The Anteater of Death Read Free Page A

for years, started getting worse, so he jumped in to fill the breach. He’s always been good about helping her. And it kept him busy.”
    “Didn’t he have a job?”
    “He dabbled in real estate. Some, anyway. Other than that, I guess his job was being Jeanette’s husband.”
    “Sounds like a kept man.”
    A harsh epitaph, and unfair. Grayson worked harder for Jeanette than most men did at their nine-to-fives. In my mind, I could see his round, eager face turned toward her, anxiously awaiting her next request. Not my idea of the perfect husband, perhaps, but as they say, it takes all kinds.
    “You’re being unfair. He didn’t just sit around counting Jeanette’s money. If the zoo needed anything, from a gross of paper clips to new plantings for the cheetah exhibit, he was our point man.”
    “I’ll take your word that the victim earned his keep.”
    We were both silent until I asked, “What’s going to happen to Lucy?”
    “Since the San Sebastian County Animal Shelter doesn’t have suitable quarters for a giant anteater, we’ll have to leave her here until…Well, until the zoo makes up its mind.”
    Which meant that the anteater’s ultimate fate lay in Barry Fields’ insensitive hands.
    Unless I could prove Grayson was responsible for his own demise, Lucy was doomed.

C HAPTER T HREE
    About an hour later, the sheriff finished interviewing everyone and released us. The earthly remains of Grayson Harrill were taken away to wherever earthly remains go, and soon afterward the crime scene techs departed.
    Lucy remained distraught. Despite my efforts to soothe her, she paced back and forth along the holding pen fence, hissing like a snake. She wanted back into her big enclosure, but on the zoo director’s orders she stayed off-exhibit. Perhaps permanently.
    Having done all I could for her, I hopped into my electric zoo cart and continued my rounds. Next stop was Monkey Mania, the quarter-acre open-air exhibit where fifteen squirrel monkeys mingled freely with zoo visitors. I’d fed the monkeys first thing in the morning, but because of the unfortunate event in Lucy’s enclosure, was late cleaning out their night quarters, a series of room-sized cages hidden amid the brush behind the exhibit itself. As I hosed down the last cage, I heard an all-too-familiar voice.
    “Teddy, I need to talk to you!” My mother.
    I froze, hoping she wouldn’t see me. With everything that had happened, I wasn’t ready to deal with her.
    “Did you hear me, Theodora? I know you’re in there because I can see that red hair of yours through the leaves!”
    So much for avoiding her. I turned off the hose and waded through the troop of monkeys that had assembled outside the night quarters door, hoping for an extra handout.
    “Sorry, guys, no more Monkey Chow until five.”
    Marlon, the big Alpha male—if a two-pound monkey can be said to be big—snuck his hand into my pocket hoping to find a tasty worm. When his hand came up empty, he shrieked at me in outrage.
    “Told you so, Marlon. Now go entertain the kiddies.”
    For once Marlon did as he was told and led his troop away from the cages and onto the exhibit’s gravel path. A tour group, noisy third-graders bussed up from Monterey, thirty miles south, cheered as the monkeys gamboled among them for several yards before taking to the trees. Having struck out with me, the monkeys began foraging, looking for leaves, beetles, and small birds. An omnivorous species, they weren’t fussy.
    “Theodora! I’m waiting!”
    “Coming,” I muttered, as I emerged from the brush.
    Today Caroline Piper Bentley Mallory Huffgraf Petersen, looking at least a decade younger than her fifty-two years, was dressed in a fuchsia Lanvin dress offset by a silver Fendi handbag and fuchsia-and-white polka dot Ghesquiere pumps, an outfit hilariously out of place in a zoo. Since she usually dressed appropriately, the outfit confused me until I remembered that one of her favorite charities, the San