The Otter of Death

by Betty Webb

  “I prefer the term ‘mother-in-law unit,’” Joe said. “You don’t look like a granny.”

  Colleen’s smile held a note of sadness. “You inherited that sense of precision from your father.”

  Joe’s father, who had preceded his son as San Sebastian County Sheriff, had been dead for ten years, but a picture of him remained in every room. Joe, except for his Irish-blue eyes, looked just like him.

  “It’s a mess back there so you gals need to be careful,” Joe warned. “Rebar, loose boards, nails all over the place, a couple of ripped insulation packages, bad for the lungs. Come to think of it, don’t even go near it.”

  Colleen’s smile broadened. “Your tendency to overprotect, too.”

  “What?”

  “Genes, dear. Genes. You’re your father all over again.”

  Joe made a few grumbling noises, but at the end, leaned over and kissed his mother’s cheek. “Whatever.”

  As soon as the dishes were put away, Joe and I went into the not-totally-green living room, done up in his own favored color scheme of beige-on-black. The room was now further enlivened by bouquets of fresh flowers. Bridie and Tonio were plunked in front of the large-screen TV, watching Sesame Street. Ever the doting father, he kissed them good-bye. After giving me a different kind of kiss, he headed to his office.

  “He means well,” Colleen said, waving through the window at him.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Or you wouldn’t put up with it, would you? His father was the same way with me. Always fussing. But it was only because he loved me and wanted to protect me. Whoever would have guessed that in the end, he was the one needing protection?” She sighed. “Well, enough of the grim stuff. Do you want to go outside and listen to the birds, or are there a few leads you want to run down? I saw you sneaking your laptop into the bedroom, by the way.”

  Flushing, I stammered, “I, uh, I, ah…”

  “Teddy, I understand more than you’ll ever know.” With that she gave me a pat on my good shoulder and headed into the kitchen. Seconds later she was typing something on her laptop. Probably another recipe.

  Tracking down Ariel Gonzales turned out to be easy.

  Remembering the lovely bouquet of orange and yellow zinnias she had sent me, I simply called San Sebastian’s Boutique de Fleur and told the young-sounding clerk who answered that I wanted to mail thank you cards to everyone who had sent me flowers.

  “But Ariel Gonzales’s home address is the only one I don’t have, so perhaps you can…”

  God bless trusting clerks. I discovered that Ariel lived less than ten minutes away in a duplex just off San Sebastian’s main drag. Not only that, but the clerk also gave me Ariel’s phone number.

  A glance at my waterproof/poop-proof Timex showed me it was almost ten. Since Ariel anchored the six a.m. news, then Good Morning, San Sebastian, followed by the noon news broadcast, she would be at the TV station for at least the next three hours. As good as I felt today, I didn’t want to hang around in the street waiting for her to show, so I dragged my laptop out from under my bed and fired it up.

  Good thing, too.

  We tend to define war heroes by only their bright and shining moments. When their light shines as brightly as had Ariel’s, we often forget that they had lives before they risked them to save others.

  A simple Google search brought up her official bio. Born to an ex-Marine sergeant father and an ex-Navy nurse mother, she had been the editor of her high school newspaper and hosted the school’s five-minute news program on KGNN. After graduating with highest honors from San Sebastian High, she was granted a full ride scholarship to UC San Bertram, where she majored in Marine Science.

  Guess who was teaching Marine Science when she enrolled at UC San Bertram?

  Dr. Stuart Booth, that’s who.

  Further net searches revealed that a year into her studies Ariel had left UC San Bertram, transferring to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to major in Engineering. Somehow I doubted that Ariel made that momentous decision because she had fallen out of love with the ocean.

  I picked up my truck from Bucky’s and spent the next hour at the vet hospital visiting Bonz again. He looked much stronger, and managed to wobble forward to greet me. Seeing him on his feet again lifted my heart.

  “He’s ready to go home, isn’t he?” I’d asked Dr. Givens upon arriving, only to receive bad news.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” she said. “His temperature was a bit elevated this morning. Nothing serious, but I want to keep my eye on him for another twenty-four hours.”

  At least she let me sit with him until he began snoring. Then I returned him to the veterinarian’s version of ICU and headed to Casa Rejas for a nap of my own. The trip had tired me more than expected.

  Two hours later, I was parked on a shady street near the town center. My research had shown that Ariel had recently purchased the duplex at 472 North Hibiscus Lane, lived in one unit, and rented out the other. The exterior of the Craftsman’s cottage and grounds were in immaculate condition, with the house and facings freshly painted, the lush greenery recently trimmed. Ariel either kept a handyman on retainer or was an avid do-it-yourselfer.

  “Hi, there!” I bubbled, when she answered my knock. A Chihuahua-something-mix stood at her feet, snarling at me. “Just dropped by to thank you for the beautiful zinnias. And for saving my life.”

  Ariel’s smile wasn’t as jaunty as mine. “Hardly necessary since your attacker was on the run by the time I got there.” Dressed in paint-spattered jeans and tee shirt, she had washed off her TV makeup. The long red scar on her cheek glared against her olive skin, which was further blemished by splatters of yellow paint. “Shouldn’t you be in bed or something?”

  “Bed rest is overrated. Do you have time for a chat?”

  She gave me a look I couldn’t quite interpret. “Sure, as long as you don’t mind the smell of latex.”

  When I stepped inside, giving the still snarling dog a wide berth, I found the living room half Landlady Green, half Buttercup Yellow—the color of the paint on her face. “Why, you’re redecorating! I like that yellow. Cheerier than the green.” Truth be told, I was tired of green. And beige-on-black. Before Joe and I married, we needed to have a serious discussion about home décor.

  “Would you like a drink? I have tea and I have coffee, so name your poison.”

  “Coffee sounds lovely.”

  Noticing my concerned look at the Chihuahua-something, she said, “Don’t worry, Chaco’s nasty, but he doesn’t bite. At least not so far.”

  I followed her and the ill-tempered Chaco into the kitchen, noting the drop cloth-covered beige carpet, the similarly covered Danish furniture. With the walls in the process of being transformed from blah to zippy I saw no pictures or photographs other than the one sitting on a teak end table. It showed several tired-looking Marines standing in front of a helicopter loaded with a startling display of rockets. Ariel was one of the Marines.

  I settled myself at the kitchen table, a daring combination of glass and oxidized iron. “That picture in the living room, are those the Marines…?” I let the sentence trail off.

  “The guys I lifted off the mountain? Yeah. I like to look at it when things get rough. Here’s your coffee. Want anything in it?”

  “I like it black. What do you mean by ‘rough’?”

  “You can take the girl out of Afghanistan, but you can’t take Afghanistan out of the girl. Now tell me why you’re here, and I know it has nothing to do with home improvements.”

  Such straightforwardness deserved an equally straight-forward answer, but I wasn’t yet ready. “Did you get a good look at the man who shot me?” I took a sip of the coffee; it was strong enough to fuel that helicopter.

  “Never saw him.” She took a sip of her own black coffee. Looked pleased and set the cup down to cool.

  “Not at all?”

  “Nope. Nada. Zip. There was a lot of brush and it was as dark as Bin Laden’s soul. Foggy, too.” Without being asked
, nasty Chaco jumped into her lap. Ariel smiled down at him. “Oooh’s the good boy?”

  Chaco drooled.

  “Are you certain the shooter was even a man?”

  “Sure as hell sounded like one.”

  “Sounded?”

  “Heavy breaths ending in basso grunts. ’Course, it could just as well have been a woman with an unusually deep voice, but whoever it was clomped like a guy, too.”

  Instead of her careful television pronunciation, she had slipped into a more relaxed manner of speaking, which I took for a good sign. “The Montinis didn’t get a look at him, either.”

  “Look, Teddy, if you don’t mind my saying so, it wasn’t very smart for you to go walking around out there after dark, especially after there’ve been two back-to-back killings in the area. You have a death wish or something?”

  Stung, I said, “I had to walk my dog.”

  “Dogs can be walked in better-lit areas.” She smiled down at Chaco again.

  “Well, you were walking around out there.”

  “No I wasn’t. I was with a friend when I heard the shot, so I…” Another shrug.

  “So you ran toward it.”

  “That’s what I do.”

  “Talk about someone having a death wish. Um, besides coming here to thank you for saving my life, I’ve got a couple more questions I’d like to ask.”

  She frowned. “Such as?”

  “Why did you let the public know where I was staying?”

  The frown grew deeper. “My producer ordered me to bring up the Booth murder. And as difficult as it can be, I still love my job, and I’d like to keep it.”

  “Understood. But I’m betting he—or she—didn’t tell you to endanger me further.”

  “You’re right. She didn’t. It just slipped out.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Teddy, strange things can happen on live TV, and a momentary loss of common sense is just one of them. Next question.” She reached for her coffee mug.

  “Okay, since you insist. How well did you know Stuart Booth?”

  Ariel’s hand, in the midst of lifting her mug to her mouth, jerked, and a few drops of coffee spilled on the table. “What the hell? Where’s this third degree coming from?”

  I waited.

  After scowling at me for a moment through narrowed eyes, she said in a voice so flat it was almost spooky, “This visit isn’t about zinnias, is it?”

  “Only partially.”

  Those dark eyes narrowed even more. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that sticking your nose in other people’s business could get you shot?”

  Like all Marines, former USMC Captain Ariel Gonzales had been trained to kill, and given the size of those rockets on her helicopter, she probably had. Yet somehow I doubted she would harm me. “I’ve been told that. On several occasions.”

  “By your boyfriend?”

  “Fiancé, actually. And my mother.”

  She motioned to my taped shoulder. “They were right. Why put yourself in harm’s way?”

  “Because a friend of mine is in trouble. She won’t even be able to find a job until the real killer is identified, which means she could lose her home. And since she’s prone to depression at the best of times…”

  “You’re talking about Lila Conyers.” At my look of surprise, she added, “I not only anchor the news, I even remember it.”

  “Then you also know she lost her part-time job at the day care center because they were afraid they’d lose business if they kept her on staff.”

  She scratched Chaco’s ugly head. “Life’s never been fair for women, so why should it be any different for your friend?” Not one flicker of compassion showed on her scarred, paint-spattered face.

  “Was it fair you had to change schools and majors because of Stuart Booth?”

  “Any woman who expects fairness in this life needs an eye transplant because she sure as hell can’t see what’s going down.” She gave a joyless chuckle. “People here in the U.S. of A. act all shocked and bothered by burkas and the fact that in an Afghan court, a woman’s testimony is given only half the weight of a man’s. Good luck for a woman trying to get an assault conviction, eh? Or a rape? Ain’t-a-gonna happen. Afghan women are aware of the inequity at the outset, whereas here in our own country it mugs us from behind.”

  “Sounds to me like you may have reported Booth.”

  “Of course I did. I wasn’t the only one, either. Two other female students reported him, and guess what? Suddenly our papers started to get poor grades. My grades became so bad I was on the verge of losing my scholarship. What’s that line in the Bob Dylan song? ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know the way the wind blows.’ When the wind became a gale, I moved to Cal Poly and never looked back.”

  She stood up abruptly, making me aware that she was several inches taller than me and around twenty pounds heavier, all of it muscle. “Want some more crappy coffee?”

  “I’m full up.”

  “Good. Now, this has been a whole helluva lotta fun, but I have to finish the living room. Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Anteaters to Zebras, remember? Your Loose-Sphincter-of-the-Week segment?”

  Despite the tension in the room, I laughed. “I’m not up to that yet.”

  “No prob. We’ll air a rerun.” With that, she put a large hand on my back, and with Chaco following, steered me to the door.

  Outside, the wind had come up and low-scuttling clouds obscured the sun. I was tempted to drive down to the harbor to talk to Darleene Bauer about the status of the otter count. The fact that Booth had died before sending in his numbers continued to nag at me. Would his count have been similar to mine? But my shoulder was signaling that it wanted some rest, so I pointed the truck in the opposite direction and headed for my current home-away-from home.

  When I arrived, I found Colleen having tea with my mother.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Caro had brought Feroz with her. The Chihuahua showed a new side of his nature by the way he played with Joe’s children. Instead of his usual growls, he emitted happy yips. Instead of snapping, he licked. For the first time I could remember, he behaved more like a dog than the Aztec warrior whose name he carried.

  My mother, however, appeared unchanged. Ever the fashion statement, she wore a dove-gray silk Armani pants suit, offset by scarlet Ferragamo flats. Her eyebrows had been professionally plucked, her hair newly streaked, and her inch-long nails painted coral. In contrast, Colleen had ditched her green apron to reveal no-name jeans and a chartreuse tee shirt that shouted in blocky red letters YOU CAN’T SCARE ME—I HAVE GRANDCHILDREN.

  “What were you doing, driving around town like a maniac?” Caro grouched when she finished hugging me. “You should be in bed.”

  “I’m taking plenty of naps.”

  “Not while you’re driving, you don’t! Where were you?”

  “Out. Getting air. The ER doc said it would be good for me.” Actually, the doctor had said no such thing, but Caro had been crying so hard at the hospital the night I was shot she wouldn’t have noticed if the doctor had been speaking in ancient Sumerian.

  “Colleen said you’ve been gone over an hour, Theodora. That’s a lot of air.”

  “I needed a lot of it.”

  “How about some tea, everyone?” Colleen said, interrupting my mother’s cross-examination. “It’s peppermint, wonderful for frazzled nerves.”

  The tea turned out to be just what I needed to chase away the taste of Ariel’s bad coffee.

  “You should move to Old Town with me,” Caro muttered, between sips.

  “Where I’m at is quite nice.”

  “But it’s so small.”

  “It’s cozy.”

  “And noisy!” This, an apparent reference to the Chihuahua-and-child commotion in the other room. “How can you possibly sleep?”

  “The kids will settle down when Feroz leaves.”

  Giving up, Caro changed the subject. �
��Speaking of dogs, how’s Bonz?”

  “Doing well. The vet says he can come home tomorrow.”

  “‘Home’ being?”

  “Here, for now. Don’t worry, I’m not foolish enough to move back to the Merilee while Booth’s and Amberlyn’s killer is still on the loose.”

  “Promise me.”

  I crossed my heart. “Promise.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “I know you think I’m a fussbudget, but your stepfather is worried about you, too.”

  “Tell Al to stop worrying. I’m perfectly safe here. Remember, Joe’s the county sheriff and he carries a big gun.”

  “But how often is he actually here?”

  She had me there. The past few days had been hectic in San Sebastian County. Two murders, several serious car wrecks out on the PCH, a couple of armed robberies, and the usual domestic call-outs. My stay here had given a taste of what my life would be like once Joe and I married, but that was okay. Given my job at the zoo and my TV program, I was a busy person, too. Caro, that lily of the field who toiled not nor spun, would never understand, but I loved her anyway.

  “More tea?” Colleen asked, noting that my mother was winding herself up for another onslaught.

  As further proof that miracles do happen, the next hour passed without any more cross-examinations. Caro even unbent enough to let Colleen show her the construction on the backyard granny cottage. Live oaks and fruit trees surrounded the still-skeletal building, but when finished, the living room would have a wonderful view of the steep hillside. As it stood now, the roof and framework for the walls were up, but no doors or windows had yet been installed; gaping holes revealed where they would eventually go. Joe was right—the site was a dangerous mess, with pieces of this and that lying in wait to trip the unwary.

  Caro, aware of the damage a loose nail or rough boards could do to dove-gray silk, remained on the periphery. “It seems rather small to me,” she said to Colleen. “Are you certain you’ll be comfortable?”