The Anteater of Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

eighteen rooms, the house dwarfed its single inhabitant, but if Caro sold it and bought something more manageable, where would she put her Victorian sofas, American Empire tables, or Renaissance Revival poster bed? I could hardly see her living in some small condo. The lack of elbow room would make her nuttier than she already was.
    Wearing the chartreuse-and-turquoise Donna Karan, my mother greeted my aged Dior with a frown, then force-marched me up the stairs to her bedroom suite, where the same dress as hers, only in yellow and orange, hung from a padded hanger. Once I slipped into it, I resembled a traffic light.
    “You look perfect.” Caro said. Obviously, not only men suffered from color-blindness. She grabbed a brush and began to rearrange my hair.
    My mother was almost as beautiful as she had been thirty-four years earlier when she’d won the title of Miss San Sebastian County and fell in love with my father, one of the judges. After their marriage ended, facelifts kept her looking young enough to snag several more husbands.
    Once she had rearranged my hair into a style more to her liking, I pulled away. “Can we go back downstairs now? I’m starved.”
    The shifty look in her eyes reminded me of the evening’s true agenda: fixing up her daughter with an eligible bachelor. “I want you to look especially nice this evening. Maybe a quick manicure. I have some lovely…”
    I hurried out the door.
    Downstairs, while gobbling canapés, I saw a dark-haired man I didn’t recognize hovering with others around the drinks table. Handsome, of what my mother would call “marriageable age,” and from the appearance of his hand-tailored suit, the possessor of a marriageable bank account. I felt like a prize pig on an auction block but consoled myself thinking that he probably felt the same way.
    Attempting to put off the encounter as long as possible, I loaded up a plate and headed for the French doors that overlooked the harbor. The sun sank toward the Pacific, casting a pink glow over everything. If I craned my neck to the left, I could almost see the lights of the fourteenth century castle that old Edwin Gunn, the family patriarch and the zoo’s founder, had transported block-by-block from Scotland a hundred years ago. When I looked to the right, I could see all the way down to the harbor and Slip No. 34, where the Merilee bobbed on the incoming tide. How I longed to be there.
    “Teddy, I’d like to introduce you to Sheridan Parker, of the Santa Barbara Parkers. He’s living in San Francisco now.” With those ominous words, Caro disappeared into a crowd of dinner guests, most of whom were members of the Zoo Guild. From their boisterous laughter, I guessed they’d already recovered from Grayson’s untimely demise.
    I bared my teeth at Parker. “Nice to meet you.”
    His smile was no more genuine than mine. “The same.”
    My gay-dar, a sixth sense Caro didn’t share, signaled that he was not the eligible bachelor she assumed. His mother probably had cajoled him into this meeting, too. Gay, straight, it never made any difference. No matter who or what you were, mothers never gave up trying to change their children, probably a genetically linked trait.
    My compassion activated toward a fellow sufferer, I offered a real smile and shifted the conversation to a neutral topic. “Did you know someone was killed at the Gunn Zoo last night?”
    He perked up. “It’s the talk of the Castro. Grayson Harrill, husband of one of the Gunn girls, right?”
    Way to go, Caro. The Castro’s only the largest gay neighborhood in the U.S. Guess you missed that part of the tour. “Yep, that’s the guy. He was shot.”
    “The story I heard must be wrong, then, that the pregnant anteater attacked him. I hope she’s okay. And her baby.”
    Too bad Sheridan was gay. He was my kind of guy. “They’re both fine.”
    He finished what was left of his drink. At these get-togethers, Caro always served wine from Gunn Vineyard.