Peril at Palm Shores (Kristi Cameron Book 7) Read online

  “There he goes—the human garbage can!” Kristi said. “Well, come on, girls—let’s go help my mom finish the monkey house. Maybe when we’re done, Randy will have a job for us indoors in the air conditioning.”

  “We can only hope!” Robyn said.

  It didn’t take long to finish painting the Monkey Jamboree building with all four of them working at it. The girls got to giggling, though, at the antics of an orangutan who was watching them from nearby in the play yard. Every time they would bend down to load their rollers with paint, he would bend over, too, and peek at them through his legs. When they stood up and started rolling he stood up, too, and moved his long arm up and down as if he were using a roller, also. “He’s aping us!” Kristi laughed.

  “Well, isn’t that what apes do?” Anna asked.

  They were cleaning up the paint supplies when Kristi happened to glance up just as three teenaged boys came through some bushes near the back of the building. They were laughing and poking at one another as they came, but when they saw the Monkey Jamboree they stopped dead in their tracks and stared. Shock and disbelief was on their faces. They started talking excitedly. Suddenly one of them saw Kristi watching them and grabbed the other two by the arms, trying to hush them. He yanked them back. They looked up and saw Kristi standing there with her paint roller in her hand. Quickly the three boys turned on their heels and left. The first guy glanced over his shoulder one more time as they walked away. He looked Kristi straight in the eye and stared hard at her. Kristi’s breath caught in her throat. The look he was giving her was mean—almost as if he were threatening her.

  Kristi stood there unmoving for a few moments after they’d disappeared from view. Who were those guys? She had a funny feeling about them. They had seemed to be just ordinary teenagers, having fun on a nice day, at first, but their behavior had certainly been strange. That one guy gave her the creeps—the one who had stared at her. She turned to Anna and Robyn and asked, “Did you see those guys?”

  “What guys, Kristi?” Anna replied. “We were at the water spigot on the other side of the building washing out our paint rollers. I didn’t see anyone. Did you, Robyn?”

  “No. Were they cute, Kristi? Which way did they go?” Robyn looked around.

  “Robyn! That’s not why I was asking you! They were kind of weird—well, I mean acting kind of weird. They came out of those bushes over there, and when they saw the Monkey Jamboree they acted—oh, I don’t know—surprised, and maybe disappointed, sort of.”

  “You’re thinking they were expecting to see the graffiti on the building and were upset to see it cleaned up already?”

  “Yeah, I guess that is what I’m thinking. When they saw me looking at them they acted kind of guilty, I thought, and took off. One of them scared me a little. The way he looked at me…” her voice trailed off.

  “What, Kristi? What are you talking about?” Kristi’s mother had come up behind them as they talked. She’d only heard the last few words of what her daughter was saying, but it was enough to send her motherly radar into operation. Now she looked at her daughter in concern.

  Kristi filled her in on what she’d just told Robyn and Anna. Rachel looked grave as she listened. “I think your instincts are right, Kristi. They may very well be the vandals. Well, we’re done here. Let’s go find Jimmy or Randy and tell them what you saw.” They gathered up their supplies and took off across the park.

  Neither Jimmy nor Randy was around when they got back to the maintenance shed. “Hello?” Rachel called as they peeked inside.

  “Hey! How ya doin’?” Sam asked as he came around a corner.

  “Oh hi, Sam! Here are our paint supplies. We need to know what you all want us to do next, too. Do you have Randy’s list here?” Rachel asked.

  “Yeah, it’s right here. Let’s see if we can find a job for you indoors, out of the heat, this afternoon.”

  “Okay, thanks! Uh, Sam, Jimmy asked us to be on the watch for anything we thought looked suspicious. Kristi saw some teenagers who were behaving rather strangely, and we thought we needed to report it. Go ahead, Kristi—tell Sam what you saw.”

  Kristi repeated one more time her suspicions about the three guys who had come out of the bushes near the Monkey Jamboree. Jimmy listened carefully and scratched his head as he replied, “Well, I’ll check out that area myself. There’s a fence behind those bushes. It could be the place they are coming in. But there’s something we can do first! We have some surveillance cameras here and there around the zoo. Let’s go take a look, Kristi, and see if you can spot those guys.”

  Sam led them through the large maintenance building to an office in the back. There, mounted on one wall, were eight television screens. The girls could see video of different areas around the zoo up on the screens. Now and then a visitor would walk into the pictures, but mostly the cameras were trained on the animals.

  “Hey, look! There’s Dan and Pete!” Robyn pointed out. The boys were painting some hand rails in the Reptile House next to the Pit. Alligators and crocodiles were in the Pit. They paid no attention to the boys on the other side of the railing.

  “And there’s Skeeter! Over here on this screen!” Anna beckoned to them. Skeeter was painting rails, too. Well, he was supposed to be painting. As they watched, though, they saw him standing in front of a pen in the Aviary. He was weaving back and forth and stretching out his arms as if they were giant wings. His head moved back and forth on his neck and he opened and closed his mouth.

  “What is he doing?” Kristi asked. They watched and laughed at Skeeter’s silent pantomime up on the screen. Finally he moved to one side, and they saw what was going on. An ostrich stood on the other side of the wire fence separating them. It, too, was weaving back and forth and stretching its wings. Its head moved back and forth and its beak was opening and closing.

  Rachel and the girls broke out in fresh peals of laughter. Suddenly Robyn gasped and she said, “Who does that remind you of? Look familiar? Skeeter is aping the ostrich! I knew that orangutan had to be a cousin or something!” she giggled.

  Finally Rachel said, “Okay, girls, let’s get serious here for a moment. Kristi, do you see anyone on the screens who looks familiar—other than your brothers, of course?”

  Kristi scanned the television monitors closely for several minutes. People moved in and out of the pictures, but most of the cameras were trained on the animals, rather than the visitors. She finally shook her head. “I don’t seem them. Maybe if we kept watching for a while they would appear, but they may have left the zoo by now, too. They definitely knew I was watching them.”

  “Sam, are the cameras on at night? Would there be tape of them last night as they did their dirty work?” Rachel asked.

  Sam shook his head. “None of the cameras were in the areas where the damage was done.” He motioned toward one of the screens. “This camera is at the entrance gate, as you can see, but if they snuck in a different way they would have avoided that one, as well. Well, Kristi’s right. They could be long gone by now, and we can’t sit here and watch all day. I’ll call Jimmy and Randy on their radios and give them a description of the guys, and maybe they’ll spot them somewhere. Give me a couple minutes, and then I’ll get back to you with a job you can do this afternoon.”

  Sam walked off with his radio, and the girls turned back to the television monitors. Skeeter was still in the Aviary, but now he was busily painting the railing. He was talking to the huge bird behind him, though, they could see, for his mouth was moving and every so often he would turn to the ostrich and gesture with his hands as if he were carrying on a conversation. The girls giggled as they watched. “I sure wish I knew what he was saying!” Rachel chuckled.

  “If I know Skeeter, I’d say he’s probably trying to teach the bird to paint! And talking about how hungry he is, and asking if the ostrich has any snacks lying around!” Robyn said. “What a birdbrain!”

  Sam came back just then with more buckets of paint. “How are your arms feeling?
Think you could handle a little more painting? We want to freshen up all the benches in the zoo. If you girls could do the ones in the buildings this afternoon, we’ll do the ones outside tomorrow morning when it’s cooler. Here are some “Wet Paint” signs, too. Be sure to put one near each bench after you finish so no one sits down and then walks away with a freshly painted rear!”

  They took the buckets and brushes, thankful at least that they would be in air conditioning for the rest of the day. “Come on,” Kristi said. “Let’s get going. I still want to visit Grandma and the babies in the nursery when we get done.”

  That was enough to keep them working steadily for the rest of the afternoon. They were just finishing the last bench in the Small Mammals House when Steve and the guys came up to them. “Almost done?” Steve asked. “The zoo is closing in a couple minutes.”

  “Uh-huh. We just have to wash out these brushes and take the stuff back to the maintenance shed,” Rachel said.

  “I’ll do that for you,” Steve offered. “I just talked to your mother over in the nursery and she’s getting mighty anxious for you all to come take her little tour. She looks a bit tired, too, Rachel. We probably need to get her home pretty soon. You all go ahead, and I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

  “You want me to help you wash out the brushes, Dad?” Dan asked.

  “No, Dan. Your grandma would be disappointed if you missed out on the nursery tour. Go on now.”

  They started off across the park. The rest of the visitors in the zoo were headed in the opposite direction, toward the gates. Kristi watched for the three mysterious teens she had seen earlier, but there was no sign of them.

  “Finally!” Grandma said as she opened the door to them at the zoo’s nursery. “I’ve been on pins and needles all day waiting for you to come! It’s such a terrible shame about the vandalism, isn’t it? I’m sorry you all had to clean up the mess. They ought to catch the scoundrels who did it and make them fix it! But, of course, we don’t have time for that before the anniversary party. Well, come in, come in! Let me show you around!”

  The teens and Rachel eagerly followed Grandma into the nursery. A small pen was in the middle of the large room. A number of cages of different sizes lined the back wall, and a closet-sized space in one corner was sectioned off in glass. There were also two or three incubators, an examining table and a small kitchenette in the nursery. Through a door on the other side of the room they could see an office, and they knew that beyond that, the zoo’s hospital occupied the other side of the building.

  A tiny antelope wobbled on its spindly legs in the little pen. It bleated softly as they walked into the room. A baby goat kid skipped around the pen, nearly knocking the little antelope over. Two bear cubs in a large kennel cage stopped their rough-and-tumble play for a moment to look at them. A pair of baby chimpanzees pounded on the windows of the glass cubicle. Grandma laughed. “They’re excited to see you! You should have seen them when Emily and Ruth, my friends from the church, stopped by for lunch earlier! I think the ladies went away believing they had adopted some new grandchildren!”

  “Aww, they’re all so cute!” the girls cooed. Even the guys were excited about the babies. They reached over the pen and scratched the antelope’s and kid’s bony little heads. Anna headed straight for the chimpanzees and tapped softly on the glass. She laughed softly as the babies tapped back and made funny faces at her. One of them stretched out its arms as if it was asking to be held. Kristi and Robyn were on their knees on the floor talking to the bear cubs.

  “Look here!” Grandma said. She had pulled a leather bag off a hook on the wall in one of the cages and now she brought it out. The kids gathered around as she pulled a baby kangaroo out of the bag. “He was given to the zoo a couple weeks ago by a family that lives near Tallahassee,” she explained. “They have a number of exotic animals like llamas, buffalo, ostriches, and kangaroos on their ranch. This little joey’s mother escaped over a fence and was hit by a car and killed. The baby survived the accident in its mother pouch, but the family didn’t feel that they could care for the baby themselves, so they gave him to us.”

  “Oh, the poor little thing!” Anna said. Grandma handed the sleeping baby over to her and she cuddled the little animal in her arms.

  “They’re all bottle-fed, and it’s almost time to feed them,” Grandma said. “Would you each like to feed one of these hungry little critters?”

  They didn’t have to be convinced! Grandma warmed the bottles and passed them out to the teens. They laughed as the babies greedily latched on to the bottles the moment they were offered. There were different formulas for each kind of animal, Grandma explained, to make sure the little ones got something that was as close to their mother’s milk as possible.

  Pete and Dan were each feeding a bear cub. The little guys were strong already and the boys laughed as they struggled to hold on to the bottles. Kristi and her mom fed the antelope and kid in the pen. The milk disappeared in no time, dripping off the babies’ chins and onto the floor. Robyn and Skeeter were each holding a baby chimp. Robyn couldn’t stop giggling. Her baby was playing with her hair. It tickled, but what was really making her laugh was Skeeter’s baby. Every couple minutes the little chimp would let go of the nipple and plant a big milky kiss on Skeeter’s cheek! Skeeter’s face was almost as red as his hair!

  “Oh, Skeeter, he loves you!” Robyn teased. “He thinks you’re his mommy! No, he thinks you’re his long-lost cousin!”

  “Robyn!” Skeeter sputtered, but she could see that he was secretly pleased at the little ape’s affection.

  Kristi was bone-tired. She couldn’t wait to get out of her sweaty clothes and take a nice refreshing dip in Grandma’s pool when they got back. Now, however, as she looked around at the tiny creatures in the nursery and thought back on the day, she was so glad they were here and doing what they could to help out at the zoo. It was hard, hot work, but she remembered what Gretchen had said earlier in the morning about being good stewards of God’s creation.

  She had often thought about how amazing and varied the Lord had made His creation, and praised Him for it. This was her chance now to have a teeny-tiny little part in preserving that creation! She rubbed the little antelope’s head and wondered how anyone could want to destroy it, or even just mess it up, like those vandals. Well, tomorrow was another day. Maybe they’d catch the guys, but whether they did or not, she and her family and friends would do what they could for these little fellows, and all the other animals at the Little Zoo at Palm Shores. Good stewards. Hmm, she had never thought of it that way!

  __________

  CHAPTER FIVE

  __________

  A Threat Lurks

  They were grabbing a quick breakfast the next morning when Steve said, “We need to make good time today on the work. I just saw the weather report. We don’t have much time to get the outside work done before the rain starts. That storm I told you about out in the Atlantic has turned into a hurricane—Hurricane Jenna. It’s also taken a turn northward, so we’re in for some rain, as early as tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” the kids exclaimed.

  “Oh, no!” Kristi groaned. “How much rain, Daddy? Will it last long? How are we going to get everything done in time for Saturday? Will the rain stop in time for the party?”

  “Whoa! Hold on, Kristi!” Steve chuckled. “I don’t know the answers to those questions. All I can say is, let’s get as much done as we can today, and then take it one day at a time after that.”

  Skeeter stuffed a half a donut in his mouth and said, “Well, let’s get going then.” He was spraying crumbs all over as he talked. “Randy mentioned something about pouring concrete and trimming some trees and bushes. He’s expecting us early. Hey Anna, are you going to finish your donut? I’ll take it! And yours, too, Kristi, if—”

  Kristi popped her last bite into her mouth and said, “Too late, Skeeter!”

  “Aw, man!”

  “Here, Skeeter! There’s one do
nut left,” Grandma said. “Don’t stuff your mouth, though, dear! You’ll choke! You can eat it in the van. You’d better all get going now, though. I’ll meet you later this afternoon at the zoo. This is my morning to help out at the hospital.”

  Gretchen met them at the back entrance of the zoo as she had the morning before. “Hi, everyone! Boy, am I glad to see you! Did you hear the weather report? We’ve got so much to do today! And by the way, thank you so much for all you did yesterday! You were real lifesavers! We’re so thankful that you came this week.”

  “We’re thankful, too, Gretchen. Now, we’d better get to work. Is Randy back at the maintenance shed?” Steve asked.

  “Uh-huh. He’s got a list of stuff to do, too, as long as your arm! The rain that is in the forecast is really going to hinder us this week, I’m afraid. Well, we can only do what we can do, and we’ll just have to hope we can get the zoo in good shape by Saturday.”

  “We’ll do our best!” they promised. “See you later, Gretchen!” They hurried across the zoo.

  Jimmy, Sam and Randy were standing outside the maintenance building when they got there. Jimmy was gesturing wildly with his arms, they saw as they approached the three men, and Randy and Sam looked upset, as well. They looked up as the Camerons and their friends drew near.

  “What’s going on, guys?” Steve asked.

  “More vandalism!” Jimmy spit out. The group gasped in dismay. “Sam just discovered it. It’s all over the park. Every exhibit got hit this time, including the ones you just painted yesterday! Not quite as much on each building, but still enough that we’re going to have to paint them all over again! I’m so mad I could—well, I don’t know what I could do! I’ll tell you one thing, though—if I get my hands on the creeps who did this, I’ll wring their necks!”