Endangered: A Zoo Mystery Part 15

His big hands with square-tipped fingers rested on the edge of the table. One of the nails was split. His steel-rimmed gla.s.ses were smudgy. "I gotta give these knees a break. Good time to stop. I've given thirty days notice."

I didn't know what to say. I said, "You can't do this to me!"

He grinned. "You bet I can. You can handle it just fine. You'll do better with Neal than I ever did. Maybe get that new aviary built."

"Have you told anyone?"

"Just you and Neal. No need to make a fuss over it."

I shook my head. "I hate change. I can't imagine Birds without you." I got up. "Will they downgrade the position or replace you with another senior keeper?"

"Neal said senior keeper."

It took me a minute to climb out of the implications for my own life. "If you go for the knee replacement, you'll need some help. I can drop by after work every day. I'll make you my famous meatloaf."

"I would appreciate a meatloaf, but my daughter will look after me fine."

I'd met Janet nee Lorenz and wouldn't trust her to look after a duck decoy. "Calvin, I'd like to help. Keep me in the loop."

"Sure thing. You go off to lunch now or you'll be late getting back."

Which meant he didn't want to talk about it anymore.

On the walk to the Administration building, two thoughts solidified. "Don't tell anyone. Calvin wants it kept quiet," and "This is it. Time to go for a senior keeper position." I'd had that opportunity when I was pregnant with Robby and chose not to apply. Arnie had gotten the position-senior keeper for Felines and Bears. Everyone who worked with him had been astonished. Neal, who had just started at Finley, had spent months regaining the keepers' respect. After Arnie came to his senses and stepped back down to regular keeper, Linda got the job.

Here came another rare opportunity, and I'd thought I was ready. Aside from realizing how much I'd miss Calvin, I should have been celebrating, not twitching with second thoughts and self-doubt.

Denny was quiet and preoccupied at lunch. Cheyenne and Marion were b.i.t.c.hing about Neal's rapid-fire changes. The first-annual Halloween pumpkin frenzy three months past was still vivid-smashed pumpkins in the elephant yard, the tiger and lion exhibits, the primate house. The animals and the visitors had loved it and the mess was unreal. He announced new developments at every keeper meeting. He had contracted out for camel rides and a walk-in parakeet display starting in spring. Every exhibit was to be evaluated for its photography opportunities and for viewing from a wheelchair. Keepers were to work with the education staff to improve their animal talks, and oh-by-the-way, he wanted visitors hand-feeding animals, under supervision.

Cheyenne said, "He told me he's planning sleep-overs for kids, maybe at the elephant barn, which is insane. He's thinking about a beer tasting. He wants a blues concert. It's idea-diarrhea. He can't rest unless he's got this place turned upside down a new way every week."

I experimented with a senior keeper persona. "He's pulling more visitors in. That's what pays the bills."

"As long as it doesn't hurt the animals, what's the harm?" Linda said.

Denny just chewed away at his yogurt and greens.

"Did your dog die?" I asked. "Income tax audit? High cholesterol?"

"No, he's b.u.mmed because we found the owners of some of those tortoises," Marion said. "We wanded them all for chips, and we found one. Dr. Reynolds traced the code. It turns out to be from a Madagascar breeding facility. They raise Malagasy endangered tortoises and turn them loose in protected areas. A dozen were stolen, all chipped in the hind leg."

"So we won't get to keep it," I said, thinking of the poor beast flying twice across half the world.

Marion glanced at Denny. "We think five of them belong to this outfit. No chips, but they have scars on their back legs, so probably they were chipped and the thieves dug them out. They just missed one. Those things are the size of a grain of rice and they migrate around inside the animal. Anyway, this place says the stolen ones match the species, s.e.x, and size of four others we've got."

"Do you just box them up and s.h.i.+p them back?" Linda asked.

Denny woke up and looked alarmed.

Marion shook her head. "If only. It'll take months to get the paperwork done."

"You checked the parrots?" I asked.

"Yeah. Nada."

I wasn't surprised. "All of them still alive?"

Marion made a face. "All of them have mites and parasites. They still haven't calmed down. I feel like a brute every time I go in to clean, all of them cras.h.i.+ng around. Then we had to catch them up to test and treat."

"Has Neal said anything about s.h.i.+pping them to Mexico soon?"

"Not to me."

Jackie joined us, bringing the latest news on the hunt for Tipton treasure. Which was that there wasn't any news, just people wandering around in the mud like squirrels who couldn't find the hidden nuts.

"How would you spend thousands of dollars in gold coins," Linda asked, "a.s.suming there is a Tipton stash and you found it? I go first. A studio with a really good kiln and potting wheel. All the glazes I want, and time to learn how to use them."

"Since you'll be rich, you won't need to sell them," I said, "so you can give me a set of plates and bowls and cups. Oh, and serving dishes. Blue-green like the two cups you made me."

"I'd buy a Trakehner mare," Marion said. "One that's already started. I'll hire a good trainer, and we'll win dressage and show jumping events all over the country. We'll have our picture in all the horse magazines."

"What about you?" Linda asked me.

That was easy. "Pay off the house and set aside some money for Robby."

"For college," Marion said.

"Or travel or his own house. Maybe to start a business." He might not be any better at school than I was. Paying off the house-what a relief that would be. With a senior keeper salary, I could make a little extra payment even without Tipton loot.

Jackie said, "I want a brand new house. One that n.o.body has lived in before me, with new rugs and new furniture."

"A house in a new development?" Linda asked. She looked guileless, but I knew this for a set-up.

"Oh, yes. On a cul-de-sac, with new little trees in front and a perfect lawn. Everything fresh."

Denny could be counted on for a major rant about housing developments, something along the line of, "That's your dream? To pay someone to trash a forest or some farm land so you can have a new house instead of fixing up an old one? That's what's destroying the world today-people expanding everywhere, paving everything, wrecking ecosystems for ego satisfaction. You're gonna need more than feng shui to get over that karma."

But he didn't say a word. Linda and I shared a look, puzzled.

Someone needed to pick up the lance Denny used for tilting at windmills, but before I opened my mouth, Jackie said, "Don't you guys start with me. I was raised on hand-me-downs, and I get to dream any d.a.m.n dream I want."

"Okay then. Let's talk about Bowling for Rhinos," Linda proposed. "I said I'd lead it, but you all have to help, or we'll be humiliated in front of AAZK."

Bowling for Rhinos used to be exactly that. Chapters of the American a.s.sociation of Zoo Keepers would round up pledges, go bowling, collect the pledges, and donate the money to rhino conservation. The fundraiser had evolved beyond bowling, but had kept the rhino focus. It had raised millions over the years for reserves in their native countries, no small accomplishment for a few hundred modestly-paid animal keepers. Linda had decided Finley Memorial Zoo should wake up and join the effort.

"Do we want to bowl or do something else?" she asked.

Pete proposed charging for a dinner in the Education Department's cla.s.sroom, which we would cook, followed by a behind-the-scenes tour. Cheyenne said to just ask people for money for a good cause and not make extra work for ourselves. Marion suggested selling zoodoo from the manure pile behind the elephant barn, a more organized effort than allowing individuals to load what they wanted by appointment. "We could even can it as a gift item," she said.

Selling zoodoo sounded good to Linda. "I'll ask Neal," she said, as we gathered up our lunch trash to depart.

Denny was off in some other s.p.a.ce.

He was in the employee parking lot, a tall shape leaning against my front fender, almost invisible in the dusk. "Hey," I said, once I recognized him and my heart restarted.

Denny said, "Ire. Need to talk to you. Meet me at the Roost?"

"I have to get Robby at day care. How about tomorrow morning?"

He didn't say anything.

"What's this about? Can't it wait?"

A silence. "Yeah, sure." Defeat sagged in his voice.

s.h.i.+t. One more thing piled on. "Okay. I've got thirty minutes. I'll see you there."

He nodded, pried himself upright, and walked to his ancient van.

At the Vulture's Roost Tavern, we sat where we always sit, at the rustic wrap-around corner table. It seats six, eight in a pinch, and that's where we migrate when Hap rounds us up for beer therapy. Strange to be just two. I ordered a gla.s.s of their bad white wine, which beat their appalling merlot, out of habit and to have something in my hands. Denny ordered a pint of Winter Warmer.

"'sup?" I asked, afraid that I already knew. "Sorry about losing the tortoises."

He brushed that off. "I know you've got the Tiptons to deal with. So no worries if..."

"If what?"

He blew out a breath. "I saw Marcie last night. Maybe you can do some girl thing for her. I got nothin'."

Something went wrong in my stomach. "She seemed okay on Monday."

"I went over to pick up some CDs I left at her place." He gazed around the tavern, ignoring the waitress delivering his beer. "I didn't think it would be like this. I thought we could still be friends."

"And?"

"She looked...broken." His gray eyes were cloudy, and all his fizz had gone flat. "Way uncentered. She didn't make sense."

My stomach did more of that bad thing. Until this debacle, Marcie had always made sense. She had lived in the calm center, and I counted on that. It came to me that Denny had relied on her for his reality checks as much as I did. It came to me that the Marcie I'd known for years was in eclipse right now.

He picked up the beer gla.s.s and looked at it. "What did I do that was so bad? It wasn't working. It wasn't good for her." He put the gla.s.s back down. "I just wanted to hug her and make her stop."

But he hadn't. He'd hung tough and now he was asking me to make it all right.

I sat back in the booth. What did I know that was of any use? I'd dumped Denny when Rick came along and then leaped into marriage. Rick and I had separated and were barely reconciled when he died. Those episodes and a string of bad-judgment affairs in high school and college were the sum of my experience in pair-bonding. That, and watching my parents and Pete and Cheyenne. Surely there were lessons from the successful couples I knew, not that I was likely to figure them out here and now. I picked my way carefully. "You said you broke it off because you were too different and both trying too hard." Captain Entropy and Ms. Tidy-Time-for sure it would be hard.

He nodded, focused on the still-untouched beer.

I said, "For a social species, we're really rotten at being together." I tried the wine. It was as bad as I remembered. What did I want to have happen here? I pushed the wine away. "You talk like you're hopelessly different. But you keep evolving toward each other. Look, you've got a steady job, you're not addicted to anything, you don't steal or beat people up. You're not a crazy hippie." I never imagined myself saying that. I finished up. "She's not-she wasn't-as timid and repressed as she was, more open to new things. You did a lot for her confidence, you know."

Denny winced. He leaned back on the bench. "She bought a vegan cookbook. Before we broke up."

That was a shock. Marcie's curried chicken, her lamb chops marinated in lemon and garlic...

"I'm not even a vegan," he said. "I should be, but I try not to obsess." He drank a little beer, put the gla.s.s down, and set his elbows on the table, leaning toward me. "A month ago she pasted a little picture of a snake on every one of her chocolate bars."

Huh?

He nodded. "She wanted me to find her a lizard for a pet."

I got it. "Marcie was trying to get over being scared of reptiles. And she expanded into food she thought you might like better. Met you half-way. And that was the problem?"

"More than halfway. Like, seventy-five percent. Ninety percent."

"So..."

"She shouldn't have to do that for anybody. She is who she is and it's great. She deserves someone who can mate for life. Somebody not like me."

"All the compromising was on her side."

"It's like a cottontail rabbit and a fringed lizard, like in some stupid kids' book where nothing pairs up with its own species. We only made it this far because I've got my own place. Living together would drive us both over the edge."

True. Denny's place was a rotting rented house with an untrained Rottweiler bouncing off the walls, tanks full of reptiles and amphibians that other people had discarded, his comic book collection stacked hither and yon, and a kitchen best described as a disaster.

"You could evolve toward neater and cleaner," I said, knowing it was lame.

"Not like Marcie's."

No, that would not happen. Marcie had a white leather couch, spotless. Her cats' litter boxes never smelled. Her napkins matched the tablecloth.

Denny leaned his head back against the wall, throat bared, hands loose on the table, and stared at the ceiling. "I couldn't be what she needed, so she warped herself to make it work. I could see her own energy and how she kept shoving it down and denying it and changing it. You do that, it's going to blow out someday, like Old Faithful. Then she'd hate me."

She wanted you, I didn't say. She tried her hardest to make it work. Little snake drawings on candy bars, they twisted my heart. And Denny's. It was enough to penetrate his thick skull, and let him see what I'd known from the start. I studied him, wis.h.i.+ng I could change him into Marcie's ideal match, appalled by this latest demonstration of my powerlessness.

He said, "It was taking advantage. It was unbalanced. Get her to see it."

I felt no satisfaction at being right all along. Like my toddler, I wanted what I wanted, and that was for Denny to make Marcie happy again.

What I said was, "I'll do what I can." It already felt like defeat.

"Go have fun," my mother said. "Say hi to Marcie for me."

"Not fun. Not looking forward to this."

I returned within the two hours I'd promised, wrung out. Marcie hadn't wanted to talk to me, then she couldn't stop. Seeing him had shattered the control she'd shown at our lunch. I didn't understand it, I couldn't fix it, I just let her talk. I never found an opportunity to suggest how he saw it.