I fought the urge to raise my eyebrows. “Here’s the deal. The actual cops think my twin sister might’ve killed Gene for reasons I don’t want to get into. But—”
“Twins? Do you look alike?” Diego interrupted.
“No,” Jack and I answered in tandem.
“Oh, OK.”
“Anyway. My sister didn’t kill Gene. But we’re trying to poke around to, you know...” My voice trailed off. This whole idea suddenly seemed absurd. We were essentially doing our own investigation.
“See if someone else killed Gene?” Diego asked.
“Yes,” Jack said. “Exactly.”
Diego nodded thoughtfully, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to have two strangers—who weren’t law enforcement officers—investigating a crime in his living room.
“I didn’t kill him,” Diego said.
“We never thought you did,” Jack said gently.
“But we did hear you had a run-in or two with him,” I added in a firm tone.
“Of course I did. I’m the local representative for FETA.”
“FETA?”
“Floridians for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.”
Jack tilted his head. “You pronounce it fee-tah? Not feta, like the cheese?”
“Of course we wouldn’t pronounce it feta like the cheese,” Diego said in a snotty tone. “We’re vegan.”
Jack clicked his tongue. “Of course.”
This conversation was going off the rails and I had to steer it back on course. “Anyway. Can you tell us about your dealings with Gene?”
He blew out a breath. “The cops have already been here. I’ve told them all I know.”
“That’s OK,” Jack said. “We’re just snooping around. C’mon, man. Satisfy our curiosity.”
“All right, fine. Gene was awful. Really horrible to alligators and other creatures.” He balled his hands into fists. “FETA targeted him as one of the top animal abusers in the state, along with two elephant circuses and a roadside monkey zoo in Pasco County. FETA sent me here to take Gene down and I started to run surveillance on him.”
I wondered if Diego had taken Gene down after all. Maybe Jack wasn’t convinced that Diego was a killer, but I wasn’t so sure. “Surveillance?”
“Yeah, I pretended I was doing a student documentary and asked to tag along with him. He was a publicity hog so he said yes. Of course, he was stupid enough not to do any sort of a background check on me. I got a ton of footage of him torturing animals. Want to see? I have it on my computer.”
“No.” I could handle a lot, including watching one of my former fellow zookeepers get bit by a rattlesnake. Animal abuse was intolerable, though.
“Not now, maybe later,” Jack said.
I held up my hand. “Let’s talk first. How many times did you video him?”
“Only twice. Then Gene found out who I was.” Diego’s cute boy-band face crumpled into a glum expression.
“How did he find out?”
“He was in talks to do some stupid reality TV show. It’s just like network TV to exploit animals for entertainment. The producers wanted to know if he’d had any fights with animal rights activists, and he said no, but mentioned me later in an offhand comment. The producers looked me up and did some digging. They outed me.”
“Sucks,” Jack said.
