Saddled with Murder

by Eileen Brady

  Then the people came.

  And his memory told him that people meant trouble.

  * * *

  Sheer curiosity made me quickly glance at the selfish wish YouTube video on my phone that night. The number of viewings had increased to 1,914.

  Like Lobo, I figured all those people meant trouble.

  Chapter Six

  I’m not a great sleeper in the best of times. Add stress and a dead body to the mix, and you create a restless night full of vague feelings of foreboding. At seven the next morning, I had to drag myself out of bed to go to work. Between lack of sleep and profound guilt over my selfish Christmas wish, I wanted to crawl back into bed and throw the covers over my head.

  But discipline had gotten me through vet school, so I ran a cold shower and got ready. Too late, I saw that Cindy texted me we didn’t start until nine thirty, so after reading an article on methods of anesthetizing invertebrates, I checked my email messages. One unexpected name caught my eye.

  Gramps had sent me an email, with an attachment. Usually he picked up the phone and called me. Puzzled, I opened it.

  And my long morning got even worse.

  * * *

  “Hey, Katie,” he said, answering on the second ring.

  My Gramps was the only person left on the planet who called me Katie.

  “So, when did this happen?” There was no point in circling the issue. His email warned me that my father, who I hadn’t spoken to in twelve years, had invited both of us to Christmas dinner to meet his new, much younger family.

  “I forwarded his invite to you as soon as I got it.” Gramps sounded suspiciously noncommittal, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

  “Well, he can bloody well forget about it.” The anger in my voice made my Buddy stop chewing on his dental bone, his regal King Charles spaniel face puzzled.

  “Okay, I hear you.”

  “I’m not kidding, Gramps, so don’t try and talk me into going.” I settled back into the sofa and tried to calm down.

  On the other end of the phone his breathing sounded a little ragged.

  “You feeling those Christmas blues again, sweetie?”

  “Not too bad,” I lied.

  “You’ve had a rough couple of months,” he reminded me. “You work all the time, and then the split with Jeremy. After being friends for so long. Maybe you should talk to someone again.”

  Frustrated, I sat up straight. “I talked to a therapist once a week for six years, Gramps. I’m talked out.” As for Jeremy, sharing my love life woes was not going to happen.

  We connected in uncomfortable silence. “Alright. I’ll wait a few days until I message your father back—give you a chance to think about it. But maybe it’s time to meet your half brother and sister.”

  Those last words pierced my heart. Anger toward my father was all I had left. Anger helped me remember my mom and brother, Jimmy. If I let go of my rage, would I be letting go of them, too?

  My head started to pound. “Sorry, but I don’t want to think about it right now, Gramps. Let’s talk later.” I used my free hand to massage the back of my head, trying to ward off the pain.

  “Sure, honey.” He hesitated before saying in a gentle voice, “Remember, your mom was my daughter, our only child, and Jimmy—Jimmy was my grandson. You need to forgive your father, Katie. I forgave him a long, long time ago.”

  * * *

  Buddy followed me into the animal hospital when I went to work. He probably sensed I needed some moral support because he was sworn enemies with our hospital cat, Mr. Cat. With no one around, I poured a big cup of coffee and snuck into my office. Immediately, Buddy moved toward his plush dog bed in the corner. Mari poked her head in and said, “Take your time. We don’t start for a while.”

  My focus soon shifted to all the incoming lab results, clinical updates, and emails. Daily routine conquered anxiety until Cindy texted me that I had a phone call on line one. Her brother-in-law, otherwise known as the Oak Falls Chief of Police, wanted to talk to me.

  “Hello,” I said, trying to get comfortable in my office chair. “What can I do for you today, Chief Garcia?” I hoped getting to the point would make our conversation brief.

  “You’re working all day today?” he asked, with no preliminaries.

  With a quick move of my mouse I opened the appointment schedule. “Let me look. I start in twenty minutes, have appointments on and off until five, with a half-hour break for lunch. Do you need me to come down to the station?”

  “No. That’s not necessary, yet.” He cleared his throat. “Dr. Turner, are you aware of a video that has been posted on YouTube, taken at your animal hospital Christmas party?”

  Now I cleared my throat. “I just found out about it. Cindy’s seen it. It’s quite…embarrassing.”

  I thought I heard a chuckle from him. “No alcohol was involved, was there?”

  “No alcohol. I really have no excuse. Just a spontaneous dumb thing to do.”

  I pictured him writing “dumb” in his notes, then underlining it.

  “Why was Pinky there?”

  Since the chief’s sister-in-law worked here and had arranged for Pinky to visit that day, I assumed he knew all about it but for some reason had to hear it from me. I dutifully told him that there was some discussion of plowing schedules and a hole in the parking lot, and that when he visited, Cindy had asked if he wanted some of our pizza and litter box cake. Why the normally shy Pinky had yelled out that third name is anyone’s guess. It simply reminded me that everyone is capable of making a stupid mistake.

  “By the way,” Chief Garcia asked, “do you know who posted the video?”

  “Found that out, too. My best friend, Mari.” I closed down the computer and put it in sleep mode.

  “Something like that might strain a friendship,” he said before he disconnected the call.

  Chapter Seven

  When Mari heard about the chief’s call, she apologized all over again. She kept apologizing until I stopped her.

  But she also felt the need to explain again. “I thought the litter box cake turned out great, so I went ahead and recorded you getting the first slice, and then Cindy started the games. Honestly, I forgot that the wish was on there when I posted it. Remember, I’m the one who called out our clients’ names. I’m feeling just as guilty, believe me.”

  Despite our innocent intentions, we both had stepped in it. As a reminder, I pointed to our pending stool samples. “We’re deep into that.”

  The treatment room, where the party had taken place, appeared to be back to normal except for some fake mistletoe taped above the X-ray door. Those few hours of the party now barely registered with me. “Mari, neither one of us is guilty of anything except bad taste.”

  “I know,” she said. “We’ll weather this storm together in the same leaky lifeboat.” The imagery was meant to be funny. Instead it made me queasy.

  She snuck in one more update before we went back to work. “This morning I tried to take the video off YouTube again, but the chief blocked it somehow. Something about it being evidence, I suppose.”

  Bureaucracy. With a shrug I assumed a few people would call attention to the link between my silly game and a sad accident. So what if five or ten more locals knew about the wish?

  “By the way,” Mari interrupted my train of thought, “we’ve got 2,733 views now.”

  “What? How did that happen?”

  “No idea. Kind of creepy, when you think about it.” My assistant picked up a pen and put it in a pocket in her scrubs. “I read a few of the comments. Most everyone loved the cake. A bunch of people mentioned something about wish fulfillment, and one woman said you were secretly a witch, not a veterinarian, who put a curse on everyone in the room.” She brushed some fur off her pants and looked up. “No worries. By tomorrow it will be old news and forgotten.�
��

  * * *

  The morning zipped smoothly by, with mostly routine exams and rechecks. I was glad to keep busy after our traumatic house call. Frank’s neighbor telephoned to make sure Teddy was okay and mentioned she wanted to adopt the friendly cat, if possible. When Frank had had a hernia repair, Ann-Marie Gilderman was Teddy’s designated caregiver and his emergency contact. We all were glad Teddy had a new home.

  As we were leaving the exam room, one client sheepishly joked he was happy I hadn’t wished him dead too. I joined in the laughter, although the humor was at my expense.

  When the last morning client left, Mari and I quickly cleaned and organized the treatment area. Cindy let us know that Chief Garcia approved Frank’s neighbor taking Teddy for now.

  “What is he, some kind of cat eyewitness?” I joked.

  “The Fifth Amendment kind,” Mari commented as we started to get ready for late-afternoon appointments. “I’m glad today is almost half over. Did the chief ever call you back, Kate?”

  “No.” I took the opportunity to sit down and check the list of today’s lab tests, making sure the many samples were logged in properly. The lab pickup was promptly at seven tonight.

  “Well, he called me back,” my assistant admitted. “He made me feel guilty about recording at the party, like I was confessing to some kind of crime. All I did was post a video.”

  Not wanting to go down that rabbit hole again, I stood back up. “That’s it. I’m officially on lunch.”

  Footsteps clicking down the hall signaled Cindy was on her way. Mari went to the employee refrigerator and removed an iced tea.

  “Great work keeping appointments on time, both of you,” she said. “Sorry not to give you any time off after…you found Frank. I wish I could have.”

  “No more wishes, please,” I pleaded.

  “I’d rather be working,” Mari said before taking a gulp of her Raspberry Mist Tea.

  “Speaking of Frank, any news about cause of death?” A sudden picture of him sitting in the recliner came and went at lightning speed.

  Cindy glanced at her cell phone screen before putting it in her pocket. “The preliminary findings point to a heart attack complicated by an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, but you didn’t hear it from me.”

  What she said sounded about right. I’d recognized some of the pills scattered on the rug near Frank’s body as blood pressure and cardiac medications. He’d huffed and puffed walking out to his SUV the last day I’d seen him alive.

  “Almost done in here,” Mari announced.

  “There is one thing,” Cindy volunteered to us after retrieving her lunch from the refrigerator. “Something the chief doesn’t like,” she explained, “is that open door.”

  “Unlocked. It wasn’t left open.”

  “Whatever,” Cindy said. “It complicates everything.”

  Mari didn’t seem fazed at all by that statement. “Half the people I know up here don’t lock their doors. What’s the chief getting in an uproar about?”

  Although she didn’t answer out of respect for her brother-in-law, Cindy seemed to be on Mari’s page. True to her sense of the dramatic, she’d saved the worst for last.

  “Guess who called today?”

  “Queen Elizabeth,” I joked. “She wants to bring the corgis in.”

  Cindy rolled her eyes. “I wish. No, it was Eloise Rieven, or as she referred to herself, victim number two on our hit list.”

  “Crap.” That jolted me out of my British royal humor frame of mind. “What else did she say?”

  “Actually, it wasn’t that bad.” Cindy stopped to take a bite of salad. “She’s annoyed and wanted the video removed from YouTube. I told her we tried, but the chief wouldn’t let us take it down yet.”

  She watched Mari’s and my reaction, with amusement. “That shifted the blame off of us, temporarily. Next, she wanted to know who was responsible for posting it. I had to tell her it was you, Mari.”

  My assistant slumped in her chair and covered her eyes.

  “But get this,” Cindy’s voice cheered up. “She likes you. When I told her how sorry you were and it was all a mistake, Eloise said at least she was still alive to talk about it. We had a little chat and it was very civilized.” She paused to let that sink in. “Then Eloise told me to tell you, Mari, that you owe her a grooming. Do you know what that means?”

  “Thankfully, I do.” Mari’s face appeared relieved. “I’ve groomed her bulldogs a bunch of times for her when she was showing, and then recently I groomed Queenie for Thanksgiving. That came out great. There’s nothing like a fresh-smelling bulldog. Hey, maybe I got off easy.”

  “Did she say anything about me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Cindy confessed. “Eloise said she expected you, Dr. Kate, to be much more professional and she’s still going to sue you.”

  * * *

  We were all waiting for our last appointment who called to say they were running late, when Cindy handed me some mail. “Looks like you have a few Christmas cards. Don’t forget to give them back to me to hang up on the tree.”

  “Well, then you open them,” I suggested. My receptionist liked to run a tight holiday ship. All thank-you notes and greeting cards were put on display in reception. Yesterday, I’d watched Cindy hanging up Christmas cards from clients by punching a hole through the open card and stringing them up with red and green ribbon. Clients and staff love it.

  “No can do. These are addressed to you, not me.”

  “Open them,” Mari said to me as she walked by on her way to the refrigerator. This kind of stuff was right up her alley.

  I started with the biggest envelope. It turned out to be a thank-you from Daffy and Little Man with an illustration showing Chihuahuas instead of reindeer pulling Santa’s sled.

  “So cute,” commented Mari as I passed it around.

  The next two were photos of pets wearing Santa hats and reindeer antlers standing with their grateful owners wishing the entire staff a Merry Christmas.

  “Love these too. Why didn’t I invent holiday costumes for animals? Think of all the money I’d be making.” My assistant periodically threatened to quit and enter the pet accessory field.

  Cindy gathered everything together and watched me open the last envelope. Outlined in gold, the pretty card depicted a cat and dog, both with gold collars, watching Santa and his sled through a window. I opened it and read the personalized greeting out loud. “Congratulations, Dr. Kate. Your first Christmas wish came true.” It was signed Frank Martindale.

  Mari gasped. I picked up the envelope and looked at the postmark. It had been mailed the day after Frank’s body was found.

  Who had sent it?

  One of us reacted immediately. “Those little creeps,” Cindy said, taking the card from my hand. “I hate teenagers. I’ll bet it’s the kid who keeps calling and hanging up on me.”

  Upset by this nasty prank, I opened one of the cabinets and retrieved a bag we put lab samples in. Trying not to touch anything, I asked Cindy to slide both the envelope and card into the plastic ziplock bag. “We’ve got to call the chief about this.”

  I rubbed my face with my hands, noticing the beginnings of another headache. If this was someone’s idea of a joke, they had very bad taste.

  When Cindy called her brother-in-law, he didn’t sound that concerned. In fact, she told us, it sounded like he expected something like this. We were instructed to lock up the card and envelope in Cindy’s desk drawer and a police officer would swing by to get it later today or tomorrow.

  Definitely by the end of the week.

  Chapter Eight

  Snow fell once again that night. In the morning the windows were frosted with an icy crystalline glaze. Poor Buddy hated walking on the new snow, cracking through the crusted surface with each step. Banging on the ground with a stiff broom helped break
it down for him. It was hard to believe we had months more of this in store for us.

  At least I could look forward to my morning meal. A client had dropped off some bagels and gourmet cream cheese for the staff late yesterday, so I scurried over to the hospital early in anticipation of a delicious breakfast. Mari showed up as I opened the bagel box.

  Five minutes later, bagels in hand, we stood in front of the refrigerator debating the relative virtues of each cream cheese spread when Cindy came into the employee lounge, an odd look on her face.

  “Want to vote on which flavor tastes the best?” I said.

  Her mouth remained tightly closed.

  “Something wrong?” Mari asked, a smear of cream cheese on her lips.

  “This is very strange,” our receptionist began. Normally upbeat, she slumped in a chair like a deflated balloon.

  Mari and I looked at each other.

  “It’s probably a coincidence…but Eloise Rieven…your bulldog breeder…”

  My mind still focused on the “everything” bagel nestled in my hand, I interrupted and said, “What does she want now?”

  “Kate. She’s dead.”

  * * *

  I had about fifteen minutes to digest this disturbing news before my first appointment. While we had been talking about bagels, Cindy had been on the phone with her sister. Pinky had discovered the body when he went to her home in the early hours to plow.

  The story was sad, but her death appeared to be an accident, the kind that happens too often in rural areas.

  Between clients Mari filled me in with the details Cindy had learned. “Eloise went outside to get more wood for the woodstove and must have tripped or passed out. She died of hypothermia out there in the cold. Why she went out in a snowstorm, no one knows.” She shook her head but then added. “Come to think of it, I did the same thing the other night.”

  “But you’re a good fifty years younger, Mari,” I answered, trying to talk and read triage notes at the same time.

  “That’s true,” she admitted. “But just because you get old doesn’t mean you act that way. My mom hauls all her own wood at sixty-three and says she still feels like she’s thirty. The shock comes when she looks in the mirror.”