The Beast Page 7

  “This is all good stuff,” Oliver said. “Do you think if I turned on enough charm, Ms. Talbot might give me a roll in the hay?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be too vague, Dunn. Tell me what you really think.”

  “I like this lemon bar. If I didn’t think I was being watched, I’d sneak a few up in a paper napkin and hide them in my purse.”

  Oliver laughed. Five more minutes passed and then a rush of wind burst through the doors. The detectives stood up.

  The woman was a presence: over six feet with broad shoulders, slim hips, and a mane of blond hair. She had blue eyes, high cheekbones, and pale skin. There was spiderwebbing at the corners of the eyes and mouth, but none of that shiny stretched skin common to plastic surgery. She was dressed in a dirty shirt and gardening pants, a floppy hat on her head. She tossed the chapeau on the French furniture.

  “Gawd, I’m a mess.” She checked her hands then offered them to Marge and Oliver. “Sabrina Talbot. Sorry about the dirty fingernails. Even with gloves, I lunched my French manicure. Nails and gardening don’t mix.” She brushed off her pants, bits of dirt falling on the Persian rug, and then sat down on a chair. “Sit, sit. And don’t worry if you spill. I reupholster the furniture every two years. It’s about that time. I’m thinking of going deco. I was in my ‘ice’ phase when I did this room. Now it reminds me of an igloo. Sit, sit.”

  The detectives sat, introduced themselves with each of them giving her a card.

  “I know that you’re here about Hobart.” A single tear down the cheek. “Who would want to harm an eccentric old man?”

  “So you know he was murdered,” Marge said.

  “Gracie phoned me last night. It was a brief conversation, and she was also short on the details. I’m hoping you can fill me in on what happened.”

  “Gracie is Graciela Johannesbourgh?” Marge asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re still in contact with Mr. Penny’s daughter.”

  “Gracie and I have become friends—mostly out of our concern for Hobart’s mental health. Over the years, he’d become increasingly odd. Now I’m not immune to eccentricity. My entire maternal half lives in a series of tiny English villages, each one more quirky than the next. But with Hobart, it had crossed the line from different to problematic.”

  Marge had taken out her notebook. “How’s that?”

  “We met when I was young. I was immediately taken with him. He was a very vital man. He reminded me of my father, so I understood men like Hobart very well.”

  “What do you mean ‘men like Hobart’?”

  “You know, these hypermacho males always trying to prove to themselves that they’re Ernest Hemingway’s successor—running with the bulls at Pamplona, mountain climbing in Nepal, navigating an uncharted river in the Amazon. Men like that are well understood in my circles.”

  “What are your circles?” Oliver asked.

  “You mean you didn’t Google me?” She stared at him with mock offense.

  “I looked you up,” Marge said. “All it mentioned was that you were the former wife of Hobart Penny.”

  “Then I’ve done my job well,” Sabrina said. “My parents believed that you should be in the news for birth, marriage, and death. I suppose divorce now is acceptable, but that’s it. Let me give you a little family history. My great-great-grandfather was Jacob Remington—as in Remington aircraft. My mother was a Remington. My father was an Eldinger on his mother’s side. If you look up the families, you’ll see that I come from old, old money. We’re the old-fashioned snooty WASPs. My parents were thrilled when I married Hobart . . . that someone wasn’t going to fleece me. Not that they needed to worry.” She pointed to her head. “I know where every dollar goes. Meticulous is my guideline. Hobart liked that about me. That I wasn’t just arm candy. Even with my pedigree and my looks and my brains, it took Hobart five years to propose. It probably had to do with his divorce from his first wife and my age. We met when I was nineteen.”

  “Was Hobart’s divorce a messy one?” Marge asked.

  “Not terribly messy, but there was no love lost. I was not the cause of the breakup. Hobart always had other women. And he was always odd, the stereotypic mad inventor. Not the most socially adroit. I think number one wife had had enough of him.”

  Oliver flipped over a notebook page. “How did you two meet?”

  “At a boring old fund-raiser for some disadvantaged something. We locked eyes, and that was it for me, although his roving eye was apparent even when we were dating. I thought that being wed to me would cure him, silly goose that I was.”

  “Can you clarify what you mean by a little odd?” Marge asked.

  “Although Hobart exuded animal sexuality, he really didn’t give a shit about people—except for beautiful women, which he more or less objectified.” She draped a leg over the armrest. “He’d always had a fascination with wild animals—a TR kind of thing, you know.”

  “TR?” Oliver asked.

  “Teddy Roosevelt. The man who shot lions and rowed down the Amazon when he wasn’t being president. Now I loved a good safari just like the next person. But I like safaris the way that I do safaris—first-class accommodations and armed guards in the open jeep. Maybe a hike or two as long as someone else is carrying the backpack. Hobart wanted to camp out in the wilds of Africa. I mean camp for goodness sakes. As in pitch a tent and eat out of tins and make our own fire and gather up the water from a stream two miles away. Now I ask you. Do I look like the sleeping bag type?”

  “Not to my eye,” Oliver said.

  Sabrina sighed. “Something cracked in Hobart as time passed. He went from being rich and odd to being a very odd, rich man. What really scared me were the delusions.”

  “What kind of delusions?”

  “This is going to sound ridiculous, but he started to believe that he was a wild animal trapped in a human body much the way that people think that they’re vampires or witches or werewolves. In his case, he was certain that he was really some kind of a big cat. Sometimes it was a lion, sometimes it was a tiger. It wasn’t as if he lost his grip on reality. He could tell you every single stock on the NYSE. He was completely oriented. And he knew that he wasn’t really a big cat. He just felt that inside his human body was the soul of a tiger. He began to grow a wild beard. He also grew out his nails. He scratched the hell out of me every time we made love. Then he started to bite. Nibbles at first, but it progressed until several times, he broke skin. That was when I said to him, ‘Hobart, you need help.’”

  “And?” Marge asked.

  “He went into treatment. The psychiatrist told me that underneath the delusions was a severely depressed and schizoid man. So they medicated him and gave him mood elevators. He didn’t like the drugs. He claimed they interfered with his sexual function. That part wasn’t a delusion. But instead of going back for a different medication, he just dropped out. Once he was off the medication, he reverted back to his former ways. He got weirder and weirder. I’d finally had enough when he started marking the furniture.”

  “Yikes,” Oliver said.

  “I begged him to get help, but he flatly refused. He might have gotten help eventually if he hadn’t gotten involved with all those . . . clubs.”

  Marge’s ears went on high alert. “What clubs?”

  “Private clubs that did God only knows what as well as the crazy animal rights organizations that fed his delusions. He gave them money in exchange for their tolerance.”

  Marge said, “Can you be more specific about the private clubs. It might give us a lead in his murder.”

  “Sadomasochistic. This was years ago. I’m sure the ones he used have all folded and newer ones have popped up.” Sabrina sighed. “Hobart used to travel all over the country to ferret out the ones he liked. He found women who would dress up in cat suits and masks and have sex with him.”

  “He told you this?” Oliver asked.

  The woman’s face went red. “He confessed, but only af
ter I found pictures of him humping young girls wearing tiger masks. I also found pictures of him with . . . animals. It was nauseating.”

  Marge and Oliver nodded sympathetically.

  “He said it wasn’t personal, that a tiger had to do what a tiger had to do.” She waved her hand in the air. “I mean, do I look like an idiot? I tried to reason with him . . . I held on as long as I could . . . but I knew it was over.”

  Silence. Oliver said, “Ms. Talbot, if you could remember any of the names of the clubs—even if they’ve folded—it might help.”

  “He never told me.” Sabrina examined her nails. “He moved out about a year after I found the pictures. The divorce was amicable. He gave me a very large settlement. His children were not happy about it. I couldn’t blame them. Hobart was not in his right mind. Being noble, being rich myself, and not wanting to get involved in lawsuits, I put two-thirds of the money into trusts for Hobart’s grandchildren. The other third was my combat pay. My generosity with the grandchildren did not go unappreciated. Gracie and I became friends. Darius called to thank me. The one thing the three of us did do was to convince Hobart—in one of his more lucid moments—to put his estate planning in the care of Darius’s law firm.”

  “And he agreed?” Marge asked.

  “Yes. Darius was smart about it. He funded whatever Hobart asked him to fund. Every so often, the two of them would go over his assets and how Hobart wanted to structure his will and what charities to give money to. So far as I know, there was never any impropriety on Darius’s part.”

  She crossed her arms over her dirty shirt. “After we divorced, he slowly sank into the life of a recluse. He took that tiny wretched apartment. Eventually he just became a shut-in. Never went anywhere except to that sanctuary that he supported.”

  “Global Earth Sanctuary?”

  “Beats me.” A pause. “Talking about this has given me a big headache.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Talbot, but the conversation has been helpful,” Marge said. “I am curious about those sadomasochistic clubs. You asked who might have killed an eccentric old man, and now I have an idea. What if your ex-husband had been giving money to someone in the sex trade and suddenly stopped? These people are not only sleazy, they’re also dangerous. Maybe someone got angry.”

  Sabrina said, “He hasn’t been going to those kinds of clubs for decades.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Not positive but . . .” She shrugged.

  “What about hiring out?” Oliver said. “Lots of escort services make house calls.”

  “Maybe . . . if she could get past Tiki.”

  Marge turned and faced Sabrina. “So you knew about the tiger?”

  “Oh my word, she nearly bit my head off when I came to visit him that one time. I never went back.”

  Oliver said, “Ms. Talbot, if you knew he kept a tiger, why didn’t you report it to authorities?”

  She rubbed her temples. “Look, Detective, I should have. But at the time, I didn’t want to crush the only living thing that the man cared about. And I knew that Hobart would just mail away for another animal. Since Tiki seemed to be bonded to Hobart, I thought the known was better than the unknown.”

  Sabrina checked her watch.

  “I really do need to end this. I can’t say that this has been fun, but it’s been . . . therapeutic in a sense. I haven’t really thought about Hobart in years. I do hope you’ll catch the person who did this to him.”

  Marge stood up. “Ms. Talbot, did you keep anything personal that belonged to your husband after he moved out?”

  “Personal? Like diaries?”

  “Diaries, letters, old photographs or old papers.”

  “There might be a box or two of his possessions in the storage wing.”

  “Do you think we might have a look at them?”

  “Sure, but I don’t know exactly where they are or if I even have them anymore.”

  “We don’t mind hunting around if it’s okay with you.” Oliver sneaked another cookie.

  Sabrina said, “Would you like a box of cookies? I have a freezer full of them. Eleanor bakes them all the time.” Before he could answer, she pressed a button and the maid came back. “Could you give these nice people a box of your delicious cookies?”

  “Yes, Madame. Of course, Madame.”

  “Thank you.”

  The maid left, and a moment later, Thor reappeared: a staff that ran like a well-oiled machine. “How can I help you?”

  “Thor, could you take them to the storage wing for me? They want to see if I have anything left from my ex-husband.”

  “They can stay here, Ms. Talbot. I can look around to see if you’ve retained anything from Mr. Penny.”

  She looked at Oliver, who said, “We always find it helpful to hunt around ourselves.”

  Marge said, “We understand if you don’t want two strangers looking around your belongings. He can come with us if that would make you feel better.”

  “Yes, that would be a grand idea. I suppose it would be rather reckless of me to have you snoop around without supervision. Thor, go with the detectives. If they have any questions, feel free to answer them. But don’t get in their way.”

  “Certainly, Ms. Talbot.”

  “Take care.” She waved. “And don’t forget the cookies, Detective Oliver.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can always come back for more.” She smiled. “Bye.”

  When she left, Thor said, “This way.”

  “Thank you,” Marge told him.

  Thor walked six paces ahead down the marble hallway. Oliver whispered to Marge, “Was it my self-deluded ego or was she actually flirting with me?”

  Marge shrugged. “The proper word is toying.”

  “Sure wouldn’t mind being her plaything.” A big grin.

  “Don’t be fooled by the charm. She could eat you for a prelude to a midnight snack.”

  “Yum, yum.”

  Marge laughed. “You know, Oliver, you’re lucky that I’ve got your back.” A beat. “I not only have your back, I’ve got it protected by a loaded gun. And let me tell you, brother, there’s nothing sexier in this world than a woman with a dead aim.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE GLOBAL EARTH Sanctuary sat on acreage that was dissected by multiple sinuous trails hugging numerous enclosures of chain-link and barbed wire fencing. The air was filled with animal sounds: roars, growls, grunts, hoots, hollers, huffs, yips and yaps, and other things that go bump in the night. It smelled ripe, and the odor would have been stronger had it been warmer. Vignette was walking at a good clip, so Decker didn’t have a lot of time to look around. But on the occasions when he did turn his head, his eyes took in blurry and shadowed shapes walking on all fours. His own feet were feeling the chill even through his socks as he hiked up the narrow pathways of mud and pebbles. Eventually a man of about sixty years came into view. He was dressed in a work shirt, vest, jeans, and boots. He gave them a wave.

  “Hi there, Vern. I’m going to check out Cody now.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Might be a good idea.” The three of them kept walking until they neared a cage containing an upright mass of fur that was limping and pacing at the same time. The animal wasn’t just roaring. It was an ear-shattering bellow. It was only machismo that prevented Decker from covering his ears.

  Vignette looked around the cage and shook her head. “He didn’t touch his lunch.” She pointed to a pile of fruit, leaves, and other undecipherable blobs. “Cody’s normally a good eater. He’s agitated about something.”

  Y’think? Decker said, “How strong are those pens?”

  “Cody’s not going anywhere.” She turned to Vern. “Well, I suppose I’d better have a look. Do you have the rifle?”

  “It’s down at the trailer.”

  “S’right. It’ll be okay.”

  “Are you sure about that, Vignette?” Vern was concerned.

  “I’ll be fine.” Without hesitation
, she approached the beast, stopping at the wire fencing. She held a bag of raw fish and a spear. To the grizzly, she said, “What’s going on, Cody?”

  At the sound of her voice, the animal lumbered over to the fence, dropped to all fours, and groaned. She said, “Grizzlies don’t see well, but their smell and hearing are excellent.”

  Decker just kept staring, his heart beating faster than usual. He hoped he wasn’t about to witness something gruesome. Penny’s crime scene was still fresh in his brain.

  She said, “What’s the matter, little guy?”

  Little guy?

  She took a whistle from her pocket and blew it once. Cody’s verbal protests had reduced to whimpering. The animal stood upright and pressed his right paw against the fence. The claws were thick and long and very sharp. She examined the paw carefully, and then fed him a hunk of raw fish impaled on the tip of the spear. “He’ll do anything for salmon.”

  She blew the whistle again. This time the left paw was offered for examination. Afterward, he was rewarded with more salmon. “No problem so far.” A third blow of the whistle.

  The bear sat on his rump and showed Vignette his right foot. “Oh my. That looks nasty, Cody. I’d be pissed, too, if I were you.”

  Decker was five feet behind her. “What’s wrong?”

  Vignette gave the bear a chunk of pink flesh on the spear. “He cut his foot pad on something sharp. I’m going to have to treat it before it gets infected.” She took out a small chub of salmon and put a capsule in the dead fish’s mouth. “Okay, guy, let’s see what I can do for you.” She fed Cody the laced flesh—using the spear as his eating implement—and then looked at her watch. Five minutes later, the bear rolled over and started to snore. She threw Vern the keys. “You know the rules. Lock me in. Keep an eye on him. And if I get caught, do NOT open the door under any circumstance.”

  “You’re going in there?” Decker was aghast.

  “I got about fifteen minutes to work.” Vignette winked at him. “Wish me luck.”

  Decker was speechless. Vern unlocked the cage door, and Vignette went inside. She worked swiftly and professionally. First she disinfected the cut, washing it out with a squeeze bottle of salt water. Then she followed with a medicinal salve or ointment. Lastly, she sealed the wound as best she could with liquid bandage material.