Dr. Horatio vs. the Six-Toed Cat (7 page)

She replaced the receiver. “That's four.” She clicked her pen open and checked the box beside Clara Wyatt's name.

“Excellent.” Doc hefted himself off the counter and offered his palm for a high five, which she provided. “I have a good feeling about this plan. Our polydactyl friend's amorous adventures are about to come to an end.”

Millie voiced a question that had niggled at her. “When you do catch him, what are you going to do with him?”

“That depends. If he's friendly, I'll neuter him and try to find him a home. If he's truly feral…” He left the cat's fate dangling ominously and disappeared through the clinic door.

Millie closed her notebook and placed it in the desk. Hopefully the cat would be amiable and sociable. Surely someone would want
him. If only Albert weren't allergic to cats, she'd take him herself. After all, the house would be a lonely place after Alison left.

Swallowing a wave of sorrow, she extracted a second notebook from her handbag and opened it to the page with her current To Do list. If her mornings had been satisfyingly busy the past week, her afternoons had been frantically so. Nicholas would arrive late Friday afternoon, just over twenty-four hours from now, and the house was nearly ready for his visit. Everything had been scrubbed and cleaned, even beneath the entertainment center in the den. Oh, how Albert complained when she asked him to move it, but she ignored his grousing. Nicholas might not see beneath the heavy piece of furniture, but
she
would know the carpet there had not been vacuumed since early spring.

Why was she going to all this trouble for, as Albert put it, Alison's Colombian drug lord? The question had taken her a few days to answer in her own mind. Because cleaning was therapeutic. Scrubbing away the old dirt and removing the clutter worked wonders on a person's stress level. And besides, Alison appreciated her efforts.

“You're awesome, Mom,” she'd said yesterday when Millie emerged from a sparkling guest bathroom. “Nick is going to love you.”

“As long as he loves
you,
” she had replied, pasting on a smile that hid her worries.

She glanced down the list. There wasn't much left to do in the way of cleaning. On the next page she examined her menu, which had been the source of much anguish. What does one feed someone from a foreign country? Her chicken enchiladas always got rave reviews from her family, but she didn't dare feed Mexican food to someone from Latin America. His mother's enchiladas probably weren't made with cream of chicken soup.

In the end she'd decided on meatloaf. One couldn't go wrong with a good meatloaf.

The door opened and Lizzie breezed in. “Sorry I'm late. I got held up by a flatbed with a pile of tents blocking Walnut Street.”

Millie glanced at the clock. One fifteen. “I hadn't even noticed.”

“I'll be so glad when this weekend is over.” Lizzie bustled around the reception counter, opened the bottom drawer of the file cabinet, and dropped her purse in. “I know the festival is important for the town, but it certainly is a disruption.”

Before Millie even got out of the chair, she began rearranging things on the desk. The paperclips went to the left of the calendar, and the pen holder in their place.

Millie fought a wave of irritation and retrieved her purse. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Ta ta,” Lizzie replied in her singsong voice while sliding the dog treat jar an inch to the right.

Setting her teeth together, Millie left the clinic.

Chapter Five

I
promise Snowball will be fine, Mrs. Kidwell.” Doc placed a reassuring arm around the anxious woman's shoulders. “We're going to take good care of her.”

They stood in the clinic's boarding area, a large space off the main hallway beyond the three small exam rooms. A rack of crates in varying sizes were secured to shelves lining two walls, and the fluffy white cat had just been deposited in a large one, the fourth and last feline to arrive for Doc's kitty slumber party.

The middle-aged woman clutched the straps of her purse, her eyes fixed on her pet. “But she's never been away from home overnight. What if she won't eat?”

Judging by Snowball's girth, he didn't think that would be a problem. “I have a lot of experience with finicky felines,” he assured the fretful woman. “And later on today we'll see if she wants to make a friend or two.”

He gestured toward the mellow calico in the next crate, who had stretched out sphinxlike on a cushion and regarded them with an unblinking green stare.

“Now, you just go along and leave her to me.” He turned the woman around and guided her gently from the room. Holding the swinging door open for her to enter the reception area, he asked a conversational question. “Are you planning to attend the festival this weekend?”

“What?” Mrs. Kidwell pulled her gaze from the door to his face. “Oh. Yes. My nephew's bluegrass band is playing tomorrow evening.”

“I'll try to stop by for that. I love good bluegrass music.”

The first smile he'd seen appeared on her face. “Then maybe you'd better miss their performance. They're not very good.”

Laughing, he escorted her past the reception desk and, after more assurances that Snowball would be well cared for, closed the front door behind her. Turning to Millie, he rubbed his hands together.

“Now, let's go catch a tomcat.”

Together they returned to the boarding room. The back door opened onto a fenced-in exercise area. They had no dogs at the moment, so he'd installed his four felines in the larger dog cages. He rattled the doorknob to satisfy himself that the lock was secure and the deadbolt in place.

“You're kidding, right?” Millie watched with her arms folded. “You think he's going to open a closed door?”

“This is a very determined cat we're talking about.” But he grinned to show her he knew he was being overly precautious.

The room had two windows, one on either side of the door, and he cracked one open about eight inches. He'd removed the screen that morning. No sense inviting the tomcat to vandalize his property. From a box in the corner he extracted the contraption he'd made last night. It jangled loudly as he lifted it.

“Give me a hand, would you?”

Millie came forward. “What in the world is that thing?”

“An alarm, of course.”

He'd gotten the idea from the bells hanging on the door at Cardwell Drugstore. To a thirty-six-inch wooden rod he had tied long strings, one every half-inch. At the end of each string hung a bell. They were all different sizes, and he'd had to visit every craft store in the nearby city of Lexington to find enough, but they would do the trick.

She jingled a bell. “Won't the noise scare him off?”

“Not if he's as determined as he's been in the past. You'll find some clips in there.” He nodded toward the box while he held his contraption. “Fasten them to the curtain rod, would you?”

The plastic clips he'd dug out of the Christmas stuff stored in the attic. He'd used them to hang lights on the rain gutters last year. Millie stood on a chair and did as instructed, and when the clips were in place, he secured his homemade alarm.

She hopped off the chair and stood back to admire her handiwork.

Millie ran a hand across the strings, and the resulting jingle filled the room with satisfying volume. He should be able to hear that from any of the exam rooms. And they'd prop open the swinging door that separated the clinic from the reception area so Millie and Lizzie could hear it from the front if he missed it.

“You know, this might actually work.” She awarded him a congratulatory smile.

“Of course it will work.” He gestured toward the four cats. “What red-blooded Romeo could resist paying a visit to our lovely guests?”

“Speaking of Romeos.” Worry lines appeared on Millie's forehead as she glanced at her watch. “Alison's boyfriend is on his way. He'll be here around six.”

Though Millie had not said much about this visit, Doc knew she was anxious about it. “Do you need to leave? Our schedule is light today. I'm sure I can handle the morning myself if you have things to do.”

“Thanks, but no. Everything's ready. Alison insisted that we eat festival food this evening. She thinks that'll be easier on him than having us stare across the dining room table at him while he chews. We're saving the family dinner for tomorrow night, after he's gotten used to us.” Her shoulders heaved with a silent laugh. “She's probably right. Albert can be a bit intimidating.”

The sound of the front door opening reached them. Millie glanced at her watch. “There's your ten o'clock appointment.”

She hurried from the room. Doc paused in the doorway, looking back at his invention. Now, how long before his polydactyl friend paid a visit?

Exactly ninety-seven minutes.

Doc was in exam room one listening to the heartbeat of Larry Greely's birddog when the sound of bells jingled through the open doorway. He snatched the stethoscope from his ears.

Larry glanced down the hallway. “What was that?”

“Be right back,” Doc whispered as he sprinted from the room.

Millie appeared in the hallway, looking toward the boarding room through round eyes. Doc held a finger to his lips as he dashed past. Human voices nearby might spook a feral cat. He raced through the reception area, drawing stares from a woman and child waiting with their yellow lab puppy, and through the front door.

Outside, he tore around the side of the building. He lost precious seconds unlatching the gate—why hadn't he thought to leave it open?—and then forced himself to approach the open window with a quick but cautious step. The sound of his panting roared in his ears. He gulped in a breath and held it, creeping as silently as possible. When he arrived he flattened himself against the building and slowly, slowly, peeked inside.

There! Pacing in front of the crates was a cat. He realized at once why Eulie Pilkington mistook him for a bobcat. This fellow was large and sleek. Plus, his coloring wasn't typical for a tabby. An abundance of black stripes nearly concealed a yellow and orange undercoat. Beautiful markings, really. A fine-looking cat.

Doc grasped the center window rail and, with a firm gesture, pulled it down. Bells jingled as the window slammed shut, and the startled cat jumped. He whirled, and Doc found himself staring through the glass into a pair of amber eyes.

I've got you, you sneaky fellow.

The cat wasted no time. With a giant leap, he scurried through the door.

Congratulating himself, Doc trotted around the building and cracked the front door open enough to allow his body to squeeze through.

Inside, he found pandemonium.

An orange and black streak raced through the swinging clinic door, which had been propped open. It careened into Millie's legs and sent her toppling backward into her chair. The door swung wide and Betty the Birddog plowed through, the air ringing with her deep-throated bark and Larry a half-step behind. The cat leapt onto Millie's lap, startling a shout out of her, and springboarded onto the desk. Betty continued her pursuit, thankfully bypassing the stunned receptionist, and with a giant leap landed on the desk. Papers scattered like confetti at New Year's. A pair of panicked amber eyes flew past Doc as the cat vaulted from the countertop into the waiting room. Larry tackled Betty and managed to hook her by the collar, but not before the dog treat jar crashed to the floor and shattered.

In the waiting area, the woman shrieked and the little girl started to cry. Her mother pulled the child onto her lap while the puppy bounded over to investigate the terrified, hissing creature hovering in the corner beneath a chair.

Doc plunged forward to rescue the puppy, who was about to become the unwitting victim of a pair of razor-sharp claws. He'd just gotten hold of the dog when the front door opened.

Whirling, he extended a hand toward it and shouted, “No!”

Too late.

The cat, sensing an escape route, dashed from beneath the chair. Before Doc could take more than a step, the creature darted to freedom between the legs of a startled Lizzie.