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Earp, the ancient and irritable pug I’d inherited from my Great Aunt Geraldine along with the dilapidated premises of Little Tombstone, was scratching himself again.
Earp’s daily activities generally consist (in equal parts) of dozing in the corner of my apartment kitchen with his head resting on the ample belly of Hercules, his pot-bellied pig companion, and—when not in repose—dogging the footsteps of ten-year-old Maxwell, the pug’s favorite human. Earp is waiting for crumbs to drop from the snacks the kid seems to be constantly consuming. Unfortunately, during the past week, Earp had added a third major activity to his limited repertoire. The pug had taken up scratching himself as a major pass time.
Something had to be done.
Earlier in the day, I’d taken Earp over to see Dr. Bagley at the vet clinic. Dr. Bagley had given Earp a once over and announced that the pug had mange.
“I’ll have to take a skin scraping and analyze it to know for sure what kind of mite is causing the infection,” Dr. Bagley had told me.
She’d then taken the sample, much against Earp’s will. He’d bared his teeth and growled at Dr. Bagley, but he hadn’t bitten.
He’s only actually bitten on a handful of occasions. One notable exception to Earp’s no-bite policy having been when my ex-husband, Frank, decided to land a hot air balloon in the street in front of the Bird Cage Cafe and declare his undying love for me because his mistress had left him. Frank’s I-can’t-live-without-you-speech hadn’t gone well. And Earp hadn’t been the only inhabitant of Little Tombstone who’d conspired to send my odious ex off into the sunset, but I digress. The salient point is that Earp is not a biter.
Dr. Bagley seemed unfazed by the pug’s ill-tempered outburst. I suppose she’s probably seen thousands of dogs in her long career. She can probably tell just by observation, which dogs will make good on their threats, and which will not.
“I’ll call you when I’ve had a chance to look at this sample under the microscope,” Dr. Bagley had told me after she’d deprived Earp of a sampling of his infected hide.
The vet had then bundled us off so she could deal with her next patient, a four-year-old Persian cat named Polly. Polly’s owner had informed me as to the cat’s particulars while we’d all been stuck in the clinic’s tiny reception area together. Polly had yowled her head off inside her carrier throughout the wait, which had not pleased Earp one bit, although it probably helped that the pug was half-deaf.
I’d had no such luck. Polly’s proud owner referred to the cat’s vocalizations as “singing,” but it seemed to me that Polly lacked talent as a vocalist and ought to be brushing up on her skills as a mouser if she intended to earn her keep.
Our Friday excursion to the vet had been a trying ordeal, and it was only half-over since Dr. Bagley had only proffered up a partial diagnosis on the spot. That initial visit to the clinic had concluded at ten in the morning; it was now late afternoon, and my phone was ringing.
“It’s Sarcoptic Mange,” Dr. Bagley told me. “You’ll have to come back in for a tube of ointment. I’ll be out, but Dr. Vance will be here until five.”
Dr. Reba Vance was new to Dr. Bagley’s vet clinic, but she wasn’t new to Amatista.
According to Juanita, proprietress of the Bird Cage Café and lifelong resident of the village, Reba was something of a local celebrity. Back in the day, Reba Vance had been a rodeo queen and, according to Juanita, was still quite a beauty.
After quitting the rodeo scene in her mid-twenties, Reba had belatedly gone off to college and later to vet school. Now, at thirty-six, she was finally coming back to where she’d started: the sleepy village of Amatista, New Mexico.
“She must still have family in the area?” I’d asked Juanita.
“Sort of,” she’d replied. “Blake Vance is her ex-husband.”
I had never met Blake, but apparently, he’d also been big on the rodeo circuit a decade or so back.
“I’m sure Reba makes a very good vet,” Juanita had told me. “She was always so good with horses.”
I hoped she was equally good with geriatric pugs. I was curious to meet this aging-rodeo queen-turned-veterinarian and doubly eager to relieve poor Earp of his irritating skin condition. As soon as I got off the phone with Dr. Bagley, I leashed Earp up and headed over on foot to the Amatista Vet Clinic a quarter-mile away from Little Tombstone on the south side of the village.
Earp is not big on walks, but Dr. Bagley insists he needs the exercise, so I ignored the old pug’s grumbling. I set off with a pocket full of treats in case that’s what it took to coax Earp into motion and a bottle of water and a collapsible dog dish, just in case the heat got the best of us en route.
We finally got to the clinic after stopping half a dozen times. We paused once for water and five times for tantalizing smells. Three of the olfactory detours were for irresistible patches of earth impregnated with scents undetectable to the human nose. One was for a half-eaten hamburger, which I allowed Earp to approach, and the final delay was to investigate what turned out to be a dead rat in an advanced state of decay. I had the gravest difficulty convincing the pug to leave the cadaverous rodent alone.
In the end, I had to pick Earp up and carry him for the next block before setting him down again and coaxing him into action by tossing a treat into his path.
We both arrived at Dr. Bagley’s Clinic hot, panting, and a trifle out of sorts.
There was not a single vehicle in the small, graveled parking lot outside the old concrete block clinic building, which had originally housed a gas station. Years ago, the old filling station had been driven out of business by the truck stop that had gone in a few miles further north on Highway 14.
As I pushed open the front door, a bell tinkled, announcing our arrival. The front counter, once the domain of the gas station attendant, was deserted. Neither Julia, Dr. Bagley’s office manager, nor either of her techs, Artie or Candice, responded when I called out. For that matter, neither did Dr. Vance.
To the left of the counter was the door that once led into the old double bays of the garage. The old garage was now divided into three exam rooms, Dr. Bagley’s office, and a storage room, all connected by a central hallway. I walked to the door that led into the hallway and pushed it open. I called out again—still, no answer.
I wondered if there had been some miscommunication between Dr. Bagley and Dr. Vance, or perhaps the new vet, overwhelmed by adjusting to an unfamiliar work environment, had simply forgotten that I was coming to pick up Earp’s ointment.
If that was the case, however, Dr. Vance had also forgotten to lock up when she went home.
The doors to two of the exam rooms and to the office were open. I stuck my head into all three, but they were deserted. The door to the third exam room was closed, and as I approached it and knocked, Earp growled and backed away from the door. I knocked again and pulled a treat from my pocket in an attempt to calm him down.
It didn’t work. Earp kept backing away from the door, which gave me a case of the creeps. I let go of Earp’s leash, allowed him to wriggle backward into the empty exam room directly across from the closed door, and shut him inside. I knocked once more at the closed exam room door, then tried the knob, which turned easily in my hand.
It was silly to be so jumpy, I told myself, but my voice sounded small and shaky as I called out one more time for Dr. Vance as I pushed the door open.
At first, I thought I was alone in the room, but as I rounded the waist-high counter in the middle that served as the exam table, I spotted a teal-blue cowboy boot.
I could not have imagined a more improbable scene.
A tall, willowy woman wearing a white lab coat lay sprawled face-down on the linoleum floor, her long, blond hair matted with blood. She’d obviously been hit in the back of the head with something, and I didn’t have to look far to find the weapon.
A substantial brass trophy which featured a horse on top lay at the woman’s booted feet, and next to her head someone—and I could only suppose it was the same person who’d hit her on the head—had scrawled, “Die Reba Die” in bright pink lipstick. I knew the vile message had been written with lipstick because the abandoned tube lay next to the hateful words scrawled on the linoleum.
It was one of the weirdest scenes I’d ever laid eyes on, but I didn’t take time to examine the blood-covered trophy or the lipstick message. I was far too worried about the victim.
With shaky hands, I dialed 911 and held the phone to my ear with one hand as I approached the body sprawled on the floor. I was sure the woman was dead until she let out a moan.