The Anteater of Death Read Free

sick.”
    “Teddy, that’s not what I meant.”
    Back to first names. Not wanting to let our personal history sidetrack me, I said, “Sheriff Rejas, I’m not sure what I did then. It’s horrible, finding someone clawed to pieces.” I breathed deeply. “After I finished upchucking, I radioed the park rangers. And the head keeper.”
    Zorah, who had followed us, looked up expectantly.
    Joe ignored her. “When you called in the emergency, did the park rangers respond immediately?”
    “As soon as they finished their Earl Grey and crumpets.”
    He shot me a look. “No point in getting smart, Ms. Bentley. I’m just doing my job.”
    “Yes, they showed up within seconds. With first aid kits and rifles.”
    He glanced into the enclosure, where the crime scene photographer was packing up his camera equipment. “Has the anteater attacked anyone before?”
    “Her former keeper, whom she didn’t like. But Lucy didn’t kill him, merely scratched him on the leg.” As far as zookeepers were concerned, anything less than twenty stitches was a scratch, and he’d only required nineteen.
    The photographer backed out of the enclosure, looking as sick as I felt.
    Oblivious, Joe resumed his questioning. “What do you think brought on the attack?”
    “It could have been anything. Merely intruding into her territory might have set her off. She doesn’t even like it when I enter, and she’s used to me. A stranger would be taking his life in his hands.” Oops. The dead man certainly had. “Do you know who he is, ah, was? I couldn’t tell from his face.” What was left of it.
    Joe leaned toward me, lowering his voice. “I don’t want this to get around yet, but his driver’s license indicates that he’s Grayson Harrill. The deputy I sent up the hill to notify his wife radioed me a few minutes ago that she collapsed. Her doctor’s with her now.”
    My nausea returned, but at least not to the retching point. “Oh, Joe, you can’t let Jeanette see him like this!”
    “We’ll make the official ID from dental records. The condition he’s in, it’s the only thing possible for now. We can confirm with DNA later.”
    Grayson’s wife was the great-great-granddaughter of Edwin Gunn, the zoo’s founder. Jeanette—who’d been my roommate at Miss Pridewell’s Academy—was a voting member of the Gunn Trust, the organization which ran the zoo.
    Now I was more alarmed than ever on Lucy’s behalf. She was just an anteater being an anteater, and as such, blameless in the attack. But I doubted that the billion-dollar Gunn Trust or its insurance carriers would interpret her actions in such a benign manner. Regardless of her popularity with our zoo visitors, the Trust could order her traded to another zoo. Even worse, they might follow Barry Fields’ advice.
    Grasping at straws, I said, “When you get through questioning everyone, it might be worth your while to find out what Grayson was doing up here. He wasn’t all that cuddly with animals.”
    Joe frowned. “Isn’t he one of the Zoo Guild members? Like his wife?”
    “Sure. So’s my mother and she doesn’t even own a cat. A lot of the Guild members see community service as their civic duty, others perform it for political reasons. Sure, the majority of them like animals. Grayson did, too, at least in the abstract, but he didn’t care for close encounters with them. You should have seen his face a couple of weeks ago when someone stuck an adolescent saki in his arms for a publicity picture. He looked at the poor little thing as if it were a bomb ready to explode.”
    “Adolescent saki?”
    “Small white-faced monkey. Weighs about a pound.”
    “If he was uncomfortable with animals, why did he spend so much time at the zoo? People have told me he was here almost every day.”
    “That’s because he’d taken over for his wife. As one of the Gunns, she did a lot of office-type stuff around here besides her Guild work, but her migraines, which she’s suffered from