Zero at the Bone (22 page)

As she got back on MoPac and headed south toward her father’s house, she felt she was in full retreat, with her sinew shriveled and her blood too timid for the task; the excitement she had felt, the growing resolve to act, had fizzled into dejection.

She turned on the radio to fill in some of the empty spaces. As soon as the music boomed through the speakers, she switched it off.

Damn it to hell. Was she going to retreat with her tail between her legs at the first rejection? Or was she going to treat this like all-out war and imitate the action of the tiger? She began to ponder the next step. Certainly she had to call Cooper Driscoll and find out what the story was. She had every right to see her grandmother. She would insist on it. Nothing was going to stop her. If she heard from Anne Driscoll’s own lips that she didn’t want to see her, then she would stop trying, but not until then.

Her resolve was stiffening.

Even before Katherine opened the car door, Belle had launched into her usual baying from inside the house. Unlocking the front door, Katherine murmured reassurances to the dog and the noise abated.

As she stepped into the front hall, Belle was waiting, as she did every day, with a rawhide bone in her mouth. The dog pressed one end of the bone against Katherine’s hand, trying to entice her into a tug-of-war. This had started the first day Katherine had come home from work, clearly a carryover from a routine her father and Belle had enjoyed. Visualizing the sixty-year-old man playing with his old Lab always made her smile and she usually accepted the invitation to play, but today she refused. “Not now, Belle,” she said. “I’ve got to make a phone call while my resolve is firm.”

She bent down to pick up the mail that had fallen in through the slot and carried it to the kitchen. Without looking at it, she tossed in onto the kitchen table and opened the back door to let Ra in. She had settled on allowing Belle to stay inside during the day to nap, and Ra to stay out in the fenced backyard, because he was accustomed to being outside.

Ra burst in, first dancing circles around her, then sniffing both ends of Belle in their ritual greeting. She threw each dog a Milk Bone and headed for the refrigerator where she kept a jug of Almaden Rhine wine. She unscrewed the top and poured herself a large glass over ice cubes—a reward for getting through another day in the snake pit, she told herself. And a bracer for being assertive with her uncle.

Sipping her wine, she sat down at the table and made the phone call.

“Katherine, how are you?” Cooper said when he came on the line. Then he lowered his voice to a tone of unctuous concern. “Any news on the investigation front?”

“Not that I know of,” she said. “Uh, Coop. I stopped to see my grandmother after work today and Janice Beechum said I’d need to check with you on a convenient time to visit her.”

There was a silence. Then he said, “Well, Katherine, you should have let me know you were planning to stop by, saved yourself some time. Let’s do this. Next time the doctor comes I’ll check with him on it, see if she’s up to … oh, someone new. She’s very weak and sedated much of the time. So let me make a note here to ask him.”

Katherine unclenched her teeth so she could respond. “When will he come by?”

“Let’s see—Thursday or Friday, I think. I’ll let you know when I talk with him.”

“But if she’s sedated, she wouldn’t even know I was there. I just want to look in on her. I wouldn’t stay long.”

“Well, I’ll pass that on to the doc. He really makes the decisions about your grandmother. Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of that. It’s nice of you to stop by to see the old girl. When you coming to see us, Katherine? You never got that dinner we promised you.”

Katherine could still smell the beef tenderloin she missed. “Well, thanks. There was another thing I wanted to ask.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve gotten interested in the Driscoll Foundation and I wondered if you’d fill me in about it. I’d love to look at some of the records and—”

“Well, finally. I’ve been waiting years for someone in this family to take an interest. I’m not going to live forever. I always tried to get Sophie interested, but she never would listen. Sure, I’d like nothing better. Probably talk your ear off.” He laughed a jovial bark. “Make you sorry you ever asked. Uh, what records would you like to see?”

“Well, I was wondering about acquisitions and—”

“Sure. I’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know, and more, probably. Of course, the records are confidential, but you don’t want to get into that level of detail, anyway. So … Miss Katherine, what else can I do you for today?”

He was trying to brush her off. She knew the tone of voice.

When she hung up the phone, she took a long sip of wine. He really didn’t want her to see Anne Driscoll. Why not? And why didn’t he want her to see the foundation records? Did he have something there to hide? She suspected he did. And she was going to find out what that something was.

Reluctantly, she began to leaf through the mail. It had been nothing but bad news lately. There were two bills for her father, which she would pass on to Travis Hammond’s partner, John Crowley, who had taken over the settlement of Lester’s estate. The big envelope from Joe she had been dreading—he’d told her about it in their phone conversation yesterday. It contained mail he was forwarding: lots of bills she couldn’t pay, another letter from the bank, a note from Hester Kielmeyer, and a plea from George Bob Rainey for her to come to the bank to sign some papers. She hadn’t been home to Boerne once in two weeks, in spite of George Bob’s rantings and Joe’s pleadings; every day she made a new excuse why she couldn’t go. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to, but it had something to do with trying to disengage herself from the place.

On the bottom of the stack was a small blue envelope addressed to her at her father’s address in dark, smudged pencil printing.

She worked her index finger under the flap and ripped it open, pulling out a small piece of flimsy light-blue stationery. She unfolded it. The second she caught sight of the heavy penciled block letters, even before she read the words, she felt a chill of recognition. It said, “Katherine, put your father’s house in order. Justice is nigh. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Pointman.”

She dropped the note on the table, stood up, and walked to the front door, slowly, calmly, so as not to alarm herself, and locked it, even though she knew no one could approach the house without Belle making a racket. Her chest felt tight and her fingers cold and prickly. She rubbed her hands together to get the circulation going as she walked back to the kitchen. Ra was standing alert and trembling, staring at her with raised ears and bright eyes. She wasn’t fooling him.

Without touching the note again and without sitting down, she read it once more.

Then she leaned over to the wallphone and dialed the police headquarters number from memory. It took several minutes to locate him, but Lieutenant Sharb finally came on the line with a croaked, “Sharb.”

“This is Katherine Driscoll. I just got in today’s mail a warning note, like the ones my father and Mr. Hammond got.”

“Read it to me.”

She read it slowly, feeling the malice in the print, in each bold pencil line.

“Is it written in pencil on thin blue stationery?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m coming over to get it. Put it down and don’t touch it again. We’ll try for prints. Are you okay?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes. We’ll talk about it.”

Katherine hung up and let her hand fall to Ra’s head. He licked her hand and leaned into her leg. She stroked the silky ears and bent down to kiss him on the muzzle. “Don’t worry, you baby,” she said. Still standing, she lifted the wineglass to her lips and started to think about an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. It was revenge in kind that was being promised—biblical, savage, and implacable. But revenge for what? What had she done to this pointman, whoever he was? What had her father done? And Travis Hammond, what had he done?

*   *   *

Eight minutes later Sharb arrived in a patrol car with its light flashing. When she saw the whirling light through the kitchen curtains, she was aware for the first time of panic rising in her from her chest into her throat. She took another sip of wine to wash it back down.

Belle fell into a frenzy of barking at the approach of the police car. Katherine put her out in the backyard before she went to the front door to admit Lieutenant Sharb and a young uniformed officer.

“This is Patrolman Rogers, Miss Driscoll. Let’s have a look.” She led them back to the kitchen and pointed to the note on the table. When Sharb saw Ra sitting under the table, brushing the floor with his swaying tail feathers, he stopped dead in his tracks and sucked his breath in.

“It’s okay, Lieutenant Sharb,” Katherine said, “he’s tame. And I put the other one out.”

“Good,” he said. He studied the note without touching it, pulled a large Ziploc bag out of his pocket, and nudged the note into it with his pen. He took out another bag and nudged the envelope into that.

“I don’t want to alarm you, Miss Driscoll, but this is identical to the one we found in your father’s pocket—except for two words: ‘Katherine’ instead of ‘Lester’ and ‘your father’s house’ instead of ‘your house.’ I’m not a handwriting expert, but I’ve looked at that other note a bunch, and I’ll wager it’s the same handwriting, same pencil, same stationery … same killer. And young Susan Hammond says her grandfather’s note was the same.”

He sat down at the table. “Sit down. Drink your drink,” he said. “Let’s brainstorm.”

Patrolman Rogers remained standing at the kitchen door, politely looking off into space.

Katherine stayed standing and dumped her wine into the sink.

Sharb didn’t seem to notice. “What do Travis Hammond, Lester Renfro, and now Katherine Driscoll, have in common?” he asked. “Let’s see … Travis was Lester’s attorney. They both were involved deeply with the zoo, and they shared the secret of the payments to Dorothy Stranahan. But what about you? Where do you fit in?” He looked at Katherine for an answer.

She spoke slowly, trying to think it out. “I’m involved in the zoo now. I’m my father’s daughter. And I know about the payments, but the only person I’ve told about them is you, Lieutenant. I have a feeling it may turn out to be discreditable to my father, so I haven’t told anyone else. I’ve been standing here wondering if this pointman is someone I know and what I could have done to him.”

“Any hunches?”

“Do you think he could be someone who works at the zoo?”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I’ve thought all along that Lester’s death was arranged by an insider, someone with keys and knowledge of the routine.”

Katherine nodded. She thought so, too.

“You got any candidates?” he asked.

Katherine thought for a while, as she ran through her head the people she knew at the zoo: Sam McElroy, Alonzo Stokes, Iris Renaldo, Wayne Zapalac, Danny Gillespie, Hans Dieterlen, Vic Jamail. “No,” she said.

“There were quite a few folks there didn’t get along too good with your dad. He was somewhat combative.”

“Yes, I know. Who are you thinking of in particular?”

“Sam McElroy, for one.” He looked at her for a reaction. “Sit down,” he said, “my neck’s getting stiff.”

Katherine lowered herself onto one of the bentwood chairs.

Sharb continued. “Several people heard him threaten Lester with firing if he didn’t mind his own business and stay out of the confidential records in the office. You know anything about that?”

“No,” she said, thinking fast to separate what she could say from what she couldn’t, “but I think Sam really didn’t want to hire me and I’ve wondered why.” She told him about Sam’s reluctance and Iris’s telling her there were several job openings besides the one in reptiles. “I think he was trying to frighten me off.”

“Hm,” Sharb said. “I wonder what confidential records your father was getting into. My sources didn’t know that.”

Katherine decided to add some candidates of her own. “Iris Renaldo told me Vic Jamail, the head veterinarian, had a fight with my father over euthanizing an old lion and that my father tried to block his promotion after that.”

Sharb looked in his notebook and wrote a few words. “I heard that, too. Your father’s described to me as a dignified and conscientious man, who could have a big temper when crossed. But none of these tiffs comes close to being a motive for murder. I have to tell you I’m stymied.”

There was a long silence during which the only sound was Belle’s barking in the back yard and Ra’s heavy breathing under the table. Sharb studied a page in his notebook while Katherine stared at the window.

“Well, okay,” Sharb said, snapping his notebook closed, “we need to talk about how we’re gonna keep you from getting knocked off by this pointman, who seems to be batting a thousand so far. I don’t want to have to take on another of these animal things—you getting swallowed by a boa constrictor or torn up by an alligator. So first off, you need to quit the zoo, as of now.”

Katherine’s first thought was, here’s an honorable way out of the snake pit. Her second thought was that she was no quitter. She had started this job for good reasons and she was going to finish it. “No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m hardly ever alone at work. And I’ll be very careful.”

He waited until she looked at him, then fixed her eyes with his beady black ones. “Miss Driscoll”—he patted the pocket he’d put the note in—“I believe this. You should believe it, too. I think you need to stay away from danger for a while, until we catch this wacko.”

“Lieutenant Sharb, if I go back to my house in Boerne, I’m alone in the country; I’ll be thrown out in a week anyway. If I sit around this house all day waiting for you to catch him, I’ll be a nervous wreck, not to mention totally broke. I need to work.”

Sharb sighed. “Reconsider.”

“No,” Katherine said.

“How about going to stay with your cousin, the other Miss Driscoll, so you don’t have to be alone here?”

Katherine thought about being in the same house with her uncle. “Oh, no. I’ve got a great watchdog here. I’ll be okay.”