Endangered: A Zoo Mystery Part 25

Rejoining the conflict, I walked through it again while my mother scrambled an egg for Robby. "You guys can take a week's vacation at my expense. If Cecile can't put you up, I'll pay for a motel. You can go to museums and parks and stuff. It will be sunny and Robby will have a wonderful time. It's just for a week or so, because this can't go on much longer." That was nothing more than wishful thinking, but what else could I say? "I'm moving out, to a new place, where I'll be safe. Can I have the keys for the truck and the Camry? My Honda has that clouded leopard on the spare tire cover so it's too conspicuous."

I could count on the fingers of one hand the times I'd seen my father angry.

"You think you can shuffle us out of the way while you deal with this criminal? That we're going to run off and leave you to face it alone? What makes us so useless and you bullet-proof? Answer me that."

"Dear, you're scaring Robby," my mother whispered.

"Don't 'dear' me. I want an answer from her."

I had no recourse, no other option. I burst into tears. Robby burst into tears. "I can't leave Denny and Marcie," I sobbed, clinging to my child, "or I'd run, too. Marcie's going to collapse, and I have to be there for both of them. All I can do is try to keep my child safe, but you won't let me. I can't ask Mom to do this all alone. It needs both of you. I have a place to stay with the dogs, but I'm already pushing my luck and I can't ask for Dad to stay there, too. It's too much. I just need you to go. Please."

I won, but I was an empty husk, withered and exhausted, by the time they finally, finally started packing.

That afternoon, after dropping them off at the airport and crying my eyes out to see my child walking away from me, I set up timers to turn the lamps on and off, backed my mother's Camry out of the garage, loaded up the dogs and a suitcase, and moved in with Neal.

Chapter Thirty.

Neal lived near the I-5 Bridge in an apartment building with a keypad at the entrance. As soon as we entered the lobby, we ran into a maintenance man, a short dark guy with bright eyes. Neal said, "Raymond, this is a friend of mine who'll be staying a few days."

Raymond didn't smirk or leer or look wise, which was a good thing because I'd have clocked him. Neal had my suitcase. I had a big bag of dog food, a tote bag of shampoo, toothpaste, et cetera, and two excited dogs winding their leashes around me. I was, without a doubt, at the end of my rope.

Neal shook hands with Raymond in a slightly peculiar way, and said, "The dogs are temporary. Let's not worry too much about them, okay?"

Raymond nodded with a fair amount of enthusiasm. "As long as they're temporary, Mr. Humboldt, I'm sure it will be okay."

Winnie and Range had never been in an elevator and weren't keen to try it. I hauled them in. They cowered and whined.

The apartment wasn't big, but it was cla.s.sy. A wall of gla.s.s overlooked the Columbia River and the bridge. Cars and small boats went about their business as the late afternoon sky glowed with pink and gray. Living room furniture ran to steel and leather, with a bright modern rug under the coffee table. The bedroom Neal showed me was stark white except for two big color photographs on the wall above the bed: a giant anteater walking a forest trail and two jaguar cubs attacking their tolerant mother. The pictures were high quality and rea.s.sured me that Neal was from the same planet as his staff. The bed was enormous and covered with a black comforter. A brown dog hair drifted onto it. Winnie and Range, unleashed, roamed the apartment sniffing vigorously, their toenails clicking on the hardwood floors.

"Dogs aren't allowed?" I asked. "I saw you, uh, tip Raymond."

"They are, but you pay extra. Two big dogs visiting might raise eyebrows. I have a neighbor who enjoys conflict."

"I'd like to reimburse you."

"No need. Do you want something to drink?"

"A double shot of tequila, if you don't mind."

"Coming up."

"I'm joking."

"You look like you need it." He disappeared into the kitchen.

I sat on the black leather sofa and wondered whether coming here was final proof I'd lost my mind. I'd sought the last place on earth anyone would look for me, and this was definitely it. When I'd proposed couch-surfing for a few days and explained why, Neal had said "yes." Now we were facing up to the reality-a bizarre episode where my boss and I learned entirely too much about one another. He came out and handed me a gla.s.s with a good-sized shot of tequila. It tasted great.

He wandered around the room, staring out the window and frowning.

"Is this your daughter?" I indicated the framed photo on the end table. A dark-haired little girl with big blue eyes and a shy smile. Aside from her eyes, she didn't look much like Neal. Delicate features in a heart-shaped face instead of his square jaw and round head. "How old is she?"

"Bailey. She's eleven now." He stopped pacing and stood with his hands behind his back.

"Where does she live?"

He stiffened. "Florida. I see her twice a year. How's your drink?"

I got the message. "It's great. Seeing those stuffed animals butchered freaked me out. Thanks for putting us up." I sipped at the tequila, which was calming my hunger pangs, warming me from the inside out.

"No problem. Stay here until the police locate those guys."

"I can use my dad's pickup, too. I'll keep switching cars when I go back and forth to the zoo so no one can track me."

Neal took a minute to digest this. "Let's see if I have this right. You think a murderer is looking for you, so you've gone to ground here. But you plan to work at the zoo as usual, a place that anyone can walk into."

The tequila was. .h.i.tting pretty hard. My empty stomach, that was the problem. But it was lovely, relaxing, after a horrible day. "I wouldn't stiff you. You're short-staffed because Denny's on the sick list."

"Arnie knows the routine at Birds. I've got him and Pete to cover it when Calvin is off. Primates won't get extra help, but Kip will manage. You stay here."

I sat up straight. "Arnie? I wouldn't let Arnie feed a parakeet. I'll go in."

"The bears survive."

"Bears are tough. He cuts corners. I'll be fine at work. We've got security guards." That was weak-George, the main security guard, was about as dangerous as one of the tortoises. I just felt safe at the zoo.

Neal looked at me with narrowed eyes. I was used to his annoyance, orders, brainstorming, second thoughts. This I couldn't define. Was I coming up short?

He said, "We'll revisit this later."

I finished the tequila and decided not to worry about him being judgmental. Time to stop crying inside about sending Robby off. Focus on the relief of knowing my boy and my parents were safe. Would it be polite to suggest a refill?

Neal said, "I usually send out for dinner. Chinese okay?"

"Perfect." I wasn't hungry. Strange. I was always hungry. I felt fine. Maybe I should drink hard liquor more often. No, I'd already had too much. In the future, stick to wine. More predictable.

Neal gave me a wary glance and walked to the kitchen. He looked really tense. Maybe he needed a drink, too. I heard him make the phone call to the restaurant and move around the kitchen.

I woke up when he buzzed someone into the building. I seemed to be curled up on the black leather sofa. Winnie lay on the colorful rug nearby. I didn't see Range anywhere. Robby? Oh, right. In California. I woke up again when Neal set a wonderful smelling big brown bag on the gla.s.s-topped coffee table. Range trotted up from wherever he'd been hanging out.

I roused myself and fed the dogs in his fancy gla.s.s bowls. Neal and I ate at the kitchen counter. The tequila wasn't sitting as well as it had at first, but food helped settle my stomach. Neal kept glancing at me. I couldn't read him at all, except that it wasn't cheerful acceptance. I'd put my foot in it somehow, but I didn't know what I'd done wrong.

"After I walk the dogs, would you go with me to feed the macaws?" I said as he cleared away the dinner debris. "I could call Pete, but he's a long way away."

"I'll do it. You'll stay here."

"But you don't know how. And it's safer to have two people, right?"

"I am starting to wonder about your survival instincts. You say you're scared, then you want to put yourself in the line of fire. Wrong mindset. Write down what you want me to do for those birds."

Humbled, I wrote instructions on the piece of paper he handed me. Neal disappeared into the bedroom and returned wearing a leather jacket. I checked for a bulge under the armpit and couldn't tell if he had a gun or not. Better not ask. He might think I thought he wasn't adequate to the task of protecting me.

Maybe the tequila was still affecting me and making this more confusing than it needed to be.

First we had to see to the dogs. We walked them in the dark at a little gra.s.s strip nearby. They were keen to check the smell-phone messages of strangers. While they sniffed, we debated how much they could learn from a strange dog's pee.

Idle chat, veiling the uneasiness.

When we returned, a couple in business suits rode the elevator up with us. She crouched a little to pet the dogs while her companion kept back, brushing imaginary dog hair off his black slacks.

Neal set up a movie, something about East Germany and a spy spying on an artist and his actress wife. After he left, I paused it and called Marcie. "How's Denny doing?"

"Thank heavens, he's better. They moved him out of ICU. We're on the seventh floor now. The discharge planner came by today to talk to him."

"Discharge? He was nearly dead yesterday. Are they crazy? Is this some insurance issue? He's got insurance."

Marcie said, "No, he really is better. He sits up and eats, and they made him stand by the bed for a minute. Tomorrow he's supposed to start walking."

"Walking. That's amazing. Now can you go home and get some rest?"

"Oh, I'm fine. I don't want to miss any information. He's still on pain meds and he doesn't remember everything."

"I'll stop by tomorrow if I can. Life is complicated right now."

"We'd love to see you."

We'd love to see you. That sounded un-Marcie-like, disconnected from real emotion. Disconnected from me. She was plenty connected to Denny. And she wasn't cutting herself any slack to rest up.

Next up was Gettler, who didn't answer. No point in leaving a message.

My folks reported they were fine at Cecile's, who was fl.u.s.tered by a two-year-old but managing. Robby decided the plane was a good dragon and safe, if boring. My father let him run up and down the aisle until the flight attendant intervened. Yes, the car seat and the stroller both came through fine. Tomorrow they would ride trolley cars and maybe go to the zoo.

I wandered around the apartment feeling bereft. When the heartache of missing Robby eased, I looked more closely. The neat shelves held books on military history, management theory and practice, zoology and animal management. I'd always wanted the modern Wild Mammals in Captivity, but my budget had never stretched that far. I pulled it off the shelf and thumbed through it. Why wasn't this in his office? I remembered that Neal's predecessor, Kevin Wallace, had a copy. Probably still in the office. I put it back. Tucked in at the end of a shelf were two books on parenting after divorce. One shelf held a small bronze sculpture of a maned wolf, an elegant South American canid that looks like a fox on stilts. That plus the pictures of South American animals in the bedroom aligned with what I knew of Neal's animal experience. I wondered how he felt about Finley Zoo's focus on Asian animals.

When he was hired, Mr. Crandall informed us that his background included the military, an MBA, corporate management, and running a small zoo in Brazil.

I'd seen evidence of all that. Neal kept up on zoo management and he'd studied management in general. He liked animal art, no surprise. He was scary neat. No pets. Well, he had a zoo-maybe he didn't need a dog or cat or lizard.

I could think of no explanation for an old wooden hand plane on another shelf, the kind used for woodworking.

I looked around the bedroom again, the dogs tight at my heels, anxious that I might abandon them in a strange place. A chunk of twisted metal sat on the dark wood dresser with a framed photograph behind it, a picture of six men in uniform. They kneeled, grinning for the camera, in front of a mud hut with a Coca Cola sign. I didn't know enough about the military to tell which branch of service. One of them looked like a young version of Neal. Was the metal fragment from an IED? A plane that crashed? An event they'd all survived or one that had killed some of them? It was from his military past and Neal looked at it every day. Not something I would be comfortable asking about.

No sign of a woman in the bedroom or bathroom. Maybe he was still recovering from the divorce. That made me think of not-quite-divorced Ken. I should ask about that next time I saw him. As for Craig, he seemed totally unattached. Wouldn't hurt to ask him anyway, come to think of it.

Neal was in my house, free to look around. What would he deduce about me?

I started up the movie. Neal returned before it was over, and I paused it.

"Everything was locked up. The birds look all right." He sat in an uncomfortable-looking leather director's chair. "I'll see if I can get a release from the feds right away and find some other place to hold them. Feeding them puts people at risk."

"A sanctuary would be peachy. Hap could give you a list." At last. "They're unbelievably noisy," I added to remind him that "managing the gap" was a pain in the rear. I shared Denny's medical update. "You get that Denny risked his life to stop the break-in?"

"I do. I was off-base to speculate in front of you at the hospital. I apologize to you and to him."

Good. "How can they discharge him?" I fretted. "He needs someone to look after him."

As soon as I said it, I knew how it was going to go.

Neal said, "If you need to take time off for that, let me know."

I just nodded.

He said, "The Amazon parrots are mostly sorted out. They'll go to a sanctuary in Mexico, but not for weeks. Doc Reynolds wants her quarantine rooms back, but she's out of luck for awhile."

I pulled away from thinking about Denny. "I wonder how many of them died before we got them."

"I'm surprised the Tiptons bothered. Most Mexican parrots aren't that valuable, and they aren't common in the illegal trade anymore. Mexico cracked down on it pretty good."

"Maybe the birds were a bonus for buying the tortoises. Maybe Jerome wanted them. He liked parrots."

Neal nodded. "The tortoises will be around for awhile, too. We'll ship five back to Madagascar. I'm negotiating to keep a few of the others, but reptile curators from two other zoos are hot for them and so is a breeding facility."

"So none of them are going back to the wild." I couldn't help feeling bitter.

"After they've been exposed to each other's diseases? You know we can't do that. People released pet desert tortoises in Arizona and infected the wild ones."

None of these animals would return to the life they were adapted for. "Is that the best we can do? People screwed them up, and now we can't fix it. d.a.m.n it, there ought to be a better way."

Neal stuck his legs out and crossed his ankles. A twitching foot contradicted the relaxed pose. "It's the optimal outcome given the limitations of the situation. Tell me who you think broke into your house yesterday."

I sighed and went along with changing the subject. "Three candidates: Tom, Jeff, or Mr. X. My money is on Mr. X." I explained the evidence for a third person a.s.sociating with the Tiptons. "Somehow he knows I talked to Wanda and Pluvia and figured out he exists. I'm guessing it's a message to back off."

"You're not the threat. The cops are the threat. You don't know who he is or where he is."

"I have some guesses. He's probably wherever the Tiptons are, hiding out with them."

"Except he tracks who you talk to and watches your house?"

Maybe my a.s.sumptions were all dubious. Maybe I should lay all of them on the table. "I think he's young, maybe twenty, and probably a meth addict."

Neal recrossed his ankles. His fingers tapped on the leather straps that served as chair arms. "Addict or not, he set up a pretty sophisticated lab. He's eluded the police for weeks. He may be what kept those Tipton knuckleheads from getting caught. He sounds experienced."