Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

  I watched as the tech carefully painted my fingernails red and embellished them with pink hearts. The end result might not make me look like a tough cop, but it was fun as heck. The tech finished by applying a sizable dollop of shea butter lotion to the back of each of my hands and massaging it into my skin.

  I lifted the back of my hand to my nose. “Mmm. This stuff smells really good.” It worked well, too. My hands hadn’t felt so soft in ages.

  Gabby succeeded me in the seat, while a middle-aged woman in a blue turtleneck, jeans, and ankle boots took my mother’s place in front of the strawberry blonde. Though the woman was casually dressed, her perfect coif and designer tote bag said she’d likely come from one of the upper-crust neighborhoods nearby. The overflowing tote told me she’d already done quite a bit of shopping. She set her tote on the ground and lifted a paper coffee cup to her mouth to down the last sip. As she raised the cup, the overhead lights gleamed off a cocktail ring on her right index finger. The ring featured a large blue topaz atop a white gold split-shank setting. Gorgeous. She dropped her cup into the trash can under the table and removed her ring, having to twist it back and forth to force it past her knuckle. Once it was off, she gently slid it onto the velvet finger on the holder.

  Preliminaries dispensed with, the tech asked, “What color would you like?”

  As the woman perused the display of polish, the tech pulled her cell phone out of a drawer on the back of the table and typed on the screen, apparently sending a text. The customer selected a subtle pink and placed the bottle on the table between them. “Let’s go with this one.”

  A few minutes later, the strawberry-blond tech finished with the polish. While her client’s fingertips set under the small, heated air dryer, the tech pulled her cell phone out and sent another quick text. A minute or so later, the woman’s nails were ready. The tech applied the shea butter lotion to the woman’s hands, too, gently rubbing it in. “All done.” The tech eased the velvet hand forward. “Don’t forget your ring.”

  “Wouldn’t want to do that,” the woman agreed, plucking her ring from the holder. She had no trouble at all sliding it onto her finger now.

  Gabby’s nails were ready, too. She squealed, holding them up for the world to see. “I love it!”

  I pulled out my wallet. “My treat,” I told my mother and Gabby. They thanked me with hugs. I stepped into line at the register behind the woman in the blue turtleneck. Her topaz caught the light again as she inserted her debit card into the chip reader. When she was done, I handed cash across the counter to cover the cost of our manicures, as well as a generous tip. Maybe it would bring me good karma.

  As we ventured out of the nail salon, we found ourselves face-to-face with the barbershop quartet. The same four men who’d been dressed in Dickens costumes and singing Christmas carols just days ago were back, only now they were singing a love song and dressed in typical barbershop-quartet attire. All four sported white pants and white shirts, with red and white striped vests and straw hats with wide red bands. Their bow ties, which were red with white hearts, gave a nod to the upcoming romantic holiday.

  Though the four men approached the woman in the turtleneck, she dodged them, turning right and heading down the walkway at a fast clip, probably aiming for the parking lot. My mother, Gabby, and I stopped to listen.

  They strolled among the shoppers who’d gathered, singing the Beatles’ classic “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” vocalizing and harmonizing and clapping their hands, to the delight of the crowd, who clapped along, too, at just the right points in the song. Just as he’d done when singing “Sleigh Ride,” the shortest one went down on one knee in front of Gabby, taking her hand when they launched into the chorus. My sister threw her head back and laughed. The man gave her a grin before standing and resuming his stroll. When the four men finished their song, the shoppers erupted in applause. Launching into “All My Loving,” they strolled off down the walkway to entertain shoppers at the stores farther down.

  My mother watched their retreating backs and declared their act, “Cute.”

  Gabby groaned and countered with, “Corny.”

  The family peacekeeper, I diplomatically brought everyone together with, “It’s both. Cute and corny.”

  No longer distracted by the singers, we picked up on the smells from the nearby food court wafting our way. Onions. Garlic. Tomato sauce.

  “I’m starving!” Gabby grabbed her stomach with both hands as if it might implode. “Let’s get some pizza.”

  A few minutes later, we were gathered around a table in the food court. My mother and Gabby were sharing a cheese pizza, while I’d opted for a southwestern salad. Given the amount of time I spent sitting on my rear end in my cruiser, I had to watch my diet.

  Gabby went to pick up her drink, and the cup slid right through her hands. “That lotion is slippery.”

  I’d noticed it, too. I’d had a hard time keeping hold of my plastic fork. I pulled three napkins from the dispenser on the table and handed one to Gabby, another to my mother, and kept one for myself, using it to pat some of the excess lotion from my hands.

  I was crunching my way through a mouthful of raw veggies when my cell phone jiggled in my back pocket. I pulled it out and checked the screen. Detective Bustamente was calling. “It’s work,” I told my mom and sister as I jabbed the button to take the call. I put the phone to one ear and a finger to the other to block out the buzz of conversations taking place around us. “Hello, Detective. Happy New Year.”

  “It’s not starting so happy,” he said. “Another animal was taken from the zoo last night.”

  “No!” Diners at nearby tables looked my way. I turned my back and hunched over in an attempt to create some privacy. “What was taken?”

  “A springbok. From what I understand it’s a medium-sized antelope—”

  “Native to Africa.”

  “You’re familiar with them?”

  “Brigit and I walk the zoo sometimes.” Probably more often than we should, but no sense telling him that.

  When I pressed him for details, he said, “You know what I know. I’m on my way to the zoo now to find out more and take a look around. Chief’s coming, too. He’s called a press conference for later this afternoon. Can you meet us there?”

  “Of course. I’ll be there ASAP.”

  Today was supposed to be my day off, but I wasn’t about to miss out on another chance to help in this investigation. While assisting a detective could give my career a boost, my reasons in this particular matter were primarily personal. It broke my heart to think of the confusion and fear these poor animals must be suffering after being removed from the homes and animal families they were accustomed to. This crime was cruel. I’d do whatever I could to help bring them home and put the perpetrator behind bars.

  “Sorry,” I told my mother and Gabby. “I have to cut our girls’ day short. Detective Bustamente needs me at the zoo. A springbok was taken last night. It’s an antelope from—”

  “Africa,” Mom said. “We heard.”

  Gabby’s face tensed with worry. “I hope you catch whoever’s doing this.”

  “She will,” Mom said with a confident lift of her chin. “Megan and Brigit haven’t had a case yet that they couldn’t solve.”

  While I appreciated my mother’s support, I feared she might be wrong. We’d been unable to determine how the thief or thieves had removed Sarki from the monkey habitat, and we’d had no luck trying to identify who might have kidnapped the beautiful birds. None of the angles we’d worked had brought us any closer to solving the crime. But maybe whoever had taken the springbok had left a clue this time, some piece of evidence that would lead us to their door.

  I gave each of them a quick hug and rushed to my car. I sped home, changed into my uniform, and rounded up Brigit. We climbed into the cruiser and off we went.

  My partner and I found Detective Bustamente and Chief Garelik at the African Savanna exhibit. The chief was a hulk of a man, with silver-bullet hai
r, gunmetal-gray eyes, and a double-barreled demeanor.

  “Hello, Chief.” I extended my hand.

  “Officer Luz.” He took my hand and gave it a solid shake that threatened to buckle my knees.

  Brigit raised her paw to shake, too, but the chief ignored her. She returned her paw to the ground and issued a soft snort as if to reprimand him for his poor manners.

  Gathered with the detective and the chief were Sharon Easley, the CSO, and a stocky black man wearing the zoo’s standard mock-safari attire.

  Easley introduced me to the man. “He’s our hoof-stock keeper. He was feeding the springboks an hour ago and noticed one of them is gone. A male. His name is Dinari. There’s no sign of the animal on the zoo grounds.”

  Knowing springboks lived up to their names and could jump quite high, I asked, “Did they seem upset by the fireworks last night?” Fear could be a powerful motivator. Maybe Dinari had put extra effort into his leaps and made it over the wall.

  The keeper said, “They weren’t crazy about the noise. None of the animals were. They were huddled together the last time I checked on them before I went home last night, but they weren’t pronking like I’d expect if they were especially spooked.”

  The CSO backed him up, looking from me, to the detective, to the chief. “My team patrolled regularly last night and kept a close eye on the animals, looking for signs of extreme stress. We didn’t notice any. Some of the animals seemed restless and some went into their private areas, but none of them exhibited any behaviors that caused us alarm.”

  “Did your team report anything else?” Bustamente asked the CSO. “Anything unusual in any way?”

  “One guy came back saying he’d caught a strong whiff of garlic behind the African Savanna exhibit.” He offered a shrug and an apologetic smile that the useless tidbit was all he had to offer. The smell had likely been carried on the wind from one of the restaurants on University Drive. Many of them had extended their hours for the New Year’s holiday. Or maybe it had been a residual aroma from the zoo’s café.

  “All right then,” the detective said, moving things along. “Let’s check out the enclosure.”

  The chief begged off then, his appearance here a goodwill gesture. As the head of the Fort Worth Police Department, his law enforcement duties were mostly administrative. “I’ve got to get back to HQ.” He bade the zoo employees good-bye before turning to the detective. “Come brief me when you’re done here.”

  Just as Camilla Bellafiore had shown me and the detective around the colobus-monkey digs, the hoof-stock keeper led us around the ten-acre habitat, which the springboks shared with other nonpredator species native to Africa. Giraffes. Zebras. Ostriches. Again, I left Brigit safely secured in a locked staff-only area so she wouldn’t frighten the animals.

  This enclosure was similar in design to the monkey exhibit. An entry comprising a roofed outdoor corridor with brick walls on each side and heavy metal gates at either end secured by key-card devices. A large center area landscaped with grasses and trees to simulate the springboks’ natural habitat. A deep, moatlike perimeter and high walls to prevent escape.

  I turned to the others. “I’ve assumed Sarki was probably taken by someone using a ladder to get into the enclosure to snatch him. He’d have been easy enough to carry. But how could a person climb up a ladder carrying one of these animals?” I gestured to the remaining springboks, which were grazing fifty or so yards away. While the springboks stood about three feet tall at the shoulder, their heads and horns added another couple feet at least. Plus, they were over five feet long from nose to tail, and weighed around seventy-five pounds on average.

  The detective thought out loud. “If the animal were unconscious, I suppose they could have strapped it to their back.”

  It was possible, maybe, but it seemed unlikely. The horns would have poked the thief. Even so, the only other possibilities my mind came up with involved some type of airlift by helicopter or crane. Surely the security guards would have noticed a chopper or crane hovering over the zoo. We discussed these scenarios and agreed all of them were unlikely.

  Still musing aloud, I said, “So if the animal wasn’t brought up out of the exhibit, could it have been taken out under the exhibit?”

  “A tunnel, you mean?” the detective asked.

  “Exactly.”

  We split into two groups and circumnavigated the entire exhibit, looking for places where the ground had been disturbed, the concrete cracked. We found some scat, but no evidence of a tunnel. It had been a long shot anyway. Tunneling into the zoo from outside would have involved extensive digging with high-powered equipment, as well as detailed maps and surveys to avoid hitting buried gas lines or plumbing. We reconvened at the exit gate, all of us at a loss.

  The detective recapped. “So we’ve pretty much ruled out the idea that someone came down into the closure, or dug up into it. That means they had to come through it.”

  We examined the perimeter walls. Again we found no evidence of damage. Again we met at the gate.

  I eyed the metal bars. “What if they came through the gate somehow?”

  The CSO shook his head. “I’ve looked at the card-reader records. The only one in and out in the last twenty-four hours was him.” He angled his head to indicate the zookeeper.

  Bustamente grunted. “There’s got to be an explanation. It’s not like someone came here and waved a magic wand and poof, the animals disappeared.”

  Not yet ready to give up on the thought that someone had come through the gate, I stepped closer and turned sideways to give it a more thorough inspection. Only two or three inches separated the bars. Someone would have to be as flat as a paper doll to fit through the gate sideways. How else could someone have come through this gate?

  I stepped even closer, my face only inches from the metal. Starting in the upper left corner, I ran my gaze back and forth over the gate, my focus traversing the top cross bar, then the middle one, stopping at the bottom cross bar. I squatted down for a better look. In the corner where the horizontal bar met the outermost vertical bar, the metal was rough, gloppy looking. It was the same at each spot where a horizontal bar met the outermost vertical bar. In other words, it could mean a center panel had been cut out of the gate, then welded back together.

  I looked up at Bustamente. “Look at these joints. The welding looks sloppy, like it was done quickly.”

  He put his hands on his knees and bent down to take a look. “You’re right. Do they all look like that?”

  After the zoo director, the CSO, and the keeper each took a look for themselves, we moved en masse to the outer gate. Spotting us through the slats, Brigit wagged her tail from the courtyard where she waited. Sure enough, this gate appeared to have been hastily welded, too. Even so, the metal held together, just as sloppy stitching could hold fabric together. It didn’t have to look nice and smooth to function properly.

  I cut a glance at the detective. “Does it mean anything?”

  He pointed to the locked gate that secured the courtyard. “Let’s take a look at that one.”

  We stepped into the courtyard and looked the gate over both inside and out. We saw no evidence of substandard welding on that gate. Hmm.

  Bustamente pointed out the open gate. “Let’s go look at the gates on the monkey habitat and compare them to the gates on other enclosures.”

  We returned to the colobus monkey enclosure. Yep, the gates to that enclosure had been sloppily welded, too. The gates at the nearby gorilla enclosure were welded by someone who had either taken more time or had more skill. The places where the metal was joined were smooth. But what does that tell us?

  A gorilla watched us from across the habitat as Bustamente turned to Easley. “Were all of the gates installed at the same time? The ones at the monkey enclosure and this one?”

  “Originally, yes,” she said. “But some of them have been damaged and replaced. I’d have to go through our records to be able to tell you for certain when each of them was ins
talled.”

  Before she spent precious time looking up information that might not be necessary, I suggested we return to the springbok enclosure. “If we think someone took the springbok out the gate, he’d have had to get out of the courtyard somehow. Maybe Brigit can show us where.”

  We traced our steps back to the courtyard outside the springbok habitat. I led her to the gate and issued the order for her to track a disturbance, hoping that the group of us traipsing all around the place wouldn’t confuse her.

  I needn’t have worried. Brigit sniffed around the gate, glanced over at us, and put her nose back to the concrete, proceeding to lead me to the back of the courtyard. She snuffled around the fence a bit and sat, issuing her passive alert.

  Bustamente and I stepped forward and looked at the metal bars supporting the wooden privacy fence that surrounded the courtyard.

  “There.” I pointed to a spot on the upper cross bar where the metal had clearly been melted.

  “And here,” Bustamente said, pointing to a similar spot along the bar to the left.

  Two poorly welded cuts appeared on the bottom cross beam also.

  I said aloud what the two of us were thinking. “Whoever stole Dinari cut a panel out of this fence and the gates. That way, the animal could be removed without activating the alarm connected to the outer bars of the gate.”

  Brigit, too, said aloud what she was thinking. Woof! Translation: Liver treat!

  I tossed her two treats and scratched her ears. “Good girl!” I placed another liver treat on top of the panel of fencing to mark the spot and waved for the others to follow us. “Let’s take Brigit around to the other side of this fence and see if she can show us where the thieves exited the zoo.”