The Anteater of Death (32 page)

“Think we can salvage their relationship?” Zorah asked, studying him.

“You’re the wolf expert, not me. I’m just helping out until their regular keeper gets back from vacation, remember?”

“But you’re the one who watched the dynamics play out.”

She was testing me, attempting to find out how good my judgment was. Not taking my eyes off Cisco, I ventured an educated guess. “We’ll need to relocate Hazel. The Phoenix Zoo’s been desperate for another breeding-age female, and their Mexican Gray Wolf Conservation Program is as good as our own. As for Godiva, we can’t bring her back like nothing ever happened. Too dangerous. If we want to salvage this thing, we’ll have to reintroduce her to the pack slowly, like we would any new animal. You know, put her in a cage and move it in a few feet further every day, let everyone sniff around, see how Cisco responds. It’s my guess he’ll welcome her with open arms, er, paws.”

She gave me an approving look and slapped me on the back so strongly I almost fell over. “That’s the way to do it! One other thing. From what I hear about your actions during the attack, you were textbook. I couldn’t have done better myself. The zoo’s lucky to have you.”

I flushed with pride. When it came to handling animal emergencies, nobody could match Zorah.

Zorah, who had never murdered anyone.

***

As the afternoon passed, I tried Joe’s office and home several times but answering machines and deputies were the order of the day. With nothing more to do, I decided to visit Lucy. Talking to her always made me feel better.

When I arrived at her enclosure, I found Dr. Kate studying the anteater across the fence with anxious eyes. One look inside and I could see why. Lucy had intensified the previous day’s behavior. Without once stopping to suck up the termites I’d hidden earlier, she paced from one end of the enclosure to the other. When she caught sight of me I thought her tense expression softened.

For her part, Dr. Kate appeared even more exhausted than usual.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m doing better than Hazel. It took eighty-six stitches to close her wounds, but you saved her life.”

Poor Hazel, just looking for a little love like the rest of us. “And Godiva?” For all the ferocity she’d shown me, I didn’t hold it against her. When it comes to animals, zookeepers are a forgiving lot.

“Cisco didn’t hurt her, but as to bringing her back to the habitat now, we’ll have to wait and see. Not to change the subject or anything, I think we should move Lucy into her holding pen.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “That’s risky.”

“We might get a baby tonight. There’s no discharge yet, but better to be safe than sorry. I prefer a more controlled environment, especially with a threatened species.”

Under normal conditions Lucy would have already been confined to her holding pen for the birth, but ever since Barry had exiled her there, she hated the pen’s close confines. Locking her up for a few minutes in order to clean her enclosure was one thing, keeping her there for days something else entirely. But the vet was boss.

I unhooked the radio from my belt. “If you want to move her now, let me call Zorah for some help. She might still be on the premises.” And might defend my point of view.

The head keeper arrived a couple of minutes later. “I’m with Teddy on this,” she told the vet, after hearing me out. “Attempting to move the anteater will make her more stressed than she already is, but if you insist, I’m willing to try.”

There was another reason confining Lucy to the holding pen might not work. Giant anteaters preferred to give birth standing up on their two hind legs, propped by their massive tails. Five feet tall when erect, her nose would almost scrape the pen’s wire mesh ceiling.

My prediction about the difficulty of the move proved accurate. Since Lucy was more familiar with me, I was given the honors, for all the good it did. Zorah opened the gate while I, with my catch pole in one hand and my safety board in the other, attempted to maneuver the recalcitrant animal into the pen. She fought me all the way, rearing up and striking out with those deadly, four-inch claws. At one point, she gave my safety board such a blow that she cracked it. Heavily pregnant or not, she could still move faster than we could.

In the end, Zorah and I retreated to the safety of the holding pen while Lucy glared at us, hissing and grumbling, flashing those long talons, threatening to eviscerate us both.

I shouted across the enclosure to the vet. “If we keep this up, she’ll probably go straight into labor, and as upset as we’ve made her, she might even kill the baby.” Infanticide wasn’t rare in the wild, especially with inexperienced mothers. In zoos, it could occur if the mother was unduly stressed—which Lucy had quickly become.

Dr. Kate studied Lucy, her talons, her long blue tongue that flickered in and out. “Point taken!” she called over the fence. “I’ll have the rangers re-rig the camera to focus on her new nest. Teddy, you‘re sure you want me to call you when she goes into labor, no matter the time?”

After receiving a strong affirmative, she gave us a wave, hopped into her cart and drove away.

Now that the excitement was over, I realized my hands were stinging from the blow Lucy had given my safety board. “I need a new board,” I told Zorah as we left the holding pen through its back gate. “One more hit and this thing’s gone, me with it.”

“There’s a spare near the Bengal’s night house. Use it until Carpentry makes you another.” Then she gave me a wicked grin. “Ever thought about transferring to the lemurs?”

***

As soon as six o’clock arrived and the last of my charges were fed and watered, I tried Joe again. No luck. I left for Caro’s.

She was ending a phone call as I walked in. At her feet, DJ Bonz gazed at her with adoration. Priss coughed up a hairball in the corner. She paid them no attention.

“You look like hell, Teddy.”

“Rough day at the office. Say, that wasn’t Joe, was it?”

She smoothed her hair, although every strand of it was already in place. Her eyes shifty, she said, “One of
my
friends.”

Which probably meant a male. With money.

I bounded up the stairs to one of the only two clean bathrooms in the house. When I’d showered away what must have been a pound of zoo dirt, I wrapped myself in a towel, padded into my room, and changed into an old pair of jeans and a tee shirt. Casual, yes, but there’d be no parties tonight.

I called Joe’s office only to learn he still wasn’t back, but this time—the fifteenth call, I guess—Deputy Guiterrez sounded testy. “As I’ve told you, Teddy, I don’t know how many times before, I can contact him on the boat if you really think it’s necessary.”

“No, no,” I muttered, hanging up.

Hearing a growl, I looked around. No Bonz. He was probably still downstairs with Caro. It was my stomach, messaging me that it was time for dinner.

When I returned to the kitchen, Caro was standing in front of the refrigerator, holding an indistinguishable package that looked years old. “How about some Chicken Kiev? I found one of those frozen thingys in the freezer. I’ll boil a potato, too. Can you do that with their jackets on?”

Picturing a big baking Idaho served half-raw, half-soggy, I shook my head. “I’ll make us a salad instead. Vinegar and oil or Green Goddess?”

“Carrot juice for me. I’m back on the Strawberry/Carrot Diet.”

“You’re a size three!”

“Size two, after three weeks on the diet. I’m trying for size one, which was my size when I was crowned Miss San Sebastian County. That’s when I met your father, remember. He loved my tiny waist. Speaking of, he’s leaving day after tomorrow.”

I put down the radish I’d been slicing. “Don’t tell me you found a plane!”

She nodded. “He’s flying out of San Jose International Airport. I hope you’ll come say good-bye to us.”

“Us?”

“I’m going along for the laughs. I’ll be back in a month. In the meantime, you keep an eye on the house.”

“Mother, you can’t be serious!”

She gave me an injured look. “I’m due for a vacation. And quit calling me ‘Mother.’ ”

Vacation? During my last conversation with my father, he’d attempted to lure me with sparkling visions of Cameroon and Iceland. I wondered what delights he had offered her. “You packing mukluks or bikinis?”

She treated me to a mysterious smile. “He told me not to tell you, that the less you knew, the better off you’d be. And him.”

That was probably true, but why did he have to involve Caro in his schemes? If he’d been here, I would have given him a piece of my mind. “What about your boyfriend? After all the work you’ve put in, are you going to dump him?” For months Caro had been trying hard to snag billionaire Cyril Keslar, of the Montecito Keslars, and before Dad had emerged from exile, she’d appeared on the verge of success.

Her expression turned prim. “I asked Cyril to loan me his Lear and he turned me down. He even had the nerve to say it sounded like I was up to something dishonest.”

I laughed. “Well, you are.”

She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at the cutting board. “Either eat that radish or throw it in the trash. Better yet, have a strawberry.”

After dinner, I helped Caro clean—or rather,
I
cleaned while she supervised. When my arms began to ache, I went upstairs to my room. Although it had ten times the space as my aft cabin on the
Merilee
, I felt cramped. Restless and hungering for the scent of the harbor, I sat down on the window seat and opened the window.

It was not yet eight, and the sun’s pink glow remained visible on the horizon. I heard the foghorn on Point Gunn, the ringing of a buoy bell. In my mind’s eye I could almost see the
Merilee
rocking on the outgoing tide, hear the creaking of the lines tethering her to the dock. Nearby, surfacing otters and sea lions would be blowing water out of their nostrils with a wheezy whoosh; here and there, a careless fish would be leaping out of the water, only to become someone’s dinner.

As the evening breeze caressed my face, I breathed in the scents of the home of my heart. Rotting algae. Dead fish. Gull droppings. Over-full dumpsters. Gasoline-slicked water. Why this gamy cornucopia could smell so wonderful was beyond me, but nothing—not even a zoo enclosure—could compare to its perfume. I relaxed for the first time in hours.

What was that old saying, “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world”? Knowing that the
Merilee
rocked on the tide was heaven enough for me. Then I remembered that she was unable to make the trip to Dolphin Island and that my days in paradise were numbered.

But my own troubles paled in light of my father’s. At least he would soon fly to safety, still free, still alive.

With darkness descending, Joe would be on his way back from his fishing trip. When he returned my call, I would tell him who had killed Grayson and Barry. The burden of a murder trial would be lifted from Zorah’s broad shoulders to descend on someone else’s.

My sore heart calmed by the nearby ocean, I drifted off to sleep right there in the window seat.

***

The cell phone’s chimes woke me.

Glancing at my watch, I saw it was almost eleven. I answered. “Joe? Listen, I need to tell you…”

I received a blast of static, then a garbled word.

“…anteater…”

Not Joe. Dr. Kate.

“…baby…difficulty…needs you…”

The connection was so bad I could hardly make her out.

More static, then a roar that sounded like one of the spectacled bears, who were only a short distance from Lucy’s enclosure. The static cleared for a moment and I heard, “…needs to calm down…
hurry!”

A final burst of static, then silence.

Fortunately, I was already dressed. Stuffing the phone into my jeans pocket, I hurried out of the house, closing the door softly so I wouldn’t wake Caro.

***

Fifteen minutes later I was fumbling with the combination lock at the zookeepers’ entrance, the cold metal slippery against my fingers. While I’d expected the lone park ranger working the night shift to let me in, the vet had obviously been too busy to alert him. Not that his absence created a problem. The three-quarter moon was bright enough to illuminate the lock’s numbers. After a couple of tries, I managed to open it, let myself inside, and after driving my truck through the gate, locked it securely behind me.

I parked behind the administration building. Pausing for a moment, I wondered if I should get one of the carts from the brightly-lit maintenance yard. But it would take too long to dial my way through another series of combination locks, find the right key for the right cart, start the thing—the carts were frequently stubborn after being left standing for a few hours—then relock all the gates.

So I hoofed it.

A symphony of sounds charged the night. The wind had risen, and palms leaves crackled above. Below, tall grasses brushed against reach other in a velvety whisper. Lions called to those left behind on a faraway veldt, coyotes yipped at the three-quarter moon. Over in California Habitat, Cisco sang of his loneliness for Godiva.

As I ran up Tropics Trail toward the giant anteater enclosure, my own heart ached. After all the misdirection had been cleared away, the solution to the murders had been so obvious, yet so painful. But thinking about the sorrow involved for everyone wouldn’t help Lucy now. She needed my focused attention. I forced myself to stop thinking about death and ran, my sneakered feet sending up echoes against the waving eucalyptus trees, causing a flutter of great horned owls.

When I reached Lucy’s enclosure I found it dark, with only the faintest glow from the far-off maintenance yard filtering through the trees. I expected to see Dr. Kate’s cart parked nearby, loaded with medical supplies, but it was nowhere around.

“Dr. Kate! Where are you?” My voice echoed along the wide trail.

The only answer was a rustle from the enclosure, near the moat.

As if enraged at having her slumber interrupted, Lucy reared up on her hind legs, flashed her talons and rumbled a warning. Her exposed belly revealed she hadn’t yet given birth.