Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection (80 page)

C
HAPTER 9

T
ony Parker was eager to see his old friend Dr. Johnny White Cloud, and for more social reasons. He dropped Sarah Hill off at her apartment. Since she’d be on call, she’d need her rest if Jezebel wasn’t found by second shift.

Doc White Cloud and his wife Patsy were more than friends to Tony Parker. When Parker was a freshman in high school, his father died from a heart attack. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and the White Clouds became a part of his family. He worked at Doc’s clinic after school, on Saturdays, and a regular forty hours per week during the summer. He cleaned out cages, groomed and fed animals, and did other odd jobs.

Parker’s interest in veterinary medicine was born there. The White Clouds treated him like a son, not having children of their own, and after Parker’s mother died of cancer while he was overseas, the relationship seemed to help them all fill the parent/child gap.

Dog days of summer
, Parker thought as he pulled away from Hill’s apartment building. Doc had told him about the “days of the dog” when he was a teenager, working at the clinic. It was the period during the summer that the earth passed closest to Sirius, the Dog Star. According to Doc, the combined heat of it and the sun made those few weeks the hottest of the year. The “dog days” was the time dogs and humans go mad and bad things happened. It was the end of August now, and it seemed the dog days were hanging on a little longer than usual.

Parker pulled down the tall hedge-lined, gravel drive and then into the parking lot. He wasn’t the only customer of the morning. In front of the white house converted into a clinic was a well-kept black, sixty-three Chevy pickup parked between Doc’s turquoise Lincoln Continental and the white clinic van. An outside phone bell rang twice as Parker stepped out of the truck.

“Tony Parker, fancy seeing you again so soon,” Mrs. Bumfield said. She opened the driver’s side door of the old truck, and her big ugly Heinz fifty-seven whined from the back. “How ya doin’?” She held out her hand for a shake and looked over her shoulder at Eldon Bumfield as he came out of the office door. “Look who’s here, Eldon. Tony Parker, the man that saved the town of Sand Creek, Kansas, and my kitten.”

“Tony, how the devil are you?” Bumfield asked. Brown tobacco juice seeped from the corner of his overloaded cheek, and he wore what looked like the same overalls and beat-up straw hat with green plastic sun visor.

“Just fine. Good to see you, Mr. and Mrs. Bumfield. No more ferocious skunks, I hope?”

“No, sir,” Bumfield answered. “You got the last and only one, thank the good Lord. How’s that bite?”

Tony flipped his hand. “Hasn’t given me any problems.”

“I sure want to thank you again for getting my kitten out of that tree,” the woman said. “I don’t know what I woulda done. ‘Course, she wouldn’t have been up there if Dawg hadn’t been in one of his bad moods. Seems like he gets that way about once a month. ‘Think it’s some kind of male dog menopause or somethun. Lucky we had you out there for that skunk when we did.”

Mr. Bumfield looked at his wife and frowned. She caught the clue.

“Oh, me, here I am carrying on so. You know, I do that sometimes, when I’m excited about seeing somebody. Anyway, Tony, thanks for saving my Little Pussy,” she said.

Bumfield looked at her and shook his head. “Watch how you say that. Dawg might get the wrong idea.”

Mrs. Bumfield hit the man with a swipe of her homemade patchwork purse, and they all chuckled.

“So, isn’t Dawg feeling well?” Parker asked, reaching over to pet him.

“Oh, yeah,” Eldon Bumfield answered. “We just brought him in to be treated for mange. Every dog in Sand Creek has had to be treated. All thirty-five or so have had it to some extent. We were gettin’ concerned that the thirty-one human bein
’s might get it if we didn’t nip it in the bud.”

Parker stopped petting Dawg and wiped his hand on his trousers.

Bumfield reached over the side of the pickup bed and took Dawg by the collar.

“Come on, Dawg,” he said. “Now don’t you give me a hard time.”

He assisted the big beast over the side and to the ground in a clumsy skirmish, then trotted him to the office door and inside. Within fifteen seconds he had deposited Dawg and jogged back out, hustling to the pickup. His meaty upper body jiggled like Jell-O slapped with a spoon.

“Well, better go,” Bumfield said, getting into the passenger side of the truck. “Come and visit us sometime, Tony. I know Tricia would like to see you again. All she’s been talking about since yesterday is how you climbed up in that tree and rescued the kitten.”

Parker smiled, thinking of cute little Tricia and her doll and of the Bumfields’ down-home hospitality. He remembered the tapestry on their living room wall depicting a group of dogs playing poker and thought how appropriately it fit in. He waved as they pulled away.

Dr. White Cloud stepped out the office door. He was a short and stocky man with long, coarse, salt-and-pepper hair, braided into a ponytail. His darkly tanned skin was like leather, covering his large-featured face, and he wore turquoise and silver jewelry on his fingers, wrists and neck.

“Thanks again for saving my Little Pussy,” Mrs. Bumfield yelled as they drove away waving.

Doc grinned wide. “Tony, how wonderful you’ve come to visit.” He also waved to the Bumfields as the left. “And I can see you’re still proudly serving, or should I say servicing, the community.”

“Hey Doc, give me a break,” Parker said, grinning back. “How’ve you been?”

They shook hands and patted shoulders, then turned toward the door.

“Real good, Tony. Yankee over those ear mites?” Doc asked.

“Oh yeah, he’s fine. How’s that big, ugly, slobbering mutt of yours?”

“Patsy’s all right. I just try to stay out of her way.”

Parker laughed and softly backhanded the old vet on the shoulder. “I meant Red, your dog, not your wife.”

On cue, a short Native-American woman nearly as wide as she was tall came through the doorway, smiling. She wore a long white dress with large pink and blue flowers.

“Look, Patsy, honey,” Doc said, showing the woman a quick smile. “Tony’s here.”

“Tony, oh, Tony!” She ran up to Parker with her two long, braided pigtails slapping her back and gave him a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bear hug.

The old vet stepped back. “Damn, Tony, next thing you know, you’ll be saving her pussy, too.”

Patsy didn’t hear, or maybe didn’t care to hear, Doc’s foolishness. “Oh, Tony, it’s so good to see you. How you been? When are you and the family coming over for supper like you used to?”

“How about after we come back from vacation, week after next? Would that work?”

“You bet, Tony. We’ll have a nice roast. I’ll fix it up just the way you like.”

Doc patted Tony on the back. “So, you must be here to finally make me an offer on my practice and let me retire.”

“No, not yet. I have decided to quit my job and go back to school full time starting the second semester. I’ve got a year left, you know. Julie’s going to go back to teaching while I’m up at K-State. When I’m finished, then I’ll be able to make you an offer.”

“Julie mentioned you were going back to school when she brought Yankee in. Sounds good, Tony. Happy to hear it,” Doc said with a big smile. “Make sure that offer’s one I can’t refuse, okay?”

“Sure thing, Doc. You folks are going to make it to the picnic tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry to say, we’re not. Just got word Patsy’s uncle down in Ponca City passed away yesterday. He was ninety-three. Have to go to one of those family powwows, tomorrow. You know what I mean,” Doc said. “They put him in the ground on Monday, and we’ll be back that night.

“I’m sorry to hear about that, Patsy,” Tony said. He turned back to Doc. “A real powwow, huh?”

“Not really. This’ll be a white man’s wake. Patsy’s mother’s family. It’ll be the same as when Uncle Arlo died. The men sat around on the porch, talking about how they were going to miss poor old Uncle Arlo. We watched baseball on a little black and white TV while passing bottles of wine around, Ripple, I think. The women were inside doing God knows what. Whew, I had a headache from that wine for two days. It won’t be anything like your powwow last New Year’s Eve. Remember? You and Jack were juggling those antique depression glasses, and I ended up wearing Julie’s bra. Hope she’s not still mad at me for getting into her underwear drawer.”

“Naw, I’m sure she isn’t. She laughs every time she thinks about it.”

“Now that was a powwow any red man could appreciate.”

“But Doc, I’m a white man.”

“You just think you are, Tony. Deep down inside, I know you’ve got some Native American blood in you. There was
an Indian in the wood pile somewhere down the road; I’ll just bet my reputation on it.”

“Your reputation as what, Doc, a Native American or a veterinarian?”

The old vet paused for a moment. He motioned as if he was putting on Julie’s bra again. “As a transvestite!”

The two men laughed, and Patsy shook her head.

Doc said, “Damn it, Tony, we just don’t get together as much as we used to.”

“I know, Doc. Hey, maybe I can talk Jack into a poker party this next Friday night over at his place, like old times.”

“Sure, Tony. Just let me know. I promise I won’t miss it. I don’t care who dies.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

Doc nodded. “I sense, though, this time is no social visit. So if your dog isn’t sick, and you aren’t ready to buy me out, what’s up?”

Parker’s face grew solemn. “There’s been a very serious dog attack. One of your customers.”

“Oh, no! Was someone hurt bad?” Patsy asked.

“Yeah, three people were killed.”

“Oh, Lord!” Doc exclaimed. “What…? Who?”

“Alvin MacGreggor and two police officers were killed by MacGreggor’s two Great Danes.”

“No, that can’t be.” Doc frowned. “I never would have thought those dogs could hurt a flea.”

“Well, they did, but I can’t figure it out, either. The only thing that would make even a little sense would be that they had rabies. But I’m skeptical. The male’s tag shows you gave him his rabies booster the day before yesterday.”

“That’s right,” Doc confirmed. “I gave them both rabies boosters.”

“The male took a bullet through the heart. He’s in the truck. I was hoping you might be able to help figure this thing out.”

“Sure, Tony, I’ll do what I can,” Doc said, changing directions and heading toward the Jimmy. “What about the female, Jezebel?”

“She’s loose.”

Doc stopped with his hand on the tailgate of the truck. He turned to look at Parker. “Loose?”

Parker nodded and opened the back.

“When a dog howls, a man will die,” Doc said with a blank stare.

“Huh?”

“Red was barking a lot late last night, and I went outside to calm him down before the neighbors complained. I heard a strange howl. Kind of hoarse, way off in the distance. It’s an old wives tale, but the howl was so strange it made me think of it.”

Parker took the dog’s front end and pulled it out far enough for Doc to take the hindquarters, and they walked sideways with it to the clinic.

“We’ll examine him and send his head in for rabies tests,” Doc said as Patsy opened the door. She followed them in and then took her place behind the reception desk.

White Cloud and Parker walked through the waiting room and into the examination room. They laid the cumbersome beast onto a stainless-steel table on casters in the middle of the room. Dawg sat in a huge wire cage in the far corner and already rested comfortably but remained alert to the commotion they made with the body of the Great Dane. A short oriental man stood next to the sink, drying off some mirror-finished surgeon’s tools and large hypodermic needles. He wore a black T-shirt and black work pants and shoes, and had coal black hair and dark skin. He was noticeably disfigured and scarred on the left side of his face and hand and had a black eye patch over his left eye. Something about him made Tony feel uneasy.

“Oh, Tony, you haven’t met Truong yet, have you?”

An unexplainable chill in the warm morning air made Parker shiver as Doc made the introduction.

“No.” He thrust out his hand. “Glad to meet you, Truong. I’m Tony Parker.”

Truong flinched at Parker’s hand, appearing surprised, but shook it anyway and bowed, face down, never meeting Tony eye to eye.

“Truong’s kind of shy, but he’s a damn good worker. And he’s cheap,” the old vet said. “Him and old Yankee really hit it off when Julie brought him in a couple of weeks ago.”

“Nothing against you, Truong, but Yankee would hit it off with anybody, even a burglar if the big sissy didn’t run and hide first,” Parker said.

“You be surprised,” Truong said, with a heavy oriental accent, head still bowed. “Yankee might be gallant warrior, when need be.”

“Truong, go get the Alvin MacGreggor file, will you?” Doc said, looking down at the large dog’s body. Truong quickly folded the white towel, draped it on a towel rack and left the room.