Notoriously Neat

by SUZANNE PRICE

  “Take your pick,” he said, reaching into the doughnut bag. “We’ve got vanilla cream filled, chocolate frosted, and powdered cake.”

  “Powdered cake,” I said. “It’s unlawful to drive with gooey fingers.”

  Vega looked amused. “You get a summons, I can take care of it.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He unfolded a paper napkin, spread it out across my lap, and half wrapped my doughnut in a second napkin before handing it to me. Then he set my coffee in the cup holder.

  “Are you always this thoughtful or just trying to impress me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. That smile again.

  I got us rolling.

  “You know the name of the animal clinic in Gloucester?” Vega asked.

  “The Gloucester Animal Clinic.”

  “Clever.”

  “You think?” I said with a dry smile. “It’s on Yarrow Street. Not far from the harbor. Hopefully I won’t have trouble finding it.”

  “I know a great shortcut,” Vega said. “In fact, I’ll give it to you once we get a little closer.”

  I nodded. Cops always knew all the shortcuts.

  We turned onto Route 127’s southbound lane, enjoying our doughnuts and coffee. Skiball seemed to have settled down—her carrier wasn’t even bouncing around on Vega’s lap. Maybe his even-keeled personality was imparting a contact calm.

  “So how’re you feeling today?” he asked after a bit. “You sound a whole lot better.”

  “Definitely,” I said. “I soaked in a steaming tub for half an hour before bed last night. Can’t beat it for shaking off a cold.”

  “And the other thing?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, knowing full well what he meant.

  “Your people problems.”

  It was a while before I answered. I wasn’t yet convinced that I had any right sticking my nose into whatever might be going on between Chloe and Mr. Black Lexus. If I decided to talk about it, it was Chloe who’d be the first, and maybe the last, to hear what I had to say. But I’d been thinking there was something I did have to discuss with Vega. Something I’d left hanging between us for too long. How could I frown on my friend’s stealth behavior if couldn’t be aboveboard in my own relationships? What sort of hypocrite would that make me?

  “Alex,” I said. “I . . .”

  He noticed my hesitation. “Is anything wrong?”

  “No, no . . .”

  “You sure?” He kept looking at me. “I thought maybe I’d been hogging the doughnuts.”

  I sighed. “I need to talk to you about Mike Ennis. About Mike and me.”

  Vega sat quietly a few seconds, then gave a small nod. “I’d appreciate it,” he said. “I was waiting till you were ready.”

  “I don’t know that I am,” I said. “Maybe there are some conversations you can’t be ready for.”

  Vega waited, his eyes aimed straight ahead at the road now.

  “I’m not some teenager out for kicks,” I said. “I’m a woman in my thirties who was very happily married for a long time. I loved my husband. We’d planned to have kids, grow old together, the whole shebang. And then life kicked those plans into the dirt. The way it does, you know?”

  He nodded.

  “Mike and I started seeing each other a few months after I moved to Pigeon Cove,” I said. “Talk about not being ready . . . I think it was too soon after I’d lost my husband. He wanted an exclusive commitment and I couldn’t give it. From that point on, things changed. We went on as if they hadn’t for a little while, but nothing felt the same. And finally we couldn’t pretend anymore.”

  “Does that have anything to do with why he took that assignment in Paris?”

  I shrugged, my hands on the steering wheel.

  “You know the story he’s covering, right?”

  “Be difficult not to,” Vega said. “It was on everyone’s lips around here for a while. A beautiful Danvers woman marries some French millionaire, moves to Europe with him, and becomes a murder suspect when her husband disappears six months later. Her name’s Damiana Somethingorother. ”

  “Wilkes,” I said. “At least that’s her maiden name. Mike’s been good friends with her since they were kids.”

  “No kidding.”

  “They even dated in high school,” I said with a nod. “Anyway, Mike was a crime reporter for a newspaper in Washington DC before he came to the Anchor. The same publisher owns a big, prestigious magazine that offered him a bundle of money for an investigative piece on the case. Mike’s friendship with Damiana obviously had a lot to do with it.”

  “How’d his publisher know?”

  “About the personal connection?”

  Vega nodded.

  “Mike wasn’t clear about that,” I said.

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “It isn’t so odd. Not for Mike. He’s always been cagey about his work. And we weren’t sharing a whole lot of things at the time.”

  “Sounds to me like you have an idea, though.”

  “My guess is he pitched the idea to the magazine,” I said. “He would probably claim taking the assignment had everything to do with a career opportunity and nothing to do with our relationship.”

  “And you believe he needed some distance.”

  I shrugged again. “It isn’t his fault. If anything, the blame’s on my shoulders . . .”

  Vega turned to me.

  “Were you up-front with him all along?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Then you shouldn’t feel that way,” he said. “I don’t think anyone’s to blame. None of us knows how we’ll handle certain situations till we face them.”

  I drove on past the Cape Pond reservoir in thoughtful silence. In full foliage the roadside trees largely screened the pond from view, but with the season still young you could see its reflective blue surface through their budding branches.

  Vega didn’t seem to notice. He’d turned to look straight out his windshield.

  “One thing you haven’t told me,” he said, “is that it’s over between you and Mike.”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

  “Because you don’t know?”

  “Because I don’t.” I swallowed. “What I do know is how I feel when I’m with you. When you kiss me.”

  “But not where I fit in?”

  “That has to be your choice. I can’t make it about what I want.” I glanced over at him. He was still staring out at the road. “Yesterday someone told me he’d spent most of his life being, quote unquote, contentedly independent. That isn’t me. I’m not trying to keep my heart locked up in a strongbox. But I do need time.”

  He turned to face me. “If it was your choice, Sky. About us. What would it be?”

  “Truthfully?”

  He nodded.

  I hesitated again. My cheeks suddenly felt warm. “I would tell you to kiss me the way you did the other night. Only when we’re alone somewhere and don’t have to be anywhere else for a long time. When you don’t have to stop.”

  I felt his liquid dark eyes hold on me for a while before they turned back toward the road ahead. Good thing they did, too. It might have been dangerous if I’d gone and sunk into them while driving.

  It must have been between ten minutes and ten centuries later when I realized we were coming up on Rogers Street parallel to Gloucester’s Inner Harbor. At around the same moment, Vega shifted around in his seat to look at me.

  “I have to tell you something,” he said finally, breaking his silence. “It may not be what you want to hear, but it’s important that you know.”

  I looked over at him, nodding, my heart stroking in my ears. His choice.

  “I got distracted and missed our shortcut,” he said with a smile.

  And then I was smiling too.

  Chapter 15

  “I would suggest leaving the cat with us for observation,” said the veterinary intern. A young, olive-complected man named Joralemon, he spoke with a faint Indo
-European accent.

  I steadied Skiball on the examining table, holding her with both hands so she wouldn’t go wildly diving off. Although none of the Gloucester clinic’s full-fledged vets would see us without the requisite appointment, I supposed I should have been appreciative we’d been assigned the intern. But Joralemon had barely given her a look in the minute or so since he’d blown into the room, and it seemed to me he should have done that before anything else.

  “When you say leave her, how long do you mean?”

  “Three nights.” Joralemon said. “Three nights minimum, yes?”

  I exchanged glances with Vega, who was standing right beside me. Then I looked back across the table at the intern. “Don’t you think she ought to have a thorough exam first? I mean, she isn’t acting that sick.”

  “I have recommended a course of action. The cat should be monitored,” the intern said. “Our receptionist will give you a list of our rates. But an average stay is fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “Did you say one thousand five hundred dollars?”

  “Average, yes?” Joralemon nodded. “Basic charges include boarding, food, and water. Further expenses may arise if medication is administered. I would also order daily subcutaneous hydration.”

  I was beginning to wonder if he’d studied under Dr. Ruthless. Or if maybe she’d authored some unholy veterinary textbook. “Is she dehydrated?”

  “No. But a fluid drip is a standard precaution.”

  “Against what?”

  Joralemon gave a frown. “Against many adverse health conditions, yes?” he said.

  I stared at him. It hadn’t taken long for those questioning yeses to become an incredibly bothersome verbal tic. “Is there any alternative to leaving her for that long? I’m just not sure about it . . .”

  “We can discuss a payment plan if cost is an issue, yes?”

  More shades of Dr. Ruthless. “That isn’t the main reason that I’m reluctant about this . . .”

  “I understand.”

  “No, I don’t really think you do,” I said. “I’m prepared to leave Skiball if I have to. But before I put her through that sort of trauma, I want to be sure it’s needed. She hasn’t been away from familiar surroundings since I’ve owned her.”

  Joralemon looked irritated. “The cat should be observed. You may wish to discuss expenses with your husband, yes? Then we can proceed with—”

  “Sky’s a friend, not my wife,” Vega said. “And I think she just told you that expenses aren’t her foremost concern.”

  “I hear quite well, yes?” A sigh. “But she must be honest.”

  I lowered. “Are you saying I’m not?”

  “Each pet owner must decide if treatment is affordable,” Joralemon said. “Otherwise we can find an alternative option.”

  “What option? What are you talking about?”

  He produced another sigh of exasperation. “If one finds veterinary health care exceeds one’s budgetary limits, one must have the courage to admit it. Our receptionist can recommend a list of shelters that can place the animal with another owner. If no medical reason is found for euthanization , yes?”

  I held Skiball protectively in my hands, my jaw almost dropping. Had Gail Pilsner been the only sane, compassionate, unrepulsive vet in the world?

  “You’re a lunatic,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Completely out of your mind.” I gripped Ski more tightly as she hunkered on the table, my fingers pressing into her sides. “A bonkers ghoul, yes?”

  “Sky,” Vega said. “Maybe we should just leave—”

  “And what? Keep hopping from one veterinary office to another?” I said. “This is becoming a nightmare, Alex. I can’t go on with it. And neither can Ski. I have to find out if anything’s wrong with her without Dr. Death here putting her in intensive care before she even gets a simple checkup.”

  He thought a moment. “Hang on to her. I’ll go out and talk to the receptionist. Maybe we can see one of the certified vets right here at this clinic—”

  Skiball suddenly hiccuped. It had a wheezy kind of sound that made me apprehensive at once.

  “Hey, Ski, you okay?” I said. Another hiccup. “Ski?”

  She retched. Did it again. Then did it even more violently a third time.

  I realized how hard I’d been squeezing her since we’d entered the room, and abruptly eased up on my grip, hoping I hadn’t brought about whatever was going on with her. But it didn’t stop the spasms. She was gagging now, her mouth wide open.

  “Ski!” I stared at her with huge, panicky eyes, on the verge of screaming at the top of my lungs.

  That was when she when she coughed the hair ball up onto the examining table. A black, yucky, and supremely enormous hair ball about the shape and thickness of my middle finger.

  A moment later she settled down, licked her paw, and started grooming herself.

  I snapped a look at Vega.

  “Well,” I said, smiling. “Looks like our problem’s solved.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “It does.”

  I scooped Skiball off the table and she cuddled against my shoulder, purring, scissoring my neck between her front paws. Across the table, Joralemon poked her gross special delivery with a pair of tweezers and lifted it up to his eyes for inspection. Then he pulled a tissue from a box on a stand, folded it around the hair ball, stepped on the pedal of his wastebasket, and disposed of it.

  “We may wish to forgo observation and send the animal home,” he said to me. “The receptionist will bill you for this consultation, yes?”

  I was thinking of some choice words for him when Vega’s cell phone bleeped. He reached into his leather coat, flipped it open, listened intently.

  “Where?” he said into the phone then. His face had grown taut. “You know who found . . . ? Okay, listen, have the men wait right there.”

  “What’s wrong?” I said, staring at him. “Alex . . . ?”

  He took hold of my elbow and led me aside.

  “We have to head back to the Cove,” he said in an urgent whisper. “There’s been another forced entry.” His eyes were on mine. “It’s just like the last one, Sky.”

  It took a moment before the meaning of that last sentence hit me.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Where?”

  “Abbott Lane,” Vega said. “A woman named Natalie Oswald was found dead in her home.”

  Chapter 16

  As I braked at the police barrier closing off Abbott Lane, I saw Officer Connors in front of it, his patrol car nearby in the middle of the road. His baby-faced partner, Jerred, stood leaning against the parked cruiser with his arms crossed.

  I lowered my window. There was an EMS vehicle pulled into Natalie Oswald’s driveway up the street, its rear panel doors wide open. Hibbard and Hornby were loading a gurney through the doors, an outline of a human body bulging the white sheet on top of it.

  Connors approached the Versa, gave me a brief, curious glance through the window, and then looked over at the passenger side.

  “That you, Chief?” he said, a hand over his eyes like a visor. “Sun’s so bright this morning I can hardly see.”

  Vega leaned across my seat. “The coroner here yet?”

  “And gone,” Connors said. “Maji sent his new assistant again. Liz Delman. She likes to be in and out, not that this one was too complicated.”

  “What are you hearing?”

  Connors nodded slightly at me in the guarded way police do when talking around civilians.

  “Go ahead,” Vega said. “It’s all right.”

  “The Oswald woman was shot,” Connors said. “Twice in the chest.”

  I felt my heart thumping and tried to look relatively composed.

  “Better let us through,” Vega said.

  The cops moved aside the wooden barricade and I drove slowly up the lane. Two more cruisers were parked on the street, one behind the other. Several town policemen stood outside the saltbox handling a knot of stunned-
looking neighbors. A couple of older women were in their house robes and slippers.

  I eased to the curb behind the patrol cars. “Okay if I stop here?” I asked Vega.

  “Yes, thanks.” He glanced over at me, Skiball’s cat carrier on his lap. “You all right?”

  I nodded, wondering if I should have mentioned I’d been to that same street—and the very house where the crime occurred—just the day before. But that would have meant telling him what had brought me there, and I wasn’t doing it unless I thought it could possibly help with something. Which I didn’t. Although it was a definite goose bump inducer . . . and not the only one.

  “Has it struck you that things end more or less the same way every time we get together?” I asked.

  “I noticed,” Vega said. “We’ll have to change that.”

  “Hope it’s soon.”

  “I promise it will be.” He paused. “You don’t have to wait, Sky. I’ll give you a call later on.”

  “I’d rather not leave.”

  “I have no idea how long it’ll take,” he said, looking at me. “Whenever I’m through here, I’ll need to head over to the station. File a report, oversee the processing of evidence . . .”

  “I can drive you. It’s on my way back to the Fog Bell anyway.”

  Vega looked at me some more. “This isn’t a pleasant place to be. I wouldn’t figure you’d want to stick around.”

  I simultaneously shrugged and shook my head. “I knew Natalie,” I said. “Guess I’m a little shaky for driving right now.”

  Which was true as far as it went. It just wasn’t the whole truth. I also wanted to quiet any thoughts—unfounded, no doubt—that the coincidence of Chloe and her male friend having been at Nat’s house yesterday wasn’t altogether coincidental.

  “Okay, I’ll be back,” Vega said. He passed me the cat carrier. “Better keep an eye on the little pest.”

  I gave a wan smile as Vega reached for his door handle, then watched him walk toward the saltbox and stop briefly to speak with the EMTs in the driveway before he entered. After that, I sat tight for a few minutes, puzzling over what could have happened to Nat. But I wasn’t about to learn anything sitting in the Versa, and after a while got tired of it.