Foxes and Fatal Attraction: Mystery (Madigan Amos Zoo Mysteries Book 9) Page 9

  “Do the police know that?” I asked, privately thinking that Josh would be pretty high on my questioning list as a potential witness.

  He shook his head. “They’ll think I did it! I wasn’t supposed to be there. I’d gone home for the day and was making dinner when I saw the folder by the door and remembered it was supposed to have been delivered earlier that day. I’m new to this whole business, and Mr Herriot isn’t exactly an easy-going boss. I thought if I dropped it into the agency, he might not find out I messed up.”

  “How did you get into the other estate agents?” I asked, assuming it had been long past closing time.

  Josh blushed a little. “Felicity had given me a key for emergencies. I’ve worked late before. She trusts me,” he said, so defensively that I didn’t doubt it was some sort of a lie. But before I could question him further, he glared at me.

  “Just leave me alone, will you? I had nothing to do with what happened to Harry Farley. Nothing at all!” he said and then angrily wiped his face with his already sodden sleeve before stalking back out towards the tables.

  I stayed behind, digesting everything that I’d learned. Josh had been at a rival estate agents on the night of the murder. Did I believe he was the killer and the one who had returned Harry’s car? I realised I didn’t. He was too upset to be the cold, calculating murderer who’d set the scene up oh so carefully to throw the police off the scent. However, I did think he might have seen who had returned the car. He’d claimed that Felicity Farley was putting pressure on him to force him to tell her who the killer was - as she believed he knew because of the evidence that he’d visited the office that night - but I remembered the look of terror on his face when he hadn’t known it was me opening the door of the cupboard. Could it be that Josh not only knew who the killer was, he’d gone out for lunch with her?

  I walked back into the restaurant, wondering if there was anything I could do in order to find out more. If I was right then Josh was in grave danger.

  They were gone.

  I looked around but their table was empty, but for their dirty dishes. They’d clearly paid and left in a hurry.

  “Looking for someone?”

  I turned around and discovered Drew James was the one who’d addressed me. Today he had his dark hair swept to the side. There was a sideways smile on his face that hinted one of his hobbies was riding motorbikes off into the sunset. Actually - the full leather outfit he was wearing hinted that.

  “They left,” I said with a polite smile before turning around and sitting back down at the table with Joe.

  But Drew hadn’t finished.

  “We should be friends,” he purred, sinking down on one knee next to the table so he was almost at my level (it was a challenging feat given my lack of height).

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” I said, unwilling to entertain foolishness.

  “You own The Lucky Zoo, don’t you?”

  Now he had my attention. Perhaps this was something more than just an idle chat. “I do, yes.”

  Drew nodded like he was thinking something through. “You know… there might be something I can do for you. I was there when the farm was sold to the Abraham family. If my memory serves me right, there’s something interesting about the deed we should talk about…”

  I turned to look at him properly. “Is there something wrong with my zoo?” This conversation was not going at all the way I’d anticipated.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” he said while his eyes wandered up and down my face. It made me wonder how much egg and avocado I’d managed to spread around my mouth. “But we should talk about it. I think you’ll find it… interesting.”

  I looked carefully at the man kneeling next to me. I’d worried that he would follow up on the initial oh-so-obvious interest he’d displayed at Harry Farley’s celebration of life, but I wasn’t sure what to make of this.

  “Give me a call.” He slipped a business card across the table. “It was a pleasure seeing you again, Madi,” he said and then walked away and out of the restaurant.

  “Did I imagine that wink or not?” Joe said from across the table, looking like the cat who'd had all the cream. “And you were worried about our meeting causing the wrong type of gossip. Just wait until that hunk starts hanging around the zoo!”

  I shot Joe a withering look whilst he rested his head in his hands, looking amused. Unfortunately, I knew he was right. People were going to talk all right.

  And Joe hadn’t imagined that wink.

  8

  The Missing Links

  I woke up at four o’clock the next morning. At first, I blinked in the dreary light of dawn, wondering why I was awake. The house was silent, Auryn was asleep beside me, and both Lucky and Rameses were asleep at the end of the bed. All the same, I was wide awake.

  The idea popped into my head as soon as I saw the time. Just the other day, Auryn had told me that his mystery intruder made their appearance at around five in the morning. If I jumped in the car now, I’d be in plenty of time to catch the fowl murderer - animal or otherwise. Auryn had collected some scent marked items from the tiger enclosure, but there was no guarantee that it would work. I bit my lip when I considered the possibility that it might be a very disturbed human being who was responsible. If that were the case, I promised myself I would stay hidden and call the police. My confrontation days were over.

  I would think back to that sensible thought an hour later when I found myself on the wrong end of a gun.

  I’d always liked walking around Avery Zoo at odd hours of the day or night. There was a stillness in the air as the animals went about their business, uninhibited by watchers. It was the unseen zoo life that took place in-between opening hours, and I always felt privileged to witness it.

  After letting myself in with the set of keys Auryn had given me long ago, I strolled through the zoo until I got close to the area where the flamingos and other waterfowl were situated. There was a gentle sound of quacking as a few Barbary ducks squabbled, but for the most part, the animals were sleeping. Good. That meant the killer was not yet in their midst.

  I looked around for a place to conceal myself and that’s when I saw it - or rather - that’s when I saw him. There was a small green tent set up on the edge of some landscaped bushes that were just off the main pathway. The tent featured a camouflage print that I personally thought looked ridiculous set against the neat, green bushes, rather than the wilds it was intended for. But worse than the tent was the shining barrel of a gun which protruded from the opening.

  I made sure to walk around behind, so I wouldn’t be shot by mistake.

  “Who are you and what do you think you’re doing here?” I demanded.

  The entire tent jumped into the air a little bit. There was the sound of a zip being undone and then a red-faced man with a scrubby beard and watery blue eyes glared out at me. “What do you mean what am I doing here? What are you doing here? Come to steal some fowl have you? You’ve got another thing coming. I’m the new security around here.”

  “Actually, I’m the owner of The Lucky Zoo - Avery’s sister zoo,” I said, in case he assumed that this was some strange sabotage attempt.

  “A likely story,” the man grumbled.

  I found I didn’t recognise him from The Lords of the Downs or from the get together of Harry Farley’s friends. I wondered just where Auryn had dredged this character up from.

  “Call Auryn if you like,” I said with a shrug I hoped looked a lot more relaxed than I was feeling. Inside, I was already burning up with rage. “To my knowledge, you’re not supposed to be here. Auryn was testing one final method before calling you in.”

  “That old nonsense would never work. I’m doing him a favour,” the man in the tent said.

  I wrinkled my nose as I caught a whiff of him. He smelt as though he’d rolled around in the fowl’s droppings. Judging by the state of his hair, he may well have done.

  “I’ll call Auryn and he’ll call the police,” I said, hoping I sounded b
rave. The man I was arguing with was armed after all.

  “Go right ahead! I’m sure he’ll be pleased to not lose any more of his animals to this killer fox. He’ll be thanking me when it’s done.”

  “But we haven’t exhausted all of the deterrent options yet!” I protested. “You are not supposed to be here right now. How did you even get in?”

  “Probably the same way the fox did - over the fence at the back and then over another fence. You’ve got to think like the animal you’re hunting.”

  “And did you see any signs that it was indeed a fox? Or just a person doing what you did?” I asked, realising I was genuinely curious.

  The shifty look on the hunter’s face was all I needed to see. He didn’t think it was a fox either.

  “You can’t just start shooting at anything that moves…” I started to say but the man shushed me and then - horror of horrors - seized my arm and pulled me lower to the ground with him.

  “It’s here,” he hissed, raising his rifle to his shoulder.

  I froze and listened before realising the hunter was right. There was the scrabbling sound of something climbing the fences. Something big.

  It didn’t sound like a human.

  I was still frowning and trying to figure out what it could possibly be when the animal itself appeared, slinking across the pathway. I just had time to draw in an intake of breath when I heard the sound of the safety catch on the rifle being snapped off.

  “No!” I shouted, pushing the gun to the side before he could pull the trigger. I overdid the movement and instead ended up clinging to the gun with the barrel pointed squarely at my nose. The creature had turned at my exclamation. When I looked over it was frozen, looking at us for a second, before it turned tail and sprinted back in the direction it had come from.

  “Blasted idiot! That animal might never come back now!” the man whose gun I was hanging off shouted.

  At last, I saw his enthusiasm for what it was. He’d known as soon as Auryn had asked him to come over and set up the tripwires that the intruder was no fox. Auryn had begun to cotton-on yesterday when we’d got our own taste of the pungent odour that came with foxes, but he’d thought that the smell of tiger would be enough to scare anything away - bar a human.

  His hunter friend had decided to clock in early, probably also knowing that it wasn’t a human who was breaking into the zoo and killing the birds. He’d decided to take Auryn’s asking for his assistance as a license to kill, and he had wanted to take home a trophy worth talking about.

  “That ‘animal’ was a lynx…. and it certainly shouldn’t be roaming loose in the wild!”

  “Well, sure, Princess. That’s why I was putting it down. A dangerous animal like that shouldn’t just be wandering around. Someone needs to put it down.”

  I glared at the hunter. He was exactly the kind I abhorred. I knew full well that he didn’t want to kill the lynx because of the danger it might cause to someone. He wanted his trophy and the resultant fame that would come from killing a lynx that had been living wild in South East England.

  “If at all possible, the lynx should be captured alive. Now we know what we’re dealing with and where it likes to hunt, it should be a simple matter of tranquillising it, or trapping it (the traps Auryn had put out were clearly too small) and then there’ll be an investigation into how it came to be living in the wild,” I primly informed the hunter.

  “You’ll have your investigation when it’s dead,” he sneered, shouldering his rifle. “Looks like the race is on. I know who my money is on catching it first.” He winked and then in the blink of an eye, he folded up his hide and marched off, back towards the fences the lynx had crossed.

  I watched him go, inwardly seething. Underneath my anger was the very real worry that this man would catch the lynx before I did. It was then I remembered I had something of an ace up my sleeve. A few days ago, I’d been contacted by an animal welfare officer who was under instruction to visit my zoo to check that it was up to scratch. We’d had a good chat over the phone and had exchanged contact details.

  It was with a grim smile that I called the number I’d saved to my phone, apologised for the early hour of the call, and explained the entire situation to the animal welfare officer. Initially, I’d been worried that he would be concerned that Avery Zoo was neglecting their animals, but once I’d explained the copious measures we’d performed in order to try to deter what we’d believed to be a fox, he’d agreed that everything had been done the correct way and, better still, he’d been relieved that the lynx hadn't been shot. Our phone call finished with him assuring me that a search would begin immediately in the miles around the zoo and that he would call in every local expert to try to capture the lynx. He also assured me that any hunter spotted would be informed that the animal was under the protection of the British Wildlife Authority, as it had so far done nothing to attack humans and I’d assured him it was actually actively afraid of people. Anyone shooting the animal on public or private land that they didn’t own and had no permission to hunt on would be prosecuted.

  Although I knew that prosecution would be a post-shooting offence, and the punishment would probably do little to deter the trophy hunter, it was a small comfort. The bigger comfort was when the welfare officer assured me that he would dispatch a couple of searchers to head off the hunter and generally make a nuisance of themselves. “That lynx won’t go within a mile of him,” he promised.

  “What will happen to the lynx once it’s caught?” I asked.

  “Well, we’ll have to establish where it came from, of course. Then, it will either be returned to its owner, or more likely, its an exotic pet who grew too large, and we’ll have to find a place for it.”

  “I could take it,” I quickly said. There was still a great deal of space for expansion at The Lucky Zoo and, I wasn’t going to lie, the thought of snatching the lynx away from the hunter and keeping it safe for good made me very happy indeed.

  “I’ll be sure to pass that information on,” the officer promised me with a smile in his voice. “Now, I’ve got a search and rescue to organise.”

  I called Auryn immediately after I’d hung up to fill him in on everything that had happened - including the trespassing hunter.

  “You didn’t give him permission to be there, did you?” I pressed.

  “I certainly did not!” Auryn said, sounding doubly grumpy for being woken up so early. “He came in to set the trip wires and that was it. I told him we’d be in contact.” He paused for a moment. “It was a lynx? A real live lynx?”

  “I saw it with my own eyes. I’ve been in contact with the animal welfare officer who called me the other day,” I’d told Auryn all about the prospect of an inspection, “and he said he’d contact all of the right people and get a search and rescue going whilst also heading your hunter off. Why are you even friends with him?” I asked, letting it slip out in my exasperation.

  “I’m not, not really. He was a bit of a bully at school, if truth be told. Quite a bit older than me, obviously. What did you do to him?”

  “What did I do to him?! He nearly shot me!”

  “Uh-huh?” Auryn didn’t sound convinced.

  “I ended up staring down the barrel of his gun… after I pushed it away to keep him from shooting the lynx,” I confessed.

  “He must have been furious.” Auryn sounded amused.

  “He could have shot me!”

  “Oh, pish! Lee wouldn’t have done that. You’ve already got his measure. He’s a coward at heart. Shooting animals to him is a way to feel tough.”

  “And you asked him to help you?” I was deeply unimpressed.

  “He’s the best shot I know! He may be an ass, but if it had been a fox we couldn’t stop, at least he’d have done a good job.”

  “Hmmph!” was all I had to say to that.

  “Look, none of these people are my friends. Not really. You know that! I just have to play nice with them all. It’s out of my hands.”

  “What
exactly do you mean?” I asked. We’d been around this before with Auryn hinting heavily that the exclusive club he was a part of had a reasonable amount of influence over the success of local businesses. I hadn’t taken it too seriously before, but Auryn had been spending remarkable amounts of time with his new ‘friends’. I was definitely starting to worry that something more nefarious was going on.

  “It’s worse than you know,” Auryn confessed. “If you thought of them as a ‘posh mafia’ you wouldn’t be far from the truth. That’s what the club is really about. Once you’re in, most people think you’ve made it. The club looks after you. In reality, it’s not so simple. Every year, there’s a review of all local businesses. The members who are toeing the line and are seen to be promoting the club’s ideals will continue to be silently supported by the group - which means more than you know. My father fell out of favour with them and look what happened to Avery…”

  “That was his own doing.”

  Auryn shrugged. “I won’t argue that he didn’t make it worse, but things were set on a downward slide even before he got himself in deep trouble.”

  “None of this can be legal!” I protested. “And what about The Lucky Zoo?” It was something that had worried me for a while. Being a woman, I couldn’t join the club. Did that mean The Lords of the Downs were automatically against me?

  “They consider yours and my zoo to largely be under the same banner. I don’t want to ruin anything for either of us. I’m sorry to say it, but we may already be in big trouble.”

  “How?” I asked, baffled as to what we’d possibly done wrong.

  Auryn sighed. “Lee isn’t a member of the club, but he’s in with the same crowd. How anti-hunting did you come across to him?”