The Koala of Death

by Betty Webb

  “Diane Sawyer,” I muttered, worried about the direction the conversation had taken.

  “Then there was that debutante ball over in Monterey—bet you never guessed I watch that kind of coverage, did you? You were the only girl in the Simper Brigade who didn’t sound like a jackass.”

  “Okay, so I’ve been on TV before. But what I said earlier holds. With my work load…”

  She ignored my protests. “Save your breath, Teddy. Aster Edwina asked for you personally. And the TV station owner seconded it.”

  I groaned. Ford Bronson was a new neighbor of my mother’s, whom I frequently saw jogging around Gunn Landing Harbor where he kept his yacht. A dot-com billionaire turned media mogul, Bronson was used to getting his way. But not with me.

  “You’ll have to tell both Bronson and Aster Edwina both no, Zorah. My work load…”

  “Not a problem. On your way down to the station every Tuesday, you’ll clock in here. If you need to add several extra hours to take care of your keeper duties, you’ll get paid time-and-a-half. You always did say you’d work here seven days a week if we’d let you. Now’s your chance to make good on that.”

  I started to say something about federal and state employment regulations, then remembered the condition of the Merilee’s engine. Long past overhaul territory, it needed to be replaced, and a new engine would cost thousands of dollars that I didn’t have. “Pay me double-time.”

  “Done.” Her answer came so swiftly that I realized I’d been had.

  Sighing, I said, “How long will I need to continue this?”

  “At least until you’ve bought a new engine for the Merilee.”

  Zoos are just like small towns; everybody knows everybody’s business.

  Conceding defeat by a superior adversary, I moved on. “You said the station wants this week’s program to be a tribute to Kate. I guess that means you want me to take a koala over there.”

  Zorah stretched out her muscular arms in a gesture that seemed to take in the entire zoo. “I envision a fuller program, with a koala, a wombat, a wallaby, and a numbat—just to add one nonmarsupial to the mix. No frilled lizard; too excitable. Same for the Tasmanian devil we have on loan from San Diego. He’s liable to chew off the anchorwoman’s head. Just give viewers some pertinent facts about each animal as you hold it, and talk about their disappearing habitats. Oh, and before the segment ends, be sure and get in a plug for our Name-the-Baby-Anteater contest. Thanks to all the publicity we’ve received, Mama Lucy’s a big star.”

  “Zorah, four animals are too much to handle. And a wombat? They weigh around forty pounds!”

  She waved away my concern. “We’ll give you an adolescent, one who weighs less than twenty. Besides, you’ll have two assistants with you. And every animal you’re taking is very well behaved. Wanchu, the female koala, is placid-to-comatose, and she’ll have eaten before you pick her up, so she might even sleep through the entire program. She’s sure to fart a lot, though, so make sure you turn her bottom away from AnnaLee what’s-her-name, the anchorwoman. Just lift Wanchu out of her cage, cuddle her for a minute—while hyping our Down Under exhibit and sounding terribly, terribly sorry about Koala Kate, of course—then put her away. The wombat might sleep through the segment, too, since they all have the energy of Rip Van Winkle. Malka-Malka, the striped numbat I saw you talking to the other day. He’s a different story. Very active, but he’s no bigger than a squirrel. He’s such a doll that the audience will fall in love with him. If he starts acting up, just give him a handful of termites, tell him he’s beautiful, and put him away. That’s it! I expect you here tomorrow at…”

  “Aren’t you forgetting someone?”

  A bland smile. “Noooo, I think I covered everyone.”

  “The wallaby, Zorah.”

  She smiled. “No problem there, I know you like the wallabies. I’ve even heard you singing to them! Nice soprano, by the way. Tell you what, I’ll give you Abim. He’s the smallest of the mob, less than two feet high. Looks just like a joey, a baby kangaroo. Big, big eyes and the sweetest expression you ever saw. He’ll be on a stretchable leash. Don’t worry, he’s been trained to it, and as long as you don’t drop the leash, you’ll do fine. Hey, if you can handle a thousand-pound horse, you can handle a wee wallaby, right?”

  I frowned, remembering that the translations from Aborigine to English on the Down Under signage informed zoo visitors that Abim meant devil.

  Maybe I was just being paranoid.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tuesday morning began well, which just goes to show.

  Down at the harbor, the morning fog wasn’t as heavy as usual, and by the time I’d fed DJ Bonz and Miss Priss and gone topside to toss the otter her morning herring, it was already clear enough to walk my dog through Gunn Park without once bumping into a trash can.

  Gunn Landing, population 592, had been settled in the nineteenth century by Edwin Gunn, the wealthy railroad baron who later founded the zoo. Located on a tiny strip of land forty miles north of Monterey, the village was little more than a harbor. Its only actual houses were in Old Town, situated on a high bluff on the other side of Highway One. Because of their expense—upwards of seven million dollars each—we peons hunkered down on our much cheaper boats. But we had big yards: the Pacific Ocean to the west and Gunn Park to the east.

  On my way past the restrooms and showers provided for the liveaboarders’ use, my cell phone rang. With Bonz panting happily at my feet, I settled myself on a picnic bench and spent the next five minutes listening to Joe’s sexy voice, not his official one. He’d fantasized about me as he took his morning shower, he purred, and could hardly wait until our dinner date that night and the follow-up next Monday, the only full day off we shared.

  “Me, too,” I purred back. “I’ll chill some Reisling. But it would be nice if we could see each other more than twice a week, especially now that you don’t have any more big cases.” Joe himself had recently suggested an increase in face time, although the prospect had its difficulties. As sheriff of San Sebastian County, he was always on call, and as a widower with two young children, he spent most of his free hours entertaining them, not his girlfriend.

  The purring ceased. “Big cases?”

  “Like those murders a few months ago.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Just highway accidents, which are sad enough.”

  “Hmm.”

  I would have been more alert to his change in tone if it hadn’t been for Bonz’s loud bark. Coming through the fading mist toward us was Hans, Linda Cushing’s aging German shepherd. He had slipped his leash again. Infuriated at this intrusion onto what Bonz saw as his own turf, my dog lunged toward Hans as best as he could, given that he only had three legs. Ordinarily, the terrier-sized Bonz is timid, but he knew from previous encounters that Hans, despite his imposing bulk, was an even bigger chicken. As Bonze snarled on, the shepherd shrank back against a rusty Volkswagen parked near the harbor gate, and vented a pathetic howl.

  “What’s going on?” Joe yelled through the phone. “Need me to send over a squad car?”

  Through the din, I yelled back, “Just Bonz threatening Hans again. Talk to you later.” I rang off, then leaned down and closed my hand gently around Bonz’s muzzle. “No, dog. Hans is a friend. Friend.”

  Bonz gave me a defiant look, but before he could bark again, I heard Linda’s voice. “Hans! Shut that racket up!”

  “We’re over here by the gate. Bonz has him cornered.”

  “Can’t keep a leash on the damned dog these days,” she muttered, coming toward us, leash and collar dangling in her hands.

  “Either he needs a smaller collar or you need to fatten him up.”

  She humphed. “Vet’s got him on a diet.”

  Remembering her financial problems—these days nearly everyone in the harbor is broke—I said, “I’ve got a spare that’ll fit him. Want it?”

  “If you don’t need it.”

  Sensing rescue at hand, Hans stopped his
howling and waved his tail. She bent down and kissed him on the nose. Bonz growled.

  “You shut up too, Bonz,” Linda said, but with a dog-loving smile, “or your mama will chop you up for otter food.”

  My aborted conversation with Joe forgotten, I opened the harbor gate with my key card and we walked our dogs along the dock. When we stopped in front of the Merilee, she recounted what little information she’d been able to give Joe about the Grimaldis’ party. “Kate seemed sober enough to me, but maybe she started knocking them back after I left.”

  “What time did you leave?” I asked.

  “Around midnight.”

  “Kate was still there?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, but trust me, that girl was sober.”

  “Did you tell Joe?”

  “Of course. I also gave him that full guest list I promised. Maybe the Grimaldis know how much she drank after I left. After all, they were the ones supplying the beer. There was one bottle of Cutty Sark on hand, but it disappeared early,” she cackled. “I helped with that, although to be honest, Doris was the one who was really knocking it back.”

  “That’s odd. I’ve never seen her drink much, either.” Doris Grimaldi, along with her husband Sam, owned Lucky Lanes, where the zoo was holding its Bowling for Rhinos fundraiser. Sam, the younger and better-looking of the two, provided Lucky Lanes’ bonhomie, leaving Doris to handle the business side of things. Like many successful people, she was more bookkeeper than partier.

  Linda snorted. “If you’d stayed longer, you’d have seen what I mean. By the time I left, she was looking pretty happy.”

  “Doris always looks happy.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  Before I could ask what she meant, she said, “That dog collar you promised?”

  “Coming right up.” I hurried below deck and snatched the collar out of a galley drawer.

  Linda received it gratefully, and fastened it around her dog’s neck. “Well, kid, I gotta take Hans back to the Tea 4 Two. Have a nice day at the zoo, and don’t let the bears eat you.”

  ***

  Zorah had informed me that she’d split my morning duties between two other keepers, so an hour later, when I clocked in, I looked camera-ready in my freshly ironed uniform. The koala, wombat, wallaby, and numbat were dozing peacefully on top of burlap sacks in their respective carriers inside the Animal Care Center, but I saw no sign of the two assistants I’d been promised.

  “I can’t handle all these animals by myself,” I complained to Dr. Francks, our new vet. A rather snappish man with a wild beard and hair that made him resemble Rasputin, he’d emerged from retirement when one of our other vets decamped with her family to the San Diego Zoo.

  He looked up from the anesthetized Bengal tiger whose fangs he was cleaning. “Zorah called a couple of minutes ago, said someone’s on the way.”

  “Some one?”

  He gestured toward the small cages by the door. “I don’t think you’re in any danger from those guys. Are you afraid the koala will fall asleep on your face and smother you? Or that the wombat will scratch your eyes out? If you’re all that nervous, maybe you should transfer to the children’s zoo where you could work with the sheep.” At that, the vet techs helping him giggled until he silenced them with a growl worthy of the Bengal.

  Thus squelched, I held my silence while my mind rehearsed the logistics of lugging around four different cages, and the prospect of keeping all the animals calm during the show. Having only one assistant would be stretching it, but an experienced animal keeper should be able to handle the job. Maybe Zorah was lending me Bill. His mouth might not be ready for prime time, but it didn’t bother the Down Under animals.

  My hopes were dashed when five minutes later, Bernice Unser, the Monkey Mania volunteer, walked through the door. She must have seen the disappointment on my face because she said, “Sorry, but there was some kind of scheduling snafu this morning and Zorah asked me to help out.”

  It could have been worse. Although no actual animal keeper, most of whom had master’s degrees in the biological sciences, Bernice had completed several of the zoo’s Small Animal Care classes and knew which end was the biting end. She was also strong, which would help with the lugging.

  “Any experience in Down Under?” I asked her.

  “Six months, before I transferred to Monkey Mania. That’s when I learned that most marsupials sleep all day. Since I can only volunteer in the mornings, I wanted to spend that time with animals who are actually awake.”

  She smiled. I smiled back. The situation wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, while Bernice and I waited with the drowsy marsupials in the Green Room at KTSS-TV, Suzi Lovejoy, the assistant producer of Good Morning, San Sebastian, a harassed-looking young woman who seemed little more than a teenager, peered into the cages.

  “Are they dead?”

  “Just sleeping,” I explained.

  Frowning, Suzi explained the segment’s logistics. Gesturing toward Bernice with an ink-stained finger, she said, “Bess here will…”

  “My name is Bernice.”

  “Yeah. Bess will stay out of camera range and keep the animals in their cages until the zookeeper…”

  “Call me Teddy.”

  “Right. Until you say you’re ready for another one. Then Bess will take out the animal and pass it to you. I don’t want Bess to say anything ’cause you, whatsyournameagain, should do most of the talking at least when…”

  “Teddy.”

  “Uh huh. Anyway, Letty, AnnaLee Harris will be your interviewer, and she’ll start off the segment with a brief Koala Kate eulogy, then she’ll introduce you. Make sure to say you’re heartbroken about Kate and how wonderful she was to work with and what a tragedy blah-blah-blah, then tell Bess to pass you that bear thingy. Once she does, give the viewers some basic information about him.”

  “My helper’s name is Bernice, Suzi. And the koala’s a female named Wanchu. She’s not a bear, she’s a marsupial.”

  “Whatever. Then we’ll break for commercial, which will be two-and-a-half minutes. When we come back, AnnaLee will ask you some follow-up of questions about the bear.”

  This time I let the mistakes slide. With Bernice paying close attention, Suzi prattled on, listing the order in which she wanted the animals introduced. After the ‘bear thingy,’ she wanted the ‘striped thingy’—I took that to mean the numbat; and then the ‘disgusting fat thingy’—probably the poor wombat. Last up would be the ‘baby kangaroo.’

  Sighing, I said, “He’s an adult wallaby, Suzi. His species tops out at two feet high.”

  “Uh huh. So let the baby kangaroo hop around some, ’cause our viewers like to see animals in action, not just laying there like they’re dead or something.”

  I assured her I’d let the wallaby give a few hops, if he was awake. He’d been snoring when we lugged him in from the van.

  “Then give him a good kick to wake him up, just don’t let the viewer see it. They tend to overreact to that sort of thing.”

  Bernice frowned. She didn’t like the idea of a kicked wallaby any more than I did.

  I gave Suzi my best glare but she was so busy looking at her watch that she didn’t notice. Bernice and I started to settle back down on the brown vinyl couch but were interrupted in mid-squat when Suzi said, “Commercial. Let’s get those fur balls out there. Stay at my side until I tell you to move.”

  She opened the Green Room door and ushered us into the studio.

  The studio was so dark I could see little in its cavernous space, only the set itself where AnnaLee Harris, wearing enough makeup to sink the Titanic all over again, sat under glaring lights on a small sofa. She was holding a book up to the camera. Across from her sat a bewildered-looking elderly man, whom I took to be the author.

  “As Mr. Greenwald here has so movingly pointed out,” AnnaLee was saying, an unsettling smile on her face. “Growing Up on an Arkansas Chicken Farm,
which he will be signing today at noon at the Book Beast in San Sebastian, makes delightful reading for those who wish to return to those less-pressured days of yesteryear…”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say less pressured…” the author began, then a voice in the darkness interrupted him. “And we’re out for commercial!”

  The smile left AnnaLee’s face as she turned away from the author like he no longer existed. “Next!” she snapped to Suzi.

  Suzi rushed forward, hauled the author off the sofa and pushed him toward the Green Room. Once he’d disappeared, muttering to himself, she said to Bernice, “Give whatshername the bear now.”

  “Teddy. Koala.” Bernice opened Wanchu’s cage.

  As Bernice picked her up, Wanchu gave a grunt and opened her eyes. Where in the world am I? she appeared to be thinking. When Bernice handed her to me, she snuggled against my neck and fell back asleep.

  “Get over there,” Suzi said, shoving me toward the sofa. “You’re on in thirty seconds.”

  For a moment, I panicked. “What’ll I say?”

  “Follow AnnaLee’s lead. And for God’s sake, do what you’re told. If you don’t, she’ll take it out on me.”

  Another shove, and suddenly there I was, sitting on the sofa with twenty pounds of dozing koala wrapped around my neck, staring at a red light on a camera that seemed to be looking up my nose.

  “Five, four, three, two…” Suzi counted.

  “Welcome back to Good Morning, San Sebastian!” crowed AnnaLee, smiling again. Then, as if someone had flipped on the Sadness Switch, her face assumed a tragic expression. “As KTSS-TV reported yesterday, the accidental drowning of my dear, dear friend Koala Kate, everyone’s favorite zookeeper, has profoundly affected us all. I first met Kate when…” AnnaLee continued to describe Kate in such glowing terms that I suspected she’d not known her outside the studio.