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Claire saw the boy flinch when Brittany Hoffman, their host for this visit, nearly jumped out from just behind the small ticket and information building where her mother sat. Claire put her hand on his bony shoulder.
“Welcome to all of you!” Brittany shouted. “We are going to have fun and learn a lot today!”
They had already been welcomed in the small parking lot by both of the senior Hoffmans, Brittany’s parents, but they’d returned to their duties, and Brittany was a bit late meeting them. She looked tired, with dark circles under her eyes. Too little sleep? Claire wondered. Maybe she’d spent the night with Jace. Despite looking tired, she was animated and almost gave off sparks.
“I’m Brittany, the daughter of the owners of the BAA. We’re so happy to see you! Don’t worry, because all the animals that bite are in special cages or behind fences. We want to show you all our farm animals, our Florida animals and tropical birds—even our snakes and alligators—which we do not pet—and especially our new tiger who is here because he was treated badly at his first home.”
Sally, a Comfort Zone child and victim of sexual abuse, who seemed so much older than her years, whispered to Claire, “What’s new about that? Let’s welcome that tiger to the club.”
* * *
Nick was pleased to see how well Brittany and Claire got along, considering that Brittany was Claire’s ex-husband’s girlfriend. More than once when Jace had picked up Lexi for a visit, a couple of times with Brittany in the car, Jace had joked that Brit was really good at taming wild animals. Nick wondered if they’d tie the knot—and if that mattered to Claire.
Brittany Hoffman was cute rather than beautiful, although she didn’t work much at it and looked a bit blitzed today. She had sharp blue eyes and a glossy mane of sandy-colored hair she wore pulled back in a big ponytail. Minimal makeup, though she hardly needed it with her healthy color. She was petite but shapely, toned and tanned. Of the Hoffman family who owned this place, she was really the only one with credentials for working with animals, as Claire had said she had a BS from the University of Florida in zoology and animal management.
As for the rest of the family, her parents, Ben and Ann, just plain loved animals. After military service, Ben had sold advertising for the local newspaper, but said he’d wanted to get away from the “rat race.” He’d told the kids when someone asked, no they didn’t have rats to pet here.
The man was tall and muscular, as if he could wrestle some of the gators they had here. Jace had mentioned he really liked the guy, an ex-marine to match his own navy pilot career. Actually, Jace had met Ben before Brittany, at a Veterans of Foreign Wars event, and it was Ben who had introduced them.
The Hoffmans were probably in their midfifties while Brittany was midtwenties. Ann Hoffman, a bit overweight with an animated face framed by sleek silver hair, seemed gracious and outgoing, whereas Ben appeared solemn and distracted, despite being a solid, salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. Since the Hoffmans were trying to make a go of what was basically an animal shelter and amateur zoo—though the State of Florida had deemed them worthy of taking in the tiger since they had built a good cage facility—Nick had insisted on paying for everyone’s ticket, even though they had offered to let the group in for free.
The only other Hoffman child was a son, Lane, a violinist with the Naples Symphony Orchestra—the black sheep of the family. Nick knew who he was from the days he attended social and charity gatherings, but couldn’t really say he knew him.
The Comfort Zone kids were given sno-cones, and their group spent almost a half hour next to the tiger cage while the poor beast paced back and forth glaring at them. As good a job as Brittany did talking about tigers, he could tell Claire was glad when they moved on to more cuddly, placid animals that meant hands-on action. Man, he thought, if that tiger got out, it had a gourmet dinner waiting just across a small moat where llamas, goats, sheep, calves and even a baby camel awaited the kids. Tiberia could probably smell dinner on the breeze.
Nick had to admit, though, that the Hoffmans were brave to try to establish the BAA here, as its fifteen acres were wedged in between the big ranch to the west and orange and grapefruit orchards to the east on this road. A nine-foot wire fence surrounded the property, and they were still making improvements on cages and refreshment stands. Obviously, it was their dream to help animals, big and small, and teach youngsters to love them as they did.
He was grateful that they’d let the kids in an hour before general admission today, though he wondered how many families would actually show up. At least Ben Hoffman had skills from his old career to arrange for advertising for the place; Claire had said she’d seen ads in both the newspaper and online.
Nick glanced back to see Ben Hoffman had appeared near the cage with a big box of something, maybe to feed the tiger. Good thing the kids didn’t stay to see a carnivore eat dinner, but at least there was no kill involved.
Near the petting cages, Nick settled down on a bench, holding a white rabbit while the kids tentatively, then more assuredly, petted, held and even talked to the animals. Duncan seemed the only one to want to pet what Brittany had called a rare mulefoot hog piglet, a squirmy little thing that looked both muddy and ugly.
Besides Brittany moving from child to child, Claire was everywhere, comforting, praising, suggesting, especially watchful of Lexi and Duncan. Nick smiled to see his former bodyguard, big Bronco, now man-of-all trades, petting the animals too. Nita, Bronco’s very significant other, was smiling and speaking Spanish to the anteater, who seemed to be the only antisocial creature of the bunch.
After about fifteen minutes, Jackson, the man Brittany introduced as their “jack-of-all-trades around here,” joined them with two pink flamingos that elicited oohs and ahhs. Though the guy was a maintenance/custodian type, Nick noted he seemed great with the animals—and kids too.
Jackson, however, introduced himself as the zookeeper. He was a tall, lanky African American around sixty, almost bald, with a big smile. He lived on the grounds, he said, helped to feed the animals and was going on an errand to get fresh vegetables for the flamingos to eat so they would stay pink.
“Because that depends on what they eat,” Jackson told the kids. Nick was impressed when he went on, “What you eat makes you colorful too—so remember to eat your veggies, okay?”
The kids nodded or responded, and waved to Jackson as he guided the flamingos back toward the small moated area labeled Flamingo Isle where he disappeared into the foliage.
“Not only our keeps-things-together genius,” Brit told them, “but a longtime friend of my dad’s.”
Duncan laughed loudly, not at that comment, but at the little piglet he was hugging.
And then—
A screech, a roar and a scream pierced the air.
“Tiberia!” Brittany yelled, and took off on a dead run.
“Watch the kids!” Claire shouted to the other adults, and headed across the moat after Brittany.
Damn! Why had he married a take-charge, bleeding-heart woman?
“Bronco, you’re in charge. Keep the kids here!” Nick ordered, and thrust the rabbit into his hands. That cry had been fierce, feral—but he was sure he’d heard a human scream too.
* * *
Claire broke into a run over the wooden bridge spanning the moat. She hadn’t run for weeks, and she was quickly out of breath. Couldn’t see the tiger cage from here because of the curve in the walk and a small building blocking it. Brittany...out of sight ahead. Had that restless tiger just roared at someone, maybe someone too close to its cage, then the person screamed?
Surely no one would get too close. They’d have to climb a fence first.
But that scream had been first low, then shrill, bloodcurdling.
She tore around the corner of the small glass enclosure that held beaver and otters in two separate displays with small water pools. When she turned the next corner, she saw only horror.
3
Brittany had climbed the four-foot-tall restraining fence and was right up to the bars of the tiger cage, shouting, “Tiberia, back, back! No! Nooo!”
But the big cat seemed to just be standing. Growling. Eating something. Brittany had told the kids it was almost feeding time, but someone else would do it today. Claire had assumed that she didn’t want the children to see a carnivorous animal tearing into its meat.
As she came closer, Claire saw a man, face up, grotesquely sprawled under the cat in a pool of blood. Brittany’s father! The tiger lowered its jaws to the big man’s ravaged, red neck and gave his limp body a hard shake.
“I’ll call 911!” Claire shouted at Brittany, who, now sobbing, clung to the bars of the cage.
Nick ran up, his cell phone already out of his jeans pocket. He was talking into it, asking for help, paramedics, the police. He put an arm around Claire, hugging her hard to him.
Brittany, hysterical, kept screaming at the beast. She began to rock against the bars as if she’d pull them from their moorings. Then she turned away, climbed the fence again, and tore around to the door of the interior part of the display where she’d told the kids there was a “tiger bedroom” and supplies. As she ran in, the door behind her caught and stood ajar. A red fire extinguisher was mounted there.
Ann Hoffman appeared, running, gasping. “What?” she cried, and then she saw. Nick hurried toward her. Unlike her daughter, the woman didn’t scream, but fastened her fists in her hair and stared aghast as if in shock.
“Do you have a gun here?” Nick asked the distraught woman. “Ann, do you have a gun? Tranquilizer darts?”
She just stared. Dear heavens, Claire thought, this was a nightmare. If Ben Hoffman wasn’t dead already, they’d never save him now.
Surely Brittany didn’t intend to go into that cage. This was no metropolitan zoo with protocols and stun guns. But that fire extinguisher gave Claire an idea.
She rushed to the door where Brittany had disappeared and shouted, “Brittany, come back! The fire extinguisher will stop him!” She lifted it from its holder attached to the inside of the door. Heavy. She staggered back with it. Nick ran to help. Good thing, because she realized she had no idea how to use it.
Leaning forward over the restraining fence, Nick yanked a ring on the metal extinguisher, pointed the hose and nozzle, and pulled the lever just as Brittany ran back out toward them with a long metal gaff. She must have meant to use it to shove the tiger away from her father, but the chemical spray hit the cat. Some of it bounced back toward them, and Nick aimed it better.
“Brittany!” Claire shouted. “Help is coming!”
“He’ll bleed out by then! Dear God, why did you do it this way?” she screamed into the cage.
Why did you do it this way? The tiger? Her father?
Again, Brittany climbed the restraining fence and threw herself against the bars again, gripping them, thrusting the gaff through the bars. What if the big cat rushed her too?
Ann Hoffman had collapsed to her knees and began to wail. Nick climbed the fence too and aimed the extinguisher through the bars, pinning the big cat back in a corner of the cage where it roared as if in pain. Finally, after an eternity—but then they were outside town on a county road—they heard sirens screaming. Claire hadn’t realized she was crying. She was hyperventilating, shaking.
“We need to get the kids home—out of here,” she told Nick as the spray fizzled out. “What if that tiger had escaped?”
In that deep, calm lawyer voice of his, Nick said, “Go tell Darcy to divide up the other kids, with Bronco and Nita, and take Lexi too. They should leave right now, but we’ll have to stay here to help Brittany and Ann.”
Ann! Claire thought. She’d been so intent on the cage. She turned to see Ann Hoffman still on her knees, her body racked with sobs, her face in her hands.
Claire turned back to Nick. “Yes, we might have to answer questions since we were kind of first responders. Should I call Jace to help Brittany?”
Nick shook his head. “Only if you want him to parachute in and try to take over. Go on, sweetheart, tell Darcy, and don’t run. Maybe Brittany and her mother will need a lawyer. This extinguisher’s out of spray, but the tiger looks like he’s staying put. And find out where Jackson went, their custodian.”
On her way back to the kids and their chaperones, Claire saw two police cars pull into the parking lot outside the entry, but the EMR vehicle drove right in through the open gate. She pointed out the direction they should go but realized they’d never get over the moat bridge in the vehicle. She hurried to get the Comfort Zone kids away.
Comfort zone. Had Ben been so comfortable with the tiger that he’d walked into that cage, or had something or someone made him enter? No one else was around. And what had Brittany meant by why he did it this way? Was she screaming at the tiger, or at her father?
* * *
Claire stared at the chaotic, tragic scene. Ben Hoffman had been pronounced dead by the Collier County Medical Examiner. Ann Hoffman was in such a state of shock that the medics, who had been called and arrived before the ME, had attended to her too. Brittany was pacing just as fiercely as Tiberia had earlier, only outside the fence surrounding the cage where the cat now lay limp from tranquilizer darts.
The tiger had been darted by workers from the Naples Zoo so that the medics and ME could get to the victim and the police could more closely survey the scene. The police had strung their neon yellow CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape and cleared the area, except for the owners/family and eyewitnesses who were first on the scene.
The body, at first covered by a tarp, was finally taken away by the ME in an official van. Unfortunately, the media had picked up on the tragedy already, and a curious crowd was beginning to gather at the front gate, now closed, where Claire spotted two TV vans with satellite dishes on their roofs. Others who had intended to visit today at the regular opening time—it looked like some grandparents with kids—still milled around, trying to learn what was going on.
Also, Nick had said that a few picketers for the humane treatment of cats, no less, were already walking back and forth outside with signs, chanting. Jackson, who had gone to run a short errand, was back now and had more than once tried to disperse the crowd. The police had briefly questioned him, but as he hadn’t been on-site, he’d just gone back to guarding the front gate. Nick had seen the guy had tears in his eyes. After all, Brit had said he was friends with her father. Jackson kept shaking his head, stunned about how this could have happened.
“Counselor Markwood,” a policeman who recognized Nick called from inside the taped-off area, “you here as a guest, or you representing someone?”
Nick rose from the bench where he sat with Claire and walked a few steps away to talk to the officer. “I’m a guest, at least for now,” Nick told him. “My wife and I brought a group of charity kids here today before regular opening hours. We didn’t see this happen but ran over when we heard the noise. I don’t think anyone knows why he did that—the deceased.”
“Yeah, especially since he evidently didn’t enter with the animal’s food,” the officer told him. “A box of it was dropped just inside the enclosure but wasn’t taken in or thrown into the cage. Real weird if it was an accident, but the detectives will check security protocol when they get here, and we’ll have to wait for the ME’s report. It was suicide to go in there. He should have known that. His wife and daughter are too shaken to explain things so far, and his son’s playing in a concert uptown. His phone’s off right now, according to his wife, so we don’t have all next of kin notified. Wish the media buzzards wouldn’t circle,” he added with a glance at the growing crowd at the gate.
With a tap of his fingers to the bill of his cap, the officer went back to his position by the cage. Despite sitting, Claire’s legs were shaking as she watched and listened. Observation and analysis were in her forensic psych blood. The only time her brain wasn’t spinning with what, how, who and why was if she slept or messed up her meds and had a narcoleptic nightmare. But a nightmare this was.
Nick came back over to her. “You still doing okay? You should carry your pills even when you rely on herbal tea.”
“I thought we’d be home by now. Nick, I know your ears perked up when you heard him say accident or suicide, but who would choose that dreadful way to kill himself and horrify his family and others when he could just jump in the Gulf or get a gun?”
He nodded as they huddled together on the wooden bench. “You know, this all hits close to home. I’d really be all in if this had any implications of being a murder like with my father, but you can’t charge a big cat with that.”
He put one arm around her and gripped her knee with his other hand. He was shaking too. She knew how hard he’d struggled to cope with the supposed suicide of his father when it had turned out to be murder, one that had taken Nick years to prove and to bring the killer to justice.
That early loss had so impacted his life that he’d founded the private South Shores investigation company. With its small, secret staff, he kept it separate from his law firm, and most of the cases managed to fly under the radar. Through South Shores funding and legal expertise, he helped others who had lost a loved one by mysterious means. He was especially drawn to cases where the cause of death was undecided and unproven: accident, suicide or murder. And had they walked into another tragic situation, or would Ben’s family have an explanation of how or why this happened?
Brittany’s frenzied words still haunted Claire: Why would you do it this way?
* * *
Jace Britten brought the Zika virus mosquito–spraying plane into the Marco Island airport and, after waiting for an old Piper Cub to land behind him, taxied toward the small hangar. What a far cry from his navy pilot days landing his fighter jet on a carrier at sea or flying solo missions over endless, blazing sand in Iraq. As much as he longed to take to the skies again in an F-35 or a big commercial Airbus loaded with lives he would die to protect, this was it for now.
But, he had to admit, he kind of liked this assignment to spray for those hellish mosquitoes that caused women to deliver babies with congenital birth defects. Zika danger had hit not only Southeast Florida but now threatened here, Southwest Florida too. And his ex-wife was pregnant with her new husband’s baby. As much as he had issues with Nick and Claire sometimes, they were good for his daughter, Lexi, and he hoped like hell that Claire would have a healthy baby. Maybe this spraying would help.
But he was serving above and beyond that too, since he was tracking the whereabouts not only of drug dealers but other criminals for the government. It was a new endeavor for him, but one that at least made things more interesting and still helped the US fight its enemies. He figured he was still serving his country as he had once. And he needed the job after leaving the airline.
“Roger that,” he responded to final directions from the small control tower. “Over and out.”
He steered the plane, which the FBI secretly owned, toward the hangar where a contact he’d met only once would service the plane, actually electronically “debrief” the recordings from his latest Stingray mission. The camera and tracking device mounted under the fuselage were worth about $400,000 of government money, and there were other pilots in the air like him, especially along the Mexican border. The Stingray aviation surveillance program relied on a tracking system that acted like a cell phone tower, one that recorded locations and could photograph events. If it had to, a Stingray plane could first focus on an area or neighborhood, then pinpoint a person and snap quite a clear picture—if they had a cell phone on them, and who didn’t lately?
The FBI had wanted him to take a desk job in DC, overseeing Stingray, but he hadn’t wanted to leave Naples, Lexi—and now Brit. Nor had he ever gotten flying out of his blood. He needed some excitement, the kind that gave him a new lease on life. And Brit—whom he’d actually met through her father, an ex-marine who had been in special ops—was a very intriguing woman both in bed and out. She had a good sense of humor too. She’d joked from the first that he had to marry her so that her name would be Brittany Britten.
He rechecked the controls, unlatched his seat belt and popped the door. He was barely off the concrete hangar floor and out into the sunny, windy afternoon when his cell sounded—the “Marines’ Hymn.” Yeah, he was a die-hard leatherneck, always would be.
The caller ID said it was Brit.
“Hello, tiger girl,” he said.
“Don’t. Don’t say that.”
“What’s the matter? You’re crying. Where are you?”
“Jace, believe it or not I’m with Claire and Nick at the BAA.”
“What hap—”
“My father went into the tiger’s cage—somehow. I mean I know how. Jace, it mauled him, killed him. The police are here and—”
He felt like he’d been hit in the gut. Ben. That big man dead? In the tiger cage! He’d—he’d gotten so close to him so fast. He couldn’t be dead! Jace had liked the older man from the first. He’d kidded him just the other day that it had been a long time since he’d had a wingman, and Ben was like that to him.
“Brit, I’m so sorry. Is Lexi still there? Is she okay?”
“No. I mean, yes, the children are safe. Everyone is gone, even the paramedics. They took his body to the medical examiner for an autopsy. Why cut him up when he’s a mess? I—I need to talk to the police now, keep the press away. It ruins everything—this place, my plans, our lives.”
He felt like throwing up, but his military training kicked in. Assess. Keep calm. React.
“Slow down, honey. Breathe. I’ll come right out. I just landed on Marco. Will they let me in?”
“I guess. Nick’s still here. I’m going to ask him to represent Mother and me if we need it, and—”
“Listen to me. The damn tiger killed him, you didn’t! I’ll be there ASAP. Listen, if it comes to needing legal help, Nick’s firm is the best. You need other support, you got me.”
He punched off the phone and broke into a run across the tarmac toward his car.
4
Claire and Nick finally had permission to leave. With Jackson’s help, they had just run the gauntlet of media and curious onlookers outside the gate. With microphones thrust in their faces, Nick had made a brief statement that the accident was under formal investigation and they had no other comment. Claire was upset that cameras rolled and the newspaper photographer took several shots. After all they’d been through, she had no desire to be back in the glare of publicity and the peril it could sometimes lead to.
Things had been going so well, and now this tragedy. She and Nick had both given statements to the Naples detective who had arrived. Ann Hoffman had been interviewed briefly since she had not been in the immediate area nor even seen the tiger that day. Besides, she was in shock. Brittany had told Nick that Jace had suggested he represent her, at least for now, so Nick had sat in with her for a lengthy interview with Detective Jensen.
When they were in their car in the parking lot, Claire exhaled hard and said, “Whew. The last time I was on TV, it brought our enemies to our front door. I just hope there won’t be criminal charges against Brittany or Ann. And they can hardly charge a dead man with criminal negligence.”
“Or his own suicide. But as you said, no one would try to kill themselves that way. And I think—from the fact Jace admired Ben Hoffman so much—with a group of young kids nearby, it couldn’t be suicide.”
“You’re not thinking it could be murder?”