Zero at the Bone (9 page)

When she looked up, she realized the lawyer had been speaking to her. “… and needless accident,” he was saying. “Terribly painful for you, dear, but dreadful publicity for the zoo, too. I’m on the board, you know. Have been for thirty-nine years. I hate to see anything that might set the zoo back. Actually, you know, that tiger, Brum, was one of my personal favorites. Of course it couldn’t have been your father’s fault, either. Such a reliable, meticulous man.”

“He was?” Katherine asked.

Travis Hammond leaned back and sighed. “Oh, my dear. That’s right. You didn’t know him at all. Hadn’t seen him for … how long?”

“Thirty-one years,” Katherine answered, feeling the full weight of each of those years.

He closed his eyes. “Yes. Since 1958. Such a long time. I first met your father when he married your mother. What a ruckus that caused! There were some stormy times there.”

He opened his eyes to look hard at her for several seconds. “You may remember some of that bad business before you and your mother left Austin.” He stared so long and directly at her that it occurred to Katherine he had been asking a question.

She shook her head. “No. I don’t remember anything about that time, except maybe … today at the zoo I thought I remembered being there before.”

The old lawyer was silent, looking up at the deer head on the wall. He seemed lost in thought.

She said, “I was surprised to learn you were my father’s attorney. Because of your close relationship to the Driscolls, you know.”

He came back to attention. “Yes. But I think your father held no animosity toward the Driscolls. Actually, I believe he went to see Anne on several occasions. I think they had buried the hatchet. But as for his coming to me for the will, he and I got to know one another well when I headed up the committee for the Phase Two building project, to house the big cats. We worked together on that very well, so it felt natural for him to come to me.

“He was a pleasure to work with, the steadiest, most competent of the keepers. He rarely missed a day of work and he often stayed all night with sick animals. Unpaid. Just for the love of it. He was a man so steadfast”—here the old man curled his long, trembling fingers into fists to illustrate—“if he said he would do something, then it would be done, even if it was long and difficult. Year in and year out, a man you could count on.”

Katherine didn’t want to hear this. She knew it would sound crass, but impatience drove her to boldness. “Mr. Hammond,” she said, “I never knew my father, and I feel nothing toward him one way or the other. He never came to see me or…”

The old man surprised her with the passion of his reaction to this. He shook his head violently and grabbed both her hands, squeezing them in his thin dry fingers. He spoke as if he were pleading for himself. “Oh, Katherine, try not to judge so harshly. Sometimes we do things when we are young. We make mistakes that we regret so bitterly, but we can never—” He stopped himself abruptly. “Well, we wish we could change them, but we can’t,” he finished lamely and let go of her hands.

“Well,” she said with a shrug, “my father wrote me for the first time last week. He said he had something for me, to help me out of the financial difficulties I’ve been having. Could you tell me how much? I need to know because on November seventh everything I own will be auctioned off if I don’t come up with ninety-one thousand dollars.”

The lawyer sat forward and opened his eyes wider in surprise. The tic in his right eye sped up. “He wrote that he had ninety-one thousand dollars for you?”

“He didn’t mention an amount, just that it was enough to cure my debt.”

He shook his head and, with a sigh, hoisted himself from the sofa and walked over to the simple wood trestle table that served as his desk. From a stack of folders he picked up the top one and brought it back to Katherine. He drew out a document and laid it on the low table in front of her.

Katherine held her breath.

“This is your father’s will. I’ve just been reviewing it. Very simple. You are the sole beneficiary.”

He did write it down! Katherine held the breath in to restrain herself from grinning. Things might work out after all.

“But I’ve just been talking with the bank, my dear. I’m afraid there’s not going to be anything for you to inherit.”

Katherine exhaled the breath she had been holding in a long sigh. Her stomach felt hollow. She hadn’t eaten all day.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes. Unfortunately. I’ll go over it all in detail with you, but the bank has frozen his assets. It’s pretty clear that there’s not even enough in his estate to pay off his creditors. So there’s really less than nothing.” He looked at her with his eyebrows squeezed so tightly together that a crevasse formed down his forehead. “What exactly did he say in the letter?”

“He said he had the money to pay off my loan so the bank wouldn’t foreclose on my home. He mentioned something I could do for him in return.”

“What was that?” the attorney asked.

“He didn’t say. He was going to tell me when I came to see him.”

They were both silent for a minute. Then Katherine asked a question that had been on her mind ever since she had received the letter from her father. “Mr. Hammond, did you tell my father where he could write to me, or anything about me? I’m wondering how he got that information.”

“Oh, I may have mentioned to him you were in Boerne. I kept in touch with your mother, you know. It would have been easy enough for him to get your address, I think.”

Travis Hammond sat down next to her on the sofa and opened the file on the table in front of them. “Let me show you everything. I don’t like being the bearer of bad news, but here we go.”

Katherine sighed and settled back to listen. She was getting accustomed to hearing bad news.

*   *   *

When she got off the elevator on the fourth floor of the Austin Police Headquarters, Katherine thought the day had brought more unpleasant surprises than her system could take. And it was only five o’clock. There was still time for more.

She caught sight of Lieutenant Sharb in a glass cubicle at the end of the hall. Now there was a man, she thought, capable of delivering endless amounts of bad news. He was typing at a computer terminal, so engrossed that he didn’t hear her approaching. She stood in the doorway for several seconds before he looked up.

“Wait. Let me save this,” he said in greeting. After punching some keys and grunting a few times, he stood up, rising only a few inches from his sitting height.

“Here. Sit down,” he said, snatching a stack of file folders from a molded plastic chair.

He sat back at his desk and folded his hands in front of him. The rims of his small black eyes were red and puffy. “Miss Driscoll, I need to hear in detail why you came to see your father today.”

She had had time to give this answer some thought. “Because he wrote me a letter asking me to come. I got it Friday.”

“But why now? I wonder. He sure hadn’t been in any great hurry to see you before.”

Katherine gritted her teeth. There was no avoiding telling it. “He said he wanted to give me some financial help. I’ve had trouble with a loan at the bank in Boerne where I live and he said he could help.”

“Got that letter with you?”

“No,” she lied, trying not to grip her bag tighter as she said it. She had resisted telling Travis Hammond about the key and she didn’t see any reason to tell this little man. It wasn’t any of his business. Not until she had a chance to see what was there first.

He said, “You’ve just been to see Mr. Travis Hammond over at his office?”

“Yes.”

He waited for her to go on, but she sat silent. If he wanted to know something, let him ask for it.

Finally he said, “Well, you inheriting?”

She had a moment of confusion. “No. Yes. But there’s nothing to inherit.”

He nodded knowingly and opened a steno book in front of him. “Too bad. I wonder how he was planning to help you with that big loan if he was broke.”

“How do you know it was a big loan?”

“Oh, from your bank. It’s been posted. It’s public record now, but we can get information like that from the banks anyway.”

Katherine was breathless with shock. He’d been investigating her, prying. It was outrageous. The man was insufferable.

He picked up a ballpoint pen and clicked it in and out rapidly. “An amazing coincidence that you arrive at your father’s place of employment only hours after he’s killed—after not seeing him for thirty-one years. Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” she said, agreeing in spite of herself. “Yes, I do.”

“Did McElroy show you the scene?”

“Yes.”

He took a tiny plastic bottle from his breast pocket, tilted his head back and squeezed a few drops into each eye. He lifted his head and looked at her with eyes streaming. “Lemme ask you something. Do you really believe that a tiger reached through that little bitty window and drug a big man—one hundred eighty-five pounds of experienced keeper—through and killed him dead? Do you believe that, Miss Driscoll?”

Katherine was struck dumb. She felt her body temperature rising. “In case something should happen to me,” said the letter. “Come soon.” He’d had a premonition!

The policeman waited for an answer.

“It’s hard to believe.”

“Sure is.”

“But you said to the press that the tiger killed him and may have—”

“Sure. The ME’s first look-see was consistent with his being attacked by a tiger. But there were some … indications I found at the scene that the tiger may have had a little help from another species of animal. Homo sapiens, maybe.”

Katherine was trying to hold her imagination in check. “What indications, Lieutenant Sharb?”

“Well, now, I can’t tell you that yet, but”—he put a blunt forefinger to his inflamed nose and mashed it to the side—“I have a nose for these things and this stinks as bad as that cat house over at the zoo.” As if the mere mention of the cats were enough to set him off, he emitted a volley of violent staccato sneezes, spraying the desk and keyboard before he could find the crumpled handkerchief and apply it to his nose.

“Let me see if I understand this,” Katherine said. “Are you saying this was not an accident? That someone fed him to the tiger? Is that what you’re saying?”

Sharb shrugged his shoulders. “Murder maybe. Can’t say yet.”

Katherine felt rage simmering under her surface. “Why can’t you tell me?” she insisted. “He was my father. I’m a taxpayer. I want to know what you’ve found.”

He turned his hands up to heaven. “Policy, ma’am. As soon as we have something definite and my boss says I can release the information, you’ll be the first to know. So … who might have had a grudge against him? You have any ideas?”

Through clenched teeth she said, “Lieutenant, I didn’t know him. I wouldn’t even recognize him. I don’t know who his friends were—or enemies, if any.”

He nodded. “Well, we always look at family first. Playing the odds. Of course, you’re all there is and we’ve already eliminated you.”

“Why?”

“Because your man José says he saw you in Boerne at seven this morning. Time wouldn’t have worked out.”

“You’ve talked to Joe?”

“No, I’ve talked to the San Antonio Police, who’ve talked to him.”

He reached behind him and lifted a box onto the desk. He pulled out a bunch of keys and a man’s black wallet in plastic bags. “These are your father’s effects. We’re finished with them.” He pushed a piece of paper and a pen toward Katherine. “You can sign here for them. The clothes we need to keep as evidence.”

Katherine looked up at him instead of at the paper. “You aren’t from around here, are you, Lieutenant Sharb?”

“Nah. I moved here from New Jersey coupla years ago. For my allergies.” He shrugged. “Good Lord, from the frying pan into the fire.”

He pointed to one of the keys. “That’s the key to his front door. But watch yourself. He had himself one vicious dog. We had to subdue it to get in, but it’s probably back on duty by now. Lord, the animals in this case are going to be the death of me.” He looked up at her in mock surprise. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You’ve already been to his house?”

“Sure. I wondered about a suicide note. Nothing there, of course. It was a dumb idea. Who ever heard of a suicide throwing himself to a tiger? Nah.”

Katherine signed the paper and dropped the keys and the wallet into her bag.

Sharb stood up. “Thanks for coming in, Miss Driscoll. How long are you planning to stay in town?”

“I don’t know. Can we have a funeral? What about the body?”

“Oh, we’ll want to hold on to that a while. We’ll notify you. Where you going to be staying?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go back home tonight. I have a business to run.”

“Let José do it, Miss Driscoll. Stick close, where I can reach you, please. You’ll want to hear about the autopsy and we’ll need to talk again. So where’ll you be?”

She felt the weight of the keys in her bag. “Oh, I’ll stay at Lester Renfro’s place tonight.”

He was already back at the keyboard. Without looking up, he said to her retreating back, “Remember I warned you about the dog.”

7

HE must have moved after we left him, Katherine thought. This is not the house I lived in for my first five years. I don’t know how I know it, but I do.

The bungalow at 37 Wirtz Avenue had been painted recently—a muddy brown with a tan trim. Katherine wondered if he had done it himself. She studied the house as she raised the back of the Jeep and extended her arm in the signal for Ra to leap out. After three hours of being cooped up, he exploded into the air as if he were heading for a water retrieve in a field trial, hitting the ground at a full run. “Hie on,” she said, giving him permission for a run.

She watched him race to the end of the sidewalk, then called him back with a flick of her hand. While Ra sniffed the yard, she leaned against the tailgate and speculated: Was Sharb a total lunatic? Or might it be possible to arrange for a man to be killed by a tiger? She visualized the man all alone, arriving in the half-light of early morning to feed the cats he had tended for eight years, entering the tiny concrete room, looking up at the window. It might be possible. But the picture she conjured up was so ugly she shook it out of her head.