The Penguin Who Knew Too Much(40)

“After they’re gone? If you mean the SOB people, they’ve set up camp there, you know,” Randall said. “I heard they were planning to stay there all summer, and without Lanahan to make a fuss, odds are they will.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “So much for getting into the zoo anytime soon.”

“You could sneak in the back way,” he suggested. He paused to grab a small fallen branch and snap off a six-inch-long stick. Then he squatted beside a small patch we’d apparently missed when sowing grass seed and began scratching in the dirt.

“Here's Lanahan's property.” He marked out a rough rectangle in the middle of the dirt patch. “Front gate's here—” two slash marks across one of side of the rectangle “—and here's the road to town—” a long line that disappeared into the grass.

“Okay,” I said. I had squatted down beside him, the better to see the map, though my ankles were already wobbling.

“Here's Vern's land, and our cousin Duane's,” he said, marking two smaller plots along one side of the zoo—the left side, looking from the road. “You see a small dirt road leading off into the woods a little ways before you go to the zoo gate?”

“I think so,” I said. If it was the same dirt road I was thinking of, I’d made a mental note of its location, wondering if it might offer a back way into the zoo if the Save Our Beasts protesters were still marching there when I returned.

“That marks the property line between Lanahan's land and Duane's,” Randall said. “And farther back, between Lanahan's and Vern's.”

“Check,” I said. Nice of Randall to help me out—but I found myself wondering if he had some ulterior motive in showing me the back way to the zoo.

“All this belongs to the Bromleys,” he said, indicating the area behind and to the right of the zoo with broad sweeping strokes of the stick, as if indicating that the Bromleys’ rolling acres continued well into the grass and possibly beyond the barn. “Tim-berland. Pines for pulpwood. And old Jase Bromley doesn’t rent out the hunting rights.”

“Annoying, I’m sure.”

“Wasn’t a big problem, long as we had Uncle Fred's farm,” he said, in a suspiciously innocent tone. “But if there's no hunting there, how come we hear gunshots sometimes?”

“Poachers?” I suggested.

“Could be,” he said. “But right here's where Charlie shot that fancy gazelle,” Randall said, jabbing the stick into the ground.

I studied the spot he indicated. It was clearly on Vern Shif-fley's land, but near the point where his land, Mr. Bromley's, and the zoo grounds all met.

“When it happened, we first thought the gazelle had wandered over from the zoo property. There's a fence, but Lanahan never bothered much about keeping it in repair. But then we remembered the strange goings-on at Bromley's. And Bromley's fences have been falling down for years. There's stretches where there isn’t even a fence between Vern's land and Bromley's. Just Bromley's ‘Posted: No Trespassing’ signs, and most deer don’t pay much attention to those.”

“But what would the gazelle be doing on Mr. Bromley's land in the first place?” I asked. My wobbling was getting worse, and I almost fell right in the middle of the Bromleys’ acreage, so I put a hand down to steady myself.

“You ever heard of canned hunting?” Randall asked.

“Not until recently.”

“There you go,” Randall said, as if that solved everything. “You think Lanahan was running canned hunts?” Randall nodded.

“And he was doing it on Mr. Bromley's land,” I continued. “So there wouldn’t be any evidence that animals were being killed on the zoo property.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“With Mr. Bromley's cooperation?”

“That I wouldn’t know.”

Or maybe just didn’t want to say, since Mr. Bromley, unlike Patrick Lanahan, was from an old local family.

“Whether Mr. Bromley knows or not, this gives him a possible motive for the murder,” I said.

“Motive, yes,” Randall said. “But no opportunity. Broke his leg about ten days ago, and last I heard he was still in the Whispering Pines Nursing Home being rehabilitated.”

“Okay, then he's out, but plenty of people around here disapprove of canned hunts. The Save Our Beasts people, and maybe Montgomery Blake.”

“Hell, we disapprove of them,” Randall said, shaking his head. “Most real hunters do. We hunt for sport and to put meat on the table, not just for trophies. What's the sport in shooting an animal that has no chance of escaping? And most of those clowns don’t aim for the head or the vitals—they aim for someplace that won’t spoil the trophy, which means that the animal dies a slow, painful death. You ask me, these game ranches should be outlawed, and if Lanahan was involved with that, I’m not sorry to see him go. But we wouldn’t try to kill him over it. We were just trying to sic the law on him.”