Chameleons and a Corpse

by Ruby Loren

  “So much for marriage!” I looked anxiously at Auryn.

  “You know that will never happen to us. You shouldn’t even have to ask it.”

  “I know, I know… something like this just comes as a surprise. It makes you look at yourself and ask if your life might seem perfect to people looking in but be another story behind closed doors.”

  “I think our life is pretty perfect,” Auryn said with an easy grin.

  “I dunno…” I said thoughtfully. Auryn’s eyebrows shot up. “…my life could do with some more whipped cream, but Tiff has run out.”

  We both took some time out to drink our hot chocolates and Auryn mused that British weather could always be relied upon to throw you a hot chocolate suitable afternoon in the middle of a blazing summer. Sometimes the entirety of a summer would be suitable for hot drinks and blankets.

  “You should get some pillows and blankets for your office. I’m going to have some in mine… when I get an office,” I amended. The Lucky Zoo had got off to a good start, but my main focus was improving the animal housing part of the zoo. Staff comfort would come next. Fortunately, the group of people I worked with understood and didn’t mind hunkering down to work in the old farmhouse until everything was sorted out. Yes, it was surreal having the small human resources team cramped up in the second bedroom with its quaint floral wallpaper, but it was working for now.

  “Maybe an office dog, too, or do you think Lucky would mind?” Auryn asked.

  “Lucky seems fine with most animals. I bet he could handle a puppy. That reminds me… I think Rameses might be missing. Maybe we should call up to check? With Scarlett missing and Timmy dead, there’s no one looking out for him.”

  “I’ll call the police in a bit,” Auryn promised. I shot him a look filled with gratitude. After what I’d seen and heard today, one more interference from me would probably get me thrown into a jail cell. It would be a great retirement present for Detective Treesden.

  2

  Creepy Crawlies

  I was about to get in my car to go back to my zoo when I realised where Scarlett was.

  Her husband had been due to attend the club meeting and she’d left work early. She was probably with whoever she was currently having an affair with. I turned around and walked back into the office to ask Auryn who that might be.

  “Let’s try Tristan Saunders first,” Auryn said when he announced he’d join me on the quest.

  “Do you know what her car looks like?” I asked as we approached Tristan’s place of residence.

  “Yeah… it’s one of those cream Fiat things.”

  “Tristan Saunders… really?” I said when we pulled up outside of the pub he owned. Tristan had always seemed so happy with his wife, Demi, and their toddler.

  “It’s just something I heard. You know what gossip is like.”

  I hoped for Demi Saunders’ sake it was nothing more than gossip. I was relieved when we checked the car park behind the pub and didn’t see any sign of Scarlett’s Fiat.

  “Who else?” I asked, swinging the car back onto the road.

  Auryn listed a couple of other possibles and we set off. My mouth set in a line when he suggested we check on Jack Lovell. He’d been a part of the team of builders who’d helped Erin Avery smuggle animals out of the zoo to sell on the black market. Although Jack hadn’t been involved, I didn’t feel overly trusting of him, and I was willing to bet the feeling was mutual.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Auryn said when we pulled into the road where Jack lived and saw the cream Fiat brazenly parked in the driveway.

  There was a silent argument as I pointed at Auryn and he pointed at me and we gestured at one another before Auryn got out of the car. Auryn had been responsible for the termination of future contracts with the company that Jack worked for, but I was the one who’d actually put his buddies in prison. I reckoned that meant I would be the least popular choice of person to interrupt a pleasant day spent with a fling.

  I watched Auryn as he went up and rang the bell. A moment later, a man in a dressing gown answered it. When he saw Auryn, things immediately took a bad turn. It was all too obvious they were arguing. I got out of the car, figuring I couldn’t make things too much worse.

  “Just tell Scarlett to get out here now,” Auryn was saying.

  The man shot a dark look my way. “What makes you think she’s here?”

  “Her car’s right in your driveway. If you want to keep something a secret, learn a little subtlety.”

  Jack shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It won’t be quiet for long. I might well be one of the family soon.” A dreamy smile came onto his face.

  “If you believe that, you’re even dumber than you look,” Auryn said, scoffing at the idea.

  “Who are you to say?” the other man protested.

  “Put it this way… yours wasn’t the first house we visited when we came looking for Scarlett.”

  His face dropped. For a brief moment, I thought he might take a swing at Auryn, but he turned and yelled back into the house for Scarlett to come to the door. She appeared a moment later dressed in suit trousers and a blouse with an exceedingly annoyed expression on her face.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, but our faces surely gave away that it was serious. She stepped outside without another word of protest.

  “Well, what is it?” she asked when Jack had slammed the door behind her.

  I looked across at Auryn, both of us realising that we had inadvertently made it so that we had to deliver the bad news.

  “It’s Timmy… I’m afraid he’s dead,” I said, as carefully as I could.

  The impressive blonde woman in front of me froze. Her face could have been carved out of marble - a beautiful piece of marble that showed the benefits of a fortune spent on surgical procedures, but marble nonetheless.

  “Dead?” she repeated, her emotions giving nothing away.

  “Yes, and the police are looking for you.” I couldn’t spell it out much more obviously than that.

  Scarlett’s expression immediately clouded. “Do you think I should call a lawyer?”

  I thought about it. “Maybe… but not Annabelle Wright,” I hastily added, remembering the lead on the drive.

  Scarlett shot me a quizzical look but didn’t ask. “Okay, I’ll text one of my company’s lawyers. Then I’ll grab a couple of things and go to the police.”

  “You can’t go home,” Auryn said. “It’s a crime scene. That’s where we found him.”

  “What was he doing? Why was he at home?” Her concern had turned to suspicion, I noted. As I’d suspected, Scarlett was very aware that her husband had been cheating on her.

  “We’re not sure. It looked like someone attacked him.” I bit my tongue, knowing I shouldn’t say too much more.

  “Poor, poor Timmy. He was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Scarlett smiled a little fondly for a moment. “How did the attacker get in?”

  “We’re not sure,” Auryn said.

  To our surprise… a car pulled across the driveway behind my Fiesta. For a brief moment, my belly flip-flopped around as I feared the police had located Scarlett, too, and we were going to be dragged over hot coals for tipping-off a potential suspect.

  A well-dressed woman got out of the car and marched over to us. “You’re lucky I was just on my way to see you about the contract. Now, what’s all this about a murder?” She inspected Auryn and me from behind her stunningly on-trend glasses and hair that surely saw a hairdresser once a week, rather than the once every couple of months mine got.

  “This is my lawyer, Georgina Farley,” Scarlett supplied.

  When the ‘pleased to meet yous’ were over, the woman renewed her severe gaze upon us. I realised she was waiting for an answer to her first question.

  “Timmy Marsden has died. We believe he was probably murdered. The police are still looking for her.” I inclined my head in Scarlett’s direction.

  Georgina Farley’s face gave nothing
away when she nodded succinctly to show that she understood the situation. “I’m going to stop you right there. Scarlett, wait in the car. We’ll discuss what you know in private, so that we’re not going to be tripped up in questioning. I don’t want Scarlett to have any more knowledge than she should have.” She waited for the car door to slam. “What do you know?”

  “Just what we told you,” Auryn jumped in. “He’s dead, and it looks like someone maybe broke in and attacked him.”

  “How do you figure that?” Georgina asked.

  “The front door was unlocked,” Auryn explained.

  “The patio door was, too, although - that’s less unusual. Timmy was about to go out, and he might have wanted to let the dog out one last time before leaving. His body was in front of the patio door,” I told her.

  “How do you think the intruder got in?” the lawyer quizzed.

  I thought about it. “The patio door. Timmy was on his back with his feet facing the door and the damage was done to the front of his chest. I think someone probably came through there, stabbed him, and he fell backwards.”

  “Who would have access to that door?” The lawyer shot me a look that said ‘other than my client, obviously…’.

  “Well, there are hedges on the sides of the house, but there’s also a garden gate that leads down the side of the house. It was open when we were there for the barbecue.”

  “There’s the footpath, too. A fence goes along the bottom of the garden, but it’s not that high. It’s just supposed to keep Rameses in. There’s also a gate in the fence, to access the public footpath for dog walks and stuff, I guess,” Auryn said. “I asked Timmy about it when I saw people down there when I was round one time.”

  “So, ample opportunity for someone - anyone - to access those doors. Thank you,” Georgina said making sure to look us both in the eye when she said it. She was a pro all right.

  We turned back towards the cars where Scarlett was waiting. The very recently widowed woman opened the door.

  “We need to head over to the police station. Take your car, Scarlett. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why you don’t want to be seen picking it up from here later on,” the lawyer said.

  “I hope none of this affects Jack. He’s just starting his own business. I’d hate for his reputation to suffer,” Scarlett fretted. I felt like bopping her over the head. Her husband had probably been murdered and she was more worried about how it might damage her lover’s reputation? If I were her, I’d be more concerned by the very real possibility that the police were going to lock me up for murder.

  “He will need to be involved. You need an alibi,” Georgina said. She was still managing to keep everything blank, but I’d been watching her over the past couple of minutes and I thought I could tell she found Scarlett’s attitude on this matter trying.

  Georgina turned to us before getting in her car. “Thank you again for your help. I’ll let you know if I have any further questions…” She left it hanging, and I realised she was waiting for contact details.

  “Just contact Avery Zoo or The Lucky Zoo and ask for Auryn or Madi, respectively. We’re not hard to find,” my fiancé helpfully said.

  “Quite,” Georgina said, looking at me with interest. I had a shrewd idea she’d already known who I was. My own renown still surprised me.

  When the lawyer had raced off, I backed out to let Scarlett follow her.

  “Did we do a good thing or a really bad thing?” Auryn said, voicing my own thoughts aloud.

  I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

  The next morning, I woke up to a boatload of responsibility that I’d completely forgotten about. It was Monday and as soon as I opened my eyes I remembered I was holding interviews today… and I hadn’t done a thing to prepare. I’d planned to spend an hour or so the previous evening, coming up with pertinent questions to ask my prospective employees, but after seeing Timmy Marsden’s final resting place on the kitchen floor, Auryn and I had sought comfort in a bottle of wine. Or had it been two? My dry mouth hinted at the truth.

  I pushed myself upright and saw the time on the quaint alarm clock Auryn kept by the bed. To top things off, I’d overslept.

  “Auryn I’ve got interviews today. I forgot to prepare,” I said, nudging my fiancé awake.

  He opened one grey eye. “Just wing it. It will be fine.”

  “Really?”

  “I dunno. As part of the zoo’s ‘everyone takes part’ ethos, the managers do the interviewing and I pop in during the final round in order to make everyone feel special and to win myself ‘future boss’ brownie points.”

  I looked at him. “That sounds pretty cynical.”

  “I’m just a coldhearted businessman at heart.” He waited to see if I was buying it. I wasn’t. “I get nosy,” he confessed. “The only interviews I’d personally conduct would be for management positions. Since taking over, there’s only been one of those interviews needed.”

  We both paused for a moment of silence, remembering the old head of reception, Jenna, who’d died before Christmas.

  “What did you ask in that interview? I need some help here!”

  “I asked general stuff. I don’t even remember. It was just like having a conversation.” The infuriating thing was, I believed him. Auryn was a natural people-person.

  I was not.

  “What jobs are you even interviewing for?” Auryn asked, propping himself up with an elbow and looking for all the world like he might have just jumped off the cover of a cheesy romance novel. I would certainly buy it.

  I reluctantly dragged my focus back to the looming disaster. “I need a reptile and amphibians keeper… at least Vanessa is sitting in with me for that one,” I said, referring to Avery Zoo’s expert in all things that had extra legs, no legs, or scales. “The other position is for an in-house marketing-cum-PR expert.”

  “Do you really need one?” Auryn asked. I’d been outsourcing the zoo’s marketing since opening. Auryn often used external companies to help promote certain events, but he also had a small team at the zoo. They weren’t necessarily experts, as most of them were technically reception and HR workers, but they got things done. My zoo didn’t even have that much.

  “I thought it would be good to try and hand it over to someone else. Although, I’m not convinced I’ll find someone who can do it all. Especially considering the salary I’m offering…” I hesitated. “Am I being stingy?”

  “No,” Auryn said, pushing himself fully upright. “When you employ someone, you let them know the job has good prospects. If you employ someone and they prove their worth, then there’s the potential for pay rises and promotions. You can’t give it all away to someone who hasn’t shown you their worth yet.”

  “Thanks, you’re right.” I was definitely suffering from a spot of nerves.

  “You’ll do fine,” Auryn promised me.

  I tried to look half as confident as he sounded.

  I’d scheduled the reptiles, amphibians, and all things crawly interviews for the morning. With a keeper as experienced as Vanessa by my side, I was confident we’d make a good choice. So far, we’d seen two potential keepers. I’d thought that both interviewees were friendly and enthusiastic and had marked them as possibles. However, I’d been able to tell that Vanessa hadn’t been impressed. The Avery Zoo zookeeper was odd to say the least, but I trusted her judgement completely. Avery Zoo’s collection of reptiles, amphibians, and insects may be small, but I knew it was of a very high standard.

  I shuffled my papers while Vanessa went out to show the next person in.

  A young woman with a neat bob and a strangely blank face sat down in front of us. If I’d had to describe her, I would have likened her to a lizard. Everything about her was still and expressionless, but her eyes were bright and made me more than a little uneasy.

  “I’m Gabby Snow,” the woman introduced herself, thrusting out a hand towards me before I’d gathered myself up to do the same. I reached and then recoiled when I saw some
thing move on her sleeve.

  She looked down. “Oh! There you are, Entwhistle! I thought I’d lost you.” She picked off the creepy critter.

  “What a wonderful example of an Indian stick insect!” Vanessa said, jumping to her feet and holding her hands out to receive the twiggy-looking thing.

  I watched and attempted to share her admiration. Then I gave up. There were limits to my desire to care for animals. That was why it was so essential that I found a keeper who did want to specialise in this area.

  I watched as the interview deviated wildly from any planned questions and instead revolved around the weird and wonderful pets the two women had. I did my best to make sure I asked about Gabby’s prior experience and what she thought of the zoo, but I already knew we’d found the right woman for the job. She wasn’t particularly people friendly, and she certainly gave me the willies, but then… so did Vanessa.

  “Hire her,” Vanessa said as soon as Gabby Snow had left the room. Then, she stood up and walked out, leaving me to deal with the other few applicants alone. See what I mean about not people-friendly? Apparently things weren’t going to get any better than a woman who walked in carrying a stick insect and then chattered at great length about the chameleons she bred for fun and frolics.

  Once the morning zookeeper interviews were over and I’d called Gabby Snow back almost immediately to offer her the job (she’d accepted) it was time to find my marketing miracle worker. My suspicions that the salary offered and vague job description hadn't attracted the highest calibre of applicants were confirmed when I looked out at the strange mix of interviewees. A few were probably teenagers, fresh out of school and hoping to try their luck. Then there were the slightly more senior, but equally desperate, university students. Finally, there were a handful of what I suspected were probably mums who’d been attracted by the potential of flexible hours. I pushed my disappointment deep down and reminded myself that appearances could be deceptive. If one of my applicants was an eighteen year old marketing and public relations genius with a billion social media followers and brilliant ideas, I was certainly going to give them a chance.