The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (23 page)

She handed me a copy of that week's
Caerphilly Clarion
, folded open to an article about Sheila Flugleman, complete with a smiling picture of her holding a bag of ZooperPoop! next to her ear.

“It's the local rag, and her family's store is probably a big advertiser,” I said.

“Yes, but according to that, she's going to be featured on Martha Stewart's show.”

I winced. Mother had a love-hate relationship with Martha Stewart—not that they’d ever met. Mother admired Martha for doing things “properly”—which as far as I could see meant by hand in as old-fashioned, labor-intensive, nitpicking a manner as possible. But I could tell sometimes that she couldn’t quite understand how Martha had gotten to be such a celebrity simply by doing things properly, when other people of equal taste and fastidiousness languished in obscurity.

“Maybe Sheila could introduce you to Martha,” I said. “Good boost for the shop, once you open it.”

Mother drew herself up to her full height. Which was exactly the same as my height, five ten—why did it look so much more impressive on her?

“I hardly care to be introduced to Martha Stewart by a purveyor of designer manure,” she said, in her most glacial tone.

Oops.

“Just as well,” I said. “After all, she's a suspect in Lanahan's murder.”

“Do you think she did it?”

“Who knows?” I said. “But even being a suspect could spoil her chances of being on television. I suspect Martha prefers her guests squeaky clean these days. Legally speaking, of course.”

“How unfortunate,” Mother said. But she was smiling as she walked off.

Within minutes the yard was empty, except for the odd stray sheep and Michael.

“Good riddance,” I said.

“Well, it was a nice party while it lasted,” Michael said. “But we don’t want to knock off too many guests the first day we’re officially moved in. I’d go over to the farm to help out, but it's time I took off to pick up Mom.”

“Now? I thought she wasn’t coming in till evening.”

“It will be evening by the time I get to the airport—she's flying into BWI instead of Dulles, apparently. Adds at least an hour to the drive, and I bet she saved maybe fifty dollars.”

“Two hours, round-trip,” I said. I thought of several other things I could add, but decided that none of them was something you wanted to say about a woman who was about to become your mother-in-law, so I bit them back. With an effort.

“Next time, I’m making the damned reservations,” Michael said. “And any other time, I’d just hire a limo service to pick her up.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.

“Do you want to come?” He sounded surprised.

“To be perfectly honest, no,” I said. “Right now the last thing I want to do is drive a couple of hours and sit around in an airport. But I figure it's probably the last thing you want to do, too,

and we haven’t spent much time together the last couple of days, and maybe you’d like some company on the way up.”

“I’d love company on the way up, but maybe I should go it alone. Spend some one-on-one time with Mom, to make up for the fact that we’re going to abandon her on Monday.”

“Good idea,” I said.

“And when I get back,” he said as he leaned over to kiss me good-bye, “I’ll tell you all about orgling.” “Orgling?”

He made an odd gurgling noise.

“That's orgling,” he said. “Part of the llama's mating ritual.” “Yuck,” I said. “Let's stick to champagne and roses.” “If you were a lady llama, that would drive you wild.” “You’ve been watching the llamas mate?”

“No, all our llamas are geldings. But Dr. Blake has been telling me all about llamas.”

“If he's been advising you to orgle at me, he's been spending too much time with his animals,” I said. “I prefer human mating rituals, thank you.”

“Hold that thought until I get back from BWI.”

“I will,” I said. “And meanwhile, speaking of Dr. Blake, I’m going to visit him. See if I can get some accurate information from him on the zoo's population.”

“And maybe a confession to murder?”

“Unlikely,” I said, shaking my head.

“I thought you suspected him.”

“I do,” I said. “But he's too sharp to confess.”

“You’ve tried to get him to?”

“Well, no,” I said. “He just doesn’t seem like the confessing kind. Maybe I should try.”

“Just be careful,” Michael said.

“I’ll make sure the staff at the Inn sees me arriving,” I said.

“Do that,” he said. “Or maybe you should just stay home and rest. Do you really expect you can solve the murder and the zoo's problems before we take off?”

“No,” I said. “And when we take off tomorrow for wherever it is we’re going, I’ll gladly leave the murder investigation to Chief Burke and the fate of the zoo to Dad and Dr. Blake. But until then—”

“Until then, you’re going to give it one last shot. Fire away, but be careful.” “Will do.”

Of course, as I pushed my way through the departing crowds to my car, I wondered if being seen by the Inn's staff would offer much protection if I were seriously worried about Blake. The Inn was notorious as a place people went when they didn’t want to be seen having lunch, dinner, or breakfast with someone other than their spouses. What if their guest services extended to providing alibis to special guests?

Or, for that matter, disposal of inconvenient bodies. Did the Inn's concierge have an alibi for the murder?

Okay, maybe that thought was a little too paranoid, but I’d certainly watch my back at the Inn. I was venturing onto Blake's turf.

I should make a point of letting Blake know that people knew where I was. Mention the fact that Michael might be calling the Inn to talk to me.

Just because the chief was busy chasing Charlie Shiffley and Shea Bailey didn’t mean that either of them was definitely the killer. I still had the uneasy feeling that Blake's sudden appearance in Caerphilly hadn’t been explained by the interest he was taking in the zoo.

Chapter 37

I had to drive a mile or so through the Caerphilly Golf Course to get to the Inn. I kept expecting a sleek, unmarked security vehicle to pull out from behind one of the well-manicured hedges or copses to bar the road, but I made my way unchallenged to a parking lot made of white gravel that gleamed like polished marble. I stashed my battered blue Toyota between a brand new Rolls-Royce Corniche and a Hummer that still had the dealer's suggested retail price sticker on it. The only other car in the lot that wasn’t brand-new was a vintage BMW that looked as if it had been washed and polished daily by an army of chauffeurs. With my luck, the Toyota would develop an inferiority complex after an hour or two at the Inn, and refuse to start when I wanted to leave.

I crunched across the spotless white stone toward the front door, which was ostentatiously unobtrusive—in fact, almost hidden between wisteria vines dripping with lush purple flowers. The doorman's manner was scrupulously polite, and I resisted the temptation to explain that my jeans and T-shirt were absolutely clean.

“Meg! What are you doing here?”

I turned to find Dad strolling away from the registration desk. His jeans and shirt weren’t the least bit clean—it looked as if he’d come straight from putting the penguins to bed. But he
seemed completely at home, and a porter murmured, “Evening, sir,” while passing him. Leave it to Dad to make himself at home anywhere.

“I came to see Dr. Blake,” I said.

“Aha!” Dad exclaimed. Then he glanced around the lobby for possible eavesdroppers. When he spotted none, his face fell slightly, but he still lowered his voice to a suspiciously conspiratorial stage whisper.

“You suspect him of being the killer?” he asked.

The desk clerk looked up from his computer, ears almost visibly cocked to hear my answer.

“More important than that,” I said, in my normal voice. “I suspect him of knowing precisely how many and what kind of animals there were in the Caerphilly Zoo.”

“But I could—” Dad began, before realizing what he’d been about to say.

The desk clerk lost interest as soon as we stopped whispering.

“Yes, I know you could tell me if you had the time to sit down and make a list,” I said. “But you’ve been rather busy caring for the animals. So I thought I’d bother Blake. And while we’re both here, maybe we can pin Blake down on what, if anything, he's going to do about the zoo.”

Not that I’d object to getting in a little prying about Blake's motive, means, and opportunity for committing the murder, given the chance. But I didn’t want to set Dad off. Still, I was relieved that his presence meant that someone other than the staff of the Caerphilly Inn knew where I was.

“Great idea,” Dad said. “And it gives you a wonderful chance to see the Inn!”

“Wonderful,” I echoed. I glanced around uneasily. I’d been to the Caerphilly Inn before, but it never failed to intimidate me. Its brochure claimed that the building was a modern interpreta
tion of a colonial-era mansion, inspired in part by Monticello, Mount Vernon, and other architectural masterpieces from the Old Dominion's more gracious eras. To me, it looked more as if Martha Stewart and the architect of Caesars Palace had gone ten rounds to see who got to have the last say in the decor.

Martha had won on a technicality in the lobby, which was filled with acres of chintz and enough distressed wood to gladden the heart of an army of termites. Rumor had it that Las Vegas ruled in the less public areas, especially the bathrooms, which were larger than most people's living rooms and equipped with both saunas and Jacuzzis. Or so they said—since the all-in price of a weekend at the Inn would have exceeded our monthly mortgage payment, Michael and I had spent our occasional romantic getaways in less rarefied quarters.

Dad, however, was charmed.

“What a lovely place!” he exclaimed as we strolled through the lobby. “Did you see the wisteria outside?”

“It's an alien invasive species, you know,” I said. Normally he’d have been the first to point this out, but apparently he was still dazzled by everything associated with Blake. “And can you imagine how much water they use to keep the golf course that green? Not to mention the toxic chemicals. I can’t understand how an environmental activist like Blake could tolerate a place like this.”

“Well, he's a rich environmental activist,” Dad said with a shrug. “You can’t expect him to stay at the Super 8.”

“Here's the elevator,” I said, pausing by the call button. “You got Blake's room number, right?”

“Oh, he's not in one of the rooms,” Dad said, breezing past the elevators toward a pair of enormous French doors beyond. “He's in the Washington Cottage.”

Wonderful. Blake couldn’t be content with an over-the-top
room in the main part of the Inn—he had to have one of the cottages.

Was I perhaps feeling a little jealous of someone who could afford the Inn's most expensive quarters? No—I was feeling a lot jealous. But at least I’d finally get to satisfy my curiosity about the cottages.

The Inn had three cottages—Washington, Jefferson, and Madison—each with its own private patio and a view of the Caerphilly Golf Course. When nearby Caerphilly College sponsored executive retreats and high-level economic think tanks, it always housed the most distinguished international economists and the richest robber barons in the cottages. For that matter, any really distinguished guest of the college could usually count on staying at a cottage—alumni who had given whacking great sums of money, or were expected to do so in future, for example. Michael always joked that if you could get a guest list for the cottages, the names would probably be the same as you’d find on most of the newer campus buildings.

“Why doesn’t Blake take a few animals?” I muttered as we followed the quaint cobblestone path to his cottage. “He's probably got more room than we do. And he could turn the llamas loose on the fairways and save the Inn a little money on groundskeeping.”

“I’m not sure the Inn allows pets,” Dad said. “This is it.”

We had arrived at the Washington Cottage, and were standing under a tall white veranda designed to echo Mount Vernon— although there were only four white pillars, not eight, and they were only about a story and a half tall. Still, it looked as if it might grow up to be Mount Vernon if you watered and fertilized it enough.

Through the door I could see parts of the interior. More chintz and old wood. The real Mount Vernon probably didn’t
contain a sleek modern laptop, but even that was perched atop a Chippendale writing desk.

Blake answered the door seconds after Dad knocked. “There you are,” he said. “My, that is a spectacular black eye you’ve got.”

I forced a smile, and reminded myself to be polite. No matter how irritating I found Blake, or how much I suspected him, he was a distinguished scientist, and a guest in town, and our best hope for getting the animals out of our backyard.

“Food's already here,” Blake said as he turned to lead us in.

And an impressive array of food indeed. The table in the cottage's dining room was covered with every cold item on the Inn's menu—meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables with dip, assorted salads, and a bowl of gigantic shrimp in which someone had already made a considerable dent.

Dad began heaping a plate with food. I followed Blake out to the patio, where I discovered that the shrimp-loving someone was Rob. He was already ensconced in a chaise longue with a glass of red wine on the wrought-iron table at his elbow and a heaping plate of food in his lap. On the glass tabletop, the shrimp tails were beginning to overflow the plate on which he’d been piling them.

“Cheers!” he said, raising his glass to us and then taking a healthy sip. “Damn, I wish I’d brought my camera. The eye's getting even more picturesque.”

“What are you doing here?” I said. “Apart from the obvious.”

“I brought Dr. Blake back here,” Rob said. “He can’t drive, you know.”

“I can drive just fine,” Blake said. “I just don’t have a license right now. If those imbeciles down at the DMV knew how to administer an eye test properly—but never mind that. Help yourself.” He waved his hand back at the French doors that led to the dining room. “What we don’t eat only gets thrown away.”