Karen Harper - Shallow Grave

She went on, “Stan Helter of the big ranch next door has offered us baby alligators and baby wild boars, no less, when we reopen. As if we have the money to build new venues for them, but I’m going to take him up on it. You know, I hear his employees, maybe his worldwide rich clients too, call him Big Cat. Ironic, huh?”

“Very,” Nick said with a look at Claire that she read as Don’t follow up on that right now.

Brittany opened a sheet of paper she had jammed in her jeans pocket with the envelope, spread it open on her knees and said in a shaky voice, “I’m translating some of the medical lingo here. Cause of death, accidental. No heart attack or stroke. Victim’s skull was broken so uncertain if skull was struck by exterior force because skull was partly crushed and degraded in jaws of animal...severed facial nerves...eardrum and eye punctures on left side...bites to neck and fractured spine...several arteries and right jugular vein torn...claw marks on chest, shoulders and arm...victim bled—bled out...”

Her voice broke into a gasping sob. She crumpled the piece of paper between her knees. “He was just doing what he should—should have. Tiberia, I mean, not my dad.”

Claire leaned closer to Brittany and put her arm around her back.

“I swear,” Brittany choked out, “I—this place—we are going to need a lawyer. We’re running on financial fumes here, but we’ll pay.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” Nick told her, crouching in front of the two of them. “My interest in this case would not be only to help you, as a good friend of Jace, and therefore of ours too, but to protect the BAA from state or federal fines or bad publicity. The firm has done pro bono work before. Brittany, I know the ME has ruled the death accidental, but for some reason, your father entered a tiger cage, knowing it was certain death. Or else he was forced to enter. That interests me too, not only for professional reasons but personal ones.”

“Forced to enter? That’s crazy! By whom?” she cried, lifting her tear-streaked face. “He had to be alone here!” she went on, gesturing so wildly Claire shifted a bit away. “You yourself saw the place was deserted when we took the kids away, and people can’t just fly in here. We have that fence—a double fence, counting the one from the ranch where those gun-happy people kill animals!”

“Look, I get your frustration and anger,” Nick said. “My father was once found with a bullet in his brain and the gun in his hand. But he didn’t kill himself. Someone else did. It took me years to prove it. I’m not saying it’s the same, but something’s wrong here. And if you trust me on this—and Claire will help too,” he added with a nod at her, “I’ll need access to your father’s laptop, his correspondence, his desk, and I don’t think your brother, maybe your mother either, is going to be thrilled about that. I’d need all that soon in case this turns into something worse than it is, and the police or other authorities confiscate all that.”

Claire stared wide-eyed. Nick Markwood at his determined best, and after he’d told her to avoid getting involved. But he probably still meant that his law office would oversee things, not that he—and she—would stay involved. Although, he’d just volunteered her to help too.

“I guess, then, we’d better move fast,” Brittany said, bouncing up as Nick stood too. “Dad’s death is more than newsworthy, as his Naples Daily News advertising friend warned me on the phone earlier today. This is all going to blow up. I’ve already been contacted by the American Zoo Safety Commission, as well as state authorities.”

Nick said, “I think OSHA, you know, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, might get in the mix too.”

“All I wanted to do was educate children to love animals and save more abused big cats. Yes, I’ll be sure you get those things from Dad’s office here right now and from their house tonight. Give me your address, and I’ll get them to you, or send Jace with them. I know he’s with your daughter right now, but I’ll see him later. He’s been a big help and—except for you two—my only support right now, and that counts my brother, Lane. Who needs outside enemies when there’s a traitor in the family?”

Nick told her, “I want to assure you that your legal team can be your biggest supporters. Claire and I admire what you’re trying to build here.”

“Thank you! Thank you for that,” she said as the three of them began to walk toward the administration trailer. “Nick,” she rushed on, still gesturing wildly, “I’ll come into your office and sign whatever I need to. At all costs I want to save and build the BAA through all this, not sell it to be more citrus orchard land or part of that big game ranch. Mother will trust me on this, though I’ll have to buck Lane. But he’s taken himself out of control of this place, so he doesn’t have a legal or financial leg to stand on.”

Claire couldn’t resist that opening. “Despite the fact he’s here today, I take it Lane and your father didn’t see eye to eye, on this place, or Lane’s chosen career.”

“Well, Dad was wrong about that, but he was such an outdoorsman that Lane’s violin passion and career was like—like a foreign language, and it made them kind of—at odds sometimes.”

“I can understand that,” Claire said, and then stopped since Nick cleared his throat as if to say enough for now. But everything she saw and heard here made her feel all in for helping Brittany. Who knew that this wasn’t helping future family if Jace and his “Brit” stayed together?

As if he’d read her mind, Nick said, “Is it okay if we call you Brit the way Jace does?”

“Yes—yes, fine.”

“Claire,” he went on, “all right with you to come alongside as a support person, as long as you can work from home or the office?”

That last comment was rather pointed, she thought. But maybe a cause and mental work was exactly what she needed until the baby was born. But staying home through it all?

“We can discuss that later,” she told him, “but I want to help.”

“Good. Brit,” Nick said, “our first goal is to keep this local and hope that it won’t explode to more.”

She seemed to deflate. She stopped walking, and her shoulders slumped. “Oh, I did forget to mention something you should know. Not only did we receive an offer of baby animals from Stan Helter—maybe as a smoke screen of kindness, if you ask me—that envelope you saw also contained a big check. Twenty thousand dollars for our father’s burial and a memorial, his note said, and there would be another hundred thousand if we wanted to sell this acreage and move to some other place with better memories. Well, you know when someone dies, the bank freezes all their assets until they see the death certificate, so this is—is really needed, so it’s tempting.”

“Glad you told us that too,” Nick told her. “So Stan Helter’s extended an olive branch, but with a sword attached.”

Brit said, “The Lord giveth and He taketh away and so does the lord of all he surveys next door, that greedy wretch Stanley J. Helter, as the signature on the check reads. I wanted to tear it up, but Lane wouldn’t let me. We started to argue but with Mom there—we just put it unendorsed in the safe. It’s made out to Mother, not me or Lane.”

She seemed to wilt even more, almost to stagger.

“Did you get any sleep at all yet?” Claire asked, putting her arm around the woman’s shoulders.

“Only a nap on Jace’s lap before Lane came busting in yesterday. Then some in bed last night with—Oh, sorry, Claire, I—”

“It’s all right. I think you two are good together.”

“Oh, no!” Brit cried, squinting into the sun past Nick’s shoulder.