Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (14 page)

“You’re right about that. No matter how you turn yourself around, nobody believes it. They’re always just waitin’ for you to slip back into old habits.” Morgan shook his head. “Syl’s the only person that’s ever had any faith in me. Gettin’ together with her’s the smartest move I ever made.”

“Will you keep your eyes and ears open, and let me know if you learn anything that could lead me to the organizers? If you find out where and when a fight’s taking place, that’s all I’d need. I might be able to arrange a reward for you. It wouldn’t be a lot, but—”

“Now just hold on,” Morgan said. “I’m not takin’ any money from the cops. I do what I want to do, I’m not up for sale.”

“I hear you,” Tom said. “But I need your help. I don’t think we have any time to waste if we want to get those kids’ pets back to them alive.” He extracted a business card from an inside pocket of his uniform jacket. “Call me if you hear something. Anytime, day or night.”

Morgan looked at the card in Tom’s hand for a long time, his mouth screwed up. Tom was afraid he was about to back away from their tentative deal. But at last Morgan reached for the card, stuck it into his pants pocket. Without speaking again, he turned to go back into his log house. At the door, though, he paused and looked around at Tom. “You know you’re messing in some dangerous business here?”

“Yeah, I know,” Tom said.

“Well, good luck to you, buddy. You’re gonna need it.”

Chapter Fourteen

She hated this place.

By the time Rachel turned into the school parking lot, she felt the back of her neck tightening with tension and a sick knot forming in her stomach.

“Oh, my gosh,” Holly said, smiling as she took in the crowd of about fifty people already waiting with their dogs outside the gymnasium. “We got a lot of customers today.”

They would be here for hours, Rachel thought, and the knot jerked tighter.

Climbing out of her Range Rover, she forced herself to pull in a deep breath of fresh air. The weather was perfect, with that rare combination of warmth and crispness that came only in autumn, and the mountains themselves seem to sway as a breeze rippled through the gaudy leaves on the trees. Sometimes even Rocky Branch District could be beautiful if she looked in the right direction.

Rachel and Holly carried boxes of rabies vaccine, syringes and needles, rabies certificates and tags into the gym, and the waiting people trooped in, struggling to keep their sniffing, yapping animals apart.

Tom had sent one of the older deputies, a man named Don Jones, to make sure Rachel and Holly were safe. While they set up their supplies on the big table the school had provided, Deputy Jones herded the crowd into a straight line, exchanged greetings with men and women he knew, patted a few of the dogs. Several people called hello to Holly, and she gave each a smile and a wave.

This part of the county was home to Holly, where she’d spent her entire life until she’d taken a job at the animal hospital, but Rachel saw it as a dark and threatening place filled with unpredictable people she would never understand. Anytime she began to feel comfortable in Mason County, as if she might fit in here after all, a trip to Rocky Branch District could destroy that assurance and remind her she would always be an outsider.

This school, in particular, gave her the creeps. A couple of months ago, following a contentious community meeting, Pete Rasey and his friends had surrounded her in the parking lot, taunting and threatening her until Tom stepped in. That experience almost made her abandon everything and run all the way back home to McLean. If she had a choice, she would never set foot in the school again, but the county had chosen this venue for the rabies clinic, she was here to administer vaccine provided by the state and county, and she couldn’t refuse to perform a public service in the area that needed it most.

She smoothed the front of her white lab coat, forced a smile and motioned for the line to move forward.

The first few dogs were little mutts with exuberant personalities. Rachel vaccinated them and gave each a quick exam. Two dogs had the inevitable accidents, squatting to relieve themselves on the polished gym floor, sending their mortified owners running to the restroom for paper towels to clean up the messes. The nervous dogs scratched and shook themselves, and within minutes a cloud of hairs floated in the sunbeams slanting through the high windows. Somehow the familiar sight of anxious dogs shedding like crazy in the presence of a vet made Rachel feel more comfortable.

Holly filled out paperwork and handed over certificates and new tags to the owners. A tiny dog that looked like a cross between a Chihuahua and a Jack Russell licked Rachel’s face like an ice cream cone before his embarrassed owner restrained him. She was laughing and wiping dog spit off her cheek when a young man in a Washington Nationals baseball cap stepped forward, tugging a large black and tan dog by a leash. Behind a leather muzzle, the animal growled and bared its teeth.

“He ain’t exactly glad to be here,” the young man said.

“I can see that.” Rachel recognized German shepherd in the animal’s rough coat, Doberman in its elongated head and slender build. “Do you have a problem with him biting?”

“Nope. Don’t want no problem, neither. I keep him muzzled when I take him anywhere away from home. It’s hard on him, comin’ in here. He hates other dogs. But he needs his shot. We got rabid coons out where we live.”

While its owner gave Holly the information she needed to fill in the rabies certificate, the muzzled dog snarled and lunged at a puppy behind him. The puppy’s elderly owner snatched up her floppy-eared little pet and backed away with it. “My lord in heaven,” the woman exclaimed, “can’t you keep that thing under control?”

“Sorry, Miz Adams. He gets all wound up—”

The dog lunged again.

“Buddy! Cool it!” The owner gripped the leash with both hands to prevent the animal from breaking free.

Imagining a dog-and-human riot in the making, Rachel filled a syringe with rabies vaccine and stepped around the table. “Let’s get this done so you can take him home.”

“He don’t like needles,” the owner said.

“I’ve never known a dog that did.” The only difference was in how many of her fingers they tried to take off in retaliation. “This has to go in his flank. Hold onto him.”

The owner knelt, the leash in one hand, and wrapped both arms around the dog’s shoulders. “Be still now, Buddy. Be a good boy for me.”

The dog’s growls escalated as he watched Rachel’s movements. When she stepped behind him, out of his sight, he howled and thrashed. He sent his owner flying and turned on Rachel. Holly yelped. The people behind them scattered, and every dog in the place started barking and howling.

Rachel grabbed the leash. The dog tried to bite her arm through his muzzle. The owner, still on his knees, retrieved the leash and clamped both arms around the dog, trying to hold him still.

Over the racket in the room, Rachel heard a man’s voice behind her. “Need some help?”

Rachel spun around to find Dr. Jim Sullivan looking back at her with a smirk on his face. She was surprised, but more than that, she was damned glad to see him. “Help him hold the dog,” she said, “so I can get the vaccine in.”

“No problem.” Sullivan approached the snarling animal without evident fear, slipped an arm around its neck, and yanked it back in a firm choke hold. “Do it,” he told Rachel.

She jabbed the needle into the dog’s flank and emptied the syringe. The owner snatched the tag and certificate from Holly and dragged his unhappy pet toward the door, the dog’s nails scraping the shiny gym floor. The other dogs didn’t quiet down until the two were gone.

Rachel blew out a breath. “Well, that was fun,” she said to Sullivan. “What are you doing here, by the way?”

“Oh, I just happened to be close by on a call and thought you could use some help with the rabies clinic.”

Close by on a call? Sullivan didn’t treat any animals in this part of the county. There wasn’t a farm within ten miles of the school. But Rachel didn’t have time to question him. The deputy had started shooing everybody back into line. Tugging her white coat to straighten it, she returned to the table. “I’m glad you showed up when you did,” she told Sullivan. “Thank you.”

“I’ll stick around if you can use an extra pair of hands,” Sullivan said.

His affable tone sounded so forced that Rachel stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what his real mood might be and why he was trying to hide it. Sullivan avoided her gaze, making a show of checking out the supplies on the table. Rachel picked up a syringe and vaccine vial. “Okay, sure. I’d appreciate the help.”

Rachel put aside the question of Sullivan’s out-of-character behavior and turned her attention to the elderly woman whose puppy had been frightened by the big dog.

Joining Rachel behind the table, Sullivan began his own stream of brief exams and vaccinations. He did the work conscientiously, but he seemed to be watching the door, as if expecting someone to come in, something to happen. She couldn’t imagine what he was looking for. The deputy was supposed to protect Rachel and Holly, but she had the weird feeling Sullivan was there for the same reason.

Rachel almost laughed at the thought.

What was Sullivan’s real reason for being there? Trying to get back in her good graces? Another laughable thought. He didn’t give a damn whether she was annoyed with him or not. So why did he show up, behaving so politely, being so helpful? So phony? What was he up to?

Chapter Fifteen

Was a single staff member at Tri-County General Hospital mourning the death of Gordon Hall? From the receptionist who greeted Tom in the lobby to the white-coated doctors and nurses in scrubs who walked the halls and clustered at nursing stations, no one seemed grief-stricken because the hospital’s owner had been murdered. Tom felt their eyes following him, though, taking in his uniform, badge, and gun. Conversation halted when he approached and resumed in whispers after he passed.

He rode the elevator to the second floor. Walking past patient rooms, breathing in the odors of cleaning products and alcohol mingled with the faint stench of vomit, he wondered, as he had a million times, how his mother ever got used to working here. Anne Bridger had been a warm, cheerful woman who filled their home with the scents of baking and fresh flowers. Her deep desire to help others had brought her here every day, to work among the sick and injured and dying and to take orders from an officious ass named Gordon Hall.

Tom still thought of this place as Mason County General Hospital, the name it had before Hall launched an effort to draw patients from neighboring counties. Most people still used the old name. It was a different place now, though. Hall had to be given credit for taking over a failing hospital in a dilapidated building and turning it into a modern health care facility.

Pushing through a swinging door, Tom entered a section of offices. Jonelle Cruise, the nursing director, worked in a corner room at the far end of the corridor. He rapped on the partially open door to draw her attention from the file she was reading.

“Hey, Tommy, come on in,” she said, removing her reading glasses. “Close the door, please.” A plump woman in her fifties, she had short brown hair streaked with gray. Over her blue blouse she wore a pink lab coat.

“I haven’t been here since everything was moved around.” Tom sat in the chair facing her desk. Motioning at a stack of cardboard file boxes against one wall, he added, “I guess you’re still getting settled.”

Jonelle sighed and shook her head. “I still don’t have any file cabinets. I’m a creature of habit. I don’t see the point of moving everybody from one floor to another, into identical space. But I guess Gordon had his reasons.”

“Nobody on the staff seems too broken up about their boss being murdered.”

Jonelle picked up her glasses, folded and unfolded the earpieces, then laid them down again. “I’m sure you heard plenty about Gordon from your mother when she had this job.”

“Yeah, I did. He was an s.o.b. to work for, wasn’t he?”

Sighing, Jonelle sat back in her chair. “I have to be discreet, Tom. I can’t afford to lose my job.”

“I understand that, and whatever you say is confidential.” If she knew anything that could make her a valuable witness, his promise of confidentiality was meaningless, but Tom’s immediate concern was getting information from her. “You work all over the hospital. You probably hear everything that goes on. If somebody had a grievance against Hall, I need to look into it.”

She folded her arms in a self-protective gesture and hesitated before answering. “Gordon wasn’t always…polite when he delivered criticism and suggestions.”

Tom didn’t respond. He waited, knowing his patience would be rewarded if she felt compelled to fill the expanding silence with words.

“Gordon was—” She broke off, sat forward and clasped her hands on the desktop. She seemed to be debating with herself, and Tom gave her the time she needed. When she spoke again, both her words and tone had a new harshness. “He could be absolutely brutal sometimes. And he had a habit of firing people on the spot if he didn’t like something they did. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to talk him into reinstating nurses and aides. I didn’t always succeed. Your mother handled him better than I did.”