by Betty Webb
“Not you.” I tried not to smile. “But if Jeanette was ill, why didn’t Grayson leave with her, which is what he’d normally do? And how’d he get home? Walk? It’s a half-mile uphill from here to Gunn Castle, and I don’t remember him being all that fond of exercise.”
“Teddy, I have no idea why he stayed on alone at the party. And as far as walking home goes, he wasn’t that exercise-averse. Heavens, I could walk the distance in my Ghesquières!” She gave a smug glance at her pretty feet. “If the man w too lazy, well, he and Jeanette had plenty of friends at the funder, people like us who live in Old Town. They’d have to drive right by the castle on their way home, so maybe they dropped him off.”
“You live in Old Town. I live on the Merilee.”
She sniffed. “That ratty old boat’s not your home. It’s ... It’s ... It’s a place you’re staying until you figure out what to do with your life. If you moved in with me, you could join the guilds, we could throw parties, take some cruises, and even double date! Wouldn’t that be fun? I could take you to my cosmetic surgeon, too. I know Dr. Markgraffe would do a wonderful job on your nose. He’s offering a Mother/Daughter Special this month, twenty-five percent off. While we’re recovering, we could go hide out in some secluded spa, get seaweed wraps and high colonics.”
I shuddered, unable to decide which sounded more unpleasant: cosmetic surgery, high colonics, or double-dating with my mother.
Fortunately, the children lined up at the gate began making enough noise to deflect my mother’s latest attempt to lure me away from my job. The noise increased as one of the zoo’s many volunteers walked the line, checking the children for any contraband the monkeys might steal. Candy, cell phones, guns. Searches completed, two volunteers escorted them into the enclosure to ensure that they didn’t pull the monkeys’ tails and to keep the monkeys from doing worse to them.
Stepping aside to let the children flow around her, Caro switched tactics. “I miss your company. Why don’t you come up to the house for dinner tonight? When I was shopping in Carmel yesterday I picked up a cute Donna Karan I know you’ll love and another one for myself in a different color. We’ll look like sisters!”
I didn’t want to look like my mother’s sister, but I knew she wouldn’t rest until she’d seen the Donna Karan on both our backs. I gave it a try, though. “Sorry. I need to sand the Merilee’s deck.”
“Not at night you don’t.” She hauled another tissue out of her handbag, and with that clean barrier between her hand and my dirty arm, gave me a pat. “Seven o’clock. Look nice.” Before I could come up with a better excuse she hurried out the gate.
Look nice.
It sounded like she’d found yet another eligible male for me.
***
The rest of the day passed without incident. Satisfied that I’d done everything needed to ensure my charges’ welfare, I parked the zoo cart near the employees’ entrance, clocked out, and climbed into my battered Nissan pickup. Then I drove home, a five-mile commute west between soft green hills that slowly leveled as they rolled down to the Pacific.
Home for me is a refitted 1979 thirty-four foot CHB trawler moored at Slip No.34 in Gunn Landing Harbor. Living up the hill with Caro in Old Town was out of the question, but the Landing offered no affordable rentals. No rentals at all, actually, except for a few closet-sized fishermen’s cottages and some over-the-garage flats occupied by the same tenants who had lived in them for years.
People don’t move around much in the Landing. Once they find a place, they dig inand for good reason.
Gunn Landing hadn’t seen any new construction in decades. Given the restrictions imposed by the California Coastal Initiative, which severely limited development, the village would never sprout apartment buildings and condos. If not for the Merilee, I would have had to commute from Castroville or San Sebastian like other zoo employees. Although the boat could be cold and damp, I considered myself lucky.
When I stepped aboard, DJ Bonz, my three-legged Heinz 57 terrier, hopped to meet me. From the galley, Miss Priss, the one-eyed Persian I rescued from the pound’s Death Row the same day I rescued Bonz, meowed as if she hadn’t eaten for days. Before grabbing the dog’s leash, I opened a can of Meow Mix and raked it into her bowl. Priss took one look and turned up her nose. She was just playing hard to get. By the time Bonz and I returned from our nightly walk, the cat food would be gone.
I snapped the leash on Bonz and headed out.
We strolled through Gunn Landing Park with the other dog-walkers. Bonz, amazingly nimble despite his handicap, sniffed along the pathway, stopping to mark every bench and trash can we encountered. He did his major business in the shadow of a red-stemmed filaree plant.
As I disposed of his droppings into a nearby trash can, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see Sheriff Joe Rejas, dressed in chinos and a windbreaker that matched the Irish blue eyes he’d inherited from his Dublin-born mother. I tried hard to ignore the easy swing of his broad shoulders, the long stride of his muscular legs, but failed. Just watching him move had always caused my breath to catch.
Fortunately, Joe, who was walking Fluffalooza, his late wife’s elderly Bichon Frisé, appeared oblivious to my schoolgirlish yearnings. After the debacle with my ex-husband, I was nowhere ready to risk getting my heart broken again.
Our dogs sniffed each other. Fluffalooza waved her thick tail and Bonz wiggled his hindquarters back and forth in an attempt to wave his nonexistent one. Due to lack of support, he almost fell over once, but righted himself just in time.
“A bit far afield this evening, aren’t you?” Joe lived fifteen miles away in San Sebastian, in the small adobe house his Hispanic grandfather had built sixty years earlier using money he had somehow saved from a lifetime spent picking artichokes for Anglo farmers.
Joe smiled. “Fluff wanted to see the sights. Besides, I need to ask you some questions.” He moved close to me. Too close. But I couldn’t bear to back away. Not while feeling the heat of his body.
“Official questions?”
The smile never left his face, or the warmth his eyes. “What else would they be?”
“I’m busy.”
“Really? Doing what?” He moved even closer.
So close I could see the tiny scar near his mouth. I wanted to reach out and smooth it away. “Nothing that can’t wait, I guess.”
He traced the line of my cheek with his finger. “A new crop of freckles, I see. On they look good.”
Now I could feel his breath on my hair.
“Teddy, I...”
I took two steps backwards. “Let’s get the questioning over with.”
Pretending a casualness I didn’t feel, I suggested we walk over to Chowder ’n’ Cappuccino. A few minutes later we were seated at an outdoor table sipping decaf, watching the fishing boats straggle in. The dogs lay happily at our feet.
Making a big show out of looking at my watch, I said, “This’ll have to be quick. I’m due at at Caro’s for dinner.”
When Joe leaned over to pet Fluffalooza, I couldn’t see his face, which was probably just as well. “How is your mother these days?”
“Same as always.”
“Too bad.” Giving Fluffalooza a final pat, he straightened up. “Tell me everything you know about Grayson.”
I couldn’t hide my surprise. “Why do you want to know?”
He lowered his voice. “Because the medical examiner found a bullet in his abdomen.”
My confusion deepened. “A bullet? Like an old war wound or something? Goodness, that is sad. I didn’t really know him, you understand, but I never heard that he’d been the military, especially some place where he could have been shot, although considering how things are going in the world these days...”
“Someone killed him, and it wasn’t the anteater. Turns out, the wounds that thing inflicted were all post-mortem.”
“That thing’s name is Lucy!”
“Don’t you understand?” Joe said, sounding frustrated. “Som
eone murdered Grayson Harrill. But every time I try to question the folks who knew him, they clam up. There are two strikes against me. I’m the law, which they only respect at a distance, and worse, they’re afraid I may be related to their maids. Since you’re more familiar with these society types than I am, you could help me. Ask a few questions real casual-like, and find out who was where the night of the murder.”
“Be a police snitch? Have you lost your mind?”
“This is serious, Teddy. Or doesn’t murder mean anything to you?”
Remembering what was left of Grayson’s body, I flushed. “Anything else you want me to do?”
“Tell me what you know about Grayson and his wife. And the rest of the family.”
What I knew about the Gunns could fill several sets of encyclopedias, but I stalled for time. “What do they have to do with this?”
He sighed. “You used to be really smart before your mother shipped you off to that snooty girls’ school.”
Thus breaking up our teenage love affair. “Miss Pridewell’s Academy wasn’t snooty.”it was located in Virginia, and too far away for a fifteen-year-old girl to sneak back and see her half-Hispanic boyfriend. Which had been the whole point.
“Do I have to arrest you to make you to cooperate?” He tried to make a joke out of it.
Following his lead, I stretched my hands forward. “Cuff me now, Sheriff. Lawsuit to follow.”
He laughed. “Now I remember why I fell in love...” He cut the sentence short and pretended to watch a big research vessel leaving the Gunn Landing Marine Institute dock. “About Grayson. He worked in real estate, right? How successful was he?”
“Only minimally. And just because I’m answering your questions doesn’t mean I’ve agreed to do your dirty work.”
“Understood. What else can you tell me about him?”
“He loved his wife. A lot. More than was healthy for either of them.”
I described the time my mother had invited the couple to one of her parties. Grayson had spent the entire evening following Jeanette around like a puppy, even waiting for her outside the door every time she visited the powder room. Once I’d tried to lure him back into the living room with the promise of a drink, but he refused to leave his post.
“Jeanette wants me here when she comes out,” he’d said.
The same behavior occurred at an Animal Welfare League dinner I’d once attended. Every time his wife left his side to chat with someone else, he began to fidget. Not that she was any more independent. When I’d steered him over to an exhibit table to see a model of the League’s proposed no-kill animal shelter, she’d hurried along behind, as if fearing I was about to run off with him.
“He was at least twenty years older than her,” I said. “Maybe she needed a father figure, and he needed a dependent daughter figure. Whatever their problems, it worked for them.”
“They didn’t have kids?”
“Nope.”
“Her father is dead, right? Everett Gunn?”
I nodded. “Both her parents were killed on a nature expedition in South America, drowned when their boat overturned. She was around twenty when it happened. Since then she’s been borderline agoraphobic and for the last year she’s been getting worse. Could be that’s what those migraines are all about.” A seagull flew down and began to peck at the remnants of a biscotti. Bonz and Fluffalooza barked in unison, but the seagull ignored them. When two more seagulls joined him, the dogs hid under the table. “Grayson wasn’t much of a traveler, either. He liked to stick close to home. I imagine that’s why she married him.”
“Or she was in love. Some people do marry for love, you know.”
That stung. “I loved Michael!” But not like I’d loved Joe.
“Nothing personal.”
I lowered my head so he wouldn’t see the misery on my face. Why had I allowed my mother to break us up? And why had Joe given up so easily? Before I’d entered my senior year at Miss Pridewell’s, he married his next-door neighbor, and by the time I graduated, they were expecting their first child.
When I left for college, I vowed never to let another man hurt me again. Then Michael came along.
“Teddy, I’m sorry.”
I made myself look him straight in the face. “So am I.”
He reached for me again, but I jerked away. I wasn’t ready. At the sudden motion, DJ Bonz stood up on his three legs and growled. Startled, the seagulls flew off.
Joe moved his leg away from the perceived danger. “That dog better not bite me.”
“His name is DJ Bonz. And he doesn’t bite.”
“Then why is he baring his teeth?”
“He’s letting you know what he thinks of you.” This is why I like animals so much. They never lie. Well, except for monkeys.
“You’d better tell him that as old as Fluffalooza is, she’s at least two pounds heavier. She’s protective, too.”
“You look like you need protection, with that big gun under your windbreaker.”
“The gun goes with the job description, like interrogating suspects. Which brings me to the question of the day. Why weren’t you at the fund-raiser?”
I sucked in my breath. “What?”
“You know I have to ask.”
After a few more deep breaths, I calmed down. He was right. Given the circumstances, he couldn’t give me a free pass. Ex-lovers had to be questioned like everyone else.
“I couldn’t attend as Caro’s guest because I’m employed at the zoo, but I could hardly work the funder, either. Think how awkward that would be, serving drinks to people I know socially. Not attending was the best way to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation.”
“Isn’t your mother a member of the Zoo Guild?”
My blood pressure spiked. “Yes, and about every other guild in San Sebastian County. It’s what she does.” When she’s not nagging me.
“I have a list of everyone in attendance, and she’s not on it.”
“She said something came up. Listen, keep me on your list of suspects if you want, but erase her. She liked Grayson, though she didn’t appreciate him always pestering her to sell the Old Town house. He wanted to tear it down and put up condos, like Greenway Development did with the old Santana place. He nagged her for months, until she finally told him to leave her alone.”
Joe chuckled. “That must have been a lively conversation. By the way, exactly how long has Grayson lived at Gunn Castle? Several years, right?”
“Since he and Jeanette got married. She insisted, and I don’t think he put up much of a fight. The castle’s a great place, if you like that sort of thing.”
The research vessel had cleared the breakwater and was now headed into open sea, trailed by shrieking battalions of seagulls. They looked beautiful, but they lived on garbage.
Then something occurred to me, and I scrambled to my feet. “Gotta go. Talk to you later.”
“I’m not finished with my questions.”
“But I’m through answering.”
I’d just realized that if the anteater hadn’t killed Grayson, there was no longer any reason for her to be confined to the holding pen. On the off-chance the zoo director hadn’t gone home yet, I wanted to call him immediately.
My exit across the park would have been more dignified if I hadn’t stepped in a big pile of dog poop. But considering my line of work, what was one more dropping here or there?
Chapter Four
Unfortunately, the zoo’s administrative offices were closed, and since I didn’t have the director’s home number, Lucy would stay in the holding pen for one more night. Having done everything possible, I dressed for my mother’s Let’s-Find-Teddy-A-New-Husband Party and made the short drive from the Merilee to Old Town.
Old Town crests a hill overlooking Gunn Landing Harbor, where Gunns, Bentleys, Pipers—Mother’s kin—and a scattering of new people lived in too-large houses built in an era when household help was cheap.
Our own place is a Greek Revival topped
off by a cube-like cupola where six generations of Bentleys have enjoyed the ocean view. At eighteen rooms, the house dwarfed its single inhabitant, but if Caro sold it and bought something more manageable, where would she put her Victorian sofas, American Empire tables, or Renaissance Revival poster bed? I could hardly see her living in some small condo. The lack of elbow room would make her nuttier than she already was.
Wearing the chartreuse-and-turquoise Donna Karan, my mother greeted my aged Dior with a frown, then force-marched me up the stairs to her bedroom suite, where the same dress as hers, only in yellow and orange, hung from a padded hanger. Once I slipped into it, I resembled a traffic light.
