Poached

  “I’m just telling you what Charlie told me,” I said.

  “Well, Charlie’s wrong,” Mom told me. “I think we can rule Kristi out.”

  “What about the other koala keepers?” Dad suggested. “There were three of them, right? Elizabeth Ames, Jen Weeks and . . . shoot, I can’t remember the third.”

  “Ashley Thomas,” Mom said. “They worked with Kazoo less than Kristi did, but they all had to learn just as much about koalas. All of them would have known the extreme difficulties involved in taking care of Kazoo.”

  “Maybe they didn’t do it to get a pet for themselves,” I said. “Maybe some rich collector like Flora Hancock paid them to steal a koala for her. She has enough money to buy all the eucalyptus in the world.”

  “None of those keepers would have stolen Kazoo,” Mom stated flatly.

  “Maybe Arthur Koenig stole him for Flora Hancock,” I said.

  “I don’t think any keeper would steal a zoo animal,” Mom told me.

  “Well whoever did it had to know how to get in and out without being seen,” I argued. “Which means the thief had to know the koala exhibit really well. If it wasn’t a keeper, then who was it?”

  “What about one of the contractors who built the exhibit?” Dad suggested. “Suppose some carpenter had his eye on Kazoo all along. Maybe he knows Flora Hancock is willing to pay big bucks for a koala. So he builds a secret entrance into the exhibit, bides his time for a few weeks, then sneaks into the zoo one night and swipes Kazoo.”

  Mom frowned at him. “You really think so?”

  Dad shrugged. “It’s possible. And it explains how the thief got Kazoo without showing up on tape. Even if Kristi or Arthur or this Astros Cap guy took the koala, we still haven’t figured out how they did it without going through the door.”

  “Maybe Astros Cap was one of the carpenters!” I exclaimed. “Maybe Freddie approached him at some point during the construction of the exhibit and they came up with a plan to steal Kazoo.”

  “Or maybe he works for the company that installed the security system here!” Dad was getting excited now. “Maybe he built in his own secret access code—which would explain how he could get into the koala exhibit and Shark Odyssey. And he might know how to override the security cameras as well so he could get in and out without being recorded.”

  He and I both looked to Mom expectantly. The frown hadn’t left her face. “It seems awfully far-fetched,” she said.

  “Maybe, but it’s still possible,” Dad countered. “In fact, I’d say it’s the best we’ve come up with so far.” He turned to me. “What’d you do with his license plate number?”

  “I called Summer,” I told him. “And she’s going to pass it on to her father. She says he knows people who can trace it.”

  “We ought to pass it on to Marge, too,” Mom recommended.

  “She won’t do anything with it,” I said. “All she cares about is framing me for this.”

  Mom sighed. “Marge might have a chip on her shoulder where you’re concerned, but she’s still in charge of security here. She should know about this. Maybe if it comes from one of us rather than you, she’ll take it more seriously.”

  “I guess it can’t hurt.” I dutifully wrote down the license plate number for my mother, who began texting it to Marge. “And while we’re at it, we should let her know about Arthur Koenig, too.”

  Mom paused in midtext. “Teddy, for the last time, I don’t see Arthur doing this—”

  “Well he was selling something he wasn’t supposed to have,” I argued. “Even if it wasn’t Kazoo, Marge should know about it.”

  “Good point.” Mom went back to composing her message.

  “Did you say there was footage of this Astros Cap online?” Dad asked. “Maybe we could forward that to Marge and the McCrackens as well.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

  I got on my mother’s computer, feeling more upbeat than I had in a while. Astros Cap being a construction worker was certainly the best explanation we’d come up with to explain how Kazoo had been taken. And there was no shortage of people he could have been working for—Freddie, Arthur, Flora—if not a combination of any of them. There was only one thing that still nagged at me: What had Astros Cap been doing at Shark Odyssey?

  It took me a few tries to find the right YouTube video; a dozen more recordings of the disaster at KoalaVille had been uploaded since lunch. But I eventually located it.

  We watched it play on the computer. Mom, who’d only heard about the events from Dad and me, just shook her head in dismay as they unfolded before her. Dad, who’d lived through it, stood behind her, struggling to keep from laughing. Finally the camera settled on Astros Cap, and I paused the video. “There!” I said. “That’s him!”

  Dad zoomed in so that Astros Cap’s face filled the screen, then squinted at the pixelated image. “It’s not easy to make him out with the glasses and the hat,” he said. “I might have seen him before, but I can’t be sure. How about you, hon?” He looked to Mom.

  “He seems familiar to me, too,” Mom said. “Though I can’t figure out why.”

  “Maybe we saw him around one of the construction sites—” Dad began, though he didn’t get to finish the thought, because Furious George suddenly went nuts.

  He’d been so quiet up until then; even Mom had forgotten about him. Now he let out a nerve-jangling scream that made all of us leap out of our seats.

  We spun around to find him racing about his cell like a maniac. He bounded off the walls, flinging everything he could get his hands on, screeching the entire time. Every few seconds he would return to the viewing window and pound on it so hard I thought he might break through. Most people don’t realize that chimps have extremely sharp teeth. The sight of George gnashing them with rage in his eyes was terrifying. I’d never seen him like this. In fact I’d never seen him be anything other than sweet and kind.

  Mom sensed I was frightened and put a hand on my shoulder to calm me. “It’s all right,” she said. “He’s not trying to get to us. Something else triggered this reaction.”

  “Like what?” Dad asked. “He’s in solitary. He can’t see anything but us.”

  “Something must have changed,” Mom said. “We weren’t doing anything. We were only looking at . . .” She trailed off and turned toward the computer.

  I looked that way too. On the screen, in full view of Furious George, was the blown-up photo of Astros Cap. “It’s him,” I said.

  Mom wiped the photo from the computer.

  George calmed down almost as quickly as he’d flipped out. He stopped banging on the glass and baring his teeth. The rage in his eyes was replaced by a pained, almost ashamed expression, as though he was embarrassed about his behavior.

  “Could that man have done something to him?” Dad asked.

  “Perhaps.” Mom had a faraway look in her eyes, which she got when she was trying to solve a problem. “But, like you said, it was hard to make him out—and George was a lot farther from the computer than we were. He wouldn’t have been able to recognize a specific person. I wonder if he was responding to something else instead.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “What he was wearing.” Mom returned her attention to the computer and did a Google image search for “orange baseball caps.” “Get ready,” she told me. “This might get scary again.”

  The monitor screen filled with photos of people wearing orange caps. Mom clicked on one and then stepped aside so that Furious George could see it.

  He went nuts again.

  One second he was calm. The next he was screeching and banging the glass.

  Mom wiped the screen once more.

  George went back to his normal self.

  Mom came to the viewing window and placed her palm against it. “You poor thing,” she said sadly. “You poor, poor thing.”

  George put his hand on the other side of the glass, so his palm was facing hers.

  “I
t’s all right,” Mom told him. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “George’s behavior is consistent with an ape that has been abused,” Mom said. “I can’t say for sure whether or not the man in the video did it, but it seems quite evident that whoever did was wearing an orange baseball cap.”

  I sat down, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me. Even though I’d seen plenty of examples of humanity’s cruelty, they still always caught me off guard.

  “Do you think it was someone here?” Dad asked.

  Mom shook her head. “It wouldn’t have been any of my people. And the exhibits here are designed to prevent any visitors from harming an animal on display. I’d suspect that this was done to George before he arrived. He’s only been here for a few months.”

  “Where was he before that?” I asked.

  “A research facility in Houston,” Mom replied.

  “Home of the Astros,” Dad said. “Probably a lot of orange baseball caps there.”

  Mom nodded, then swiveled her computer monitor so that George could no longer see it and opened a folder filled with movie files.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “Video from the security camera that faces the crowd in the chimp exhibit,” Mom told me. “FunJungle records everything that the cameras see and keeps it for two weeks.”

  “Why just two weeks?” I inquired.

  “There are over ten thousand cameras at this park,” Dad explained. “All that video takes up a huge amount of memory. The servers aren’t big enough to keep everything forever. So security only holds on to what’s important.”

  “Like this.” Mom pointed at the video clips. “I asked security to send me the feeds from the exact times that George had his episodes. I’ve gone over them a few times already, figuring something in the crowd might be triggering him, but until now I didn’t know what to look for.”

  She clicked on the file from the previous morning. The camera footage filled her screen. It was grainy and shot from an angle near the ceiling, so it was almost impossible to make out anyone’s face. A time stamp at the bottom of the screen showed that the film was starting at 10:55 a.m.

  There were sixteen people in the crowd. One of them was wearing an orange baseball cap. It wasn’t Astros Cap, just a random visitor.

  “There,” Dad said.

  “Got him,” Mom said, then brought up the next video, which was from three days before, at 1:37 in the afternoon.

  The crowd was much bigger this time. There was a group of elementary school children on a field trip. It took us a bit longer to find the kid in the orange baseball cap.

  “There,” I said.

  “Looks like we have our trigger.” Mom sighed. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Dad said. “It’s almost impossible to see until you know what to search for.”

  Mom nodded, but still looked upset with herself. She brought up a third video to confirm her theory. It was from a week before, just after three in the afternoon.

  There were only five people this time, so it wasn’t hard to find the man in the orange baseball cap.

  “Hey,” I said. “That’s Astros Cap!”

  Mom paused the video and enlarged it. It wasn’t a great picture, given the angle of the security camera, but it definitely looked like the guy I’d seen around. He had the same thick build and was wearing sunglasses, even though he was inside.

  “Looks like he’s been spending a lot of time around here,” Dad said suspiciously.

  Before I could respond, the phone rang. Mom snapped up the receiver. “Charlene Fitzroy.”

  The person on the other line said something. I couldn’t hear it, but it made Mom look toward me, surprised. “Yes, he’s here,” she said. “But I’m his mother. Whatever you need to say to him, you can say to me.”

  She then listened, nodding a few times. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll give him the message.” She hung up and rolled her eyes.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “The personal assistant to J.J. McCracken,” Mom replied. “The boss wants to see you first thing tomorrow.”

  ENEMIES

  J.J. McCracken’s office was on the top floor of the administration building. It was the nicest office in the entire park, which didn’t make that much sense, given that J.J. only used it one day a month, if that. Most of the time he was traveling around the world, overseeing the dozens of companies he owned—or cutting deals to buy yet another one.

  The room was twenty times the size of my mother’s office, with huge windows that normally offered a panoramic view of all of FunJungle. Today, however, it was sleeting so badly that I couldn’t see a thing. When the secretary showed my parents and me in at nine a.m., J.J. was already seated at his enormous desk. The size of the office and the desk were probably supposed to signify J.J.’s power, but to me they had the opposite effect. J.J. was a short man, and surrounding himself with big things only made him seem smaller. He looked kind of like a kid who’d snuck into his father’s office.

  J.J.’s personality wasn’t small at all, however. He was effusive and opinionated, and spoke in a voice that seemed to come from somebody three times bigger. J.J. had grown up close to where FunJungle was built and still acted like a local good old boy rather than a Wall Street billionaire. His standard outfit was a denim shirt, a bolo tie, and cowboy boots. When I entered his office, I was worried he might be angry with me. Instead he seemed thrilled to see my whole family.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Fitzroys!” he crowed. “Three of my favorite members of the FunJungle family!” He came out from behind the desk to greet us, shaking Dad’s hand and mine and giving Mom a peck on the cheek (which he had to stand on tiptoe to do). “I really appreciate y’all coming down here this morning. I know you’ve got things to do and places to be.”

  “Like school,” Mom said pointedly, nodding toward me.

  J.J.’s smile faltered, but only for a second. He wasn’t used to people talking to him the way Mom did, but he always seemed to appreciate her cutting to the chase. “You’re right,” he admitted, then spoke directly to me. “It was probably bad form, demanding to meet you right now, when you’re supposed to be studying. But the fact is, I wanted to talk to you face-to-face, ASAP. This was the first opportunity I had. I just flew in from Berlin this morning.” He gave me a grin. “Don’t you worry, though, Teddy. If that school gives you any trouble about truancy, just tell Principal Dillnut to call my office. I’ll set him straight.”

  I grinned back. J.J. McCracken was the most revered person in all of Central Texas. It was kind of like having the president of the United States offer to write me a note excusing me from class. “You really mean that?”

  “I never say anything I don’t mean,” J.J. told me. “How is old Lyndon B. Johnson Middle School anyhow?”

  “Honestly?” I asked. “Lousy.”

  J.J. chuckled. “I hear you. It wasn’t too much fun for me, either. I had this one teacher, Mrs. Orton, who made my life downright miserable.”

  “I have Mrs. Orton now,” I said.

  J.J. took a step back in surprise. “She’s still alive? Jumping jackalopes! She was ancient when she taught me—and I’m no spring chicken. The old bat must be two hundred years old by now! She giving you any trouble?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Mrs. Orton doesn’t always seem that fair when it comes to grading Teddy’s papers,” Dad offered.

  “I wouldn’t put too much stock in what Mrs. Orton thinks,” J.J. said. “She always told me I wouldn’t amount to much.” He waved to his office. “I think we can agree she missed the mark on that one.”

  J.J. might have happily rambled on about his old teachers all day, but Mom cut him off. “I’m sure you didn’t call us in just to talk about old times, J.J.?”

  “Right as usual, Charlene.” J.J. waved us to a couch, then sat in a large, overstuff
ed armchair. “I wanted to talk to you about something far more terrible than middle school—which is saying something. Teddy, I know you’ve been nosing around in this whole Kazoo business.”

  I looked toward my shoes. Either Summer had spilled the beans about me, or she’d been right and J.J. had seen through her story. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. . . .”

  J.J. laughed. “Hold on there, kiddo. I’m not planning to tan your hide for this. In fact, I want to thank you.”

  I lifted my head, surprised. On either side of me, Mom and Dad seemed equally caught off guard.

  “You do?” Mom asked, before I could.

  “Sure,” J.J. said. “Now, I know there’s been some trouble, but I doubt that Teddy’s entirely to blame for that. Your son shows gumption, Charlene, and I respect that. In fact, sometimes I wish my security staff here behaved a bit more like him.”

  I glanced at my parents, unsure what to make of this. I’d heard J.J. was upset with my snooping—but now he seemed pleased with it. “So . . . you don’t think I stole Kazoo?” I asked the billionaire.

  J.J. hesitated for a little too long before answering, like he was choosing his words very carefully. “I’ll admit, there was a moment or two when I had my suspicions. Not that I thought you were up to anything criminal, Teddy . . . but you do have a reputation for pranks around here, and I thought perhaps this might have been one that had gone a little too far.”

  “Now hold on there . . . ,” Dad began, but J.J. held up his hands to signal he wasn’t finished.

  “All I’m saying is that I considered the possibility,” he explained. “And you have to admit, the evidence was stacked pretty high against your son.”

  Dad backed down. “I suppose.”

  “Well, that’s probably all moot now anyhow,” J.J. said. “In light of what Teddy turned up with his snooping last night.”

  Mom and Dad looked to me curiously, then back to J.J. “Is this about Astros Cap?” Mom asked.