Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

What happened between Kally and Charlie I don’t know, and may never know, but something did. Something soured Charlie. After he told me she was gone he hated female things. We sat on the bench at the lion habitat more than before. He had time for it. But Charlie stared at the Duchess with squinty, mean eyes.

“The zoo ought to get shut of that cat. She’s a fugging menace,” Charlie says. “You can’t trust a female. Why do you come out here every night?”

“That beauty is very fussy. If I don’t take care of her she will starve down to a moth-eat rug. Somebody got to do what’s right for her.”

“You’re a natural fool,” Charlie says. “Leo, he’s steady and lazy. You can predict what a male will do. With Duchess you’ll find you’re a half-step slow.”

I drink my beer and grin and belch.

“She hates me,” he says bitterly.

“She loves me. Every time I go inside she takes the measure of my meatiest bones.”

“You can’t trust a bitch.” Charlie has drunk many beers. His voice catches. “They’ll step out on you.”

Across the moat, in the habitat, Duchess walks back and forth, back and forth. She yellow-eyes us like we’re impala on the Kalahari.

So I had to know what happened to Kally. I took a vacation day. While Charlie was working I went to his house.

It’s a white frame house in a middle-class neighborhood. Paint peels on it, and tall yellow grass stands in the yard. I went around back and looked in the kitchen window. Dirty dishes were piled on the table. Some stuff he’d thrown at the garbage can had missed it.

I popped the lock on the window with a short crowbar I’d carried inside my pants, along my upper thigh. Then I scrambled in.

The kitchen furniture was yellow Formica with rusty chrome legs. Leading off the kitchen was the den. It opened on a bedroom to the left and a bedroom to the right. Straight ahead was the living room. All the furniture was shiny oak. The couch was blue and puffy. The TV was a twenty-five-inch Motorola. The unmade bed in the big bedroom had controls like the power console on a car. I smelled the pillows. They didn’t smell like Kally. In a basket under the dresser in the bedroom was a six-month-old newspaper, seven ear swabs, and a cologne bottle with a label that said “Joop.” I opened it and lifted the stopper. The Saturday-night smell of it brought back Kally... her teasing and her playfulness and her smile. I pulled open the dresser drawer. The sight and smell made me close my eyes, weak in the knees. I picked up the boxes, the little brushes and lipsticks. I screwed the lipsticks in and out, thinking of them touching Kally’s mouth. I read the labels of liners and blushers and foundations and things like that.

And I knew.

However Kally left, she hadn’t expected to go. She would have taken her stuff. She always changed her face and clothes before going out in public. One minute she was a sweaty worker in a zoo you wouldn’t notice. Forty minutes later she was a jingly, sweet-smelling, short-skirted flirt who caused men to smile and turn their heads.

Kally was crazy about Charlie. She didn’t go away easy. He’d ’ave had to beat her up something fierce. And she was strong. So when she left, if she left, her face would have been cut by Charlie’s rings. She wouldn’t have wanted me to see her, or anyone to see her, for a long time. Maybe ever. She wouldn’t have looked like my princess.

So I had to get even with Charlie, me with my little brain.

What I did was get some of the tranquilizer the vet uses when we work on the teeth of a bear. I figured out the weight of a bear and Charlie’s weight, and doped his beer. We were sitting on the bench outside the cat house when I gave it to him. When he said, “You got a key?” I pretended the caps were tight on the bottles I opened. After he drank the second bottle, his chin fell to his chest.

I dragged him to the cat house, opened the door to the habitat, and dragged him toward the middle. After I cleaned up the drag marks I returned to Charlie, drank half a bottle of beer from my side of the carton, and poured the rest on Charlie’s face.

He wakes up sputtering. “Where are we?” Charlie says in a dopey voice.

“The lion habitat. Smell something funky? I turned out Duchess.”

Charlie sits up, propping his back with his hands. He looks two ways real fast. “You didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Where is she?”

“To your left. Maybe you can see the flash of her eyes. They look green in reflected light. She don’t know what to do about us. She’s looking at us and looking away. No need to think about the entrance. It’s locked behind us.”

“Put her back in the cage.”

“This ain’t Leo.”

“Jeez, what are we going to do, Jack?”

“I don’t know about you. I’m going to run for the moat. There’s a gate there with a slide latch. I’m wearing my Reeboks.”

“You can’t outrun a lion, you damn fool! Nobody can.”

“I don’t have to outrun a lion. I just have to outrun you, Charlie.” I begin to laugh. “I just have to outrun dopey Charlie.”

“Bastard!” he screams.