Sneak Peek of Home on the Mange

Chapter One

Earp, the ancient and irritable pug I’d inherited from my Great Aunt Geraldine along with Little Tombstone, was scratching himself again.

Earp’s daily activities generally consisted (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 dogging the footsteps of Maxwell, the pug’s favorite human, while waiting for crumbs to drop from the snacks the kid seemed to be constantly consuming. Unfortunately, during the past week, Earp had added another 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 in to see Dr. Bagley, who up until quite recently had been the village of Amatista’s only vet.

Dr. Bagley had given Earp a once over and announced that Earp 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 proceeded to take the sample, much against Earp’s will. He’d bared his teeth and growled at her, but he did not bite. He’s only actually bitten on a handful of occasions. A notable exception to Earp’s no-bite policy being when my ex-husband, Frank, decided to make an appearance 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. Earp hadn’t been the only inhabitant of Little Tombstone who’d conspired to send my odious 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 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.

The 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 mid-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 seven this evening.”

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 early 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.

I was curious to meet this aging-rodeo queen-turned-veterinarian and doubly eager to relieve poor Earp of his irritating skin condition, so 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 stopped 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 senses, 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 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 a single vehicle, an old blue Chevy extended cab pickup, in the small gravel parking strip 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 couple of miles further north on Highway 14.

As I pushed open the front door, a bell tinkled, announcing my arrival. The front counter, once the domain of the gas station attendant, was deserted. Neither Kristen, 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.

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 back 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.

The front door to the clinic was unlocked, and there was a vehicle that presumably belonged to a member of the staff in the gravel parking lot. Someone must be around.

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 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 appeared to feature 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.

Chapter Two

I’m afraid that the 911 dispatcher found me less than coherent.

“Someone tried to kill my dog’s vet,” I said as soon as the voice on the other end confirmed that I’d reached emergency services.

“Name, please?” the voice said.

“Emma Iverson. I’m afraid she’s in a bad way.”

“Where are you calling from, Ms. Iverson?”

“The small animal clinic in Amatista. She’s moaning a little, but—”

“Do you know the street address of your location?”

The poor woman on the floor let out another moan. The bleeding on the back of her head seemed to have more or less stopped. I remembered hearing somewhere that head wounds often appeared worse than they actually were because the head tended to bleed more profusely when cut than other parts of the human anatomy.

“I’ll have to go outside to find the address,” I told the dispatcher. “Shouldn’t I try and do something for the victim.?

“We can’t dispatch an ambulance until we have your exact location,” the voice on the other end of the phone informed me as if Amatista were big enough to get lost in.

It was like talking to one of those weird in-home voice-activated devices which, while privy to great swaths of the collective knowledge of humankind, is not necessarily at the ready with the particular bit of information you require.

I half expected to be offered a list of restaurants in a three-mile radius that offered delivery. Of course, there would be zero options on that list. We have only one restaurant, the Bird Cage Café, which does not deliver. If you blink as you pass through Amatista, you’ll miss it altogether.

Clearly, the officious voice on the other end of the line didn’t know that there was only one vet clinic in Amatista, it was visible from the highway, and any ambulance driver who’d ever been to Amatista, never mind the police, wouldn’t have any trouble finding it.

I decided to play along with the voice. There’s no use arguing in these situations.

I darted into the reception area and plucked a business card out of the little plexiglass holder on the counter.

“14378 Highway 14. The cross street is Calle Ocho.”

“Thaaannk you,” said the voice drawing out the a in an exaggerated show of exasperation. “I have dispatched emergency services to your location. They should be arriving in twenty to thirty minutes. Please stay on the line in case I need further information.”

That’s the problem with living way out in the middle of nowhere: when you need help, it takes ages to arrive. I decided that calling on local help was my best bet.

“I’m going to have to hang up on you, Alexa,” I told the impatient dispatcher.

“My name is not Alexa; it’s Cammie.”

“My apologies. I’m going to hang up and summon local help.”

“I’d advise you to stay on the line.”

“Can you tell me how to assist a woman lying face-down in a pool of her own blood?”

“Is the injured individual in any immediate danger?”

“Not unless her attacker returns,” I said.

“Do you know the identity of her attacker?”

“No.”

“Do you have any reason to believe her attacker might return?”

I wanted to say, “How should I know?” but instead, I just said, “No,” and walked to the open door of the exam room, pulled it shut, and activated the button lock, just in case.

The dispatcher’s question increased my urgency to summon assistance or at least company.

Earp, who’d initially howled his little head off and thrown his body repeatedly against the closed door of the exam room across the hall after I’d locked him in, had gone quiet.

He was too quiet, which made me worry that the pug had gotten into something in there and was currently consuming it, edible or not.

“Don’t move the victim and wait for help to arrive,” the dispatcher told me.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Don’t move the victim and wait for help to arrive,” she repeated as if reading off of a script.

That was not terribly helpful. I already knew how to do nothing.

“I’ll call back if there’s anything else you need to know,” I said and hung up before not-Alexa could repeat her instructions for the third time.

Unfortunately, we do not have a doctor living in Amatista. We do not even have a nurse. We have two vets, but one was currently incapacitated on the floor, and the only number I had for Dr. Bagley triggered a recorded message that I was pretty sure originated with the landline that rang a few times in reception before going silent.

We didn’t have a doctor. We didn’t have a nurse. We didn’t even have a vet available. So I did the next best thing: I called a lawyer.

“Hello, Emma,” Jason Wendell said when he answered. “You ready for our date tonight?”

I was supposed to be going to see a musical in Santa Fe that evening with Jason, Amatista’s only lawyer, and most eligible bachelor. He had gained the exalted status of most eligible on the strength of being under forty, gainfully employed, and possessing all of his original teeth and most of his original hair.

I had not been sure if our outing to see the Santa Fe Players perform The Music Man was supposed to be a date or not. Our relationship was a bit ambiguous. I was 100% in favor of moving us out of the friend zone, but I was a little hazy about how Jason felt.

“Not exactly,” I told Jason. “There’s been a bit of a crisis. I could use some help.”

Calling a veterinarian lying prostrate on the floor of the Amatista small animal clinic surrounded by a pool of her own blood “a bit of a crisis” was rather understating the case for Jason hurrying right over, but it turned out that he didn’t need a great deal of urging to come to my assistance. 

“Where are you?” Jason asked.

I imagine he was expecting me to say that I was at Little Tombstone—the rundown roadside tourist attraction I’d inherited from my grandmother and late aunt. There’s a crisis at Little Tombstone every other week, but not generally of a violent nature. More often than not, it’s because some bit of the ramshackle premises has decided to detach itself from the rest, or a pipe has spontaneously sprung a leak.

I have never once summoned Jason to deal with carpentry or plumbing emergencies. Jason Wendell wears imported, handmade leather loafers and starched white shirts. His strengths lie more in the intellectual realm, and he was probably next to useless when it came to rendering first aid. However, as we’d been instructed to do nothing but wait for help, I felt it would not be asking too much to request that Jason provide moral support.

“I’m at the vet clinic,” I told Jason as I knelt over Dr. Vance’s head and tried to decide if I should even touch her. “Dr. Bagley’s new vet appears to have been viciously attacked.”

“I’ll be right there,” said Jason and hung up.

Jason Wendell’s neat, modern concrete office building—which sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of old adobe and wood frame structures that make up the rest of the village—was only a block away.

While I waited for Jason, I made sympathetic sounds in the direction of the injured woman, not that I believed she was in any condition to take comfort in them. I also made a pass around the room but discovered nothing except the possible source of the lipstick which Dr. Vance’s attacker had used to scribble his, or her, odious epithet.

A purse, which I assumed belonged to Reba, had been knocked from the counter to the floor, and the contents, including a bright pink billfold, spangled with rhinestones, a bottle of perfume—which fortunately had not broken as it fell—and a hairbrush lay scattered near the prostrate woman.

I was loathe to disturb the woman’s possessions and contaminate the crime scene, so I left them where they were. Besides, everything I could glean from the victim’s scattered belongings about the motive for hitting Reba on the back of the head was already apparent. It hadn’t been to get her cash or credit cards; it looked like nothing from her purse had been disturbed save the lipstick.

Whoever had hit Dr. Vance in the back of the head must have snuck up on her, but perhaps it had been more of an impulsive attack than it appeared. Snatching up whatever happened to be at hand and scrawling a hateful message on the floor as an afterthought did not indicate—at least to my mind—a significant degree of premeditation.

The only thing it did suggest was that whoever had hit Reba in the back of the head wasn’t terribly fond of her, to put it mildly, or at least that’s the impression they’d wanted to make.

I supposed that a particularly clever thief who’d impulsively attacked Reba in an attempt to prevent her from reporting his actions might have scribbled the words “Die Reba Die” in an attempt to make the attack appear to be the result of a personal vendetta, but as I stood there making vaguely reassuring sounds at Reba, I decided that scenario seemed rather unlikely.

Besides, nothing appeared to have been stolen.

Less than three minutes had passed when I heard the bell over the front of reception tinkle and looked at the time on my phone, even though it had felt like twenty.

The speediness of this arrival put me on high alert. It was probably Jason, rushing to my assistance, but I called out his name through the door just to be sure.

When he answered back, I unlocked the door of the exam room.

“What happened?” he asked as he joined me in crouching over Reba Vance’s prostrate body.

“It appears someone hit her in the back of the head with one of her own rodeo trophies.” I pointed to the bloodied trophy that lay almost at my feet. “What do you do for a semi-conscious person with a head wound?”

“You leave them be until help arrives. Do you know when that will be?”

I looked at my sent calls and did a little math in my head.

“Another fifteen to twenty-five minutes.”

“What’s her name?” Jason asked me.

“It must be Dr. Vance. Reba Vance. She’s who Earp had an appointment to see.”

“Reba,” Jason said, directly addressing the woman lying on the floor, “Can you hear me?”

It was just then that Earp started barking again and resumed throwing himself against the door of the exam room where he’d been confined against his will.

“I’d better let Earp out,” I told Jason and left him there, squatted on the floor next to the presumptive Dr. Vance’s body. 

End of Sneak Peek