The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery)

by Jessie Bishop Powell

  THE CASE OF THE RED-HANDED RHESUS

  A RUE AND LAKELAND MYSTERY

  THE CASE OF THE RED-HANDED RHESUS

  JESSIE BISHOP POWELL

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  Copyright © 2016 by Jessie Bishop Powell

  “Soulful Eyes” by K. Donovan, copyright © 2014. Reprinted by permission of K. Donovan

  All rights reserved.

  Permission granted by Project Lifesaver Inc. (dba Project Lifesaver International)

  Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Powell, Jessie Bishop.

  The case of the red-handed rhesus / Jessie Bishop Powell. — First edition.

  pages cm — (A Rue and Lakeland mystery)

  ISBN 978-1-4328-3144-8 (hardcover) — ISBN 1-4328-3144-5 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4328-3154-7 (ebook) — ISBN 1-4328-3154-2 (ebook)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3154-7 eISBN-10: 1-4328-3154-2

  1. Animal sanctuaries—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Human animal relationships—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3616.O8797C37 2015

  813'.6—dc23 2015022053

  First Edition. First Printing: February 2016

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3154-7 ISBN-10: 1-4328-3154-2

  Find us on Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage

  Visit our website– http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/

  Contact Five Star™ Publishing at FiveStar@cengage.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 20 19 18 17 16

  To all the families, teachers, and staff at Churchill Academy

  in Montgomery, Alabama.

  Every day, you prove that autism has many faces.

  You will never be puzzle pieces.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This is a work of fiction, set in a fictitious town, with fictitious characters. All of them live only in my mind, but they wouldn’t be there at all if I didn’t have help from some monumentally awesome people. Writing is a collaborative effort, even when only one person creates a world. Support systems, first readers, editors, and subject experts are all essential components of any work such as this.

  First, I must once again thank my husband Scott for not only taking over most of the childcare and housework so I could complete this book, but for also being my first editor. He is also an amazing writer. Second, I must thank my children for failing to mutiny when I was a less-than-present mother and for acting impressed when told that Mom is an author. Caroline, Sam, even if you’re faking it, I appreciate the support. Everyone in our extended family has cheered me on. They shore me up when the inevitable self-doubts creep in.

  And oh the self-doubt. I am grateful beyond words to Deni Dietz, senior editor at Five Star, who has supported my writing from the first time we met. When she accepted the first book in this series, The Marriage at the Rue Morgue, for publication, she gave me validation I’d wanted since I was ten years old. Everyone at Five Star, in fact, was amazing in putting Rue Morgue together. The book would not have happened without Tiffany Schofield, Nivette Jackaway, and Diane Piron-Gelman, to name only three. As I send this second title out, I know I am extending my hopes to a highly qualified team.

  I have been able to maintain my connection to Detective John K. Schadle, who is now the Chief Deputy of the Adams County, Ohio, Sheriff’s Office, and through him to a network of experts. Rural law enforcement is different from work in the city, though I’m sure there are many commonalities. I may have grown up rural, but I’ve lived in cities for sixteen years now. I need his perspective to help me grasp some things that never made sense and learn others I didn’t know.

  Lisa Harvey, a fellow writer and social worker, taught me a bit about the foster care system, though I have taken a few creative liberties. Lisa was also the primary voice behind the Trifecta writing challenge. Although the website she created is no longer active, the friendships and communities it has fostered are long-lasting.

  Natasha’s poem “Soulful Eyes” is really by my friend K. Donovan, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. I am not a good poet. I don’t have the mastery of metaphor that poetry requires, and the piece she created for my character is so perfect.

  For my knowledge of primatology, I must thank at least two people. Melanie Bond of the Center for Great Apes in Florida has given me ideas and guidance from the start. Although I pretend my fictitious sanctuary can house orangutans, the Center for Great Apes is really the only great ape sanctuary for orangutans in the United States. Zoos we have several, sanctuaries but one. Her knowledge of these fascinating creatures is combined with a keen editing eye, and I am grateful to have her friendship.

  She also connected me with Bob Ingersoll, who (among many other roles) once held the title of president at Mindy’s Memory, a primate sanctuary in Oklahoma. He is known for his work with the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky and his adamant stance against primates as research tools. My imaginary sanctuary is dedicated to studying those animals currently in captivity in order to better understand them and meet their needs. I do not want my novels to promote unethical treatment of primates in any way. Bob helped me understand rhesus macaques and their care. More than that, he gave me a sense of what it feels like to be on the front lines of animal activism, and I am enormously grateful for his time and insights.

  After Scott, my first readers for this book were DL Bass Kemp, Melanie Bond, Linda Myers, Kirsten Piccini, and Detective Schadle. I don’t expect them to find all my errors, and I have boundless gratitude for their corrections and honesty. First readers don’t merely exist to shore up a sagging ego. They are also meant to save me from myself as much as can be done, and they do.

  The two children introduced in the book, William and Sara, have Asperger’s syndrome, and I also need to thank my personal autism community for ideas and support. Both of my children have Asperger’s syndrome, and my psychiatrist assures me I have a “touch of it” as well. This knowledge came as such a relief to me, since I grew up bullied, unable to understand other kids or make sense of their behaviors. I didn’t fit in with any group until I was in college. I did not recreate my kids or myself in the children in this book. They are drastically different. Instead, I considered my characters first and foremost as characters. Autism was only one aspect of the personalities they developed.

  My friend Dawn Beronilla was hugely informative on the topic of receptive language delays. I understan
d what they are in principle, and I’ve seen them in action. But receptive language problems are essential to William’s role in the book. I needed to know its practicalities, and Dawn gave me some wonderful hardwiring in this area. It is thanks to her that I know what a “cheese-light” is.

  My knowledge of autism and Asperger’s in particular is formed by personal experience. Asperger’s syndrome often gets stereotyped, both in literature and in real life, even though it has technically been lumped under the general heading of “autism spectrum disorder” in the United States. Plenty of nations still acknowledge it as a distinct diagnosis.

  I tried to avoid the stereotypes about autism and Asperger’s. Not everyone with Asperger’s is literal-minded; some speak in fluid metaphors. Although I was a terribly literal-minded child, I got the hang of figurative language early on. Savant syndrome is not the same as Asperger’s syndrome. I am not brilliant in anything, and neither are my kids, though we’re all pretty good at most things. Asperger’s does not mean a lack of empathy. As it happens, that’s something I’ve always suffered from an overabundance of. Asperger’s doesn’t mean speaking in an uninflected robot voice. My kids and I have always had a full vocal range. Indeed, when my daughter was working through some speech issues, she was always easy to understand because her tone of voice was usually clear. Asperger’s doesn’t always mean an avoidance of eye contact, or a lack of enjoyment of social activities, or a too-quiet conversational style. You get the picture. These are traits that appear sometimes in some people, and when they are present, they vary in degree.

  I have seen extremely well-written books featuring autistic characters who run the personality and intelligence gamut just like everyone else. I have also seen some horrible literary presentations of autism that rely on stereotype and assumption. I hope my characters fall into the former category, rather than the latter.

  Finally, while many details of the book are fictitious, some children on the spectrum do wander, sometimes with tragic results. Autism affects communication. A nonverbal individual can easily wander away from a group, distracted. Children do this anyway, but when the ability to call for help is in any way hampered, the wanderer’s danger is greater.

  William is a wanderer. He wears a tracking device made available by a group called Project Lifesaver International. The device and company are real, and I am grateful to CEO Gene Saunders for permitting me to use the real thing rather than having to make something up. The commendable work of the group allows rescue parties to rapidly hone in on a person’s location, saving precious minutes. Moreover, there are grants to fund it, and costs to individual families are typically low to nonexistent.

  Finally, thanks to you, reader, for picking up my book and giving me a whirl. I’d love to know your thoughts, and you can always find me at http://jesterqueen.com.

  CHAPTER 1

  Natasha’s cell vibrated on the counter, but I ignored it. She often forgot to turn it off when she surrendered it to my care at ten p.m. It was well past midnight now, and I was busy unpacking. The move into Ironweed had been sudden, though anything but impulsive, and my husband and I were busy with the kitchen boxes tonight.

  Tasha’s phone stopped buzzing as Lance lifted a stack of plates and set them on the counter. “I hate all this waste,” he complained, unwrapping the dishes and putting them in the cabinet above the sink. “Will you be able to reach these if I put them on the lowest shelf, Noel?”

  “Try not to think about the waste.” I sliced open a box, revealing our stemware, then walked to the sink and stretched my arms into the cabinet. Since I top out at five feet, most kitchen shelves have to be accessed with a step stool. Day-today items are best stored in easy reach. “As long as the plates are in front, I should be okay.”

  The phone buzzed again. Lance groaned. Natasha’s grand-parents, Gert and Stan, had only recently adopted her, and now they were both hospitalized for the long term. Since she had come to live with us, our fifteen-year-old foster daughter had blossomed socially. So much so that we found it necessary to place limits on everything from the Internet, to outings with friends, to the aforementioned cell.

  We had also been forced to adapt our views of what it meant to be a teen, which had heretofore been shaped by our contact with my sister’s children. Natasha was nothing like the college-bound Rachel or Rachel’s fifteen-year-old sister, Brenda. For that matter, I doubted Tasha would have much resembled ten-year-old Poppy at the same age. Perhaps when she was eight. Maybe when she was my nephew Bryce’s age, she had seemed like a child. But right now, she was more like a badly confused adult in an underage body.

  In fact, Natasha was a large part of the reason for this move. Lance and I used to pride ourselves on our economical lives in our small house, but that home had what Natasha called “one bedroom and one room with a bed.” It was all we could afford while trying to run the financially strapped Midwest Primate Sanctuary that was our passion as well as our profession.

  Stan, a wealthy man who donated to all of Ironweed’s foundations, made three bedside calls and purchased the home behind our backs. Then he sold it to us for a dollar. When I told him, “You can’t buy us a house like that, Stan!” he smiled and went mute, as if the pneumonia he had developed in the hospital had suddenly stolen his vocal cords.

  What I wanted to tell him, “You can’t buy back Natasha’s mental health,” didn’t need to be spoken. He knew it. And it hurt him as badly as the broken bones that had put him in the hospital.

  His realtor was sitting across the bed from us with a pinched look. Nurses stopped by regularly to count us (we technically numbered entirely too many for this wing of the hospital) and shoot glowers reminding the patient he needed to stop doing business when he should be healing. Our refusal to accept the sale was delaying him.

  Lance looked as frustrated as I felt, but we had experience in arguing with Stan. It was pointless. He had been known to forge signatures to achieve his philanthropic goals, while judges in our small Ohio county pretended not to see. The fact that he was in a Columbus hospital coated in casts, tubes, and wires made no difference. The officials would come to him if he could not get out.

  If he wanted to buy us a house, then we could either live in it or rent it to someone else. Mostly, we could be grateful he was a kind man, because money bought things in Muscogen County, and it would have done so regardless of Stan’s intent.

  On the way home from the hospital, Natasha wept, “This is my fault. I told him I got scared at night out there.”

  “None of this is your fault, Tasha,” I told her. “He’s assuaging guilt. He also blames himself for Art’s death and everything you’ve been through.” It didn’t matter to Stan that until he and Gert finalized her adoption, Stan had been her step-grandfather. Natasha was his only grandchild, and he and Gert were her only grandparents. She was the most precious thing in their worlds. Art was our good friend who founded the Midwest Primate Sanctuary and headed it until his death. He had also been dear to Stan.

  Gary, who had hurt Natasha and killed Art, was technically Gert’s nephew, but Stan had paved the man’s path in Muscogen County. It certainly didn’t affect Stan’s position that he himself had nearly died at Gary’s hands; he still felt at fault. The fact that we had all failed to grasp how dangerous Gary was did nothing to ease Stan’s mind. Gary was determined to come to Muscogen County with or without Stan. He manipulated his way into the invitation to hide his illegal activities. Art simply got in his way.

  We all got in his way. If Chuck, an orangutan abandoned on the sanctuary’s grounds, had not interrupted Gary’s encounter with Stan, Stan would have been dead before rescue workers could find him in the Ohio woods. As it was, he was preserved by his cell phone’s GPS.

  Although his survival was now certain, his departure date from the hospital was far less so. Gary’s mother, a participating member of the pornography ring her son operated, had poisoned her own twin sister. Gert was alive, but her health was far less stable.


  Natasha was the only one with any idea of what Gary was capable of at that time. And he’d terrified her into silence. She had spent four, nearly five years trapped by him, not even completely escaping when her mother’s death from a drug overdose allowed her grandparents to adopt her over the protests of her mother’s boyfriend, who turned out not to be her father at all. With Gary dead and the majority of the people who had hurt her in federal custody, Tash had finally developed a sense of empowerment in our care. She recognized and was willing to identify many of the guilty parties.

  But that, too, took a toll. Because she was a minor, she would be providing taped testimony for several trials, not taking the stand. But she had not yet done so, making it even more difficult for her to move beyond the things that terrorized her. She took a veritable pharmacy of anti-anxiety medications to get through each day. And our old backyard had too many dark shadows.

  When we realized how badly injured Gert and Stan were, and that Natasha had nowhere to go with her grandparents disabled, we impulsively invited her to stay with us. I thought Lance was motivated purely by sympathy. But it was more personal for me. I knew a little more about what she had been through, once having been sucked into an abusive relationship myself, and I hoped I could reach her where another might not be able to do so.

  After Stan bought us the house, we didn’t do anything at all for two days, as our workload at the sanctuary, where Lance and I shared management duties, was heavy this time of year. We didn’t have summer interns from Ironweed University, like we did the rest of the year, and many of our long-term volunteers were vacationing. Natasha provided a highly useful pair of hands. We all left for work early in the morning and came home exhausted each night, making a perfect excuse to avoid talking about Stan’s latest purchase.

  But on the third morning, when the sound of a tree branch scraping against the house had kept Natasha up most of the previous night, the topic became unavoidable. “We should consider going,” I told Lance. “For now, anyway. I’m afraid out here at night, too, these days.” After all, I wouldn’t have known Natasha was awake and frightened if the same noise that troubled her hadn’t also pulled me from a deep sleep to check all the doors and windows. I hated not feeling safe in the country, but I couldn’t deny the pervasive unease I experienced when the sun set each evening.