Belly Up

Terrified, Teddy makes his way home from World of Reptiles. He worries Henry’s killer could be following him and could make another attempt on his life at any moment. Teddy’s mother senses something is wrong, and he tells her all about his investigation, the dead jaguar, and the black mamba. Fearing for her son’s safety, she urges him to stop the investigation: “[I]t’s not your job to find out who did this. And it’s not mine, either” (128). When Teddy asks whose responsibility it is, she calls Martin del Gato.

An hour later, Teddy returns to World of Reptiles with his mother, Martin, four security personnel, and all the park’s herpetologists. FunJungle is its own municipality, placing it outside the jurisdiction of the local police. Still, Teddy’s mother wants the police involved, and she bristles at Martin’s suggestion that Teddy can’t be trusted because of the pranks he pulled in the park. Martin is suspicious of the boy and wonders why he thinks Henry was murdered. Buck Grassley, FunJungle’s head of security, is a childhood friend of J. J. McCracken’s. He wears cowboy boots and carries a Bowie knife everywhere he goes.

Buck explains he has an officer reviewing footage from the security camera in the hall containing the mamba exhibit and then hurries off when he receives a call.