Endangered

by Ann Littlewood

  I didn’t like the looks of this interaction—threatening the mother and baby—and described it to Kip. “He’s always cranky,” she said, “and he’s never seen a baby either. Probably just curious. I don’t think he’d hurt the baby.”

  She knew them far better than I did.

  Calvin and I expected a busy day at Birds. Dr. Reynolds had scheduled physicals for the penguins. We’d wrangled penguins for her many a time, and it went smoothly. Which is to say, after it was over, I stank of fish, had a swelling lump on my knee where I’d fallen in the slippery exhibit, and was bleeding from a chomp on my left thumb courtesy of Mr. Brown/White. Mr. B/W was a youngster with a two-tone band on his wing because we’d run out of colors and had to double up. He wasn’t any more resentful of physical restraint than the other birds, I just got careless. Under Dr. Reynolds’ watchful eye, I’d rinsed and ointmented and bandaged my wound. The smart money said I’d survive.

  The birds had donated blood samples, been vaccinated, and endured a fair amount of poking and prodding. Nothing serious had turned up, and we’d soon know the gender of the three unsexed chicks thanks to the blood work. Calvin had assigned Mr. or Miss to each of them, based on intuition, and I was eager to see how accurate he was.

  The Penguinarium was a beneficiary of the bond passed a few years earlier by the good citizens of Vancouver, Washington. The “island” in the pool was resurfaced to seal it against bacteria and reduce abrasiveness on tender penguin feet. An expensive new air filter system slightly improved the tang and greatly improved the chances of avoiding fungal diseases. Neal muttered about tearing down the whole building and starting over, but Calvin and I saw little hope of that. Other areas of the zoo had more pressing needs. Other areas of Birds had more pressing needs, such as the decrepit walk-through aviary that would be replaced someday with the glorious one I envisioned.

  The exams put us behind schedule. I was striding toward the Children’s Zoo to tend to the birds that lived there when I ran into Neal. It was too soon to lean on him again about the macaws, so I meant to smile, nod, and go about my business.

  But he stopped in front of me. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ve got a deal cooking to try and get those Amazon parrots sent back to Mexico, but it’s complicated as hell. It might not work. Especially not if they turn out to be full of viruses.”

  “Mexico as in a zoo or as Mexico as in free in a forest?”

  “Not yet established.”

  “Still, that’s great. When?”

  “Also not yet determined.”

  “How about the smugglers?”

  “Like I said before, I have to read it in the papers like everyone else. We look after the animals until the court case is settled, then the agencies tell us what to do with them.”

  “Right,” I said to be polite.

  “I’ve got no juice with these people. I just wish I did. Doc Reynolds is looking into where those tortoises were stolen from, and that’s about all we have the resources for.”

  “Got it,” I said. Good news about the parrots, no news about the smugglers. Did I dare bring up the macaws? But he was off.

  I stopped by the mandrill exhibit again after work and found Kip there. We studied the monkeys in silence. Sky yawned, flashing his canines, and watched us out of the corner of his eye. He wandered around the exhibit poking his fingers into clumps of straw. Violet kept getting up to stay out of his path, yanking the baby off the nipple each time. “Stop that,” I muttered. “Does the baby seem weaker?”

  Kip shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Violet’s not getting any rest, and the baby’s not getting to nurse much.”

  Kip shook her head. “Can’t tell what’s going on when we’re here for just a few minutes.”

  “What if we got one of the Education volunteers in civilian clothes to hang out and take notes for a few hours?” I should have taken longer to think about it. Kip was quick to conclude that her inferiors were trespassing.

  “Either it’s working or it isn’t and we have to pull the baby. We’ll know in another day or two.”

  I pushed my luck. “Right now, Sky’s reacting to us, and Violet’s reacting to him. Couldn’t hurt to see what they do when we’re not around.”

  Kip looked unconvinced. “Those volunteers aren’t trained in behavioral observation.”

  “Some are. They watched the clouded leopards for Linda. We know which ones have the most experience.”

  Kip looked irritated, which was not unusual. We watched the monkeys for a few more minutes, but nothing much happened. I was surprised when she said, “Go ahead if you want to. Can’t do any harm.”

  I took this as a sign that Kip was more concerned than she was letting on. I left a message for Karen Belsky, the head of the Education Department.

  At home, I found Pete immersed in a cloud of spicy scents and steam rising from a wok. He loved Thai and Chinese food and used to cook four or five nights a week, although he and Cheyenne had been eating out most nights lately. I cooked on my days off—meatloaf or spaghetti or roast chicken. Cheyenne cleaned up the kitchen, and I did the rest of the housework, which suited us all reasonably well.

  “Where’s Cheyenne?” I asked, looking in the fridge for a snack for Robby. I washed his hands and gave him a chunk of string cheese.

  “She’s returning some stuff she bought at the Jantzen Beach mall. She should be here soon.”

  Pete was a good-looking guy, tight-curled black hair and complex tattoos on his dark skin. He looked like he’d be a player at a bar or music scene, but he was steadfastly domestic. Cheyenne was the risk taker, and I worried that she’d get bored with Pete. I liked them as a couple, liked the idea that their relationship had lasted for years, through jobs at several zoos, travel in Thailand and Cambodia, and living with a child who wasn’t theirs. They were affectionate with Robby, but I knew better than to use them as live-in babysitters. I might be the landlord, but Cheyenne had a sharp tongue and a clear idea of who was responsible for what.

  I called Marcie, who didn’t pick up, and left another message apologizing and asking her to call me. After feeding the dogs, I spent a little time with the macaws, who were edging into their new space one perch at a time. They let me reach into their cage and swap out three toys I’d bought, replacing them with three others. Toys get stale when they’re available all the time. I tossed in some Brazil nuts in the shell. “Put those beaks to work,” I suggested.

  I hadn’t yet read their scratched-up bands. I’d need to be close, maybe with the bird perching on my hand. With luck, I could use the codes to trace them back to their breeder and maybe learn how old they were and what gender. I sighed. The birds needed more attention and hand-fed treats to learn to trust me and tolerate handling. Where was the time for that?

  “Dinner’s on,” Pete called and I washed up and came to the table.

  Cheyenne showed up before we were finished, in high spirits. She smooched Pete and filled her plate, talking non-stop about cool shoes she’d seen at the mall and plans for the new elephant barn and news about Ian—the strange and silent keeper she shared Elephants with. “I think he’s got a girl friend, can you believe it? She came to Elephants today and he managed to introduce her. Bridget. Tough looking chick, but she acts like she owns him. That’s what he needs, he’s got no initiative whatsoever. He just pines after unavailable women.” Ian was inarticulate and socially incompetent. I had to admit that he came across as a little creepy.

  I glanced at Pete, who seemed puzzled by the ebullience. Normally Cheyenne was a little on the dour side. Whatever, her mood was contagious. I was glad to hear that Ian had found a legitimate romantic interest. If he took to mooning over Cheyenne, Pete had made it clear he would either flatten the guy or else they would pull up stakes and head for another zoo. None of us wanted that.

  Robby was asleep and I was b
rushing my teeth when Cheyenne hollered up the stairs, “Iris, get down here. The news is going to have ‘startling Tipton developments.’”

  I stood behind the sofa where she and Pete sat and heard about a near-miss airplane incident, a gigantic mud slide in Honduras, and another impasse in Congress. The local news finally came on.

  The woman newscaster announced, “The Clark County sheriff’s department has released information about the girl initially identified as Liana Tipton.” With wide eyes expressing shock and amazement, she said, “The teenager found dead at the Jerome Tipton residence during a recent drug arrest was not the Tipton’s daughter as believed. Fingerprints have identified her as seventeen-year-old Shelby Adamson, who ran away from her home in Fort Dodge, Iowa, when she was fifteen.” A quick shot showed a stubby, weary couple with expressionless faces—her parents.

  “And now this word from the sheriff’s department.” A uniformed spokesman said in a flat voice that Shelby/Liana had died from a gunshot fired between twelve hours and thirty-six hours after the Tiptons were arrested. Moreover, she was killed somewhere else and moved to where her body was discovered outside the Tipton home. Back to the newscaster, who flashed the mug shots of Jeff and Tom Tipton and a phone number to report any sightings. Cut to a commercial for a drug that would make a depressed woman laugh and square dance. Cheyenne shut the sound off.

  “You thought she was their daughter,” Pete said.

  Liana, Liana—how did you end up with the Tiptons? “Everybody did. The Tipton mother was asking for her daughter. A neighbor said she was missing. She lived there. How did she get from Iowa to the middle of nowhere in Washington? This is unbelievable.”

  Cheyenne said, “The killed-elsewhere-and-staged part is what I think is unbelievable. Lugging her body around? Sick.”

  I stood up and paced, wide awake. “I saw the spot after they took her body away. No blood on the ground. There should have been a lot of it if she’d been left where she’d fallen. Somebody shot her and tried to blame it on the bust.” This didn’t make sense. “How could anyone expect something that dumb to fool the cops? Anybody who’s ever seen a crime show would know it wouldn’t work. The cops must have kept quiet about it while they tried to find the Tiptons, maybe so they wouldn’t run as far.”

  The Tiptons didn’t have a television set. Did Tom or Jeff have a clue about forensics? Maybe they were the last two Americans who didn’t. That pale freckled face…“Why would they murder her? She was just a kid.” But not their sister.

  Cheyenne clicked the set off. “Maybe they think she turned them in.”

  I considered. “One of the cops at the farm said Tom sold meth to the wrong person and that’s what got them busted. But Jeff and Tom might not know that. They might have thought it was her.” Shooting a girl…“A neighbor said the mother was really dependent on her. She was part of the family.”

  “Maybe the sons fought over her, or she two-timed one of them.”

  I couldn’t come up with anything better. All I knew was that the Tipton ugliness had touched her and she’d died.

  Cheyenne got up and stretched her arms up and back. “The media will milk this dry.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Cheyenne was so right. The radio on the way to work was abuzz with Tipton news. I didn’t hear my name, which was heartening. I had slept badly and could barely cope with Robby and Cheyenne, much less the media. It was Pete’s day off and he slept in.

  I was assigned to Birds, but interrupted my routine to rendezvous in front of the mandrill enclosure with three Education Department volunteers Karen had rounded up on short notice—after I had explained and apologized to her for hogging the Education van for three days. If school children never became conservationists, it was the Tiptons’ fault, not mine, I insisted. Karen said she’d be big about it and contact her group.

  I told the volunteers what we wanted them to look for. Three female heads nodded—two gray-haired women and one college student. They had clip-boards and pens and a hastily constructed checklist. They seemed delighted to help out and were concerned but not emotional about the situation. Perfect. I confirmed their schedules—two hours each, six hours total today—and turned away to leave them to it.

  And found myself facing the photographer in the black jacket.

  “Iris, it’s Craig. You remember?”

  “I do.” He’d stuck in my brain as the only appealing feature of the Tipton calamities. He and Ken.

  The jacket was unbuttoned, showing a dark tee shirt and an indifference to cold. The knit cap was gone. Brown hair with a clean shine. Jeans and black sport shoes. Those hazel eyes. “Can you talk for a minute?”

  I shook my head with regret. “If my boss had okayed an interview, he would have told me. So, no. Sorry.”

  He looked away and back. “How about this? I’d like to ask you to lunch. Rosemary Café, on me.” His smile implied a joint conspiracy, a good time, a world of possibilities. “I promise not to talk about the Tiptons.”

  “Why would you do that?” I knew the café in downtown Vancouver and liked it. I liked the smile, too, but that was irrelevant. I wasn’t that easy.

  “Why wouldn’t a guy ask you to lunch?” A frown. “You are single, right?”

  The volunteers weren’t hiding their fascination.

  He folded his arms across his chest. “All I’m asking for is expertise on the zoo part, background only. We can keep it off-record. I don’t want to get the animal parts wrong.”

  “Talk to Neal Humboldt. His office is in the Administration building. He’ll want to see your credentials.”

  “You are one tough lady to get to know. Here’s my card. It’s good for a free lunch any day.” He gave a finger wave to the volunteers and moved off toward the zoo’s entrance.

  One of the older ladies said, “If I were you, I’d just say yes.”

  “Yum,” said the young one. “Give him my phone number if you aren’t interested.”

  Whoa. I’d almost forgotten I had a real date that night, dinner with Ken. Liana turning into Shelby had jolted it out of my brain.

  A date. Uh-oh, no child care. My top priority after lunch.

  In our claustrophobic little break room, Denny out-did the broadcasters with speculation about Liana/Shelby and the Tiptons. Linda, Cheyenne, and Marion chewed their lunch and watched him roll. I didn’t pay much attention until he started in again about human trafficking.

  “Denny! Stop it. Liana walked over to visit Pluvia with Wanda. She wasn’t a prisoner.”

  “Could have been emotionally subjugated.”

  “Yeah. But she was warmly dressed and didn’t look starved, and the mother was really concerned about her. Liana could have walked to the road and thumbed a ride if she wanted out.”

  Denny actually stopped to think. I steered him toward something that bothered me. “The Tiptons grew weed for years and stayed under the radar. Then a few months ago, they set up the second barn and started cooking meth. The animal enclosures we saw looked new, so the wildlife trafficking was recent, too. What set them off? Why change a system that was working fine?”

  Cheyenne said, “Maybe it was Liana. Maybe she had bigger ideas for bigger bucks.”

  Denny said, “That neighbor, Pluvia. She and Liana and Wanda, the mother, could have come up with a plan to overthrow Boss Tipton.”

  I waited to see how he could possibly create a coherent explanation out of this.

  He didn’t even try. “Or it’s the younger son—Tom? He wants to establish himself in the hierarchy, not be bottom tier any more. So he came up with all the changes. But Liana didn’t like it and …Probably Tom and the other one, Jeff, both wanted her and she played them off against each other and it went bad.”

  He had soared well beyond the few facts we had. I gave up, finished my lunch, and checked in with Neal. I told h
im Craig wanted to interview me and asked if that was okay. He said he’d prefer I didn’t. That was as expected, but disappointing. I wouldn’t have minded a little one-on-one with Craig. I refrained from asking about re-homing the macaws, but only because he took a phone call.

  I called my father at his shop and asked if he and my mother could keep Robby for dinner and an hour or so after.

  “Don’t see why not,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll pick him up on my way home.”

  I was reasonably certain that he understood I’d called him instead of my mother because I didn’t want to answer questions about my plans. Bless him, he didn’t ask any. I’d tell them about Ken when I picked Robby up afterward.

  I went back to work, finished up with Birds, and stopped by Primates to de-brief the last of the mandrill volunteers. The three of them had diligently checked the checklist and noted the notes, but they’d also put their heads together at some point during the day and come up with a theory. The silver-haired woman on the last shift said, “She’s scared of him, but he wants to see the baby. He comes to take a look, so she runs away and that makes the baby cry and then he gets grouchy so she runs away some more. She’s frazzled and so is the baby. The other female just sits there and ignores the whole thing.”

  I couldn’t fault their analysis, since it supported my own. The question was, what could we do to de-stress the mandrill family? I had an idea, but blurting out ideas sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Dr. Reynolds’ approval was necessary and she would likely say yes, but it was Kip’s area. If I went to Dr. Reynolds first, Kip would consider that sneaking around her back. But Kip wasn’t convinced we had a problem and would likely say no. Worse, Kip was already annoyed with Dr. Reynolds for reducing the fruit in most of the primates’ diets and substituting more leafy greens— better for their teeth, digestion, and weight control. Monkeys love fruit, and Kip loved giving them treats.