Karen Harper - Shallow Grave

“Nope, nothing is scary anymore,” Claire assured her daughter. “But remember what we were saying about looking carefully both ways before crossing any street, even a quiet one like this? You said your teacher talked about that, so it’s important.”

The child nodded, but the skipping stopped. Claire had to admit she’d gone easy on her lately, especially since their archenemy had died and they’d felt safe to come home again.

Even before she married Nick, it had been a dangerous roller coaster ride with him. At least they and Lexi’s father, Jace, had come to an understanding about sharing the child. Lexi had even adapted well to calling Jace “Daddy” and Nick “Dad.” Claire did worry, though, that since Jace had a serious female friend—whom she and Lexi both liked—that she’d someday have to share Lexi for longer periods.

“You okay with this walk, sweetheart?” Nick asked Claire. “Not too tired?”

“I feel fine,” she insisted, and smiled at him in the glow of a neighbor’s post light. She wished he’d turn on his flashlight, but she didn’t want him or Lexi to know she suddenly felt jumpy.

No streetlights illuminated this newly developed area south of Naples off Collier Boulevard, not far from the fringe of the wilderness and the Everglades. It was sad, she thought, that developments like theirs were pressing against the Glades, because that meant wild animals sometimes encroached on the neighborhood. Or, the truth was, humans were encroaching on them. That reminded her that they were going to a petting zoo tomorrow.

She and her sister, Darcy, were overseeing a trip there for the children in their charity, Comfort Zone, an organization for kids who had endured violence in their homes. Nick was going along this time, so she was pleased about that. They would visit the Backwoods Animal Adventure, which locals called the BAA. Its logo was a sheep, but there were plenty of more exotic animals, including birds such as parrots and flamingos, not to mention an abused tiger the BAA owners had taken in.

Claire gasped as Nick jerked her and Lexi behind him. He clicked on his flashlight. The beam sliced through sharp shadows to palmetto and dwarf palms, which seemed to leap at them.

Before anyone said a word, he slanted the beam to the side. It shone on a bright yellow sign the Save Our Wildlife group had put in. The sign had bold print and a drawing of a Florida panther—an endangered species that inhabited South Florida and was quite secretive and stealthy, moving mostly at night.

“The sign?” Claire whispered. “What?”

“Shh. There!”

She glimpsed a sleek shadow slink across the street toward the thicket on the other side. A blur of beige fur, gleaming gold eyes, a rustle of leaves, and it was gone. Neighbors had claimed to see the big cats crossing nearby, but they were elusive.

“Wow! It ran fast, but I saw its eyes!” Lexi cried, clinging to Claire as if it would attack. Nick put his arms around Claire with Lexi pressed between them.

“No one will believe we actually saw one,” Claire whispered. “Some call them ghost cats. The newspaper says that claims to see them usually turn out to be something else.”

“We did see one,” Nick said, “but let’s head back.”

But for a moment, the three of them still stood tight together, staring at the sign that read Crossing Danger above the outline of the beautiful beast.

* * *

Before Nick and Claire had supper that night, they let Lexi stay up so Nick could help her research Florida panthers and tigers on the family laptop while Claire called her sister. Lexi had already taken the phone from Claire to tell her cousin Jilly, who was going to the BAA with them tomorrow, that they had seen a Florida panther—a real big one with big eyes.

Now Nick could hear Claire back on her cell phone, talking about a kid nicknamed Duck, one of the Comfort Zone children she worried about because his father had committed a murder and was still on the run. Ex-con Irv Glover had come home drunk to find a male social worker talking with his wife, Marta. She was asking him how to get a restraining order. He’d beaten both of them in a rage, while Duck hid under a bed, and the social worker had died from his injuries. Irv had not been seen since.

Marta and Duck had moved, but money for them was being mailed to their old address with postmarks from Tennessee, where Irv had lived once, so the authorities were looking for him there. Still, Marta Glover was barely making ends meet. More than once Claire and Darcy had taken a food basket to them. Nick knew details of the boy’s life because he’d helped to prosecute his father years before for aggravated vehicular assault stemming from a road rage incident, for which he’d served time.

“I’m going to call Duck by his real name Duncan from now on,” Claire was telling Darcy. “He needs to have his self-image and confidence built up. The other kids still snicker over ‘Duck,’ and that doesn’t help anyone recover from an abusive situation.”

He watched Claire pace as she talked to Darcy, her only original family member left. Darcy and Steve lived closer to town with their two kids, a boy, Drew, who had just turned seven and Jilly, who was Lexi’s age. The two girls were as tight as Darcy and Claire.

While Lexi looked at pictures on the screen of Siberian tigers like the one they would see tomorrow—man, he didn’t know tigers were endangered from hunters, poachers and loss of environment—he looked away to watch his beautiful wife.

Unlike most native Floridians, Claire had light skin, red hair and green eyes that could haunt a man—and had him from the first. She was tall at five-ten, slender but sturdy looking, even carrying the baby, his baby. Like an idiot, his eyes filled with tears he blinked away. When he’d first met Claire, he’d hired her because he’d seen how good she was in court, testifying as a forensic psychologist expert witness. Thank God they had both lived through three harrowing murder investigations since then, and he had vowed never to put her on the stand or in danger again.

Life was good. He was thrilled with Claire, loved his stepdaughter and hoped for a son, though he’d be happy with another girl. Lexi was all in for a sister, though Claire tried to explain that she’d be a “big” sister to the new baby since she’d be five years older. When they’d had the ultrasound recently, they had told the doctor they didn’t want to know the child’s sex ahead of time. Lexi had been furious over that, but Claire had wanted it that way—“the old-fashioned way.” Yeah, if that meant family values and Claire just pursuing her career online, at least until the baby was here and a bit grown, that was fine with him. Besides, she had a big house to oversee now, even with a nanny’s occasional help. He smiled at Claire as she ended the phone call and came over to sit beside him on the couch.

He put his arm around her, and she leaned against him. Lexi was listening to a narrated piece about tigers in Thailand, and she’d turned the sound way up, but they still whispered.

“Everything set for tomorrow?” he asked as he gave her a squeeze. “I suppose Jace’s girlfriend, Brittany, is going to be there, the ‘tiger talker.’”

“Darcy and I like her, thank heavens. You know, it’s nice that Jace likes her family too—her father, at least. A navy flyboy and a marine, they get along great. I don’t think I ever told you that Jace feels his own father loved his marine recruits more than he did him, so I’m thinking Brittany’s dad, Ben, is more or less a father figure to him.”

Nick said, “That’s my favorite psychologist, always probing and assessing.”

“Anyhow,” she went on, “Brit, as Jace calls her, is going to give us the tour and a little lecture about their new tiger they’ve named Tiberia. Clever, huh, the t in tiger mixed with ‘Siberia’?”