The Peacock's Poison

by Ruby Loren

  I smiled as I walked up the stairs into the office area. The visitors loved watching the animals at work, performing their natural behaviour, so it was win win. I also already had some ideas for Christmas treats and activities that I hoped would give the zoo outside of the wonderland a seasonal boost.

  To my surprise, when I reached the top of the stairs I heard shouting, followed by one of the more senior Human Resources staff members flouncing out. She threw her hands up in the air when she walked past me, as if to say ‘what can you do?’. I proceeded with caution, wondering what had disturbed the normally peaceful office environment.

  Lawrence leant against a desk, walking stick in hand. He appeared to be in frank discussion with one of the zoo’s other HR staff. From what I could gather, he didn’t think the man he was talking to was doing his job correctly.

  “You can’t just bow to the will of these people! It’s all nonsense. They know what to expect when they come to the zoo. They can’t blame us for their own incompetence!” Lawrence said, so loudly everyone in the office must have heard.

  I winced and looked somewhere else in the room. I made eye contact with Claudia, who had the twin of my own expression on her face.

  I knew exactly the kind of thing Lawrence was talking about. Visitors to the zoo could be a tricky bunch. If someone had a perfectly normal accident, or got too close to an animal by ducking under the safety fences, somehow it was our fault. It was the HR department’s duty to deal with all complaints. They did their best to smooth everything over, so the zoo didn’t have lawsuits to deal with. I’d never envied their job. A lot of tact and diplomacy was needed. You couldn’t just tell the customers they were wrong. As much as I agreed with Lawrence’s sentiment, he was showing his age. You couldn’t afford to behave that way anymore.

  I looked around the room, but Auryn wasn’t in sight.

  “Lawrence, it’s lovely to see you in today. Are you looking for Auryn?” I said, stepping into the role of peacekeeper. When Lawrence turned away, the HR team member, David, shot me a look of sincere gratitude.

  Lawrence’s aged face wrinkled, and I knew he didn’t have a clue who I was. However, he was unlikely to admit it. This time, his age was on my side.

  “I’m not looking for the boy. I’m just making sure this zoo is run up to the high standards that Charles would have expected.” He shook his head, his white hair still a magnificent thatch on his head. “Someone needs to run this place.”

  I bit my lip to stop myself from saying something I’d regret. I was actually glad Auryn wasn’t here to listen to this. My friend had only just started to gain confidence in running the zoo, and I had a feeling that he might put more stead in Lawrence’s words than he should.

  Fortunately, I was saved from making a further remark by Claudia coming over.

  “How about we go over the forecasts together?” she said to the old man. “I need your sharp eyes to spot any continuity errors.”

  “Well, I suppose I could…” Lawrence said, his attitude diffusing now he’d been offered something to actually do. To my immense surprise, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started lighting one up.

  “Not in the office, Gr…Lawrence!” Claudia said, slipping up for a moment in her panic.

  “What? Is there a law against smoking now?” Lawrence said and laughed at his own joke.

  I exchanged a look with the dark-eyed Claudia.

  “Yes, actually,” she said, taking the cigarette from between his fingers. “Also, they’re bad for your health! Where did you even get these from? You know you’re supposed to have stopped.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions. They haven’t killed me yet, have they?” Lawrence said, which was true enough.

  Claudia flipped her eyes heavenwards right in front of him. Apparently the time for subtlety had long since passed.

  “I’m the head of the board. I need to be here running the zoo until the boy is ready for it,” Lawrence said, making me grit my teeth again. I thought Auryn was doing pretty damn well. He’d been smart enough to realise that he wasn’t able to singlehandedly run the zoo, so he’d asked the staff to help him out. Avery Zoo was more democratic and more successful than ever.

  “He’s already let someone die on his watch,” Lawrence said, making my mouth drop open with shock.

  “That was nothing to do with Auryn!” I said, finally losing my temper with the old man.

  He waved a hand in my face. “Hmm, from what I’ve been hearing about the girl who died, she was probably asking for it.”

  “‘Woman’ who died, and she wasn’t asking for it,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “What?” Lawrence said looking baffled.

  Behind his back, Claudia shook her head at me. Much like persuading Lawrence to quit smoking, it was also too late to force him out of old prejudices.

  “Back in my day, we had a girl like that in the village. She never realised how little anyone thought of her. She threw her virtue around without a care. It will have been the same with this one. It’s no wonder she ended up the way she did.”

  “Poisoned?” I said, wondering how that detail fitted in with his logic.

  “Oh, hmmm, yes, probably,” he said.

  I shook my head, resigned.

  “Let’s look at the forecasts. There’s no point dwelling on a crime we have nothing to do with. There’s a zoo to run,” Claudia said, perhaps a little callously but I could forgive that in the face of Lawrence.

  “How are you and Auryn, eh?” Lawrence said, seeming to forget that I was still standing right there. Or perhaps he just didn’t care.

  Claudia smiled at him. “We are getting along just fine,” she told him. There was something predatory about her tone that I didn’t much like. I wondered if Auryn knew he had a tiger on his tail.

  “I always said to Charles you were future Mrs Avery material,” Lawrence carried on, oblivious to the many listening ears, which were surely cocked in our direction right now.

  Claudia laughed, like he’d said something outrageous. But I couldn’t help but notice, she didn’t try to correct him.

  7

  Feral Friends

  Auryn poked his head around the corner of the staffroom a couple of days later. Things had been pretty hectic since the opening of the Winter Wonderland, but as far as I knew, everything was going well.

  “Glad I caught you both!” He said, addressing me and Tiff. “The police have gone through all of Jenna’s stuff and have returned it. I asked them to leave it in her office, seeing as I haven’t yet found a replacement for her role.” He looked a little troubled. “I wonder if a successor will mind using that office…”

  I shrugged. “It’s just a room. She didn’t die in there.” I bit my tongue. Now I sounded uncaring!

  Auryn dithered a little more and then decided to get to the point. “Look, I know it’s not your job, and it’s okay if you say no. I can ask someone else, but I was wondering if you could find time to go through what’s been left in Jenna’s office and put it in boxes, or something. It turns out her parents are in a retirement home up in Yorkshire, so it’s going to take a while for them to be able to come down the country to sort her affairs out.” He shook his head. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to meeting them and having to explain why their daughter died at my zoo.”

  “Oh, Auryn, you weren’t the one who killed her,” Tiff said, supportively.

  Auryn shot her a winning smile and I couldn’t help but wonder if…

  “We’ll do it for you. It’s not a problem,” Tiff said, volunteering us both.

  All that for a smile, I thought with no little amusement. Claudia was not going to be happy if she found out her plans might be scuppered.

  “There was one other thing… Officer Kelly said that if we noticed anything missing from her stuff when we look through it, let them know.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what might be classed as something being ‘missing’. Vanishing stationary? I suppose you’ll onl
y know if you don’t find it.”

  Five minutes later, we were back in Jenna’s office. The things the police had taken were on her desk, but I was pleased to see that both the phone and the photographs hadn’t made a second appearance. Perhaps the police wanted to keep them as evidence. I hoped that even after the case was over, they never made their way back to her family. I had no doubt that her parents knew the sort of woman Jenna had been, but there was no reason to rub their faces in it.

  I looked around the room, my eyes scanning the bare walls. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something we’d missed.

  Tiff noticed the way I was scouring every inch of the small office. “Hoping she left us a note with her killer’s name written on it?”

  I half-nodded. “It would be handy. Something like ‘If I die tonight, it was Jon Ridley who did it.’”

  Tiff pulled a face. “He wouldn’t have had the guts. Was he involved with Jenna? He’s not conventionally attractive,” she said, referring to Jon’s rash of acne and very generous ears.

  I shrugged. “It’s probably best to just assume that everyone was involved with her in one way or another.” I hesitated as a thought occurred to me.

  It must have occurred to Tiff, too, because she threw me a disbelieving look. “You don’t think that includes Auryn, do you?”

  “Probably not?” I said. I was pretty certain that Auryn would never have contemplated Jenna. Until our accidental kiss, and then the one he’d shared with Tiff, he hadn’t, to my knowledge, accepted any other invitations from members of staff at the zoo. And I knew he’d had a few. It would surprise me if he’d gone with Jenna.

  I opened Jenna’s little silver laptop and noted that the password protect had vanished. The police must have managed to get in and change the settings. I shut the lid again and then, with a glance to check that Tiff was suitably occupied boxing up papers, I slipped the laptop into my tote bag, which contained Christmas cards for the office staff. The police may still have her phone and the photos, but I wasn’t naive enough to think that there wouldn’t be anything else, perhaps hidden away, on her laptop. Theoretically, the police would have done a better search than I could. If they’d found anything truly incriminating, the laptop wouldn’t be back here. Even so, it would be better to check that everything on the laptop conjured happy memories of the past, not nasty ones that may be formed in the wake of her death.

  “I wonder who’s going to sort out the apartment where she lived,” Tiff mused.

  “Maybe her parents will hire someone to help them clean?” I said and then bit my lip when I thought about the other material which could be found at the apartment, too. “Perhaps we should mention it to Auryn. We could do the first tidy up. Then a group from the zoo could come over and clean, if it’s needed.”

  Tiff nodded. “It would be a nice thing to do.”

  We looked at each other, the thought that it would be unfair for her parents to have to see all of the things Jenna had left behind, and then have to deal with them, passing unsaid between us.

  “I think we’re pretty much done,” Tiff said, stacking the last cardboard box. We looked in silence at the three storage boxes. Jenna had worked at the zoo for years and this was the sum total of her efforts. Three storage boxes to be shipped off somewhere else, where they’d no doubt be forgotten about. It was a sad state of affairs. The only thing that could alleviate some of the awfulness would be if her killer was brought to justice. By my side, I felt my hand ball into a fist at the thought that someone had done this to her. They’d taken her life away.

  And they were still walking free, pretending to be a normal person.

  It wasn’t right.

  “I wonder if the police are any closer to finding a suspect,” I mused out loud.

  “I think they’ve barely started their interviews,” Tiff replied. “Up until now, I had no idea there were so many men between the ages of eighteen and forty five living or working close by.”

  I spent the afternoon making animal-safe decorations for enclosures. It was a far cry from my usual work, doing my best to change animal lives for the better. Avery Zoo was as far forward as it could be right now, so I was reduced to using my knowledge to make sure that the decorations would not be misconstrued as animal cruelty of any shape or form.

  I tied a wreath of holly on top of the cow shed and tilted my head at it. It looked okay. It was a shame there weren’t any berries, but you never knew what animals were going to pick up and eat! Plastic had been out for the very same reason. I shook my head, thinking back to a zoo in France where I’d worked. At a place like that, either problem would never have crossed the minds of the people who’d worked there. But then, they probably wouldn’t have wasted any time running around trying to decorate animal enclosures.

  I added a few other bits of animal-safe greenery and reflected that I missed working as a consultant. Auryn had asked me to come back to help him through his bereavement. We’d never actually agreed how long I would come back for, but with Jenna’s murder still unsolved, I knew now wasn’t the time to be thinking about leaving the zoo.

  I just wish there was something more useful I could do! I thought, glaring at the holly in frustration when it slipped free of the twine for the umpteenth time.

  When I was away from the zoo, I missed my friends, but now I was back I was bored. It was nice to be with Tiff, Auryn, and the other familiar faces, but my old job wasn’t waiting for me. Whilst I was permitted by Auryn to make suggestions and changes related to any of the animals in the zoo, I didn’t have responsibility for their care. There were enough keepers to have everything handled, and I was missing the job I’d once loved.

  I finally managed to tie the holly into place and figured it was time for a break. I decided to pay a visit to the cats, to see how Lucky’s siblings were doing.

  When I made it out into the barn, there was the usual mad scuffle when all of the cats vanished out of sight. In spite of the rather rude welcome, I smiled. At least this was one part of the zoo that would never change.

  I sat on a hay bale and waited, knowing that in time, a few of them would peep out, and I might catch sight of the younger ones. Lucky’s siblings had been caught, neutered, and released a while ago. According to the vet and their new zookeeper carer, Emily, they were in good health and ready to join the vermin hunting team who lived behind the zoo. Lucky himself was also back in action. I’d taken a couple of walks with him close to the house I rented in Gigglesfield, getting him used to the leash and also to the area. As luck would have it, there was an old, boarded up cat flap that had been there when I’d first rented the property. It had been a relatively simple task to install a fancy new flap, which only opened when Lucky’s microchip was nearby.

  The first day had been the worst. I’d come back home, half-expecting to have to go and dig him out of a ditch, or worse - never find him at all.

  Instead, he’d been curled up on my bed, the outside world forgotten. I supposed it was one of those things where the forbidden fruit was much more desirable than when it became a free-for-all. Plus, the weather was definitely getting colder. There were days where I felt like curling up in bed instead of braving the frosty mornings.

  Something moved next to me.

  I held my breath and tried not to move a muscle, knowing that any action on my part would cause the cats to run away again.

  The black cat with the white paws slipped out between the bales and looked up at me. I held my breath as I got a really good look at Lucky’s mum. It was plain as day that they were doubles of each other, although I strongly suspected Lucky would grow to a greater size than his mum.

  Lucky was the last kitten she’d ever have. As soon as it had been safe to do so, the wannabe feral cat had been caught and spayed, so she’d never have to experience another pregnancy and bring more kittens into a world that wasn’t a kind place for them.

  To my surprise, the cat took a step towards me, and then another. I knew better than to make a mov
e and waited as she hesitated before making a decision, and hopped up onto the bale next to me. I held my breath when she wandered closer, rubbing her head against my arm, before stepping onto my lap. Then she curled up in a ball and settled down for a nap.

  Her behaviour wasn’t typical of a feral cat. There were many true feral cats at Avery Zoo, who were wild to the core. However, I’d always known that this little cat was likely a pet, either abandoned, or seeking a new life for her and her kittens. Even so, it was touching that she’d decided to trust me enough to sleep on. My human mind wanted me to believe it was her way of saying thanks for taking in the kitten she couldn’t care for, but my knowledge of animals… and cats…informed me that she’d just seen the opportunity for a heated sleeping mat and had taken it.

  “Madi! I have something amazing to tell you,” Tiff said, catching me on my way out of the zoo at the end of the day. She seized my arm and skipped a few steps holding it.

  “What is it?” I asked, pleased by the idea of some good news for a change.

  “It’s Auryn! I never did thank you for talking to him for me, but thank you so much. You won’t believe what happened. He apologised for acting so strangely. It was because he was worried about his grandad, and then when he passed away, well…” Tiff shook her head sadly. “I told him that it was all water under the bridge and that I completely understood. Wrong place, wrong time and all that, but then he asked me out to dinner with him.” Her blue eyes were wide when she said it. “I’m not going to make the same mistake I did last time. For Auryn, it probably is just dinner and not a proper date. But it’s something, right, Madi?”

  I nodded and smiled, finding it easier to ignore the lead weight in my stomach whenever Tiff talked about her feelings for Auryn. She was a far better choice for the young zoo owner, no matter what I may or may not feel. Tiff was happy in her career at the zoo. I had some seriously itchy feet. Either Lucky and I would have to hit the road to work on some new animal cases, or I’d have to get a job at a zoo where we could stay in one place and I could do the job I’d once done. There simply wasn’t room for me at Avery.