The Anteater of Death (33 page)

“Oh, Lucy, you’re all right!”

Another rustle, this time from the lone California buck brush at the side of the trail.

Jeanette Gunn-Harrill stepped out, the pistol in her hand pointed straight at my heart. “You always were ridiculously fond of that anteater, Teddy.”

In my concern for Lucy, I had obeyed my emotions instead of my brain, not thinking the phone call through. Common sense should have reminded me that Dr. Kate always messaged me via beeper. As for the “static” on the line, that would have been easy enough to fake. Anyone could hiss.

Somehow I had to talk Jeanette down and stay alive until the solitary park ranger happened by on his nightly rounds. Struggling to stay calm, I said, “Don’t do anything you’ll be sorry for, Jeanette. Things aren’t as bad as they seem.” A foolish statement if there ever was one.

The gun didn’t waver. “You think I’m stupid? The only man I ever loved is dead and I killed him. That’s as bad as it gets. As for Barry…” She waved away the director’s memory as if he were an annoying gnat. “Grayson thought I was stupid. Maybe I was for a while, when I loved him, believed in him, allowed him to talk me into pulling out of the Trust. He said it was for the good of our marriage, that we’d buy our own place up in the City where we could concentrate on loving each other without my family making fun of us all the time. But the truth was that he’d grown sick of me and our special relationship. All he wanted was to get his hands on as much money as possible, then leave me for that puppet-waving bimbo.”

Kim. The puppet-waving bimbo. I’d noted the resemblance between her and Jeanette, with their tall, sturdy builds and long blond hair. As the waiter in that little San Francisco bistro had said, “From a distance, all blondes look alike.” Henry Gunn thought he’d seen Grayson dining there with Jeanette, but he’d really seen Kim.

Poor Grayson. Unlike the free-ranging Roarke, but like so many other faithless men, he preferred one physical type.

A laugh interrupted by a sob. “You want to know something funny, Teddy? I’m the one who suggested she take those stupid puppet-making classes! I mean, did you ever see those raggedy-ass things she made? They were an embarrassment to the zoo, a joke! But in the end, the joke was on me, wasn’t it? She and Grayson ran into each other up there. And then they…”

The light from the maintenance yard glimmered on a tear snaking down her cheek. “I wanted to stay in the City with him when he was doing all those interviews, but then I got one of my damned migraines and he sent me home. A couple of days later, when I was feeling better, I borrowed one of the family cars and drove back up to surprise him. That’s when…” She choked off, unable to speak.

“That’s when you saw them together.”

“He betrayed me!” she wailed. “I walked in and there they were, in the bed
we
shared, doing…doing what he was only supposed to do with me!”

Keep talking, Jeanette, keep talking
. “Did they see you?”

“They were too busy. That awful townhouse! It’s nothing but a brothel.”

I was certain Frieda would agree. But that was a different woman, a different broken heart. If I wanted to stay alive, I had to keep this one talking. “Did you confront Grayson about Kim?”

A spiteful smile. “Of course, just before I shot him. He told me that if I loved him, I’d understand, that Kim was his last chance for a normal life!”

The rage in her voice convinced me to change the subject. “How did Barry know…?” How best to say
that you murdered your husband
.

“He saw me slip away from the administration building that night, right after I came back from…from doing what I did. I’d thrown that silly anteater costume on the pile with the others, but he didn’t figure out what it meant until the next day, after…” Her eyes welled again.

“He was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?”

“The man had no morals. No one’s going to miss him. Did you know that only eight people showed up for his funeral?” She laughed through the tears raining down her face. “At least Grayson drew a nice crowd. How many people were there? Fifty? Seventy-five?”

Where was that park ranger?

“I loved him, Teddy. I
loved
him!”

Horribly enough, I believed her. Her grief was real. So real that for too long it had blinded me to the fact that Grayson hadn’t been anything like an anglerfish at all, someone so attached to his woman that he’d lost his individuality. He was more like a Mexican gray wolf, faithful
most
of the time, as long as it served his purposes. Godiva’s terrible attack, first on Hazel and then on Cisco, had brought that realization home.

“You shoved Kim off that curb in Carmel, didn’t you?”

More laughter. “Puppet Girl had it coming. Lucky for her that SUV had good brakes. Otherwise, she’d be road kill.”

When Jeanette’s attempt at killing her rival failed, she turned on her own mate. Just like Godiva. “How did you know Zorah had a gun in her desk?”

“Just lucky, I guess. I’d already made up my mind to kill him, but I was going to use this one…” I tried not to flinch when she waved it at me. From this angle, the thing looked like a cannon. “It’s one of old Edwin’s. You’ve probably seen it hanging in the drawing room a million times. Aster Edwina keeps the collection in perfect working order.”

“But you didn’t use it. You used Zorah’s.”

She looked at her great-great grandfather’s gun like she’d never seen it before. “Oh. Right. A few days before…before I did it, I was down at the zoo, hoping to catch Kim alone. I had this gun in my handbag, and I was going to…You know what I was going to do. Anyway, I couldn’t find her in the auditorium. When I looked for her in the administration building, there was Zorah, acting peculiar about something in her desk. She got a call about some animal and left, so I looked in the drawer and there it was. She all but gave me that gun!”

As distraught over Grayson’s unfaithfulness as Jeanette had been, she had recognized the advantage of using a weapon that couldn’t be traced to her. I remained confused about one thing, though. “The night of the fund-raiser, you faked your migraine and left, but you returned later. How? No one saw your car.”

“That’s because I didn’t drive. You’ve been up to the castle often enough to know how isolated it is up there, especially at night. An elephant could stomp around outside and nobody would notice. I slipped out the back, where there’s never anyone around after dark, took the short cut through the vineyard, and entered the zoo through the employees’ entrance. And before you ask, yes, I know all the lock combinations. You guys should change them more regularly. Otherwise some disgruntled employee could get in and do some damage.”

Here she was, about to blow my brains out, but she could still spare a thought for the zoo’s welfare. What dedication.

“After getting in, I put on the extra anteater suit I’d ordered—yeah, I was the one who ordered them—and waited in the shadows until Grayson went to the little boy’s room. When he came out, I lifted up the mask and told him I had something to show him over by the anteater’s enclosure. The lions were roaring that night, making so much noise that I knew no one would hear…Grayson…He…” She gulped. “He never suspected a thing.”

Like everyone else, he had mistaken her passivity for stupidity.

“I didn’t know…I didn’t know shooting him would hurt so much!”

Hurt
who
so much? Her? Or Grayson?

“Oh, Teddy, he made the most horrible noise! And he didn’t die right away. He…He tried to run away, but I got in front of him and was going to shoot him again, to put him out of his misery like you do a badly injured animal, but he climbed over the enclosure fence. I guess he thought he’d be safer with Lucy than with me. Or maybe he thought he could hide down there. When he hit the moat he went under the water for a minute, and I thought he was finally dead, but then he crawled out and…” Her sobs were horrible to hear.

Something occurred to me. Here I was, hoping to stall Jeanette until the night park ranger came by to rescue me. But under ordinary conditions, the rangers weren’t armed, and Jeanette might shoot him, too. If I wanted to stay alive without getting someone else killed in the process, I’d have to help myself.

But how? Running and hiding was out of the question, because other than the brushy area directly behind her, Tropics Trail stretched straight and broad for approximately twenty yards in both directions. The Trail might be lined with palms, but until it hooked around to the west for the spectacled bear exhibit, it contained no ground foliage dense enough to hide in. As for rushing Jeanette, she stood a good ten feet away from me. I’d be dead before covering half that distance.

Her next words convinced me I had little time left. “Too bad you had to be so nosy, Teddy. And so stubborn. I hoped that after I hit you over the head that night down by the harbor you might back off, but you didn’t. Now I have to do what I need to do.” Her voice, once jittery with adrenaline, flattened to a dull resolve. Animals displayed this behavior just before they attacked.

I tried one last appeal. “You don’t have to kill me, not really. What Grayson did, cheating on you when you loved him so much, a jury will consider that a crime of passion.”
But not Barry’s murder, they won’t.

She looked at me with distain. “You always did underestimate me, even in Monopoly. I am so tired of people—especially
you
—thinking I’m stupid.” She leveled the pistol and squinted one eye.

I raised my hands and tried to act panicked—not difficult, given the circumstances. “Oh, God, Jeanette! Please don’t shoot me! I swear I won’t tell anyone!”

Then, hoping that for at least a second she’d pay more attention to my words than my actions, I spun on my heel and—practice making perfect—vaulted cleanly over the fence into the anteater’s moat.

As I splashed down, I heard a gunshot and the bee-whine of a bullet flying past. Knowing there was nothing else I could do, I dove again beneath the water’s surface and stroked hard for the other side. This moat wasn’t as deep and nowhere near as wide as the bears’, but by the time I reached the bank, two bullets had penetrated the water, missing me by scant inches. My plan was to head for the thicket by the banana tree, and after that—if Lucy let me—use the broad-leafed cover to hide in while I crept toward the holding pen, through it, and out the pen’s rear gate. Once I reached the narrow trail used by the keepers, heavy brush would cover me all the way to the administration building, where I would barricade myself in the windowless employees’ lounge and phone for help.

But as I sloshed ashore on the other side of the moat, Lucy rushed to meet me, and the growl that issued from her throat wasn’t friendly. Enraged at this intrusion, she reared to her full height, long talons flashing. Would she do to me what she had done to Grayson’s body? With despair I realized I might not survive long enough to put the rest of my plan into action.

To gain time, I said in the cooing tone I normally used with her, “Does my Lucy want a
banana
?”

The growl faded into a querulous rumble. The red glow of anger in her eyes softened.

“Banana
, Lucy!
Banana!
”

After taking a half-hearted swipe at me, she dropped to all fours. When I repeated the magic word, she ducked her head and flicked out her blue tongue.

“Snort?”

Grateful tears cleared the moat water out of my eyes. “Yes, Lucy
loooves
banana!” One baby step at a time, keeping my eyes on those horrible talons, I backed us both into the shadowy protection of the banana tree thicket where bullets couldn’t find either of us. She followed closely, rumbling her greed.

Although it seemed like an eternity, only seconds had passed since I’d jumped into the moat. Jeanette, apparently recovered from her shock that I would dive into what looked like certain death, snapped off a couple more rounds. When they missed, she howled in fury. No stranger to the zoo, she knew that if I reached the back trail, her chances of catching me in its deep undergrowth weren’t good.

So she did exactly what I’d done. Emboldened by my safe passage across the anteater’s enclosure, she vaulted over the fence.

When she splashed down in the moat, Lucy swung her head around.

I reached the holding pen. Put my hand on the gate. Started working the combination lock. Saw the fire extinguisher in the corner. The shovel. The rake.

I was no longer weaponless.

Behind me, the anteater made threatening noises. I wasn’t safe yet, so I kept talking, kept maneuvering the lock. “
Banana
for Lucy. Soft, mushy
banana
.”

The last tumbler fell into place. The lock opened.

Jeanette screamed.

Lucy stretched to full height again, talons slashing. This time, Jeanette was the object of her ire. Lucy slashed at her hand, knocking the gun into the foliage.

“Run back to the moat!” I screamed. “She hates water!” Too late. Talons sliced through the air again. Connected.

With little more than a sigh, Jeanette went down.

It could have ended right there. For a moment, a very brief moment, I was tempted to escape through the holding pen, leaving Jeanette to Lucy’s mercies. After all, hadn’t she killed two people and tried to kill me? Instead, I dashed into the holding pen, grabbed the rake, and without caring for my own safety, rushed to Jeanette’s side. When I reached her, I saw blood seeping through her shredded blouse. The anteater towered over her, talons flexing.

I gave Lucy a poke with the rake. “No!”

Those baleful eyes turned toward me again. A hiss.

“I said, ‘
No
!’”

She looked toward the holding pen, then at me. Her blue tongue flickered.

“
Squeak
?”

Lucy really wanted that banana.

Keeping an eye on the anteater, I grabbed Jeanette by the foot and dragged her into the safety of the pen. As Lucy hissed her frustration, I slammed the gate and screamed for help, hoping the ranger was somewhere nearby.