An Embarrassment of Itches Read online

  “I meant regarding Amanda’s murder.” My mother practically rolled her eyes at me, which was patently unfair.

  “That’s why I need your help. I’ve got a business to run. While you track down who might have been pissed off that Amanda was refusing to sell her property, Laney, the agent, is going to see if there’s anything hinky with the art end of things—counterfeiting, illegal sales, that sort of thing.”

  “That’s more like it.” Clearly, she approved.

  I glanced at my watch. “I need to hurry if I’m going to see patients. After that, I intend going to the town council meeting tonight.”

  This time she frowned. “I thought you said the issue with the dog licenses was flogging a dead horse.”

  Ah, she had been listening.

  “I did. But as the potential owner of property being considered for development, I think I should be there for the meeting.”

  My mother pursed her lips and tapped the side of her nose. “Yes! Armed with the list of names I’ll find, you’ll be able to spot anyone who’d have a stronger motive than most for wanting Amanda dead.”

  “Maybe. That’s the general idea, anyway.”

  I avoided pointing out that same person might aim their hostility at me next. What my mother didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Better yet, it wouldn’t hurt anyone else, either.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I’d made good time with my afternoon appointments and was pleased with my efficiency until I reached into my cooler and realized I didn’t have enough doses of distemper/parvo combinations to vaccinate Lloyd Parker’s litter of heeler puppies.

  Using language that would have appalled my mother, I made an illegal U-turn and sped toward home, calling Lloyd on the way to tell him I’d be late. He took it in stride, and I ended the call to concentrate on my driving.

  I pulled up in the drive with a little spray of gravel and hopped out of the car, telling Remy to wait as I dashed inside.

  It was a good thing I left him in the car because the first sign something wasn’t right was when I grabbed the doorknob, and it turned without me putting the key in the lock. Had I left the house this morning without locking the house? Not likely, but not impossible, either. I’d been distracted. I could have forgotten to lock the door.

  But when I pushed it open and found a very disgruntled Siamese standing in the hallway lashing his tail from side to side, the depth of the wrongness was clear. There was no way I’d forgotten to lock up behind me and neglected to properly shut the door to the spare room as well.

  I almost backed out of the door and headed to the car to collect the dog. Better to have backup before entering a home where an intruder might still be present. Even better to call the police and let them know you’d had a break-in. But the way Ming was stomping around, it seemed unlikely that anyone was still in the house.

  Cautiously, leaving the screen door latched to prevent Ming from escaping, I edged my way into the house and listened. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the refrigerator’s wonky compressor gurgled, and I gave a breathless laugh at my fear. Any amusement died away when I saw the damage that had been done in the small living room. Someone had taken a knife to the cushions and slashed them until the cheap foam interior had spilled out in gaping wounds. The wall-mounted flat screen TV had a series of spider-webbed cracks across its surface, and the cast iron doorstop in the shape of a German Shepherd lay below it in front of the entertainment console. My beloved books had been swept from the shelves and some of them lay mutilated and torn asunder like murder victims.

  A slow burning anger took me into the kitchen, where someone had ripped open boxes and bags of cereal, pasta, and dry goods and scattered them across the room.

  Darn it. I’d just bought that box of Cap’n Crunch, and I’d only eaten one bowl.

  I didn’t go into the kitchen, but followed Ming down the hallway to my bedroom, where the damage was even more vicious. Clothes had been ripped and shredded. My favorite pair of boots had been scored with a sharp object. Drawers lay upended and emptied onto the floor. The crowning insult, however, was the damage to a photo of me and Major taken many years before on one of our favorite hiking trails. The frame was twisted into a pretzel, the glass shattered, and the photo itself torn. Pieces of the photograph lay scattered on my bed like rose petals from an obscene lover.

  My pulse thudded in my temples so hard it was as if I’d mainlined an espresso straight into my veins. Nausea turned cartwheels in my stomach, and I had to put out a hand for balance along the wall as I continued my examination of the house.

  The only room that had seen little damage had been the spare room which housed Ming. I looked down at him by my feet and met his cool, hostile gaze. “I’m guessing they weren’t expecting to find you, were they?”

  Ming, understandably, said nothing, but licked his paw to groom his face.

  I finished my circuit of the house. It didn’t take long. Glass crunched underfoot as I neared the bathroom, and there I discovered the intruder had used my special-occasions-only, expensive lipstick to scrawl hateful messages on my smashed mirror and gouged walls. The scent of my favorite perfume mixed horribly with the minty odor of the toothpaste that smeared the floor. Darn it, that perfume cost a bloody fortune. It was one of my few indulgences. When I caught up with whoever it was—and I had my suspicions—he’d pay for that. Oh, he’d pay.

  On some level, I recognized that my obsession with stupid things like cereal and perfume was an attempt to wall off my emotions from the greater shock of having had my home invaded. Focusing on the minutia of the damage helped mitigate the feeling of violation. I took out my phone and began taking pictures with the detached dedication of a crime scene technician until it suddenly hit me that my home was a crime scene. I stuffed a protesting Ming into his carrier and set him outside while I went back and took dozens of photos of each room for insurance purposes. Only after I was done did I call the sheriff’s department.

  Predictably, Joe himself came out with Frank and Holly, along with a lab tech. He found me outside with Remy, photographing another scene of destruction I’d discovered: the perpetrator had found my supplies in the shed out back and scattered them to the four winds, smashing what could be smashed, and ruining everything else. Bandaging material, vaccines, flea and tick products, heartworm preventative—all destroyed. I tended not to keep a lot of inventory on hand, as most of my clients could order from my online pharmacy, but aside from what I had in my car, everything else was ruined. It represented a substantial monetary loss, and I’d been on the phone reporting it to my insurance agency as the entourage from the sheriff’s office had arrived.

  I don’t think I’d ever seen Joe so contained and yet so angry at the same time. His fury was like a volcano. Slight indications of disturbance on the surface with the hint of dangerous lava and a possible explosion beneath. The tic of a muscle in his jaw suggested eruption might be closer to the surface than he’d care to admit, however.

  “How are you doing?” He gave my arm a gentle squeeze that was at odds with his thunderous expression.

  The image of the torn photo of Major came to mind, and I blinked furiously. I would not cry, damn it. Oddly enough, Joe’s outrage had the effect of tempering mine.

  “Okay, I guess. As well as anyone would be doing after such a violation. Whoever did this had an axe to grind. My guess is Brad Taylor or Derek Ellis.”

  My pragmatic response seemed to settle Joe, and his anger cooled into concentrated purpose. “No angry clients? No upset boyfriends?”

  I snorted at the thought of my generating enough resentment to trigger a would-be lover into this kind of attack.

  “Most of my clients appreciate that not only am I just about the only game in town, but I’m also doing my best. That goes a long way toward soothing even the most distraught client. As for boyfriends—” This time I couldn’t help but laugh. “Let’s just say that’s extremely unlikely.”

  As in, I’d actually have to have one i
n the first place.

  “Are you missing anything? What about controlled drugs?”

  I nodded, already expecting this question. “To the best of my knowledge, about a hundred in cash that I hadn’t taken to the bank yet. As for controlled drugs, I limit that to euthanasia solution and script the rest out. Whoever did this didn’t find my safe—I keep it in the hayloft in the barn. I checked the contents, and everything is there.” I hesitated and then went on. “However, I’m pretty sure the letter from Amanda that her lawyer gave me is gone. I left it on the kitchen table, and I can’t find it anywhere.”

  “Well, that’s not suspicious at all.”

  I welcomed the return of Joe’s drawl. “Which is why my two favorite candidates for this are Taylor and Ellis. You might want to do a handwriting comparison between them and the messages left in the bathroom.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job, Ginge.”

  “Don’t call me Ginge.”

  Our exchange might have sounded acrimonious, but I think we understood each other. While he went off to examine the extent of the damage, I called Lloyd and explained I’d had a problem with vaccine spoilage, and it would be a few days before I could get more vaccines in. He took it in stride but reminded me the pups would go to new homes soon, and he needed to get that first vaccination done. I promised I’d let him know as soon as possible when the replacements had arrived and then called the distributor to beg for a rush delivery.

  I could have told Lloyd what really happened, but something made me keep mum on the subject. Joe’s people weren’t likely to talk. It was best that the break-in stayed out of the local gossip network for now.

  After what seemed like hours, Joe found me sitting under a tree, composing an email to my insurance agency, listing the damage and lost inventory as best I could. Remy jumped up to greet him with delight. I merely looked up at his approach.

  He came to a stop to stare down at me. “The lab tech is just about done. We’ll let you have copies of the photographs to share with your insurance agent.”

  As the quality of the photographs was likely to be better than mine, I thanked him.

  “Chances are the perp wore gloves, but we can run any fingerprints we found through the system. We printed you the other day. Anyone else been in your house that we need to rule out?”

  Well, that was an embarrassing question.

  “My mother has been here a few times.”

  I hated to think about the fallout that would occur when she found out about the break-in and hoped her prints were in the system already as part of the National Child-Protection Act.

  Joe’s nod was very matter of fact. He took out a small notebook and pen. “Anyone else?”

  I thought hard about who else would have been in my house and came up empty. “Er, no.”

  “No one?” The wrinkle on Joe’s forehead proclaimed his disbelief. “You haven’t had anyone over for dinner or... whatever?”

  My cheeks couldn’t get any hotter. “You’ve seen what a dump the place is. Even if I had the time and energy for socializing, I’d hardly invite anyone here. It’s a real deal-breaker if I ever saw one.”

  His frown suggested he still didn’t get it, so I elaborated. “Most successful professionals don’t live in a broken-down double-wide.”

  The implication being I was not a successful professional.

  When he spoke, there was no sign of a drawl whatsoever. “The people who measure the level of your success based on the kind of house you live in aren’t the sort of people you should care about.”

  Easy for him to say. Or maybe not, considered at the moment he was camping in an RV. “Whatever,” I said. “That doesn’t change the fact I don’t invite people over.”

  “No one?”

  His gaze seemed to bore into me, asking all kinds of questions I preferred to leave unanswered. The best I could do was obfuscate. “If I want company, I go to someone else’s house.”

  His eyes narrowed, but then he flipped the notebook shut and pocketed it. “I take it you’ll stay with your mom tonight?”

  “No way.”

  Okay, the words that came out of my mouth were more emphatic than that. At Joe’s raised eyebrows, I hurried on.

  “The last thing I want is for my mother to know about this. If I refuse to get a gun now, she’ll arm herself like she’s going to war and move in with me. I’ll never hear the end of it unless I buy some darned assault rifle and enough ammunition to take out the entire town. Besides, I have this whole mess to clean up.”

  “Do you want help?”

  His offer sucked all the air out of my lungs, and for a moment, I couldn’t respond. I pictured the two of us working side by side; the company making short work of a miserable task. Maybe we’d order pizza. I’d open a bottle of wine (provided it hadn’t been smashed) and we’d sit on the porch watching the sunset and talking about old times. I tried to imagine him picking through the detritus of my life—one in which I’d fallen short of all my goals—and the thought was unbearable.

  “No, thanks. I appreciate the offer, but I’ve got this.”

  The look he gave me nearly pierced my defenses, but I knew I was making the right call.

  I didn’t hang about waiting for the lab techs to finish processing the house. I locked Ming in the large catio I’d had built onto the back of the house for the feral cats to stay while recovering from being spayed or neutered and took Remy with me as I drove into town for supplies. I'd have left him behind to watch the place, only there broken glass lay everywhere that I needed to get up first. I’d need lots of garbage bags, as well as a new mop and broom to deal with the mess, and I had to replace the ruined food, or no one would get anything to eat for dinner. I needed a few things to wear as well, at least until I could replace the bulk of what had been destroyed. As much as I hated the idea, shopping at the supercenter in Clearwater had to come first. As I made the drive, I could see where the convenience of a similar shopping center in Greenbrier having might be considered worth it by many.

  I returned from the store to discover the cleaning fairies had been busy in my absence. They had swept the kitchen. The flour, pasta, and dried cereal had been bagged, which now sat in neat rows beside the door. Someone had found my old vacuum cleaner and vacuumed up the broken glass. I'm surprised they got it to work. That Electrolux had belonged to my grandmother and was older than I was. An attempt had been made to remove the writings on the bathroom walls but had failed for lack of industrial strength cleaning agents. Chances were I would have to repaint it, anyway. The only room that had been left uncleaned was my bedroom, and for that I was grateful. No need for the cleaning fairies to poke through my ratty clothing and see for themselves that my fashion sense tended towards Early Thrift Store. In fact, if my mother got wind of this, she would stalk Goodwill for replacement items and the odds were high I wouldn’t like her choices. For some reason, my mother bought me clothing that looked best on an eighty-year-old grandmother or a middle-aged farmer. Nothing in between.

  But the generosity of the cleaning fairies had left me with very little to do. My mind boggled slightly at the idea of either Frank or Holly pitching in with the cleaning, but they must have. There's no way it could have been done that quickly otherwise. Even the remnants of all my medical supplies had been bagged and set aside for disposal. After I finished restoring order to my bedroom, I unlocked the chain from the catio and brought Ming back inside. Painting could wait.

  I couldn’t settle, however. In the morning, I’d call Doc Amos and see if he’d let me borrow enough vaccines to do Lloyd’s litter. I’d replace them when my order came in. No point calling until then, however. Doc was probably long gone for the day. The thought of cooking dinner held no appeal. I didn’t have a working television and reading only reminded me of the library of favorite books I’d have to replace. A big juicy cheeseburger from Sue’s diner—the one I’d refused earlier today instead of something healthier—called my name. After that, I’d go to the tow
n meeting.

  My mailbox was at the end of my drive, and as I came level with it, I rolled down my window and collected my mail. Some flyers, some bills, but one plain white envelope was unmarked. Knowing clients sometimes left payments this way, I tore open the letter. Inside was a single sheet of paper.

  When I unfolded it, the page bore a single sentence in New Times Roman created by anyone who had access to Windows Office and a printer.

  If you know what’s good for you, SELL.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sue’s had been crowded. I guess a lot of people had the same idea about grabbing a bite to eat before going to the meeting because the place had been jam-packed. Kim and Sue both looked run off their feet, and the food took longer than usual to arrive. I’d ended up taking a seat at the counter because all the tables were full. As soon as I’d eaten, I left a big tip and navigated the seated diners for the exit.

  Because of the lack of a meeting room of sufficient size, the Town Council met in the library as a rule. It was a good thing I decided to walk because the library parking lot was full when I got there. People milled about the entrance to the building as I walked up. The heat inside was stifling, and I shed my coat as soon as I could. Experience told me it was best to hang on to it, so I folded it over my arm and made my way into the meeting.

  It was already practically standing room only. Beth Ann Carlson and her husband stopped me when I would have made my way to an empty seat.

  “Doc!” Beth Ann’s hair was cut short in the back to angle down toward her chin, with tall spikes in the rear, and streaked in heavy bands of blonde and cinnamon. Her voice pierced the din of the room like a foghorn. “Is it true? Did you inherit all of Amanda Kelly’s millions?”

  I could never decide if Dave Carlson had little to say or if he figured it wasn’t worth competing with his wife for airtime. His lined face bore the perpetual expression of a sad Basset Hound, and I’d been tempted in the past to offer him a dog biscuit to gauge his reaction. From the way he leaned forward to hear my response, for once he seemed interested in what his wife had to say.