Free The Koala of Death by Betty Webb Page B

while I got ready for work, she would nag at me about my chosen profession until I hurried out of the house only half-dressed in my zoo khakis. To get away from the constant nagging, I’d moved onto the Merilee, where I fell in love with harbor life.
    But the devil demanded her due. To make Caro leave me alone, I’d agreed to show up at her Let’s-Find-Teddy-a-Suitable-Husband parties as long as said parties didn’t happen more than twice a year.
    With fingers tightened around the steering wheel of my old Nissan pickup, I wound my way up the hill to Old Town, where the family home sat at the end of a eucalyptus-lined lane. A cupola-sprouting Greek revival built in an era when full-time household help was cheap, it consisted of eighteen rooms, only six of which Caro actually used. The other rooms served as storage areas for the furniture that had been accumulated down through the centuries by various Bentleys and Pipers: a Queen Anne armoire here, a Romanov settee there. The living room was three times as long as the entirety of the Merilee but considerably stuffier, cluttered as it was with Victorian sofas and armchairs. At least it offered plenty of seating for my mother’s well-heeled guests.
    After greeting me warmly, Caro had the valet hide my truck in the back, then led me upstairs to my old room, where she, her hairdresser, and her cosmetician proceeded to turn me into a different person. My frizzy red hair disappeared underneath smooth waves, and my rabbity eyelashes were darkened with mascara. The freckles Joe so loved were paved over by Mme. Cherie’s Masque de Bisque . I resembled a gargoyle trying to look like Barbie.
    Once encased in the revealing gauze-over-silk Basso & Brooke dress Caro had bought me, I steeled mself and walked downstairs to find guests already milling about and a string quartet from San Sebastian Community College playing bastardized Vivaldi. Judging from the leers proffered by my wanna-be-date, the dress was a success.
    “That’s so hot,” Jason Jackman McIlhenny Forbes IV slurred, as he downed another martini he didn’t need. His bleary eyes didn’t once leave my chest, and it was all I could do not to toss my glass of Gunn Vineyard’s prize-winning ’03 Merlot in his face.
    “How nice that you like my dress,” I muttered between clenched teeth. Boy, Caro sure could pick ’em.
    “I wasn’t talking about your dress, sweet stuff, just what’s peeking out from under there. Say, why don’t we sneak out of this snooze fest and take a drive along the coast in my new Alpha Romeo? Not only will I show you what it can do, but I’ll show you what I can do, too. You’ll like it. All the girls do.”
    “Oh, look! There’s Aster Edwina Gunn! I must talk to her!” Leaving the inebriated dolt behind, I jostled my way through the crowd.
    At the far end the room, Aster Edwina held court on a red velvet chair designed to look like a lesser royal’s throne. The eighty-something head of the powerful Gunn family was deep in discussion with my mother and Ford Bronson, the billionaire who owned KTSS-TV, as well as other media outlets across the country. Before I could veer off in another direction, Aster Edwina waved me over. “Ah, the girl of the hour.”
    “Hello, Aster Edwina,” I said. Then, at Caro’s prompting, I added, “Thank you for that promotion at the zoo, not that I wanted it.”
    If Aster Edwina’s smile had been any thinner, it would have cut off her tongue. “The television program will be good for you, dear, definitely more in keeping with your talents.”
    Caro nudged me. “See, Teddy? She only wants the best for you.”
    Like the lion knows what’s best for the gazelle. “Well, it’s been nice chatting with you, but I was just passing by on my way to the food table.”
    That thin smile again. “The food table is in the opposite direction, Theodora, right behind that awful Forbes boy your mother hopes will be your next husband.”
    She made it sound like I’d