Stray Hearts (8 page)

Kay dragged the trash bag out the back door, leaving it ajar as she crossed the yard to the back fence. The rickety gate leading to the alley squeaked painfully as she swung it open. She removed the lid from the trash can, but just as she was about to give the bag a final heave-ho, something big and black streaked past her. She spun around to see Rambo bounding down the alley.

“Rambo!” She stared at him a moment, dumbfounded. He circled and sniffed, then galloped away from her in blissful, bounding leaps. How in the world had he got out?

Ashley. She’d been so wrapped up in gawking at Matt that she hadn’t latched his cage.

Again.

Kay watched him frolic down the alley, knowing she couldn’t possibly chase after that monster. He was like a bulldozer, mowing down anything that got in his way. Megadog. Supersized dog. Dog to the tenth power. No way could she even
think
about going after him.

She started to go inside to tell Matt and Hazel what had happened, but then she realized Rambo was already at the end of the alley and was making a right onto Gibson Street, and all at once she imagined him running out in front of a car and getting hit. Then she imagined the look that would be on Matt’s face when he found him. She’d been around here long enough to know that he loved every one of his animals, even a brainless maniac like Rambo, and he’d dedicated a huge part of his life to keeping them safe. How could she stand here and let one of them get away?

Kay took off running. When she reached the end of the alley, she spied Rambo three houses north, cavorting around a lawn sprinkler. For the next half hour she hop-scotched after him, nearly catching him a dozen times, only to have him slip from her grasp at the last minute.

She chased him down streets, across yards and through alleys, sharpening her vocabulary of four-letter words the whole way. Finally she saw him engaging in an intense sniffing contest with a little brown rag-mop of a dog through a chain-link fence. She tiptoed up behind him, clamped her hand onto his collar, then dug her heels into the grass and held on as he tried to take off again.

She yanked her belt from around her waist and looped it through Rambo’s collar, muttering really nasty things under her breath. She proceeded to drag him, leaping and panting, back toward the shelter, trying to pretend she really didn’t have a hundred pounds of canine hurricane on the end of a very short leash. The sun hovered low on the horizon as she finally pulled him through the gate into the backyard. About to drop from exhaustion, she climbed the back steps and reached out to open the door.

It was locked.

She beat on the door, calling as loudly as she could. No one answered. A feeling of foreboding oozed through her. Everyone was gone for the day.

Hadn’t they noticed she was gone? What about Rambo? How could they possibly have missed the fact that
he
wasn’t there?

In desperation she pulled Rambo through the backyard and headed next door to Matt’s clinic. Her panic escalated when she saw that no lights shone through the windows either upstairs or down. She banged on the front door. No response. Had he stepped out for a few minutes, or would he be gone the whole evening?

Call him.

She reached for her phone, only to realize she didn't have his cell number.

She stuck her phone back into her pocket and slumped onto the bench beside the front door, Rambo panting wildly beside her. “I can’t believe this,” she muttered, staring dumbly ahead. “I simply cannot believe this.”

She looked at her watch. It was twenty-five minutes until
When Zombies Attack.
If she wasn't home for that, Sheila was going to kill her.

She dragged Rambo down the steps to her car and hustled him into the back seat, thankful she’d thrown her purse in the trunk and her car keys in her pocket. She slid into the driver’s seat and glared at the dog in the rearview mirror.

“Now, listen up, dog. I can’t sit here all night, so you’re coming home with me. You’re going to go into my kitchen like a good little monster, where you’re going to stay until I get a hold of Matt. You are to keep your paws to yourself. Do you understand? You are to—”

Rambo took a flying leap into the front seat and slurped his tongue the length of Kay’s face. She shoved him away with disgust. He spun around and slimed the passenger window with his wet nose, then let out a bark that reverberated inside the car like an atomic explosion.

Kay started the car. “This is a bad idea,” she muttered. “A very bad idea.”

Matt stood at the makeshift podium in the cafeteria of Thomas Jefferson Middle School, wrapping up his address to the ladies of the McKinney Metropolitan Ladies’ Club. Over the past year he’d been asked to speak to a variety of groups about the shelter, which was good because it usually resulted in a few donations, and bad because he detested public speaking.

“...and as I said before,” Matt said, “you’re welcome to drop by the shelter anytime and see how we help these animals. And please consider volunteering some of your time, either at the shelter itself or as a temporary foster parent for one of our animals. Or adopt a pet yourself. We have plenty to pick from.”
Oh, boy, do we.
“There are lots of ways to get involved, to make a difference.” Matt flashed the most sincere smile he could muster. “The animals thank you, and so do I.”

As the ladies applauded, Mrs. Flaherty, the short, stout president of the McKinney Metropolitan Ladies’ Club, stepped up beside him, laid an envelope on the podium and leaned into the microphone.

“Dr. Forester, I know I speak for all of us when I say that we find your establishment of the Westwood Animal Shelter worthwhile both to the animals and the citizens of this community. In light of that, we’d like to present you with a small donation.”

Small? Lord, he hoped she was just being humble.

 “Dr. Forester, please accept this check from the McKinney Metropolitan Ladies’ Club in the amount of...fifty dollars!”

Matt blinked with disappointment and groaned inwardly. Fifty dollars? Would the bank notice if he added a couple of zeros?

He forced himself to smile as Mrs. Flaherty handed him the check, then thanked her profusely, which led to another round of applause, and Matt wishing he was anywhere else.

By the time he extricated himself from the horde of chattering women and headed out of the building it had started to rain. As he ran through the downpour to his car, all he could think about was getting home, getting out of this suit, and maybe using the fifty-dollar check as a bookmark.

Fifty bucks.
Damn.

He put the key into the ignition, then stopped and sat in silence for a moment. He had to stop this self-pity stuff. It wasn’t their fault he couldn’t say no to any misbegotten animal that wandered up to his door. And it wasn’t their fault his ex-wife was living it up on her income and half of his. Fifty bucks beat nothing, which is what he’d have gotten if he’d sat at home, cracked a beer, then fallen asleep on the sofa watching that trashy miniseries.

Minutes later he turned onto Porter Avenue and headed down the street toward home. As he drew closer, he saw a car in his driveway. He pulled up behind it and got out ignoring the rain that had settled into a warm drizzle. The evening thus far had been pretty boring, but as he looked toward the house there was no doubt in his mind that the excitement level was getting ready to pick up considerably.

Kay was sitting on his front porch—holding Rambo.

Chapter 6

Matt walked warily up the porch steps. Kay stood up, took a few steps forward and thrust the leash at him, which he could see now wasn’t a leash at all but a leather belt. At the same time Rambo leaped up and slapped his muddy paws against Matt’s chest.

“Rambo! Hey, buddy!” Matt scratched the dog behind the ears, then glanced at Kay and felt a twinge of dread. Something was terribly wrong here, and from the homicidal expression on her face he could tell he was about to bear the brunt of it.

“Where have you been?”

Matt recoiled, wondering what in the world he’d stepped into. “Well...was there someplace I was supposed to be?”

“Yes! You were supposed to be here two hours ago so you could put this mutt back in the shelter where he belongs!”

Matt glanced around, bewildered. “How did he get
out
of the shelter?”

Kay took a deep, angry breath and swiped her limp blond hair away from her face. “I took out the trash at the end of the day. He got loose. I went after him. He led me halfway across town before I finally caught him again. And when I got back to the shelter—guess what? Everyone was gone, including you.”

“You’ve been waiting here with him all that time?”

“No. Unfortunately, I took him home with me.”

Matt glanced down at Rambo, who danced brainlessly at the end of the makeshift leash. “Hope you’ve got a big backyard.”

“I don’t have
any
backyard! I live in an apartment—a beautifully restored 1930s apartment with arched doorways and plaster walls and wood floors and stained glass—” Kay’s fists tightened at her sides, and he thought for a moment she truly intended to use them. “He got me evicted. That monster got me evicted from my apartment!”

“Evicted?” Matt cringed at the image that came to mind—piles of rubble and settling dust, with Rambo cavorting in the aftermath. “What happened?”

Kay’s eyes narrowed with fury. “He broke a vase.”

“A vase?” Matt had expected something a little more structurally undermining. “That’s it?”

“Oh, it wasn’t just any old vase. It belonged to my landlady. It sat on a little mahogany table in the entry hall. Mrs. Dalton’s Great-Aunt Helen shipped it to the States during the London Blitz of World War Two so it wouldn’t get broken. Did you hear that, Matt?
So it wouldn’t get broken
/”

“Still, it’s just one vase—”

“One eight-hundred-dollar vase!”

Matt winced. “Oh, boy.”

“I know what it’s worth because Mrs. Dalton told me. Repeatedly. With tears in her eyes. You’d think it held her dead husband’s ashes or something, the way she was going on. I’m already way behind on my rent, and with the eight hundred—” She paused, and for a moment Matt thought she was going to cry. “Mrs. Dalton suggested that perhaps it would be best if I moved out.”

A fifty-dollar donation, and now this. Matt’s evening was complete.

“And I had no idea where you were or when you’d be back,” Kay went on. “For all I knew you had a date—” she paused and eyed him speculatively “—and you weren’t planning on coming home at all.”

Matt had to smile at that one. He only wished his love life was as active as she seemed to think. “You’re right. I did have a date. In fact, I was surrounded by women all night. I’m a pretty popular guy, you know.”
With the over-sixty crowd.

Kay stared at him for a moment as if she half believed him. Then she waved the thought away with a sweep of her hand. “Never mind. I’m not the least bit interested in your love life. All I wanted to do was watch—”

She stopped suddenly, her anger momentarily suspended. Then she dropped her gaze and looked away. “Watch what, Kay?”

She let out a breath of disgust, then turned back around with her chin raised defensively. “Something on television.”

“Television? You mean you dragged this one-dog destruction team home with you so you wouldn’t miss a television show?”

“It wasn’t just
any
television show! It was
When Zombies Attack
!”

“Like that makes a difference?”

“Yes! I wasn't about to miss an episode just because of that dog!”

“If it was so important, why didn't you record it?”

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth scrunched up with annoyance. “I forgot. So if I hadn't brought him home with me—”

“You wouldn't have gotten kicked out of your apartment.”

Kay’s lips tightened. She glared first at Rambo, then at Matt. Finally an expression of complete disgust flooded her face. “Oh, all right! It was a stupid thing to do. But that doesn’t lessen your liability in this situation.”

“Excuse me?
My
liability?”

“Yes! He’s your dog!”

“He’s not
my
dog! He’s—” Matt stopped. She was right. Rambo lived at the shelter, for which he had total responsibility. “Okay, technically he’s my dog, but he didn’t get to your apartment building by himself, did he?”

Kay took an angry step forward. “Look, I’m not going to foot the bill for something
your
dog did. My sister’s an attorney, and a pretty wicked one at that. If I have to—”

“Oh, will you stop it? Is that the only way you people know how to solve problems? By dragging someone to court?”

“Don’t you understand? I don’t have eight hundred dollars! I barely have
eight
dollars! When I move out, Mrs. Dalton will keep my deposit as a down payment on the eight hundred and the rent I still owe, but that means I won’t have any money for a deposit on another apartment. Before this is all over with, I’m going to be sleeping at the bus station!”

Even though she had the approach of an attack dog, Matt was beginning to feel sorry for her. After all, she’d taken responsibility for Rambo instead of letting him run loose, which was a pretty big step for a woman who feels about dogs the way the average person feels about rattlesnakes.

But what about the eight-hundred-dollar debt Rambo had incurred? He thought of the fifty-dollar check in his pocket and almost laughed out loud. Maybe it would buy him a ticket to that mythical place where money grows on trees.

“Kay, I’d really like to give you the money.”

“Good. Then we don’t have a problem after all.”

“But I don’t have eight hundred dollars.” He collapsed on the bench beside the front door and yanked his tie from around his neck. “Do you know where I was tonight?”

“I told you before. I’m not interested in your love life.”

“Oh, would you get off that? I didn’t have a date.”

“But you said you were with women—”