The Llama of Death

by Betty Webb

  The skeleton puppet and his burlap-clad peasant handler were still in costume when they arrived at the trailer. Since past experience had taught me that the actor who performed the Ded Bob routine liked to stay in character, I addressed the puppet. “Well met, skeleton sir.”

  “Likewise, fair hussy,” Ded Bob cracked back, ogling my low cut gown. “Wanna see my etchings?”

  “Sorry, although I’m certain they’re a delight. As is your own fair, if skeletal, self. Could I speak to your human, please?”

  “You mean Smuj, here?” He pointed a bony finger to the gauze-veiled man holding him. “He’s non compos mentis, so anything you have to say you can say to me. Sure you don’t wanna see my etchings? They’re anatomically correct.” Another ogle at my breasts.

  “Absolutely sure. All right, Bob, I hear that on the day Victor Emerson was killed, you heard the Sazacs arguing outside your trailer.”

  “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t.”

  “Let’s say you did.”

  “Hmmm. Let me think back. Ooops. Can’t. Brain’s all rotted away.” He waggled his skull. “See? No rattle! Nothing but empty air.”

  Maybe banter wasn’t the right approach. “Elvin Dade’s trying to frame my mother for Victor’s murder.”

  “My etchings are framed, too. Wanna come in and see?”

  “Please, Ded Bob!” I sniffled, not entirely for effect.

  The skeleton drooped his head. Smuj, who had a softer side than his alter ego, spoke up from underneath his face veil. “Oh, all right. I never could say no to a lady. You are one, aren’t you, Teddy? Okay, okay! Stop with the dirty looks already! And for God’s sake, don’t cry! I don’t see what this has to do with your mother’s unfortunate situation, but from what I could hear, Deanna Sazac was accusing Judd of being a little too friendly, if you know what I mean, with that Bambi woman. He denied it, but Deanna ripped him up one side and down the other, all at the top of her voice. He had to shout over her just to be heard. I’d already done three shows that day and had two more to go, and there went my plans for a nap. Once I realized someone was getting roughed up, I had Bob here yell for them to stop.”

  “That’s all?”

  “What’d you expect me to do, shoot them? Oops. Bad joke, considering.”

  “Did either of the Sazacs mention Victor?”

  “Once. Judd said something about Victor pushing things too far, whatever that meant.”

  “Those were his exact words, ‘pushing things too far?’”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you say you have no idea what that meant?”

  At this, Ded Bob snapped back to attention and craned his skeletal head toward my bodice. “The peasant’s too dumb to lie, hussy. Now, about those etchings…”

  ***

  By the end of the day, I’d made up my mind that no matter what Aster Edwina threatened, I wasn’t going to pull another shift at the Renaissance Faire. I missed the zoo. I missed my fellow zookeepers, I missed the zoo’s visitors. More importantly, I missed the animals, especially poor Alejandro, now isolated in Quarantine.

  I was determined to do something about that.

  So focused was I on Alejandro’s misery that I forgot to change out of my wench outfit before visiting Caro, and my entrance to the jail was accompanied by wolf whistles all around.

  “You look like a tart,” my mother said when she saw me.

  “That’s the whole idea.”

  “I could kill Aster Edwina for this.”

  “Uh, Mother? You’re in jail. Do you really think it’s a good idea to be talking about killing people?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me ‘Mother’!”

  “Caro, you do get my point, don’t you?”

  “What point?”

  “Never mind. How’s your day been?”

  “It’s been a living hell, Teddy. As if you care.”

  “I care, Mo…Caro. I know this has been terribly difficult for you, but maybe I can help talk you through it. So c’mon, what’s been happening?”

  She sniffed. “Not much, really.”

  “Tell me about the ‘not much,’ then. As your daughter, I need to know what you’re going through.”

  Mollified, Caro treated me to a summation of the horrors of her day. They included a morning consult with her attorney, group manicures with Demonios Femeninos, yoga with her friend Giselle Coventry (serving thirty days for her second DUI), flower arranging lessons in the rec room, and scrapbooking sessions with a visiting social worker.

  The San Sebastian County Jail was a living hell, all right.

  ***

  When I finally dragged myself home to the Merilee, it was after eight. I expected my animals to greet me with glee, but none of them came to see me when I stepped below decks. All three—Miss Priss, DJ Bonz, and Feroz Guerro—were huddled together in a shivering heap of fur in the corner of the galley’s banquette.

  “Hey, guys, aren’t you hungry?”

  Nothing but whimpers and a mew.

  “Don’t want walkies?”

  More whimpers.

  A brief sniff told me why the dogs didn’t need walkies. After I’d spent the next few minutes cleaning up the mess, they remained huddled together. The evening was still warm, so it wasn’t as if they were cold.

  “People, show some consideration. Mama’s home and all’s right with the world.”

  I kneeled down and held out my hand, expecting at least one of them to jump off the banquette and come visit, but not one of them budged.

  “Bonz!” I commanded. “Here!” For emphasis, I slapped my thigh.

  The usually obedient Bonz didn’t move. He just looked at Feroz, who looked at Priss. Priss closed her eyes and pretended to be somewhere else.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  I looked around. All appeared normal at first, but then I noticed that the door to the aft bedroom was shut. Knowing how much the animals liked to curl up on my bed, I always left it open in my absence.

  Someone had been on my boat.

  Maybe still was.

  I kept up a running commentary about my day while I very quietly tiptoed to the galley counter and pulled out a knife from the knife rack. Then just as quietly I tiptoed to the aft bedroom door and yanked it open.

  No intruder lurked there.

  Just a dead rat on my bed with a crossbow dart through its heart. Hanging from the protruding end of the dart was a note.

  “STOP AKSNG QESTONS OR YOUL B NXT”

  Chapter Twelve

  I ran down the dock to Linda Cushing’s Tea 4 Two and interrupted her in the midst of feeding her cats.

  “Did you see anyone hanging around the Merilee?” I asked, trying to look calm. Like me, Linda lived alone, and there was no point in scaring her.

  She shook her head. “Sorry. I spent the day with a friend in Monterey. Did someone break in?”

  “Yes, but nothing was taken.” I didn’t mention Mr. Rat.

  Under ordinary circumstances I would report my grisly find to Joe, but since Homeland Security had rendered him unavailable, I called my old friend Deputy Emilio Gutierrez as soon as I returned to the Merilee. No point contacting that fool Elvin Dade.

  “Can you talk, Emilio?” I asked as soon as he answered.

  “Just for a minute. I’m standing in line at the San Sebastian Cinema. Elena will kill me if we miss The Muppets Go to Mars, so make it snappy.”

  As succinctly as possible, I told him about the rat and the note, adding, “The spelling was too bad to be authentic. Someone with an education trying to act the opposite.”

  He lowered his voice. “How much blood was there?”

  “Almost none, come to think of it. The rat could have already been dead when it go
t shot by the crossbow.”

  “Hmm. And you say your animals weren’t hurt?”

  “Just scared.”

  “Teddy, you won’t like hearing this, but it sounds to me that the intruder might have a soft spot for animals.”

  He was right. I didn’t like hearing it. “You mean someone like a zookeeper, don’t you?”

  “Someone like that, yes.”

  “None of my friends would do something like this!”

  “If I remember correctly, Emerson officiated at some of your zoo friends’ weddings.”

  There was nothing to say to that.

  “Teddy?”

  “What?”

  “Want some advice?”

  “Let me guess. It’s ‘Stop poking around and mind your own business.’”

  “Quite the mind-reader, you are. That’s exactly what I was going to say. Leave the detective work to the professionals.”

  “Professionals like Elvin Dade? Not while my mother is rotting away in jail.”

  A long sigh. “Your family and mine go way back so I’ve checked on Caro every day. I can assure you she is not rotting away. If anything, she’s having the time of her life. Look, as frustrating as all this has been, Sheriff Joe will be back soon and the Victor Emerson case will be turned over to him. He won’t be able to get your mother out before her thirty days are up—I’m sure you remember that riot she started in the courtroom—but all this nonsense about linking her to the Emerson murder will disappear like the hot air it is.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Bank on it. Now here’s some advice you can accept. Take a sheet of plastic, wrap up the rat, the dart, the note, the whole mess, and stick it in your freezer. As soon as this blasted Muppet film’s over I’ll drop by to collect the evidence and drive it to the lab to see if whoever did it got sloppy and left fingerprints. But for now, please, please, please don’t do any more detecting. I’ll…”

  I heard a woman’s voice. “Two adults?”

  “Yep,” Emilio answered. Then to me, he said, “Gotta go. But remember what I said. Stay safe. Mind your own business.”

  Click.

  Emilio had been right about one thing. Before I put the “evidence” in a plastic garbage bag, I slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, flipped the animal over, and looked at its underside. Tire tracks ran the length of its body, proving that the animal had met its maker not via crossbow, but by car. So, yeah, maybe Emilio was right about the other thing, too.

  But not the zookeeper part. Zookeepers revere life.

  Especially my friend, Deborah.

  A galley refrigerator is small, its freezer microscopic. To make Mr. Rat and his accessories fit, I removed my ice cube tray and two frozen dinners. No big deal. They were long past their expiration date anyway.

  Evidence on ice, I stripped the bed and headed for the laundromat.

  ***

  Two hours later, laundry finished and folded, I went onto the Internet, looking for animal lovers with shady pasts. I found no more negative postings about Deborah, thank goodness, but when it came to someone else, Google hit the jackpot.

  Judd Sazac, the doting owner of the harbor’s most loveable Jack Russell terrier, had once made the Los Angeles Times during a homicide investigation. Five years earlier, he had been a person of interest in the murder of Sandi Birutta, the Beverly Hills socialite he was dating. The authorities’ interest in him dropped when Birutta’s gardener was caught trying to pawn some of her jewelry. Although the gardener maintained his innocence in Sandi Birutta’s murder, he did plead guilty to theft. His current address was Folsom State Prison, but for robbery, not murder. That part of the crime was never solved.

  Did Deanna Sazac know about this?

  For her own safety, I decided the news couldn’t wait until tomorrow, so as late as it was, I called her and told her what I’d discovered. Yes, she said, she knew all about Judd’s past; he’d told her everything. And she’d appreciate it if from here on out I minded my own bleeping business. She didn’t say bleeping.

  “Poking around in other peoples’ lives can get you hurt,” she spat, before hanging up on me.

  Cursing myself for ruining another woman’s evening, I went to bed.

  ***

  When I awoke the next morning, I suffered a brief moment of displacement. Yes, my pets were still curled up at the foot of the bed, and I could hear Maureen, the harbor otter, bumping against the hull to beg for her morning sardine, but everything looked different. Why in the world was I in the forward bunk space, which was usually reserved for visitors? Then I saw the stack of strongly bleached laundry sitting on the galley table next to a carbon copy of a police report. It all came flooding back. Dead rat. Threatening note. Two uncomfortable conversations with Emilio, one on the phone, one when he stopped by to pick up Mr. Rat.

  My first emotion wasn’t fear, it was anger. How dare someone defile my Merilee!

  Happy animals recover fast, so when I grabbed their leashes, Bonz and Feroz danced matching jigs. As we headed out to the park, we left a complaining Priss behind. From her plaintive cries, you’d think she hadn’t been fed in a year.

  I would like to say I didn’t look at my animal-loving neighbors any differently this morning, but I did. Last night’s events had left me so paranoid that I didn’t say a word to any of them. When Linda Cushing, sitting on the deck of Tea 4 Two cradling one of her many cats, waved a cheery good morning, I had to force myself to wave back. In the park I eyed my fellow dog-walkers with suspicion: Deborah’s husband Phil Holt and the couple’s rescued Heinz 57; Judd Sazac and his Jack Russell terrier; even poor Howie Fife, hobbling along with his mother’s elderly cockapoo. Could any of them have left that note?

  By the time I returned to the Merilee, I despised myself.

  “Not one of my friends,” I muttered, dishing out Miss Priss’ Fancy Feast. “Not one of my friends.”

  While feeding Bonz and Feroz their separate diets in separate bowls, I changed my mantra to, “Not an animal lover.”

  I kept it up all the way to the zoo. After clocking in, I headed straight for Quarantine.

  Quarantine isn’t just one barn; it is a series of large, airy sheds at the back of the zoo. Whenever a new animal is brought in, it stays here until one of the zoo’s veterinarians certifies it healthy enough to go on exhibit. Sometimes, if an animal is suspected of having a contagious disease or is badly injured, it stays in an isolated shed near the clinic, where it can be checked on every hour. Alejandro, not meeting either designation, was being kept in the main barn, along with a zebra about to give birth, an Arapawa goat with its newborn, and an eland with a sore leg.

  I found Alejandro lying in a back stall. Some other animal keeper had obviously been there earlier, because his stall was clean, and he had been supplied with fresh water and plenty of llama pellets mashed with sweet horse feed. But he still looked miserable.

  When I unlatched the stall gate and walked in, he didn’t even get up, just looked at me with those sad llama eyes.

  I knelt down beside him. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry.”

  He looked away.

  “Would you like some chopped carrots?”

  Silence.

  “Want your ears scratched?”

  Continued silence.

  “Or I could shanghai a couple of children and drag them down here to keep you company.”

  Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought one ear flickered slightly at the word “children.”

  “I’ll do what I can to spring you, sweetie.”

  I waited for an answer. None.

  Since he wouldn’t speak to me, I took the initiative and began scratching his ears. He shut his eyes in pleasure, but remained silent. Knowing how lonely he was, I spent a few minutes keeping him company, but eventually
, other duties called. As I let myself out of his stall, he called…

  “Maaam!”

  Come back.

  ***

  At the zoo’s Friendly Farm enclosure, deep shadows marred Deborah Holt’s usually brilliant blue eyes, probably out of concern for Alejandro. She walked over to me, trailed by a flock of chickens.

  “Were you the one who freshened up Alejandro’s stall this morning?” I asked.

  “Of course. The poor thing looks so depressed. What happened yesterday? I heard he attacked someone, but that’s about it.”

  After I gave her the sordid details, her tired-looking eyes lit up. “You say the drunk’s name was Ernest. Would that be Ernest Dalrymple, by any chance?”

  “I was too busy keeping him from being killed to ask his last name. Is it important?”

  “Could be. Ernest Dalrymple was Alejandro’s former owner. From what I hear, he knocked out one of Alejandro’s teeth trying to get the poor thing to suck from a bottle of beer. Fortunately, his neighbors saw the whole thing and called the Humane Society. When they couldn’t find a proper home for him they contacted the zoo. I went and picked him up myself.”

  A quick call to a sleepy Emilio Gutierrez revealed that, yes, a man by the name of Ernest Dalrymple had been arrested for Drunk and Disorderly at the Faire yesterday and had already bonded out. Not only was Dalrymple screaming about filing a lawsuit for wrongful arrest, but he appeared bound and determined to get Alejandro put down.

  “Put down!?” I screamed into the phone. “But he’s the idiot who caused the entire incident!”

  Emilio tut-tutted. “With an animal that size, an attack is a serious thing. If you want to save Alejandro’s life, you’d better come up with some witnesses who’ll swear the man provoked the incident. In the meantime, don’t you know what time it is? Seven! I worked late last night and was looking forward to sleeping in.”