The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (14 page)

“Annoying, I’m sure.”

“Wasn’t a big problem, long as we had Uncle Fred's farm,” he said, in a suspiciously innocent tone. “But if there's no hunting there, how come we hear gunshots sometimes?”

“Poachers?” I suggested.

“Could be,” he said. “But right here's where Charlie shot that fancy gazelle,” Randall said, jabbing the stick into the ground.

I studied the spot he indicated. It was clearly on Vern Shif-fley's land, but near the point where his land, Mr. Bromley's, and the zoo grounds all met.

“When it happened, we first thought the gazelle had wandered over from the zoo property. There's a fence, but Lanahan never bothered much about keeping it in repair. But then we remembered the strange goings-on at Bromley's. And Bromley's fences have been falling down for years. There's stretches where there isn’t even a fence between Vern's land and Bromley's. Just
Bromley's ‘Posted: No Trespassing’ signs, and most deer don’t pay much attention to those.”

“But what would the gazelle be doing on Mr. Bromley's land in the first place?” I asked. My wobbling was getting worse, and I almost fell right in the middle of the Bromleys’ acreage, so I put a hand down to steady myself.

“You ever heard of canned hunting?” Randall asked.

“Not until recently.”

“There you go,” Randall said, as if that solved everything. “You think Lanahan was running canned hunts?” Randall nodded.

“And he was doing it on Mr. Bromley's land,” I continued. “So there wouldn’t be any evidence that animals were being killed on the zoo property.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“With Mr. Bromley's cooperation?”

“That I wouldn’t know.”

Or maybe just didn’t want to say, since Mr. Bromley, unlike Patrick Lanahan, was from an old local family.

“Whether Mr. Bromley knows or not, this gives him a possible motive for the murder,” I said.

“Motive, yes,” Randall said. “But no opportunity. Broke his leg about ten days ago, and last I heard he was still in the Whispering Pines Nursing Home being rehabilitated.”

“Okay, then he's out, but plenty of people around here disapprove of canned hunts. The Save Our Beasts people, and maybe Montgomery Blake.”

“Hell, we disapprove of them,” Randall said, shaking his head. “Most real hunters do. We hunt for sport and to put meat on the table, not just for trophies. What's the sport in shooting an animal that has no chance of escaping? And most of those clowns
don’t aim for the head or the vitals—they aim for someplace that won’t spoil the trophy, which means that the animal dies a slow, painful death. You ask me, these game ranches should be outlawed, and if Lanahan was involved with that, I’m not sorry to see him go. But we wouldn’t try to kill him over it. We were just trying to sic the law on him.”

“Sic the law on him? You mean you reported your suspicions?”

Randall nodded.

“Chief Burke didn’t do anything?” I asked.

“He's been trying,” Randall said. “But I don’t think a city fellow like him knows how to go about it. He had that deputy of his, young Sammy Wendell, skulking around the woods, trying to catch whoever was doing it.”

“And Sammy didn’t have any luck?”

“You ever heard Sammy crashing around in the woods? No self-respecting poacher's going to hang around long enough for Sammy to catch him. Besides, Bromley's land is half in Caer-philly County and half in Clay County, and the Clay County sheriff has a peculiar lack of interest in the whole problem. I’ll give Burke one thing: he works hard and he's honest.”

By my count, that was two things, but I just nodded and studied the map some more, to make sure I had the location of the convenient dirt road firmly in mind.

And my mind was busily turning over the implications of what Randall had said. Which seemed to confirm what I’d learned from the film student. While Lanahan, the improvident zookeeper, might be annoying, it was hard to imagine anyone killing him. But Lanahan, mild-mannered zookeeper by day and evil organizer of canned hunts by night—he’d probably have a whole pack of people after him.

If there were canned hunts, and if Lanahan was involved. After all, given what had happened with his nephew Charlie, Ran
dall might not be the most impartial judge of Lanahan's character.

Meanwhile, Vern had finished his phone call. He looked our way, and Randall, with a nod of farewell, went over to join him.

I studied the map for a few more minutes, than scuffed the dirt till I’d erased it. I wasn’t sure why—after all, I had Chief Burke's permission to visit the zoo, or at least his grudging tolerance.

But it occurred to me to wonder what the chief thought of the accusations against Lanahan. I went into the house to see if the chief was still occupying our dining room or if he’d been displaced by some new four-legged arrivals.

Chapter 24

I found the chief still ensconced in the dining room, though he’d moved the table he was using as a desk so it wasn’t directly beneath the chandelier where the sloth was hanging. Sloths, actually; now there were two of them. Dad and Montgomery Blake were also there, haranguing the chief about something. Rather, Blake was haranguing and Dad was standing by, with an anxious expression on his face. The chief looked even more irritated than he usually did in the middle of a case, so I decided to see if interrupting him would help.

“I have some information for you,” I said, joining the trio. “Did you know that the Save Our Beasts people have been picketing the zoo?”

“Save Our Beasts?” the chief echoed.

“It's an animal-rights group,” Blake said.

“I guessed as much,” the chief said. “But which one? What with the college and all, we have several of them operating in town. I hope they’re not nutcases who think we should let the wolves and grizzlies roam freely in their original habitat, whether or not there are thousands of people living there now.”

“I think these nutcases may have a legitimate beef,” I said. “They think Lanahan was arranging canned hunts.”

“It's an outrage!” Blake boomed. “No civilized society should tolerate it. The very idea—”

“Cut the editorial,” the chief said.

“How can you condone this barbarous behavior!” Blake shouted. Despite his advanced age, he had a good, strong orator's voice. Through the window, I could see people outside in the yard looking up to see what was wrong.

“I’m not condoning anything,” the chief said, interrupting Blake. “I spent thirty years trying to keep the good citizens of Baltimore from slaughtering each other. It's left me with a strong repugnance toward violence of any kind. And a strong respect for the law—”

“Canned hunting's illegal in this state,” Blake said.

“And Lanahan was innocent until proven guilty,” the chief said. “My officers searched every inch of the zoo grounds, looking for evidence of wrongdoing. And when we couldn’t find any, I called state game wardens and U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents in—they couldn’t find anything either. So either Patrick Lanahan was a hell of a lot smarter than any of us, or maybe the rumor was just that—a rumor.”

“So this has nothing to do with Patrick's murder,” Dad said with a sigh.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” the chief said with narrowed eyes. “Regardless of whether Lanahan was a saint or a sinner, anyone who's all fired up about how he treated animals has a definite motive for his murder.”

With that, he stomped off.

“He means me, of course,” Blake said. “Won’t be the first time I’ve been persecuted for my beliefs.” He strode off, head high.

“Pretentious old goat,” I muttered. Unfortunately, I didn’t mutter softly enough.

“Meg!” Dad exclaimed.

“Sorry,” I said. “But Blake really gets on my nerves for some reason.”

“He does good work,” Dad said. “Really he does.”

But his tone sounded ambivalent. Was he still worrying about whether Blake was a fake? Or was I, perhaps, not the only member of the family who was starting to find Blake hard to take?

I strolled outside. It occurred to me that now might be a good time to talk to Blake—while he was still worked up about the canned hunts, and perhaps not as much on his guard as usual.

But I lost him in the crowd—how many relatives had we invited, anyway, and were they all going to show up a day early? I made my way to the side yard, where, thanks to the trenches, it was a lot quieter. I ducked under the yellow tape and stepped over half a dozen of the trenches until I stood in the middle of the side yard. I decided I liked the vantage point. I could see more newly arriving cousins trotting up the road from their increasingly distant parked cars. I could see the growing swarm who had already arrived setting up food and drink in the backyard. And they could see me, and we could wave back and forth at each other, but it was peaceful out here in the trenches, and if anyone tried to sneak up on me, I’d see him a long way off.

Luckily no one did except Michael, who appeared at the edge of the yard and, after glancing curiously at the trenches, began making his way across them to where I stood.

“Giant moles?” he asked.

“Close,” I said. “Sprockets. Searching for their long-lost and presumed suspiciously dead great-uncle Plantagenet.”

“Edwina's late husband, the botany professor? I thought he’d disappeared while on an orchid-collecting expedition to the Amazon.”

“That's the Sprocket party line, but apparently a dissident minority think he's buried in our basement.”

“Then why are they digging out here?” Michael asked, studying the excavations.

“Police won’t let them in the basement,” I said. “I assume they’re warming up for an attempt to tunnel in. So how's the unpacking going? You’re not overdoing it, are you? Do you need my help?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We have more than enough help. We’ll have everything unpacked, assembled, and put away long before nightfall.”

“And we’ll be six months finding our stuff,” I said. “But never mind.”

“By midday tomorrow they’ll all be having so much fun they won’t notice when we sneak away.”

“By midday tomorrow they wouldn’t even notice if the house got up and walked away,” I said. “If you don’t need me, I’m going to find Mother and put her in charge of organizing a work detail to fill in the trenches. Though Rob suggested maybe we should just dig some more and plan to put in a pool.”

“A pool,” Michael said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked around at the trenches with greater interest. “That's an interesting idea.”

“Just tell the relatives what you want,” I said. “Meanwhile, after I talk to Mother, I’m going back to the zoo.”

“Is this a detective mission or an animal-welfare mission?”

“It's a saving-Meg's-sanity mission,” I said, giving him a quick kiss. “Later.”

I found Mother with Rob and Eric, down at the penguin pond. Eric was plastered against the chicken-wire fence, avidly absorbing every detail of the penguins’ behavior. Mother was
standing upwind, holding a sun parasol over her head and a small linen bag of Rose Noire's potpourri to her nose. Rob was sprawled in Dad's lawn chair, sipping lemonade.

“I’m sorry, Eric,” Mother was saying. “But the penguins can’t stay forever.”

“But see how happy they are here,” Eric said.

“I can’t imagine anything would be happy living in a stench like that,” Mother said, shuddering. “Meg, isn’t there something you can do? Bathe them, perhaps?”

“Mother, they spend all day swimming,” I said. “They don’t need bathing.”

“Perhaps if the water were cleaner,” Mother said.

“It's a pond,” I said. “How are we supposed to clean it?”

“I think they like the smell,” Rob said, strolling up. “Just stay upwind and it's fine.”

“That's a matter of opinion,” Mother said, inhaling her potpourri.

“If they were staying longer, perhaps we’d worry about their hygiene,” I said. “But this is just temporary, remember?”

“That's true,” Mother said. Her expression brightened.

“But why can’t they stay?” Eric said. “They’re perfectly happy here.”

“They’re not our penguins, remember?” I replied.

“I’m sure they’d be much happier somewhere else,” Mother added. “In a real zoo.”

“Or back in the Antarctic where they originated,” I said. “I expect they find the Virginia summers rather warm.”

Mother sighed in sympathy and fanned herself a little more briskly.

“Oh, no,” Eric said. “They like it here. Dr. Blake says if they were back in the Antarctic they’d get eaten. By killer whales and
leopard seals. He said there's nothing a leopard seal likes better than a fat, juicy—”

“Speaking of Dr. Blake,” Mother said, loudly. “Have you made any progress in figuring out who killed poor Patrick?”

“Is that a non sequitur, Mother?” I asked. “Or merely a subtle way of conveying your suspicion of our eminent visitor?”

“I’m sure you’ll find out, dear,” Mother said.

“I’m working on it,” I said. “Meanwhile, when our helpful legions of family movers have finished with the unpacking, could you steer a few of them to the side yard, to deal with all those holes the Sprockets have been digging?”

“Deal with them how?” Mother said. “Your brother was suggesting—”

“Aunt Meg, look,” Eric called. “The penguins are fighting.”

Chapter 25

“Oh, no, dear,” Mother said. “The penguins aren’t really fighting. I’m sure they’re only pretending.”

Rob, who’d been taking a sip of his lemonade, spluttered and snorted most of it out again, and had to be pounded on the back.

No, the penguins weren’t fighting. Apparently this was their mating season. One penguin—presumably male, though I suspect only another penguin would really know or care—had scrambled atop another penguin. He flapped his stumpy banded wings furiously. He paddled his tiny feet as if trying to outrun an army of leopard seals. And he trilled and cooed with impressive ardor. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be accomplishing anything.

I couldn’t tell whether the female penguin was sabotaging his efforts in some way or whether he was merely overexcited and inept, but he kept falling off. Sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, occasionally backward, and once, rather spectacularly, forward, giving himself a painful-looking bonk on the head. In his defense, I noted, the female was almost perfectly round and her wet feathers looked rather slippery. For that matter, the male penguin was fairly round and slippery himself.