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

  “Now, boss, take it easy!” Sam tried to calm the irate man. “Let’s go take a look at the security cameras and see if we can see anything on the video tapes.”

  Sam ran the tape back in the machines and they looked closely at the screens. The pictures were harder to make out than they had been the day before. There was some light coming from the street lamps scattered around the park and the night-lights shining in the buildings, but for the most part, the video taken during the night was dark and grainy.

  They could make out the animals, though. Some of them were nocturnal—active during the night. They watched as a pair of raccoons turned over a log looking for the treats their keepers had hidden beneath it. Others, like the apes, huddled together in family groups and slept peacefully.

  Sam fast-forwarded through one of the tapes until finally they saw what they were looking for—a trio of shadowy figures moving quickly toward the Cat House. They watched in disgust as the vandals sprayed the front of the building and then moved out of range of the camera lens. The timer on the screen said 1:39 AM.

  “What do you think, Kristi?” Sam asked. “Do these look like the same guys you saw yesterday?” He ran the tape back again and they watched the scene once more.

  Kristi shook her head. “I don’t know. I have a feeling that it’s the same guys, but I can’t really say for sure. The picture is so dark, and not very good quality—and we’re mostly just seeing their backs from a distance. There aren’t any good pictures of their faces.”

  Jimmy looked glum. “I know. Well, we have too much to do than to stand around here and look at hours of tape. I’m going to call Gretchen and have her come over here and take a look, and then we’ll call the police and hand the tapes over to them. If we come across some good views of the guys’ faces, we’ll have you take another look. Okay, Kristi?”

  Kristi nodded. “Sure. What do you want us to do now?”

  “Paint!” all three of the zoo workers said at once. They handed out brushes, rollers, rags and paint cans and sent Rachel back to the hardware store for more paint. The rest of them headed out with what paint they had on hand, while Jimmy and Sam hurried off to get the animals fed.

  “I can’t believe we just painted this yesterday and here we are again,” Robyn said as they started the work at the Monkey Jamboree.

  “I know,” Kristi said. “This is so awful. I mean, not that we have to do the work, but that those guys would do this. I mean, it’s awful, too, that we have to do the work all over again, but—oh, you know what I mean!”

  “We could have traded spots with the guys,” Anna said. “Then at least we’d be doing something different.”

  Robyn giggled. “I don’t think that would work, Anna. Can you imagine if Skeeter was over here painting? The work would never get done! Remember Skeeter and the ostrich? Can you imagine if Skeeter and the orangutan started aping one another?”

  Kristi laughed. “I think that’s exactly why Dad sent us back over here!”

  They got busy. By the time they were done, Rachel was back with the rest of the paint and supplies. They moved on to the Aviary. Randy had repaired the eagles’ pen, and there had been no more damage to any of the other enclosures—that they had found yet, at least—so they were able to work fairly quickly.

  Kristi rolled the last bit of paint from her tray onto the wall in front of her and called over to Robyn and Anna, “I’ll be right back! I’m going to go rinse out my roller and paint tray. Anna, could you please get this last little patch over here? I ran out of paint. Hey, girls! It’s looking good! This is going pretty fast! We’ve done two buildings so far, and the guys have probably done at least that much, too, so we’re halfway there with the painting! Then we get to start all the other work!”

  “Whoopee,” Robyn groaned. “My arm is going to fall off by the time we get done with all this rolling!”

  “Well, cheer up, Robyn. If that happens Randy will probably let you slide on trimming the bushes!” Kristi picked up her paint tray and walked around to the side of the building where the water spigot was. She turned it on and cupped her hand under the cold water. Ooh, it felt so good! She splashed a little water on her hot, sweaty face, and let some trickle down her neck. It was already hot, and it would be much hotter before the afternoon was over. There would be no air-conditioning for them today. They had to get the outside work done before the rain started.

  The water was splashing noisily in her tray and Kristi was concentrating on rubbing the paint out of it when she was suddenly surprised by a hand on her shoulder. She glanced back, and dropped the tray in alarm. The guy from the day before was standing behind her—the one who had glared at her! He had walked out of the bushes at the back of the building. She took a step backwards.

  They stared at one another for a moment. “What do you want?” she finally said when she could get her voice back. She sounded a little shaky, but she hoped he wouldn’t notice. She picked up the paint tray and held it tightly. She would whack him with it if she had to, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that! She’d rather run than fight! She tensed, looking for an opportunity to get past him and run back to her friends. At the moment he was blocking her way.

  “What do you want?” she repeated, raising her voice and hoping someone would hear her and come to investigate. “Why are you and your friends doing this?”

  He ignored her question. “Think you can stop us, you little do-gooder?” he sneered. “You can paint today and try to cover up our ‘artwork,’ but it’ll all be back tomorrow! And if not tomorrow than the next day, or the next day after that! So go ahead and do your good works! It won’t get you anywhere!”

  “But why? Why are you doing this?” she asked again. She had almost forgotten her fear in her puzzlement over his words. The whole thing just seemed so senseless and crazy!

  “Don’t worry about it, girl. I’m just here to tell you to go home—if you know what’s good for you! You can’t stop us, and you won’t be able to catch us, either, so get lost—or you’ll be sorry!” The guy backed away, and then turned and disappeared back through the bushes, the way he had come.

  Kristi wasted no time in getting back to her friends. “Anna, Robyn!” she cried as she ran around the corner of the building. Her voice really was trembling now.

  Anna took one look at her and knew something was wrong. She dropped her roller and came running over to her friend. “Kristi! What is it? What happened?”

  Kristi threw her arms around her. “Oh, Anna! I was so scared! That guy—that guy from yesterday snuck up on me and threatened me!”

  “Oh, Kristi! Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

  “No, I’m okay. Just scared, I guess.” She was shaking. “We have to find my dad and tell him.”

  “He and your mom are over at the Small Mammal house, I think,” Robyn said. “Do you want me to go get him?”

  “No, we’ll all go over there together. Just leave the paint stuff for now. Hurry! If we can let the others know fast enough, maybe someone will see him and be able to catch him.” Now that she was safely with her friends and had a plan in mind, she was able to get control of herself again. And the sooner they found her parents and the zoo workers, the better she would feel.

  The girls ran up the path toward the center of the zoo. They had only gone a short way, though, before Jimmy met them with the golf cart. “What’s going on, girls?” he asked as he zipped up to them and stopped the cart. “Is something wrong? I was watching the monitors and I saw you looking upset and scared so I came to see what happened.”

  “One of the guys Kristi saw yesterday came up to her and started threatening her!” Robyn burst out before Kristi could say a word.

  Jimmy jumped out of the cart and said, “Are you okay, Kristi? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  “No, no, I’m fine! But I want to find my mom and dad and tell them.” Kristi said.

  “Okay, but wait just a moment.” Jimmy lifted his radio to his mouth and spoke into it. “Sam! Randy! Mee
t Steve and Rachel and the girls over by the Small Mammal house. Kristi just had another run-in with one of those guys from yesterday. I’m going to take a look around the Aviary and see if I can find any traces of him before the trail gets too cold, and then I’ll meet you there, too. Do you copy that, guys?”

  “Roger, we copy that, boss. We’re on our way!”

  “Okay, Kristi, where exactly did you see him, and which way did he go?”

  Jimmy asked. Kristi quickly filled him in, and then they split up. Jimmy hopped back into the golf cart and took off in the direction of the Aviary, while the girls set off once more toward the Small Mammal house.

  “Hey, girls!” Rachel greeted them from the ladder where she was painting as they came running up the path. “Done already? That was fast!”

  “Not quite, Mommy!” Kristi panted, as she bent over trying to catch her breath. “Something happened!”

  Steve looked up. Something in his daughter’s voice told him to pay attention. Rachel, too, was suddenly on alert. She put her paint brush on top of the can, and clambered down the ladder as quickly as she could. “What happened, Kristi?” her mother asked quietly.

  Kristi repeated her story one more time, only this time her voice had started to shake again. Just being with her mother and father was such a relief that her emotions were starting to get the best of her.

  Rachel put her arms around her daughter and hugged her tightly. “You’re sure you’re okay, Kristi?” she asked. Her voice was all choked up. “He didn’t touch you?”

  “He touched my shoulder, but he didn’t hurt me, Mom. I promise! He didn’t even actually say he would hurt me, either—just things like you’ll be sorry and if you know what’s good for you. I guess I just got scared because he snuck up on me and we were alone back there—and he did look and sound mean, too.”

  “I don’t blame you for being afraid, Kristi!” Rachel said. “I am just so thankful you’re okay! I think this is the end of you girls working here at the zoo!”

  “Oh, Mom! Please, no!” Kristi started to protest. Robyn and Anna looked worried, too. Sam and Randy came around the corner just then, though, and once more Kristi had to go into the story of her encounter with the young vandal.

  “The police are on their way, Kristi. They’ll want to get a statement from you,” Sam said. “They’re going to meet you back at the Aviary so you can show them where you were and how it all happened.”

  “Okay. We need to go back there and finish the painting anyway. We were almost done, but we stopped to come and tell my parents what had happened.”

  “Oh, no, Kristi! I told you—you girls are through! I will not have you out here in harm’s way! That guy singled you out, Kristi, because he knew you had seen him the day before, and he waited until he had you alone, away from the others—and it could have been much, much worse! He could have really hurt you, Kristi!” Rachel was upset. Tears were in her eyes and her voice was trembling now.

  “But he didn’t, Mom! The Lord was with me, remember, and besides—the Little Zoo needs us. This is our chance to be good stewards for Him! Please, Mom!” Kristi pleaded. Anna and Robyn didn’t say anything, but Kristi knew they were just as dismayed as she was at the idea of having to stop their work here.

  Help came just then from an unexpected source—her father. Normally her parents stuck together on any decision, especially on the important things like this, but now Steve said, “Rachel, let’s think about this for a minute. Kristi is right, but so are you. We cannot take any chances with our own daughter, or Anna or Robyn, either, who have been entrusted into our care. How about this—why don’t I work with the girls from now on, and you work with the guys? That way the kids will always have an adult with them. We’ll be down to two work teams instead of three, but we can still probably get almost as much work done just as quickly because there will be more of us on each team. How does that sound?”

  Rachel agreed to her husband’s plan. “Well, let’s get back over to the Aviary then, so Kristi can speak to the police. We’ll finish the painting there, and then come back here and finish this. It will be lunchtime by then, and we’ll fill the fellows in on what happened while we eat. Then we’ll split into our two new teams after lunch. How does all that sound to you, Randy and Sam?”

  “It sounds just fine, Mrs. Cameron,” Randy said. “I’ll do a little revising of the job list and have you all set to go again right after lunch.”

  The police arrived just as they got back to the Aviary. Kristi had to go through her story again and give a description of the guy to the police. “He looked like he was maybe eighteen or nineteen, thin, about as tall as Randy over there, and he had dark hair and eyes. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans,” she said. “Oh, and he had a tattoo of a rose on his left arm.” She took the officers around to the water spigot where the teen had surprised her. They looked around for footprints and pushed through the bushes themselves to try to find out how the vandals were getting in.

  “It looks like they’re just scaling the fence behind the shrubs,” one of the policemen said when they finally came back. “Is there any way you can extend the height, or put barbed wire up there, or even electrify the fence?” he asked Jimmy.

  “We’ll have to look into it and come up with some kind of plan,” Jimmy agreed. “I don’t know what we’ll do, but it’s clear we’re going to have to do something more about the security here.” He sighed. “As if we don’t have enough financial problems to deal with already, without having to pour more money into keeping out a few punks who don’t have anything better to do with their time.” He shook his head in disgust. “Well, thanks, Officers, and thank you, too, Kristi. You did an awesome job of giving a good description of that guy.”

  Rachel, Steve and the girls said goodbye, and hurried across the park to meet the boys at the Tiki Hut for lunch. Dan and Pete were already seated at one of the tables, but Skeeter was pacing back and forth, looking up and down the paths for them. “What took you so long?” he complained as they approached the refreshment stand. “We’re starving!”

  “We were talking to the police,” Steve said. He held up his hand as the fellows began to pepper him with questions. “Let’s get our food first, and then we’ll tell you all about it while we eat. We need to hurry.”

  They were finally all back at the table and Steve told them briefly what had happened. The guys wanted to hear the story then from Kristi herself, of course, and once again she had to tell all the little details. She was getting tired of repeating it, but at least with every telling it got a little easier and didn’t seem quite as scary.

  Dan jumped up and looked around, as if he were hoping he’d see the guy who had dared to bother his sister and be able to pound on him a little. Skeeter had a different reaction, though. “Man, Kristi, you should have whacked that creep in the head with the paint tray! I would have loved to have seen that!” he said wistfully.

  They all laughed but Steve soon said, “Kristi did just the right thing under the circumstances. The guy probably would have hurt her if she had struck out at him first. Mom and I have come up with a new plan, though, for the rest of the work here. I’m going to be working with the girls, and Mom will work with you guys. No more going off on your own to wash out rollers, or get more supplies or whatever. If you need to do that, take someone with you and let one of us adults know what you’re doing.”

  Randy showed up with the new list of jobs just as they were finishing their lunch. He had decided to skip trimming the trees and bushes for the time being. “Could you girls paint over the graffiti at the Pachyderm Pavilion, and then do all the benches outside, just like you did the ones indoors yesterday? I’m sorry about keeping you out in the heat this afternoon, but at least the breeze in picking up quite a bit, so it won’t be so hot and humid today. Guys, I need you to paint just the front of the last building—the Arctic display—and then I’m going to have you mixing and pouring cement in several places around the zoo. We have some badly cracked a
nd broken sections of sidewalk, and we don’t want someone falling and getting hurt and then suing the zoo!”

  They split up once more and got back to work. Grandma arrived at the zoo later in the afternoon and was dismayed to hear that they had had to start all over again on the work after the new vandalism of the night before. They had agreed not to tell her about Kristi’s encounter with the young thug. “It will just worry her,” Kristi had said to her mother, “and she’ll feel bad that she invited us to come here and work. Rachel had agreed.

  “I’m going to go check on my babies over in the nursery,” Elizabeth had finally said after hearing about the other events of the day. “Why don’t you all come by the nursery when you’re done? You’ll be able to meet Tammy the vet this time, and one of the other volunteers, Sarah. I’m sure they’ll be happy to let you feed the babies again today.”

  “We’d love to, Grandma!” Anna had eagerly accepted for all of them.

  The rest of the afternoon had gone swiftly after that. They met up with the guys at the nursery and spent another hour with the tiny inhabitants, feeding and playing with them. “I swear this little guy remembers me from yesterday!” Skeeter said as the baby chimp he was holding plucked at his red hair and poked his freckles.

  Tammy showed them around the hospital and they got to see the injured and sick animals there. The parrot squawked loudly as they entered the large, white tiled room, which sent the other birds into a wing-flapping tizzy.

  At last the long day was over, and they all trooped wearily out to the van. “I’ll ride with my mother in her car,” Rachel said to her husband. “Let’s stop at a restaurant to eat so no one has to cook or clean up. We’re all too beat tonight.”

  “We’ll follow you,” Steve said. “Stop wherever you want.”

  They pulled into a restaurant along the shore a few minutes later. It was peaceful and cool inside. Their table was right next to the huge windows overlooking the beach. It was a lovely place, but after the hard work and emotional turmoil of the day Kristi was almost too exhausted to enjoy the atmosphere, or even the food. She was ready to fall asleep. She leaned her head against the window and looked out at the waves crashing onto the beach. The last rays of the sun were painting streaks of pink, peach and gold against the deep purple of the sky. It was a beautiful sight, but the wind whipping at the palm trees on the beach, and the white-foamed surf pounding the sand reminded her that somewhere out there was a hurricane. She couldn’t worry about that now, though, she thought as her eyes slowly closed. She was just too tired…