Free The Koala of Death by Betty Webb Page A

heard the basics of Bill’s arrest on KRSS-AM. No doubt the television stations were also featuring it. “You haven’t been listening to the news?”
    Sam shook his head. “Too depressing, what with the economy, the terrorists, the…”
    I raised my hand to stop him. “KRSS is reporting that Kate was murdered, and the authorities already have a suspect in custody.” For now, I wanted to leave Bill’s name out of it.
    After a moment of shocked silence, Sam said, “Murdered? I don’t believe it! Who would hurt such a sweet girl? Every time I…”
    “Sam. Don’t.” Doris gave her husband a warning frown. To me she said, “Thanks for telling us, Teddy, but we have to get over to Lucky Lanes now, don’t we, Sam?”
    “We do?” Sam’s face was a study in confusion.
    “Don’t you remember? Super Strikes, that league from Castroville? They changed their regular night to Wednesdays and that’s going to be too much for Evelyn and Carlos to handle by themselves. Let’s get going.” Doris all but hauled her husband out of his chair.
    Having worn out my welcome, I excused myself and headed over to the Merilee and the more soothing company of DJ Bonz and Miss Priss.
    Later, as I took Bonz for his evening constitutional through Gunn Park, I reflected on my conversation with the Grimaldis. Bear keeper Jack Spence was a member of Super Strikes. During our afternoon break, he’d bragged about picking up a seven-ten split the night before, thus winning the evening’s eighty-two dollar jackpot, so Doris had been lying.
    As the evening fog drifted toward the harbor, I realized that I’d not asked the Grimaldis the question I’d originally meant to ask.
    Had one of them opened the electronic harbor gate for Bill?
    If not, who had?

C HAPTER S IX
    Friday evening, after taking care of my own animals, I drove up to Old Town to get ready for Mother’s Let’s-Find-Teddy-a-Suitable-Husband soirée. While I disliked these parties, my attendance at them kept most of her manipulations down to a dull roar.
    The problem was this.
    I had been born into money. The Pipers, my mother’s family, were one of the area’s founding families, and for around a hundred years, had accumulated piles of the green stuff via their ranching and shipping concerns. But like so many families, they’d lost it all during the Depression. Fortunately, the Piper women tended to be beautiful and were able to snag rich husbands. Mother met my very wealthy father when he was a judge in the Miss San Sebastian Beauty Pageant—she won, of course—and married him soon afterward.
    Unfortunately, several years later my father, who was as dishonest as he was rich, embezzled millions from the family brokerage firm of Bentley, Bentley, Haight and Busby, then decamped to Costa Rica with the loot. When the Feds were through with Caro, she had lost her house, the cars, the diamonds, the furs, and for all intents and purposes, was penniless. Well, there was that sub rosa offshore account Dad set up for us. Unfortunately, it would raise the curiosity of the Feds if it were accessed too frequently, so being a Piper and still beautiful, Caro married rich again. And again. And again. Each succeeding husband had more money than the previous one, and in no time, Caro had recouped the family finances, even buying back the family home the Feds had snatched out from under us. Now she was able to live high on the hog without making too many suspicious withdrawals.
    I took a different path. Once I finished college, I married a young and very un rich attorney and moved to San Francisco with him, but was eventually deserted for another woman. Since I had not inherited the Piper family beauty, I knuckled down to support myself by teaching. After finding that San Francisco held too many bad memories, I moved back to Caro’s house in the Old Town section of Gunn Landing, and shortly thereafter found myself working at the zoo. To my surprise, I adored it.
    Caro didn’t. Every day