Cat In A Leopard Spot

The baby stood taller than she and its big shiny glass eyes seemed almost to move as she stared at it in horror. Shooting a baby anything, and then setting up this Disneyesque mother-and-child vignette…

Dazed by disbelief, Temple tiptoed around a few other animal skin rugs, trying not to notice species. Zebra, she thought. Lovely, lithe zebra. Well, the hunters would say there were too many of them, or once had been, or would be if they weren’t “harvested,” as if living things could be harvested like onions or tomatoes. Which could be considered living things too, by some. What a slippery slope ethical consumption was!

She started at the sight of a huge gray elephant’s foot…just a wastebasket by the massive wooden desk.

She tried to imagine someone cutting off her foot, hollowing it out, and keeping it to hold crumpled papers and broken rubber bands.

And where were the other three feet? At whose desk sides? In what attics and storerooms, antique shops? Imagine the places they’d been, far from the dusty and lush ground trod by the huge creatures when living.

There had been 100 million wild elephants in Africa once, she’d read recently. And now there were twenty.

Temple turned, looking for somewhere to sit before she got dizzy.

Well.

Not the velvet-upholstered horn chair…or the zebra-hide director’s chair. Maybe that ordinary black armchair…eek! Leather. How would she like to see her parents used as upholstery?

No wonder animal rightists got a tad agitated. Once you started thinking about how people used and abused animals, and animal “products,” once you realized the human race was now launched into cloning and genetically designing animals to serve its every need or whimsy…

Temple turned as she heard the double doors into this chamber of horrors open.

A man stood framed by them, wearing a khaki jacket and pants bristling with pockets.

He was stockier than a stuffed laundry bag, his head sun-reddened between the spiderweb of thin gray hair strands still left to him. Huge freckles spread over his face and tops of his hands like fat rings in soup. Three large warts only emphasized his blunt, wind-burned features.

Beauty and the Beast had been given a cruel new twist, for the beauty was in the taxidermist’s remnants of the animal kingdom, and the beast was the one puny man in their midst.

Oh, he wasn’t so puny physically. In fact, Temple might ordinarily be intimidated, ever so slightly, by such a huge, hearty, and callous specimen of Homo sapiens.

But, buttressed by the wise artificial eyes of noble creatures from water buffalo to lion and tiger and bear to deer and the elephant foot standing at truncated attention as a wastebasket beside his massive mahogany desk…

Well, Temple had never been in the presence of a serial killer before.

Get the goods on this guy, she heard herself thinking, and let Max take him down.

She felt like just another bit of insignificant prey…and then like a tiger-in-disguise herself. Hidden by the jungle, moving silent and swift. Ready to pounce…

“Miss Barr, is it?”

He came forward, held out a callused hand (from holding an elephant rifle, no doubt), and shook hers in a relatively relaxed manner. “And how can I help the Crystal Phoenix today?”

All right, PR Woman, do your Clark Kent imitation. Or maybe Lois Lane.

“It’s so kind of you to see me on such short notice, Mr. Van Burkleo. We’re in a bit of a pickle at the Phoenix with our animal exhibit.”

“I thought you were doing a petting zoo.”

“We are, and we have a consultant handling that. But…at the last minute the owners—”

“The Fontanas.”

Temple didn’t correct him. The owner of the Crystal Phoenix was Nicky Fontana, singular. And Nicky had nothing to do with his family’s mob background. But mentioning such a shocking desertion of his roots wouldn’t serve Temple here.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “Such a nice family to work for.”

Van Burkleo’s sandy, hairy eyebrows raised. She didn’t look like a mob soldier.

“We are not unaware,” she went on, “that our best clients would very much like access to the services you provide. And we thought you might be willing to advise in our acquisition of one or two more…thrilling exhibits for our renovated areas.”

“Have a seat.”

She nearly threw up. The “seat” he indicated was that literal monstrosity, a Victorian chair constructed solely of deer horns upholstered in crimson velvet.

Temple arranged herself on it like Queen Victoria greeting a foreign dignitary (though her feet, even in three-inch-high wedge heels, didn’t quite touch the floor).

“What an interesting…zoo you have here,” she observed.

“A few of my personal trophies.”

“Then you are a big-game hunter yourself.”

He bowed.

“You have been to Africa many times?”

“Yes.” He smiled. “But the best specimens were not bagged there.”

Temple managed to look genuinely mystified.