The Penguin Who Knew Too Much

by Donna Andrews

  Apparently their valiant defense of the sheep had fired up the llamas, and they seemed determined to remain a part of the party. They spat gobs of foul-smelling green stuff on people who tried to lead them to the pasture, until everyone got the message and left them alone.

  Through it all, the party continued unabated. The Shiffleys were notably absent—presumably they were all out looking for young Charlie—as were the police, who were pursuing both Charlie and Shea Bailey. And at any given time, several dozen of my relatives would be off in some remote part of the yard coaxing lemurs off roofs, convincing stubborn camels to stand up and walk, recklessly grabbing irritated porcupines, and managing to get bitten and scratched in such large numbers that Dad found himself operating an impromptu field hospital.

  Meanwhile, Mother's troops were scurrying around to replace the food the monkeys had eaten or spoiled. I pointed out, several times, that only a small portion of the assembled provisions had been out on the picnic table during the monkeys’ raid—probably less food had been spoiled than we usually had left over after one of my family's bashes. But no one paid the slightest attention to me, so I eventually gave up.

  Anyway, perhaps they had a better handle than I did on how much food would be needed for this particular party. Apart from more than the usual number of relatives, we also had quite a few visitors. About twenty of the SOBs were still around. Apparently the animal prison break had been the work of Shea and a small hard-core cadre within the organization. The rest, after assisting in the wolves’ recapture, stayed around to eat and apologize repeatedly for their leader's misdeeds.

  “I mean, what a stupid thing to do,” I overheard one of them saying. “Like turning a bunch of wolves loose at a picnic is striking a big blow for animals’ rights.”

  “He yelled at me last week for getting a cat from the animal shelter,” another one said. “As if keeping a pet were something really immoral.”

  “You know, I don’t think he really likes animals all that much,” the first one said.

  And many Caerphilly residents seemed to be turning up— ostensibly to help with the animal roundup, though I didn’t see many of them leaving when they found out that the roundup was complete.

  Practically the only people I didn’t see were the Sprockets. And that worried me. I’d been surprised how easily they’d let me evict them earlier, and I’d fully expected them to show up and try to resume their digging, under cover of the party. The fact that they hadn’t seemed to indicate that they had something sneakier and more annoying planned. Like showing up in the middle of the night and beginning to dig with ponderous and unsuccessful efforts at silence.

  So at dusk, with the animal roundup mostly complete and the party definitely hitting its stride, I was sitting in Dr. Smoot's Adirondack chair with an ice pack on my black eye, scanning the crowd with my good one, and fretting.

  “Don’t worry,” Michael said, dropping by to check on me for the twentieth time. “We won’t be taking any pictures tomorrow.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Rob said. “I plan on taking millions.” “But not of Meg,” Michael said.

  “Aw, come on,” Rob said. “I’ve never seen such an awesome black eye.”

  I glared at him, and he snapped yet another picture of me with the ice pack over my eye and nose.

  “I think the ice pack's probably done all the good it's going to,” Dad said.

  “Better safe than sorry,” I said. “Besides, it's soothing.”

  Actually, the ice pack was almost as annoying as Rob, and the intense cold was giving me a headache, and I might have abandoned it, except that Rob's annoying determination to take a picture of me with my eye swollen half shut had brought out my stubborn side.

  “Dr. Langslow!” One of the off-duty protesters came running up, looking agitated. “They need you over in the trenches. Someone fell in, and we think he's hurt himself.”

  I followed Dad to the side of the house where the trenches were still in active use. A crowd had gathered around one of the trenches near the barn, and when I had wormed my way to the front of it, I saw Barchester Sprocket lying at the bottom. Rutherford Sprocket was standing directly across from me on the other edge of the trench, holding a shovel and frowning down at his fallen comrade.

  “Ah,” I said. “I was wondering when they’d show up. Is he all right?”

  “We could sue,” Rutherford said. “Incredibly dangerous, just leaving trenches lying around like that.”

  “There's caution tape around it,” I said. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, he fell in one of the trenches the two of you dug.”

  “Poetic justice,” Rob said.

  “Hoist by his own petard,” Michael added.

  “We could still sue,” Rutherford said.

  “I wouldn’t,” I said. “We have lawyers in the family.”

  “So do we.”

  “Lots of lawyers,” I said. I looked around at the assembled crowd, about a hundred of them, most of them relatives. “Will all the family attorneys present please raise your hand?”

  Seventy or eighty hands went up. In fact, about the only people who didn’t raise their hands were the SOBs and Rose Noire, and I could tell she was tempted. For some things, like playing fast and loose with the truth when convenient, I could always count on my family. And at least a dozen of them weren’t lying. I wasn’t sure if Rutherford believed it, but he stopped muttering about suing.

  “How is he?” he asked, looking down at Dad and Barchester.

  “I think his leg's broken,” Dad said.

  “I didn’t realize we’d been digging over there,” Barchester said.

  “I think we need to mark the trenches more clearly,” Dad said. “Or we’re going to have more casualties by the end of the evening.”

  “No we’re not,” I said. “That's it! Party called on account of darkness!”

  Chapter 36

  “Meg, be reasonable,” Dad said.

  “Darkness and excessive excavation. I am being reasonable. It's too dangerous to have a bunch of people partying in the dark with all these holes and trenches.”

  “But, Meg,” Mother said. “Everyone's come so far, and they only want to have a nice time. You can’t just send them home.”

  “Okay,” I said. I climbed up on a picnic bench and took a deep breath.

  “Party moving to Mother and Dad's farm!” I shouted. “Everyone grab the food and drink and head on over to the farm!”

  To my amazement, it worked. People began packing up the dishes of food and the coolers of beverages and swarming, lemminglike, out to the parked cars.

  “What a splendid idea!” Dad exclaimed. “I’m heading over to the hospital right now with poor Barchester, but I’ll get over to the farm as soon as I can.”

  He trotted off beside the stretcher, looking cheerful, as he always did when someone was obliging enough to break a limb, slice an artery, or provide some other reasonably engrossing medical drama. Mother looked less than thrilled.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to her. “If it's still going on when you’re ready for bed, you and Dad are welcome to come back here. You can have your pick of the guest rooms.”

  “I suppose,” she said.

  “And didn’t you say you had lots of odd jobs that needed doing around the farmhouse?” I asked. “While you’ve got everyone there, you can start recruiting people to do them.”

  “Now that's a thought,” Mother said. She turned and walked toward the back door. On her way to the front yard to catch a ride, I hoped. But just as she was reaching for the doorknob, something caught her eye. She turned and stood on the back porch watching as Sheila Flugleman scuttled by with another bucket full of raw material.

  “Meg,” Mother said, in what the family called her grand duchess tone of voice. “Who is that...person?”

  Oops. “Person” was bad. “Lady” would have meant that she was impressed and wanted a suitably formal introduction. “Woman” would have been neutral. “Person,” with t
hat slight pause, was as close as Mother ever came to using a four-letter word.

  “Sheila D. Flugleman,” I said. “Her family owns the Farm and Garden Emporium.”

  “Ah, the feed store,” Mother said, nodding. Apparently she was not in a mood to cut Sheila any slack.

  “What's she done?” I asked.

  “She's been circulating through the crowd passing out flyers,” Mother said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a sheet of paper, holding it by one corner as if it were made of Zooper-Poop! “And . . . collecting at the same time.”

  “Well, someone has to clean up after the animals.”

  “Not the sort of thing I expect to see at my parties. And not the sort of thing you want at yours, either, I should think,” she added hastily when she remembered that she wasn’t in her own garden.

  “You know how hard small business owners have to work to get the word out,” I said. Mother frowned at this. After years of threatening, she was finally launching her own small decorating business. Launching it in both Yorktown and Caerphilly, in all probability. Surely she wouldn’t condemn Sheila Flugleman for what she herself might soon be forced to do?

  “Hmph,” she said, pulling something else out of her purse. “If this is true, I hardly think she needs to waste her time bothering my—our guests.”

  She handed me a copy of that week's Caerphilly Clarion, folded open to an article about Sheila Flugleman, complete with a smiling picture of her holding a bag of ZooperPoop! next to her ear.

  “It's the local rag, and her family's store is probably a big advertiser,” I said.

  “Yes, but according to that, she's going to be featured on Martha Stewart's show.”

  I winced. Mother had a love-hate relationship with Martha Stewart—not that they’d ever met. Mother admired Martha for doing things “properly”—which as far as I could see meant by hand in as old-fashioned, labor-intensive, nitpicking a manner as possible. But I could tell sometimes that she couldn’t quite understand how Martha had gotten to be such a celebrity simply by doing things properly, when other people of equal taste and fastidiousness languished in obscurity.

  “Maybe Sheila could introduce you to Martha,” I said. “Good boost for the shop, once you open it.”

  Mother drew herself up to her full height. Which was exactly the same as my height, five ten—why did it look so much more impressive on her?

  “I hardly care to be introduced to Martha Stewart by a purveyor of designer manure,” she said, in her most glacial tone.

  Oops.

  “Just as well,” I said. “After all, she's a suspect in Lanahan's murder.”

  “Do you think she did it?”

  “Who knows?” I said. “But even being a suspect could spoil her chances of being on television. I suspect Martha prefers her guests squeaky clean these days. Legally speaking, of course.”

  “How unfortunate,” Mother said. But she was smiling as she walked off.

  Within minutes the yard was empty, except for the odd stray sheep and Michael.

  “Good riddance,” I said.

  “Well, it was a nice party while it lasted,” Michael said. “But we don’t want to knock off too many guests the first day we’re officially moved in. I’d go over to the farm to help out, but it's time I took off to pick up Mom.”

  “Now? I thought she wasn’t coming in till evening.”

  “It will be evening by the time I get to the airport—she's flying into BWI instead of Dulles, apparently. Adds at least an hour to the drive, and I bet she saved maybe fifty dollars.”

  “Two hours, round-trip,” I said. I thought of several other things I could add, but decided that none of them was something you wanted to say about a woman who was about to become your mother-in-law, so I bit them back. With an effort.

  “Next time, I’m making the damned reservations,” Michael said. “And any other time, I’d just hire a limo service to pick her up.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” I asked.

  “Do you want to come?” He sounded surprised.

  “To be perfectly honest, no,” I said. “Right now the last thing I want to do is drive a couple of hours and sit around in an airport. But I figure it's probably the last thing you want to do, too,

  and we haven’t spent much time together the last couple of days, and maybe you’d like some company on the way up.”

  “I’d love company on the way up, but maybe I should go it alone. Spend some one-on-one time with Mom, to make up for the fact that we’re going to abandon her on Monday.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “And when I get back,” he said as he leaned over to kiss me good-bye, “I’ll tell you all about orgling.” “Orgling?”

  He made an odd gurgling noise.

  “That's orgling,” he said. “Part of the llama's mating ritual.” “Yuck,” I said. “Let's stick to champagne and roses.” “If you were a lady llama, that would drive you wild.” “You’ve been watching the llamas mate?”

  “No, all our llamas are geldings. But Dr. Blake has been telling me all about llamas.”

  “If he's been advising you to orgle at me, he's been spending too much time with his animals,” I said. “I prefer human mating rituals, thank you.”

  “Hold that thought until I get back from BWI.”

  “I will,” I said. “And meanwhile, speaking of Dr. Blake, I’m going to visit him. See if I can get some accurate information from him on the zoo's population.”

  “And maybe a confession to murder?”

  “Unlikely,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I thought you suspected him.”

  “I do,” I said. “But he's too sharp to confess.”

  “You’ve tried to get him to?”

  “Well, no,” I said. “He just doesn’t seem like the confessing kind. Maybe I should try.”

  “Just be careful,” Michael said.

  “I’ll make sure the staff at the Inn sees me arriving,” I said.

  “Do that,” he said. “Or maybe you should just stay home and rest. Do you really expect you can solve the murder and the zoo's problems before we take off?”

  “No,” I said. “And when we take off tomorrow for wherever it is we’re going, I’ll gladly leave the murder investigation to Chief Burke and the fate of the zoo to Dad and Dr. Blake. But until then—”

  “Until then, you’re going to give it one last shot. Fire away, but be careful.” “Will do.”

  Of course, as I pushed my way through the departing crowds to my car, I wondered if being seen by the Inn's staff would offer much protection if I were seriously worried about Blake. The Inn was notorious as a place people went when they didn’t want to be seen having lunch, dinner, or breakfast with someone other than their spouses. What if their guest services extended to providing alibis to special guests?

  Or, for that matter, disposal of inconvenient bodies. Did the Inn's concierge have an alibi for the murder?

  Okay, maybe that thought was a little too paranoid, but I’d certainly watch my back at the Inn. I was venturing onto Blake's turf.

  I should make a point of letting Blake know that people knew where I was. Mention the fact that Michael might be calling the Inn to talk to me.

  Just because the chief was busy chasing Charlie Shiffley and Shea Bailey didn’t mean that either of them was definitely the killer. I still had the uneasy feeling that Blake's sudden appearance in Caerphilly hadn’t been explained by the interest he was taking in the zoo.

  Chapter 37

  I had to drive a mile or so through the Caerphilly Golf Course to get to the Inn. I kept expecting a sleek, unmarked security vehicle to pull out from behind one of the well-manicured hedges or copses to bar the road, but I made my way unchallenged to a parking lot made of white gravel that gleamed like polished marble. I stashed my battered blue Toyota between a brand new Rolls-Royce Corniche and a Hummer that still had the dealer's suggested retail price sticker on it. The only other car in the lot that
wasn’t brand-new was a vintage BMW that looked as if it had been washed and polished daily by an army of chauffeurs. With my luck, the Toyota would develop an inferiority complex after an hour or two at the Inn, and refuse to start when I wanted to leave.

  I crunched across the spotless white stone toward the front door, which was ostentatiously unobtrusive—in fact, almost hidden between wisteria vines dripping with lush purple flowers. The doorman's manner was scrupulously polite, and I resisted the temptation to explain that my jeans and T-shirt were absolutely clean.

  “Meg! What are you doing here?”

  I turned to find Dad strolling away from the registration desk. His jeans and shirt weren’t the least bit clean—it looked as if he’d come straight from putting the penguins to bed. But he seemed completely at home, and a porter murmured, “Evening, sir,” while passing him. Leave it to Dad to make himself at home anywhere.

  “I came to see Dr. Blake,” I said.

  “Aha!” Dad exclaimed. Then he glanced around the lobby for possible eavesdroppers. When he spotted none, his face fell slightly, but he still lowered his voice to a suspiciously conspiratorial stage whisper.

  “You suspect him of being the killer?” he asked.

  The desk clerk looked up from his computer, ears almost visibly cocked to hear my answer.

  “More important than that,” I said, in my normal voice. “I suspect him of knowing precisely how many and what kind of animals there were in the Caerphilly Zoo.”

  “But I could—” Dad began, before realizing what he’d been about to say.

  The desk clerk lost interest as soon as we stopped whispering.

  “Yes, I know you could tell me if you had the time to sit down and make a list,” I said. “But you’ve been rather busy caring for the animals. So I thought I’d bother Blake. And while we’re both here, maybe we can pin Blake down on what, if anything, he's going to do about the zoo.”