Endangered: A Zoo Mystery Part 5

"What cha' got?" asked the electrician.

"Beats me." I shouldn't have touched it. Too late now. I sealed the bag back up and stuck it in a pocket. The house was empty of law enforcement. I swept the carpet as best I could and dumped the mess into the kitchen trash.

Denny stood in the cold by the van yakking with Ken. I waved the bag. "Found this behind the cage. A bag with a gla.s.s in it."

Denny gave it a glance and didn't try to care. "Let's go."

Deputy Gettler emerged from the barn and tromped over to the photographer who stood watching us. "You again? You want to get yourself arrested? Keep on doing what you're doing, because I am that close. You get yourself behind that crime scene tape right now."

Craig saluted and headed toward the driveway with the deputy close behind him. Ken followed them. I could hear Gettler's radio mumbling in Navaho or Sanskrit on his hip.

I checked the macaws and the carrier on the roof while Denny visited the bathroom. Denny climbed in on the pa.s.senger side, and I started the motor. "I need to show this bag to the cops." But all the patrol cars were gone from the parking lot. Only the electric company van remained. "d.a.m.n. Where's a cop when you need one?"

Denny was preoccupied with his thumb injury. "Call them tomorrow. Or tonight. We are done with this place. I can't remember my last teta.n.u.s shot."

"The date will be on file in the office with your TB tests." I tucked the bag behind his seat where we wouldn't kick it and the macaws couldn't chew it. I'd deal with it at the zoo.

Two men in parkas, jeans, and boots wandered the driveway between the road and the parking area. Denny and I tensed, but they ignored us, focused on the metal detectors they each waved along the ground. Looking for some sort of evidence? Nothing they wore displayed an agency logo. The log that had trapped us the night before was gone.

"Outta here!" Denny said.

"Too right." I gunned the van onto the road. It skidded on an icy patch and I wrestled it back into the right lane. Getting creamed just as we were escaping the Tipton farm would fit right in.

Even in daylight, the road seemed ominous. Thick, moss-padded limbs of big-leaf maple hung over the highway. Sword ferns and evergreen shrubs prevented any view inside the forest. A raven followed the road ahead of us for half a mile, flying easily at our speed before veering off on unknowable raven business. We pa.s.sed a tangle of logs on a naked hillside; a yellow log loader rusted amid the stumps.

After a few miles, Denny said, "Nothing is ever totally bad. Those birds will end up in a better place, and we got these amazing torts. I'm going to talk to Neal and see if we can set up a whole tortoise unit. This is golden-we'd never see these guys otherwise. A few will be good for Asian Experience, and we could set up a whole Madagascar exhibit. I'll look at the master plan with Neal maybe next week and see what we can do."

"Golden?" I said. "Golden? Two people are dead and you're celebrating? And may I remind you, that these are stolen reptiles?" Anger felt good. It flushed out some of the impotence and fear of the last three days. "How many of those animals died before they got to the Tiptons'? Most of the rest could croak despite everything Dr. Reynolds can do. Golden, my a.s.s." A macaw squawked behind me.

Denny c.o.c.ked his head, considering my perspective as if it really hadn't crossed his mind. "Probably true, but no one can change what already came down. All we can do is deal with the new reality and improve the trajectory. We could do a ton of conservation messaging. Between the pet trade and the food markets, tortoises are getting vacuumed up everywhere." He wound up, "And if we learn more about breeding them, collectors won't need to take them out of the wild."

"Messaging, sure. Breeding, mostly bulls.h.i.+t. Those Amazon parrots? Neal told me plenty of people breed them. They're common. Anybody can buy a legal one. The wild ones are just cheaper."

"Huh. That sucks swamp water." He took a moment to think. "Captive bred ones are healthier, so it's stupid anyway. But nothing we can do about it now. Seriously."

"Yes, there is. We can figure out where they came from, who the importer is, and shut down the pipeline."

Denny looked at me sideways. "Uh, what have you got in mind?"

"Nothing. Yet."

We rode on in what would have been silence if Denny hadn't lapsed into muttering. "Different antibiotic...Show Marion how to soak them...Humidity...Ban cold meds...Legalize to strip out the profit..."

The macaws also muttered, but didn't release the full power of their vocalizations. The van would have been intolerable. I rolled down the window to clear the disinfectant smell and soon rolled it back up because it was cold out there.

I waited until we were on the freeway and the van was settled in the middle lane. Letting go of annoyance at Denny was an old challenge. I squared my shoulders, took a breath. This week, we'd worked together, been in danger together. We were both calm. Well, he was calm. There was no reason to think we'd be alone together any time soon. A better opportunity wasn't likely. "Denny. Life doesn't offer up unlimited opportunities, you know. They don't circle back if you miss them the first time."

Any normal person would have said, "Huh? What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

What Denny said was, "That's true and it's not true. Karmic debts don't go away until they're paid. And some life lessons keep repeating until you get them."

He had a talent for derailing me, but I wasn't having it. "You won't find someone like Marcie again. You should make it work."

He s.h.i.+fted in his seat, not looking at me. "We decided to separate for awhile and see how it goes."

It sounded rehea.r.s.ed. "Not what I'm hearing. She's pretty broken up." I kept my own tone reasonable.

"Why am I talking to you about this? This is between her and me."

"I'm collateral damage. She's my best friend." The silence that followed didn't feel quite right. "And you and I, we go way back." There was a muddle. What were Denny and I to each other? Co-workers, sure. Ex-lovers from long ago. Friends? Yeah, sort of. With Marcie, I needed to know she was solid and there for me when I fell apart. Pure self-interest. No, not just that. I hurt when she hurt. With Denny- "I talked to her two days ago. We're friends. She's fine." His voice was firm, but stress leaked out in the line of his mouth.

"Yeah. I heard about that. Not fine."

Silence.

I adjusted the rear-view mirror to check on the birds and set it back. All I could tell was that they hadn't escaped. "Her dad split when she was four and she hardly ever hears from him. She had this abusive boyfriend when we were college roommates. He used to tell her she was fat and stupid. You were her first boyfriend after that-it took her four years to try again. Now you bail on her. She's hurting."

"It's not like that."

"What is it like?" When he didn't answer-"She told me she never used the M word, but something flushed you like a pheasant. She's good enough for hooking up now and then, but not for a real commitment. Is that it?"

"Bulls.h.i.+t. You know that's not true, and it disrespects us both."

He sounded angry and he had a right to be. I'd lost patience and gone to goading him.

After a pause, he said, "She's into mellow music, like Jack Johnson. I like Unknown Mortal Orchestra. She's super tidy and clean. I'm not. But the big thing? Whatever she thinks I should do or say, I don't get it right, and she's nice about it. She's always nice about it. She has to transcend us both to make it work. We can't keep misaligning and pretending it doesn't matter." Denny's eyes were locked on the Costco truck ahead of us. "You never wanted us together. So what's your beef now?"

He had me there.

Chapter Seven.

We were almost to the zoo, in a leaden silence, when I realized the lack of a next step. Where were we supposed to deliver these macaws? Denny called Neal to see what he and Dr. Reynolds had decided. He figured out which b.u.t.ton to push to turn on the speaker phone, something I'd never managed.

A tinny little version of Neal's voice said, "You're done out there? No drama?"

"Denny cut his finger. He might need a teta.n.u.s shot."

Neal said, "That's an improvement." He was his usual wound-up self. "This favor we're doing wasn't supposed to take two keepers for three days. It's costing us overtime, and lord knows if we'll ever get compensated for it. And the fact that it turned out to be that dangerous for you two has me wondering what the h.e.l.l our taxes are paying for. I am not happy with the police performance."

His concern for our safety was touching, until I wondered if that had to do with the downside of injured keepers-OSHA investigations, hiring temps, and so on. No doubt I was being unjust. Denny a.s.sured him we would never set foot on the Tiptons' farm again and asked, "Where do you want the macaws?"

He said to put them in the quarantine room with the Amazon parrots. Then he remembered that the Amazons were probably wild and the macaws weren't and that the quarantine regulations were different. So use another quarantine room. No, they were all full or about to be. Apparently he and Dr. Reynolds hadn't connected and gotten this settled.

We waited while he told us to put them in various places, proposing and rejecting options. "h.e.l.l," he finally said, "where are we going to put them? I shoulda figured this out already, but I've been buried in elephant barn meetings, and Fish and Wildlife keeps calling. You got any ideas?"

"Hap has parrots," I said toward the phone. "He might take them." Hap, the zoo's Commissary manager, kept birds at home in elaborate aviaries. "No, cancel that. Disease risk."

Silence as we all thought. "Well, there's always my bas.e.m.e.nt." I meant that as sarcasm, but knew it was a mistake the instant the words were out.

"Good idea. It'll be temporary. You and Denny set them up today, and we'll figure it out tomorrow. Best we can do."

Dead air.

Denny thought this was fine. Not his bas.e.m.e.nt, after all.

How were the two of us going to unload the heavy cage? d.a.m.n.

Finley Memorial Zoo is off Interstate 5, south of the Tipton farm and north of Vancouver, Was.h.i.+ngton. My house is farther south across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon. We took the zoo exit off Interstate 5 and drove to the employee parking lot, where Denny's van and my car were parked. I explained that he had to drive the zoo van to my house while I drove my car because it held Robby's car seat. He could drive the zoo van back to pick up his vehicle.

Denny headed for the hospital to argue his way into the tortoises' quarantine room and check on his babies, and I left to find Hap and see if he would come along to help unload.

Late afternoon, and Hap was where I expected him, in the Commissary. He sat on the metal counter talking on the phone, a big, scarred man with tattoos up and down his arms. Bald-headed with a closely-cropped beard, he looked tough, which he was. We had a solid, if cautious, friends.h.i.+p.

He finally finished with his produce order. "Iris. You're back to civilization."

"How'd you like to leave early to help us unload the mother of all cages? At my house."

"Me and who else? Will Pete be there?"

"No. Me and Denny. It's their night for dinner out and tango cla.s.s."

Hap snorted. "Tango? Benita keeps ragging on me to learn that s.h.i.+t with her. You checked with Neal?"

I called Neal and told him I was hijacking Hap. He didn't object.

Hap looked at the sky. "Snow or ice storm by tomorrow. Benita's got to quit driving the Mini Cooper or pop for snow tires." Benita was his pet.i.te and ferocious wife.

"I don't think so. The weather report's almost always wrong."

We wrangled our way to the parking lot. Hap and Denny would unload the macaws. I'd pick Robby up on time, and we'd have a quiet dinner at home, just the two of us.

Hap set off toward his vintage Crown Victoria, me toward my Honda. Hap had history with law enforcement-ancient history, to be fair-and thought that driving a retired patrol car was a hoot. I could only imagine what it cost to fill the tank. The zoo van was still in the lot since Denny was still messing with tortoises. Its pa.s.senger door wasn't closed right; I could see the seatbelt was out of place and in the way. The macaws would get chilled.

"Hey, wait," I called to Hap and opened the door to look around inside the van. The GPS device was still there. The macaws were fine. Maybe I was imagining things. But I was pretty sure Denny wouldn't have left the door that way. I looked for the plastic bag and couldn't find it.

d.a.m.n.

Hap came over to find out what was holding me up.

"Someone broke in."

"You left it unlocked?"

"I guess so." I couldn't remember hearing the chirp. Double d.a.m.n. "Now this...thing...a bag...from the Tipton house is missing." Why would anyone swipe that? I couldn't believe someone had followed us from the Tipton farm, broken into the zoo, probably thanked his lucky stars that the van was unlocked, and stolen the bag.

I searched the van again, with the same results.

Hap walked over to examine the gate. "Jimmied to keep it from latching." He pointed to the short chunk of two-by-four that kept the gate from closing enough to latch.

Anyone who drove up to the gate from Finley Road had to stop and enter a pa.s.s code at a keypad. Then a motor opened the gate. To leave, all you had to do was pull up to the gate and a sensor opened it. The chunk of wood had kept the gate from latching, which meant it could easily be pushed open from either side. Hide in the bushes, wait for a vehicle to come along with a driver who knew the pa.s.s code-that would be me-then shove the piece of wood in place. Once everyone had left the lot, push the gate open and walk or drive in.

I got Hap to search the van, which upset the macaws. Denny showed up and confirmed he hadn't touched the bag. I called 911 and told them that what might have been evidence from the Tipton bust had just been stolen, but I didn't really know what it was. I felt like a fool.

We followed instructions to wait. Eventually a patrol car showed up outside the gate. I waved an arm at the sensor inside, the gate opened, and the car pulled in. A few minutes later, I'd told the deputy all I could.

He didn't believe a word of it. "No idea what was in that bag, huh? No idea who stole it? Are you sure?"

Confused and annoyed, I said, "What's the matter with you? I told you what happened."

"Iris," Hap said, "he thinks you had a drug buy turn sour."

"Drugs? What? Listen, you-"

Hap put a hand on my arm. "We'd better get those birds to your house. Are we done here?"

The deputy said, "I guess so."

I certainly was. "Tell Deputy Gil Gettler about this. Please."

He nodded unconvincingly and lost interest entirely when his radio muttered something comprehensible only to him. He hopped back into the patrol car and took off.

I headed south, alone in my car with my outrage. Hap followed in his Crown Vic, Denny in the zoo van.

Unloading the macaw cage was way worse than getting it into the van in the first place. We never would have gotten it out without Hap. No plastic bag showed up. The three of us wrestled the cage, with the birds horrified into silence, down the steps into the bas.e.m.e.nt. Robby was in day care, which helped. My dogs couldn't stop barking, which didn't. We tilted the cage upright and it barely cleared the bas.e.m.e.nt ceiling. The macaws scrambled for a new perch. Denny and I were breathing hard, Hap wasn't.

We rested in the kitchen with beers for Hap and Denny and a gla.s.s of cabernet for me. We spent a few minutes trying to figure out why the Tipton brothers cared about a little gla.s.s and a tissue in a bag.

Hap wanted to know how they knew we had it. I said, "Anyone could have been hiding in the woods watching us. I showed it to Denny outside. It wasn't a secret."

Hap opened a second beer. "Maybe not them. A random car prowler might have thought it had something valuable."

"A car prowler would have taken the GPS," I said.

"Maybe that bag is what they were looking for when they searched the barns at night"-Denny's only useful contribution.

I checked my watch. Plenty of time to get Robby. "I wish I knew what was wrapped up in that tissue." Denny was off and running: a safe deposit box key, jewels, a thumb drive with all their sources and customers. "No, thumb drives are too big. I'd have noticed that. Something fragile and tiny, put inside the gla.s.s to protect it."

"You should have searched the roadsides in case he threw it away," Denny said. "You can do that tomorrow."

That bag was gone forever and the Tiptons took it. I knew it in my bones.