Free Guarded by Mary Behre Page A

owner’s daughter? He didn’t have time to wonder long because Shelley hadn’t taken five steps when Reyna called out, “Don’t go stirring up trouble again, because I will get the sheriff involved this time. No matter what my daddy says. I won’t have you raising a stink here anymore.”
    “Me? You’re accusing me of stirring up trouble?” Shelley spun around. The blue blazes Reyna mentioned earlier seemed to shoot from Shelley’s eyes.
    In the distance, three men made their way up the trail, led by an older man in a blue jumpsuit. Dr. Kessler’s white suit shone like a beacon in the afternoon light. The man really did dress like his office picture. His silver-topped walking stick glinted as he struggled to keep pace with a lanky man in a tan deputy’s uniform and hat.
    Not good.
“Let’s go, Shells,” Dev said, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
    She shrugged away his touch and squared off with Reyna. “No. I don’t stir up trouble. I’m the one who you’ve had to call multiple times in the past six months to clean up the messes you and your family have made. Or did you forget?” Shelley plunked her hands on her hips. “Wasn’t it last month your
daddy
burned the body of a five-year-old green iguana instead of properly disposing of the poor animal? I didn’t even get a chance to examine it first. Or are you now claiming that I raised a stink when I asked to do that before you got rid of the creature? So there would be documented proof about what killed it? Green iguanas can live twenty years in captivity.”
    “My daddy was perfectly within his rights to burn that disgusting lizard. It was dead.” Reyna stepped forward, mirroring Shelley’s stance. “There’s no requirement that says he has to perform a lizardtopsy—”
    “It’s called a necropsy,” Shelley hissed. “And it should have been performed.”
    “Necro?
Ewww
 . . . Whatever it’s called, why should he bother? The thing was dead.” Reyna narrowed her eyes further. “You think we should let you cut it up just to satisfy your suspicious little brain? Not that it would have mattered. In your mind, we’re already convicted of animal cruelty. You even called the USDA on us!” Reyna stepped closer and raised her voice. “Lucky for you, they have better things to do than to worry about smelly old reptiles.”
    “Lucky for you, you mean,” Shelley shot back. Her face nearly as red as her curly hair. “Had that been a mammal that died under your tender care, the USDA wouldn’t have been the only one involved. It wouldn’t have looked good for this town if word got out that its landmark zoo has animals dying and disappearing mysteriously.”
    “Oh my God! You’re going to tell me there’s some sort of conspiracy going on here? You are one crazy bitch if you believe that.”
    The man in the blue jumpsuit sprinted the last few feet up the path, leaving the other two behind. He put a hand on Reyna’s shoulder.
    “Reyna, please,” he slurred slightly. Up close, his uniform was crisp and freshly pressed with ELKRIDGE ZOO emblazoned on the front left pocket. In his early sixties with thinning gray hair, a florid complexion indicative of excessive alcohol use, and bloodshot, watery eyes, he swayed slightly. “Dr. Morgan was only trying to help.”
    “Really, Daddy?” Reyna spun on the man. “Stop defending her. How can you say she was only trying to help? She threatened you last week.”
    “I did no such thing.” Shelley crossed her arms over her chest, her blue eyes still shooting sapphire sparks. “I just told him no other animals better disappear under mysterious circumstances.”
    “I believe your actual words were much worse.” Reyna laughed like a hyena. “Isn’t that right, Deputy Munro? You were contacted that day, I believe.”
    The deputy double-timed it up the last few feet of the trail at the woman’s call. He stepped up beside her and withdrew a small black notebook from his pocket. Beneath his