Last But Not Leashed, page 24
“Right,” I answered. “But let’s not forget our patient only weighs eight pounds, so every drop of blood is precious.”
“We’ve got two big donor dogs if necessary,” Mari reminded me. “Desi is registered with a veterinary blood bank, typed and cross-matched.”
“If it comes down to that, which I hope it doesn’t,” I said, “the first transfusion should be fine. But let’s think positively.”
Mari nodded but added, “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.”
Mr. Katt gracefully jumped down from his perch and stared at the Chihuahua. It looked like they were preparing to rumble.
“Can you check the surgical packs and make sure we sterilize some small hemostats?”
In medicine, there’s a grim saying that all bleeding eventually stops. Although removing the mass on Little Man’s belly was a relatively minor procedure, I agreed with Mari. Better to be overprepared.
As if adding his approval, Little Man gave out one of his otherworldly yowls.
While we went about our day, Little Man’s expressive eyes caught mine at every opportunity, followed by a low yip. As part of his escape plan his front paws tried to dig their way through the stainless steel cage.
It didn’t help that Mr. Katt had positioned himself directly in front of the Chihuahua’s cage, taunting him.
“Leave him alone,” Mari told the big fluffy cat. As if personally insulted, Mr. Katt gave us a dirty look, skillfully jumped first on the countertop then to the top of the upper cabinets, where he fastidiously groomed his paws and glowered at us.
Finished with Little Man for now, I took him out of his hospital cage and brought him back to my apartment. He greeted the other dogs then proceeded to tell them in a doggy yodel about his adventures. I retreated to my office to catch up on some paperwork. I’d been at it for about twenty minutes when Mari stuck her head in. “I’ve got a health certificate for travel and vaccination update in exam one.”
“Be right there,” I said. It used to be that traveling with a pet was pretty straightforward. Now, however, each airline sets requirements for travel. There are breed restrictions, cabin restrictions, temperature restrictions, length of time from last rabies shot—not to mention the complicated international rules, made even worse with Brexit.
Most veterinarians suggest that owners verify for themselves travel guidelines for their pet. I logged off and went to examine my patient.
When I opened the door, I got a surprise.
“Hi, Dr. Kate,” Elaine said to me. “How have you been?”
“Good,” I told her. I realized although I’d listened to Elaine’s lectures, this was the first time I’d spoken one-on-one with Sookie’s replacement. “Mari said you need a travel health certificate?” On the stainless steel exam table, an unusual dog slowly wagged its plume of a tail. Elaine was the owner of a Chinese crested dog, the hairless variety, a breed devoted to their owners. Her pet had long, white-fringed fur on its ears, feet, and tail paired with a dark-skinned, hairless body.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” I asked, letting her sniff my fingers.
Elaine came over and stroked her ears. “Her AKC name is Ling’s Crested Wonder, but I call her Ling Ling. I socialized her right from a puppy, so she’s very friendly.”
“She’s adorable and so well behaved,” Mari said. “Dr. Kate, Ling Ling has normal vitals and, according to Elaine, no health issues.”
“And she’s how old?” I paused for the answer before putting my stethoscope to her chest.
“Only three,” Elaine answered.
The exam on this interesting breed showed no health issues. Since each pure breed is prone to certain problems, I carefully looked at Ling Ling’s retinas, teeth, and overall body conformation.
“She doesn’t occasionally hop, or hold one leg up?” I asked, looking for the signs of a kneecap problem.
“No. She’s a fast little runner.”
A look at her teeth and down her throat revealed a correct scissors bite and healthy mouth. All other systems, including cardiovascular, seemed fine.
I decided to address a common problem in small dogs. “Is she house-trained?”
Elaine smiled. “Perfectly. She mostly goes inside in the winter. I put wee-wee pads down, and she never misses.”
I made a mental note. If I ever had any extra money, I would buy stock in the company that makes wee-wee pads.
The small dog relished all the attention.
“Here’s a suggestion,” I said. “Put the wee-wee pad inside a large litter box pan. Encourage Ling Ling to step in and do her business. The pan confines the urine to one spot and makes cleanup much easier.”
“Great idea,” the owner said.
“So, I need to know when you are leaving, where you are going, and what airline you are using. It’s a direct flight, I hope?”
“Yes. First we’re driving to Virginia to visit my cousin. Then we’ll be flying to LA,” Elaine informed us. “I’ve already got her place reserved in the cabin.”
“What about your pet carrier?” Mari chimed in. “There are size restrictions so it will fit under the airplane seat, if I remember correctly.”
She pulled a folder from her purse, with a copy of the airline’s pet policies. The company logo was prominently displayed, as was its web address. “Will this help?”
I was impressed with how thorough and organized Elaine was. Since her vaccines were all up-to-date, the only shot Ling Ling needed was her rabies booster.
“Remember to keep within the time guidelines posted by your airline,” I reminded Elaine. Most animal health certificates must be issued within ten days of travel. She seemed to have benefited from her association with the late Sookie Overmann.
Mari held for the rabies vaccine, which Ling Ling barely felt. After turning the dog over to Elaine, she asked, “Does this mean you’re not doing any more organizing seminars?”
“I’m finishing the last one in the contract,” she confessed. “But Glenn has been such a…jerk…about everything, I decided to move and leave all the unpleasantness behind.”
Since I’d seen Glenn Overmann in action, I could only imagine what Elaine had gone through. I was trying to figure out some way of asking her about the Bitcoin theft, but Mari beat me to it.
“Sookie’s name came up yesterday when we visited Chloe Ramboulle. She was quite pleased with her closet renovation.”
“That was all Sookie. Chloe was her private client. I didn’t even get a chance to see the place.” On her careful face, I caught a shade of annoyance.
“Was that part of your contract?” I asked. “You had your jobs, and she had hers?”
Elaine stroked her dog’s hairless back. “My employment contract didn’t exactly say much. I was hired as a general company employee only. My job was sort of to come in after the design phase and make sure everything ran smoothly.”
“I think that’s the hard part,” Mari interjected. “Coordinating all the tradespeople. When I renovated a bathroom a couple of years ago, it was a nightmare.”
“You have to have a lot of patience,” Elaine said. “But don’t be a pushover. Even a plumber needs a deadline.”
“Don’t get me started on plumbers,” Mari said.
One other thing puzzled me. “Why did you choose LA?”
“Sunshine, the ocean, and an influencer opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
Call me old-fashioned, but I still couldn’t fathom a profession like influencer. It seemed to me the Internet was a restless thing, gobbling up the new and spitting out the old. However, Elaine seemed happy, and who was I to question her choice?
“Are you working on anything else?” Mari asked. “Something I could subscribe to?”
Elaine hesitated. “I will be cleaning online if you want to join me.”
Busy filling in the travel forms, I only heard a snippet of their conversation. It didn’t make any sense.
“What did you say?” I asked, pressing Print on the office laptop, which would send health certificate copies to the receptionist’s printer.
“I’ll be cleaning various parts of my new place for my subscription audience,” she said. “The introductory price is fifteen dollars a month. That doesn’t include private sessions and requests.” Her smile appeared genuine, eager to launch this new endeavor.
Except for the fact I still didn’t understand.
When I glanced over at Mari, she simply shrugged.
“Do you mind explaining what exactly you do for your…members? Is this some kind of seminar?” My mind still hadn’t wrapped around how she made any money.
She blushed. “I’m going to be cleaning my home, online. Many people get pleasure out of watching someone clean, or they like to clean along.”
“Viewers pay to watch you vacuum your rug?”
“Certainly. Of course, they pay more if you vacuum in your underwear.” This time her smile was much more confident. “Sookie had an OnlyFans account with around four hundred people watching her from around the world. That generated six thousand dollars a month, minimum. I helped her run it. With special requests, like bathrooms, she easily boosted it up an additional five hundred.”
A quick math calculation added up to seventy-two thousand plus a year. No wonder she wanted to dump Glenn.
Elaine seemed to warm up to her topic. “Some men like to watch a larger woman eat, or sit on a cake— You wouldn’t believe how you can make money on the Internet.”
This topic was making me uncomfortable. “Do you have any other questions for me?” I asked her. “Is Ling Ling a good traveler?”
“She sure is,” her owner said, giving the dog a hug. “She curls up and goes right off to sleep.”
“Maybe you could get Ling Ling her own show,” Mari said. I thought I detected a whiff of sarcasm.
“What a great idea,” Elaine said enthusiastically.
I could see the possibility of more money brighten her eyes. Cleaning house with your dog. Ling Ling shook her head, her long ear fringe reminiscent of blond hair floating in the California sea breeze.
Back in the treatment room, I asked in disbelief, “Does that sound like an odd career choice?”
Mari poured a half-cup of coffee and peeled open a granola bar. “At first I kind of got the creeps just thinking about it.” She took a bite and added, “Then I began to wonder how I’d feel emptying the dishwasher in a bikini.”
“Cold?”
She laughed. “Enough said.”
“Agreed.” Sometimes you can share too much.
***
Early the next morning, the rest of Little Man’s lab work came in, and everything looked good. For an older Chihuahua, he appeared in extremely good health. Mari clicked his leash onto his thin blue harness and put him on the floor. I took a few pictures to send to Daffy, and we patiently waited for him to use his wee-wee pad. I’d taken all the food up after his six o’clock dinner. Little Man yipped when I placed him in the hospital cage with no breakfast.
“Did I tell you he acted like the king of the hill last night?” I said to Mari. “Even Desi stepped back and let Little Man have his say.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. A lion’s heart in the body of a mouse.”
“If I squint my eyes a little, he sort of looks like a mouse. Pointed nose, big ears.”
Mari laughed. “That’s why he thinks he’s the big cheese.”
We had a few more clients, but the reception area cleared out by lunchtime. Dark clouds rolled in around noon, and the outside temperature took a nosedive. Once again, snow was predicted for the Hudson Valley. Blowing winds meant unpredictable drifts of snow. At noon, a travel advisory was announced starting around three p.m. and continuing until three a.m. the next day.
“Sometimes I wonder why I don’t move to Florida,” Cindy said, eating yet another salad for lunch. A native of Oak Falls, she and her husband always tried to get away for two weeks in winter, either to Florida or on a cruise to the Caribbean.
“Because of our other three beautiful seasons,” I reminded her. “Besides, Florida battles hurricanes and flooding and humidity.”
“But they get to battle it in shorts and flip-flops,” Mari added.
“Funny, Mari.” Cindy took out her fork and dug in. “I can dream, can’t I?”
Mari and I prepped for Little Man’s surgery. Whatever the biopsy showed, I was going to make sure there were wide margins around the tumor. I didn’t want the pathologists to say I needed to go back into surgery because abnormal cells extended past the margin of the sample.
Things went smoothly once our tiny Chihuahua went under anesthesia. Using electrocautery to limit bleeding, I carefully made a large incision, removing the mass and at least another inch and a half on all sides. With an eye to creating minimal scarring, I created a neat closure using my pink suture material. To protect the surgical site, we outfitted our patient with a lightweight foam collar. On his back paws were a pair of soft booties. I didn’t want him to bother the incision site by swiping it with his toenails.
As soon as he was sitting up in his cage, I snapped a picture and texted it to Daffy. She’d been a wreck, she said, but was glad that the surgery was over. To prove her statement, she sent us a selfie of her and her girlfriends in matching straw hats drinking icy margaritas in front of a marina filled with sailboats.
Cindy poked her head in. “The remaining appointments for this evening canceled or rescheduled,” she said. “That means a shorter workday for everyone.”
“Not me,” I told both of them. “I’ll be babysitting Little Man.”
“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Cindy said with a laugh.
A half hour later, all the countertops were clean, medical waste disposed of, and our surgical log updated. The surgical instruments had been washed with soap and hot water and were ready to be sterilized. A hint of lemon lingered in the treatment room air.
“Go on home, Mari,” I told my assistant. “I’ll finish up what’s left.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. Do you want to take Desi with you? I’m not sure I need him anymore.” Learning that the two thugs at Elaine’s lecture were Chloe’s bodyguards, and not connected to dogfighting in New Jersey, made me feel silly for jumping to conclusions.
“Can I leave him here for a few more days? I didn’t realize that Lucy needed a break. She’s more relaxed without him always trying to distract her. Plus, I have an excuse to concentrate on her and the puppies.”
“Fine with me. The more the merrier, sort of.”
I walked my friends out to the reception area. Snowflakes already thickened the sky, sticking to windshields and car hoods. As Mari and Cindy drove away, I closed and locked the animal hospital and set the alarm.
With the storm moving in, I anticipated having only animal companions this evening. Since it was relatively early, maybe I’d have time to finish Posey’s notebooks. I had to admit I’d started to wonder how her book ended.
And whether she knew who killed Sookie the Sorceress.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Back in my apartment, I helped Little Man crawl into the safety of his large cat carrier. Buddy lounged on his dog bed upside down. Mr. Pitt sprawled on the floor chewing his moose toy, and Desi stared up at me. I figured he’d heard Mari and assumed he’d be going home.
After a few treats and plenty of attention everyone settled, dozing comfortably. The storm slammed some overgrown branches up against the kitchen window and rattled the panes. Only Desi, still new to my apartment, paid any attention. Doc Anderson had bought a backup generator for the hospital several years ago, so I didn’t worry about losing power. Food wouldn’t be a problem either. I’d taken Elaine’s advice from the organizing lectures and gone on a supermarket shopping spree, loading up on soups, veggies, and frozen fruit for smoothies. A small mountain of canned goods, chips, peanuts, and chocolate took up the back of the pantry.
Again, a little memory of Luke and me weathering a storm together cropped up. Cuddled together on the…
Sabotaged by my own brain, I stood up, made some tea, and fished out half an oatmeal raisin cookie from my cookie stash. On the kitchen table sat two veterinary journals and an old Agatha Christie mystery. I’d already glanced at the electronic versions of my medical journals and knew the Christie mystery backwards and forward. Then I remembered Posey’s notebooks. I’d promised myself I’d finish them, so I picked them up from the nightstand and made room on the kitchen table.
I’d been reading them in order and jotting down a few things as I read to help jog my memory. So far, all I had was a list of character names and the basic plot.
One thing I did find odd was how Posey added new characters. Often, they appeared with no introduction; only after several paragraphs did we learn who the new character was.
The last page read in the second notebook was easy to find. So far, the servant and the tutor/vampire were still hatching a plot to steal money from the duke. Pansy, it was revealed, had some sort of secret connection to royalty, which is why she felt entitled to her share of the gold. The tutor, Count Grazanski, taught the duke’s children by day and transformed into a vampire by night. Every three pages, it seemed, Pansy and the vampire had a romantic tryst. The couple’s ultimate plan was to change Pansy/Posey into a vampire and fly away into the night with a big pile of stolen gold.
Count Grazanski held my tender heart in his hands, my poor achy and perhaps breaky heart, that yearned for his caress.
Wait. Did Posey just borrow a very famous Billy Ray Cyrus lyric?
I assumed the vampire didn’t actually hold her heart in his hands, only metaphorically. Trying to finish my tea before it got cold, I stopped reading, poured some more tea, and consulted my notes. I’d taken a guess and paired up the fictional characters with real people from Oak Falls. The servant Pansy stood for Posey. Count Grazanski might be Glenn, and the way the sorceress died sounded a lot like Sookie. So far, it appeared that Posey deliberately paired up the first letter of her book characters’ names with the real names of the people she knew. But I didn’t find any match to Elaine yet.
