Adieu at the Zoo_A Jefferson Zoo Mystery Read online

  Jodie gave me her cat-swallowed-the-canary look. “Okay, Sam. Now tell me again how you’re not seeing Nelson Farthington?”

  If nothing else, the Farthington letter distracted Jodie from the death of Jack Dubois. I decided to play along, extending the discussion longer than I otherwise might.

  “I’m sure he only wants to personalize our discussion of the grant award,” I said, “make sure I feel grateful for his Foundation’s largesse. That’s the way rich people are. They like to incur obligations.”

  “Sam,” Jodie chided, “that’s so cynical. Maybe he likes you and wants to get to know you better. You do have a likeable side, you know, much as you prefer to keep it hidden.”

  Ignoring her comment, I returned the penknife to its previous resting place, pushed the drawer closed, and glanced around at my messy desk deciding to leave everything until the morning, since my day off seemed to be on hold. “I am a cynic and I admit it,” I said. “Comes from thirty-five years of living among members of the species homo sapiens.”

  Jodie groaned. “I know. You’d be happier living life as a plant, which is about how you live anyway. I’m glad Nelson Farthington invited you to dinner. At least you’ll get to see what life is like outside of the zoo and the cocoon you call home.”

  “I’m also an introvert,” I countered, lowering my voice for my Greta Garbo impression. “I vant to be alone.”

  “You mean you’re afraid of commitment.”

  “That, too,” I agreed. “Now, can we stop the psychoanalysis and close up shop for the day? If I don’t eat soon, I may pass out. My blood sugar levels are bottoming out.”

  “Mine, too,” Jodie admitted. “Guess I’ll join you after all. As long as we don’t talk about Jack Dubois, I’ll be okay.”

  “Great.” I ushered Jodie out of my office, locked the door, and headed for the ladies room. “Gotta make a pit stop first.”

  Jodie followed me in. I was glad to see her back to normal and no longer catatonic over her Wetlands discovery. She likes to play psychologist, but in this instance, I think I beat her at her own game.

  Now, if I could work the same magic on myself. Rid my brain of images of a bloated corpse and a murderer running loose in our small town. Memories of Hitchcock’s movie Psycho, danced in my head. One thing for certain, I planned to postpone my usual nighttime shower until the morning.

  Chapter 10

  Friday morning found me running late. I’d showered way too long, all to the pulsating beat of hot water massaging my aching muscles as I ruminated on the events of the previous night and reviewed the hectic schedule I faced at my office later in the day. What had I done to bring on this backache? When nothing came to mind, I blamed my mattress.

  One of these days, I planned to find time to buy a new one—one of those magic-foam things that promises a deep, restful night’s sleep of the kind I rarely experience. However, mattress shopping would have to go on hold this weekend. Ginger and I were planning to meet at nine sharp Saturday morning for a day trip to Benson’s Gold Mine near Charlotte, North Carolina.

  It’s one of the first documented gold finds in the U.S. of A. We’d been postponing this particular trip for nearly a year, what with Ginger’s art projects, her husband’s business, and my plant acquisition trips. Finally, we vowed nothing would stand in the way of our goal of panning for gold in the stream waters at Benson’s mine, not even murder now that I think about it, although that alternative wasn’t included in our original pact.

  The next day’s adventures aside, I still had to get through black Friday, which I’d initially planned to take off from work. I toweled off, dressed, and made my way to the kitchen where I tossed a bagel in the toaster, smothered the result with cream cheese and chives, downed a cup-and-a-half of coffee, and called it breakfast.

  A quick spritz of water on my houseplants and I was ready to roll into the zoo on the last working day of the week. I managed to stroll into my office an hour later than usual, which wasn’t bad, considering.

  My secretary Maddy greeted me with her usual ‘hey,’ one of the southern expressions along with y’all that I’ve picked up since living here. Both are handy and help me fit in. “Hey, Maddy,” I replied, as I swung by her desk without stopping.

  “Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for you. This has got to be the first day all year you haven’t been here by seven-thirty.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Hello-o-o. It’s only nine-ten. I’m barely officially late, and besides, I thought you were taking the morning off after your late night hobnobbing with the Zoo Alliance biggies.”

  “Since today is Friday, I decided I’d rather leave early instead,” she paused, “if that’s okay with you, I mean.”

  “That’s fine, but what’s the urgency this morning?”

  I assumed she was impatiently waiting to hear the gory details pertaining to the discovery of the murdered body of Jack Dubois, but her Cheshire cat grin clued me as to what might be occupying her mind instead.

  “I guess you saw the note I left last night?”

  “I saw it, and so did half the zoo, I expect.”

  Maddy remained nonplussed like most of my staff when I employ sarcasm. I’m not sure if my remarks go over their head or they want me to think so.

  “No,” she added, “but everyone’s twittering about it this morning even so.”

  I moved from sarcasm to outrage. “You mean twittering on Twitter?”

  “No, I mean gossiping. We’re all wondering whether you’re gonna say yes to dinner or decide to jeopardize the zoo’s Farthington Foundation funding by turning Nelson down.”

  “I’m glad to hear everyone holds me in such high esteem.”

  I now fully appreciated the spot I was in—suffer through an agonizingly uncomfortable dinner with Nelson Farthington tonight or metamorphose into a full-fledged pariah at my place of employment.

  “Of course, I’m not having dinner with him tonight,” I said as I unlocked my office door. “I have other plans.” I marched inside and closed the door behind me. Let them twitter about that, I thought, as I picked up the phone and called Dan Saunders on his direct line.

  “Morning, Dan.”

  “Hey, Sam. What’s up?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering. What happened after I left last night? Have you learned any more about Jack Dubois?”

  “Nothing much to report. The sheriff said he’d order an autopsy to determine COD.”

  “COD?”

  “Cause of death.”

  “Oh, right. I remember hearing the term on some TV cop show.”

  “You watch cop shows?”

  “Sometimes,” I replied, not wanting to disappoint him.

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “I’m not telling,” I said, mostly because I couldn’t remember the name of a show that might impress him. Not that I was into impressing Dan Saunders. Really.

  “Here’s the bad news,” he said, turning serious. “Andy LaRue hasn’t shown up for work. His shift started at seven this morning and he’s still not in. I’ve telephoned his cell and his landline, got nothing. I’ve even called his mother. She says she hasn’t heard from him since around nine last night when he stopped over to tell her about his cousin. She said she tried calling him this morning too, and couldn’t reach him. We’re both worried.”

  “Maybe he’s somehow involved in his cousin’s death,” I offered, pausing for breath. “Maybe he panicked about the discovery of the body, and now he’s on the lam.”

  I could hear Dan smothering a laugh. “On the lam? What have you been watching, re-runs of Dragnet?”

  “It’s a term my parents used,” I said, trying to redeem myself.

  “I’m sorry for laughing, but I haven’t heard that in years.”

  “Go ahead, have your fun.”

  “Anyway, to answer your question or suggestion or whatever it was, I’ve been wondering the same thing about him. On the other hand, maybe he’s the next victim. You know how An
dy is—all Barney Fife bravado. If he suspected someone of killing his cousin, he’d hunt him down and confront him. That’s my real worry.”

  “Sounds like this whole situation is going from bad to worse. Maddy tells me Bob’s called a meeting for ten, and I expect he’ll pepper me with a million questions I can’t answer.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, I’m down for the same meeting. Have you talked with Jodie yet this morning?”

  “No. I don’t think she’s come in yet.”

  “Yes, she’s here. Or, at least she was, half-an-hour ago. Apparently, Andy’s mother telephoned her this morning, too.”

  “I hope she hasn’t gone out looking for him. That’s all we need, to have her turn up missing.”

  I shouldn’t have worried. On the mention of her name, Jodie burst into my office auburn curls flying.

  “I’ll see you at ten,” I told Dan, “Jodie just arrived.” I hung up the phone and scrutinized my sidekick. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have guessed she was hung over. “Have a seat,” I said, pointing to the only chair not covered with a stack of papers.

  “I can’t sit, Sam. I’m too agitated. Andy is missing, and I’m worried somebody murdered him just like they murdered Jack.”

  “I know. I just talked with Dan. Where have you been?”

  “I went down to Wetlands as soon as I got in this morning to look for the missing shoes.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No, and I searched everywhere, even put on my waders and walked all over the place. Nothing.”

  “Odd about the shoes,” I said.

  “That’s not all that’s odd. We’ve got a killer on the loose around here, Sam, maybe a serial killer, and who knows where he’ll strike next? Andy’s mother is frantic. And it’s a good thing Jack’s mother passed or she’d be having a nervous breakdown about now, too. Of course, nobody knows where Jack’s father is. In fact, I’m not sure anyone knows if he had a father.”

  “Time for you to calm down,” I said, pointing again to the empty chair. “You’re not making any sense. Of course Jack Dubois had a father, everybody does, and I suspect his last name might be Dubois.”

  “In that case, you’d be wrong,” she said, sliding the chair closer to my desk before grabbing the edge with both hands to steady herself as she sat down. “Dubois is Jack’s mother’s last name. She and Andy’s mother are siblings, or rather, were siblings. She got pregnant with Jack by some no-good drug addict and died of an overdose herself last year after bequeathing her habit to her son. Jack was a good kid born into a bad situation.”

  “I think you have a soft spot in your heart for Jack.”

  “Only because the odds were always stacked against him and I have a thing for underdogs, which is why I’ve been a Cubbies fan ever since I spent a summer at my cousin’s place in Chicago.”

  I’d never heard about her Chicago trip, but I wasn’t about to ask. “I wish there were something you and I could do to find Andy,” I told her, “but Dan says the authorities are working on it. We have to leave them to their job. I wonder if the killer even stayed in the area. Maybe he’s some drifter who ran into Jack at a local bar.”

  “Oh, the killer’s still around all right,” Jodie said, as if possessed with paranormal powers. “Some local drug dealer is my bet and if Sheriff Joyner and his Keystone Kops don’t find Andy and nail the SOB who killed Jack in the next twenty-four hours, I may have to take on the job myself.”

  Now I knew she was delusional. “Maybe the best thing for you would be to take today off, go home, rest, watch TV or read a good book and get your mind off Jack Dubois.”

  “I appreciate the offer, Sam, but I can’t.” She reached for her cell phone and checked the time. “I’ve got a meeting with Bob at ten. I suppose it’s about last night…”

  “I’m down for the same meeting,” I said, echoing Dan, “and so is Dan. I expect Bob will want a blow-by-blow description of everything that happened, beginning with why you happened to be the one sent down after hours to clean the catch basin.”

  Jodie shrugged. “We drew straws,” she said, “and I lost.”

  Chapter 11

  I told Jodie I had a couple of calls to make before our ten o’clock with Bob, and I’d stop by her office on the way to the meeting. Once she left, I reached for Nelson Farthington’s note and dialed the digits neatly penned at the bottom of the page. The number connected me to his cell, though I’d half expected a parlor maid to answer.

  “Mr. Farthington, this is Samantha Clark from Jefferson Zoo.”

  “Good morning, Samantha, and please call me Nelson. I’m about to apologize to you again, this time for my spur-of-the-moment dinner invitation.”

  Did that mean he was about to cancel? If so, I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. “No apologies necessary,” I assured him.

  “Does that mean you’re free to join me?” He sounded almost happy, or at least somewhat pleased, which surprised me.

  “Um, sure. I haven’t any other plans tonight, so I’ll be happy to have dinner with you.”

  I heard a slight chuckle on the other end of the line. “Great. And I’m not offended to be your last resort.”

  I tried to disguise my embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I guess that didn’t come out right. Let me re-phrase. I’d be delighted to join you for dinner. One caveat, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The only meats I eat are poultry and seafood.”

  “No problem. I can pick you up around seven. Will that work?”

  “That’s fine.” I gave him my address and directions to my house in case he wasn’t familiar with my side of town, but he said his GPS would find it.

  “See you at seven, then,” he added, ringing off.

  I had to walk past Maddy in order to reach Jodie’s office and of course she asked me to please change my mind about dinner with Nelson Farthington. I decided she could wait to hear that I’d accepted his invitation.

  When we were out of range of Maddy, I told Jodie about agreeing to meet Nelson Farthington for dinner. I thought she’d tease me about it, but instead she gave me a stricken look.

  “I hope he’s not the killer,” she said.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am serious, Sam. Nelson Farthington might be respectable now, but he was a wild teenager, so wild his parents sent him off to Europe to some boarding school in England. He didn’t come home for years. Not ’til he finished college. All that time over there, who knows what he was doing? Think about the London Strangler. Some rich dude who got his jollies slitting women’s throats.”

  “I think you’re confounding Jack the Ripper and the London Strangler. You need to lay off Sherlock Holmes,” I said. “No wonder you can’t sleep at night.”

  “Well, just be careful. Keep your phone handy and text me if anything and I mean anything, seems the least bit suspicious.”

  “The only thing I find suspicious is why he wants to have dinner with me in the first place.”

  “You underestimate your sex appeal,” Jodie told me with a straight face.

  “I never knew I had any.”

  “That’s what I mean,” she said, holding open the door to Bob’s office suite. Through the conference room window I could see Dan Saunders sitting across the table from Bob and Nate. He smiled and waved as we entered.

  “Go on in,” Bob’s secretary told us, “they’re waiting for you.” She made it sound like an execution.

  Most of the senior staff, including Ginger, had arrived ahead of Jodie and me, and were seated around the table patiently waiting to hear more details about the previous night’s remarkable events.

  The only person straggling in later than the two of us was our Public Relations Manager, Rhonda Brinkley, a blonde former TV news anchor with an ego the size of the elephant exhibit. Once Rhonda settled in, Bob opened the meeting by passing around a copy of an article from the morning paper. The headline read: Local Man Found Dead at Zo
o. A few sentences followed about Jack Dubois’s background and employment with Mooney Construction. The account listed cause of death as unknown.

  The story appeared on page two of our local rag and Bob took a few minutes to thank Rhonda for keeping the news off the front page. I glanced over the article noticing no mention of the suspicious circumstances surrounding Jack Dubois’s death, another coup for Rhonda. I had to give her credit—the woman was good at her job.

  After going overboard with kudos to Rhonda, Bob directed a series of questions to Jodie and me, in the middle of which Nate tried to harass me about imagined problems at Wetlands before Bob cut him off and turned back to questioning us about finding the body.

  “I did notice something that might interest the sheriff,” I said.

  Bob’s face perked up. “Which is?”

  “The body was tied with Bee Line rope.” I noticed Ginger’s surprised look, and regretted not telling her about the rope before the meeting rather than surprising her. I shrugged an apology to Ginger. “It’s a rope I’ve seen in Design, which Ginger can tell you about.”

  She nodded matter-of-factly. “We use a lot of it and there’s always some lying around. Anyone could have picked it up, including the Mooney Construction workers.”

  Bob motioned to Dan with one of his little hand flips that we’d all learned means, ‘you take it from here.’

  “I’ll let the sheriff know about it,” Dan said. Turning to Ginger, he added, “and I’ll relay your point about Mooney so he doesn’t send someone out here to harass your staff.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it,” Ginger replied. “We’ve got more than enough on our plate right now.”

  Bob raised an eyebrow then nodded, signaling he’d heard Ginger’s message and he’d deal with her workload issues another time.

  At some point, Jodie and I satisfied Bob’s curiosity about last night’s events, or he decided he could wring no more details from either of us. He ended the inquiry by reminding everyone to report back to him immediately with any new information about Jack Dubois, and to answer no questions about the incident from people in the media. All press requests were to be referred to Rhonda on pain of death—or worse.