Endangered: A Zoo Mystery Part 6

Chapter Eight.

The next day, grat.i.tude coursed through my veins as I clocked in at the Commissary, as welcome as caffeine. I was back to being a mom and an animal keeper, in my own world where the worst problem I would face was a toddler tantrum or a penguin refusing its vitamin-enhanced fish. If both roles meant cleaning up doo-doo, well, that was what I signed up for. Ordinary routine suited me fine. I looked for Hap to thank him again for his help loading the macaw cage the day before, but he wasn't around.

"Iris! You're back." My friend Linda, senior feline keeper, smiled at me. St.u.r.dy and solid, she had let her thick hair grow out to its natural color, an enviable red. "I thought you were on a one-day boondoggle and now I hear all kinds of stories."

"I am totally behind on everything, and I don't want to repeat the same story a dozen times. I'll tell all at lunch. What's been happening here? Quick version."

"That's not fair." She fake-pouted for thirty seconds before bringing me up to date.

We walked and talked. I'd started as the feline keeper and could never entirely let go of the cats. "Have you put Losa and Yuri together yet?" I asked. Our clouded leopard pair had bred successfully two years ago, and we were eager for a repeat.

"It's the right time of year, but so far she's not interested. Maybe in a month."

"And the tiger girls?"

"Fat and sa.s.sy. Come by on break. They'll be out."

Nadia and Katrina were Amur tigers, two-year-old sisters. They lived where my old tiger buddy, Rajah, now deceased, had resided for his long life.

What a pleasure to talk with a friend about the ordinary joys of my job.

This was a Sat.u.r.day. I was always a.s.signed to Birds on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, when Calvin Lorenz, the senior bird keeper, was off. I usually worked Birds with him two or three additional days a week as well. Pete had filled in while I dealt with crises at the Tipton farm.

Linda's path diverged from mine and I headed for the Penguinarium kitchen. No ice storm had materialized nor had snow, aside from a light dusting, which was being eradicated by the rain.

Underfoot was asphalt, not mud, and there wasn't a law officer or crime technician in sight. An ordinary day at the zoo. Perfect.

Except that I remembered my first task was reporting to Neal, which wasn't routine. I swerved off to his office.

My boss was a little taller than I, maybe five-foot-nine, but he projected six-foot-six worth of impatience. Short brown hair, piercing blue eyes, great posture with square shoulders. His background was a complicated history of military, corporate, and zoo positions. I'd seen him laugh, but never relax.

"The macaws are settled in my bas.e.m.e.nt," I said. "Mission really accomplished." Then I had to tell him about the stolen bag in the parking lot, which made me look like an idiot. I couldn't keep it a secret-he'd find out eventually.

His reaction managed to combine alarm and disbelief. "I'm going to have Maintenance search that van again. This makes no sense."

I dodged further discussion by asking where I should take the macaws. He ma.s.saged the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "I'm working on it. It should come in for a landing soon."

"They're close-banded, so I'm pretty sure they're pet birds."

"Agreed. They aren't part of the parrot and tortoise hairball that's giving me ulcers. Every agency in every form of government for miles around has a stake in one or the other."

"And where is it that you want the macaws to end up, exactly?"

He tapped his fingers on his desk. "I appreciate that you went the extra mile in a really tough situation. I know I can count on you to manage the gap for now."

The bulls.h.i.+t was a signal he was stumped-he hadn't a clue where he could park the macaws other than my bas.e.m.e.nt. I felt duped. That gave me the right to press him a little. "Everyone agrees that the Amazon parrots are illegal, right?"

"I'm told there's no record of any permits to import them."

"So what's happening to catch the smugglers? Is Fish and Wildlife tracking them back to the source?"

He made a little tent with his fingers resting on the desk. "You may be surprised to learn that law enforcement doesn't copy me on their internal reports of investigations. We don't meet for coffee and bran m.u.f.fins. I'm just supposed keep the birds alive until they decide what to do with them."

"But are they going after these guys or not?"

"The Tiptons, the surviving ones, are in hot water up to their red necks already. So maybe not. But I have no idea. Aren't you a.s.signed to Birds today? If you don't have enough to do..."

I plowed on. "The Tiptons were the middlemen. There's no reason to think they went to Mexico and caught the birds and brought them across the border themselves. Someone else did that and sold them to someone who sold to the Tiptons. That's a chain that needs to be broken."

"I couldn't agree with you more. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do and so do you. And, by the way, those tortoises are the big deal. They're worth a wad to collectors, some of them are from Madagascar, and it's pretty strange that they ended up with a family that never made a blip before with Fish and Wildlife."

"They'd been selling weed for years and no one noticed that."

I left in a sulk, depressed about the smugglers and sullen about the macaws. I had nothing against the macaws personally, but they were noisy, their cage was guilt-inspiring, the feather plucking was dismaying, and Robby had to be kept away from them lest they nip off a hand. Not my first choice for house guests, and I seemed to be stuck with them.

I ran into Marion, the veterinary technician, on the way to the Penguinarium. She was young and round with ruddy cheeks and looked like she should be herding geese with bows around their necks through some bucolic, sun-lit pasture. She wore a standard brown uniform accessorized with a dozen enamel pins on her chest, mostly big-eyed baby animals. This demure exterior often misled the unwary.

"How are the parrots in quarantine?" I asked.

"Eating like there's no tomorrow. There's ca-ca everywhere in that room."

"What about the tortoises? Is that little one any better?"

"Still sick."

A little more of my delight in a normal day faded.

She wanted to know all about the Tiptons, and I told her, "Details at noon."

Marion chose not to pa.s.s up the opportunity to b.i.t.c.h as we stood with our arms wrapped across our chests in a chilly wind. "Denny is driving me nuts about those tortoises. Dr. Reynolds says no way can he hang out at the hospital, which he knows perfectly well, the idiot. Can he spell 'quarantine'? No, he cannot. He's fixated on substrates and humidity and UV light, nagging at me nonstop. They're all eating now. He should go be happy someplace and get off my case."

I backed away making sympathetic noises.

At the Penguinarium, I spent half an hour reviewing the notes Calvin left for me plus the standard records of each minor event or anomaly from the previous three days. One penguin had declined her vitamin fish two days running, but ate fine otherwise. The Bali mynahs were not happy about the new low-iron pellets. The female nene, or Hawaiian goose, in the aviary was limping, but her foot looked fine. Calvin's guess, and mine, was arthritis since she was a geriatric bird. All of this was wonderfully normal and my spirits lifted again.

I stood at the baby gate set across the door between the kitchen and the African penguin exhibit and examined each bird for a few minutes. n.o.body limped or bled or sat hunched up. I set to work stuffing vitamin pills into fish as the penguins brayed orders to hurry it up. Even the heavy scent of fish eaters was a comfort.

After the morning feeding, I scrubbed the aviary pond and wondered what was in that wretched bag and why the Tiptons thought it was so important. Was there a connection to Liana's death? For the life of me, I couldn't see one. Or a connection to the smugglers, either.

At lunch time, I ducked into the administration building and down the steps to the bas.e.m.e.nt. This was the new employee break room-"new" as in newly designated for our use. The zoo cafe manager had wearied of us cl.u.s.tering at the indoor tables all winter, leaving his "real" customers, the visitors, to eat their hot dogs while standing. Worse, they could overhear our discussions of fecal matter, insects, and s.e.x habits of exotic species. Now the keepers were privileged to eat in this bas.e.m.e.nt at a table next to the copy machine. The room was airless and the decor dispiriting, but it was warm and dry, characteristics we all valued highly in winter. And no one interrupted lunch to ask us where the bathrooms were or why we didn't have pandas.

Denny and Linda, the feline keeper, were there already. My housemates Pete and Cheyenne were eating also, as was Marion with her Bambi jewelry, so the little room was nearly at capacity. Pete was working Primates today. Cheyenne was always on Elephants because it was so specialized, although Elephants included the giraffes and other hoof stock.

Ian, the lead elephant keeper, and Arnie, the bear keeper, rarely joined us. Ian was shy to the edge of catatonia, and flaky Arnie long ago discovered that he'd had used up my tolerance as well as Linda's.

Denny had already shared most of the disasters at the Tiptons' farm to a fascinated audience. I wasn't eager to revisit Jerome and Liana Tipton's deaths, but there was no escaping it. Hearing Denny describe how I'd found Liana's body depressed me all over again. It also reminded me that the circ.u.mstances didn't make sense.

I was correcting details about moving the parrots when Jackie, the zoo's office manager since fish crawled onto land, dropped in with a local newspaper.

"This is great stuff," she said. "Best news since that huge travel trailer fell off the freeway into the river." Reality rarely satisfied Jackie's thirst for drama. Her poofy hair was an unconvincing jet black, which somehow suited her sharp features and inquisitive dark eyes.

I skimmed the articles about the Tiptons. It described the shooting death of a teenage girl believed to be their daughter, nothing new. The pictures were mug shots of the sons. Jefferson Davis Tipton looked like a frightened Cape Buffalo, a burly guy ready to bolt or charge. Thomas Jefferson Tipton seemed to have a little more cognition going on, but he didn't look like Citizen of the Year either. They were wanted for questioning in regard to the death of their sister, but were believed to have fled to California. I found no mention of myself or Denny. I handed the paper to Linda.

Denny ticked off items on his fingertips. "We've got drugs. We've got illegal wildlife. What goes with that kind of criminal pipeline? Weapons. Human trafficking."

"Whoa! I didn't see any s.e.x slaves in the barns," I said.

Jackie and Linda stared at him. Pete and Cheyenne looked at each other, one of those couple things. Marion snickered.

Denny chewed on his veggie burger. We watched his Adam's apple as he swallowed and regained his voice. "Same criminal networks run all of those. Not always, but they overlap. These are the big dollar international crimes, billions and billions." Denny had a weakness for conspiracy theories, but he was on target with this. "The Tiptons are the tip of the iceberg. The cops missed a weapons stash is my guess." No longer on target.

"Well. Ain't we got fun?" Jackie said. "This zoo business gets more exciting all the time." She rolled her eyes at me and reclaimed her paper. I grabbed it back and checked the byline before I relinquished it. Not Craig Da.r.s.ee.

I ate and climbed up the stairs to get back to work, only to find Officer Gil Gettler waiting for me. Jackie ushered us into the tiny conference room between Neal and Mr. Crandal's offices, located near enough to her desk to permit eavesdropping through the thin wall. We both declined coffee. The office coffee was always terrible.

"I'm here about your recent incident. Could you tell me about this stolen evidence?" He'd been a fixture at the farm, but I'd never really looked at him. He was trim and tidy in a crisp uniform with chunks of lethal-looking black gear hanging off his belt. He looked to be about forty, with arms and shoulders that implied he worked out. I braced myself for criticism.

We sat around a rectangular table and I walked through finding the bag, failing to find anyone to turn it over to, and what the bag and its contents looked like. "It was an ordinary plastic bag and a boring little water gla.s.s. Not exactly Waterford crystal." I showed dimensions with my hands and, as requested, sketched the gla.s.s in his notebook. "The tissue was wadded up inside. I didn't take it out so I can't say what was hidden there, but I think there might have been something. The tissue wasn't very clean."

"You said it was behind the bird cage against the wall."

"Yeah. This cage-I can show it to you-is pretty old and I think it's homemade. It sits flat on the floor instead of raised up on legs with coasters. It's hard to move. No one could have gotten at the bag without some work. I didn't see it until I went back to sweep up."

"You took the cage?"

"It's at my house." Gettler looked surprised, so I explained why the macaws were in my bas.e.m.e.nt. I a.s.sured him he was free to discuss the matter with Neal and suggest a different home for them.

"How could this bag have gotten where you found it?"

I'd been thinking about that. "One way would be when the cage was first set up. But it wouldn't be that hard to do later. The cage has small doors so you can reach in to feed and water from either side. The door on the far side wasn't hard against the wall. You could reach in, unlatch it from the inside, and push it open three or four inches. Then you could drop the bag down between the cage and the wall. If you wanted to hide it, toss some birdseed and feathers after it. Then close the latch again."

"So anyone could have put it there."

"Not really. Whoever did it had to stick their hand in with the macaws. They're likely to bite."

"How bad would that be? What if you wore gloves?"

I shook my head. "With gloves, you couldn't unlatch the far door. Without them, you could get chomped pretty good. But if the birds knew and liked you, you could try it without gloves."

His eyebrows went up. "Who knew you'd found this?"

"I can't remember who was around when I brought it outside and showed it to Denny. It was a bright day. Someone could have watched us from the woods and seen me bring the bag out. You could hide an army around that place." Pluvia had said that Tom and Jeff watched from the woods.

He moved on to the van robbery in the employee parking lot. If he didn't believe me, at least he was polite about it. He said, "That bag might have nothing to do with the Tiptons, but if you find it, we'd like to see it. It's a murder investigation, and we have to follow up on all the leads. Thank you for your time."

He was being dutiful and doubtful, and I couldn't blame him. I moved to another concern. "Um, are you looking into the wildlife smuggling? Where they got the parrots and tortoises?"

"That would be the Feds. You could contact US Fish and Wildlife."

I might have to do that.

"Uh, one more thing."

He waited, eyes alert.

"Liana wasn't killed during the bust, right? She didn't die where I found her."

A stiff smile. "Let me know if you remember anything else of significance." And he took his leave.

When I clocked out at the Commissary building, I looked for Hap and found him in a back corner at his computer, his bald head bent close to the screen, thick fingers poking at the keyboard. "Who the h.e.l.l boosts canned marmoset diet?" he demanded. "Is there a black market for canned monkey food n.o.body ever told me about?"

"Inventory program savaging you again?" I tried to be sympathetic. Hap hated that program, mostly because he didn't like Neal, and Neal was the one who insisted he keep it up to date. "Maybe Kip took a couple of cans and forgot to tell you."

"It's a whole carton short. And it shows an extra carton of turtle diet."

I debated saying the obvious and finally went for it. "Sounds like it was logged in wrong when they were delivered."

"Get outa here. Go home and feed our kid."

"Our kid" was Hap's little joke, based on me wearing his uniform in the last stages of pregnancy because no one else's would fit. It was not anything to be mentioned around his wife, Benita. She was highly territorial in regards to Hap, who in his less conventional years had given her excellent reasons for suspicion. I wondered from time to time why they never had children. The zoo staff overall had a very low rate of reproduction, and my co-workers seemed to regard Robby as an example of a rare and fascinating species.

"Hap, I want you to come over again. Bring Benita. I'll buy cookies. That macaw setup isn't great, and one of them is chewing on his feathers. Neal's got no plan to get them out of my bas.e.m.e.nt any time soon." I'd read that at least a quarter of captive macaws pull out their own feathers. Smart, active birds confined to a tiny world get bored and frustrated.

"There's half a dozen macaw sanctuaries he could call." Hap poked a key and swore.

"It's probably held up by the court case."

"That would be his story. I'll come by tonight, but it may be late. Benita slid on the ice and creamed the side mirror on her Mini. I gotta fix it. Shouldn't be too bad."

"Great. Call if it doesn't work out. I turn back into stone about ten o'clock."

Hap pointed to his computer. "Where am I supposed to get dandelion greens in January? Denny can grow his own weeds for those tortoises."

I clocked out and wasted half an hour walking the road to and from the freeway looking for the lost bag. I found plenty of beer cans, a sofa cus.h.i.+on, and a smashed pizza box. Duty done, I drove to my parents' and found Robby engrossed at the kitchen sink. He demonstrated that a plastic triceratops would not float and provided a lengthy and mostly incomprehensible narrative as I helped him into his coat.

At home, Pete was cooking eggplant with green curry and tofu. That was one of the major benefits of having him and Cheyenne as housemates-he loved to cook. They had lived with me since I was pregnant with Robby and paid half the mortgage payment and utilities in return for a bedroom and the run of the place. I found Cheyenne a little tough to live with, but she and Pete were good to Robby and overall, they were a huge plus.

I offered Robby a sample of Pete's creation, a peanut b.u.t.ter sandwich, and some peas. I dove into the curry.

Cheyenne seemed subdued.