“Can you find a longer hose?” he called.
Okay, there probably were more hoses around. I was about to go and look for one when the lion roared. Not a big roar, but then we were awfully close to it.
Eric whimpered. Spike shut up. He turned to face the sound, all his fur seeming to stand on end, and uttered one gruff, challenging bark.
Okay, I’d give him top marks for courage, but zero for brains. “Stand back,” I said. “I’m coming down.”
Jumping into the lion's den might not have been the smartest move, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk away and look for another hose if the lion was about to emerge. I was taller than Eric; I could lift him up to reach the hose, and then climb up myself. So I scrambled up the bars of the inner fence, maneuvered over their curved tops, climbed down the other side, and then slid down the hose. I was in too much of a hurry and landed off-balance, scraping both palms and ripping the knee of my jeans. That was bad, wasn’t it? Didn’t lions attack when they smelled blood? Or was that only sharks?
My arrival seemed to reassure Eric.
“I can climb up if you lift me up so I can reach the hose,” he said. “But how are we going to rescue Spike?”
He got top marks for courage too, I thought, if he could worry about Spike at a time like this.
“We’re going to tie him up in your T-shirt,” I said. “And then one of us can carry him out.”
“I’d probably better do it,” Eric said. “He doesn’t bite me nearly as much as he bites you.” He sounded a little calmer. Maybe worrying about Spike distracted him from his fear. If so, he was welcome to haul the little furball.
To my surprise, my plan worked rather well. We wrapped the suddenly cooperative Spike into a neat little bundle, and then, using the leash and Eric's belt, we rigged a harness that would let one of us sling him over our backs for the climb up. Pretty good, considering how hard it was to keep my hands from shaking every time the lion growled. Thank goodness Reggie seemed to be a lazy, procrastinating lion, taking his own sweet time coming out to devour us. Eric insisted on carrying Spike, and eyeing how high I’d have to jump to grab the rope, I didn’t argue.
“Okay, I’m going to lift you up now,” I said.
Eric had gotten a lot heavier since the last time I’d lugged him around. I hoisted him up as high as I could, and he could still just barely reach the hose, which meant that getting out wasn’t going to be a picnic for me, either. But I breathed a sigh of relief once he grabbed the hose. He scrambled up, nimble as a monkey, and then scaled the tall fence a little more slowly. Now that he was on the way to safety, I began looking around for something I could stand on.
“Don’t let Spike loose till I get up there,” I called over my shoulder. “We don’t want to have to do this all over again.”
“Okay,” he called down, peering through the fence. “But you’d better hurry!”
The lion growled as if agreeing with him.
I jumped up and tried to grab the end of the hose. No luck. The second time fell short as well. The third time, I grabbed the hose. Success.
Then the hose snapped in the middle, dumping me in a heap at the foot of the wall. I hit my funny bone on the way down and landed on something that knocked the breath out of me.
“Aunt Meg, are you all right?”
I nodded. I didn’t have the breath to answer. The lion growled again, and I suddenly felt a wave of fierce irritation at his damned repetitive growling.
“Some king of the beasts,” I muttered, with what little breath was returning. “Hiding there in your den, deliberately growling just to scare people.”
“What was that?” Eric called.
“Never mind,” I said. “You go look for another hose.” “What are you going to do?”
“Wait here for you to come back with a longer hose.” “Okay,” Eric said.
The lion's failure to appear had gone beyond luck and was edging into downright weird. Something odd was happening, and I had a hunch what it was. But I waited till I heard Eric's footsteps fade in the distance before moving. If I was wrong, I didn’t want Eric to witness what would happen.
I scrambled up from the floor of the cage to the first level of the concrete terraces. There was an opening there, but it wasn’t the source of the growling—that was coming from the opening in the second terrace. I climbed up another level, took a deep breath, and began carefully picking my way over to the den's mouth. I heard another growl.
“Aunt Meg, don’t! We can find another hose; just wait a little longer!”
We? Eric had returned and was clutching the bars of the cage. Standing by him was Montgomery Blake. “Get out of there!” Blake shouted. Did he think I’d jumped in for fun? “Find me a rope, then,” I called back. “Aunt Meg!” Eric called.
I stuck my head into the mouth of the lion's den.
Chapter 27
Outside, I could hear shouts from Eric and the old naturalist— probably because my arrival at the den coincided with another loud roar. I crawled inside, turned off the tape recorder, unplugged it, and carried it outside. I left behind the timer it had been plugged into.
“It's a fake,” I said, holding up the machine. “I don’t know what happened to the real Reggie, but he's not here any longer. Just this.”
I shoved the tape player back into the den and began climbing down. I checked the other den, just to be sure, but the lion exhibit was definitely empty. Now that I could stop and think, I realized that most of the other cages still smelled as if animals had been living in them recently—a faint, not unpleasant blend of fur or feathers and dung. The lion's cage only smelled dusty.
But it was still a little spooky, and when Montgomery Blake finally came back with a larger, sturdier hose, I wasted no time climbing out.
“Do you realize what would have happened to you if there really had been a lion in there?” he asked, shaking a long, bony finger in my face.
“Do you really think I’d have stuck my head in there if I hadn’t been pretty sure there wasn’t a real lion?” I asked.
Blake looked shaken, and his face was pale and drawn. He really was over ninety, I realized. Most of the time he was so vigorous you forgot his age. Maybe almost seeing another human being turned into steak tartare upset him. He frowned, and turned to the sign on the cage.
“Reggie,” he said. “I suppose that explains it. If the poor old beast really had been still alive, he’d be pushing forty.”
“That's old for a lion?”
“Even older for a lion than I am for a human,” he said with a harsh bark of a laugh. “Average lifespan in the wild is maybe fifteen, sixteen years. They could easily live another five or ten years in captivity, with proper treatment. But forty? I wasn’t surprised the poor old thing stayed in his den growling all the time. That's one of the first things I was going to do, if I’d taken over—have the vet look over Reggie, and more than likely we’d find it was time to put him out of his misery. But still—what the hell were you doing in there?”
“Spike fell in,” Eric said. “And I tried to rescue him, and I couldn’t get out, so Aunt Meg came to rescue me.”
“More guts than sense,” Blake grumbled. “Risking your lives for a stupid little runt like that.completely useless, these over-bred toy dogs.”
I’d had the same thoughts about Spike myself, when I was annoyed with him, but I’d earned the right to think them—I had the bite scars to prove it. Where did Blake get off, insulting a harmless dog in front of his owners? Well, mostly harmless.
I was about to tell Blake off, when I saw Eric frown at Blake, open his mouth—and stop. He took a couple of deep breaths and closed his mouth again, though he didn’t look as if it were easy. Smart kid. I followed his example. What did I care what Blake thought of Spike?
“You said something just now,” I said aloud. “If you’d taken over—was that something that might have happened if Patrick hadn’t been murdered?”
“Still might happen,” he said. “H
e tried to borrow money from me a year or so ago—some excuse about temporary cashflow problems. I told him the only way I’d lend him anything was if he opened the books to me and my auditors and followed my instructions on how to solve his problems. He turned me down then, but last month he finally got so desperate that he agreed.”
“So he opened the books to you.”
“He was going to. That's why I’m here in Caerphilly—seeing whether we can save the zoo or whether we need to close it and find homes somewhere else for the animals.”
“Do you know what animals he has?” I asked.
“Supposedly,” Blake said. “Of course, the totals might be inflated—he did still have Reggie on the roster. Probably a few other animals who died of old age or possibly inadequate medical care. Though I admit, so far I haven’t detected any signs of neglect or mistreatment.”
“Could you give me a list of his animals?” I asked.
“Why?”
“Because apparently Lanahan fostered them all out with people who had no idea what they were taking on, or at least no idea how long they’d be stuck with them,” I said. “And Dad seems to have extended an open invitation to anyone who can’t cope to drop their charges off with me. I’d like to know how bad it's going to get.”
Blake hooted with laughter at that.
“I can imagine!”
Then he frowned at me for a few seconds, as if calculating. Was he trying to figure out if I could be trusted with the list? He was definitely up to something.
“I can probably pull a pretty accurate list together,” he said. “No idea where they are, of course. I’ll be back at the hotel tonight. Bring your father if you like. I’ll give you the list, and we can talk about how to cope with your new charges.”
“Possible future charges,” I said. “And temporary charges at that.”
Blake barked his staccato laugh and strode off.
“Where are you going?” Eric called after him.
“To inspect the lagoon,” Blake said. He turned around and fixed his hawklike glare on Eric. “Want to see if Patrick got all the animals out of it or if he left a few alligators behind?”
“Alligators?” Eric echoed. “Meg, can we go see the alligators?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to take the time, and I wasn’t in the mood to spend more time in Blake's company. But I had just led Eric into serious danger, and I felt guilty about it.
“If you’re too busy, he can come with me,” Blake said.
I liked that idea even less.What did we really know about Blake? Quite apart from the usual worries one would have about entrusting a child to a stranger, Blake seemed to care more about animals than people. If the alligators were starving and saw Eric as a tempting tidbit, would Blake find their point of view reasonable?
“Aunt Meg, can I go see the alligators? Please!” Just then a solution appeared.
“There you are.” My brother walked around the corner of a nearby building. “Hey, Meg, what are you doing here?”
“Like Dr. Blake, I’m investigating,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“He drove me out here,” Blake said. “Confounded doctors took away my license two years ago. Don’t see how they expect a body to get around without a car.”
“Please,” Eric whined.
“Yes, Eric, you may go with your uncle Rob and Dr. Blake to see if there are any alligators in the lagoon,” I said. “And your uncle Rob will bring you safely back afterward.”
I glared at Rob, attempting to communicate that I expected to get Eric back without any bite marks or missing parts.
“Alligators!” Rob said. “Cool!”
“Come on, then,” Blake said. He strode off, with Rob trailing after him. Eric started to follow, then turned back and frowned. “Aunt Meg? It was really weird what happened with Spike.” “What do you mean?”
“I had to go, so I found the bathrooms—they’re down by the lion's cage. That's why I went down there. And I didn’t think I should take Spike inside, so I tied his leash really tight to a railing. And while I was inside, he started barking, and I went out and he was gone. And I’m pretty good at knots.”
“You think someone untied him?”
Eric shrugged.
“I don’t know, but it sure was weird,” he said. “And I could hear him barking, and I followed the sound, and he was already down in the cage. How do you suppose he got down there?”
“Through the bars.”
“Yeah, except there's this screen—I guess it's to keep little kids out. I didn’t think he could jump high enough to get over the screen.”
“Never underestimate Spike's ability to get himself in trouble,” I said. “After all, he thought there was a lion in there. He probably jumped higher than he’d ever jumped in his life!”
Eric thought about this for a second, then smiled.
“Yeah, I guess he was in a hurry to fight the lion.come on, Spike.”
He turned and ran off, with Spike scampering along beside him. I returned to the lion's cage and examined the fence. Yes,
there was a heavy wire screen covering the bottom three feet of the fence. Unlike some parts of the zoo, the screen was in good repair—I could find no holes or gaps in it.
So there was no way Spike could have fallen in by mistake. And although I’d pretended to think it possible, to reassure Eric, I also didn’t think Spike could possibly have jumped over the wire screen, even with the promise of a lion on the other side. And how had he managed to fall so far without hurting himself?
Someone had deliberately put him in the lion's cage.
Though I often joked about strangling Spike, the idea of someone actually trying to harm him sent me into a cold fury.
Of course, it might not have been Spike they wanted to harm. Anyone who knew us or had been spying on us might have guessed that Eric would try to rescue Spike—and would certainly have expected me to go in after either of them.
Suddenly the day didn’t seem nearly as warm and bright, and the silence and emptiness felt ominous.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I muttered. Throwing an eight-and-a-half-pound dog into a cage was one thing. Tackling me was quite another.
I’d ask Rob later how he came to be separated from his passenger, and whether they’d seen anyone else at the zoo.
For now, I decided to retrace my steps to the car.
On my way, though, I scoped out the area near the lion's cage—the last part of the zoo I hadn’t inventoried. Apparently this was where Lanahan had kept his more dangerous guests. I found the spotted hyenas’ cage. It didn’t make me feel one bit fonder of them to know that their names were Winken, Blinken, and Allan. I found myself closing the door to the cage marked “Bobcat (Felis rufus): Lola.” Lola clearly wasn’t there, but it still made me nervous, seeing the door to her former lair hanging open.
Though maybe someone had opened it recently. I saw fresh scuffmarks in the dirt inside. Probably Eric, exploring. Maybe I should talk to him about risky behavior. Or, more likely, get someone else to do it—someone who hadn’t spent the afternoon leaping into a lion's den. I latched the door cage and moved on.
I stopped by the zoo office to close and lock the door again, then took the perimeter trail, hiked back to the edge of the zoo property again, and used the fallen-tree bridge to cross the fence. But just as I was unlocking my car, I heard an odd thunk-ing noise out in the woods—as if someone were hitting a tree with a hammer. But it wasn’t the steady tapping you’d hear if someone was using a hammer—just a single thunk.
I stopped, listened for a few moments.
Thunk! There it was again.coming from the other side of the road, away from the zoo.
I used my remote to lock the car again, shoved the keys in my back pocket, and went to investigate.
I tried to move quietly, though I suspect that, like Sammy, I could be heard by any real woodsman within a mile. Still, it was a pleasant walk—and not one I would have dared make during the winter, wh
en no amount of bright orange could guarantee that a passing hunter wouldn’t mistake me for potential venison.
The thunks continued, at random intervals, and a little louder as I approached their source. I was slowing down, listening for another thunk to make sure I was heading in the right direction, when something whizzed by my head, nicking my cheek before skittering to a stop a few inches away.
I dropped to the ground, clapping a hand to my stinging check. Then I pulled my hand away and looked at it.
I was bleeding.
Chapter 28
Only a trickle, but it shook me up—especially since whatever had nicked me had missed my eye by only an inch.
I crawled back a few feet and found the weapon: a crossbow bolt.
I lay on the ground and listened. I heard two more thunks. Then something else skittered through the leaves to my right.
I got up, stuck the bolt in my back pocket, and began running to the left, trying to circle wide before approaching the source of the thunking again.
In a few minutes, I found myself peering out of the shrubbery into a clearing. A young man with the tall, lanky look of the Shiffleys was standing there with his back to me. He held a crossbow. As I watched, he lifted it and released a bolt. It flew toward a tiny target at the other side of the clearing and hit with a loud thunk!
Odds were I’d found young Charlie Shiffley, whiling away the time until hunting season in a rather dangerous manner.
I wondered why he hadn’t heard me coming until I noticed the iPod tucked into an armband on his left bicep and the cord that led to the tiny speaker buds in his ears.
I got a better look when he bent down to pick up another bolt from a pile at his feet. Unlike his body, his face was noticeably less angular than Randall's or Vern's. Either his mother's features were softer than his father's, or he hadn’t quite lost his baby fat. His face was slightly spotty—only slightly, but remembering how I’d felt about pimples at his age, I suspected he considered himself hopelessly disfigured. Actually, he wouldn’t look all that bad if he’d just shave—his upper lip had the slightly soiled look of someone who really shouldn’t bother trying to grow a mustache. Still, not bad for a teenager. He was probably quite a hit with the girls at Caerphilly High.
The Penguin Who Knew Too Much Page 13
