Adieu at the Zoo_A Jefferson Zoo Mystery Read online

  Despite a long history of medicinal and food use, the plants are highly toxic, including the Sago Palm, a popular misnamed houseplant that is highly poisonous to both pets and humans. In fact, the toxins of certain varieties are so potent they’re capable of altering a person’s DNA if ingested, which got me wondering if Jack DuBois might have died from cycad poisoning.

  Taking a calculated risk, I asked Nelson if he’d heard about the death of Jack Dubois.

  “I did, and I feel really bad about it. I knew the kid.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, he used to visit here with his friend, Tony Pope. Their families worked for my parents, and I knew both boys personally. Jack’s grandmother used to bring him to work with her,” Nelson said. “He was a pip, that kid. I was very sorry to hear about his untimely death.”

  I wanted to hear more about Jack Dubois’s relationship with the Farthingtons, but we’d arrived at a small greenhouse reserved specifically for the cactus and succulents collection, which turned out to be Nelson’s favorite. He rambled on rapturously about the Lophophora Divine Cacti, also known as the Peyote cactus, and the Hoodia Gordonii, a South African succulent whose flowers smell like rotten meat.

  Fortunately, no purple blooms were in evidence or I might have lost a large fraction of my dinner. An extract from the Hoodia plant, creatively named p57, is thought to be a powerful appetite suppressant and consequently in great demand in western countries as a diet aid. The San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert are known to have eaten the stems to ward off hunger and thirst. I wondered how Farthington II managed to import a Hoodia and decided to ask.

  “Your father has a CITES certificate, I presume?” Which would surprise me, since the certificates allowing the import of plants like the Hoodia plant are tightly restricted. CITES stands for Convention on International Trade for Endangered Species, the organization that regulates and licenses the import, export, and exchange of plants and animals covered by the Convention.

  “Farthington Industries has a certificate,” Nelson explained, jogging my memory with regard to the dubious link between Farthington Industries and Big Pharma.

  After that reminder and learning of the Dubois connection, I was ready to wrap up the evening and hoped Nelson III felt the same way.

  “I have an early morning tomorrow,” I ventured, “much as I’m enjoying the tour of your father’s collection.” I thought I sounded gracious, given that Jodie’s warnings were still dancing around my head.

  Nelson looked somewhat taken aback. “I hope I haven’t bored you.”

  “Oh, not at all,” I assured him. “I’m afraid the exhibit opening today is catching up with me.”

  “Then perhaps we can do this again? There’s still more of the collection to see.”

  “I’d love to,” I assured him, hoping I hadn’t jeopardized my latest grant proposal to the family Foundation.

  Chapter 15

  Nelson drove me home in his Porsche with the top down since the May night was particularly warm. During the ride, he plied me with questions about the zoo’s Hort suppliers and once or twice hinted about what he called off-the-radar growers. I wondered if he was angling for the names of illicit traders? If so, I was the wrong person to ask.

  “I wish I could help,” I told him, “but off-the radar growers are outside my areas of expertise.”

  “I don’t mean to give you the wrong impression. I thought perhaps you might know some local traders, since I’m always on the lookout for new plant sources for my father.”

  I felt I’d missed something important here, which caused my thoughts to return to the connection between the Farthington family and Jack Dubois. Were the Farthingtons involved in the illegal plant trade? If so, did Jack Dubois find out about it and try to blackmail them and Nelson killed him for it? Or rather, had him killed since I couldn’t picture either Farthington II or III dirtying their hands with the job personally.

  My mind reeled with unanswered questions as Nelson pulled up to the curb in front of my house and vaulted out to open the car door and walk me to my front door. I had no intention of inviting him in, and stood on the porch thanking him for an enjoyable evening. I held out my hand, remembering to lighten my too-firm handshake. Nelson took my hand gently as I expected, but then leaned over and planted a kiss on my cheek, which I hadn’t expected.

  “I had a lovely evening, and hope to see you again soon,” he said, before bounding down my front steps.

  As I entered my house and turned to close the front door, I noticed a pickup truck pass by, which resembled the one Dan Saunders drove. By the time I caught the door to keep it from closing, the truck had turned the corner out of view.

  Maybe I was seeing things. Or was it Dan, perhaps stopping by to tell me they’d found Andy? And if the truck belonged to Dan, had he witnessed Nelson Farthington kissing me goodnight?

  I kicked the door shut with my foot, flipped the deadbolt and collapsed onto my couch in a snit, sleeping the night away dressed in my new dinner-date clothes.

  I had a pretty good idea I wouldn’t need them anytime soon.

  §

  I woke early Saturday morning disgusted with myself for sleeping on the couch in my new clothes. I hadn’t even brushed my teeth the night before and my breath smelled worse than a hyena’s scent markings.

  Not that I’ve ventured that close to a hyena, but I know they mark their territory with their anal scent gland, so I’m making a broad assumption here. Our zoo has two spotted hyenas—the laughing kind—and the more I see of them, the happier I am they’re well-fed and not prowling my backyard at midnight, crushing the bones of every mammal within earshot.

  After showering, I washed my wrinkled and sweaty new clothes by hand and draped them over the shower rod to dry. I planned on re-running the same outfit in case my dinner date with Dan Saunders was still on for Sunday night. Amazing how much better things look in the morning after a good night’s sleep on a comfortable couch.

  I headed into the kitchen where I made a pot of coffee, popped some bread in the toaster and with the gold mine visit in mind, glanced through the North Carolina Historic Sites website on my laptop while I ate.

  I love treasure hunts. Visions of spotting a large gold nugget in my panning tray had been dancing in my head for the past week. Maybe I could sell it for enough to buy a comfortable mattress.

  If my wishful thinking hints at the pitiable salaries zoo employees enjoy, I wouldn’t disabuse anyone of the idea. I blame the gullible public. For reasons I fail to comprehend, people unwittingly subscribe to the idea that zoo jobs are glamorous, like working on a Hollywood set or joining an archeological dig. As a result, every open position attracts a bevy of applicants, which kicks in the supply and demand factor of market economics, keeping our salaries hovering slightly above the poverty level.

  The truth is, zoo jobs are like any other, including archeology and movie making—a lot of hard work. If you love what you’re doing, then it’s great, but if scooping poop gets you down, you might want to consider an occupation other than zookeeper. And if sitting in endless meetings discussing the tensile strength of Plexiglas surrounds, or foraging for cockroaches in an infested exhibit in the middle of a dark night turns you off, then my advice is to steer clear of zoo curator positions as well.

  Adversities aside, I have to confess to loving my job, which is why I put in way more hours than required, but today was my day off and I planned to forget about work and enjoy myself with my good friend. I phoned Ginger at 8:45 and told her I was leaving to pick her up.

  “I’m ready and waiting,” she replied, “with a thermos of coffee and some blueberry muffins I whipped up last night.”

  I was salivating already.

  Chapter 16

  No surprise, but Ginger’s food bag contained more than a couple of blueberry muffins, including two cups of fresh fruit salad topped with vanilla yogurt, all homemade of course.

  “It’s only an hour’s drive,” I told her as she unpac
ked her picnic basket.

  “I know, but I figured you probably hadn’t had time to prepare a decent breakfast for yourself what with your late night date and all.”

  “My dinner with Nelson Farthington was not a date,” I reminded her. “It was a zoo public relations visit that I conducted on behalf of Alliance.”

  “Did you have a good time, though? You know I want to hear all about it.”

  In between chowing down on the contents of Ginger’s basket, I filled her in on my evening. I know some people enjoy collecting rich friends, but for me, nothing’s better than friends who love to cook. One of these days I may turn to cooking myself, much as I like to eat.

  “Speaking of news, any word on the Design break-in?” I asked.

  A few days earlier, thieves had broken into Design’s studio and stolen every copper item they could put their sticky fingers on, including all the copper leads from the welders. Unfortunately, the culprits broke every last welder trying to get at the leads.

  Adding insult to injury, they carted away their booty in one of Design’s pickup trucks, wrecking the vehicle in the process. Security found the truck smashed into a tree near the back gate.

  “Not much,” Ginger moaned. “The sheriff suspects an inside job because we always leave a key in the truck, which only an insider would know. I told Dan he should tell the sheriff to forget about suspecting one of our people. We’ve been leaving keys in our trucks for twenty years. After all, our buildings are in the middle of woods, which are in the middle of nowhere. And besides, the thieves missed a pile of brand new copper leads stacked in the corner of the building. Anyone on the inside would have known about the new leads.”

  “I’d wager on one of Mooney’s Construction workers. They drive right by your operation on the way to their work site,” I said, which sparked a light in my brain. “I wonder if that copper theft had anything to do with the death of Jack Dubois?”

  “Maybe,” Ginger said. “If so, I hope it makes the case easier to solve so we don’t have to lock everything up before we leave at night. What a pain. I took some heat from Nate over the truck. I guess you saw the notice he sent out telling everyone never to leave keys in zoo vehicles, day or night.”

  “I did, and I plan to ignore it. Think of the problems we’ll have if we start taking the keys out of the carts every time we use them. We’ll spend half of our days hunting down a key every time we need to use a cart.”

  “Nate does a lot of things like that,” Ginger acknowledged, “acting before he thinks.”

  “If copper’s so valuable these days,” I said, not meaning to change the subject except that Nate and indigestion go together for me, “maybe we should visit a copper mine today instead of a gold mine,” which wouldn’t have been a bad idea since our gold mine visit turned out to be a bust, at least from the point of view of a source of revenue for redoing my bedroom.

  Neither of us discovered a pricey gold nugget or uncovered even a flake of the yellow stuff. If I sound disappointed, I wasn’t. We had a good time examining the rocks inside the gold mine and hearing about the history of North Carolina’s gold rush, the first in the nation. The U.S. mint in Charlotte, we learned, was the country’s first.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I told Ginger, as we swirled our pans, straining our eyes for nonexistent flashes of shiny grains in the sand. “I’m thinking about the girl’s Zoo Camp coming up at the end of next month. Maybe we can take the kids for a hike out to the stream in the conservation tract and pan for gold, and the counselors can teach them about the history of gold mining in North Carolina.”

  Ginger’s eyes widened. “I think it would be fun. Let’s buy the prospecting supplies while we’re here. Once we sell the idea to Bob, he’ll reimburse us, I’m sure.”

  “It’s worth the risk,” I agreed, “and if not, we can always start our own prospecting company when we retire,” which set off a discussion on our way to the visitor center about what we really would do come retirement time.

  Inside the gift shop we bought two-dozen panning trays and a few souvenir trinkets for ourselves before heading for the car. On our return trip, I asked Ginger if she wanted to join me on a short excursion, a trip down the old logging road in the zoo’s conservation area where we could search out a good spot for the gold panning outing.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you want to do a little prospecting for yourself while you’re out there?”

  “Only for research purposes,” I assured her, “to see how well the pans work at streamside.”

  “I’d like to join you, but I had a late night and I’m planning to spend the rest of the afternoon cooking your dinner. Besides, Jimmy hasn’t seen me all day and he’ll want to hear about our failed prospecting trip.”

  I dropped Ginger off at her house promising not to be late for dinner, and put in a call to Jodie. “Hey, are you busy?”

  “Depends,” she said. “Is this about work or play?”

  “A little of both. If you’re free, I’ll drive over to your place right now and tell you about it on the way.”

  I caught a long sigh on the other end of the phone.

  “Okay. Anything’s better than cleaning my apartment. Besides, I’m still stressed out about what might have happened to Andy, so I could use a diversion.”

  “See you in half-an-hour then.”

  I needed to stop home and trade my car for my pickup. I like to baby my nearly new Prius and that meant keeping it away from logging roads. I was happy Jodie agreed to accompany me. She’d pan for gold without any qualms about zoo policy should a large gold nugget happen to find its way into one of our pans, although I did explain that we were heading out to perform an experiment, not attempt to enrich ourselves on zoo property.

  “So, if you find a gold nugget, what do you plan to do with it?” she asked.

  “I haven’t decided,” I told her, which was the truth.

  Chapter 17

  Jodie and I bounced along the logging road at no more than ten miles an hour. Good thing my truck had four-wheel drive because the dirt road was in worse shape than I remembered. We rounded the top of a steep hill leading down to the widest part of the stream, and in the distance, I could see the rear end of a car parked by the side of the road.

  “Wonder whose car that is?”

  Jodie leaned closer to the windshield, squinting at the vehicle. “Do you have your phone with you?”

  “Right here,” I said, pointing to the clip on my belt. “And my radio.”

  “You may need to make a call because I think that car’s been in a wreck.”

  I inched down the hill, handing my radio over to Jodie. The closer we got, the more I realized she was right.

  “Who would be out here, anyway, and why?” Jodie asked.

  “Somebody fishing or hunting, I expect. Looks like they came down this hill too fast and lost control.”

  We pulled up to the SUV, its front end lodged in a large tree when Jodie let out a loud gasp. “Oh, no. It’s Andy LaRue’s car. Oh, Lord, if he’s inside, I hope he’s still alive.”

  If he was in there. I hoped he was still alive too, but I wasn’t holding my breath since he’d been missing for a couple of days, plenty of time to bleed to death. My heart raced as we leapt out of my pickup and approached the wreck.

  I spotted him first. “It is Andy, and this is not looking good.” I placed my fingers on Andy’s neck as my first aid training kicked in. “I feel a slight pulse. He’s alive, but barely. Call 911 for an ambulance. I’ll radio Security.”

  “I’m already on it.”

  “We can’t move him,” I told her, “we’ll have to wait for help to arrive. I hope he’ll be okay.”

  I looked up to see tears streaming down her face, as I retrieved my radio and contacted Security.

  “He’s not such a bad guy, really,” she said. “If he’d just drop the macho act, I’d consider going out with him again.”

  Jodie’s sympathy quotient is higher than Mother Teres
a’s. It’s one of the qualities I value most about her, but, I thought, it’s not a good reason for dating someone, a fact I knew from experience.

  When Security answered my call, I asked for Dan, only to learn he wasn’t available. I explained where we were and asked someone to get an ambulance out here as soon as possible. I told them we’d stay with Andy until help arrived.

  Jodie sat on the ground next to the car and held Andy’s one free hand, talking softly to him. I watched his eyelids, hoping they would flicker open, but no such luck. I’m not big into praying but I said some prayers for Andy as I tried to figure out how long he’d spent in that wrecked car, wondering why was he out here in the first place.

  An ambulance showed up in less than fifteen minutes, impressive considering our location, escorted by a sheriff’s car carrying two deputies, one of whom I’d met for the first time at the Wetlands exhibit when Jodie found Jack’s body. I knew we’d have some explaining to do, and the deputy didn’t disappoint.

  As the EMT’s worked to free Andy, the deputy I’d met earlier greeted us with, “You two have some explaining to do.”

  I tried to hold my tongue, but Jodie, who knew the young man from church, snapped, “Knock off the law and order act, Billy. We work at the zoo, and this is zoo property, so it’s no big deal finding us here. The sheriff’s department ought to be thanking us for doing their job for them, finding another victim of that serial killer you’ve allowed to run loose so he can bump off half the town.”

  Billy immediately went on the defensive, which clearly was Jodie’s intent. “We’re doing our best, Jodie. We’ve had search parties out round the clock looking for Andy.”

  She didn’t let up. “Yeah, and look who found him. It’s a good thing we had to come here in search of a camping spot for the girl scouts, since it looks like nobody from law enforcement thought to take a gander out here. Given I found one body for you, the least you could’ve done was scour zoo property looking for Andy. Obviously, this serial killer knows his way around the zoo.”