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.