The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (26 page)

Of course, no matter how reassuring it felt to have my own blunt instrument in case the intruder in the sheep pasture proved dangerous, it would probably have been wiser to call the police. And I might have, if I hadn’t known that the chief probably had every officer in Caerphilly and the surrounding counties scouring the landscape for Charlie Shiffley and Shea Bailey. Interrupting that search would not endear me to the chief. Especially since he’d already had to interrupt it once to deal with our escaped animals. Never mind that the escaped an
imals were the SOBs’ fault, not ours. Right now, I didn’t think that was a distinction that would carry much weight with the chief.

And after all, the intruder would probably turn out to be Seth Early, performing some abstruse sheep-related farming chore that had to be done at night. Or some quirky New Age ritual he’d taken up under Rose Noire's influence. Singing the sheep a soothing, wool-centric lullaby, perhaps. Mr. Early still hadn’t quite gotten over being annoyed about the time in February when I’d reported a prowler on his property, and two deputies had interrupted him when he was trying to help one of his ewes through a difficult birth.

The intruder's flashlight disappeared behind a small rise, which gave me the perfect opportunity to sneak up on him. I approached from the other side of the hill, walking slightly crouched, and took shelter behind a convenient rock. And when I peered over the rock, I saw that it was, indeed, an intruder.

Sheila D. Flugleman. She was carrying one of her manure buckets and running her flashlight beam over the grass. A sheep turd appeared, and she stopped, pulled a small shovel out of the bucket, scooped up her prize, and then resumed the hunt.

I stood up, pointed my flashlight at her, and clicked it on.

“So does gathering it by moonlight do something special for the sheep manure?” I asked loudly. “Or could you possibly be diluting the purity of ZooperPoop! with the lowly droppings of the ordinary domestic sheep?”

She jumped and uttered a small scream—not much more than a squeak.

“Seth Early has those exotic sheep from the zoo, doesn’t he?” she said. “I’m taking their dung.”

“The Norwegian feral sheep? Yes,” I said. I strolled down the hill toward her. “And you can tell their dung from the rest?”

“I’ll mix it all up,” she said. “The package says that it contains manure from zoo animals. It doesn’t say that's all it contains.” A sudden thought struck me.

“That's why Patrick started charging you for the manure, wasn’t it?” I asked. “As long as ZooperPoop! was a small operation that saved him money on cleanup costs, he didn’t care. But when he found out what a moneymaker it was, he demanded a share in the profits. And threatened that if you didn’t pay, he’d tell everyone that ZooperPoop! was just ordinary farm manure.”

A wild guess, but from the sudden look of panic on her face, I suspected it was an accurate one.

“I guess that's not a rumor you want getting out just when you’re on the verge of getting some serious national publicity, according to the
Clarion,”
I added.

Her expression turned from anxiety to fury. When will I learn to leave well enough alone?

“Not a word of it's true,” she said. “And you can’t prove it. And anyway, I had nothing to do with his death, and if you tell Martha Stewart a word of this I’ll—I’ll—aarrgghh!!!”

She threw her bucket of manure at me and sprinted for the road.

“Eeuw! Gross!” I muttered. I’d seen the bucket coming, and dodged it. At least I thought I had. But I wasn’t sure she’d completely missed. I inspected myself by flashlight but couldn’t tell.

I heard Sheila's car start up—apparently she’d hidden it in a small thicket of trees down the road from our house. I turned to watch as she careened down the road toward town, tires squealing at every turn.

Good riddance. I’d go back to the house and call Chief Burke. Report that she’d assaulted me with a disgusting weapon.

But not until after my shower.

I unstuck Chief Burke's yellow crime-scene tape so I could get
into the basement and throw all my clothes directly into the washer. Then I dashed upstairs, naked—luckily the party had lured all the relatives over to Mother and Dad's farm. I used up about half a bar of soap taking a long, hot shower. Then I wrapped myself in a bath towel and sprawled on the bed. The newly assembled bed with its clean sheets and its incredibly comfortable mattress. I was just going to rest a few minutes, and then get dressed, so I was ready to be perky and welcoming when Michael returned with his mother and his aunt. Really I was.

At least that was my plan. I don’t think I’d quite dropped off to sleep when I heard a noise outside.

It sounded rather like the ghastly wailing Mother's cat made if you didn’t let him into the house the instant he arrived on the back porch. But Boomer was back in Yorktown. This was Caer-philly, and we didn’t have any cats. Ducks, penguins, llamas, camels, acouchis, sloths, lemurs, and seventeen other species of zoo animals, yes—but no cats.

Not yet, anyway. Wasn’t there some kind of wild feline missing from the zoo? A bobcat. What if whoever had fostered it had chosen now, at—good grief, one in the morning—to drop off his unwanted charge?

There it was again. Lower this time. Closer to a moan than a caterwaul. Even if it wasn’t the missing bobcat, something was wrong. What if some ordinary domestic cat had been prowling around and come to grief—creeping too close to the hyenas’ cage, for example?

I peered out the front windows. Nothing unusual. I went into the bathroom, which had a window overlooking the backyard. Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but the various sheds, shrubs, picnic tables, lawn chairs, and trenches all lay undisturbed in the moonlight.

But I hadn’t dreamed that noise.

I threw on sweatpants and a T-shirt, shoved my feet into clogs, grabbed my flashlight again, and went downstairs to investigate.

Nothing suspicious in the backyard. The penguins stirred slightly when I passed their coop, then settled down to sleep again. At one end of the yard, a llama stood, apparently guarding three sheep who had settled down to sleep under the weeping willow. More refugees from Seth Early's pastures—I’d get someone to take them back tomorrow after they’d finished trimming the lawn.

Then I heard the low, moaning noise again. The llama lifted its head and turned slightly toward the source, ears and nostrils twitching.

I was definitely hearing a cat, and not a happy one. The sound seemed to be coming from the side yard.

I headed toward the noise, reminding myself to watch out for the Sprockets’ trenches. Which weren’t really that hard to spot if you were looking for them.

I heard a soft whine. Definitely coming from one of the trenches. I just couldn’t tell which one.

Few of them counted as pure trenches anymore. It would have been easier to search them efficiently if they were. But Mother's digging crew had been at work, filling in the holes in some places, joining two or more trenches in others. I wandered about, scanning the bottoms of the various holes, and wondered if I should just give up till morning.

No, not if an injured animal might be out here.

But I wasn’t finding anything. No abandoned bobcat. No hyena-savaged cat lying helpless in the trenches. And no practical-joking humans pretending to be mating cats, either. A couple of my teenage cousins had tried that once, shortly after we moved in, but I was pretty sure my reaction had discouraged repetition.

Then, in the next-to-last trench from the house, I spotted it—a patch of slightly lighter gray in the shadows at one end of the trench. I inched a little closer, and the shadows moved until a pair of eyes stared up at me. They were yellow-green cat eyes, but farther apart than a house cat's eyes would be. Clearly their owner was bigger than a house cat.

Evidently Lola the bobcat had arrived. And she didn’t sound happy.

And what if bobcats could jump the way house cats could? I jerked back from the edge of the trench, expecting to see twenty or thirty pounds of peeved bobcat emerge, claws whirling. But nothing happened. All I could hear from the trench was a soft whine from Lola.

I circled around the end of the trench so I could peer in from the other side and flicked on my flashlight as I leaned over.

I saw Lola, flinching from the light, her tufted ears flattened against her skull. She growled at me.

Then I spotted the crossbow bolt protruding from her flank.

“I don’t blame you for being ticked off,” I said to Lola. “And I don’t suppose there's any way I can convince you that I had nothing to do with the pain you’re feeling.”

She hissed at me. I flicked off the flashlight to avoid stressing her.

“I didn’t think so,” I said. “I’m going to call someone to help you.”

But who? Dad, perhaps, though I wasn’t sure his wildlife-rehabilitation expertise extended to bobcats, and Mother would never forgive me if I got him involved and he injured himself. The Caerphilly Animal Welfare Department clearly wasn’t up to the job of dealing with Lola. Montgomery Blake, perhaps—he certainly claimed to have experience with big cats. If he was back at his hotel and not still out roaming the county in a suspi
cious manner. I didn’t much like the idea of inviting him over unless I had plenty of witnesses around. Chief Burke. That was the ticket. I’d call the police and then Blake, and—

Something hit me across the backside, knocking me off my feet and into the bobcat-infested trench.

Chapter 41

As I fell, I twisted to avoid landing on Lola. I succeeded, but the effort threw me off balance. I landed hard, doing something to my leg that hurt so badly I almost fainted. But the five razor-sharp claws raking down my side snapped me out of it, and for a few frantic seconds I scrambled to put some distance between myself and Lola. Not that I felt like moving—I was pretty sure my leg was broken. But Lola seemed to want her personal space back. Fine by me. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

When the dirt settled, Lola and I were lying at opposite ends of a ten-foot stretch of trench, glaring at each other. I could see a fresh trickle of blood from the wound on Lola's flank. I felt bad that I might have hurt her on landing, though I suspected it was her efforts to fight me off that had set off the bleeding. At least she seemed too hurt to come after me. A good thing, too. I was also bleeding, from where she’d lacerated my side. And worse, my leg hurt like hell, and lay twisted at an odd angle. I wasn’t up to defending myself.

But I might have to. Whoever pushed me into the trench clearly didn’t have my best interests at heart.

Lola howled softly at me—an aching sound, half threat and half pain. I wished there were some way I could tell her that I wasn’t going to hurt her. I wasn’t the enemy—the enemy was still up there. And probably still up to something.

Just then I spotted something on one wall of the trench—a little red dot of light, like the one Charlie Shiffley's laser sight projected onto whatever he was about to shoot. It played over the wall, found Lola, and moved on.

Whoever was using it was behind me. He’d have to circle around the trench to point it at me.

Probably a good idea to play possum. Let whoever pushed me in think I’d been even more seriously injured by the fall. Maybe I could get a clue to his—or her—identity.

I waited, ears straining. Nothing.

It was annoying that I couldn’t put a face to the enemy lurking overhead. One moment I expected to see the craggy face of Montgomery Blake peering over the edge, lobbing a few more genial insults down before he finished me off. The next minute I was sure it would be Shea, the SOB leader. I also spared a few thoughts for Sheila D. Flugleman—a normal person might not think manure a sufficient motive for murder, but she definitely wasn’t firing on all cylinders. And the Sprockets, who had appeared so conveniently soon after the body was discovered— what if they’d had something to do with putting it there? Even Charlie Shiffley—perhaps Chief Burke was right, and he wasn’t the innocent kid I thought he was. And I could think of other candidates for the killer if I tried, and I probably would if the wait went on much longer.

Patience, I told myself. Sooner or later, my attacker had to show himself, right?

Then a few clods of dirt fell on me. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe playing possum wasn’t such a good idea after all. I was lying in a six-foot-deep trench, and the person who had pushed me in was probably the killer. A killer who had buried his previous victim in a convenient nearby excavation. Human
beings are creatures of habit—what if he was planning on repeating the process?

“Damn,” a voice above me said. “I thought sure she’d finish you off by now.”

Startled, I looked up to see Ray Hamlin craning his head over the side of the ditch.

“Maybe if you hadn’t shot her from behind with a crossbow before throwing her down here she would have,” I said.

“If I’d shot her, I’d have finished her off,” he said. “Wasn’t my lousy shot.”

“One of your clients did it, then?”

He chuckled.

“Yeah, one of my clients. Lousy shot, and a sniveling coward to boot. Took off like a bat out of hell as soon as that damned kid showed up and started threatening to call the police. I should have guessed that kid was going to be trouble. Should have guessed a little sooner you were, too. But we’ll take care of all that.”

His face disappeared. I glanced at Lola. She was looking up at where Hamlin's face had been, snarling silently.

“Good girl,” I said. “He's the bad guy. Remember that.”

Just then something landed on the dirt between us. A body, with its hands duct-taped behind its back. Lola howled, and I suspected she was swatting at the new arrival with her claws. It was Charlie Shiffley. He didn’t react to Lola's attack, so I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back toward me as far as I could, until he was out of her reach. Then I checked his pulse to make sure I hadn’t just rescued a corpse. No, his eyes might be closed, but his pulse was strong and he was breathing fine. His hair was matted with something wet and sticky. Moonlight washed out the color, but I suspected it was blood.