Drizzled With Death (5 page)

Graham stood beside him, his uniform hat in one hand, a coffee mug in the other. After what had happened at the breakfast, he had never gotten to make his announcement about the loose animals. Most likely he was there to try again. I crossed the room, hoping to ask him if a mountain lion had turned up among the exotics gallivanting about the village.

Before I could ask him, though, I experienced my third
strange animal sighting in two days. This time, however, I knew I wasn’t the only one to see it, judging by the gasps and the clumsy dying off of the music. There was an intake of breath best described as similar in timing to an elementary school concert. Someone had left the door open and a kangaroo jumped into view and headed to the stage area, its half-curled tail thumping against the black-and-white-checkerboard floor. A minuscule head poked out of its pouch, a pair of tiny ears pricked up above its neat head.

“Would now be the time to make your announcement?” I called out to Graham over the dying din of instruments and the silencing clatter of utensils against china.

Graham sprinted past me in the direction of the kangaroo. Everyone else instinctively pulled back then a few brave souls surged forward brandishing forks and coffee mugs. Knowlton sprang from his booth and flapped a dessert menu at the springing animal. It pounced toward him and landed an assertive paw on the sweets offerings. I found myself wishing I could ask her for some tips in dealing with Knowlton. That kangaroo was all right in my opinion. It was all I could do to keep from cheering her on. I wished I could take her out for a beer, but she obviously needed to keep a clear head with a joey on board.

Knowlton retreated to the safety of his booth and pulled his feet up on the bench. Tansey moved toward him and placed a hand on his shoulder, like he was still a joey himself. Graham disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared with a fifty-five-gallon gray plastic trash can in his hands. He held the lid like a shield and made a clucking, smooching sound at the kangaroo. She swiveled her ears in his direction but her eyes were focused on Roland’s bass. She bounced toward it and the delicate underpinnings of the arthritic building trembled.

Roland scrunched his shoulders together like he was attempting to make himself disappear behind the instrument, but he did no better than a small child hiding under the covers to avoid monsters in the closet. His freckled knuckles clutched white on the neck of the bass. Sweat sprang up on his forehead like there was a sprinkler system tucked in behind his eyebrows.

Graham navigated the terrain well, considering how little space was available for a trash can between all the booths, tables, and music enthusiasts. The kangaroo hurtled forward into Roland and his instrument just as Graham attempted to upend the trash can over its head. The bass crashed against Roland and knocked him off balance. The kangaroo feinted right and Graham left, and the only thing Graham managed to slip his trash can on top of was the music stand Roland was using before the music had come to a crashing halt.

All hell broke loose. The inside of the Stack Shack erupted into a flurry of activity. It was as though a film crew had descended on Sugar Grove and asked adults to reenact a food fight from high school days. Waffles and sausages and a criminal waste of syrup littered the floor. Hash browns and home fries provided enough slipping hazards to support the need for a physical therapy clinic in town. Coffee flowed like spring snowmelt across the black-and-white-checkerboard tile. In among it all, the kangaroo and her baby dashed and darted and squeezed shrill shrieks from the most stalwart of New Hampshire countrymen. Men who from early childhood had accompanied their elders on journeys deep into the woods for hunting trips, camping trips, and firewood-cutting missions were laid low by this exotic creature running amok in their beloved breakfast establishment.

Emboldened braggarts hugged the walls whenever the kangaroo made a foray in their direction. Armed only with musical instruments and butter knives, they quivered like Chihuahuas in a New Hampshire winter. There would be much to talk about in the post office Monday morning. All tales of past glory were negated as men with bear heads mounted over their fireplaces leapt onto the countertop where they habitually enjoyed morning coffee to remove themselves from the dangerous clutches of a mother kangaroo and her tiny offspring. In a singular act of courage, Mindy Collins, the church organist and an experienced den mother, opened the main door to the Stack Shack. The kangaroo took the hint and bounced out through the opening. Graham followed in hot pursuit. My only sorrow was not having seen him do the same the night before when I informed him about the mountain lion.

I caught Piper’s eye over the disheveled heads of the other Griddle and Fiddle participants. We had known each other since she taught me how to squirt milk through my nose the first day of third grade. We both got sent out from snack time into the hall in order to think about our behavior. We had enjoyed getting into trouble together ever since, but I don’t think either of us had ever imagined trouble quite like this. I know I never had. If our third grade teacher could have gotten ahold of that kangaroo, something a whole lot more drastic than time-out in the hall would have been on her mind. I don’t think that mammal would have gone out to recess for the whole school year.

Everywhere I looked, there were sticky spots and broken china. Flatware and ruined meals carpeted the floor. This did not even begin to address the condition of people’s clothing or their stricken expressions. Anyone who had had the misfortune of holding a cup at the moment the kangaroo appeared was invariably wearing its contents of that cup. Grease and syrup and even ketchup spattered shirtfronts and sweaters. People who may not have ever been the snappiest of dressers but who never would appear in public with things sticking to their faces looked like kids in need of a hot bath.

Piper looked crazed. The Stack Shack was her life. Ever since we were kids, she had known she wanted to own the place. She had saved her birthday money, allowance, and even lunch money she chose not to waste on eating from the age of nine on. Many of her first customers at the Stack had been early supporters of her lemonade stand, the proceeds of which had also rolled into the Stack savings fund. By the time she graduated from high school, she was positioned to make an offer to the elderly owners. I’m sure they never would have envisioned this sort of crisis in their beloved restaurant either. Piper kept swiveling her head from side to side, shaking it in disbelief.

Tansey, always one to take charge, hoisted herself onto the top of the breakfast counter, the burnt orange laminate groaning under the strain. She dinged a spoon against a water glass and attracted even more attention than her attempt at athleticism had.

“All right, people, pull yourselves together. Does anyone have any idea where that animal came from or what it was doing here in the Stack?” People on all sides of me looked to others for an answer. As far as I could tell, I was the only one with anything close to an explanation.

I wasn’t sure it was my place to pass along a message on behalf of the Fish and Game Department, but from the way that kangaroo had taken off, it didn’t look like Graham would be available to do it anytime soon. And I was sure information about a loose kangaroo would whip through the town faster than a bout of the flu. I didn’t want people going around saying out-of-control exotic animals were taking over the town. Someone would be sure to take matters into their own hands, and Knowlton would be posing an entirely new taxidermy exhibit.

“I do,” I said, stepping toward the counter and scrambling up alongside Tansey, who wisely slid down to take a seat on a stool. Who knew how much strain the old counter could take? I may not weigh much, but who wanted to chance a collapse on top of everything else that had happened that day?

I went on to explain about the released animals and how Graham was hoping townspeople would help to round them up safely by reporting sightings and even corralling them when possible. “No one is in any danger here except the animals themselves. You know you wouldn’t let your kids out in this weather in the evening without a jacket. So you can imagine what it must be like out there for a bunch of monkeys and a couple of parrots.” People had a lot of questions and some expressed a desire to try lemur stew. But most were excited at the prospect of helping with something so out of the ordinary. Some people stuck around to help with the cleanup at the Stack, but most headed out the door as soon as I finished speaking, to follow tracks and to look for scat.

Piper got over her shock pretty quickly when she realized the animals were in a lot more trouble than she was. By the time we had righted the last overturned chair and mopped the last bit of sticky from the floor, she was all for joining the hunt.

“What about leaving some food out near the back door of the Stack? We could wait behind the Dumpster and then throw a net over them or something.” Piper rubbed her hands together excitedly then clapped them like a little child.

“Do you even know what kangaroos eat? Do you have a net big enough for that thing?” I didn’t want to show it, but I was feeling a little intimidated by the idea of trying to corner that creature in a darkened back alley. Not that the space behind the Stack was really at all like the average idea of an alley—gray and dark and narrow with more shadows being cast than light by the streetlamps overhead. No, the space behind the Stack, just like most other stores in Sugar Grove, looked out onto some bushes and a generous parking area. In sight of which were dense stands of trees. More leaves littered the ground than trash ever did. No one in my life had ever been assaulted in an alley in Sugar Grove. But then, kangaroos never roamed here either. Nor had anyone died under suspicious circumstances at a public function. Or any other way for that matter.

Wallace Coombs was thought to have bopped off his wife and hidden her body under the floor of an old icehouse back in the twenties, but that was before my time. And she turned up alive and kicking a couple of years later, having sown her wild oats by running away with a food vendor she met at the county fair. People had gossiped about Wallace when she left and even more when she came back.

But today had been different. Alanza was well and truly dead. She wasn’t going to show up two years later, whatever had ailed her worked off by many moons spent slaving away as a fried dough maker or lemonade squeezer. She wasn’t going to see any more kangaroos, and I was worried about either Piper or I sharing her fate.

“They’re herbivores, I know that much. Maybe a big bowl of tossed salad would do the trick. I’d hate for that little joey to go hungry. He was awfully cute with his dark eyes and pert ears.”

“Joeys only require milk, so long as they still fit in their mother’s pouch.” I said this with a lot more authority than I felt. I had no idea if they were like human babies and supplemented their caloric intake by hopping out now and again and having a nibble of some shoots or leaves. I wasn’t even sure she was right about the herbivore thing. From the way the mother kangaroo thrashed the Stack to pieces, I had no doubt she could hunt down a bit of meat for her baby’s dinner if she set her mind to it.

“So salad for the mother and a saucer of milk for the baby.” Piper yanked on the door to the walk-in and fetched a glass bottle of milk from a local dairy. Rummaging around on a shelf under the counter, she found a metal mixing bowl and filled it with vegetables. The salad looked like something fresh from the farmer’s market. Even when she was serving wildlife, Piper was a food artist first. If someone told me she baited rat traps with triple-cream Brie, I’d believe it. Before I could complain any more, she hurried out the back door. I followed her—there’s safety in numbers—and watched while she placed her offerings carefully on the ground in front of the Dumpster.

“You know the frost is just going to reduce that to a soggy mess by morning, don’t you?” I pointed at the heaping serving of mesclun, grated carrots, and ruby-colored grape tomatoes.

“With any luck, it won’t last until morning.”

“We won’t last ’til morning. It’s already near freezing and there are hours and hours ’til dawn. I’m not planning to spend all night out here.”

“Be a sport. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“That still leaves you with the problem of a net,” I said, hoping to knock her off track.

“I know just what to use.” Piper hurried back inside and headed for the employee bathroom. I followed her and watched her grab at a rope dangling from the ceiling. The tugging swelled the outlines of her beanstalk tattoo and made the plant look like it had received a hearty helping of fertilizer. Down came the ladder to the creepy Stack attic.

When the Stack was built, it was meant only to serve as a summer eatery. There was no original attic since there was no need for insulation if the pipes were properly drained before cold weather. The restaurant was open all the way to the curved underside of the roof. The people Piper had bought the place from had converted it to a year-round business by dropping in a ceiling and adding insulation. The townspeople got a year-round eatery, and Piper got a place to store everything that didn’t fit in her camper. I mounted the creaking stairs behind her, wondering what she could possibly have up there that could be used.

She pulled on a string that looked like the malnourished younger brother of the rope hanging from the stairs and tugged on the light. The bulb was as pikerish as Scrooge with his piggy bank.