“Barbecue season,” her dad replied. “Summertime.” He squinted into the air, trying to call up the memory. “Can’t have been last summer. I was still pretty much out of it. Didn’t go shopping on my own. Maybe it was the summer before? Or the year before that?”
“Whenever it was, we’re lucky this thing didn’t explode and leave us cleaning apricots and sticky apricot juice from all these shelves,” Sonny said. “Why don’t you get a bag, and we’ll put this away separately.”
She carefully combed each shelf, but luckily the can of apricots was the only time bomb she discovered. The contents of each shelf got divided—what could go, what should stay—and the keepers were returned to the cabinet. By the time they were done, they’d accumulated a good-sized collection of stuff that Mike shouldn’t be eating anymore—canned hash, sloppy Joe mix, Vienna sausage, jars of meat sauce, and a lot of salty canned vegetables.
“Canned potatoes?” Sunny said in disbelief, hefting a can. “You couldn’t just cook a potato?”
“They’re cut up in little chunks.” Mike defended his choice. “Good for making potato salad.”
They also contributed some dry food to the collection. For some reason, Mike was heavily overstocked on corn muffin mix. And he also added most of their boxes of flavored gelatin. “I had more than enough of that stuff in the hospital,” he said. “And when I came home here, flat on my back, I ate it to please you. No more. If I get really sick again, let’s stick with applesauce.”
Mike went into the garage and returned with a cardboard carton marked “Books.”
“One of the ones you already emptied,” he quickly explained when he saw the look of dismay on Sunny’s face. “I figured if it could stand up to your library, it should be able to hold this stuff.”
Sunny agreed and, after they got everything stowed away, asked, “Do you want to drive over now?”
“It’s getting kind of late.” Mike glanced out the window. The light was already fading. “We’ll both go tomorrow. That’s when Helena will be there,” he added in as offhand a tone as possible.
“Okay,” Sunny said, reaching up to the top of the fridge to pet Shadow while he nuzzled against her hands. That let her hide her grin from Mike.
If he wants to impress his lady friend, it’s not my business.
“
Besides,” Mike went on, “I’ve got some buddies to call. After I tell them what we found in our cabinets, maybe they’ll decide to clear theirs out and donate, too.”
*
Sunday morning was
bright but chilly, although it warmed up in the afternoon. Mike finished his three miles of hiking around the outlets, then they loaded their donations into his car.
“Where is this food pantry?” Sunny asked as they drove off. “Is it downtown?”
Mike shook his head. “Real estate there is too expensive. They’re in a store on Stone Road—what used to be a store. Place went bust, and the landlord can’t get a new tenant, so he’s letting the Elmet Ladies use it.”
Sunny nodded. Even in a long-settled development like the New Stores, there was always one hard-luck shop. Sunny had seen three tenants, for example, in the space next door to the MAX office. As a landlord, though, it was probably against Ollie Barnstable’s principles to let the place out for free.
As they neared their destination, Sunny recognized the place. It was a stand-alone store with a good-sized parking lot. First it had been a showroom for high-end car stereos and alarms, and then a guy had tried to operate a computer repair shop. Its last incarnation had been as a ninety-nine-cent store, and even that had failed.
“They couldn’t get people out here even to buy cheap crap,” Mike said, nodding at the number 99 that still showed in the plastic sign over the door. “They left it up because it’s the 99 Elmet Ladies.”
A hand-painted poster saying
FOOD PANTRY
had been taped to the inside of the window.
Sunny got out their box of food. Mike held the door for her as she entered the store. It was a very bare-bones arrangement. A makeshift counter stretched across the interior space, cutting off the back corner of the former store. It had obviously been knocked together out of plywood, although an attempt had been made to create a homier atmosphere by stapling gingham-style plastic tablecloths over the bare wood. Behind the counter, industrial-style metal bookcases stood at right angles against the walls. Helena Martinson and several other women stood stocking or rearranging the contents. While the shelves weren’t quite bare, they weren’t overflowing either.
Mrs. Martinson spotted them and went to the counter. “Oh, thank you, Mike! And Sunny,” she added.
“Not many customers,” Sunny said, glancing around. Except for herself, Mike, and the Elmet Ladies, the store was empty.
“Officially, we’re closed on Sundays,” Mrs. Martinson explained, “except for real emergencies—and to restock.” She began unloading the carton they’d brought, arranging the contents into different piles.
“Ah,” she said in satisfaction when she came across the hams. “We try to come up with three meals a day for each customer, but it’s hard to offer anything balanced when we’re depending on donations. Zack Judson tries to help, giving us some of his overstock, and we’re trying to shame the big supermarkets into helping, too.”
She noticed the hand-lettered label on the side of the box. “If you’ve got any books you’d like to get rid of, Sunny, we’ll be holding a sale next month.” Her cheeks got a little pink with embarrassment, but she continued her pitch. “We’ve got to raise funds any way we can.”
“I’ll see what I can do about that,” Sunny promised, remembering the hectic job of getting her stuff out of her old apartment. “Thinning the herd might be a good idea. It will give us a bit more space in the garage, although Shadow will miss the piles of boxes. He likes to play at mountain climbing.”
“Toby likes to climb, too.” Helena bobbed her head a little, grimacing. “At least he tries. Most of the time he tumbles and takes something down with him.”
“Youthful energy,” Sunny said hopefully. “Sooner or later, he’ll settle down.”
“It’s a lot more responsibility than I realized, taking on a pet.” Mrs. Martinson finished her sorting and called over a couple of the other ladies. “Maybe I should have listened to Carolyn Dowdey—”
“Carolyn Dowdey!” One of the other women made the name sound like a bad word. “When we set up the 99 Elmet Ladies and made plans, she was right in the middle of everything, voicing her opinions on how to do everything. But when it comes to volunteering to help out—I haven’t seen her in almost a year.”
“Her cat was very sick, and Carolyn had to spend a lot of time taking care of her,” Mrs. Martinson offered weakly.
But now she has the time to go and squawk at Zack Judson,
Sunny thought.
“Towards the end, she had to give the poor animal some sort of shots,” Helena Martinson went on.
The other volunteer loaded up her arms with one of Helena’s piles. “You see it in here,” she said, “like this one family. They were doing fine until the husband lost his job at the shipyard. The wife sold Avon or something, but even with that and unemployment, they had a hard time feeding themselves and a kid, much less a pet. And when their dog got sick, what could they do? A vet’s bill comes to about a month’s rent.”
Sunny nodded, but she was still chewing over Helena Martinson’s last comment.
If Shadow got sick, would I have the heart to stick him with needles?
She wasn’t sure.
Sunny let her
father chat with Mrs. Martinson for a while, and then she and Mike returned home. As they opened the door, Shadow came out of the living room and strolled over to give them a sniff. Apparently, they didn’t bring home any interesting scents. The cat just turned around and searched out a new patch of sunlight to nap in.
“That looks like a pretty good plan,” Mike said, looking down at Shadow. “But maybe we could have some lunch first.”
They sat at the kitchen table, making some inroads into the sliced turkey that Sunny had bought.
“Pretty interesting, what the 99 Elmet Ladies are trying to do with that food pantry,” Mike said in between bites of his sandwich.
Sunny nodded. “It looks like practical help that a lot of people around here need.” She found herself thinking about the story Mrs. M.’s friend had told about the family torn between getting treatment for the dog or paying the rent. What had Carolyn Dowdey talked about? Intravenous treatments and surgery? With the salary Sunny made at MAX, how would she afford something like that if Shadow got sick? He’d been lucky enough to bounce back quickly from his misadventures so far, and it helped that Jane seemed to feel she owed Sunny favors. But if Shadow really got knocked down by some illness, how could she watch Shadow suffer?
“Earth to Sunny.” Mike waved a hand in front of her eyes. “You’ve been sitting there for a couple of minutes, looking at that sandwich as if you wanted to strangle it.”
“Sorry.” She looked over at him. “I was thinking about that family with the sick dog. Could Jane do something with the animal fund to help out people like that?”
“It’s not easy, getting people around here to accept charity,” Mike said slowly. “I bet it must kill some of those folks, just going to the food bank, and Helena and the other ladies try to keep it as nonofficial as possible. What you’re talking about, there’d have to be hoops to jump through—
administration
.” He made that sound like a bad word. “Plus, you’re poking your nose into how Jane makes a living. That can get kinda . . . personal.”
Sunny thought about that for a minute. “I can see what you mean,” she said finally. “But then, people get awfully personal about vets. That’s something else I should talk to Jane about.”
She got on the phone to see if Jane was busy and got an invitation to come over and visit the pet hospital. Jane let her in and led Sunny to what she called “the observation wing.” It was just a room equipped with cages for patients who had to stay overnight. Jane did some housekeeping chores and gave quick checkups to the three dogs and two cats who were in residence.
“I have a suggestion for you and Tobe to consider,” Sunny said as Jane worked. “Could Martin have been killed by a dissatisfied customer?”
Jane sighed. “There are certainly enough of them.” She put on a pair of heavy gauntlets to deal with a hissing cat that kept making clawing gestures at her. “And not this kind either.”
She succeeded in calming the cat down and checking her vital signs. When Sunny complimented her, Jane replied, “That was easy compared to dealing with the humans. They come in half hysterical because their pet is sick. And if you make the animal better, well, that’s your job, isn’t it? But if, God forbid, poor little Bobo doesn’t get better, well, then you’re a worthless quack. Worse, you’re a money-grubbing quack.”
She shook her head. “Look at you and Shadow. I suggested a treatment that you could take care of by yourself. In a lot of cases like that, people will come back to me with a pet that’s still limping. They ‘couldn’t find the time’ to take care of the animal. I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised. Most people can’t find the time to take care of themselves. So many of the illnesses among people today could be treated with diet and exercise. Heck, a lot of them could’ve been avoided in the first place with diet and exercise.”
Sunny nodded, thinking of her father.
“Instead, though, people wind up going to the doctor to ask for a pill.” Jane looked disgusted. “I try to see if the animal’s human partner can be depended on to help in treatment. Martin, who had a lot more experience, automatically wrote the humans off. He’d do procedures that hurt the animals a lot more than home treatment would.”
“Because of money?” Sunny asked.
“Maybe—in later days,” Jane admitted. “But he also had stories of patients coming in much worse because their owners couldn’t follow a simple course of treatment. Martin argued that he was merely protecting his professional reputation. He put a lot of money, training, and time into his practice. He said he didn’t want to depend on some civilian who might screw up even simple instructions.”
She wrote a couple of notes on patients’ charts. “For my part, if I think a pet’s human is trustworthy—like you—I’ll suggest a home treatment option where it’s feasible. Otherwise, it’s my professional responsibility to see that the animal gets the necessary care. And if that means a paying visit, so be it.”
Sunny remembered Mike’s comment about poking her nose into how people make their living. But Jane had a point.
And the vet was on a roll now. She continued, “It’s not an easy job, Sunny. I treat the pet, but I’ve got to deal with the human side of the partnership. Sometimes that’s difficult. It can take people a while to come to grips with the fact that their pet is extremely ill—or worse, that their pet can’t really be cured. While that process goes on for the human, I have to make sure that the pet isn’t suffering.”
Jane turned to survey her patients in their cages. Some of them were pacing around. Most just lay in a corner, looking unhappy. Sunny couldn’t tell whether their unhappiness came from boredom or illness.
“Sometimes I have to extend treatment longer than I’d like to—beyond what I think is humane,” Jane admitted. “But that’s because the human can’t bring himself—or herself—to make a decision about ending the pet’s suffering, not because it’s adding a bit more profit to my bottom line.”
Sunny nodded somberly. “The other day, I heard about someone who had to give her cat injections, and I was wondering how much harder would it be, deciding to end things for him, if he were so sick—”
“I think you would make the right choice,” Jane said quietly. “Sometimes, it’s worth doing everything you can. But sometimes you realize that it’s selfish, keeping a pet with you when the animal is in terrible pain.”
“I hope you’re right.” Sunny shivered a little, even though the room was warm. “But it must be a terrible decision to make. And it’s easy to see how some people could end up blaming the doctor.”
“Even the nicest folks can get pretty nasty,” Jane agreed. “You have to let them vent their feelings, and if you can, help them get through it. You might not believe me, Sunny, but I think grief counseling comes into this. It’s like losing a member of your family. You’re still pretty new to the experience of having a pet. You have to go through this kind of loss yourself to understand what I’m saying. The problem is, dealing with that kind of grief is a case for a human psychologist, not a vet. We try to do what we can. Whenever we had a euthanasia case, we’d give the person a DVD to watch.”
She gave Sunny an embarrassed smile. “Maybe it doesn’t sound like much, but a lot of people have told me it helped.”
Her expression darkened a little. “Martin and I had a long-running argument over those damned discs. He used to give them to people, and then tack a charge onto their bill—at a big markup.”
I can’t tell if it’s grief or anger,
Sunny thought.
But Jane is still thinking a lot about Martin.
“
It took a long time, but I finally convinced him that giving the disc as a gift was the decent thing to do. It’s weird, what you count as a success in a marriage. Fact is, he left not long after that.”
Jane knelt by one of the cages, petting the dog inside. “I wonder sometimes what Martin did when he set up his own practice. Did I really change his mind, or did he go back to charging folks for that little bit of comfort?”
“I can’t answer that,” Sunny said, determined to change the subject. “But I think you have a lot to talk about with Tobe Phillips.”
Jane glanced up at her. “What do you mean?”
“From what you say about vets in general, there are probably a lot of people who were seriously annoyed with Martin in particular.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Jane said.
“So you should mention that to Tobe,” Sunny explained, “and he should mention it to Detective Trumbull.”
“If my own practice is anything to go by, the detective would find himself with a lot of possible suspects,” Jane admitted. “But lots of people grouse about the treatments, or the costs. I don’t ever remember a dissatisfied client putting a vet to sleep,” Jane joked. “Sorry, gallows humor.” She smiled, then frowned. “Checking out all those people, though—that’s going to be a major distraction. He’ll end up wasting time that should be used to find the real killer.”
Sunny took a deep breath. How to put this delicately? “Finding the killer isn’t your concern, or Tobe’s. It’s Trumbull’s job. You’re just trying to make sure you don’t get accused of something that you didn’t do.”
Let’s face it,
Sunny added silently.
Martin Rigsdale was not a nice guy. He cheated on you, he was probably cheating on his new girlfriends, no doubt he cheated his patients—he cheated the Ukrainian mob, for heaven’s sake. You can be sad that things didn’t turn out as you might have hoped, even mad at the guy. But that’s about as much as you should invest in Martin. If Trumbull finds whoever murdered him, fine. But if it remains an unsolved mystery forever, it’s not gonna break my heart.
Jane might not be sure about distracting Mark Trumbull, but she was apparently willing to be distracted herself. “I still can’t get over seeing Toby—Tobe—after all these years,” she exclaimed. “He looks good.”
“And since he’s in court all day, I guess he’s either overcome or outgrown his old problem.”
Jane’s mouth dropped open. “Yikes! I’d forgotten all about that.”
Sunny looked at her in disbelief. “You forgot that we nicknamed him Toby P. Philpotts, because he always had pee in his middle?”
“Stop it!” Jane begged, trying to stifle giggles. Then she got thoughtful. “Is that a problem you can outgrow?”
“I bet they have pills for it now,” Sunny told her. “‘Ask your doctor if Pee-no-more is right for you.’”
“Or maybe there’s something to do with tubing,” Jane suggested. “Like a stadium buddy.”
“Don’t even start going there,” Sunny warned her. “My dad drove over half of the Northeast, delivering salt. When I asked him about bathroom breaks, he told me about the trucker’s very personal assistant. All the fun of a catheter, but with a—ah—external connection, if you catch my drift.”
Jane made a face. “Gross!”
“Says the lady who tells stories about vomiting dogs while we’re trying to eat lunch,” Sunny said. “I guess the device probably exists. What I don’t know is if my dad actually used it, or if he just used the story to keep me out of his dresser drawers.”
“I’d say that would work—either way,” Jane replied with a grin. Her tone changed as she went on. “Let’s hope that Tobe’s problem is history. From what we saw, he grew up to be a really nice guy—as well as a nice-looking one.”
Oh, wonderful.
That critical voice from the back of Sunny’s head joined the conversation.
Now we’re back in high school talking about what’s gross and who’s cute?
Sunny squelched the complaints. She’d rather hear Jane talking like this instead of rehashing old fights with Martin or stressing over Trumbull. “Yeah,” she agreed, “Tobe does seem nice.”
“I wonder if he’s available,” Jane idly asked.
“Oh, come on,” Sunny said. “You didn’t check his finger or do the office once-over? How out of practice are you?”
“And I suppose you got the full story, Ms. Ace Reporter?” Jane shot back.
“I noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and that there were no pictures of a wife or kids on his desk or bookcase.”
“So—what?” Jane asked. “He’s single?”
“Maybe, though from what I understand, single guys don’t usually become law partners,” Sunny objected. “If a person is going to be that involved in a firm, the other partners want to make sure he’s settled.” She shrugged. “Or he may be just very, very good at what he does, and they wanted to keep him. You mentioned your marriage and your divorce, which gave him an opening. He did say that he’d seen worse divorces than yours, but he didn’t add anything personal there.”
“So what’s the bottom line on his availability?” Jane pressed.
Sunny shrugged her shoulders and threw out her hands. “Insufficient information.” She grinned at Jane. “But probably worth more research.”
Jane laughed, but shook her head. “If you’re anything to go by, I’d have to say that reporters are very, very strange.”
But we have needs, too,
Sunny thought.
If you’re chasing Will Price, can’t I go after Tobe?
That was something she couldn’t say out loud. Sunny picked her words carefully. “Speaking of distractions, you’d better remember that Tobe is your lawyer. He’s got to keep his eyes open and his mind clear for the duration.”
“Oh, come on.” Jane’s cheeks got a little pink. “That’s something that even these guys in the cages know about. Don’t poop where you eat.”
“I don’t think pooping is the activity I’d worry about,” Sunny told her.
Jane’s face got pinker. “Okay, point taken. Sheesh.”
Jane was a little teed off now, ready to leave the topic of Tobe Phillips. But under that, Sunny caught a flash of loneliness in the pretty vet’s eyes as she turned back to her patients.
*
They chatted a
little longer while Jane finished up at the pet hospital. As they stepped outside, Sunny glanced at the sky above. Clouds were gathering, but she still considered suggesting that they stop off for a cup of coffee. Maybe they could even stop at Spill the Beans and have a whoopie pie. But her finances argued against that course. After bribing a tobacconist and shelling out for a breakfast that Will didn’t even eat, Sunny couldn’t take on any more unaccustomed expenses this week. And no way was she about to let Jane treat her again.