Nonstop Spaniels (Novella) Page 2

  “I am just going to look into it,” I said, after a sip of wine. “Ricki’s a true animal lover. If she’s concerned, there’s probably a reason.”

  “Well, if you find something wrong, tell me about it, okay? I can nudge someone with authority to take a look at the place if anything seems off.”

  “Will do,” I said. “Thanks.”

  We took the dogs for a walk after they ate their dog food dinners. And then Zoey snuggled up with Rex for the night.

  Matt and I did the same … and a whole lot more.

  • • •

  The next afternoon I left HotRescues in the capable hands of my staff and volunteers to go meet Ricki at PetForYou.

  From the outside, the place looked amazing. It was in the hills of Eagle Rock and appeared from the narrow road leading up to it to be some kind of major estate.

  The front part was easily accessible, with a parking area leading up to a nice, if plain, beige stucco building with a sign identifying it as the PetForYou Veterinary Clinic. Ricki had said that the man running the shelter was a veterinarian, so that made sense.

  The property ran up the mountainside behind the clinic, and there was a lovely pewter-shade stone mansion there. Where the doctor lived? Maybe, but it was also surrounded by the same kind of chain-link fencing we had at HotRescues and that other shelters used, too.

  I parked in the lot and went into the veterinary building in the front. Several people sat in the waiting area. Some had dogs on their laps or on the floor in front of them—a Sussex spaniel, a Chihuahua, several mid-sized mixed breeds including one that looked nearly all Doberman, and one Great Dane.

  Others had positioned crates on the waiting bench that lined the wall, presumably with cats or other smaller pets inside.

  I asked for Ricki at the enclosed front desk, assuming she could already be there in the throes of her interning duties. The woman who helped me was young, too, and wore a blue lab jacket.

  “Oh, yes. She’s here. I’ll get her for you.” She exited the office area, leaving a couple of other staff members there to help incoming pet owners.

  In a minute, Ricki appeared in the doorway that most likely led from the waiting area into the rest of the clinic. She, too, wore a blue lab jacket. Her smile was weak. “Hi, Lauren. Come with me. We can get to the shelter through here.”

  I ignored some dirty looks from people in the waiting area. I assumed they’d been there for a while and thought I was getting preferential treatment.

  In a way, I was. Then again, I hadn’t brought in any animals that required veterinary care.

  They had no way of knowing that I already had an excellent veterinarian and didn’t have any interest in finding another.

  “I’ve told Dr. Ideman that you’re coming,” Ricki said as we walked through a large empty hallway with lots of doors that I assumed led to examination rooms. “I said that you like to visit other private shelters and meet their administrators. He said he could carve out a few minutes to meet with you between patients, then I can show you the facility. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course.”

  We stopped at a door at the end of the hall and Ricki knocked. “Come in,” called a male voice from inside.

  Ricki opened the door and motioned for me to enter first. I blinked when I saw how large the room was, all fitted out with antique lamps and what appeared to be actual still life oil paintings on the walls.

  It wasn’t my business, but I wondered why the value of all that stuff hadn’t gone into helping the animals in his shelter. On the other hand, maybe this guy was as wealthy as the HotRescues benefactor, Dante DeFrancisco … although I doubted it.

  The man behind the ornate mahogany desk was a lot slighter than the furniture surrounding him. The only hair I saw on his head from this angle was a wide stripe of frizzy blackness above his ears. He wore glasses and a stony frown on his middle-aged face.

  “Yes?” he said. “You’re—er …” He looked at Ricki almost accusingly, even though he was the one who apparently couldn’t recall whom she’d said would be visiting him.

  I stepped forward in front of Ricki, my hand extended. I was still clad in my blue HotRescues staff T-shirt and jeans and felt a bit underdressed for this place, but I didn’t really care about the impression I made. “Hi. I’m Lauren Vancouver, chief administrator of HotRescues. We’re a private shelter in the San Fernando—”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it,” he cut me off. “What brings you here?”

  “Curiosity.” I pasted a smile on my face that I hoped appeared friendly, despite how I’d taken an immediate dislike to this guy. “Ricki has been a volunteer at HotRescues for quite a while and she’s told me about your wonderful facility.” That kind of exaggeration might serve Ricki well since she apparently had to stay in this guy’s good graces to complete her internship.

  “Right. I’m sure she has.” He shot a glare at Ricki, who quickly looked down at the floor. “Okay, professional courtesy and all that, but I’m between patients at the moment. Let’s go into the shelter and I’ll show you around—in, say, five minutes. We’ll go with Frank Ellingsone.” He was still staring at Ricki, who looked up.

  Interesting that he would take time to give me a tour instead of leaving it to Ricki.

  “Professor Ellingsone is here?” Ricki sounded surprised. She glanced toward me. “He’s my advisor.” Her voice shook a little, and I assumed it was out of nervousness. What was going on?

  “He’ll be here by then. And you can say to him everything you’ve been griping to me about, Ms. Robard. Now head on into the shelter and we’ll catch up with you.”

  Nodding toward me, Ricki all but bolted out of the office. “See you soon,” I said in a friendly tone. “I’ve got lots of questions for you.”

  “I’ll bet you have.”

  I followed Ricki.

  “He’s such a monster at times,” she said in a low voice as she led me around a corner in the hallway and toward a door at its end. She opened it. It led to a wide walkway lined with ficus shrubs taller than us. At the far end was a wooden gate. “There’s an outside way into the shelter, too, but this is easiest from the veterinary clinic.”

  “Why don’t you just talk to—what’s his name? Professor Elling …”

  “Ellingsone. And what? Tell him how much I don’t like working for Dr. Ideman? They’re friends. And most of the time I’ve gotten along okay with Ideman. It was just the last few days, when I brought up NKLA and assumed he’d appreciate the idea, that he started acting this mean. Before, he mostly ignored me, had me work with his staff. And why not? He gets free assistance from someone who’s learned at least a little about veterinary techniques.” She sounded bitter.

  “I understand,” I said, and I mostly did. I knew how much she cared about pets. If she was anything like me, it was probably difficult to act all happy and obsequious to someone whose position on killing animals was wishy-washy. If, indeed, it was.

  I intended to find out.

  She showed me into the shelter. It was more opulent than the veterinary clinic, although I suspected that the house up on the hill trumped both. But there were some really adorable dogs there who looked at us soulfully from inside their enclosed kennels, obviously ready for new families. Most were smaller dogs, like a recent litter of cockapoos and several other spaniel mixes. There were also some Labs and Dobies and pit bull mixes. I wanted to hug them all.

  Especially after Dan Ideman arrived with the man introduced to me as Frank Ellingsone. He was short, wore a dressy shirt that suggested he’d just come from teaching a class, and kept looking from Ideman to Ricki and back again with wary cardboard-colored eyes as if he were waiting for an eruption from one of them.

  Had he seen them warring before? But I knew that Ricki, in her position, couldn’t maintain overt animosity. Not if she wanted her degree.

  Some staff members wandered around the shelter, too, and they all but bowed as the vet strode past.

  “Nice place,”
I said. “Do you conduct a lot of adoptions?”

  “Not as many as I’d like, or as fast as I’d like,” he said, “but I’m sure you know how that feels. Some of those dogs have been here for six months or more.”

  “Yes, some take longer than others,” I agreed. “It’s especially nice when we finally find homes for them.”

  I caught Ricki’s wide-eyed grimace when Dan Ideman said, “You could say that. But some of these guys need to get out of here so we can make room for others who’ll go faster.”

  “We’ve sometimes conducted special adoption events to help get people acquainted with long-term residents at HotRescues. If you’d like, I can let you know how we do it.”

  “Right. Maybe.” He didn’t sound enthused.

  “And I understand that you’re not yet part of the NKLA Coalition. That’s something else I can help you with. It’s easy to join, and the publicity—”

  “Didn’t I tell you to back off that?” Ideman practically roared as he stopped in front of Ricki and glared down at her. “And now you’re telling people about your ridiculous accusations.” He turned toward me. “Look, Ms. Vancouver. Lauren. I’m a veterinarian. As much as I’d like to save all animals under my care, the reality is that we lose some both at my clinic and at the shelter. Do I go out of my way to kill them? No. But I’m not about to join some do-gooding organization that will tell me how to conduct my business here.”

  “But it’s not—” I began, prepared to tell him how unobtrusive the NKLA movement was. Yes, it had a message, but no one pushed the members.

  “That’s enough.” Frank Ellingsone also planted himself in front of Ricki. “I can see that this situation isn’t working as well as it should, but unfortunately I don’t have somewhere else to place you, Ms. Robard. Either you work it out or you won’t get your degree. It’s as simple as that.”

  “But I didn’t mean anything,” Ricki said, sounding both frantic and tearful. She shot a look toward Dan Ideman. “Please. I won’t say anything else about it.”

  “Me, neither,” I assured them, although that wasn’t exactly true. I would tell Matt, and he might be able to get someone, by way of New Hope Partners, to check on how things really went here at PetForYou. If there was excess killing for no reason—well, if nothing else, I could help by soliciting negative publicity. I knew Carlie and her TV show and what she would say.

  Some of the shelter staff and visitors had stopped to stare at us. Ideman glared, and at least those wearing PetForYou shirts hastily departed.

  “All right,” he said to Ricki. “We know where we stand. You want my approval of your internship here, you settle down and work and butt out of how the shelter is run. Got it?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Hey, I have an idea,” I said. “If you have some animals who’ve been here for longer than you’d like, I’ll take them in at HotRescues. Ricki can help me get them there. How does that sound?”

  “Maybe,” Ideman said slowly. “I’ll think about it.”

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Ricki said. “That way they’ll survive even if—” She broke off what she’d been saying, and I figured she’d been about to mention NKLA again after promising not to. “Thanks, Lauren. I’ll put a list together today.” She looked at her advisor. “Is that all right with you, Professor?”

  “If it’s okay with Dan.”

  We all looked at Ideman, who was glaring again at Ricki. “As long as there’s no bad publicity about it, it’s fine.”

  • • •

  Ricki came up with a list of half a dozen animals—four dogs and two cats. I brought Pete back to PetForYou the next day to pick them up.

  Ricki was there. So was Ideman, blocking our way into the shelter at the other entrance. “I don’t know about this,” he said.

  “Please,” Ricki urged.

  “You’d better wait another day,” he insisted.

  I had no choice but to agree. “It’ll be okay,” I assured Ricki. “You’re not going to put these guys down tonight, are you?”

  “I don’t just do that randomly,” he insisted.

  I wasn’t so sure.

  But as it turned out the animals I’d come to rescue weren’t found dead at the shelter the next morning.

  Dr. Dan Ideman was.

  He’d been stabbed with a scalpel—like the one I’d seen in Ricki’s veterinary bag.

  Heck, he was a vet. There were plenty of scalpels around his adjoining animal hospital.

  Yet I wasn’t surprised when the cops zeroed in on Ricki as their primary suspect.

  Chapter 3

  I first heard about Dr. Dan Ideman’s death the next morning when Nina arrived at HotRescues. As we often did, Zoey and I had come in early to make sure enough staff and volunteers were there to clean enclosures and conduct initial feeding of our inhabitants. All had been going well as usual, but I’d chipped in to help, also as usual, washing some of the quickly emptied bowls and throwing dirty rags and towels into our large washing machine.

  Then I’d returned to my office where I’d left Zoey. I was going through the computer files of our most recent adoptions to ensure I’d uploaded all pertinent info from the applications for later follow-up when Nina popped her head inside my door.

  “Lauren, have you heard the news?”

  I looked at her. “About what?”

  “The vet Ricki’s doing her internship with. He’s dead.”

  I stared. “But I just met him the day before yesterday.” I realized immediately how stupid that sounded and shook my head. “What happened?”

  Nina shot me a sympathetic grin. “They aren’t saying yet—or at least they weren’t when I first heard about it.”

  We both hurried upstairs to our conference room, where one of the two TVs at the shelter was located. The other one was in the central building in the older kennel area, which was now our security building. That was where whoever was on security duty slept upstairs each night, and we also had a special room downstairs for monitoring the security cameras posted all around the kennel areas.

  A couple of the local TV stations still had news programs on at this hour, and I switched to one of them.

  The story was apparently a big deal, or maybe it was an otherwise slow news day.

  But I wasn’t exactly surprised when the team of reporters at the anchor desk began discussing it—and said that the authorities were speculating it was a homicide.

  “Further details as we learn them,” said a young guy in a suit as he smiled at the camera.

  I wanted to learn them right now.

  I considered calling Antonio Bautrel. The boyfriend of our security director, Brooke Parnall, was a detective with the LAPD—not in the Robbery-Homicide Division, but in Gangs and Narcotics. Even so, he was generally able to obtain information on investigations in other divisions and sometimes let me in on how they were progressing.

  That was very useful to me at times. Unfortunately I had gotten involved in attempting to solve murders recently, not by choice but because first I, and then some close friends and acquaintances, had become the main suspects. Would I get involved this time? I had a sinking feeling that I might. I’d been there during an argument between Ricki and the victim, and I hadn’t been the only one to overhear it.

  If Dan Ideman’s death turned out to be murder, the authorities would be looking at my cherished HotRescues volunteer Ricki as a suspect.

  In fact, she’d been the first, and only, suspect who’d come to mind when I’d thought about the possibilities. Of course I didn’t really know Ideman or who his friends and enemies were—except for Ricki’s advisor, Frank Ellingsone. He’d been a friend. With any gripes? I had no idea.

  Well, all this was just speculation. I didn’t want to investigate another murder and I wouldn’t. Unless I had to. For Ricki’s sake.

  I received a frantic call from Ricki late that morning.

  Yes, unfortunately the cops apparently considered her a person of interest, if not their
prime suspect—yet.

  Here we go again.

  • • •

  First things first, though. Ricki hadn’t been taken into custody, but she had undergone one interrogation and anticipated more.

  “Do you think Esther Ickes would be willing to be my lawyer?” Ricki asked. She was now with me at HotRescues, apparently using it as a haven. She was even dressed like a regular volunteer in her yellow HotRescues T-shirt.

  I’d motioned her into my office as soon as she’d arrived so I could hear what had been going on since I’d seen her last, the night before. We sat at opposite ends of the sofa in the conversation area across from my desk since it was less formal, and I felt sure she needed companionship as much as guidance right now.

  “Let’s find out.” Pulling my phone from my pocket, I called Esther. She was a senior attorney who had helped not only me but other people I knew, including some of those I’d worked to prove weren’t guilty of murders. She was delightful and smart, and I loved hearing how she fooled lawyers who were younger than her into believing she might be senile—and then watching her romp all over them in court.

  Esther had heard of the veterinarian’s death and had paid attention since she wondered, because he ran a shelter too, if I knew the guy.

  “We met, just the day before yesterday,” I told her, then explained the circumstances, including his supervision of Ricki for her internship.

  “I take it she’s a suspect,” the wise elder lawyer surmised, “and that she needs some legal help.”

  “Seems that way,” I said.

  “When can I meet her?”

  Smiling, I nodded at Ricki and passed her the phone so they could discuss logistics. Meanwhile, I bent down to pat Zoey, who lay on the rug at our feet. My dog looked up, gave a little licking motion to show pleasure, then snuggled back down again.

  When Esther and she were done talking, Ricki handed me back my phone. “I’m meeting her at her office in about an hour.”

  “Great,” I said. “Although I had hoped you’d accompany me back to PetForYou this afternoon.”