Trick or Deadly Treat: A Fresh-Baked Mystery, page 13
It was also an empty waiting room at the moment.
“Can I help you?”
The voice came from behind the counter. The young woman who sat at the receptionist’s desk was about twenty-five, Phyllis estimated, with long, light brown hair. Her nose had been broken at some time in the past, and that had left it with a tiny, almost unnoticeable bump that didn’t distract from her wholesome prettiness. The red, slightly swollen eyes that showed she had been crying did a little bit, though.
“I’m sorry,” Phyllis said automatically. She would have done that anyway if she’d encountered someone who was upset, but now she had another reason for wanting to present a sympathetic ear. “Is something wrong?”
“There’s been a . . . a death,” the young woman said.
“Oh, goodness!” Phyllis said. She had never thought of herself as much of an actor, but the past few years had revealed unsuspected talents in that area. She always felt a little guilty when she had to lie to people, but she told herself it was for a good cause. She went on. “One of Dr. Baxter’s patients?”
“No, it’s . . . Dr. Baxter.”
Phyllis looked shocked. It wasn’t that much of a stretch. It really was shocking that a woman had been beaten to death right here in this very office. Not in this waiting room, of course, but only a few feet away.
“That’s terrible,” she said. “I stopped by to make an appointment to see her.”
“Do you have a medical problem?” the young woman asked. “I can refer you to someone . . .”
“I need to have some gallstones removed,” Phyllis said. She had decided on that because she’d actually had such an operation several years earlier and thought she could bluff her way through a conversation about the procedure. “Dr. Baxter was one of the surgeons my doctor suggested, so I thought I would talk it over with her before I made up my mind.”
That wasn’t exactly the way these things usually worked, Phyllis knew, but it wasn’t so unreasonable or far-fetched as to be suspicious. At least she hoped it wasn’t.
The receptionist didn’t seem to think twice about Phyllis’s explanation. She said, “I’m sorry, but you understand . . .”
“Of course,” Phyllis said. “I’ll talk to my regular doctor again and get his advice on how to proceed. I’m really sorry to hear about Dr. Baxter. Was it a sudden illness, or had she been sick for a while?”
The receptionist’s eyes widened. She said, “You don’t know?”
Phyllis just put a puzzled look on her face and shook her head.
The receptionist leaned forward and said in a hushed voice, “She was murdered!”
Before Phyllis could do more than start to look shocked, another woman’s voice said, “Raylene!”
There was a counter beside the receptionist’s desk on the other side of the window, the way things were set up in most doctors’ offices, so that patients could conclude their visit, pay anything they owed, schedule a follow-up appointment, or whatever before coming back out into the waiting room. While Phyllis and the receptionist were talking, another woman had come up to that counter from somewhere deeper in the office.
She was a brunette in her thirties, very attractive and well dressed. Instantly, the woman struck Phyllis as familiar, and after a moment she realized why. She had seen pictures of the brunette while searching the Web for information about Susan Baxter. She was Meredith Carlyle, Susan’s sister.
Sam had told Phyllis about the unpleasant conversation between Meredith and the two young employees at Hank Baxter’s clinic. Meredith lived up to that reputation as she snapped, “My sister didn’t pay you to sit around and gossip, Raylene, and I’m certainly not going to, either.”
It sounded like Meredith Carlyle thought she was in charge here at her late sister’s office, just like she was trying to take over at the vet clinic.
Raylene caught her lower lip between her teeth for a second, then nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” she said without looking up. “I’m sorry.”
Meredith jerked her head toward Phyllis and asked, “Who’s this?”
“Just a prospective patient, ma’am. I’ve already told her she’ll have to find another doctor to perform her gallstone surgery.”
Meredith opened the door between the waiting room and the corridor that led back into the rest of the office. She came out into the waiting room and with obviously grudging politeness said to Phyllis, “I’m sorry, but we’ve had a tragedy here. The office is actually closed. We’re just here trying to clean up some of the business affairs . . .”
“I understand,” Phyllis said. “I’m sorry I intruded.”
“No, that’s perfectly all right. You didn’t know . . . You really didn’t know?”
“About what happened to poor Dr. Baxter?” Phyllis caught herself just before she used the phrase your sister. Meredith hadn’t introduced herself, so the person Phyllis was pretending to be shouldn’t have had any idea that she was Susan’s sister.
“That’s right. I don’t see how you could have missed it. It’s been all over the newspaper and the TV.”
“Well, that explains it. I don’t read the newspaper anymore, and the only TV stations I watch are those that show reruns of all my favorite shows from forty or fifty years ago.”
Phyllis actually did watch those stations most of the time. Some people might argue the notion, but TV had been better back then as far as she was concerned. But she wasn’t really anywhere near as clueless about current events as she was making herself out to be.
Meredith went on. “Well, I’m afraid we can’t help you, but good luck with your medical situation.”
“Thank you, dear,” Phyllis said with a smile. “I suppose I should be going now.” She started to turn toward the door but paused to look through the receptionist’s window again. “And thank you, too. Raylene, was it? My, that’s a pretty name. Is it an old family name? How is it spelled?”
“It’s, uh, R-A-Y-L-E-N-E,” the young woman said. She cast a nervous glance in Meredith’s direction, as if she was worried that her former boss’s sister might get mad at her again. But she added in answer to Phyllis’s question, “It was my grandmother’s name.”
“Well, it’s beautiful, and so are you.”
Meredith said with a growing edge of impatience in her voice, “If there’s nothing else we can do for you . . .”
“No, that’s all,” Phyllis said. “Good-bye.”
Let them think she was just a dotty old woman with gallstones, she told herself as she left the office.
If either of them had anything to hide, sooner or later they would find out differently.
Chapter 16
A fter supper that evening, Phyllis told Sam about her visit to Dr. Susan Baxter’s office. Their quiet-voiced conversation took place on the back porch while Buck poked around the yard in the last of the day’s fading light.
“So I didn’t really learn much, I’m afraid,” Phyllis said. “But I did get a look at Meredith Carlyle. She was exactly like you described her, Sam.”
“I was worried I might’ve been a little too hard on her,” Sam said. “She just lost her sister, after all. That might’ve made her act, well . . .”
“Bitchier than she really is?” Phyllis shook her head. “I think most of the time stress just brings out the way we really are to start with. The filters people put in place in civilized society are down and their real selves come out. That’s why people under duress are capable of great cruelty . . . or great courage.”
“Spoken like a history teacher,” Sam said with a smile.
“History teaches us a lot.”
“So does basketball, mainly that if you want to succeed, you got to hustle.”
“So what’s our next move?” Phyllis asked.
Sam looked surprised. He said, “Shoot, I don’t know. You were always the one who figured out what we needed to do next.”
“But this is your investigation. I’m just helping, remember?”
Sam frowned in thought for a long moment, then said, “I want to find out more about whatever it was that made Hank Baxter stop bein’ Kyle Woods’s vet. If there’s any chance Woods killed Susan, it’s got to come back to that.”
“I agree,” Phyllis said with a nod. “But how are you going to find out? You said you already asked Woods, and he wouldn’t tell you anything.”
“There’s at least one other person who knows,” Sam said.
“Hank Baxter himself.”
“Yeah.” Sam sighed. “I may have to come clean with the doc and tell him what we’re doin’. I don’t know how he’ll react.”
“If he’s innocent, I’d think that he would be very grateful someone believes him and wants to help him.”
“Yeah. The worst he can do is tell me to butt out, too.”
“Those two young people who work at the clinic might know something about it,” Phyllis mused.
“Tommy and Holly? Yeah, they might. I hadn’t forgotten about ’em. That’s why I said there was at least one other person who could tell me what happened. Could be more. As a matter of fact, it might be smart to approach them first. They’re friendly enough, and they know me by now. If I ask Baxter first and he doesn’t want to tell me, he might order Tommy and Holly not to talk to me, too.”
“That makes sense.”
“I’ll go back out there in the morning,” Sam said.
“What about Susan Baxter’s funeral?” Phyllis asked. “It’s tomorrow afternoon.”
Sam scratched at his jaw, looked doubtful, and said, “We can’t very well go to that, can we? We weren’t exactly friends of the family.”
“The notice about the service didn’t say that it was private. If there are enough people there, it’s possible no one would notice us.”
“You really think we’d find out anything useful at a funeral?”
“You never know until you try,” Phyllis said.
* * *
After breakfast the next morning, Sam drove out to the vet clinic. He was going to have to come clean with Baxter’s two young assistants and admit that he was investigating Susan Baxter’s murder. He didn’t have any idea how they would react to that, but otherwise he was at a dead end.
As he approached the driveway that led to the clinic, he saw another pickup pull out from it and turn in the other direction. Sam slowed as he saw the writing on the other vehicle’s door and recognized it.
That was Kyle Woods leaving the clinic.
Another vehicle was coming up the driveway from the clinic toward the road. This was a car with a man behind the wheel. Sam eased his pickup to the side of the road as if he were stopping at one of the houses along there. He stopped and waited as the car slowed down for the driver to look both ways along the road before pulling out.
Sam recognized the man behind the wheel. He was Tommy Sanders, Hank Baxter’s assistant.
Tommy turned in the other direction as well and fell in behind Kyle Woods’s pickup. That could be perfectly innocent, Sam told himself. Just because they had left the clinic one right after the other and were going in the same direction didn’t mean Tommy was following Woods.
But it didn’t mean he wasn’t, and as far as Sam could see, there was only one way to find out.
Questioning Tommy and Holly could wait. Right now he wanted to find out where Tommy was going.
He knew he was acting purely on gut instinct as he pulled out from the side of the road where he had stopped the pickup. He had read enough Western novels and watched enough Western movies to know that sometimes a man had to play a hunch.
Tommy was about a quarter of a mile ahead of him. Sam sped up a little to narrow the gap without getting too close. He thought it was highly doubtful that Tommy would recognize his pickup, but if Sam was right behind him, the young man might glance in his rearview mirror, see his face, and realize who he was. The trick was to hang back but still stay close enough that he wouldn’t lose sight of Tommy’s car.
By the time Tommy reached US 180, also known as Fort Worth Highway and formerly US 80, the main east-west artery through town and that part of the country before the interstate came through, Sam was a couple of hundred yards behind him. Sam worried that the red light at the highway would let Tommy through the intersection but catch him. His foot got a little heavier on the gas. He couldn’t speed too much, though, or he’d risk being stopped by a Weatherford police car. That would be the end of his attempt at trailing the young veterinary assistant.
Sam made it through the light on yellow. He had seen Tommy turn left onto the highway and head toward the courthouse square. Sam felt relieved when he spotted Tommy’s car up ahead. A couple of vehicles were in between them now, which ought to make it even easier to trail the young man. Sam couldn’t be sure, but he thought he even saw Kyle Woods’s pickup farther ahead.
When the little informal procession reached the square, Sam still had two vehicles, a car and an SUV, between him and Tommy. He saw Woods’s pickup make a right onto Farm to Market Road 51 and head north. Tommy did likewise, and so did Sam.
The road to Peaster turned off this road. Sam had to fall back again as they reached the northern edge of town and traffic began to thin out, but he felt certain now that Woods was on his way back to his house and Tommy was following him for some reason. Tommy wasn’t trying to trail Woods without being spotted, though. In fact, his car was right behind the dog breeder’s pickup.
Sure enough, they both turned onto the Peaster Highway. Sam did, too. When they reached Woods’s house, Woods turned in at the driveway and pulled around beside the shed next to the dog runs. Tommy parked in the driveway in front of the office and got out of his car.
That was all Sam saw before he drove on past. He didn’t think he could get away with pulling in behind them. No tall tale he could spin would keep Woods from being suspicious of him showing up again.
A quarter of a mile farther on, Sam came to an unpaved county road. He swung into it, backed up, and turned around to drive toward Weatherford again. By the time he passed Woods’s place, Tommy’s car was empty and there was no sign of the young man. He and Woods were probably in the shed or inside the office, Sam thought.
This was pretty interesting. Hank Baxter had stopped being Kyle Woods’s vet, but clearly some connection still existed between Tommy and Woods.
Sam didn’t slow down. He drove on past and headed for town. He didn’t think Woods or Tommy would tell him what was going on if he asked them straight out.
But there might be another way to find out what he wanted to know.
* * *
When Sam got back to the vet clinic, only one car was parked in the lot. He figured it belonged to Holly, and when he went in, he found her behind the counter, confirming his guess.
“Howdy,” he said with a smile, trying to be as avuncular as possible, although considering the gap in their ages, grandfatherly might be a more apt description, he thought.
“Mr. Fletcher,” she said. “You don’t have Buck with you, do you? His appointment isn’t for a few days yet.”
“No. I just came by to see how you folks are doin’. Has Dr. Baxter come back to work yet?”
“No, he hasn’t.” Holly lowered her voice. “His wife’s funeral is today.”
“Is he goin’?” That seemed to Sam like a legitimate question to ask under the circumstances.
“He says he is. He says that Susan—the other Dr. Baxter—was his wife, and even though they were having trouble, he still loved her.”
“That lady who was here the other day . . . Susan Baxter’s sister, was she? . . . I don’t think she’ll be very happy if he shows up at the funeral.”
“No, she won’t,” Holly agreed. “But Dr. Baxter said that Meredith Carlyle wasn’t going to keep him away.” She shook her head worriedly. “I’m afraid there’s going to be more trouble.”
“Well, we can hope not,” Sam said. “How are things goin’ here at the clinic?”
“Nearly everybody has picked up their pets and taken them somewhere else. At this rate, the practice may have to shut down soon.”
“That’d be a real shame. I haven’t known you folks for long, but I can tell that all of you really care about animals.” Sam looked around. “Where’s Tommy today? Out at the barn?”
“No, he’s . . . running an errand. That’s the one bright spot, I guess. One of our old customers came by and wanted to talk to Tommy about a job.”
“You mean this fella wants to work here? Or he wants to hire Tommy?”
“He wants to hire Tommy. When I said that was a bright spot, I might have been stretching the truth a little. I’m not sure it’s a good idea. But if Dr. Baxter can’t keep the clinic going, Tommy’s going to need another job, especially if he’s going to try to attend vet school. With the economy the way it is these days, a person can’t be too picky, I guess.”
“You said this was a customer of the doc’s talkin’ about hirin’ him? Not another vet?”
“No,” Holly said. “A dog breeder. A very successful one. He’s had a number of champions.”
Sam nodded and made himself look impressed. He said, “Well, that might be a pretty good deal, I guess. Tommy would be helpin’ him with his business?”
“That’s right. There are all sorts of medications and supplements to keep track of, and some of the dogs have to have injections and things like that.”
“Show dogs, eh?” Sam chuckled. “They’re not on the juice, are they?”
“Pardon me?” Holly said with a puzzled frown.
“You know, like baseball players on steroids. They don’t do things like that with show dogs, do they?”
Holly’s face tightened up. She said, “I don’t know anything about that.”
Sam’s pulse kicked into a higher gear. He wondered if he had accidentally stumbled into the thing that had caused the dispute between Hank Baxter and Kyle Woods. Were there doping rules in dog show competitions? Sam had no idea, but he was willing to bet that some time on the computer would allow him to find out. If that was true, could a doping scandal have ruined Woods’s lucrative business? Was there enough at stake to provide a motive for murder?
