The Koala of Death Read online

  The Koala of Death

  The Koala of Death

  A Gunn Zoo Mystery

  Betty Webb

  www.bettywebb-mystery.com

  POISONED PEN PRESS

  Copyright © 2010 by Betty Webb

  First Edition 2010

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2009942210

  ISBN-13 Print: 9781590587560 Hardcover

  ISBN-13 Print: 9781590587584 Trade Paperback

  ISBN-13 eBook: 9781615952526

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  DEDICATION

  For Wanchu and her sisters.

  And especially to Notch and Half-Ear—long may they and

  their endangered cousins contribute to the beauty of this Earth.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing may be a solitary process but whipping all those words into shape is not. For the improvements they suggested, my thanks go out to the glorious Barbara Peters at Poisoned Pen Press who wanted “more koala,” the Sheridan Street Irregulars, Marge Purcell, Debra McCarthy, and Robert C. Kezer. Louise Signorelli provided much-needed technical advice. Bravo to you all!

  On the zoo front, more thanks are due the Phoenix Zoo and John Sills, the zoo’s Collection Manager, Birds, who patiently explained the intricacies of the Great Flamingo Round-Up (and had me laughing as he did so); and to Paige McNickle, the zoo’s Senior Keeper, Hoofstock Trail, who took me behind the scenes and introduced me to Notch and Half-Ear, the white rhinos who appear in this book.

  My continued admiration (and envy) goes out to the happy liveaboarders at Moss Landing, California—www.mosslandingchamber.com—and to Yohn and Melanie Gideon, of the marvelous Captain’s Inn (www.captainsinn.com) who showed my husband and me such warm hospitality.

  Special thanks go to Eileen Brady, my bowling partner at the Bowling for Rhinos fundraiser. (Yes, folks, that event is real). We may not have won that bronzed rhino dung trophy, but we sure had fun, didn’t we?

  As for the rest—any errors that appear in this book are my fault alone, not those of the helpful folks listed above.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I awoke during a pearly dawn to hear something bump against the Merilee’s hull. A brief glance at my bunkside clock gave the time as 5:24. Before I could pull the covers back over my head, DJ Bonz, my three-legged dog, slapped a wet tongue across my face, while at the foot of the bunk, Miss Priss mewed, Feed me, feed me, feed me.

  “I can’t have just six more minutes?”

  No, you can’t, they thought at me.

  Miss Priss, a mostly Persian who had weighed a whisker-thin three pounds when I rescued her from the same shelter I’d rescued Bonz, marched up my leg, across my stomach, and onto my chest. Now a whopping ten pounds, she shoved the small terrier mix out of the way so she could glare down at me through her one remaining eye. Feed me, feed me, feed me.

  “I can take a hint.” With a groan, I threw off the eiderdown comforter—even in June, Gunn Landing Harbor mornings can be chilly—and rolled out of the bunk. “Now you guys just settle down for a minute while I…”

  Bump, ba-ba-bump.

  There it was again, the sound that had wakened me. Portside. Surely not Maureen. The sea otter never showed until 5:45 a.m., so punctual I could set a clock by her. Maybe, like me, she’d had a rough night. Ignoring my pets’ ever-louder demands, I slipped on some sweats before removing a herring from the galley’s small refrigerator. Thus steeled against the chill, I stepped out on deck and drew a deep breath of Pacific Ocean air. Sounding only yards away, gulls shrieked, but I couldn’t see them.

  Grayness swirled around me in a fog so thick that only the outline of the boat next to mine was visible. A blue and white CrisCraft twice the size of my Merilee, the Gutterball bobbed gently in the harbor’s calm water. The night before, its owners, Doris and Sam Grimaldi, had thrown a noisy party that lasted far too late. I’d stayed until ten, then came back home to the Merilee to get some sleep, but found myself still awake at one, listening to a boat full of drunks guffaw at jokes so ancient they should have died with the dinosaurs.

  Casting a dirty look at the now quiet Gutterball, I leaned over the Merilee’s rail, herring in hand. For a moment, the fog parted just enough that I could see, in the oily water below, a patch of sable brown fur heading for the boat again. Then the fog closed in.

  “Early today, aren’t you, Maureen?” I held the herring out, waiting for her to break surface. Even if she couldn’t see the fish, she would smell it.

  Feeding resident wildlife was just one of the joys of harbor living. My quarters on the Merilee, a 1979 thirty-four-foot CHB trawler—or “powerboat,” to landlubbers—might be cramped, but the view was terrific. Once the mist cleared, anyway.

  Despite my waving the herring around, Maureen didn’t respond. The otter just thunked into the Merilee’s hull, eighteen inches below the final “E.” That was odd, too. She usually surfaced under the “M.”

  “Maureen?”

  By rights, she should have already stuck her head out of the water, chattered at me, then executed a flirtatious belly roll to earn her breakfast. Not today, which gave me some concern. In the past few years, the Central California coast had seen a rise in sea otter deaths due to Sarcocystis neurona, a protozoan found in innkeeper worms and clams, which were among the otters’ favorite meals. Could Maureen…?

  Truly alarmed now, I leaned farther forward, intending to grab Maureen by the scruff of the neck and haul her aboard, to be followed by a quick trip—if it wasn’t too late—to the vet. But as the fog parted again, I saw something that a clear day would have revealed earlier: otters don’t wear pink dresses or tie their long hair back with festive silver ribbons.

  “Help!” I yelled. “Anyone! Woman overboard!”

  Without waiting for an answer, I plunged into the dirty harbor water and hooked my arm around the woman’s neck, tipping her blue-tinged face out of the water. Although my soaked sweats weighed me down, I was able to maneuver her over to the Merilee’s ladder. I tried not to fasten on the phrase “dead weight,” but as she dangled limp and cold in my arms, I suspected that the rescue had already been too late. Yet I couldn’t let her go.

  “Help!” I yelled again. “Someone get a rope or boat hook! She’s too heavy for me to lift! Call 9-1-1!”

  The Gutterball remained silent, but from the boat slip on the other side of the dock, a woman called out, “On my way with a rope!” It was Linda Cushing, the owner of the Tea 4 Two. Then I heard hurried footfalls. Seconds later, the Merilee rolled to starboard as Linda stepped on deck. “Damned fog, c
an’t see a thing. Where are you, Teddy?”

  “In the water near the stern. Hurry! Just in case.” Just in case, what? Just in case the dead could rise again?

  A splash next to me as Linda threw down one end of the rope. “Slip it under her arms, tie it tight, and help me ease her up,” she ordered.

  With much grunting and gasping, we two women pulled and pushed our helpless third up the chrome-slick ladder and onto the Merilee’s deck, where she flopped across the teak as if boneless. Linda cocked a critical eye. “If you’re thinking about giving her CPR, forget it. That’s about as dead as I’ve ever seen.”

  Although dismayed by Linda’s seeming heartlessness, I had to agree. The woman was indeed dead, her body slightly swollen from an hours-long immersion in the water. And now that tendrils of dark brown hair no longer covered her face, I recognized her, too.

  Kate Nido, also known as Koala Kate. The new koala keeper at the Gunn Zoo.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Are you telling me you didn’t hear Ms. Nido go into the water?” Sheriff Joe Rejas asked, his blue eyes searching mine.

  I hated it when my boyfriend became official with me, but in this case it was understandable, so I repeated myself for the third or maybe fourth time. “As I’ve been saying, Joe, the noise from the party kept me up past one, but after that, I fell dead…” I swallowed. “…fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until she bumped against the Merilee.”

  An injury to Kate’s head must have accounted for the thin red smear across my soaked sweatshirt, which for some reason, Joe demanded I turn over to him along with my sweatpants. His request left me standing on the deck wrapped only in a terry cloth robe that had seen better days. I tried not to watch as two hefty EMT’s casually zipped Kate into a body bag, then just as casually carted her off toward a waiting ambulance. This just-another-day-at-the-office attitude seemed all wrong. Now that the fog was beginning to dissipate, I saw that the tourists gathered at the rail overlooking the harbor didn’t seem particularly disturbed, either. When had the world become so indifferent?

  Remaining in sheriff mode, Joe asked, “Ms. Nido’s the one they call ‘Koala Kate,’ isn’t she? Has that TV segment on Good Morning, San Sebastian? Called ‘Koala Kate’s Kuddly Kritters’?”

  “The zoo hired her two months ago, just before the new koala exhibit opened up,” I explained. “That TV show was only part of her duties.”

  Who would call the station to tell them Kate wouldn’t appear tomorrow or ever again? Zorah Vega, the zoo director? A former zookeeper herself, Zorah was great with animals, but social niceties seemed beyond her. She’d delegate the job, perhaps even to me, since the owner of the TV station was an acquaintance of my mother’s. Oh, God. That meant…

  “Who was there?” For some reason, Joe had taken out a note pad and was writing in it.

  I pulled myself together. “Who was where?”

  “At the Grimaldis’ party, Teddy.”

  “Liveaboarders from the harbor. And zookeepers.”

  He looked up from his note pad. “Why would zookeepers—besides yourself, of course, since you live here—attend a harbor beer bash?”

  I swallowed again. The fact that I’d just pulled a coworker out of the water was beginning to hit home. Kate had felt so cold. So…so dead.

  “Teddy? Answer me.”

  “They…uh, Sam and Doris Grimaldi are hosting this years’ Bowling for Rhinos fundraiser at their bowling alley, and they wanted…they wanted to treat the committee volunteers. They don’t live at the harbor, so they probably left for their house in S-S-San Sebastian once the p-party was…was…”

  “Sit down.” Joe eased me onto a deck chair and hovered. “Take deep breaths.”

  I followed his advice, and as soon as my head cleared, stood back up. “I’m fine, don’t fuss. This thing, it’s just a shock, that’s all. Nobody expects to…” Get a grip, Teddy. I forced my voice to sound steadier than I felt. “The party. You want to know who was there. Besides the BFR committee, there was Linda Cushing, whom you just met. Linda’s lived at the harbor for ages and can tell you anything you need to know about anyone. Besides Linda, there was Walt MacAdams, Larry DuFries, myself, and a couple of other liveaboarders from around here.”

  “I need the zookeepers’ names, too, Teddy.”

  One by one I counted them off on shaking fingers. “Buster Daltry. Since he’s the rhino keeper, he’s also Chairman of Bowling for Rhinos. And there was Robin Chase, big cats; Jack Spence, bears; Myra Sebrowski, great apes. Oh, and Lex Yarnell, the park ranger. He’s on the committee, too. And Zorah, of course.”

  Joe stopped writing. “Zorah Vega, the zoo director?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Not that long ago, Joe had arrested Zorah for suspicion of murder. Someone else had been proven guilty of the crime, but I knew she still carried a grudge against him for the time she’d spent in jail.

  “Anyone else at the party besides the neighbors and the zoo folks?”

  I searched my mind, but it refused to cooperate. “If I think of anyone else, I’ll let you know. But what difference does it make? It was an accident, wasn’t it? Kate probably had too much to drink, then slipped and fell into the harbor. I guess she hit her head and that’s why she didn’t call for help, even though you’d think…”

  “How much did you have to drink last night, Ms. Bentley?” He’d become official again, and I hated it.

  “One-and-a-half beers.”

  “You didn’t hear anything unusual?”

  “No.”

  “Cries of distress? Anything that sounded like a struggle?”

  “Hey, what’s all this…?”

  “Thank you, Ms. Bentley. That’ll be all.” He stepped onto the dock and walked toward his deputies, leaving me standing on the Merilee’s deck with my mouth open.

  ***

  My name is Theodora Esmeralda Iona Bentley, but most people call me Teddy. I’ve been a zookeeper at the Gunn Zoo for around a year, mostly working with the giant anteater and various small primates, sometimes helping out with the Mexican gray wolves and the marsupials in Down Under, the zoo’s Australian section.

  As work places go, the Gunn Zoo is ideal. Located four miles inland from Gunn Landing Harbor, it escapes most of the coastal fog, so my workdays tend to be sunny and bright. But every now and then, Aster Edwina Gunn, administrator of the Gunn Family Trust, which founded the privately-owned zoo decades earlier, limos over to spread fear and gloom among employees and animals alike. Given what had happened to Kate, today would be one of those days.

  Despite the sad business of the morning, I arrived at work well before seven and was zipping along one of the wider zoo paths in my zebra-striped cart toward Down Under. When I had phoned the zoo director to tell her about Kate’s death, she’d told me to start my day with the marsupials before taking care of my own charges.

  “I’ll call Bill, but you know how he is,” she’d said. “He was probably tending bar at the Amiable Avocado last night and has his phone turned off. In the meantime, the less the marsupials’ routines are disturbed, the better off they’ll be, so get down there first thing.”

  Known to zoo visitors as “Outback Bill” because of his heavy Aussie accent, Bill was a part-time keeper who at one time had dated Kate. Recently their relationship had ended, and Bill had been seen around the local bars with a series of other women. Given their estrangement, I doubted Bill would grieve too hard over her death, especially since it meant that Zorah might now hire him full-time. Originally a keeper at the Sydney Zoo, Bill could tell the difference between a nail-tail wallaby and a rock wallaby. Even better, the koalas liked him almost as much as they’d liked Kate.

  When my cart screeched to a halt outside the service entrance to the koala enclosure, I at first didn’t see them. Normally, Wanchu, the female, would be sleeping in a tree, with her mate, Nyee, snoring nearby. But when I climbed out of the cart, I saw Wanchu waddling across the enclosure toward me.

  “Morning, cutie!” I calle
d. “Ready for some fresh eucalyptus browse?”

  She looked up with those big brown koala eyes. Yes, she thought at me. Hurry up so I can get back to sleep.

  Koalas look adorable with their Teddy-bear builds and goo-goo eyes. The Aboriginal people of Australia believe koalas are the reincarnation of lost children, a belief that—given the animals’ sweet dispositions—makes sense. Even wild koalas allow strangers to pick them up. Part of their docility stems from not only their temperament, but from the fact that koalas are almost always drowsy. If they’re not already asleep, they’re thinking about sleeping, because their diet of eucalyptus leaves is so poor in protein that they have to eat a pound of leaves per day merely to stay alive. All that chewing exhausts them so much that they wind up sleeping 75 percent of the time.

  Wanchu was one of the only Gunn Zoo animals we keepers were encouraged to touch. Zoo-born and orphaned only days after she’d left her mother’s pouch, she had been hand-raised by an overly doting zookeeper. Now full-grown, she still loved to cuddled.

  “Come to Mama, sweetness,” I cooed, grasping her by her forearms.

  Wanchu pulled herself up and curled around my torso much as she would have around a tree trunk. Because of her heavy eucalyptus intake, she smelled like cough drops. After nestling against me for a few minutes while I sang a few bars of “Waltzing Matilda,” she lifted her head, gazed soulfully into my eyes, and chirped, “Eeep, eeep, eeep!”

  “Yes, and I’m glad to see you, too, Wanchu. You’re my favoritest female koala.” I didn’t want to make Nyee jealous.

  “Eeep?”

  “You’re hungry? Well, your wish is my command. A large serving of eucalyptus browse coming right up.”

  She snuggled again. “Eeep?”

  “Yes, I’ll give Nyee some, too.”

  “Eeep.”

  Putting a koala down can be difficult, not only because you don’t want to, but because koalas cling. Wanchu finally allowed me to place her in the crook of her tree so I could return to my cart for a large bundle of wrapped eucalyptus leaves. I was tying them to her tree when I heard another cart screech to a halt on the other side of the fence.