Silent Night: A Raine Stockton Dog Mystery (12 page)

“Is everything okay?”

“Long story!”  I had to shout now to be heard over the increasing cacophony, not to mention the fact that Melanie was deliberately trying to shield the device from me by hunching over it.  “We’re all fine!”

Miles said something I didn’t hear, and eventually Melanie disconnected in a huff, flinging herself back against the seat and refusing to look at me, or at the box of puppies in her lap, for the remainder of the trip.

Cisco started to whine anxiously as soon as we turned into the gravel parking lot, and I couldn’t blame him.  He’d been injured in the line of duty not too long ago—the hair still hadn’t completely grown back over his shoulder wound – and the vet’s office was not one of his favorite memories.  I told him as I put the car in Park, “It’s okay, boy.  You get to stay in the car this time.  I’ll bring you a cookie.”

His ears perked up at that, and he stopped mid-whine.

Melanie started to fumble with the door handle, and I told her, “Stay there.  I’ll come around.”

She scowled at me.  “You’re not going to leave me in the car, too, are you?”

I considered that for a moment.  As a general rule, I am as responsible with my dogs as I would be with a child, so Melanie should have been as safe sitting in the car as Cisco was.  The problem was that I trusted Cisco; I didn’t trust Melanie.  Also, I didn’t think Miles would approve.  So I said, “You can sit in the waiting room and play video games or something.”  I got out of the car and opened her door.  “Hand me the box.”

“My coat!” she protested, as I tucked the folds of her coat more securely around the puppies.

“We’re two steps from the door,” I told her impatiently.  “Get over it.”

She scrambled after me.  “This is child abuse!”

I rolled my eyes.

I’m pretty well known around my vet’s office, not only because of my own dogs, but because of the work I do with humane society and the golden retriever rescue group. Well, basically Maude and I
are
the local golden retriever rescue group, which is doubtless how a box of puppies landed beside my mailbox.  Ethyl and Crystal, Doc's wife and daughter respectively, greeted me cheerfully from behind the front desk, and then oohed and ahhed over the contents of the box.
 
Melanie, having snatched her coat off the box as soon as we got inside, stood in the center of the room glowering, and I pointed sternly to a chair.  “Sit,” I commanded.

In a moment she flung herself into the chair I’d indicated and powered up her iPad.

Ethyl she gave me a questioning look, and I responded with a shrug.  “Babysitting,” I said.  I peered over the counter at Crystal, who was returning the last puppy to the box.  “The little female doesn’t look so great,” I said.  “I hate to walk in like this but I didn’t want to take a chance.”

“Not a problem,” replied Crystal.  “There are a couple of people ahead of you, but I’ll take these little guys back and see if I can get them cleaned up a little.  I’ll call you when Dad is ready.” 

I crossed the room to sit beside Melanie, stopping to speak to Mrs. Dawson, whose bichon yapped noisily from his carrier, on the way.  The bichon had been one of our grooming clients before we’d closed for remodeling, and I hoped would be again when we reopened.  I asked after her dog’s health, and she assured me he was just in for his shots.  She asked when she could bring him in for a shampoo and trim, and I replied brightly, “Just give me a call after Christmas.  We’ll work him in.”  I was beginning to wonder if I would have to start washing dogs in my kitchen sink.

Mrs. Dawson lowered her voice confidentially and cut her eyes toward the back room, where Crystal had taken the puppies.
 
“You know who those pups belong to, don’t you?”

I had my suspicions, but I wanted to hear her say it.

“Lester Stokes’ mama dog just had a litter a couple of months back.  I was over there picking out a pumpkin with the kids and I thought I never would get them back in the car for playing with those puppies.  He tried to make me take one home but they were too little to leave their mama, their eyes were barely open.”  She snorted.  “Like I need another dog.  This one is about all I can take care of as it is.”

Crystal called her in just then, and I went to sit beside Melanie.

“My dad’s last girlfriend had a house in Cocoa Beach,” she said loudly.  “I liked her a lot better.”

I smiled weakly at the man sitting across from me, who returned a polite nod, and I picked up a six- month-old copy of
Dog Fancy.
  Not only I had already read it, I had donated it to the waiting room.  But I pretended to be absorbed, because it was better than having to make conversation with Melanie.

Crystal called me into the exam room twenty minutes later.  I told Melanie to stay put and went inside.  “Thanks for seeing me, Doc,” I said.  One of the puppies was on the steel examining table; the other two were in a wire crate in a corner.  “Someone dumped them off this morning or late last night.  I don’t know how long they were out in the cold.”

Doc Withers was a tall man with slightly stooped shoulders, steel-gray hair, and wire-rimmed glasses.  The pawprint-patterned scrubs he wore did not detract from his dignity in the least; in fact they only enhanced it.  He had been taking care of my dogs, Maude’s dogs, and everyone else’s dogs in the county for as long as I could remember, and there was no one else I would trust with my pets.

He held the squirming little pup up to face level and said, “Well, now, little fellow, you’ve had yourself quite an adventure, haven’t you?”  He glanced at me, bouncing the puppy experimentally in one hand.  “Six pounds, three ounces.”

Crystal put the puppy on a baby scale and reported, “Six pounds, three ounces.”

I grinned.  “How long has it been since you missed one, Doc?”

“Oh, it’s got to be going on eight years now.”

“Missed it by one ounce,” Crystal said.

“Yeah, but that was before it peed all over the table.”

We all laughed and while Doc examined the first two pups with easy efficiency, Crystal and I chatted about—what else?—dogs.  Doc pronounced them to be golden/lab mixes, between six and seven weeks old, and in pretty good health, considering.  He gave the two boys their shots and put them back in the great, but when he set the little female on the table, her legs splayed out from under her and she collapsed, too weak to stand, her chin banging the table top.
 
Doc’s face went grave, and Crystal and I were silent while he completed his examination.

“What do you think?” I asked quietly.

“Well, she’s dehydrated,” Doc said, “and running a little fever.  I’d like to start her on antibiotics and I.V. fluids.  We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Is she going to die?”

The voice that spoke at my side startled me, and I spoke more sharply than I had intended.  “Melanie, I told you to wait outside.”

Melanie shrugged, looked at the shivering little puppy cradled in Crystal’s arms.  Doc smiled at her. “We’re going to try not to let that happen,” he said.

I said unhappily, “It isn’t—you don’t think it could be parvo, do you?”

Parvovirus is an extremely dangerous, often fatal, and highly contagious disease in dogs that can live in the ground where an infected dog has been for up to a year.  Most puppies have immunity from their mother’s milk for the first eight weeks or so, and then they are inoculated.  But sometimes, when the mother is not inoculated, there is no immunity to pass down.

Doc said, “That would be unusual this time of year.  We see most of our Parvo in the spring.”

“Could be canine flu,” Melanie volunteered.  “That’s pretty bad.”

I stared at her and she said, “I looked it up on the internet.”

Doc said, “I’d like to keep the other two overnight just to see if they start showing symptoms, just in case.  Why don’t you check back with me tomorrow afternoon?”

I said, “Okay, thanks.”  I hesitated.  “I don’t suppose you have any idea where the puppies might have come from do you?”

“I have an idea,” he said.

“Lester Stokes’ bitch?” I suggested.

Melanie’s eyes went wide behind her glasses.  “My dad doesn’t allow people to swear in front of me.”

“It’s not swearing when the word is used in its proper context,” I told her impatiently.  “A female dog is called a bitch. Look it up.” 

Doc tried to hide his amusement.  “This is her second litter this year.  Every puppy in the first one had demodex; people were bringing them in from all over the county.”

“How old is she, anyway?”

“Eight or nine.  Pretty little Golden.  But too old to be bred that often.”
 

I said, “Listen, if I can talk him into getting her spayed, would you give me a break on the surgery?”

Doc smiled.  We had done this kind of thing before.  “I’ll do it for the cost of anesthesia.  But good luck getting her in here.  He makes money on those puppies when they’re purebred.”

“Thanks, Doc.  I’ll check with you tomorrow.”

“Merry Christmas, Raine.”

Lester Stokes had a little truck farm not three miles from the vet’s office, and it would have been foolish not to stop by when I was this close—and also while I was still filled with enough righteous indignation to  argue him down.  So I grabbed a handful of dog biscuits from the jar by on the counter, bundled Melanie back into the car, and tossed Cisco his promised cookie as we took off for the Stokes’ place.  The rest of the dog biscuits I stuffed into my coat pocket, which did not make Cisco happy at all.  He kept sniffing the air and stretching his head over toward the driver’s side of the car, trying to see what I had done with them.  You know that old joke: if you think your dog can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and only giving him two.  I see living proof of that every day.
 

“We’re just going to make one quick stop,” I told Melanie as I slowed the car and signaled a right turn at a battered rural mailbox. 

Melanie said, “I don’t understand why somebody would throw away a box of sick puppies.”

I was surprised when I glanced at her and discovered she was not wired to her iPad.  I sighed.  “I don’t either, honey.”

The driveway wasn’t very long, and it was lined on either side with the remnants of last year’s garden: dried cornstalks, withered tomato plants, piles of rotting pumpkins.  In the off-season Lester made his living doing odd jobs and selling firewood, and the approach to the small wood-frame house at the end of the drive was marred by a big pile of split firewood in the front yard.  Beside it was a police car.

I couldn’t hide my surprise as I pulled in behind the police car, and Cisco could not hide his excitement.  He began to pant and paw the window as soon as he caught sight of the blue bubble light.  I may have mentioned Buck Lawson is probably his favorite person in the world.  “Stay here,” I told Melanie.  “Let me see what’s going on.”

The sound of a barking dog greeted me as I got out of the car, and I saw a white-faced golden retriever, her sagging teats evidence of a newly-weaned litter, lumber over to the gate of a small chain-link dog enclosure.  Her barks were desultory and her tail wagged lowly and dispiritedly, and I was torn between rushing to comfort her and greeting the two people who stood beside the wood pile, one of them being my ex-husband.  For once, I ignored my instincts—and the dog—and went over to Buck.

“Hey, Buck,” I said.

He returned briefly, “Raine.”  He did not look happy to see me.  “You mind holding on a minute while I talk to Nick?”

The person he referred to was a teenage boy in a sawdust-sprinkled sweatshirt and work gloves.  There was a gas-powered log splitter beside him, and when I walked up he turned to load another log into it.  “I already told you, I haven’t seen Ashleigh in a week.  I’m sorry about her old man, but everybody knows it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

Nick.  Ashleigh.  Something stirred in the back of my brain, but an awful lot had happened in the past few days, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Buck said, “Why do you think that?”

The boy shrugged without looking at Buck.  “He was a mean drunk. He pissed off the wrong person this time.”  And there was a note of bitterness in his voice as he pulled the starter cord.  The engine sputtered and died.  “Somebody that could fight back.”

I lifted an eyebrow at Buck, and Buck said, “Did he hit Ashleigh, Nick?”

He shrugged and pulled the starter cord again.  “None of my business.”

Buck said, “I thought you were her boyfriend.”

Nick pulled the starter cord one more time, ignoring Buck, and suddenly I remembered where I had seen the girl in the photograph in Earl Lewis’s kitchen before.  She was the one who had been sobbing in the girl’s bathroom at school yesterday when I went in to change. 
You’ve got to come get me, Nick, something terrible has happened.
 

I said, “Didn’t you talk to her yesterday afternoon?”

Buck looked at me, and so did Nick.

I went on, “Didn’t she call you after school and ask you to pick her up?  She sounded pretty upset.”