Karen Harper - Shallow Grave

* * *

Inside the tight quarters of the BAA administration trailer, Jace held Brit close. He’d had to talk his way in through the cop at the gate. Brit had said her mother was heavily sedated and lying down in the back room, just staring at the ceiling. Brit hugged him back hard, but he was amazed she didn’t cry. Tough cookie. Or else she was in shock, like her mother. He knew damn well from combat experiences that horror sometimes took a while to be real, let alone to heal.

“The tiger had already mauled him and bitten through his carotid artery,” she said against his shoulder. “There was blood, blood, blood all over. Jace, just when the tiger was bringing more people in, and our family was getting on better. Wait until Lane hears. He’ll go ballistic. He hated the idea of the BAA.”

“Yeah, you got a brother who’s a far cry from the rest of you. But back to what happened here,” he said with a sniff as he pictured an apparently healthy, happy Ben having a beer with him just last week. Had he known the guy at all? Had he liked him too much too fast? Damn, but he regretted their recent argument. Trying to keep his voice steady, he asked, “Did Ben go in to feed Tiberia?”

“He was going to feed him since I was with the kids, including Lexi, but he knew better than to go into the cage for that—for anything, especially at feeding time. He knew just to shove the food through the hatch and then push it in closer only with the long gaff pole. The food box was not in the cage—but he was.” Her voice broke again.

“Maybe he just stepped inside because he thought the animal was secure in that holding area—what you called the bedroom, separate behind the cage. Maybe Tiberia was hiding in that little cave you made so he could get out of the sun, and then—”

“Jace, I’ve been over it all with an officer, then a detective with Nick Markwood there!”

“Sure. Sure,” he said, kissing the top of her head through her wild hair, then pressed his lips there. “Just a mystery, then, one we may never have the answer to.”

“He hadn’t been himself lately. Kind of depressed and inwardly angry—more than usual, that is. That scares me.”

“You mean that he might have been secretly sui—”

“I don’t know. I don’t know! Now I have to decide whether to admit Mother to the hospital where they can keep an eye on her or whether I can take her home.”

She suddenly exploded in sobs. He held her as tightly as he could, sat down in the swivel desk chair and pulled her onto his lap. If only Claire had been like this when they were married, telling him everything, trusting him, clinging even.

* * *

Claire, Nick and Darcy sat the four children down in Darcy’s living room. Lexi perched on a leather hassock between Nick’s legs. Duncan was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Darcy’s son, Drew, and Jilly leaned against her mother’s shoulder on the couch. Still fighting exhaustion, Claire sat in a chair, facing everyone.

In her steadiest voice, feeling a bit better since Darcy had brewed tea for her, even if it didn’t have her herbals, she began, “I know you are all wondering about the accident at the BAA today.”

“It was a loud scream and scary,” Jilly said.

“It was real bad,” Duncan added. “Like someone getting beat up and real hurt.”

“Okay, that’s all true,” Claire put in, feeling it wouldn’t take much for this to “go over Niagara” as her father used to say. “Remember that Brittany, the tiger talker, told us that tigers are wild animals. When they live in the wild, they have to kill to get meat to eat.”

Nick nodded in encouragement, and Darcy bit her lower lip. Claire still didn’t know how she would have survived her own childhood without her younger sister, when their father took off for parts unknown and their mother became such a recluse, escaping reality through books. Sad that the two men Claire had cared for had father issues too. And what was the truth about Ben Hoffman’s relationship to his daughter and son—even to Jace?

“Well, Mr. Hoffman, Brittany’s father,” Claire went on, struggling for words, “the man we met in the parking lot, made a mistake when he went to feed the tiger its meat. Somehow he didn’t know Tiberia was in its cage and he walked inside, and the animal thought it was still in the wild, and he hurt Mr. Hoffman. Sadly, he died.”

Drew asked, “You mean the tiger or Mr. Hoffman?”

“It was a terrible accident, but Mr. Hoffman died.”

Lexi said, “Then isn’t the tiger a murderer, not just a hungry big cat?”

Claire tried to keep her voice steady. “But you know that’s how animals are. They aren’t like people, who decide whether they will hurt or kill someone. Animals don’t know right from wrong like people do.”

“Bronco sometimes kills gators and those big snakes that are out in the Glades,” Lexi said. “Is he a murderer? And do you mean that Tiberia ate Mr. Hoffman—like—like—for dinner?”

“My dad hurt and killed someone,” Duncan said, “and that’s why he ran away, but the tiger’s in a cage and can’t go anywhere.”

Questions, protests followed, some rational, some off the wall. Lexi and Jilly cried. Claire and Nick, Darcy too, tried to calmly, carefully explain animal instinct and carnivorous vs. herbivorous to the children. Though she’d thought she could handle this, Claire scolded herself. She could have done better actually testifying before a hostile lawyer in court right now.

Besides, in the middle of this terrible day, Claire remembered that last week she and Nick had invited their friends and South Shore team members Heck and Gina, Bronco and Nita for dinner in—she glanced at her watch—three hours. At least the women were bringing dishes to go with salmon steaks on the grill. She bet, with all this going on, Nick had forgotten too.

But despite it all, she refused to cancel the dinner because it was going to be a big night for Bronco, and he had wanted those closest to him there. He was planning to announce his engagement to Nita after he proposed to her out by their pool, under the gazebo he had built for them. No going back to reschedule, since Bronco had picked this date because it was also Nita’s birthday and, he’d said, there would be a full moon tonight.

Full moon. Perfect! Wasn’t that when people supposedly went crazy?

5

“Welcome,” Claire told Bronco and Nita as they came in the front door. “So glad to see you under much better circumstances.”

Bronco nodded. Nita carried a basket with a salad. Little did she know that she’d be going home this evening with a diamond ring. Surely she’d accept Bronco’s proposal. All they needed was more upheaval of any kind today.

Bronco and Nita had fallen in love when they’d first worked for Claire and Nick. They had known Bronco longer, ever since the first South Shores “murdercide” case they had worked together. They had hired Nita as Lexi’s nanny when their family was endangered, so they had been blessed to have both Bronco and Nita as aides and friends.

Bronco was a big, burly guy with the proverbial heart of gold, one who used to make his living hunting gators and the huge constrictor snakes that bred in the depths of the Everglades and, like other animals, were encroaching on civilization. Nita was a young widow, a pretty Hispanic woman who was cousin to another of Nick’s employees, his tech guru Hector Munoz, called Heck, who was just getting out of his car in the driveway with his girlfriend, Gina.

Bronco was telling them, “Nita said we should cancel since we all been through too much today—’course, next to the Hoffman family, it’s nothing. But it’s her birthday, and we can be happy as well as sad.”

Nick took Nita’s basket while Claire and Nita hugged. “I agree,” Claire told them. “I think friends need each other at times like these.”