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She lay back on her pillows. Blessed, blessed silence.
The bang of metal crashing against metal brought her bolt upright.
A moment later the doorbell rang.
As she got up to answer it, the telephone beside her bed shrilled.
CHAPTER THREE
“JUST A MINUTE,” Nancy shouted at the door as she reached for the telephone. “Mayfield,” she answered.
“Nancy,” said Mabel, the evening receptionist at Creature Comfort, “we’ve got an emergency. Mac’s on his way. He asked me to call you.”
“What kind of emergency?” she stuck her finger in her other ear to block out the impatient ringing of the doorbell. “I just walked in the door.” She glanced down at the full glass of wine with longing. No alcohol if she had to go back to surgery. “Is it the mastiff?”
“Worse. The Marshall’s Jack Russell. Some idiot let a pit bull out. He got into the Marshall’s yard.”
“Oh, Lord.” The throbbing over Nancy’s right eye intensified. “How bad?”
“He’s alive, but he’s going to need emergency surgery.”
“I’ll be there in forty minutes unless I run into a Statie with his radar on.”
“Drive carefully. I’ll get things ready.”
“Thanks, Mabel.” Nancy hung up and turned to the door. “All right, all right, dammit, I’m coming!” She yanked it open. Mr. No-Eyes stood on the front porch behind a tall, skinny, teenage boy whose head was nearly bald. He looked half sulky, half terrified. “What?” she snapped.
The man thrust the boy forward. “Tell her.”
She heard Lancelot behind her, stepped out onto the front porch and slammed the door shut. “Tell me what?”
“I kind of, you know, backed into your car.”
“You what?” Nancy pushed past the pair and down her front steps. Her Durango had been shoved four feet closer to her front porch by the hippo-size Suburban hard up against its rump. Over its rump, actually. Nancy ran to her car. Her rear bumper was dented, the right taillight lay in shards, and her right rear tire was flat. “What on earth happened?”
“My son, here, decided to move the Surburban into our driveway.” His voice was quiet, but she could almost feel the man’s rage.
“Yeah, I guess I hit Reverse,” the kid said. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“It was the fault of a malevolent universe?” his father growled. “Of course it was your fault.”
“Look,” Nancy said, “I don’t give two hoots if it was the fault of a parallel universe.”
“This unfortunate creature is Jason Wainwright, my son.”
“Big whoop,” Nancy said. “Look, you. I need my car now, right this minute. I have an emergency. I have to go back to the clinic right now.”
“You’re a nurse?”
“I’m a veterinary surgical assistant. I’ve got to get back to help save a dog that just got mauled by a pit bull. And I’m wasting time.” She grabbed Jason’s sleeve. “Come on. You and your daddy are going to drive me to the clinic, wait for me if it takes all night and drive me home, or I swear to God I’ll have you locked up for driving without a valid Tennessee driver’s license.”
Jason stared at her openmouthed. “Can you do that?”
“If you two don’t get your rear ends in gear, you bet I can.”
“I can’t leave my two younger children on their own,” Wainwright said.
“Can’t your wife look after them?”
“I don’t have a wife.”
“Then bring them. Now!” She strode toward the Suburban.
“Jason, go get your brother and sister while I move the car.”
“Da-a-ad,” Jason whined.
“Do it now. Fast.” Then he shrugged. “Remember, pizza at a mall.”
WHILE JASON ROUNDED up his siblings, Tim carefully backed the Suburban out. It didn’t have a scratch. The damage to the Durango’s bumper didn’t look too bad, but until the light and tire were replaced, and until a mechanic checked the car out thoroughly, she couldn’t drive it.
“If it needs bodywork, I could be without a car for a couple of weeks,” Nancy said. She stood watching him with her hands on her hips.
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’m sure my insurance agent will pay for a rental. I’m truly sorry about this. Jason isn’t usually so mutton-headed.”
Nancy raised an eyebrow. She suspected she had yet to plumb the depths of Jason’s mutton-headedness. “Does he have any sort of driver’s license?”
“Illinois Learner’s permit. He’s fifteen. He’s not supposed to drive without an adult.”
God help the world’s drivers when this kid turned sixteen.
A pubescent vampiress slouched across the road toward them. She was trailed by what looked like a relatively normal small boy. With Nancy’s luck, he’d be a kleptomaniac or a Peeping-Tom.
Wainwright started to introduce her to his brood.
“Can we skip all that? Unless you want to be personally responsible for the death of a Jack Russell terrier.”
To his credit, Wainwright took her directions down the side roads without question and drove fast and competently. Not fast enough, of course, but then a supersonic jet wouldn’t have been fast enough. In the back seat, Jason sulked in a corner, and in front of him in the middle seat, his sister bobbed to the music in her headphones. Wainwright had introduced her as Angie. The blond kid was Eddy. He hadn’t said a word.
Nancy pulled the sun visor down to cut out the glare from the westering sun, and caught his image in the visor mirror. He was staring at her.
He doesn’t blink. Creepy.
“Down there,” she said. “Drive through the wrought-iron gate into the parking lot outside the front doors.”
TIM HAD BARELY BROUGHT the truck to a halt when Nancy jumped out, ran up the front stairs and shoved through the glass doors into the lighted reception area. He saw her speak to the woman behind a tall reception desk, then disappear through a side door.
“Can we go find some pizza now?” Angie asked. “I’m starving.”
“Stay here.” Tim started to climb out of the driver’s seat. With a glance at Jason, he reached down and took the keys out of the ignition.
“How do you know I can’t hot-wire it?” Jason asked.
“If you can, don’t.” He took the front stairs of the clinic two at a time.
“May I help you?” asked a motherly woman at the front desk. “We’re actually closed now, but if you have an emergency…”
“The woman who just came in is my emergency,” Tim said. “We’re her new neighbors, and I’m afraid my son put her car out of commission.”
The woman’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “You’re…him?”
“I should have introduced myself.” He put out his hand. “I’m Timothy Wainwright.” He glanced at the name plate on the desk. “I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs. Uh…”
She touched his hand for an instant. “Huh,” she said and turned back to her computer screen.
“Um, I realize hitting Miss Mayfield’s car isn’t likely to endear me and my family to you, but it was an accident. My son didn’t do it on purpose.”
The woman didn’t look at him. “The way you treated the Halliburtons was on purpose, though.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Mabel turned back. “It’s your right, of course, but in my opinion it was a wicked thing to do, and I know Nancy agrees with me.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who are the Halliburtons?”
At that moment the telephone on the desk rang. Mabel picked it up. “Creature Comfort.”
Wainwright hadn’t even looked at the name on the front gate of the clinic’s parking lot. He was about to go back to his children before they bailed out of the car and fled into the night alone in search of pizza without him when Mabel finished answering a question and hung up. “Um, do you have any idea how long Miss Mayfield is likely to be?”
“Why?”
He gave Mabel his most endearing smile. It nearly always worked on distraught parents. Didn’t work on Mabel, however. “I’m her chauffeur until we can get her a rental car.”
“No idea. Could be an hour, could be six.”
“I’m going to go feed my children some pizza. Where do you recommend?”
Grudgingly she gave him the name and address of a chain pizza place, and directions to get there.
He pulled out a business card. “Here’s my card with my cell phone number. When Miss Mayfield needs me to pick her up, just have her call me. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
“Don’t bother,” Mabel said. “I will personally see that Nancy gets home safely, and I’ll pick her up tomorrow morning and take her to a car rental place.”
The place was air-conditioned, but the ice in Mabel’s voice dropped the temperature another twenty degrees. He nodded. “Thanks, but I’ll have to rent the car for her. My credit card, you know.”
“Fine. See that you do.”
He started out, then turned back. “Um, could you tell me who the Halliburtons are and what I did to them?”
The woman in front of him actually swelled up. Since she was no lightweight to start with, she looked formidable. “You don’t even know the names of your tenants?”
“I’m sorry?”
“They’ve lived in your house across from Nancy for ten years. They’ve tried time and time again to buy it from you, and every time you’ve refused. Then out of the blue, you toss them straight out onto the street like so much trash so you and your family can invade.” Her eyes narrowed. “What happened? Chicago get too hot for you?”
Oh, great. He’d only met two people so far and both of them hated him. He’d never even heard the Halliburtons’ name. “My agent has handled the property ever since Granddad died.” He tried to sound conciliatory and wound up sounding even more arrogant and uncaring. Surely these Halliburtons didn’t actually wind up on the street. He’d have to find out somehow. His agent might know. He didn’t think this woman was the proper person to ask. “I knew the tenants had tried to buy the house, but it’s been in my family for over a hundred years. I’d never sell it.”
“You sure as shootin’ haven’t cared about it for the past ten,” Mabel snapped and dismissed him.
He gave up and went back to the car. He hoped his children hadn’t ripped up the upholstery while he’d been gone.
Eddy was asleep with his head against the side of the car. Angie was still jouncing to her silent music, but Jason was nowhere to be found. Oh, great. “Where’s your brother?” he asked Angie. Twice.
She waved a hand. “He went off that way around the back.” She pointed to the edge of the parking lot.
“If you ever expect to eat another pizza, don’t move and keep an eye on Eddy.” He trotted off around the building.
This clinic stretched a long way back from the modern brick building in front into a large metal building like a warehouse. Lights under the eaves showed him to where more light poured out from open garage doors at the side. He started to call for Jason, then saw him inside the metal building—must be a barn for large animals. He was standing beside some kind of pipe enclosure.
“Jason?”
The boy jumped. “I’m not doing anything,” he said sulkily.
Tim walked into the light. In the stall a large gray-and-white sheep stood placidly chomping hay while two—what?—sheeplets? No, kids. Or was that for goats? Lambs. He must be losing his mind not to remember. God, he was an English professor—teacher—now. Words were his thing.
He was simply too tired to think straight. The nine-hour drive from Chicago would be enough to exhaust anyone. That same trip with his three children would have exhausted an entire platoon.
“Hey, folks, can I help you?”
Jason started at the voice. A tall young man in hospital greens walked out of the shadows at the far end of the building. Surely he was too young to be a veterinarian.
“Sorry,” Tim said. “My son Jason here saw the lights. I came hunting for him. Come on, Jason.”
“Dad,” Jason said plaintively, “do we have to? I mean, I’ve never seen a live sheep before.”
“Of course you have. At the petting zoo, don’t you remember?”
Jason sulked. “It’s not the same. And it didn’t have babies.” He looked up at the young man. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing now.” The guy grinned at Jason. “Momma had a tough time having those twins. Happens, sometimes. Had to do a cesarean. You know what that is?”
Jason nodded. “Knock her out, then cut across her belly and take the babies out that way. I didn’t know you did that with animals.”
“We do when we have to.”
Tim expected Jason to be grossed out.
“Cool. Is there a bunch of blood?”
