The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold by Scott William Carter
Author:Scott William Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scott William Carter
Published: 2016-06-14T14:00:00+00:00
Chapter 14
Despite the snow, the Portland Metropolitan Zoo had remained on its normal operating schedule for a Friday in December. It turned out to be a good thing, as the main lot was nearly full. Judging by the number of parents toting bundled-up children toward the front gates, plenty of people had decided to take advantage of school being out to visit the animals in a winter wonderland.
I hoped that made it likelier that Felicity Langford was around.
After finding a parking spot near the back, I stood shivering in line until I had my ticket—thank God the credit card went through—and I was cramming into the zoo behind two little boys more interested in their Game Boys than what lay before them.
The sky, an uneven mixture of gray, black and white, made me think of a mop bucket after it had been well used. The light was so poor it could have been dawn or dusk or anything in between. Stinging my face, a slight breeze swirled a fine, dust-like layer of snow over pavement that was otherwise shoveled bare. I wished I'd brought a hat. Or gloves. Or a scarf. As it was, I had to settle with keeping my head down and my hands shoved deep in the pockets of my leather jacket.
Long-tailed billy goats. Bulky Appalachian boars. Long-horn elk, huddling in a herd. Most of the animals nearest the gate were uninterested in the wintery transformation of their pens, gathered inside their dens and caves, peering out as if hoping all this white stuff would all go away soon. I saw a few ghosts, an old man shuffling along in a tuxedo and a top hat, a little girl in nothing but a swimsuit playing in the big field outside Zootopia Cafe—obvious ones, but neither of which could have been the woman I sought. Then it suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea what Felicity Langford looked like.
In the elephant enclosure, I leaned against the back wall and mulled over the problem. The benches were all taken, mostly by children standing on them to peer over the throngs of people at the three elephants beyond the glass, including one baby elephant small enough that I could barely see its leathery gray head over all the parkas and wool hats. The children's gleeful laughter rebounded off the concrete walls. The air smelled musky, of animal sweat and wet hay, with just a whiff of the popcorn, peanuts, and cotton candy.
How could I find Felicity Langford? I started with my smart phone, something I should have done in Barnacle Bluffs but hadn't thought to do because I'd been so focused on Jak's welfare. A couple minutes of searching resulted in little but a few scant mentions on a couple of ancestry websites—one that indicated she'd died in the eighties. Other than that, I now possessed the helpful knowledge that she had both Irish and German relatives.
That was the problem with people born pre-Internet. Unless they'd been famous somehow, the digital age only seemed to care about people born within it.
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