The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (9 page)

“And I’m going over to the storage bin to get the move going again,” I said. I went inside to get my own keys. Out on the porch, I overheard the chief giving Sammy orders.

“Don’t tell any of those confounded reporters that I’m over at the zoo, you hear? If they ask, Horace and I went into town for some equipment, and I’ll be back directly. And call me if anyone finds that damned Shiffley kid!”

Damned Shiffley kid? Had Charlie Shiffley already popped to the top of the chief's suspect list? Or was he just the only suspect unlucky or unwise enough not to be immediately available for questioning?

Chief Burke's job, not mine, I reminded myself. My job, for now, was to get the move finished.

And that's what I did for the rest of the afternoon. I put myself in charge of the crew loading the stuff from our storage bins into the trucks. It was hot, sweaty, muscle-aching work, but at
least it kept me away from the house. I didn’t have to watch Sammy's epic battle to keep the reporters from infiltrating the basement. I could try to forget about the fact that Mother was arranging and rearranging everything, probably in ways that had nothing to do with what Michael and I had planned. If any more animals arrived, I didn’t have to deal with them. It was dusk by the time I arrived back at the house.

Chapter 14

I felt an irrational surge of relief when I pulled up in front of the house and found it still standing and apparently quieter than it had been during the afternoon. Silly of me—someone would have found me to share the news if anything really exciting had happened, like a house fire or the arrival of a troupe of performing bears.

There were still a few vehicles parked along the roadside. The chief's sedan and one of the patrol cars. A few others, but they might belong to relatives showing up annoyingly early for Monday's party. And with any luck, most of them had gone over to visit Mother and Dad at the farmhouse for the evening. Peace and quiet reigned.

But I did spot one visitor. He was down by the pasture, leaning on the fence, gazing at the llamas. Not the Animal Welfare guy, though—the newest visitor was tall and stocky. I strolled down to see what he was up to.

He turned when he heard me approaching, and stuck out a thick, callused hand.

“Ray Hamlin,” he said. “Proprietor of the Clay County Zoo.”

“Meg Langslow,” I said. “I’ve heard of your zoo.”

I didn’t mention that most of what I’d heard was condescending. And I found myself wondering if he would normally have struck me as foxlike, or if I was starting to think in animal meta
phors. His copper red hair was combed back in a manelike fashion, perhaps to disguise a thinning spot on top, and his face had a quizzical, lopsided look, as if he’d been about to say something sardonic and got stuck midway, with one eyebrow perpetually crooked a little higher than the other.

“So, you folks in the market for an ark?” he said. He wheezed a couple of times with laughter, and then the wheeze mutated into a cough, which gave me time to restrain my irritation. At least three other people had made the same joke at various times over the course of the afternoon.

“We do have a lot of animals, yes,” I said. “And more arriving all the time. More than we’re really equipped to handle. I was planning to get in touch with you to see if there was any possibility you could take some of them. At least in the short term.”

“Hmm,” he said, frowning at the llamas. “I have several llamas already.”

“You don’t have to take the llamas if you don’t want to,” I said. For the time being, the llamas didn’t require much more than a little pasture space. I could think of other animals whose departure was a higher priority, animals that were a lot more trouble to have around. The hyenas, for example. And the penguins.

“Nice llamas, of course,” he said. He cocked his head to one side and continued to scrutinize the llamas, as if unwilling to reject them completely before figuring out if they were superior, in some subtle way, to the llamas he already had. I’d seen my nephew Eric, at a younger age, wearing the same expression one Halloween, trying to decide whether the benefits of rummaging through a proffered goody bowl were worth letting go of the candy he already had clutched in both sticky little fists.

“Most of the ungulates aren’t really a problem, anyway,” I said.

“The what?” he said, frowning.

“Ungulates. Hoofed animals.”

“Oh, ungulates,” he said, as if correcting my pronunciation, though I couldn’t tell a difference between my pronunciation and his. “Yeah, the herd stock isn’t a problem. It's the carnivores you’ve got to watch.”

More wheezing.

“Exactly,” I said. “And we’ve got a few of those, too.”

“I don’t suppose you have a list of the available animals,” Hamlin said. “I have a general idea of what he had, of course, but I haven’t visited him in quite a while. I don’t know which ones I’d want to take on.”

“You don’t seem to be getting the point,” I said. “We’re not offering you a chance to cherry-pick the Caerphilly Zoo to fill in the gaps in your own collection. Some of these animals probably require special care that we have no clue how to provide. In the short term, we need someone who is qualified to foster them. We’re talking animal welfare here.”

“Yes, the animals’ welfare comes first, naturally,” he said quickly. A little too quickly, and he didn’t sound all that sincere. I began to have second thoughts. Did I really want to entrust the health and safety of our animals to this man?

Of course, if even I was starting to think of them as “our animals,” finding them a new home had become especially urgent, before Michael and Dad completely forgot that the menagerie didn’t belong to us. And just because he rubbed me the wrong way didn’t mean Hamlin was unkind to animals.

“Once everything is settled, I’m sure we can work closely with you to find a permanent home for all the animals. Determining which ones you feel would benefit from living at your zoo and which ones would be better off at another facility.”

He frowned again, and then his face cleared. He’d got the
message. Help us out of this crisis, and maybe you will get a chance to cherry-pick Patrick's collection after all.

Though I wasn’t promising anything. And luckily, the animals weren’t mine to promise.

“I’ll still need to know what animals you have so I can arrange spaces for them,” he said. “If you can get together a list, I can start working on freeing up as much space as possible. The Clay County Zoo's still pretty small—I wasn’t a trust-fund baby like Lanahan. But we’ll do what we can.”

“That's fine,” I said. I felt relieved. Partly because I’d made progress toward getting someone to take the animals off our hands. And, contrary as it sounds, partly because I’d have a little more time to vet him before entrusting the animals to him.

I’d get Dad to check him out. For that matter, if Dr. Montgomery Blake insisted on hanging around, maybe I could guilt-trip him into helping check Hamlin out. Blake seemed a lot less gullible than Dad.

Or maybe just a lot less nice. He and Hamlin should get along splendidly.

I felt a momentary pang of guilt. Why was I being so quick to suspect the worst of Blake? Apart from his slightly officious and overbearing manner, he hadn’t really done anything wrong. I pondered my distrust for a few moments without coming any closer to an answer, except that my gut instinct told me Blake wasn’t exactly what he seemed. I resolved to keep an eye on him.

I headed back to the house. The yard was quiet, apart from an occasional noise from one of the animals that hadn’t settled in for the night. All the humans had gone inside—except for Dr. Smoot, who had returned to the Adirondack chair. But he wasn’t actually sitting in it—in fact, he, too, appeared to be settling down for the night.

Chapter 15

I stood, hands on hips, surveying Dr. Smoot's arrangements. He had appropriated a couple of pillows from the porch swing. He’d placed a plastic garden bucket upside down to the left of the chair, to serve as a table. On the bucket, he’d arranged a box of tissues, a paperback copy of
Scaramouche
, and a flashlight. And he’d taken off his shoes and socks and was walking around barefoot, holding a glass of water and brushing his teeth.

We were used to relatives showing up for an afternoon visit and staying for a week, but I’d never laid eyes on Dr. Smoot before today.

I went over to talk to him.

“So, is there anything you need?” I asked, in my most cheerful, helpful hostess voice.

“Yes, actually there is,” he said, and began taking off his pants.

“What the—,” I began, and then I realized that he wasn’t disrobing. Beneath the baggy gray pants he was wearing tan Bermuda shorts.

“What a relief!” he said, echoing my thoughts. He pulled off his tie and began unbuttoning his shirt. I watched with fascination as he pulled it off, revealing a faded Duke University T-shirt.

“Could I have a coat hanger?” he asked. “I don’t want to spoil my work clothes.”

“Um ...right,” I said.”You’re planning to sleep here? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable—”

“Not inside!” he shrieked, turning pale.

“No, of course not,” I said. “Here's better. Plenty of fresh air.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “After a fright like I had today, I find it hard to go into any confined space again for a while.”

“How long a while?” I asked.

Dr. Smoot looked at me with reproachful eyes.

“I understand,” I said quickly. “It's just—wouldn’t you be more comfortable in familiar surroundings? I mean, where do you sleep when this hits you at home?”

“In the backyard,” he said. “In my hammock. Yes, that would be more comfortable, but I just can’t face the car.”

He shuddered dramatically.

“Yes, that would be a problem,” I said. “Perhaps if you—”

“Even with all the windows open, a car's way too small right now. I just need to rest here for the time being. If the car's in the way, I’d be happy to give you the keys so someone could move it.”

“The car's fine where it is,” I said. “Have you ever considered getting a convertible?”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Michael has a convertible,” I said. “It's amazing how free and unfettered you feel, driving around in a convertible.” “I don’t want to be a bother.”

“One of us could run you home in the convertible if you like.”

“I wouldn’t want you to go to that much trouble,” he said. “Just a coat hanger. And maybe a light blanket, if you have one.”

I gave up and went inside to fetch a coat hanger. I found Michael, Dad, Eric, and Dr. Blake sitting around the kitchen table, eating chocolate ice cream.

“Aunt Meg, do you want some ice cream?” Eric asked. Dad waved the scoop invitingly.

“What's wrong?” Michael asked, putting down his spoon.

“Dr. Smoot plans to camp in our backyard tonight,” I said, heading for the hall. “I’m going to take him a coat hanger for his suit.”

“No you’re not.” Michael caught me by the arm and steered me back to the table. “You’re going to have some ice cream. I’ll deal with Smoot.”

“He’d like a blanket, too, if we have one,” I said. Michael nodded, and disappeared into the front hall. I sat, thinking I was too tired to eat, but after I’d stared at Michael's ice-cream bowl for a few seconds, I decided it looked appealing after all.

“So, getting back to the opossum,” Blake said. I glanced over and saw that he was, indeed, holding up a small, sleepy-looking possum. “Do you know what else is interesting about it?” He was using that determinedly cheerful voice people often use when talking to young children, so I deduced that he was speaking to Eric. But Eric was at least half a dozen years too old for that kind of voice, so I also deduced that Blake hadn’t had much contact with children.

Either of Eric's older brothers would have called Blake on it, but Eric was a remarkably good-natured kid. He merely shook his head.

“They have an opposable hallux!” Blake said. “Do you know what that is?”

“Big toe,” I said through a mouthful of ice cream. Dad beamed at me. “Good guess,” Blake said.

“Wasn’t a guess,” I said. “Dad taught us all about possums. We had plenty of them around the house when I was growing up.”

“It's illegal for private citizens to keep them!” Blake said, in the booming tones of a fire-and-brimstone preacher denouncing fornication.

“Not if you’re a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, which Dad is,” I said. “It's perfectly legal.” I was tired, but I restrained myself from sticking out my tongue and saying, “So there!”

“Well, that's all right then,” Blake said. Rather grudgingly, I thought. “Anyway, the interesting thing—”

“Hey, Meg!” My brother Rob came in, carrying an empty icecream bowl. “There are a couple of Sprockets here to see you.”

“That's all we need,” I muttered.

“What's a Sprocket?” Blake asked.

“The people we bought the house from,” I explained, scraping up a last bit of ice cream. “Edwina Sprocket, the former owner, left equal shares in her estate to all her nieces and nephews, or to their children if they were already dead, which meant that before we could buy the place, we had to get each and every one of them to approve the terms. Over a hundred in all.”

“That must have been difficult,” Blake said.

“Difficult? It would have been difficult if they were reasonable people,” I said. “And they’re not. It was well-nigh impossible. But I thought we’d finally finished with the Sprockets. Did they say why they were here?”

“Um... not really,” Rob said. “They just asked for you.”

“Figures,” I said. “I’ll go see what they want.”

The two Sprockets were typical—short, pale, and rather mousy, with peeved expressions on their largely chinless faces. They looked for all the world like large white rats who’d temporarily taken human form. I was half inclined to ready a cage for them, between the hyenas and the acouchis. They’d have made perfect casting for Cinderella's coachman and footman.

“Rutherford Sprocket,” one of them said. “And this is my brother Barchester.”

“How do you do?” I said. “Can I help you?”

“We came about the body,” Barchester said.

Chapter 16