“Oh, dear,” Michael said. “I have a bad feeling about that. He must know the answer would upset you. I could try to pry it out of him if you like.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “There's more than one way to skin a cat.”
“Oh, Meg,” Rose Noire said, closing her eyes in horror. “That's such a horrible, violent expression. I do wish you wouldn’t use it.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It's only an old saying. No actual cats will be skinned during the course of today's wildlife-rescue activities. Or for that matter, in the murder investigation. Not by me, at any rate. After all, I probably won’t have much time to worry about it until after we finish the unpacking.”
“Division of labor,” Michael said. “You work on the murder and a new home for the animals. I’ll see to the unpacking. We don’t want to delay... the party or anything.”
“I can’t leave you to handle the unpacking all by yourself,” I protested.
“All by myself? You mean the two dozen of your relatives who are already here will be leaving soon, instead of being joined by dozens more? Damn. I was looking forward to bossing them all around.”
“You’re right,” I said. “You see to the unpacking. I’ll worry about murder and the menagerie. Is Chief Burke around today?”
“He's appropriated our dining room for his command center,” Michael said.
I snagged a slice of toast and went to the dining room. The door was open, and I could see Chief Burke sitting in one of our folding chairs, frowning down at some papers on the card table that served as his desk. When he didn’t look up after a few moments, I knocked on the door frame.
“What now?” he grumbled.
“May I interrupt you for just a minute or two?” I asked.
His eyes flicked up at me, though he didn’t raise his head. I could see he was trying to give the impression of being much too busy to waste any time on me.
“I want to visit the Caerphilly Zoo,” I said.
At that, he lifted his head and sat back.
“Why? You must have at least half the animals here already. Just wait a day or two and you’ll probably have the whole collection.”
He laughed heartily at this. I tried to laugh along, but I wasn’t sure my effort looked authentic.
“Well, that's why I want to visit the zoo,” I said, as the chief's chuckles subsided. “Dad seems to have extended an open invitation to anyone who's fostering any of the zoo's animals that if they get fed up, they can come over and dump the animals on us. And I need to know just how many animals that might eventually be. And even more important, what kind of animals.”
“Your father can’t tell you?”
“He seems to be having trouble remembering.”
“You ever consider that it might be a deliberate case of amnesia,” the chief said, trying to suppress a grin. “Like maybe he doesn’t want you to know how bad it could get around here.”
“I’m positive it's deliberate,” I said. “He thinks if I know how bad it could get, it will make me madder. And it probably will, for a few minutes, but in the long term, the more I know about how many of what kind of animal we might get stuck with, the better I can cope.”
“And visiting an empty zoo will help you cope?”
“An empty zoo full of carefully labeled pens and cages. If I take an inventory, at least I can figure out what animals were there.”
“How were you planning to get in?” the chief asked. “I got Mr. Thorndyke from the bank to let me in yesterday afternoon, but he's locked up again and gone off to his beach house for the long weekend.”
“If Lanahan's gazelles can get out and wander over to the Shif-fleys’ woods, I’m sure I can figure out a way in,” I said. “Unless you have an objection.”
I took the chief's growl for grudging permission.
“Speaking of which, Randall Shiffley sounds pretty worried about his nephew,” I said. “Have you really arrested Charlie Shif-fley for killing that gazelle?”
“It wasn’t a gazelle, it was something called a dik-dik,” the chief said, frowning again. “Looks a lot like a deer, only they don’t get more than a foot and a half high. And no, I haven’t arrested Charles. Recommended that they take him in for an eye exam, if he couldn’t tell that thing wasn’t a full-sized deer, but arrest him? No. Not from want of nagging from Patrick Lanahan, but I don’t take orders from anyone on how to do my job. He told me last week that if I didn’t arrest the boy he was going to file a civil suit against the Shiffleys, and I told him to go right ahead, and good luck finding some kind of evidence to show the jury, because my officers sure can’t.”