Belly Up Page 20

  “By stealing from me?” J.J. growled. “By killing my mascot?”

  “I’m not the one who killed Henry.” Martin spun and pointed at Buck. “He did!”

  Buck stared bullets back at him. “Now you’re just talking crazy.”

  “I’m not! Buck found out I was smuggling and tried to blackmail me into giving him a cut. He confronted me one night at Hippo River after I’d brought in a big shipment. . . .”

  Buck grabbed Martin and started to arrest him. “Enough of your lies . . .”

  “Leave him alone,” J.J. ordered. “I want to hear this.”

  Buck looked at J.J., surprised.

  Martin pulled away. His haughty demeanor had vanished. Now, he was begging for mercy. “I had over two pounds of emeralds in a plastic bag . . . and Buck wanted them. I needed to hide them fast, so I threw them into Henry’s pool. I figured they’d just sink to the bottom . . . but that lousy hippo ate them!”

  “So you killed him?” J.J. asked, aghast.

  “Not me! Buck did it! He saw the whole thing. I wanted to wait for Henry to crap the emeralds back out again, but I guess the bag got jammed in his stomach. After a few days, Buck got impatient and fed Henry the jacks. It never occurred to him that Doc would want to do an autopsy. I kept Doc from going through all Henry’s stomach contents, though. Buck and I returned to the auditorium later and got the emeralds.”

  J.J. gaped at Martin and Buck, at a loss for words for once in his life.

  “Tell me you don’t really believe this?” Buck asked. “You’ve got proof the guy’s a criminal—and now he’s just trying to bring down everyone else. I’ll bet he’s the one who killed Henry! He always hated that hippo.” Without waiting for an answer, he snapped a pair of cuffs off his belt.

  As he did, I noticed the Bowie knife he kept sheathed there.

  Suddenly everything fell into place.

  “Martin’s telling the truth,” I said. “Buck killed Henry. And he freed the mamba and let the tiger out.”

  Every pair of eyes in the room shifted to me.

  “Aw, now don’t tell me we’re gonna have to listen to this little troublemaker,” Buck snarled. “He’s done more damage to this park than anyone. . . .”

  “Shut your piehole,” J.J. snapped. “Let him talk.”

  Then he turned to me expectantly.

  My mouth went dry. For a moment, I doubted everything I’d come up with. But when I went over it in my mind again, it all made sense.

  “Buck was waiting outside the theater the night of the autopsy,” I said. “It must have surprised him to see me, because he followed me home. I found his bootprint in the dirt outside our trailer.” I pointed to Buck’s cowboy boots. Their heels were half-circles, the kind I’d assumed had been from dress shoes.

  “That doesn’t mean squat,” Buck protested. “Half this county wears cowboy boots. . . .”

  “Let the kid speak or so help me, I’ll duct-tape your mouth shut,” J.J. snapped.

  Buck backed down like a whipped dog and glared at me hatefully.

  “The walls on our trailer are really thin,” I continued. “Buck heard me tell the police Henry had been murdered, so he tried to scare me off with the mamba the next day. He runs the security system, so he knew how to shut off the cameras in Reptile World to hide the fact that he was there.”

  “And when that didn’t scare you off, he set the tiger on you,” Summer put in.

  “No,” I said. “That’s what I’d been thinking too, but the tiger wasn’t meant for me. It was meant for someone else who was on the walkway that night: Doc.”

  “What?” J.J. asked. “All of a sudden, he wanted to kill Doc, too?”

  “I didn’t want to kill anyone!” Buck shouted.

  “Shut up!” J.J. roared at him.

  “At first, Buck thought I was the only problem,” I explained. “But the night before the party, I told him that Doc was the one who’d learned how Henry had been murdered—and who’d autopsied all the other animals. Then Buck realized Doc was the real threat. He knew about Henry’s murder, the smuggling, everything. If Buck got rid of Doc, he got rid of all the evidence. So he rigged the ladder to set the tiger free. The rope was cut clean through and it was an inch think; only a knife like Buck’s could do that.”

  “So?” Buck asked. “Lots of men have knives like mine.”

  “But you’re the only one who could get one past security. Every party guest had to pass through two metal detectors that night. But not you. Plus, it explains why you took fifteen minutes to respond to our emergency call. You were hiding in Carnivore Canyon and couldn’t leave until after we did. Then you had to go out through the back exit and loop all the way around.”

  “Sounds open-and-shut to me,” said Summer.

  “No!” Buck snapped, a little too quickly. “It’s all speculation! You don’t have proof.”

  “I’ll bet we could find some,” I said. “You couldn’t have erased every security tape. There’s thousands of hours of them. There’s bound to be one of you getting the jacks at FunJungle Emporium, or sneaking into the theater after the autopsy, or following me home that night, or rigging the ladder into Carnivore Canyon. . . .”

  “This is insanity.” Buck spoke directly to J.J. now. “The kid’s making everything up. He’s just trying to protect his parents. There’s evidence against them. . . .”

  “All of which you provided,” J.J. replied. He pointed to two security officers. “Go to the security room and lock down every tape we’ve got from the past two weeks.”

  “J.J., please.” Buck now looked desperate and wounded. “We’ve been friends a long time. You’re gonna tell me you don’t trust me?”

  “Trust? Let’s talk about trust.” J.J. began to tick things off on his fingers. “First, my own manager of operations killed my animals to smuggle emeralds into the country. Now, he’s accused my head of security of killing my mascot, then plotting to kill a twelve-year-old boy and my vet. My head of security claims it was the boy’s parents who killed the hippo, but the only person who appears to have been doing any actual investigating around here at all is the boy—who managed to turn a lovely funeral into a national travesty on live television today. That doesn’t include my PR director who’s botched everything he’s laid his hands on, a security staff that’s so incompetent they couldn’t find their own rear ends with a mirror, bodyguards who can’t control a thirteen-year-old girl—and my own daughter, who’s been slinking around behind my back every chance she’s got and thinking I wouldn’t notice.” As J.J. spoke, he was getting angrier and angrier, as though he’d been struggling to hold his rage in for some time but was now ready to explode. “Frankly, it doesn’t seem that I should trust anyone here at all. Because every single person I’ve trusted has been up to something and I’m sick of it!”

  The entire room fell silent, ashamed.

  “It’s not like you’re completely honest either,” I said.

  J.J. wheeled on me, stunned I’d dared accuse him. “What did you say?”

  “My parents and I saw your plans. You’re going to build thrill rides in the animal exhibits.”

  “Daddy?” Now it was Summer’s turn to look betrayed. “How could you?”

  I’d heard J.J. McCracken could outtalk any businessman in the world, but apparently this didn’t hold true for his daughter. He crumbled under her gaze, stammering, “Those weren’t . . . Those are just prototypes. They’re not . . .”

  Buck Grassley suddenly bolted for the door. He was surprisingly fast for an old man—and everyone was too distracted by J.J. to respond quickly. Buck slipped past his security men and Summer’s bodyguards and dashed for the hall. . . .

  . . . When Large Marge stepped into his path and punched him in the nose. There was a loud crack, a small spurt of blood, and then Buck dropped flat on his back, unconscious.

  Marge cracked her knuckles and looked J.J. McCracken square in the eyes. “Who’re you calling incompetent?” she asked.

 
I raced across FunJungle as fast as my legs would carry me. It was tough going, though. The concourses were so packed with tourists, there was barely room to move.

  There had been plenty of concern that the string of publicity disasters would hurt FunJungle’s business, but if anything, the opposite had occurred. The park was busier now, a month after all the trouble, than it had been before. The scandal about Henry’s murder had been headline news all over the world; if you believed that there was no such thing as bad publicity, J.J. McCracken couldn’t have bought more of it. The footage of the escaped tiger and the plummeting hippo coffin had been viewed millions of times on YouTube; now people wanted to see the places the events had taken place themselves.

  Which wasn’t to say people weren’t coming to see the animals at all. They were—although the more cautious guests tended to avoid Carnivore Canyon, no matter how much time Pete Thwacker spent insisting that no more tigers would escape. As I ran past SafariLand, I noted that the wait for the tram was an hour long. In addition, a line of people snaked out the door of the Polar Pavilion—although they might have been less interested in seeing the penguins than getting out of the 100-degree heat.

  Doc, ever the pessimist, groused that it was all too good to last. Given the financial straits Martin del Gato had left the park in, he figured it was only a matter of time until FunJungle had to start selling the wildebeests to hot dog factories to make ends meet. (Dad insisted Doc was joking, but I wasn’t so sure.) Mom pointed out that, of everyone, Doc should be optimistic. After all, he could have been in jail.

  I rounded Amazon Adventure and Hippo River came into view.

  J.J. McCracken had decided not to press charges against Doc. Either J.J. believed Doc wasn’t really guilty because Martin had blackmailed him into helping with his scheme—or he simply didn’t want to lose his best vet for five to ten years. He’d also kept Doc’s daughter’s connection to the ALF a secret—as had everyone else involved. But J.J. had gone after everyone else who’d betrayed him with a vengeance. He’d used his political clout to ensure that Martin and Buck were arrested without bail and put his top attorneys on the case to make sure they both went to prison for a long time. Of course, J.J. also made sure Pete Thwacker informed the press of all this to convince the public he was the good guy in this scandal.

  I reached the Hippo River Restaurant and found it closed. This was surprising; the restaurant was usually open all day and there was always an hour wait. Now, there was only a cluster of disgruntled tourists who kept checking their guide maps to see if they’d read the hours wrong.

  I checked my phone, thinking I’d made a mistake as well. But there was the text from Mom: Come to HR restaurant ASAP!!!

  I called Mom. She didn’t answer. Instead, fifteen seconds later, she opened the door and furtively waved me inside, as though worried she’d be caught in the act.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Mom put a finger to her lips and signaled me to follow her.

  The restaurant looked a lot bigger when it was almost empty. Most of the lamps were off, so it was dark and cavelike, the only light coming from the massive windows that looked into the hippo enclosures.

  On the other side of one window, Henry’s replacement, Horton Hippo, slept at the bottom of the river. The fact that Horton was actually outside was surprising to me. Personality-wise, Horton was the anti-Henry. He was extremely timid and unaggressive for a hippo, preferring to spend most of his time in his holding pen where the guests couldn’t see him. While this aggravated Pete, even he admitted that a hippo who hid from the tourists was infinitely better than one who fired poop at them.

  None of the people in the restaurant was watching Horton, though. Instead, they were all clustered at the window into Henrietta’s enclosure: Dad, Doc, all four of the hippos’ keepers, Pete, two of his underlings from the PR department, Large Marge—and Tracey Boyd, an officious woman who’d replaced Martin as director of operations. (She’d started only two days before, so I hadn’t met her yet.) There were also several Klieg lights, reflectors, and cameras—still and video—mounted on tripods: Dad’s handiwork. Henrietta herself loomed on the other side of the glass.

  As Mom led me over, Dad and the keepers waved, looking happy as kids on Christmas morning.

  Tracey gave me a sideways glance. “What’s he doing here?” she asked.

  “Teddy’s like a bad penny,” Marge muttered. “He turns up everywhere.”

  Marge had been promoted after Buck’s arrest; J.J. had been impressed with her performance in his office. Summer and I had protested, revealing that Marge had actually plotted to kill Henry herself, but this turned out to be a misunderstanding. When Pete had told Marge he wished Henry was dead, Marge hadn’t realized it was only a figure of speech and tried to run her own private sting operation. To me, this was further proof of Marge’s incompetence, but J.J. had viewed it as initiative. Marge was now second-in-command of park security, which meant she had even more freedom to tail me suspiciously each day.

  “This is my son,” Mom told Tracey. “I figure after all he did bringing Henry’s murderer to justice, he deserves to be here for this.”

  Tracey looked to Doc for confirmation. Doc nodded that it was okay, though it seemed to pain him to do it.

  “What’s going on?” I asked for the second time.

  “Henrietta’s in labor,” Dad said.

  It took me a moment to process that. “But I thought she and Henry never, uh. . . .”

  “Apparently they did,” Mom said. “While no one was looking.”

  A huge grin spread across my face. “And no one ever noticed?”

  “A pregnant two-ton hippo doesn’t look that different from a nonpregnant two-ton hippo,” Doc told me. “Although I suspected something was up. . . .”

  “And you never told anyone?”

  “No. I told people. People who needed to know. I just didn’t tell you .”

  Even Doc’s crustiness couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. I knew most of it was for show. Mom had told me Doc really felt indebted to me for helping bring Martin down, though he’d never said a word of thanks to me.

  I looked through the window at Henrietta. Unlike humans, animals are usually very calm during labor. Henrietta just sat by the glass, occasionally rearing up to poke her nostrils out of the water.

  The restaurant door banged open and J.J. and Summer McCracken entered, flanked by bodyguards. Even J.J. couldn’t hide his excitement. Summer rushed across the room toward us. “Tell me it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “It hasn’t,” I said happily. What was already an incredible day had just got even better. I hadn’t expected to see Summer again for months; she was heading back to private school that day. Sadly, we hadn’t had much opportunity to see each other since the incident in her father’s office. The press had been hounding Summer like crazy—half the magazines in the country still seemed more interested in her reaction to Henry’s murder than in the story behind it—and J.J. had warned her bodyguards that if she gave them the slip again, they’d be fired. We’d had lunch at the zoo twice and I’d been invited out to the ranch once, but that hadn’t been nearly enough time for me. I would have been happy to spend every day with Summer—though I wondered if she felt the same way about me. Now that there was no murder to solve, my life had become routine again, while hers had remained busy. I hadn’t even had a chance to see her in the past few days; we’d had to say good-bye by phone. Or so I’d thought.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on a plane?” I said.

  “It’s our plane,” she replied. “It leaves whenever we want it to. And we couldn’t miss this. . . . ”

  “Of course not,” J.J. agreed. He might have been a tough businessman to everyone else in the world, but he was a total pushover for his daughter. When she told him she’d never speak to him again if he built thrill rides inside the animal exhibits, he had immediately promised not to. Or at least, he’d promised for now. . . .

  “Hey
!” Dad said. “It’s happening!”

  We all turned to the window. Henrietta stood on her hind legs and grunted loud enough that it echoed through the restaurant.

  “Don’t be alarmed by that,” Doc told us. He was never crotchety in front of J.J. “That’s a good sign.”

  “Isn’t this amazing?” Watching the hippo, Summer grabbed my hand. I’m not sure if she even knew she was doing it. She was riveted to Henrietta, her eyes filled with excitement.

  I’d seen animals give birth plenty of times before. More than I could count. But I’d never held a girl’s hand before. For the first time, I got the idea that Summer might want to be more than just friends. “Yes,” I said. “It’s amazing, all right.”

  Thankfully, it was so dark in the restaurant no one could see my face had turned red as a baboon’s bottom.

  Henrietta gave a push and, within seconds, the baby was out. Everyone cheered. Even Doc cracked a smile for once.

  The baby hippo already weighed fifty pounds and knew how to swim. Henrietta nudged it toward the surface for its first breath.

  Up at Nugudugu Overlook, the guests shouted with joy as the baby emerged. I caught J.J. and Pete share an excited look. Both seemed to be seeing dollar signs.

  Summer squeezed my hand, thrilled by what we’d just witnessed.

  The baby hippo swam back down to Henrietta’s side and began to nurse.

  I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Dad had been shooting pictures constantly, making sure he got the entire birth on film. Mom stood by his side. “I’ll be darned,” she said. “It’s a boy.”

  “Henry Hippo Junior,” J.J. McCracken proclaimed. “I believe we can market that.”

  STUART GIBBS

  Stuart Gibbs has written several screenplays including See Spot Run , Repli-Kate , and the upcoming Parental Guidance , and has developed TV shows for Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC, and Fox. Before all that, he studied capybaras (the world’s largest rodents) and worked at the Philadelphia Zoo (which is run much better than FunJungle). He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children, Dashiell and Violet. This is his first novel.