The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (6 page)

“Autistic kids are a bunch of
monkeys
?” I didn’t shout, only because Natasha had latched onto my shoulder. She was pushing down on it, like she could hold my voice down by pressing on my body.

She leaned close to my ear, but before I could get on her case about inappropriate sexuality, she murmured, “You
do
call
her
the Orangutan Lady.”
Touché Tash, touché.

“I don’t know much about autism, but your analogy sounds pretty inaccurate to me.” I snatched a slice of pizza too soon and scalded my fingers, then crammed it in my mouth—beef, pork, and all—and burned my tongue.

“No . . . of course not . . . but they . . . he . . .
this particular
hypothetical autistic child needs constant supervision. Who better than researchers? You’re behavior specialists. You spend all
day
supervising creatu—”

“Stop.” Lance had engaged in a similar murder of his fingertips, but he stopped short of killing his taste buds. “Pull back. Are there classes this couple could take to . . . prepare to make such a decision, maybe with a more realistic understanding of the situation?”

A Grinch-worthy smile blossomed on Merry’s face. “Hypothetically,” she said, “they already have. You have my business card. Now if you’ll excuse me, I should meet William and his
current
foster mother at the hospital.” She pushed past Lance and left without eating any of the pizza, suddenly far less interested in talking to us.

Lance tried to continue the conversation in her absence, but I shut him down. “Later. I’m still completely overwhelmed, and I’m not thinking rationally.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m probably not either.”

I brooded over his words on and off for the next several hours. Was he experiencing the same things I was, or exactly the opposite?

We hid out longer than anyone else, and by the time the Marine opened as usual at eleven, most of the press had given up trying to get a glimpse of Natasha and me, but one persistent Columbus reporter met the three of us sneaking out the back. He had a camera, but no video recorder. Lance shuttled Natasha to the truck. I gave a short statement and let him take a single picture of me so he would go away quickly.

Stan Oeschle’s granddaughter had already been identified from today’s news coverage, but I refused to discuss her presence with this man. She was too easily recognized in this part of the state. There was another reporter I
would
talk to, but he wasn’t hanging around. He knew how to find me later, and he doubtless already had his photos.

“Where to?” Lance asked.

My stomach rumbled a complaint about a late breakfast of meat pizza and soda. “Someplace to get me antacids.”

Ten minutes and one drugstore visit later, Lance dropped Natasha and me off at Ironweed University and drove toward the primate sanctuary himself. I needed to finish and print my syllabi before the semester started, not to mention get them turned in for copying. Lance needed the same things, but he planned to wing it when classes started next Tuesday.

Tasha could have opted to spend time with friends, but by the way she alternately yawned every few minutes and flinched away from small noises, I suspected she preferred to curl up on the couch in the department secretary’s office and sleep nestled in the certainty of being watched and safe. She could have crashed in my office, but it had been Art’s, and the sofa in
there
was legendary. The secretary rushed to greet us as we stepped out of the elevator in the Biological Sciences building. “I saw you on the
news
, and I was so
worried
!”

“Thanks, Travis,” I greeted him as Natasha made straight for his couch. “We’re doing fine.”

“What about the little boy? How did you ever find him?”

“I think he’ll be fine, too.”
If his social worker doesn’t get him killed from ineptitude.
“How are you settling in here?”

“One day at a time,” he said. “One
long
day at a time.” He patted my arm as he moved away toward his office.

Travis was the new secretary. The old one had retired in the wake of Art’s death. Travis was, like Lance and me, still getting used to the department. We shared regular stories of bewilderment about policies and the locations of things. Lance and I had always taught part time at Ironweed U, but our one class each per academic year was an upper-level course taught out at the primate sanctuary. The school didn’t even maintain office space for us.

When Art was murdered in June, only Lance and I could teach the classes his students had already registered for at the end of spring term. Cancelling them would have created havoc. Lance and I had been cordially invited to fill the gap. In other words, the department chair called us up and told us our new schedule in the middle of July.

I hated the man, but we needed the money. We didn’t argue. Where Natasha’s name had largely been shielded from the news of the pornography ring, the sanctuary’s had not. A few pictures of our monkeys in lewd shots had been leaked. We lost funders almost daily for the month of June, and when things stabilized in July, we had to make some hard decisions. We already only employed three people besides Lance and myself. Everybody else was a volunteer. We needed to cut one salary. Rather than let go any of the hands we desperately needed, I fired myself.

For the present, I was formally a volunteer. It made no practical difference to day-to-day operations. Lance and I were both still in charge. But it was a slice to our personal finances, and those university courses were something of a godsend.

And there was something else. I didn’t think the sanctuary would ever recover to the point of being able to pay me again. Lance and I needed to
keep
the added income. Ironweed U was advertising Art’s position for the following fall. Once someone was hired to replace him, the need for part-time faculty to teach his courses would evaporate. If the wrong person got hired, someone with a different pet project, the university’s desire to fund the sanctuary might also evaporate, and besides Stan Oeschle and his personal fortune, Ironweed U was our largest source of money.

The solution seemed simple to me. I loved to teach. I wanted Art’s job. But Lance and I had long ago agreed we were field researchers, not teachers to be trapped into semester schedules. I didn’t think he would like it when he found out I was applying.

Dear Nora:

Why am I the only person who can do anything around here? My husband and kids will hardly lift a finger. Help!

Worked to the Bone

Dear Worked:

Hire an expensive housekeeper and present the bill to your family. Then take yourself for a spa weekend. Repeat as necessary.

Nora

Half an hour later, I jerked at a knock on my open door.

“Sorry.” Bryan, Travis’s partner, shifted from foot to foot in the hall.

“No,
I’m
sorry. I’m jittery and distracted. Here, come in. I didn’t expect to see you so quickly.” I shifted some books encroaching on the couch. Because it had been here longer than the current doorway, that particular upholstered nightmare would only be coming out in pieces. It had automatic priority over my need for space. Natasha’s complete unwillingness to sleep on it was testament to its age and condition. If I got Art’s job, my first official act would be to evict both the sofa and my current officemate, even if the former had to be removed one axed-up piece at a time and the latter bribed with gourmet coffee.

Bryan didn’t answer my implied question. Instead, he began reshelving titles. “Lance can’t keep those things in order, can he?”

“I guess I’ve already made room for you one too many times. You know where all of them go.” Lance’s and my shared office at the old house worked because it was at least four times this size. Even at our old house, the room had been twice as big as this cramped hole in the university wall. But we were part-timers, and it was something of a coup to score Art’s old office, which was considered large by departmental standards. Technically, we were not entitled to the bigger spaces afforded our fulltime colleagues, but nobody else wanted to clean up Art’s mess or deal with his files. The tradeoff was Lance and me having to share
everything
here, even the desk, like a couple of teaching assistants. Still, there were certain tasks best accomplished at school, and completing syllabi and writing out assignments seemed to be among these, since paper was at a premium at the center and the department offered free printing in exchange for timely submission.

I hated to come in after Lance had been here. He was untidy at best, downright sloppy at worst, and the desk brimmed with his stacks of papers and inexplicable notes. I always swore half the reason he and Art had gotten along so well was their mutual disregard for anything resembling organization. I’m hardly a neat freak myself, but I can keep a desk cleared. I can put away my books when I’m through using them.

Bryan finished his work as my personal librarian. “Saw you on the news.” He didn’t quite manage to keep the curiosity out of his voice. “Pretty freaky stuff.” He sat.

“And now the kid’s social worker wants to place the kid with
us
, but you may
not
print that.”
And why won’t that idea leave me alone?
Bryan was one of the two editors of the
Muscogen Free Press
, and the only reporter I would even consider talking to about this morning’s adventure. He had done wonders to keep the sanctuary’s name held in high regard, at least in the county.

“With you and Lance?” His question held personal, not professional, interest.

I resumed my work at the keyboard. “What is she
thinking
?”
And what am I thinking?

“A couple of people she knew nothing about would be perfect for the kid because you happened to find him, naturally.”

“She knows about us. Knows too
much
about us. She’s the one who wouldn’t leave us alone when we were taking classes for Natasha.”

“The
Orangutan Lady
?”

Bryan and Travis had listened to me rant about Merry for most of the summer. They were interested in our progress through social services because they were considering an adoption from foster care themselves. They had been working with a private agency for nearly three years and were no closer now to parenthood than when they started out. The foster care system was looking better and better to them.

But even within the system, there was a delay for a couple hoping to adopt an infant, as they were, and they had already been through a home study with the private agency. Our rapid and tumultuous experience with Natasha hadn’t given them much confidence in the system. For the present, they were planning to stay the course and keep waiting.

“What did she say?”

“You don’t want to know. It was racist, now I think about it, though at the time, all I noticed was how offensive it was about the little boy’s mind.”

“You going to report her?”

“I’m going to talk to somebody once I’ve calmed down. Officer Carmichael heard the remark too, and I want to get his take.” I hit enter three times and typed my name into my document. “You have a minute to proofread something?” Bryan’s sharp editor’s eyes were exactly what I needed now.

“Sure. Travis is going to be embroiled with the department chair for at least the next thousand years.” He glanced at his watch. “At this rate, our lunch date is going to be tomorrow.” It was already one o’clock, and the biology chair was notorious for last-minute demands, making lunches nigh on impossible for his employees. One of Travis’s chief complaints since taking the job was his schedule as a salaried employee. He’d been hourly at his former jobs, and the lack of guaranteed breaks irked him.

I hit print and retrieved my sheets. Art’s personal printer was another advantage of the university office. “Thanks for the help.” While he read and red-lined, I checked on Natasha. Travis had left her in the care of a graduate assistant, another semi-friendly face who didn’t seem to care one way or the other that the sleeping girl behind her was tossing and talking. “Don’t,” Natasha said. “She’s only sleeping.”

“Tasha,” I called.

She twisted, but didn’t wake.
“No! . . .”

“Natasha.” I patted her arm.

“Get off of me!” She jumped to her feet, then jerked her head from side to side, her arms held in a defensive pose. As quickly, she collapsed to her seat, gasping for breath like she’d been running. “It’s you,” she said. “Thank God, it’s only you.” She lowered her forehead to her palms.

“Are you all right?”

“I saw the EMT . . . when Mom died . . . purple . . .” She shook her head, clearing it, and said, “Yeah. Can I lock myself in the conference room and call Trudy? I remembered something.”

Natasha never wanted to talk to me about the things she remembered. Stan said she never talked to him, either. Perhaps she confided in Gert, but I don’t think so. The memories came to her jaggedly, in nightmares and waking flashbacks. When she volunteered at the primate center, I often heard her talking in a low voice to Chuck, our resident male orangutan, who we had captured after he saved us all in June. I wondered if she was telling him about the things that made her shudder and cry out in her sleep, and clam up and pull away while waking. Without fail, if she felt something was significant, she rang the FBI agent.

“Let me make sure it’s not where the chair has Travis cornered. If it is, you can use my office. Otherwise, it should be fine.” The conference room was empty when I looked in, but the stink of rotting food emanating from the departmental fridge and its unofficial pantry in the cabinet to one side made both of us gag. “Trash can.”

Shirts pulled over our noses, we dashed in with the can from the hall and emptied both the pantry
and
the fridge. I nearly pitched the fresh lunch Travis would probably not be enjoying, but Tasha swiped it back at the last second. Lacking anything to scrub with or any cleaning liquids to employ in such a project, I was prepared to unplug the fridge and leave the door open to let it air to the room. But Natasha saw a can of disinfectant spray on the top shelf. “Help me push the big table over there, and I’ll reach that,” she said.