The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (13 page)

I was tempted to try sneaking into the zoo by a back way. There were a couple of dirt roads that looked promising, but since I had no idea where the zoo property began, I decided not to wander off into the woods yet. Better to find a map.

“You want to go to the library for story hour?” I asked Eric. The Caerphilly Library had a nice collection of county maps.

“That's for little kids,” Eric said, wrinkling his nose. “I’d rather go back and see what new animals we’ve got.”

So I went by the house to drop off Eric. Call me an uncaring aunt, but I hoped he’d be disappointed. However, a lot more cars had arrived during our unsuccessful scouting expedition to the zoo. Most of them probably belonged to relatives, showing up much earlier than expected, but there might be a few disgruntled animal foster parents in the lot.

As Eric ran off to inventory the livestock, I spotted Mother through the living-room window. From her gestures, I deduced that she was still giving orders to her volunteer movers. I decided to sneak in the back door for a cold drink before setting out again.

As I strolled around the side of the house, I found myself wondering if the relatives held a solution to the animal problem. Surely given the hosts of family members who’d be showing up today, tomorrow, and Monday, we could find a few willing to
foster the various animals until the future of the Caerphilly Zoo was assured. Especially if I got Mother to talk them into it. For that matter, knowing my family, odds were I could find permanent homes for many of the animals if I just— “Mwah-ha-ha!”

I jumped as a sinister black-cloaked figure leaped out from behind a hydrangea, baring long, bloodstained fangs and flexing fingers armed with impressive clawlike fingernails.

“I vant to drrink your blood!” he intoned in a deep, guttural voice.

“Oh, very impressive, Dr. Smoot,” I said. “I see you and Rose Noire are working hard at overcoming your phobia. How's it going?”

“Very well, thank you,” he said, in a more normal voice. He grinned, which looked peculiar in a face painted fish-belly white, except for a few streaks of flesh color where he’d rubbed the makeup off scratching his nose. And he had trouble talking through the fangs without lisping. “I confeth,” he went on, “I thought it wath a crathy idea at firtht, but I’m really thtarting to get into it. It’th—very empowering.”

“That's good,” I said. He not only lisped—he drooled slightly. I started to sidle away, hoping to avoid hearing much more. It always made me nervous when people in therapy wanted to tell me about their psychological problems. Wasn’t that one of the main reasons for doing therapy—being able to talk over your problems confidentially with a trained mental health professional? Someone whose first reaction wouldn’t be, “Whoa, he's a few ants short of a picnic”—or at least someone with a vested interest in not blurting it out loud. If just talking to any old passerby would help, why do therapy?

Of course, the fact that I was thinking of Rose Noire's bizarre plan as therapy made me even more nervous than did Dr.

Smoot—who was babbling on about how it had felt, leaping out of bushes to scare people all morning. No wonder he hadn’t gone home yet. Odds were most of my family hadn’t minded a bit, and with them around, he probably fit in better here than he had anywhere in his life.

“That's great,” I said. I began backing up in earnest. “Just keep it up and I’m sure you—”

The ground under my feet disappeared.

Chapter 22

“Are you all right?”

I don’t think I lost consciousness, but I was too stunned to speak for a few seconds. Then I looked around. I was in a grave. A hole three feet wide, six feet deep, and—

Okay, maybe not a grave. It was about fifteen feet long. So either it was a grave for, say, two professional basketball players who insisted on going head-to-head in the afterlife, or it was more like a trench.

Still, not someplace I wanted to be lying, gazing up at an anxious, drooling faux vampire hovering solicitously over me.

“Can you give me a hand out?”

He frowned for a moment.

“No,” he said. “I’m not that far along yet. I’ll get thomeone.”

His face disappeared. I stood up and tested all my limbs. Nothing seemed broken, despite the six-foot fall.

So why was there a trench in our side yard? Some utility problem? The gas came in the front, and the septic field was out back, so neither of them was apt to be involved. And the phone and electrical wires weren’t buried. And, last I’d heard, cable didn’t come out this far. What was going on? I began pacing up and down the trench out of sheer impatience.

Dad's head popped over the side of the trench.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Fine.”

“Stay where you are.”

As if I could go anywhere. I was about to start pacing again when the end of a ladder thumped down at the far end of the trench. I ran over and scrambled up and out of the trench.

“There you are,” Dad said, beaming at me. “Randall Shiffley's gone off to fetch some of that yellow caution tape they use around construction sites, which should help a lot, but in the meantime, you’ve got to watch out for the trenches.”

“Trenches? There are more than one of them?”

Evidently there were. Looking out over the side yard I counted ten of them, all neatly parallel, all three feet wide and spaced three feet apart. The area between the house and the barn was more than half filled. In a couple of places, boards had been placed across the trenches to make paths. I noticed that the last four trenches were only half as long as the rest, although they were visibly growing toward regulation size even as I watched.

“What is going on?” I said. “Are we digging in to resist an invasion? Or perhaps we’ve already had the invasion—someone dropped off a batch of giant moles?”

“It's the Sprockets,” Dad said.

“The Sprockets?”

As if on cue, Rutherford Sprocket's head appeared in one of the trenches, gradually rising until I could see that he was pushing a wheelbarrow.

“It's quite ingenious,” Dad said. “They figured out that if they leave a dirt ramp, it eliminates the need for a ladder, and makes it much easier to haul the dirt off.”

Rutherford trundled his wheelbarrow load of dirt across the remaining undisturbed part of the side yard, emptied it onto a giant dirt mound there, and then vanished back into the hole again.

“Who the hell told the Sprockets they could ruin our yard?” I exclaimed.

“They said you did.” “They what?”

“It's for a good cause,” Dad said quickly. “They only want to find their great-uncle Plantagenet's body. They said they told you all about it.”

I strode over to the edge of the first trench, put my hands on my hips, and took a deep breath.

“Stop digging immediately!” I bellowed.

Heads popped up out of the trenches all over the yard, like startled prairie dogs. Several dozen heads, most of them belonging to members of my family. I assumed the few unfamiliar faces were auxiliary Sprockets recruited by Rutherford and Barch-ester, though for all I knew they could be my own relatives— distant ones lured by the promise of a larger-than-usual party this weekend, or perhaps newly acquired relatives by marriage. I noticed at least two Shiffleys, and made a note to triple-check the next few invoices from the Shiffley Construction Company, to make sure we didn’t get billed for their digging services.

“Everybody out of the trenches!” I shouted at the sea of heads. “No more digging!”

Most of the diggers obediently began climbing out of the holes and scuttling away. The two Sprockets didn’t move. I made my way over to the hole they were crouching in, leaping over each of the intervening trenches far more easily than I could have if I weren’t so riled up.

“Out!” I said, pointing toward the road.

“But we’re looking for Great-uncle Plantagenet,” Barchester whined.

“I don’t care—get out!”

“We only want to—,” Rutherford began.

“Out! Now! Or I’ll start filling those holes with you still in them!”

The two grudgingly dropped their shovels on their wheelbarrows and trundled them up the ramps. I dogged their heels until they’d loaded their tools in their car, and every so often, if they seemed to be slowing down, I bellowed “Out!” again. Quite cathartic, and I felt infinitely better as I stood by the side of the road, arms crossed, face still arranged in a severe frown, and watched them drive away.

“Good job,” Rob said, joining me. “Although if I were you, I’d have made them put the dirt back.”

“I just wanted them out,” I said.

“Got that point.”

“When Mother's finished with the visiting relatives, I’ll get them to fill in the trenches.”

“Hey, why waste all that digging?” Rob said. “Wouldn’t take that much more effort to put in a pool.”

“I just want the yard back.”

“Suit yourself,” Rob said. “I’m going to see what Dr. Smoot is up to.”

Randall and Vern Shiffley returned and began roping off the entrenched area with yellow caution tape. And not a moment too soon—a small convoy of cars and SUVs had pulled up and begun to disgorge another flock of cousins. Most of them were carrying covered dishes, all of them were gawking up at the newly painted house, and none of them, of course, were watching their feet. If not for the Shiffleys’ efforts, the trenches would have taken a heavy toll on the guest list and the supply of provisions. But after milling about aimlessly exclaiming over the trenches for a few minutes, they all wandered toward the front door or took the long way to the backyard, around the far side of the house.

Vern nodded absently and strode off toward the edge of the yard, where he pulled out a cell phone and turned his back. Randall came over to stand by me.

“That should take care of it,” Randall said. “Nobody could miss all that hazard tape.”

“You underestimate my relatives,” I said. “And how wild tomorrow's party will get.”

“Tomorrow's party? You mean today's party won’t get all that wild?” he asked, indicating the swarms of relatives setting up in the yard.

“This is tomorrow's party,” I said. “They’re getting an early start on it.” He nodded.

“By the way,” I said, glancing over to make sure Vern was still absorbed in his phone call. “You said that you couldn’t count on Chief Burke clearing Charlie in time. In time for what?”

Randall hesitated for a few moments and glanced at Vern.

Chapter 23

I controlled my impatience and waited for Randall to speak.

“Charlie's a smart kid,” he said finally. “Good at math. College material. Wants to be an engineer. And he's a good athlete, too— Virginia Tech offered him a football scholarship, so he can go without racking up a lot of debt. Only they hadn’t quite signed the contract when Lanahan started making such a stink about his damned gazelle, and the college has been backpedaling.”

“I see,” I said.

“I can understand how they feel,” Randall continued. “I wouldn’t want a kid around who could deliberately steal that gazelle and shoot it out of pure meanness. It was a stupid mistake, yes, but a mistake. Charlie wouldn’t hurt a fly, only the longer the stink about the gazelle went on, the less the college people seemed to believe that.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be a problem anymore,” I said. “I gather Chief Burke wasn’t ever that keen on trying to prosecute Charlie—no real evidence. With Lanahan gone, the whole thing will probably drop.”

“Yeah,” Randall said. “But if you think the college doesn’t want a sneak thief and a poacher, how do you think they feel about a suspected murderer?”

“Surely they don’t really suspect Charlie?”

“No more than anyone else who knows how to use a cross
bow,” he said. “But no less, either. So we need to get this murder investigation wrapped up as soon as possible.”

“I’m sure Chief Burke is doing his best,” I said. “He’ll find out the truth.”

“Someone has to,” Randall grumbled.

Why did people always look at me when they said things like that?

“I thought you were going over to the zoo to count cages or something,” he said.

“I did,” I said. “But there was an animal-rights protest going on, so I decided to come back after they were gone.”

“After they’re gone? If you mean the SOB people, they’ve set up camp there, you know,” Randall said. “I heard they were planning to stay there all summer, and without Lanahan to make a fuss, odds are they will.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “So much for getting into the zoo anytime soon.”

“You could sneak in the back way,” he suggested. He paused to grab a small fallen branch and snap off a six-inch-long stick. Then he squatted beside a small patch we’d apparently missed when sowing grass seed and began scratching in the dirt.

“Here's Lanahan's property.” He marked out a rough rectangle in the middle of the dirt patch. “Front gate's here—” two slash marks across one of side of the rectangle “—and here's the road to town—” a long line that disappeared into the grass.

“Okay,” I said. I had squatted down beside him, the better to see the map, though my ankles were already wobbling.

“Here's Vern's land, and our cousin Duane's,” he said, marking two smaller plots along one side of the zoo—the left side, looking from the road. “You see a small dirt road leading off into the woods a little ways before you go to the zoo gate?”

“I think so,” I said. If it was the same dirt road I was thinking
of, I’d made a mental note of its location, wondering if it might offer a back way into the zoo if the Save Our Beasts protesters were still marching there when I returned.

“That marks the property line between Lanahan's land and Duane's,” Randall said. “And farther back, between Lanahan's and Vern's.”

“Check,” I said. Nice of Randall to help me out—but I found myself wondering if he had some ulterior motive in showing me the back way to the zoo.

“All this belongs to the Bromleys,” he said, indicating the area behind and to the right of the zoo with broad sweeping strokes of the stick, as if indicating that the Bromleys’ rolling acres continued well into the grass and possibly beyond the barn. “Tim-berland. Pines for pulpwood. And old Jase Bromley doesn’t rent out the hunting rights.”