The sun was fast disappearing. The wind was rising. I hadn't bothered to wear a jacket, but the temperature must have dropped into the low fifties. My teeth started chattering.
Each outside run had its own door that gave onto the back lawn. Each was closed with a heavy padlock to prevent vandals and thieves from opening the doors and either chasing the animals out or hurting them.
Both Eli and I had keys to all those padlocks. We also had cell phones.
Mine sat on the front seat of my truck ten feet away in the parking lot. My key ring hung from the truck's ignition. The keys to those padlocks were on my key ring.
I couldn't climb the fence. The holes in the wire were barely large enough for my big toe, and on top of the fence three strands of barbed wire were set so that they leaned inside the kennel at a forty-five degree angle. Any animal that actually made it to the top of the fence was faced with the insoluble problem of that barbed wire.
The cougar hadn't managed to escape. I was older and much less agile. Beside, I didn't have claws.
Even if Loba wanted to help me, only a circus dog trained to do the trick could have raised that inside steel bar. It would have taken a big, strong dog-no Jack Russell terriers need apply, thank you.
The sun had dropped below the roof line of the kennel. I hunkered down against the brick wall to absorb what heat remained.
Sooner or later somebody would find me.
Loba had meanwhile continued to batter the door.
Suddenly I heard an ominous crack. The wood was starting to splinter.
Chapter 32
In which Loba nearly wins the day
If Loba managed to break through that door, all I had to defend myself was a bucket of dirty water and a mop with a wooden handle. Maybe I could jam it between her jaws until I could get inside and shut her out.
More likely I'd wind up jamming my forearm between her jaws while she chewed on it.
Better than my throat.
"Maybe Momma was right. I should have married a Delta planter and spent my days having tea parties. You hear that, wolf? You are making me question my vocation."
Inside I heard a thud as Loba sank to the concrete floor. Worn out, poor thing. Good.
"Nobody wants to hurt you. You and I have a lot in common. You've lost Marion. I've lost Morgan. You don't understand what's happened to you. Neither do I. We know we're miserable. You figure it's got to be somebody's fault. Me too."
Loba continued to pant. I leaned over to look through the slit.
I nearly lost my nose.
Loba snarled and tried to drive her canines through the small opening straight into my face.
I waited until I heard her thud onto the concrete once more. "So much for sweet talk. At least doctors get some appreciation occasionally. Vets are the Rodney Dangerfields of this world, I swear, wolf. The pay's lousy, the hours are crummy, and the conditions frequently suck. My patients have stomped, bitten, slashed, kicked, and generally smacked me around. Now you want to chew my face off."
Loba gave a great sigh. I heard the click of her toenails as I crossed the enclosure. A moment later I caught the sound of lapping.
"You go ahead and drink all you like, you blasted-critter-you. Right now I'd be happy to share that bowl with you. God, I am spittin' cotton."
I peeked through the slit again. Loba's head was buried in her water bowl. I quietly worked the handle of my mop through the opening. Maybe I could raise that bar before Loba finished drinking.
Without warning the handle was wrenched from my hands. The soggy mop hit me squarely in the chest and sent me sprawling. I heard the snap of wood, grasped the handle and yanked it out of the slit.
Or at least as much of it as remained. The jagged stob was now two feet shorter than it had been. Inside Loba growled, snarled, and tossed her new toy around.
"Drop it, damn you!" I slapped the door with the flat of my hand. "You could get splinters in your innards, you dimwitted hound!"
I kicked the door and yelped when my big toe collided with the wood. "Somebody get me out, dammit!" I stormed to the far end of the run. Where was Eli? Loba had been quiet for several minutes. Probably seeding her intestines with splinters that I would have to fish out under anesthetic.
I tip-toed to the door to the den and put me ear to the jamb.
Loba growled.
"You dad-dratted lupine bitch," I shouted. "To think I felt sorry for you. You deserve to freeze in northern Minnesota. See how you get along with a bunch of wild wolves who haven't been carried around on silver platters. I am not a poodle. If one of us winds up needing stitches, it's going to be you and not me, you got that?"
"Maggie, what on earth are you yelling at? Come out of there."
I jumped and whirled. Eli stood outside.
"I saw your truck when I pulled into the clinic parking lot. I was going to go straight home when I caught a glimpse of that red shirt you're wearing, so I walked over. Come on out of there."
"Would you kindly tell me how? That dad-blasted wolf locked me in." I said. At that point Loba, who had no doubt heard Eli's voice, began to hurl her body against the inside of the door once more.
"What is she doing in there?" Eli asked.
"She is doing her dead-level best to tear through that door and then through me. She has been at it for the last hour."
"Maggie, where are your keys to the padlock?"
"Hanging from the ignition of my truck."
"Right beside your cell phone, no doubt."
"Don't start."
"How many times have I made you promise to keep that cell phone in your pocket at all times?"
"I thought I'd finish cleaning up Loba's run in five minutes."
"What if I hadn't spotted you in here? What if I'd gone straight home?"
"You or the girls would have hunted me up when I wasn't home to give you dinner."
Eli held up her hands. "It is kind of funny."
"Eh!"
Two minutes later I stepped onto the lawn in front of the kennel, took key and padlock from Eli and relocked the gate. "Now all we have to do is get Loba back where she belongs."
"Why bother?"
"She can't spend the night in there."
"I don't see why not."
"Because Duane will walk into that office to pick up his cleaning stuff for the kennels at six-thirty tomorrow morning and get the fright of his life is why not."
"You told me Lanier Polman said this thing was a sweetie-pie," Eli said as we started around to the back door of the clinic.
"It was. We bonded, or I thought we did. Ear scratches, tummy rubs, complete submission behavior."
"Your or hers?"
I considered decking her. "I knew she'd probably be upset after Marion left, but I figured if I just left her alone for a while, she'd settle down and accept the situation. She didn't seem to need medication to chill her out."
"Another miscalculation on your part. So how do we get her back outside, 0 Dances with Wolves?" Eli leaned against the wall. "Looks pretty hopeless to me."
"We could shoot her with the tranquilizer pistol, but I hate to take the chance. We haven't weighed her, so the dose would have to be guesswork. I'm already worried about the splinters from the mop she bit off."
"She did what?
"Didn't you notice I was only carrying half a mop?"
"Good grief," Eli said.
"Okay, how's this? I put food and tranquilizer into her dish, and while she's eating it, we lower a rope over her head from above and snub it up tight. Just like Peter and the Wolf. Then we open the door of the cage, race across, raise the bar to the outside, and slip back out into the office. Then we go fix dinner."
"Which we do you see as sneaking past her and lifting that bar?"
"You're faster."
"I'm also smarter. Somebody's got to go in that cage, pull up the bar and open the door. I promise you, hemo sabe, it ain't gonna be me. There's a twelve-foot-one-minute period when one of us will be locked in w
ith a poodle-chomping carnivore harboring a grievance. It's your wolf. You do it."
"Fine. You just make damned sure you keep that lasso tight."
I broke up a tranquilizer pill, mixed it in with a can of dog food, and slipped it under the wire into the cage. I snatched my fingers out an instant before the wolf stuck her muzzle under the wire and snapped at them.
"Are you planning to wait until that tranquilizer takes effect?"
"Not if I can help it. Get ready with that lasso."
Eli stood on top of a small table beside the cage and took careful aim with the loop.
The wolf raised her eyes to see what was happening above her head.
Eli dropped the loop, pulled it tight around her neck, and snubbed it around the steel pipe that supported one comer of the wire. "Go, Maggie! "
I was on my way back, mission accomplished, when Eli yelled, "Come on, blast it! I can't hang onto her much longer! She weighs a ton."
I opened the door to the corridor.
Suddenly the wolf leapt straight up, twisted her body a hundred and eighty degrees in mid-air, and bit through the lasso.
It split as cleanly as though it had been sliced with a scalpel.
I screamed, jumped backward through the door and slammed it just as the wolf threw herself against it.
With no tension in the lariat, Eli teetered on the edge of the table she was standing on. "Help!"
I caught her.
Eli scowled at the bitten end of her lariat. "I don't know who you're billing, Maggie, but make damned sure you include the cost of a new rope."
"And a new mop."
Loba shook offthe rope, picked it up in her teeth and trotted cheerfully into her outside run. She sank onto her haunches and began to worry the rope as though it were a particularly nasty copperhead.
"She should settle down now," Eli said.
"Right. She's happy. She thinks she's won."
Eli walked across the lawn toward her cottage. "Get yourself home, Maggie. And take a shower before you fix dinner. You smell like Loopy Loup. "
Chapter 33
In which Maggie makes an announcement
"Maggie," Lanier Polman said when I walked in my kitchen door. "Where on earth have you been?"
At my heels, Eli said glumly, "You don't want to know," then she cheered up. "Actually, you do, since it's your fault."
I left them to it and ran up the back stairs and into my bedroom. I stripped off my clothes, showered, and called Patsy. "You owe me." I told her what had happened, then I hung up and called Sarah in Los Angeles. No need to tell her I was calling because I'd been scared of being savaged by a wild wolf.
"How are the wild fires and mud slides?" I said, then smacked myself on the forehead. Great way to start.
"No worse than the tornadoes in Tennessee," she replied. She sounded harried.
"Did I call at a bad time?"
"Actually, yes. I'm on myway to Thailand to scout locations. I have to pack and catch a plane to Tokyo."
"Is it safe?"
"A good deal safer than dealing with sick horses and nippy dogs the way you do. I don't think there are any man-eating tigers where we'll be."
"How about cobras and bamboo snakes and Maoist guerillas?" I asked.
"No guerillas. No go-rillas either. I'll probably be staying in a fourstar hotel."
"Maybe I'll come visit."
"God no!" She must have realized how that sounded, because she said in a more conversational voice, "I'll probably be working twenty hours a day." I heard her deep breath. "I'll be home for Christmas. Are you managing all right?"
"Sure."
"Things okay at the clinic?"
"Going great guns."
"And home?"
What did she want me to say? I'm miserable and lonely? That would do neither one of us any good. "I'm staying busy." I hesitated. "You'll be working twenty hours a day-more than I do. We're not that different, are we, Sarah?"
"I just have to please one director. Look, I have to run. Take care of yourself"
"I love you," I said, but to a dial tone. I scratched Bear's ears. "Well, that went well."
Lanier met me at the foot of my back stairs. "Sorry, Maggie." Then she grinned and spoiled the contrition all to heck. She was beginning to thicken around the waist a bit, but she looked beautiful and prosperous, not at all the waif I had met when she came to interview with Dr. Parmenter. She wore beautifully cut slacks and a silk shirt in a dark cerise that complimented her tan skin and streaked brown hair perfectly.
"You didn't tell me we were going formal," I said. I had tossed on clean slacks and a sweatshirt. "Whatever 's in the oven smells good. Bread pudding?"
"Yep. Heather brought a big salad and Vickie brought Country Captain. "
Country Captain is chicken cooked with rice, gravy, raisins and almonds. It's as Southern as spoon bread. Done by a good cook like Vickie, it's divine.
"I need to set the table," I said and started for the dining room.
"All done," said Heather from the doorway. "When you weren't here, we assumed you were out on a call, so we fixed everything." She eased her back. "I think I've about reached the limit of these maternity jeans. The stretchy panel in front refuses to stretch any more."
"Be thankful, Heather Louise," Vickie Anderson said. She lifted a glass filled with a suspiciously dark highball, and tossed her exuberant head of red hair. "You gestate only nine months. Horses are pregnant eleven and a half, sometimes longer."
"And elephants do a full two years," said Eli. "Tell Heather and Vickie why you're late, I dare you."
"I figured they'd all know by the time I got here, Doctor Mouth of the South."
"Maggie got trapped by the big, bad wolf." Eli giggled.
Lanier was hunting through my kitchen drawers. A second later she came up with salad tongs. These women knew more about my house than I did. "I am so sorry! I swear I've never seen Loba act like anything except a perfect lady."
"The poodle attack ought to have given us both a clue." I leaned against the kitchen counter. "It's not really your fault. Poor little bitch."
"Can you stand it one more day?"
"Sure, now that I know what I'm dealing with. I'll keep her on mild tranquilizers. Maybe I can even get back on speaking terms with her. Tell Marion she's doing fine. No sense in making the poor woman any more miserable than she is already."
After we had all finished seconds of Lanier 's bread pudding, I clinked my glass. "Hush, everybody, I have a proposal to make."
The six heads turned to her.
"You all know Morgan wanted me to retire when he turned sixtyfive this year."
"Yeah, but nobody thinks you'd have done it," Vickie said and refilled her wine glass. She'd brought a nice Reisling to serve with dessert.
I ignored her. "Eli and I have been talking about taking in a third partner for the last couple of years. So, I thought, maybe one of you would be interested in buying my half of the practice. Or two of you might want a quarter each."
The room erupted in noise.
"But, Aunt Maggie, what can you do if you don't work?" Susan asked.
I took a deep breath. "I intend to travel."
"For pity's sake, haven't you given up that idiotic retirement idea yet?" Eli snapped. Her mouth set in a hard line and her eyes narrowed.
I avoided her eyes and turned to others. "Anybody interested? Heather, what about you? You're still working pickup at the emergency clinic, aren't you? You don't have a regular job yet."
"Actually, I'm pretty much working full time at the experimental station keeping records for Rick. At least until the baby's born, and then I'm going to try to be a stay-at-home mom for a year. Rick and I couldn't possibly afford to buy a partnership, but unless you're set on a woman, he might be interested in joining your practice as an employee to make some extra money. He loves his heifers, but it's kind of a dead end job."
"You've got the cart before the horse," Vickie said. "Seems to me we ought to try w
orking some at the clinic. See if it's a decent fit. Maybe have Maggie work with us in our practices some. See how we do things."
"Good idea," Eli said. "If Maggie doesn't come to her senses and actually tries to go through with this nitwittedness, I'm the one who'll have to get used to a new partner."
"Eli, you'd work with Count Dracula if he could deliver a calf," I said. "Heather, do you think Rick would let me visit the experimental station? I haven't been down there in ten years."
"Sure," Heather said. "Rick loves to show off his girls. We're starting to artificially inseminate on Friday. You could come down and give us a hand."
"Well, Eli? Think you could spare me Friday morning for a couple of hours?"
Eli threw up her hands. "Why not?"
"How about the rest of you? Any takers?"
"Not me," Lanier said. "I have a thriving practice in midtown, thank you very much." She looked at Susan. "Maybe the kid, here, can actually go to college."
"I thought Daddy was supposed to pay for college."
Lanier stammered. "He-he is, but... "
"But he's never done one damn thing he was supposed to do since he dumped us," Susan said.
"Susan, watch your language."
"Why? Y'all say damn and hell and a whole lot worse."
"We're grown women, and we shouldn't. You are fourteen years old. You definitely shouldn't.".
"It's a bad habit," I said. "When you're a vet like your mother..."
"A what?" Susan laughed, but there was no mirth in it. "I can't ever become a vet, even if I wanted to, which I don't."
"Okay, if you don't want to, but you're certainly smart enough," Heather said. "Lanier says your scores on the SAT are so high right now you probably won't have to take it again. Your mother probably won't have to pay for college anyway. You'll get scholarship offers out the wazzoo."
"Yeah, it'll help their affirmative action stats. Let's face it, I couldn't go to vet school. Attitudes may have changed, but not that much. Can't you hear the good of boys? 'Come on honey, roll faster, you can catch that cow."'
"But you can walk," Heather said. "I've seen you."
"Pul-leeze," Susan said and rolled her eyes. "Okay, how's this? 'Come on, honey, let's see you hobble after that cow."'
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