Hope Harper Daddy's Monkey Business -

“Good,” Hope said, pulling out a chair. “Because I have some ideas. And they involve less feces-throwing and more actual planning.”

The first week was fine. Her father buried himself in ledgers – actual paper ledgers, because Gibbons distrusted computers almost as much as he distrusted the mandrill who did taxes – and Hope helped where she could. She organized receipts, catalogued feed expenses, and learned the alarming truth: Mr. Gibbons’ Traveling Primate Paradise was a tax shelter. Not for money. For monkeys. hope harper daddy's monkey business

“Daddy. What is this?”

She confronted him at midnight, in the tent, while a chimpanzee named Cha-Cha watched them from a hammock. “Good,” Hope said, pulling out a chair

She had not written about the monkey business. Literally. Her father buried himself in ledgers – actual

The trouble began on a Tuesday. Hope came home from her shift at the local library – shelving books, breathing air that smelled like paper instead of monkey musk – and found her father sitting at the kitchen table, grinning like a chimpanzee who’d discovered a termite mound.