The Koala of Death

by Betty Webb

  To a loud chorus of cheers, I rushed forth and scooped up my beautiful trophy. Rhino dung looks so nice when it’s bronzed.

  When the crowd settled down again, Zorah said, “The award for Most Successful Nonmillionaire Money-Grubber goes to rhino keeper Buster Daltry, who raised the sum of $12,257.56 by going from door to door throughout San Sebastian County spreading the word to households, offices and schools about the rhinos’ plight. And, I would like to add, he personally bought $100 worth of raffle tickets for himself.”

  “Way to go, Buster!” someone yelled, as the rhino keeper blushed. “Bet you’re going to be living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next month!”

  “Get up there and get your bronzed shit, mate,” Bill ordered, giving his bowling partner a good-natured shove.

  The cheers increased as Buster clomped his big feet forward to receive his trophy.

  When the hysteria died down Zorah picked up two pencils and drummed them on the table in an inexpert but rousing take on “Ruffles and Flourishes.”

  Knowing what was coming next, the room fell quiet.

  After stashing the pencils in her pocket, Zorah picked up the mike again. “Time to award the big prize we’ve all been waiting for, an all-expenses-paid, two-week African safari for two—two people, mind you—two! to Mother Africa, where two lucky people will gaze upon elephants, rhinos, giraffes, big cats and all the other wonderful animals that roam the veldt. Are you ready, folks?”

  The loudest cheers of the evening erupted from the crowd.

  “All right. As you know, we’d planned for Aster Edwina to pick the winner, but an emergency came up and she needed to leave.”

  The crowd awwwed.

  “So I brought in a substitute. For this final best-of-all prize, and to assure you that there’s no fishy business afoot, the long arm of the law will now reach into the hopper and pull the winning number.”

  To my delight, Joe emerged in full uniform from the back of the crowd and jostled his way to Zorah. At his appearance some people cheered again; a few others booed. I guess it all depended on how traumatic their experience with the long arm of the law had been. Since Joe looked so dangerous and sexy in his uniform, I delivered a wolf whistle. He winked back.

  As Joe turned the crank on the hopper, Zorah used the pencils as drumsticks again.

  “Turn! Turn! Turn!” shouted the crowd.”

  Joe kept turning and the crowd grew louder.

  I had no horse in this race, myself. If I won, it would be disastrous public relations situation for the zoo, so I’d given my tickets to others. Joe, who had earlier purchased twenty tickets from me as I’d stopped by the police station on my way to Lucky Lanes, had done the same.

  Some people were more deserving of good fortune than others. But Luck was a fickle lady, as was proven every time a divorce attorney won the Powerball.

  “Pick it! Pick it! Pick it!” everyone screamed.

  Experienced at crowd control and the riots that sometimes broke out when excited people lost their common sense, Joe stopped the roll mid-crank. The tickets slid to a heap at the bottom of the hopper. Turning his back, he reached behind him, fumbled the wire gate open, and after rustling through the tickets for a few more excruciating seconds, pulled one out.

  Joe looked at the ticket for a second, then said, “Want to know the number?”

  “Read it! Read it! Read it!”

  He grinned, enjoying the chance to make people happy for a change.

  “One five oh…”

  People scanned their tickets. Several tossed them with disappointed expressions.

  “two…”

  More tickets were tossed.

  “seven…”

  Even more tickets hit the floor.

  Perhaps I imagined it, but I thought I heard an indrawn breath.

  “…three.”

  “Say again?” A voice from the back, too choked up to be readily identified as male or female. Heads turned toward the voice as Joe reread the number.

  “One-five-oh-two-seven-three.”

  A long silence, then—“Oh, my God, I won!”

  It was Buster Daltry.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It took six of us more than two hours to clean up Lucky Lanes and its parking lot. In the celebration that had followed Buster’s win, people ripped up score sheets and rained them down on him like confetti. After being doused with beer, the big man was hefted on the shoulders of other big men and paraded around the bowling alley like a king, then out the double doors and into the parking lot, where the other ticket buyers roused themselves out of their collective funk long enough to congratulate him.

  The cleaning crew, comprised of me, Robin, Helen, Bernice, and Haylie and Mark Hewitt, was now one short. Buster had planned to help out before Fate intervened. After his royal progress through the parking lot, he’d been carried down the street to the Amiable Avocado, where he was working his way toward a world-class hangover.

  “I’m glad Buster won, aren’t you?” Robin said, sweeping up the last scrap of paper into a black garbage bag.

  “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, and I say that without irony,” I answered. “Let’s hope he gets to see both black and white rhinos, not that I could ever tell the difference. And elephants. Buster loves elephants.”

  “Maybe he’ll see cheetahs on the run. And a lion pride. With cubs.” She sounded wistful.

  Poor Robin. After Bill and Myra had treated her so shabbily, I had been secretly rooting for her. To get her mind off her losses, I said, “Well, this is it. All that’s left is to take this stuff out to the Dumpster.”

  For the next few minutes we hauled bag after bag, until Sam Grimaldi declared the job finished. “A professional crew couldn’t have done better,” he said.

  He ushered us out the door, and while we climbed into our vehicles, stayed behind to lock up.

  With the exception of the block where the Amiable Avocado is located, the small city of San Sebastian is pretty much deserted after midnight. My journey through town would have gone faster, but I hit every red light between the main drag and the turnoff to Gunn Landing. The lights were long ones, too. I didn’t mind, because the city’s strict zoning regulations kept the heart of San Sebastian authentic, so with my window down to admit the fresh night air, I enjoyed the picturesque view.

  Renovated adobe buildings erected in the mid-1800s reflected the area’s Spanish influence, with adobe storefronts connected to each other by tiled archways. The city had its share of statuary, too, and I drove by life-sized bronzes of Horace Bentley, my paternal great-great-great-grandfather; Abraham Piper, my maternal great-great-great grandfather; and the infamous Edwin Gunn, from whose loins sprang the indomitable Aster Edwina. The real star of the city came at the intersection of El Camino Real and Via del Sosa, where stood a floodlit, life-sized bronze of Padre Bautista de Sosa, the Spanish priest who had founded San Sebastian Mission. As always, I gave the padre and the trio of adoring Indian children at his feet a salute as I drove by.

  The end of the city’s older section signaled the new business center, flagshipped by the corporate headquarters of SoftSol. Although it clashed with the Spanish-themed buildings that came before, at least it was attractive enough not to be an eyesore.

  But the view degenerated once I passed the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING HISTORIC SAN SEBASTIAN sign. This signaled the less aesthetic side of the Modern Age, which was represented by fast-food restaurants and strip malls. Idling at the last endless red light before the turnoff, I found myself staring through the window of a laundromat, watching what appeared to be the entire San Sebastian Community College’s women’s soccer team doing their laundry. A black woman with hair as red as mine stood at the sorting table near the window, folding an SSCC red-and-black regulation jersey. As the light changed, she looked up and waved. I waved back.

  I was just about to release the pickup’s clutch when a dark sedan pulled along beside me and I heard a loud crack. Before I could r
eact, the driver’s side window of my truck disintegrated, covering me with powdered safety glass.

  “Wha…?”

  The sedan pulled forward, then angled in, effectively cutting me off.

  Before I could breath again, I heard another crack, and my windshield splintered into a web-like pattern. Shocked, I released the clutch too fast, and my Nissan stalled. Still not understanding what was happening, I turned the key in the ignition and tried again, intending to shift into reverse to give myself room to pull around the dark car. The pickup truck took two hops forward, then stalled once more.

  Another loud crack, this one followed by the clang of something hard striking metal. Then, without the interference of safety glass, I felt something whiz by, and a nanosecond later, the rear widow exploded.

  I sat there, too stunned to move.

  My mind cleared when someone yelled, “Get out of the truck! There’s a sniper out there!”

  I saw the redhead from the laundromat holding its door open, gesturing frantically for me to come in.

  “Get in here, girl! Someone’s shooting at you!”

  Sometimes I might be a little slow on the uptake, but I’m not stupid, so I followed her instructions. As more cracks and clangs destroyed the peaceful San Sebastian night I lowered my head, slid along the bench seat to the passenger’s side, and bailed out the door. Shielding my head with my Best Money-Grubber trophy, I scurried toward the laundromat in a bullet-ducking crouch while more shots rang out. The redhead’s strong arms yanked me inside. As soon as I’d cleared the door, several other women upended a metal sorting table in front of it.

  “We’ve already called 9-1-1,” my savior said, kneeling beside me and brushing powdered glass off my shoulders. “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “I never saw…” My voice came out as little more than a squeak.

  “You’re bleeding.” She turned to a wiry blonde and snapped, “Jennifer, hand me that pillowcase. No! The clean one.”

  The blonde handed her a snowy pillowcase.

  I protested that I was fine and couldn’t possibly be bleeding, but the redhead pressed the pillowcase to my cheek, then held it up. “See?”

  The pillowcase was now blotted with red. “But I can’t be shot,” I squeaked again. “I would have felt it.”

  She shook her red curls. “Just a scratch. Where’s the damn cops when you need them?”

  “Joe’s right down…he’s right down…” The street, I meant to finish, but I ran out of voice.

  “Dina, give her a drink. She’s going to faint.”

  Sorry, Red, I’m not the fainting kind. But I complied with her orders and took a big gulp out of the insulated water bottle Dina—a female bruiser almost the size of Joe—held to my mouth. After I’d swallowed, I gagged. “What the hell’s in here?”

  “Grapefruit juice and bourbon,” Dina answered. “About half and half.”

  Steeled for the burn this time, I took another slug while Red, whom I guessed was the team captain, snapped out more orders. “Ariel and Brittany, make sure the back door’s locked. Lacy and Denise, lift that other sorting table onto the top of the one at the window. We need to block it before that asshole starts firing in here. But make sure you’re covered while you lift it. We don’t want anyone shot, and God knows how long it’ll take the cops and EMTs to arrive.”

  Accustomed to obeying Red, the women snapped to attention, and within seconds, turned the laundromat into a fortress. They weren’t through yet. After breaking open the supply closet, they armed themselves with mops, brooms, and open jugs of bleach.

  “He comes in here, I’ll knock his head off,” Dina muttered darkly.”

  “It would be more fun to bleach his eyes out,” Red said, her face fierce. “Wonder if they’d sizzle?”

  “What’s that thing you’re hanging onto?” Dina asked. “A bronzed softball?”

  I looked down at my Best Money-Grubber trophy. The teakwood base now sported a round hole just below the rhino dung.

  “Rhino shit. I won it.”

  Dina and Red shared a long look, the kind you give people who claim they’ve been abducted by aliens.

  I started to explain that the heavy trophy would make a good weapon if worse came to worse, but then the sounds of approaching sirens cut me off.

  The law had arrived.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was hard to tell if Joe was furious or worried, which is a common problem with cops; you can’t always read their faces.

  “Did you get a good look at your assailant?” he asked again, while redheaded Liz Carroway, the captain of the SSCC’s women’s soccer team, looked on.

  The laundromat had never been meant to hold so many people; an entire soccer team, several sheriff’s deputies, two inquisitive crime scene techs, and a fussbudget EMT who kept insisting that I go to the hospital. It was all very irritating.

  “Too dark,” I said. “Not even sure he was a he.”

  “How about the car. Make? Model?”

  “Big and black? Small and blue? You think I’m a bat or something? Not that they actually ‘see,’ it’s more of a radar kind of thing.” I took another deep drink of Dina’s grapefruit juice/bourbon mixture. By now, it not only tasted a whole lot better, but I felt a whole lot better, too. So much fuss over a sniper. Hey, I was still in one piece, wasn’t I? So no harm, no foul. Except for my poor Nissan pickup truck. All those windows! What was my deductible? Two hundred? Three?

  “It’s five hundred dollars!” I wailed.

  Joe turned to Liz. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

  She shrugged. “Girl never did make any sense. She even told us that bronze baseball was rhino shit.”

  I clutched my beautiful award to my chest. “Is too!”

  Joe frowned. “Teddy, are you drunk?”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too,” chortled the EMT. “C’mon, Miss Bentley. Let’s just get you on this nice little stretcher here and we’ll take a nice little ride to the nice little hospital. Just scoot onto…”

  “Gonna slap you!”

  Liz reached forward and jerked Dina’s water bottle from my hands.

  “Cruel!” I sobbed, trying to grab it back.

  Joe stood up. “Oh, for…All right, folks. Party’s over. Ms. Carroway, if you’d give your statement to the deputy over there, I’d appreciate it. Same with the rest of you, ah, ladies.” Then, to the EMT, he said, “She’s refusing treatment.”

  “Let it be on your head,” the EMT warned. Then he and his partner took the stretcher and left.

  After giving his men a slew of instructions, Joe hauled me to my feet. “I’m taking you to your mother’s.”

  I looked at my watch. “Awwww, it’s after curfew. She’ll kill me!”

  His face assumed another expression I couldn’t read. “Not in front of a witness, she won’t.”

  ***

  Several hours later, I woke up to see a red-eyed Caro sitting next to the bed, Feroz perched on her lap like a miniature guard dog. She looked like she’d been there all night. Pushing the covers and Miss Priss aside, I staggered past DJ Bonz and his cat into the bathroom. As my mother held my head, I emptied my stomach into the toilet.

  “Good thing I put the seat up last night, otherwise there’d be a mess on the floor,” Caro commented as I re-heaved. “Think you’re through now? Heavens, you were drunk!”

  “I don’t know how that happened.”

  “Joe said something about grapefruit juice and bourbon.”

  “I’ve always hated bourbon. Now I hate grapefruit juice, too.”

  After I stood up, she dampened a washrag, blotted my face, then handed me a glass of Listerine. “Just gargle, don’t swallow.”

  As per instructions, I gargled, brushed my teeth, and gargled again. Since Caro continued to hover, I said, “I would like to take a shower now, so if I could have a little privacy?”

  She pressed her lips into a hard line. “I’ve seen your naked butt before, Theodor
a. Remember, I used to change your diapers.”

  At the mention of diapers, my stomach heaved and I looked longingly at the toilet again.

  “You see? You’re not safe to be left alone.”

  “You never changed my diapers,” I said, waiting for the nausea to pass.

  “Between nannies, I did. You can’t replace those people right away, you know, what with all the references that need checking.”

  Ceding defeat to a stronger opponent, I stripped and showered. When I stepped out of the tub, she handed me a thick towel. Once I dried myself off, she wrapped me in a terrycloth robe so closely and slowly it felt like an extended hug. But since my mother wasn’t into displays of physical affection, I figured I must have imagined it.

  “How does buttered toast sound, dear?”

  I waited to see what my stomach would do, but when it made no comment, I nodded.

  Down in the breakfast room, the toast, albeit somewhat charred, hit the spot. As I started on my third slice, I realized that Caro must have made the toast herself. “Where’s the maid? Surely you haven’t started giving her Sundays off, too.”

  “Grizelda quit.”

  “What was she, your third this year?”

  “Fourth. People are so disloyal these days. Myself, I blame the media.”

  Myself, I blamed Caro. She was enough to drive old Padre Bautista de Sosa to drink.

  “Speaking of touchy subjects, how long did Joe stay last night?” I asked.

  “Until three.”

  “That long?”

  “We talked.”

  The very idea that my mother and Joe could remain alone together for that amount of time without killing each other boggled me beyond boggle. “What about?”

  “New York Fashion Week, Halston’s fall line…” Seeing my expression, she said, “We talked about you.”

  “Come to any conclusions?” I started on my fourth piece of toast, which tasted better now that I’d heaped it with the expensive marmalade Caro had shipped over regularly from London.