Endangered

by Ann Littlewood

  Denny and Linda, the feline keeper, were there already. My housemates Pete and Cheyenne were eating also, as was Marion with her Bambi jewelry, so the little room was nearly at capacity. Pete was working Primates today. Cheyenne was always on Elephants because it was so specialized, although Elephants included the giraffes and other hoof stock.

  Ian, the lead elephant keeper, and Arnie, the bear keeper, rarely joined us. Ian was shy to the edge of catatonia, and flaky Arnie long ago discovered that he’d had used up my tolerance as well as Linda’s.

  Denny had already shared most of the disasters at the Tiptons’ farm to a fascinated audience. I wasn’t eager to revisit Jerome and Liana Tipton’s deaths, but there was no escaping it. Hearing Denny describe how I’d found Liana’s body depressed me all over again. It also reminded me that the circumstances didn’t make sense.

  I was correcting details about moving the parrots when Jackie, the zoo’s office manager since fish crawled onto land, dropped in with a local newspaper.

  “This is great stuff,” she said. “Best news since that huge travel trailer fell off the freeway into the river.” Reality rarely satisfied Jackie’s thirst for drama. Her poofy hair was an unconvincing jet black, which somehow suited her sharp features and inquisitive dark eyes.

  I skimmed the articles about the Tiptons. It described the shooting death of a teenage girl believed to be their daughter, nothing new. The pictures were mug shots of the sons. Jefferson Davis Tipton looked like a frightened Cape Buffalo, a burly guy ready to bolt or charge. Thomas Jefferson Tipton seemed to have a little more cognition going on, but he didn’t look like Citizen of the Year either. They were wanted for questioning in regard to the death of their sister, but were believed to have fled to California. I found no mention of myself or Denny. I handed the paper to Linda.

  Denny ticked off items on his fingertips. “We’ve got drugs. We’ve got illegal wildlife. What goes with that kind of criminal pipeline? Weapons. Human trafficking.”

  “Whoa! I didn’t see any sex slaves in the barns,” I said.

  Jackie and Linda stared at him. Pete and Cheyenne looked at each other, one of those couple things. Marion snickered.

  Denny chewed on his veggie burger. We watched his Adam’s apple as he swallowed and regained his voice. “Same criminal networks run all of those. Not always, but they overlap. These are the big dollar international crimes, billions and billions.” Denny had a weakness for conspiracy theories, but he was on target with this. “The Tiptons are the tip of the iceberg. The cops missed a weapons stash is my guess.” No longer on target.

  “Well. Ain’t we got fun?” Jackie said. “This zoo business gets more exciting all the time.” She rolled her eyes at me and reclaimed her paper. I grabbed it back and checked the byline before I relinquished it. Not Craig Darsee.

  I ate and climbed up the stairs to get back to work, only to find Officer Gil Gettler waiting for me. Jackie ushered us into the tiny conference room between Neal and Mr. Crandal’s offices, located near enough to her desk to permit eavesdropping through the thin wall. We both declined coffee. The office coffee was always terrible.

  “I’m here about your recent incident. Could you tell me about this stolen evidence?” He’d been a fixture at the farm, but I’d never really looked at him. He was trim and tidy in a crisp uniform with chunks of lethal-looking black gear hanging off his belt. He looked to be about forty, with arms and shoulders that implied he worked out. I braced myself for criticism.

  We sat around a rectangular table and I walked through finding the bag, failing to find anyone to turn it over to, and what the bag and its contents looked like. “It was an ordinary plastic bag and a boring little water glass. Not exactly Waterford crystal.” I showed dimensions with my hands and, as requested, sketched the glass in his notebook. “The tissue was wadded up inside. I didn’t take it out so I can’t say what was hidden there, but I think there might have been something. The tissue wasn’t very clean.”

  “You said it was behind the bird cage against the wall.”

  “Yeah. This cage—I can show it to you—is pretty old and I think it’s homemade. It sits flat on the floor instead of raised up on legs with coasters. It’s hard to move. No one could have gotten at the bag without some work. I didn’t see it until I went back to sweep up.”

  “You took the cage?”

  “It’s at my house.” Gettler looked surprised, so I explained why the macaws were in my basement. I assured him he was free to discuss the matter with Neal and suggest a different home for them.

  “How could this bag have gotten where you found it?”

  I’d been thinking about that. “One way would be when the cage was first set up. But it wouldn’t be that hard to do later. The cage has small doors so you can reach in to feed and water from either side. The door on the far side wasn’t hard against the wall. You could reach in, unlatch it from the inside, and push it open three or four inches. Then you could drop the bag down between the cage and the wall. If you wanted to hide it, toss some birdseed and feathers after it. Then close the latch again.”

  “So anyone could have put it there.”

  “Not really. Whoever did it had to stick their hand in with the macaws. They’re likely to bite.”

  “How bad would that be? What if you wore gloves?”

  I shook my head. “With gloves, you couldn’t unlatch the far door. Without them, you could get chomped pretty good. But if the birds knew and liked you, you could try it without gloves.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Who knew you’d found this?”

  “I can’t remember who was around when I brought it outside and showed it to Denny. It was a bright day. Someone could have watched us from the woods and seen me bring the bag out. You could hide an army around that place.” Pluvia had said that Tom and Jeff watched from the woods.

  He moved on to the van robbery in the employee parking lot. If he didn’t believe me, at least he was polite about it. He said, “That bag might have nothing to do with the Tiptons, but if you find it, we’d like to see it. It’s a murder investigation, and we have to follow up on all the leads. Thank you for your time.”

  He was being dutiful and doubtful, and I couldn’t blame him. I moved to another concern. “Um, are you looking into the wildlife smuggling? Where they got the parrots and tortoises?”

  “That would be the Feds. You could contact US Fish and Wildlife.”

  I might have to do that.

  “Uh, one more thing.”

  He waited, eyes alert.

  “Liana wasn’t killed during the bust, right? She didn’t die where I found her.”

  A stiff smile. “Let me know if you remember anything else of significance.” And he took his leave.

  When I clocked out at the Commissary building, I looked for Hap and found him in a back corner at his computer, his bald head bent close to the screen, thick fingers poking at the keyboard. “Who the hell boosts canned marmoset diet?” he demanded. “Is there a black market for canned monkey food nobody ever told me about?”

  “Inventory program savaging you again?” I tried to be sympathetic. Hap hated that program, mostly because he didn’t like Neal, and Neal was the one who insisted he keep it up to date. “Maybe Kip took a couple of cans and forgot to tell you.”

  “It’s a whole carton short. And it shows an extra carton of turtle diet.”

  I debated saying the obvious and finally went for it. “Sounds like it was logged in wrong when they were delivered.”

  “Get outa here. Go home and feed our kid.”

  “Our kid” was Hap’s little joke, based on me wearing his uniform in the last stages of pregnancy because no one else’s would fit. It was not anything to be mentioned around his wife, Benita. She was highly territorial in regards to Hap, who in his less conventional years had given her excellent reasons
for suspicion. I wondered from time to time why they never had children. The zoo staff overall had a very low rate of reproduction, and my co-workers seemed to regard Robby as an example of a rare and fascinating species.

  “Hap, I want you to come over again. Bring Benita. I’ll buy cookies. That macaw setup isn’t great, and one of them is chewing on his feathers. Neal’s got no plan to get them out of my basement any time soon.” I’d read that at least a quarter of captive macaws pull out their own feathers. Smart, active birds confined to a tiny world get bored and frustrated.

  “There’s half a dozen macaw sanctuaries he could call.” Hap poked a key and swore.

  “It’s probably held up by the court case.”

  “That would be his story. I’ll come by tonight, but it may be late. Benita slid on the ice and creamed the side mirror on her Mini. I gotta fix it. Shouldn’t be too bad.”

  “Great. Call if it doesn’t work out. I turn back into stone about ten o’clock.”

  Hap pointed to his computer. “Where am I supposed to get dandelion greens in January? Denny can grow his own weeds for those tortoises.”

  I clocked out and wasted half an hour walking the road to and from the freeway looking for the lost bag. I found plenty of beer cans, a sofa cushion, and a smashed pizza box. Duty done, I drove to my parents’ and found Robby engrossed at the kitchen sink. He demonstrated that a plastic triceratops would not float and provided a lengthy and mostly incomprehensible narrative as I helped him into his coat.

  At home, Pete was cooking eggplant with green curry and tofu. That was one of the major benefits of having him and Cheyenne as housemates—he loved to cook. They had lived with me since I was pregnant with Robby and paid half the mortgage payment and utilities in return for a bedroom and the run of the place. I found Cheyenne a little tough to live with, but she and Pete were good to Robby and overall, they were a huge plus.

  I offered Robby a sample of Pete’s creation, a peanut butter sandwich, and some peas. I dove into the curry.

  Cheyenne seemed subdued.

  “Don’t like it?” Pete asked.

  “No, it’s fine.” She opened a second beer, which wasn’t common. “We got the blood test results on Nakri. Not pregnant.”

  I looked up from collecting the eggplant Robby was rejecting. “Oh, that’s too bad. It all went so well.”

  Six months ago, Cheyenne had predicted Finley Zoo would have its first elephant birth. The younger of our two Asian elephant cows, Nakri, had been the recipient of semen a veterinarian had brought from a bull at another zoo. The artificial insemination had gone “perfectly” according to Cheyenne, meaning Nakri had stood still for the expert, something the elephant keepers had spent months training her to do. The procedure had gone according to plan. Except that egg and sperm had stood each other up.

  Artificial insemination was the only way Nakri would ever know motherhood since Finley Zoo lacked the facilities to house a bull elephant. No one wanted to ship her away from Damrey, her blind companion, to mate with a bull the usual way. I picked peas off Robby’s shirt. “Will they try again?” Nakri would probably vote “yes”—she would earn a steady stream of treats for the insemination and the regular blood draws to track her hormones.

  “I guess. If we can afford it. Neal’s going to look at the budget. Pete, I found Irish music at this coffee house on Division. Let’s eat and go.”

  Pete said he was too tired. Cheyenne took the stairs to their room in a huff.

  Hap showed up, alone, right as I was starting the bedtime routine. He ignored me and my parrot concerns. Instead, he said “hi” to Pete, who was on his way upstairs, and then crawled around on the floor trotting and bucking with Robby on his back. He rolled Robby, already choking with laugher, onto the rug and tickled his belly. The dogs circled and barked, trying to figure out how to join the fun.

  I kept myself from telling Hap to dial it back. Robby was loving it, and Hap wasn’t going to break him. My boy didn’t have a father, and he spent most of his time with me, my mother, and his day care provider—women who tried hard to be calm and gentle with him. My dad was more physical, although Pete wasn’t. Hap was taking it to a new level. Guy time. Gender appropriate. A Good Thing.

  When I couldn’t take it any longer, I said, “Hap, he needs to calm down or I’ll never get him to bed.”

  Robby voted against calming down, but Hap backed off and settled on the sofa with him and the farm animals. Robby slowly lost momentum as he showed Hap the correct way to arrange chickens and pigs so the triceratops could eat them. I left Hap to evaluate the macaws in the basement while I carted him up to bed.

  Hap was watching “Dancing with the Stars” when I made it back to the living room. He clicked the TV off, reluctantly, and we talked about the birds—toys and other entertainment, diet, a bigger cage. He said he’d bring over a spare cage he had and connect it to the existing one. He’d figured out a structure that would occupy most of my basement and allow them to fly a little.

  “We can do better than what you’ve got right now,” he said, “but it’s still piss poor. The sanctuary I’m thinking of has this huge flight cage. Get Neal to send them there, with a donation to pay for expenses. It ain’t free, housing dozens of rejected parrots.”

  “Sure, Hap. All I have to do is ask. Neal always does whatever I want.”

  He ignored this and leaned back on the sofa, his elbows resting on its back. “So, Iris. You seeing anybody yet? With your looks, it shouldn’t be that hard.”

  “What? No, not right now.” Where was this coming from? Thankfully, he didn’t sound like he was offering himself as a candidate. “Better not let Benita hear you talk like that.”

  Hap grinned. “She was the one who pointed out what a babe you are. Me, I never notice that sort of thing. So…What’s holding up the parade?”

  “Excuse me? You’re taking charge of my love life?”

  “Nope. Just asking why you aren’t out there.”

  “Mind your own business” was on the tip of my tongue, but Hap was a friend and parenting had taught me not to give irritation its head. And he was helping with the macaws. “I’ll get around to it. I’m busy, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “No pressure. Benita wants me to ask if you’d like to meet a guy she knows. He’s good.”

  “Hap, I’ll tell you when I need you to pimp…to find blind dates for me.”

  “Sure you will. Well, I had to ask. Don’t keep your mad on for too long.”

  “Not mad. Just busy.”

  I puttered around after he left, closing down the house. Romping with my kid and helping me with Birds didn’t earn Hap a license to remodel my life. My mother had exclusive rights to that. Ah—playing with Robby triggered this. He thought Robby should have a daddy.

  Hap wasn’t the first to raise the issue of my social life. A few months ago, Linda suggested ditching the wedding ring. “You’ll never get paired up again if you keep that on.” I’d mulled it over—loyalty to Rick, people thinking I was an unwed mother, no time or energy for dating—and decided to try living without it.

  Mr. Right, whoever he was, hadn’t noticed. Now the universe was nudging again.

  The more I thought about the guys I’d met at Hap and Benita’s parties, the funnier it got. Their circle of friends did not run to people with steady jobs and parenting potential. I pictured myself test-driving part-time roofers and shade-tree mechanics, men who who spent their weekends drinking beer at motorcycle rallies.

  Pete was coming out of the bathroom when I climbed upstairs. I was still laughing and wouldn’t tell him why.

  Chapter Nine

  You don’t get to sleep in on your day off if you live with a toddler. We were all up at the usual six o’clock. Pete and Cheyenne went off to work. Faced with a day at home with his mother, Robby tugged at my sleeve and said, “Pay w
it’ Hap.” I couldn’t compete with a bronco ride from Hap, but I did my best.

  At the off-leash area in Laurelhurst Park, I tossed a foam ball to Robby and tennis balls to Winnie and Range. When the dogs were panting hard enough, we moved across the road to the playground. The dogs flopped down and panted away while Robby and two bigger girls clambered about on the elaborate bright blue climbing structure. It was a reasonably dry and satisfying morning, ending with a flushed and cheerful Robby and two contented dogs.

  After lunch, I suggested that he exercise his creative side. “Let’s draw with the new markers. This one smells like grape.” My celebration of normal life was over and unfinished business from the Tipton farm had swept back into my awareness. I had an agenda.

  While Robby unleashed the right side of his brain, I found the scrap of paper Ken from Animal Control had handed me when I’d asked for his card. I made a phone call to ease my mind. It seemed to be his personal number, and he wasn’t in. I hesitated about the voice message—leaving my own number might be misconstrued as—what? A come-on? I left my name and the number anyway and asked whether he’d gotten the Doberman pup out of the rain. I hung up and stood with my hand on the phone wondering whether I did have a subconscious motive. No, I’d meant to call him before Hap had messed with my mind.

  I intended to make a second call, but good sense intervened. Neal would not appreciate me contacting US Fish and Wildlife directly about their intentions and strategies in regard to certain illegal wildlife now held at the zoo. I’d try asking Neal again. I paced around for a few minutes trying to think how I could strike a blow for conservation and came up empty. I had nothing to help track the animals back to the wholesaler. Wildlife crimes had happened under my nose, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it, any more than I could nail whoever had murdered Liana.

  Robby and I burned the rest of the day with grocery shopping and housekeeping, which included adding branches to the macaw cage for them to destroy. Everyone needs a hobby and my vine maple needed trimming.