monterey, thirty miles south, cheered as the monkeys gamboled among them for several yards before taking to the trees. Having struck out with me, the monkeys began foraging, looking for leaves, beetles, and small birds. An omnivorous species, they weren’t fussy.

“Theodora! I’m waiting!”

“Coming,” I muttered, as I emerged from the brush.

Today Caroline Piper Bentley Mallory Huffgraf Petersen, looking at least a decade younger than her fifty-two years, was dressed in a fuchsia Lanvin dress offset by a silver Fendi handbag and fuchsia-and-white polka dot Ghesquiere pumps, an outfit hilariously out of place in a zoo. Since she usually dressed appropriately, the outfit confused me until I remembered that one of her favorite charities, the San Sebastian County Library Guild, had been slated to hold its monthly luncheon today. Why was she here, not there?

She wrinkled her nose. “You stink, Teddy.”

“Taking care of monkeys will do that to you.”

As if to lead me away from my life of grime, she took me by the arm, then immediately let go as if something from the scorpion exhibit had stung her. “What in the world?”

“One of the monkeys crapped on me before I could move out of the way.”

With a cry of distaste, she opened her purse, hauled out some tissues and wiped a brown spot off her hand. “You don’t have to live like this. Now that one of these nasty creatures has killed someone, you need to resign immediately. In fact, I want you to come home with me now.”

Normally she behaved as if we were pals, not mother and daughter, but today she’d slipped back into the over-protective mother who’d driven me crazy throughout my teens. Ignoring her demands, I started up the winding pathway toward the exit, giving her the alternative to stay behind with my furry friends or follow me.

She chose the latter. “Didn’t you hear me? If you really want to work, God knows you don’t have to, we can find you another job in…”

“Please don’t tell me you skipped your luncheon to start that again.”

My job at the zoo had been an ongoing source of dissension ever since I’d left my teaching job in San Francisco. No compromise was possible. She didn’t like the idea of a Bentley cleaning up after anyone, especially monkeys. I didn’t like the idea of being trapped indoors all day with homo sapiens. Not that I have anything against homo sapiens.

Mother gave her hand a final flick with the tissue and handed it back to me instead of tossing it on the path. At least her work on the Zoo Guild, another of her organizations, had taught her that much.

“Since you ask, dear, Jeanette Gunn-Harrill was supposed to be our speaker today, but when we learned what happened to poor Grayson last night, we decided on a quick meeting to discuss what we could do for her. We wound up ordering flowers from La Jolie Jardiniere. Not lilies, too clichéd, but something sleek and comforting.”

She waited for me to say, “That’s nice.” So I did.

“Look, I know you love your job, but I’m afraid you’ll get hurt. You’re my only child, for heaven’s sake!”

One of the squirrel monkeys scampered across the walkway in front of us, carrying her baby on her back. Catching sight of a pink bead on her metal neckband, I identified her as Zsa Zsa, a first-time mom. Because first-borns rarely survive in the wild, their inexperienced mothers frequently being unable to cope, I’d prepared myself to hand-raise the baby. My caution proved unnecessary. Zsa Zsa loved her baby and if she had a flaw as a parent, it was in being over-protective. Gee, who did she remind me of?

“Mother, I’m perfectly safe here.”

“I’m sure that’s what Grayson thought before the anteater bit him. And don’t call me ‘Mother.’ It’s too age-specific. You know I prefer ‘Caro.’”

“Anteaters have no teeth,
Caro
. She clawed him.”

“Horrible!” Her hair, makeup and manicure were flawless; only the quiver of her collagened lower lip marred the perfection. That, and the slight pinky-orange tint her skin had taken on since she’d begun the La Jolla Strawberry/Carrot Diet a month earlier.

“It’s time for you to rejoin the real world, Theodora, maybe go back to teaching.”

Real world? This, from a woman who at a size three thought she was too fat?

I looked around at the playful monkeys, listened to their bird-like calls blending with the nearby kookaburra’s cackles and the roar of the snow leopard six exhibits over. On the soft westerly breeze I could smell the Pacific, that liquid Eden populated by dolphins, whales and otters. If this wasn’t the real world, I didn’t know what was.

“I hated teaching. Besides, my teaching certificate has expired.”

“You don’t have to teach. You can…” Caro had never worked a day in her life, so her career advice tended to lack substance. “You can open a boutique.”

“I’m not interested in clothes.

“How about an art gallery? I’ll front the money.”

“Gunn Landing already has more galleries than the tourist trade can support.”

“Go back to school! Study law or something.”

“Living with Michael soured me on the law.” I wouldn’t wish my ex-husband’s hours on my worst enemy. Not even him.

“How about medicine? You’re smart. You could be a doctor.”

The urge to laugh returned. I had never been a good student, frequently nodding off from sheer boredom, ditching classes to ride my horses, guessing my way through tests. I’d achieved my bachelor’s in biology and afterwards, my teaching credentials, by the skin of my teeth, so the idea of attempting medical school, even if one would accept me, was beyond ludicrous. All I wanted was to be outside in the sun and the rain and the fog and whatever the Central Coast climate threw at me. I especially wanted to be outside with animals. Like my Lucy.

Which reminded me of something that had been bothering me. “You were at the Zoo Guild fund-raiser last night. Wasn’t Jeanette there, too?”

Caro stopped, a strange look on her face. “Of course she was, at least that’s what I heard. They say she left early, without Grayson.”

“What do you mean, ‘they say’? You don’t know for sure?”

“I wasn’t at the funder. Something came up.”

My mother hadn’t attended the fund-raiser? Civic-minded to a fault, she never missed any Guild function. For now I let it pass. “You’d think that when Jeanette noticed her husband didn’t make it back home, she would have called the police. Or did she? The sheriff didn’t say anything like that.”

As my mother stood there, one of the monkeys, an adolescent male named DiNiro, ran across her foot in pursuit of a dragonfly. She jerked her foot back as if the monkey were a snake.

“Ugh. Does it have fleas?”

“Probably. Did Jeanette and Grayson have a fight or something?”

“Don’t be silly. Those two never fought.”

She resumed walking toward the exit, eager to escape the free-range wildlife and return to the domain of human beings. Two more monkeys ran by, giving her a wide berth.

I hurried after her. “Jeanette never went anywhere without Grayson, so why’d she leave early? And later, how could she possibly not notice he wasn’t in bed with her? They do sleep in the same bed, don’t they?”

“I never asked.” As we reached the exhibit gates, where another group of school children waited for their turn to walk among the monkeys, she halted again. “Why are you so interested in Jeanette’s comings and goings? You went to school together, but you’ve never had two minutes to spare for her since then.”

“Just curious, that’s all.”

She put her hand up, keeping me from opening the door and ushering her out of the exhibit. “Teddy, you’re not a curious person now, and you weren’t a curious child. You never cared for anything other than your horses or going out on some boat. In fact, you were so uncurious that I used to worry about you.”

Used to? “Caro…”

“Oh, all right. I heard that halfway through the funder, Jeanette came down with one of those awful migraines of hers, so she left. Once she arrived home, she took enough medication to zonk her out for the duration. When the police showed up this morning she hadn’t come around yet, and they had the devil of a time waking her. My maid heard that from her maid, you understand. I wasn’t snooping or anything.”

“Not you.” I tried not to smile. “But if Jeanette was ill, why didn’t Grayson leave with her, which is what he’d normally do? And how’d he get home? Walk? It’s a half-mile uphill from here to Gunn Castle, and I don’t remember him being all that fond of exercise.”

“Teddy, I have no idea why he stayed on alone at the party. And as far as walking home goes, he wasn’t
that
exercise-averse. Heavens, I could walk the distance in my Ghesquières!” She gave a smug glance at her pretty feet. “If the man was too lazy, well, he and Jeanette had plenty of friends at the funder, people like us who live in Old Town. They’d have to drive right by the castle on their way home, so maybe they dropped him off.”

“You live in Old Town. I live on the
Merilee
.”

She sniffed. “That ratty old boat’s not your home. It’s…It’s…It’s a place you’re staying until you figure out what to do with your life. If you moved in with me, you could join the guilds, we could throw parties, take some cruises, and even double date! Wouldn’t that be fun? I could take you to my cosmetic surgeon, too. I know Dr. Markgraffe would do a wonderful job on your nose. He’s offering a Mother/Daughter Special this month, twenty-five percent off. While we’re recovering, we could go hide out in some secluded spa, get seaweed wraps and high colonics.”

I shuddered, unable to decide which sounded more unpleasant: cosmetic surgery, high colonics, or double-dating with my mother.

Fortunately, the children lined up at the gate began making enough noise to deflect my mother’s latest attempt to lure me away from my job. The noise increased as one of the zoo’s many volunteers walked the line, checking the children for any contraband the monkeys might steal. Candy, cell phones, guns. Searches completed, two volunteers escorted them into the enclosure to ensure that they didn’t pull the monkeys’ tails and to keep the monkeys from doing worse to them.

Stepping aside to let the children flow around her, Caro switched tactics. “I miss your company. Why don’t you come up to the house for dinner tonight? When I was shopping in Carmel yesterday I picked up a cute Donna Karan I know you’ll love and another one for myself in a different color. We’ll look like sisters!”

I didn’t want to look like my mother’s sister, but I knew she wouldn’t rest until she’d seen the Donna Karan on both our backs. I gave it a try, though. “Sorry. I need to sand the
Merilee
’s deck.”

“Not at night you don’t.” She hauled another tissue out of her handbag, and with that clean barrier between her hand and my dirty arm, gave me a pat. “Seven o’clock. Look nice.” Before I could come up with a better excuse she hurried out the gate.

Look nice.

It sounded like she’d found yet another eligible male for me.

***

The rest of the day passed without incident. Satisfied that I’d done everything needed to ensure my charges’ welfare, I parked the zoo cart near the employees’ entrance, clocked out, and climbed into my battered Nissan pickup. Then I drove home, a five-mile commute west between soft green hills that slowly leveled as they rolled down to the Pacific.

Home for me is a refitted 1979 thirty-four foot CHB trawler moored at Slip No. 34 in Gunn Landing Harbor. Living up the hill with Caro in Old Town was out of the question, but the Landing offered no affordable rentals. No rentals at all, actually, except for a few closet-sized fishermen’s cottages and some over-the-garage flats occupied by the same tenants who had lived in them for years.

People don’t move around much in the Landing. Once they find a place, they dig in, and for good reason.