Night Kill (14 page)

If I reported it, Calvin might get in trouble for allowing a safety hazard, making my prospects as a bird keeper even dimmer.

If I kept quiet and Wallace found out, it might terminate my prospects as any keeper at all.

Then there was the “Iris the Idiot” factor.

This, too, was familiar.

My brain must have taken a bigger hit than I realized. Keeping quiet and avoiding a thorough investigation risked a repeat, possibly jolting Calvin or a visitor.

Sighing, I sucked it up—again—and trudged painfully to the Administration building. By the time I got there, I’d realized that telling Calvin first was a good idea. I pushed on the door to the Administration building and it flew open, yanked from the inside by a big middle-aged man whose pink polo shirt clashed with an unhealthy red face.

“No one talks to me like that. No one gets away with that,” he insisted over his shoulder as he shoved past me.

At my raised eyebrows, Jackie said only, “Denny.” She listened in as I called Calvin and delivered the short version of what had happened. I started toward Wallace’s closed door.

“No sunshine in there today,” Jackie warned.

I stopped. “What did Denny do this time?”

Jackie scanned the office for witnesses. “That jerk threw his popcorn bag on the ground next to the trash can. Denny asked him if he shits next to the toilet.”

A grin surprised me by burbling through the day’s traumas. I straightened out my face.

“And,” Jackie went on, “Wallace got the estimate for resurfacing the Children’s Zoo asphalt after it got wrecked by the flooding. It’s twice what it was last time. And two of the petting zoo goats are having a pecking order issue. They were slamming their heads together and one backed into a preschooler and tripped him and he knocked out a tooth. That was about an hour ago.”

Oh, boy.

Wallace glowered at my news and decided he had to make a personal inspection of the accident site. “When things are bad, I can always count on you to make them worse,” he snarled as we walked back to the World of Birds.

Calvin met us there. He’d called Maintenance, but no one was reachable. The three of us eyed the heat lamp and its reflector. Calvin first traced the cord to the outlet to be sure I really had unplugged it, then bapped the reflector with his finger a couple of times to confirm it really wasn’t charged. That knocked loose the cord, which had been draped over the reflector and hidden by foliage. He inspected the cord. Two inches of plastic covering were melted, bright copper showing. We all nodded thoughtfully. Cord fell over reflector, which was hot from the bulb. Insulation melted, wire touched reflector, reflector was charged.

“This could of killed you,” Calvin said.

“The bulb was burned out,” I said, not sure what my point was.

Wallace took the cord from Calvin and looked at the damaged section. “The bulb isn’t necessary—you completed the circuit. Did you get burned?”

“Nothing to bother with.” They both seemed to know about electricity.

Wallace turned to Calvin. “You aren’t using the right wire and you shouldn’t have this where visitors can get at it. This setup is an accident waiting to happen. We got a big surplus of accidents and don’t need any more.”

His voice wasn’t quite that of a foreman chiding an employee. There was a faint note of triumph, of evening a score.

Calvin’s face shifted from puzzled to truculent. “You hold on a minute. This don’t make sense. I never put a heat lamp that low—it should be three feet higher, the food platform too. And those cords don’t melt that easy. What was it doing draped over the reflector anyhow?”

He didn’t sound like an employee being chided.

I’d never seen them interact before except in keeper meetings. What was up with those two?

Wallace’s face was stony. “So you think Iris fooled with your setup?”

“I did not!”

“Coulda been a visitor.” Calvin didn’t sound convinced or convincing.

“Work with Maintenance to get something better. I want all of these replaced by tomorrow,” Wallace said and left, muttering about accident reports.

Calvin stayed in the aviary. He went to the tool shed hidden in a back corner and pulled out the stepladder. He inspected the World of Birds thoroughly. None of the other heat lamps was reachable without the ladder. Lacking any instructions, I stood and watched. Finally he removed the defective fixture and pushed the food platform higher up the pole that supported it. He examined the pole, and shook his head. Insisting I hadn’t messed with it was futile and possibly humiliating, so I kept quiet. On impulse, I took the damaged fixture from him, removed the bulb, and climbed the stepladder to try it in another fixture. It lit up. It had just been loose, not burned out.

“Teenage boys messing around,” Calvin finally diagnosed. “Pulled the food platform and heat lamp down, left the cord touching it. Seen visitors do a lot of strange things but not this one.”

I couldn’t tell if he was covering his own rear or if he really believed that.

I wondered if I had seriously underestimated how dissatisfied he was with me. Enough to set up a nasty practical joke, possibly a fatal one? Then I thought about the accident with Raj. Was something really malicious going on that had nothing to do with Calvin? If so, who and why? But it was possible I was at fault for Raj getting out. Maybe I was unbelievably accident prone. Someone had pawed through my clothing and set my house on fire…

We went back to finishing up the daily routine, my head aching with bruises and questions.

Calvin usually said, “Time to head for the barn” at 4:00 PM. Today he hadn’t even that many words.

Wallace had left a note on my time card. Instead of punching out, I had to hobble to the Administration building again, plenty of time to consider the possibilities. Wallace thought I’d screwed up the light fixture myself and hadn’t admitted it. I was about to be fired or invited to resign. Calvin had complained about me and I was being transferred to Children’s Zoo or the gardening crew. Or maybe a thorough reaming out with threats of what would happen next time. That sounded like the best-case scenario. I gimped into Wallace’s office with my jaw clenched, vowing to keep my mouth shut and not make a bad scene worse.

Nothing good ever happened in that room. Wallace rummaged around on his desk, not looking at me, and pulled out a piece of paper. “L.A. Zoo’s looking for a keeper with carnivore experience. This is the ad. You got the qualifications.” He met my eye, apparently with some effort. “Now I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get rid of you or anything. None of you keepers ever believe I could be on your side, but the truth is, I’m thinking you might want to get back to the cats and start fresh at the same time. I’m thinking of what I might want in your position, and if it isn’t what you want, forget it.” That said, he squared his shoulders and waited.

Instead of responding to this little speech with a heartfelt “Huh?” I mumbled something about thinking it over and stumbled off. Wallace called me back to hand me the ad.

I was so flummoxed that I forgot to worry about another break-in until I was nearly home. But I found an undemolished house and unpoisoned dogs. After feeding the dogs and Bessie and eating my chicken potpie, I sat on the floor for some canine consolation. Range seemed less depressed about Rick’s disappearance and more resigned to getting his affection from me. Winnie wanted a walk, as always, but I didn’t feel like strolling around my neighborhood in the dark.

Buffered against near-death willies by loyal companions, I considered the incident in the aviary. Dr. Dawson said Wallace was concerned about accidents. No surprise the foreman had lit on the L.A. job as a way to ease me out. From his perspective, I was the straggler in the herd. “I can count on you to make things worse.” That hurt worse than the bruises.

My second week on Birds was not going well.

I set aside all the other mysteries and considered the puzzling dynamics between Wallace and Calvin. I didn’t know much about Calvin before I started working with him, and I didn’t know much now. Aside from the clumsy incident with the eagle, he was hard working and conscientious. He clearly wanted the best for his birds. Wallace seemed to give him a free hand, maybe because Wallace didn’t give Birds much of a priority. Who could tell me about Calvin and his relationship with the foreman? Jackie and Hap came to mind, mostly because they would talk to me. Kip Harrison, the head primate keeper, and Sam Bates, the hoof stock keeper, both knew Calvin better, but they weren’t likely to share gossip with me.

This transition to Birds was exhausting and nerve-wracking. Which was most at risk—my job or my life? The more I thought about it, the more significant that question became.

On the other hand, Rick was not the same festering wound in my heart that he had been. The wound hadn’t healed, but it had changed, become sadder but less crippling somehow. I couldn’t forgive him, but I didn’t hate him anymore. And I missed him. If he were with me, at least I could yell at him, demand to know what he thought he was doing that night, tell him how bad this was for me.

I pushed the dogs aside, checked the locks on doors and windows, took a hot shower to ease my aches, and gave it up for the day. I never had gotten to share the story of the house fire with my coworkers.

Chapter Twelve

“Did they steal any of your ID? Your checks?” Jackie had sunk her teeth into my housebreaking. She was mumbling around a mouthful of Polish sausage with sauerkraut, her ruby nails digging into the bun. It was too wet for sitting outside; we were camped in the café. Peacocks wandered disconsolately outside, deprived of their opportunities to mooch.

“I don’t think so. No, the police asked about that. The checks were dumped out, but they were all there. My ID was in my wallet with me.”

“So what did they take?”

“I don’t know. I’m still getting everything straightened out. They left the TV and DVD player.”

“You might want to change your bank account.”

“Police said it was an amateur, not anyone good at robbing houses.”

“Sounds like rotten kids looking for drugs.”

I didn’t think so, but my guesses weren’t any better.

I gnawed on my own sausage and winced as Jackie squirted more catsup on hers. Catsup and sauerkraut? Gross. I had arranged an early lunch for the two of us, using my break-in story as the lure. Two elderly women were the only other customers in the café.

“Jackie, I don’t get why anyone would break into my house and I don’t understand Calvin either. Tell me about him.” There, the transition was inept, but the question was nicely nonspecific. Far better than “Does Calvin like to set lethal booby traps?” or “Does he hate women?”

Jackie considered the matter. “He’s always kinda cranky, not much fun. And so straight-arrow. No bad words. No bad thoughts as far as I can tell.” She shifted in her seat and tried another approach. “His wife died a few years ago. He wasn’t such a grump when she was around. I suppose he blames Wallace.”

“Huh! Major bad blood. Why?”

“Not bad blood between them exactly. Just bad blood from Calvin. Wallace doesn’t hate Calvin, only the other way around. I think.”

“So why?”

Jackie picked at strands of sauerkraut, taking her time. “Well, back when I first started, about four, five years ago, Calvin had his daughter, Janet, working in the office, and didn’t she think she was something special.” Jackie’s lips thinned. “She got hired as the bookkeeper. Mr. Crandall thought the world of her. Then she and Wallace started dating and there was no living with her. She was forever having a better idea how to do things in the office. She’d yak about it until somebody made us do it her way. The queen bee for sure. But she got hers.” Jackie delicately licked her fingertips. “I mean, who would have thought she’d have her fingers in the till? She was such a little do-gooder, Christian and everything. But she had sticky fingers and got caught and fired. That was the end of marrying Wallace.”

“Marry Wallace? God, what a narrow escape!” Wallace in a romance? Sounded like a rhino taking up ballet.

“Probably got the job ’cause of her dad and she was short and perky. Mr. Crandall loves that kinda woman. Maybe she had a drug problem and that’s why she took the money.” Jackie brightened at the thought. “Anyway, we had this bomb scare so we all cleared out of the building.” She finished her sausage and sipped her diet cola. “This money was sitting around from a special Easter egg hunt the zoo set up to get all these kids in. It was awful, millions of them, crawling all over the grounds for these fake eggs in the rain. But it brought in some extra gate receipts. She was going over it at the end of the day when we got the bomb call. So we all had to stand in the rain for, like, hours while the bomb guys went over the whole building. They should have sent us home.” Jackie pulled out a cigarette and tapped the butt on the table, still bitter.

“And?”

“Oh, the till was empty when we got back in. Wallace asked everybody, then he called the police. We had to let them search us and they found the money in Janet’s purse. Nobody could believe it, at first. She was crying, saying she didn’t do it. Said she was set up. Yeah, right. Mr. Crandall went all fatherly to her, but he made Wallace fire her. He wouldn’t fire anybody himself. She never did admit she took the money.”

“Calvin thought she was innocent?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, she was his little darling. I heard him yelling at Wallace to be a man and stand up for her. He figured Wallace wanted to break up with her, so he framed her. Framed her. Just how likely is that, I ask you?”

It was easy to picture Jackie hovering outside Wallace’s door, head cocked like a serval listening for a mouse.

“So anyway, Janet disappeared, thank God. The zoo got the money back, and Calvin stayed mad at Wallace. Like he thinks Wallace was unjust ’cause he can’t face his daughter being a thief.”

“Jackie, you know everything,” I said.

“Oh, not really. I just keep my eyes open,” she said, crossing her legs modestly. “Anyway, then his wife died. So I figure he blames Wallace for that, too.” She piled up her trash, ready to leave.