Endangered

by Ann Littlewood

  Chapter Seven

  We were almost to the zoo, in a leaden silence, when I realized the lack of a next step. Where were we supposed to deliver these macaws? Denny called Neal to see what he and Dr. Reynolds had decided. He figured out which button to push to turn on the speaker phone, something I’d never managed.

  A tinny little version of Neal’s voice said, “You’re done out there? No drama?”

  “Denny cut his finger. He might need a tetanus shot.”

  Neal said, “That’s an improvement.” He was his usual wound-up self. “This favor we’re doing wasn’t supposed to take two keepers for three days. It’s costing us overtime, and lord knows if we’ll ever get compensated for it. And the fact that it turned out to be that dangerous for you two has me wondering what the hell our taxes are paying for. I am not happy with the police performance.”

  His concern for our safety was touching, until I wondered if that had to do with the downside of injured keepers—OSHA investigations, hiring temps, and so on. No doubt I was being unjust. Denny assured him we would never set foot on the Tiptons’ farm again and asked, “Where do you want the macaws?”

  He said to put them in the quarantine room with the Amazon parrots. Then he remembered that the Amazons were probably wild and the macaws weren’t and that the quarantine regulations were different. So use another quarantine room. No, they were all full or about to be. Apparently he and Dr. Reynolds hadn’t connected and gotten this settled.

  We waited while he told us to put them in various places, proposing and rejecting options. “Hell,” he finally said, “where are we going to put them? I shoulda figured this out already, but I’ve been buried in elephant barn meetings, and Fish and Wildlife keeps calling. You got any ideas?”

  “Hap has parrots,” I said toward the phone. “He might take them.” Hap, the zoo’s Commissary manager, kept birds at home in elaborate aviaries. “No, cancel that. Disease risk.”

  Silence as we all thought. “Well, there’s always my basement.” I meant that as sarcasm, but knew it was a mistake the instant the words were out.

  “Good idea. It’ll be temporary. You and Denny set them up today, and we’ll figure it out tomorrow. Best we can do.”

  Dead air.

  Denny thought this was fine. Not his basement, after all.

  How were the two of us going to unload the heavy cage? Damn.

  Finley Memorial Zoo is off Interstate 5, south of the Tipton farm and north of Vancouver, Washington. My house is farther south across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon. We took the zoo exit off Interstate 5 and drove to the employee parking lot, where Denny’s van and my car were parked. I explained that he had to drive the zoo van to my house while I drove my car because it held Robby’s car seat. He could drive the zoo van back to pick up his vehicle.

  Denny headed for the hospital to argue his way into the tortoises’ quarantine room and check on his babies, and I left to find Hap and see if he would come along to help unload.

  Late afternoon, and Hap was where I expected him, in the Commissary. He sat on the metal counter talking on the phone, a big, scarred man with tattoos up and down his arms. Bald-headed with a closely-cropped beard, he looked tough, which he was. We had a solid, if cautious, friendship.

  He finally finished with his produce order. “Iris. You’re back to civilization.”

  “How’d you like to leave early to help us unload the mother of all cages? At my house.”

  “Me and who else? Will Pete be there?”

  “No. Me and Denny. It’s their night for dinner out and tango class.”

  Hap snorted. “Tango? Benita keeps ragging on me to learn that shit with her. You checked with Neal?”

  I called Neal and told him I was hijacking Hap. He didn’t object.

  Hap looked at the sky. “Snow or ice storm by tomorrow. Benita’s got to quit driving the Mini Cooper or pop for snow tires.” Benita was his petite and ferocious wife.

  “I don’t think so. The weather report’s almost always wrong.”

  We wrangled our way to the parking lot. Hap and Denny would unload the macaws. I’d pick Robby up on time, and we’d have a quiet dinner at home, just the two of us.

  Hap set off toward his vintage Crown Victoria, me toward my Honda. Hap had history with law enforcement—ancient history, to be fair—and thought that driving a retired patrol car was a hoot. I could only imagine what it cost to fill the tank. The zoo van was still in the lot since Denny was still messing with tortoises. Its passenger door wasn’t closed right; I could see the seatbelt was out of place and in the way. The macaws would get chilled.

  “Hey, wait,” I called to Hap and opened the door to look around inside the van. The GPS device was still there. The macaws were fine. Maybe I was imagining things. But I was pretty sure Denny wouldn’t have left the door that way. I looked for the plastic bag and couldn’t find it.

  Damn.

  Hap came over to find out what was holding me up.

  “Someone broke in.”

  “You left it unlocked?”

  “I guess so.” I couldn’t remember hearing the chirp. Double damn. “Now this…thing…a bag…from the Tipton house is missing.” Why would anyone swipe that? I couldn’t believe someone had followed us from the Tipton farm, broken into the zoo, probably thanked his lucky stars that the van was unlocked, and stolen the bag.

  I searched the van again, with the same results.

  Hap walked over to examine the gate. “Jimmied to keep it from latching.” He pointed to the short chunk of two-by-four that kept the gate from closing enough to latch.

  Anyone who drove up to the gate from Finley Road had to stop and enter a pass code at a keypad. Then a motor opened the gate. To leave, all you had to do was pull up to the gate and a sensor opened it. The chunk of wood had kept the gate from latching, which meant it could easily be pushed open from either side. Hide in the bushes, wait for a vehicle to come along with a driver who knew the pass code—that would be me—then shove the piece of wood in place. Once everyone had left the lot, push the gate open and walk or drive in.

  I got Hap to search the van, which upset the macaws. Denny showed up and confirmed he hadn’t touched the bag. I called 911 and told them that what might have been evidence from the Tipton bust had just been stolen, but I didn’t really know what it was. I felt like a fool.

  We followed instructions to wait. Eventually a patrol car showed up outside the gate. I waved an arm at the sensor inside, the gate opened, and the car pulled in. A few minutes later, I’d told the deputy all I could.

  He didn’t believe a word of it. “No idea what was in that bag, huh? No idea who stole it? Are you sure?”

  Confused and annoyed, I said, “What’s the matter with you? I told you what happened.”

  “Iris,” Hap said, “he thinks you had a drug buy turn sour.”

  “Drugs? What? Listen, you—”

  Hap put a hand on my arm. “We’d better get those birds to your house. Are we done here?”

  The deputy said, “I guess so.”

  I certainly was. “Tell Deputy Gil Gettler about this. Please.”

  He nodded unconvincingly and lost interest entirely when his radio muttered something comprehensible only to him. He hopped back into the patrol car and took off.

  I headed south, alone in my car with my outrage. Hap followed in his Crown Vic, Denny in the zoo van.

  Unloading the macaw cage was way worse than getting it into the van in the first place. We never would have gotten it out without Hap. No plastic bag showed up. The three of us wrestled the cage, with the birds horrified into silence, down the steps into the basement. Robby was in day care, which helped. My dogs couldn’t stop barking, which didn’t. We tilted the cage upright and it barely cleared the basement ceiling. The macaws scrambled for a new perch
. Denny and I were breathing hard, Hap wasn’t.

  We rested in the kitchen with beers for Hap and Denny and a glass of cabernet for me. We spent a few minutes trying to figure out why the Tipton brothers cared about a little glass and a tissue in a bag.

  Hap wanted to know how they knew we had it. I said, “Anyone could have been hiding in the woods watching us. I showed it to Denny outside. It wasn’t a secret.”

  Hap opened a second beer. “Maybe not them. A random car prowler might have thought it had something valuable.”

  “A car prowler would have taken the GPS,” I said.

  “Maybe that bag is what they were looking for when they searched the barns at night”—Denny’s only useful contribution.

  I checked my watch. Plenty of time to get Robby. “I wish I knew what was wrapped up in that tissue.” Denny was off and running: a safe deposit box key, jewels, a thumb drive with all their sources and customers. “No, thumb drives are too big. I’d have noticed that. Something fragile and tiny, put inside the glass to protect it.”

  “You should have searched the roadsides in case he threw it away,” Denny said. “You can do that tomorrow.”

  That bag was gone forever and the Tiptons took it. I knew it in my bones.

  Chapter Eight

  The next day, gratitude coursed through my veins as I clocked in at the Commissary, as welcome as caffeine. I was back to being a mom and an animal keeper, in my own world where the worst problem I would face was a toddler tantrum or a penguin refusing its vitamin-enhanced fish. If both roles meant cleaning up doo-doo, well, that was what I signed up for. Ordinary routine suited me fine. I looked for Hap to thank him again for his help loading the macaw cage the day before, but he wasn’t around.

  “Iris! You’re back.” My friend Linda, senior feline keeper, smiled at me. Sturdy and solid, she had let her thick hair grow out to its natural color, an enviable red. “I thought you were on a one-day boondoggle and now I hear all kinds of stories.”

  “I am totally behind on everything, and I don’t want to repeat the same story a dozen times. I’ll tell all at lunch. What’s been happening here? Quick version.”

  “That’s not fair.” She fake-pouted for thirty seconds before bringing me up to date.

  We walked and talked. I’d started as the feline keeper and could never entirely let go of the cats. “Have you put Losa and Yuri together yet?” I asked. Our clouded leopard pair had bred successfully two years ago, and we were eager for a repeat.

  “It’s the right time of year, but so far she’s not interested. Maybe in a month.”

  “And the tiger girls?”

  “Fat and sassy. Come by on break. They’ll be out.”

  Nadia and Katrina were Amur tigers, two-year-old sisters. They lived where my old tiger buddy, Rajah, now deceased, had resided for his long life.

  What a pleasure to talk with a friend about the ordinary joys of my job.

  This was a Saturday. I was always assigned to Birds on Saturday and Sunday, when Calvin Lorenz, the senior bird keeper, was off. I usually worked Birds with him two or three additional days a week as well. Pete had filled in while I dealt with crises at the Tipton farm.

  Linda’s path diverged from mine and I headed for the Penguinarium kitchen. No ice storm had materialized nor had snow, aside from a light dusting, which was being eradicated by the rain.

  Underfoot was asphalt, not mud, and there wasn’t a law officer or crime technician in sight. An ordinary day at the zoo. Perfect.

  Except that I remembered my first task was reporting to Neal, which wasn’t routine. I swerved off to his office.

  My boss was a little taller than I, maybe five-foot-nine, but he projected six-foot-six worth of impatience. Short brown hair, piercing blue eyes, great posture with square shoulders. His background was a complicated history of military, corporate, and zoo positions. I’d seen him laugh, but never relax.

  “The macaws are settled in my basement,” I said. “Mission really accomplished.” Then I had to tell him about the stolen bag in the parking lot, which made me look like an idiot. I couldn’t keep it a secret—he’d find out eventually.

  His reaction managed to combine alarm and disbelief. “I’m going to have Maintenance search that van again. This makes no sense.”

  I dodged further discussion by asking where I should take the macaws. He massaged the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “I’m working on it. It should come in for a landing soon.”

  “They’re close-banded, so I’m pretty sure they’re pet birds.”

  “Agreed. They aren’t part of the parrot and tortoise hairball that’s giving me ulcers. Every agency in every form of government for miles around has a stake in one or the other.”

  “And where is it that you want the macaws to end up, exactly?”

  He tapped his fingers on his desk. “I appreciate that you went the extra mile in a really tough situation. I know I can count on you to manage the gap for now.”

  The bullshit was a signal he was stumped—he hadn’t a clue where he could park the macaws other than my basement. I felt duped. That gave me the right to press him a little. “Everyone agrees that the Amazon parrots are illegal, right?”

  “I’m told there’s no record of any permits to import them.”

  “So what’s happening to catch the smugglers? Is Fish and Wildlife tracking them back to the source?”

  He made a little tent with his fingers resting on the desk. “You may be surprised to learn that law enforcement doesn’t copy me on their internal reports of investigations. We don’t meet for coffee and bran muffins. I’m just supposed keep the birds alive until they decide what to do with them.”

  “But are they going after these guys or not?”

  “The Tiptons, the surviving ones, are in hot water up to their red necks already. So maybe not. But I have no idea. Aren’t you assigned to Birds today? If you don’t have enough to do…”

  I plowed on. “The Tiptons were the middlemen. There’s no reason to think they went to Mexico and caught the birds and brought them across the border themselves. Someone else did that and sold them to someone who sold to the Tiptons. That’s a chain that needs to be broken.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do and so do you. And, by the way, those tortoises are the big deal. They’re worth a wad to collectors, some of them are from Madagascar, and it’s pretty strange that they ended up with a family that never made a blip before with Fish and Wildlife.”

  “They’d been selling weed for years and no one noticed that.”

  I left in a sulk, depressed about the smugglers and sullen about the macaws. I had nothing against the macaws personally, but they were noisy, their cage was guilt-inspiring, the feather plucking was dismaying, and Robby had to be kept away from them lest they nip off a hand. Not my first choice for house guests, and I seemed to be stuck with them.

  I ran into Marion, the veterinary technician, on the way to the Penguinarium. She was young and round with ruddy cheeks and looked like she should be herding geese with bows around their necks through some bucolic, sun-lit pasture. She wore a standard brown uniform accessorized with a dozen enamel pins on her chest, mostly big-eyed baby animals. This demure exterior often misled the unwary.

  “How are the parrots in quarantine?” I asked.

  “Eating like there’s no tomorrow. There’s ca-ca everywhere in that room.”

  “What about the tortoises? Is that little one any better?”

  “Still sick.”

  A little more of my delight in a normal day faded.

  She wanted to know all about the Tiptons, and I told her, “Details at noon.”

  Marion chose not to pass up the opportunity to bitch as we stood with our arms wrapped across our chests in a chil
ly wind. “Denny is driving me nuts about those tortoises. Dr. Reynolds says no way can he hang out at the hospital, which he knows perfectly well, the idiot. Can he spell ‘quarantine’? No, he cannot. He’s fixated on substrates and humidity and UV light, nagging at me nonstop. They’re all eating now. He should go be happy someplace and get off my case.”

  I backed away making sympathetic noises.

  At the Penguinarium, I spent half an hour reviewing the notes Calvin left for me plus the standard records of each minor event or anomaly from the previous three days. One penguin had declined her vitamin fish two days running, but ate fine otherwise. The Bali mynahs were not happy about the new low-iron pellets. The female nene, or Hawaiian goose, in the aviary was limping, but her foot looked fine. Calvin’s guess, and mine, was arthritis since she was a geriatric bird. All of this was wonderfully normal and my spirits lifted again.

  I stood at the baby gate set across the door between the kitchen and the African penguin exhibit and examined each bird for a few minutes. Nobody limped or bled or sat hunched up. I set to work stuffing vitamin pills into fish as the penguins brayed orders to hurry it up. Even the heavy scent of fish eaters was a comfort.

  After the morning feeding, I scrubbed the aviary pond and wondered what was in that wretched bag and why the Tiptons thought it was so important. Was there a connection to Liana’s death? For the life of me, I couldn’t see one. Or a connection to the smugglers, either.

  At lunch time, I ducked into the administration building and down the steps to the basement. This was the new employee break room—“new” as in newly designated for our use. The zoo café manager had wearied of us clustering at the indoor tables all winter, leaving his “real” customers, the visitors, to eat their hot dogs while standing. Worse, they could overhear our discussions of fecal matter, insects, and sex habits of exotic species. Now the keepers were privileged to eat in this basement at a table next to the copy machine. The room was airless and the décor dispiriting, but it was warm and dry, characteristics we all valued highly in winter. And no one interrupted lunch to ask us where the bathrooms were or why we didn’t have pandas.