Early Friday I was at the zoo in civilian clothes with a novel in my backpack, loading two portable animal kennels into my truck. A penguin shuffled nervously inside each kennel while Calvin fussed nervously outside. He gave me advice on plane trips, several emergency contact numbers, and pounds of paper to hand off to the Los Angeles Zoo keepers. He reviewed each page with me in detail, complete instructions for nurturing these particular birds.
At last the penguins and I escaped to Interstate 205, aimed south toward Portland International Airport, sharing the long curving bridge across the Columbia River with commuter traffic.
The night before I’d dropped Winnie and Range at my parents since I’d be back late. The folks both thought a free plane trip was a grand bonus. I hadn’t explained that it was a clear signal that my boss saw me as surplus at best and a liability at worst. Whatever. It would be cool to see the Los Angeles Zoo. This was an adventure, not a trial run at exile.
Sure it was.
But truly, the new bridge, “new” as of 1983, felt wide and open, free of the struts overhead that bound the ninety-year-old Interstate 5 Bridge I usually took to Portland. Trees in splashy fall dress dotted the riverbanks. A seagull drifted across six lanes, wings set at the perfect, effortless angle. I really could shrug off my troubles. So long, gray skies and unanswerable questions; hello, California sunshine.
In good time my truck was in long-term parking at the Portland airport and the penguins were in the hands of the airline, to be tucked somewhere in the plane where they wouldn’t freeze. African penguins are from the southern tip of Africa, not Antarctica, and don’t take well to frost, especially when they are used to indoor living.
I punched in a code at the ticket kiosk to get my boarding pass and discovered I was going to Burbank, not Los Angeles. Close enough. On the way to the security line, a sign outside Tina’s Lounge and Grill assured me that “there is always a reason to have a drink at the airport.” Not the best omen. My positive attitude faltered.
Security personnel scrutinized an X-ray of my backpack, shoes, and belt, and waved me through with indifference.
I had requested a window seat so I could survey the West Coast from above, a view I hadn’t seen since my parents took me to Disneyland years ago. A woman in a black pantsuit took the aisle seat and shoved a briefcase under the empty middle seat, ignoring me. Once everyone had wrestled luggage into the overhead bins and obediently fastened their seat belts, the plane turned toward open space and stopped. It sat and roared to itself for a moment, then floundered down the runway like a loon striding and flapping on a lake surface to gain enough speed for takeoff. As the ground receded, it came to me that this was a heavy hunk of metal, and we are not a species meant to fly.
The plane steadied itself as it leveled out. My row mate hauled out her briefcase, fired up a little computer, and got to work. I dared to peek out the window. Far below a silvery river was a thread among uneven dark forests. Snow frosted the hills, and clear cuts made patterns like a badly designed quilt thrown over the entire western half of the state. Clouds hovered at eye level and below, gray lumps of thick fog.
The clouds closed in to make a tight visual barrier stretching flat and monotonous in all directions. I pulled the novel my mother had provided out of the backpack. The jaguar in the title turned out to be a metaphor and the lead character was mean-spirited to friends and enemies alike. The airline magazine celebrated vacations and promoted gadgets I could never afford, and the crossword puzzle stumped me on a German river, then on Thai currency. I put it away and looked around, jumpy and impatient. Everyone else seemed calm. Bored, even.
A flight attendant, a cheerful woman about my own age, offered coffee. Weak, but hot and welcome. The oatmeal breakfast bar had a lot in common with monkey chow, without the crunch.
The plane droned on, chewing through a dull, thick fog. The view stopped a dozen feet outside the window. My row mate stayed focused on her laptop. I was caffeinated, safe, and immobilized. Thoughtful reflection was inescapable.
What would the wasteland of my life look like from 30,000 feet? I flinched away from the emotional Grand Canyon named Rick that dominated the landscape, then dragged myself back. Marcie believed putting words around things gave them handles.
Anger…grief…humiliation…self-doubt…abandonment…loss loss loss…
And bewilderment. What was Rick + Iris all about? Why did Rick die the way he did?
Answers were not forthcoming.
As for the rest of my pathetic little life—
Evicted from Felines, faltering in my new role at Birds, urged by the boss to take a job elsewhere. An accident-prone incompetent. No place felt safe—not my disaster of a house, not my job.
If putting words to feelings gave them handles, the handles were sharp-edged and red-hot. I sank in my seat, wishing codeine was available for wounds of the heart and that caffeine could counter emotional exhaustion.
So many questions without answers. I wasn’t good at this. Despite asking other keepers and wondering hard, I’d learned no more than I knew the day Rick died. Baldly stated, he had gotten drunk an hour or two after promising to stop and stumbled over the guardrail into the lion moat and to his death. Dr. Dawson had to be right, alcohol addiction was powerful. But today, that simple explanation didn’t feel right. Where did he go to drink? Would he really switch to whiskey so that he could keep his word about not drinking beer? I had to concede that was too twisty and tricky for Rick.
Friends who should be saner and more sensible than I remained convinced it was an accident.
Like Raj getting out was an accident. The little squeak of the cat door being raised…
Like the heat lamp accident. That one stank of booby trap—I didn’t buy the teenage vandal theory. Calvin hadn’t warmed to me as a coworker, but he simply wasn’t vindictive. I couldn’t believe he’d done it.
Who was the booby to be trapped? It could have been Calvin just as well as me. Whoever had set it was willing to risk hitting the wrong target. Was it meant to kill or only to frighten? A reckless prank?
Why would anyone have it in for Calvin? Nothing much had changed there for years. He took care of Birds and kept to himself. He and Wallace didn’t get along, but according to Jackie, that was of several years’ standing.
I was what had changed in Calvin’s world. I was displacing Arnie, insisting someone had let Raj out on me, asking about Rick’s death.
Arnie as the perpetrator, wanting Birds back? Arnie hadn’t the wits or the initiative to set a clever trap.
Who, then? And why?
Too many accidents. It didn’t add up. Something was going on.
I stared unfocused at the seatback in front of my face. Intuition struggled through acid sorrow and weary uncertainty to the surface and hardened into conviction.
Someone had killed Rick and was trying to kill me to hide it.
“Flying scare you?”
I blinked at the businesswoman across the empty middle seat. I must have made a noise.
“Flying is much safer than driving.” She smiled in sympathy.
I nodded vaguely. “I’ll be fine.”
I’d been too angry and sad, too rattled by accidents and change, to listen to fitful whispers from my subconscious. Stilled by a seat belt and the unvarying rumble of jet engines, I opened to another version of Rick’s last night. The blood alcohol level was a lab mistake or had been faked. He hadn’t been at the zoo to meet another woman, but for an innocent work-related matter. And someone, on purpose or by accident, had killed him.
This version was blessedly devoid of bitterness, unstained by betrayal. It left Rick whole, not a liar or a weakling. And me not a fool for loving and trusting him.
Rage jolted me like the heat lamp. Someone had killed my husband.
He was not going to get away with it.
The flight attendant brought around more coffee; my neighbor typed and moused. The plane bucked twice and shied a little. The captain suggested we all put our seat belts on.
Cold reality percolated through hot anger. If I tried to track down his killer, I remained a target. Staying at Finley Memorial Zoo would require dodging more fatal “accidents.” Or I could leave. The job at the Los Angeles Zoo might be all that stood between me and ending up like Rick.
Wallace or not, I wanted to work at Finley Memorial. The little zoo was on a rising curve, given the bond money for upgrades. I could make a difference at Finley. Besides, I was a Northwest girl; L.A. was not my town. Too big, too flashy, too far from tall trees, vacant driftwood-littered beaches, shady mountain trails. No Marcie, no parents. Bad air, bad traffic. Way too much change for me to handle now.
I would never cut and run. I’d get to the bottom of what happened with Rick. Then salvage my job.
How, exactly, would I accomplish all this? My track record was not good.
Metallic whining noises issued from the plane’s belly. Clanking and a jolt. Startled out of my thoughts, I hoped that meant the landing gear was deployed and not that a critical piece had fallen off. We seemed to be sloping toward earth, where a mosaic of roads and housing developments grew larger and more detailed. I could see for miles and all I saw was pavement and buildings. I packed up my neglected book and ugly new convictions.
The flight was fifteen minutes late and I worried about finding the Los Angeles Zoo staff. I needn’t have. Two beautiful people in khaki shorts and shirts awaited me, the L.A. Zoo logo on their shirts: silhouettes of snake, condor, rhino, gorilla. He was dark and handsome; she was blond and pretty. Their pockets identified them as Ben and Cindie; their knees were tanned. I felt like Sasquatch lumbering out of the Northwest, too big, too pale, and still stunned by harsh conclusions.
We hung around until the penguins were unloaded, shepherded the crates into the zoo van, and took off through vivid sunshine, Cindie driving. Interstate 5 was a familiar landmark, although with more potholes and patches than up north. I set my fears aside, gaped at palm trees and started peeling off layers of winter clothing, down to jeans and a T-shirt.
At the zoo, we went in through a service entrance and drove to the quarantine area. Fresh paint and good equipment made me want to weep. I felt a new kinship with Mr. Crandall and his ambitions. We put the crates in a quarantine room with its own pool, then opened up their little front doors. The penguins crammed themselves as far back in the crates as they could. I reminded them that they hadn’t wanted to be in there at all a few hours ago. We went off, leaving them huddled in their little prisons-turned-refuges. The idea was that they would come out when they settled down and felt secure. But it had to be by 5:00 PM because that was when I needed to head back to the airport with the empty crates. Lucky little dudes. Eventually they would reside in a bigger, better exhibit than they would ever live to see at Finley.
Ben and Cindie gave me the short version of the insider tour of the Los Angeles Zoo. We strolled among visitors, many speaking in languages other than English. My mother would have swooned at the plants, beautiful botanical specimens with neat labels. I glimpsed animals I’d never seen before including meerkats—a type of mongoose, looking like cute weasels—and capybara, sort of a hundred-pound guinea pig.
For minutes at a time I was free of wondering which person I thought of as a friend might have killed Rick.
I stopped dead at the gerenuks, African antelope that apparently the Disney Imagineers had designed because Bambi wasn’t cute enough anymore. They were wonderfully slender with long elegant legs and necks. Big dark eyes were ringed with natural eyeliner. A fawn nursed vigorously, its ears flapping as it bunted the mother’s udder. The mother stood stock still, except that she switched her tail rapidly and stamped one foreleg delicately, over and over, like a film loop. Another doe stood straight up on her hind legs to nibble shrubbery eight or ten feet above the ground. The adult male, presumably the father of the fawn, walked up to the high-reaching female and waited until she dropped lightly back to all fours. Just as weightlessly, he reared up and mounted her back. She casually walked out from under him, not interested today. No hard feelings on either part that I could see.
This place made Finley Zoo look like a backyard menagerie. I had a wonderful time, except for fear and anger about the quagmire waiting for me at home bubbling to the surface every quiet moment. Joy would slip off like an unbuttoned cloak, leaving me chilled.
We ran into Ben’s boss, whose exact title escaped me. An athletic guy with wraparound sunglasses, a gold earring, and a sexy little beard, again the shorts and tanned legs. Greg something. Ben explained my mission.
“I’ve heard of Finley Memorial. Thought it was in Canada. I know a guy who worked there. Is Neal Dawson still around?”
“Yeah, he’s still the vet.” Greg wasn’t the first person to overlook Vancouver, U.S.A.
“We were in school together for a year, UC Davis. He stole my girlfriend.”
Dr. Professional in a fevered love triangle? I gaped.
Greg laughed. “Yeah, he doesn’t seem the type. I think it was the contrast effect, Mr. Distant coming on to her. I thought he was stuck up and bad tempered, so it caught me off guard. But she thought he was shy and lonely.” He shook his head, shaking off regret. “Man, was she ever hard to write off. Perfect body, a smile to light up a city…”
“I had no idea he was married. Seems like the classic bachelor.”
“I wish. Hey, maybe she left him. That would be fantastic. Got divorced myself a year ago.”
“Again,” said Ben.
His boss shrugged that off. “Man was not meant to live alone. You tell Dawson you met me, and I was incredibly hot and have an awesome job, okay? And if you find an address for Winona, send it to me.”
I couldn’t help but laugh with him. He was pretty hot.
He gave my upper arm a tiny squeeze and the sunglasses probably hid a wink, then he was off down the path. Cindie rolled her eyes at his back.
The beautiful pair of keepers—I tried not to think of them as prime breeding stock—left me to finish the tour by myself. They gave me their work phone numbers on a scrap of paper. Cindie dotted her “i”s with circles, but didn’t turn them into smiley faces. They promised to try to connect later and show me around some more if there was time before my flight.
I had two hours before my job interview and made slow progress through more of the zoo. The black rhino was hypnotizing—quick, agile movements in a burly shape that should have been cumbersome. The horn on the tip of her nose was improbably long and sharp, with a shorter horn closer to her eyes. She had something on her mind and was pacing from one end of the enclosure to the other, raising her weirdly shaped head to peer and sniff every few minutes. Her skin was reddish brown, hairless like a person’s. Her eyes were dark and suspicious.
“I like a big girl who drools,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to see Greg, still in the sunglasses. “She’s worth drooling over,” I said.
“Not you—her.” He grinned.
The rhino was indeed drooling a little.
He leaned against the rail next to me. “Lunch coming up. She’s on a diet so she’s hungry.” Aftershave lotion and a hint of fresh sweat awoke a primitive part of my brain. “Hey, did you leave a husband in Portland or are you free for dinner?”
Interesting way to phrase the question. “No husband, but I’ve got a plane to catch. Sorry.”
“Lunch then?”
“Uh, sure.” I nodded and produced a cautious smile. I could use a few friends at this zoo, and I was hungry.
White teeth showed when he grinned, a dominant, confident lobo. “Let’s go to my apartment. I’ll fix you something special. Gourmet chef is one of my many talents. Parking lot’s this way.” He took my elbow and started off.
I balked. “A restaurant would suit me better.” He wasn’t that charming.
“I make a mean spaghetti carbonera. Got some white wine in the fridge, a nice salad. Show you a little California hospitality.” There was the grin again, and the pressure on my elbow.
“Hey, back off. I’m not going to your apartment for a nooner. And let go of me, damn it.”
He stepped back, hands held palm out. “We’re talking lunch here. Just a little hospitality.” The smile was gone.
I felt off balance and klutzy. Was there a worse way to turn down a pass? Now his pride and feelings were hurt, a potential ally lost. “Look, I’m not up for this. My husband died a couple of weeks ago and I’m…not up for this.”
Greg’s eyes were hidden behind the dark glasses. The rest of his face shifted from resentment to curiosity. “No kidding.” A pause. “You’re from Finley Zoo? They lost a keeper recently, right? I saw a newspaper article.”
Sigh. “Right.”
“A cat keeper. Was that your husband?”
“Reptile keeper, not cats,” I said, trapped. I had never used Rick’s last name and had been counting on that to shelter me from talking about his death.
Greg thought about it. “Rough situation. Don’t miss seeing the bongos.”
And he was off, head up, arrogant stride, saving his charm for a more likely prospect.
I kicked myself for not deflecting him with more grace and ground my teeth at his predatory opportunism. The rhino stared at his back, then whirled like a quarter horse and trotted across the enclosure.
A burrito and soda with a good view of giraffes took care of lunch, but I was hot and depressed when it was time to go find the personnel office. If word got around about how my husband died, management would have questions that I didn’t want to answer. Like why I still wanted to work with large carnivores, why I still wanted to work at a zoo at all, was I unstable. I wanted, needed, a job offer.
Maybe Greg wouldn’t discuss it with the hiring manager. Maybe I was worrying for nothing.
I introduced myself to the middle-aged receptionist. She gave me an application form to fill out. That done, she ushered me into a cool, dim conference room.
Waiting to interview me, minus the sunglasses, was Greg.