Over His Head

CHAPTER THREE

“JUST A MINUTE,” Nancy shouted at the door as she reached for the telephone. “Mayfield,” she answered.

“Nancy,” said Mabel, the evening receptionist at Creature Comfort, “we’ve got an emergency. Mac’s on his way. He asked me to call you.”

“What kind of emergency?” she stuck her finger in her other ear to block out the impatient ringing of the doorbell. “I just walked in the door.” She glanced down at the full glass of wine with longing. No alcohol if she had to go back to surgery. “Is it the mastiff?”

“Worse. The Marshall’s Jack Russell. Some idiot let a pit bull out. He got into the Marshall’s yard.”

“Oh, Lord.” The throbbing over Nancy’s right eye intensified. “How bad?”

“He’s alive, but he’s going to need emergency surgery.”

“I’ll be there in forty minutes unless I run into a Statie with his radar on.”

“Drive carefully. I’ll get things ready.”

“Thanks, Mabel.” Nancy hung up and turned to the door. “All right, all right, dammit, I’m coming!” She yanked it open. Mr. No-Eyes stood on the front porch behind a tall, skinny, teenage boy whose head was nearly bald. He looked half sulky, half terrified. “What?” she snapped.

The man thrust the boy forward. “Tell her.”

She heard Lancelot behind her, stepped out onto the front porch and slammed the door shut. “Tell me what?”

“I kind of, you know, backed into your car.”

“You what?” Nancy pushed past the pair and down her front steps. Her Durango had been shoved four feet closer to her front porch by the hippo-size Suburban hard up against its rump. Over its rump, actually. Nancy ran to her car. Her rear bumper was dented, the right taillight lay in shards, and her right rear tire was flat. “What on earth happened?”

“My son, here, decided to move the Surburban into our driveway.” His voice was quiet, but she could almost feel the man’s rage.

“Yeah, I guess I hit Reverse,” the kid said. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“It was the fault of a malevolent universe?” his father growled. “Of course it was your fault.”

“Look,” Nancy said, “I don’t give two hoots if it was the fault of a parallel universe.”

“This unfortunate creature is Jason Wainwright, my son.”

“Big whoop,” Nancy said. “Look, you. I need my car now, right this minute. I have an emergency. I have to go back to the clinic right now.”

“You’re a nurse?”

“I’m a veterinary surgical assistant. I’ve got to get back to help save a dog that just got mauled by a pit bull. And I’m wasting time.” She grabbed Jason’s sleeve. “Come on. You and your daddy are going to drive me to the clinic, wait for me if it takes all night and drive me home, or I swear to God I’ll have you locked up for driving without a valid Tennessee driver’s license.”

Jason stared at her openmouthed. “Can you do that?”

“If you two don’t get your rear ends in gear, you bet I can.”

“I can’t leave my two younger children on their own,” Wainwright said.

“Can’t your wife look after them?”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“Then bring them. Now!” She strode toward the Suburban.

“Jason, go get your brother and sister while I move the car.”

“Da-a-ad,” Jason whined.

“Do it now. Fast.” Then he shrugged. “Remember, pizza at a mall.”

WHILE JASON ROUNDED up his siblings, Tim carefully backed the Suburban out. It didn’t have a scratch. The damage to the Durango’s bumper didn’t look too bad, but until the light and tire were replaced, and until a mechanic checked the car out thoroughly, she couldn’t drive it.

“If it needs bodywork, I could be without a car for a couple of weeks,” Nancy said. She stood watching him with her hands on her hips.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’m sure my insurance agent will pay for a rental. I’m truly sorry about this. Jason isn’t usually so mutton-headed.”

Nancy raised an eyebrow. She suspected she had yet to plumb the depths of Jason’s mutton-headedness. “Does he have any sort of driver’s license?”

“Illinois Learner’s permit. He’s fifteen. He’s not supposed to drive without an adult.”

God help the world’s drivers when this kid turned sixteen.

A pubescent vampiress slouched across the road toward them. She was trailed by what looked like a relatively normal small boy. With Nancy’s luck, he’d be a kleptomaniac or a Peeping-Tom.

Wainwright started to introduce her to his brood.

“Can we skip all that? Unless you want to be personally responsible for the death of a Jack Russell terrier.”

To his credit, Wainwright took her directions down the side roads without question and drove fast and competently. Not fast enough, of course, but then a supersonic jet wouldn’t have been fast enough. In the back seat, Jason sulked in a corner, and in front of him in the middle seat, his sister bobbed to the music in her headphones. Wainwright had introduced her as Angie. The blond kid was Eddy. He hadn’t said a word.

Nancy pulled the sun visor down to cut out the glare from the westering sun, and caught his image in the visor mirror. He was staring at her.

He doesn’t blink. Creepy.

“Down there,” she said. “Drive through the wrought-iron gate into the parking lot outside the front doors.”

TIM HAD BARELY BROUGHT the truck to a halt when Nancy jumped out, ran up the front stairs and shoved through the glass doors into the lighted reception area. He saw her speak to the woman behind a tall reception desk, then disappear through a side door.

“Can we go find some pizza now?” Angie asked. “I’m starving.”

“Stay here.” Tim started to climb out of the driver’s seat. With a glance at Jason, he reached down and took the keys out of the ignition.

“How do you know I can’t hot-wire it?” Jason asked.

“If you can, don’t.” He took the front stairs of the clinic two at a time.

“May I help you?” asked a motherly woman at the front desk. “We’re actually closed now, but if you have an emergency…”

“The woman who just came in is my emergency,” Tim said. “We’re her new neighbors, and I’m afraid my son put her car out of commission.”

The woman’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “You’re…him?”

“I should have introduced myself.” He put out his hand. “I’m Timothy Wainwright.” He glanced at the name plate on the desk. “I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs. Uh…”

She touched his hand for an instant. “Huh,” she said and turned back to her computer screen.

“Um, I realize hitting Miss Mayfield’s car isn’t likely to endear me and my family to you, but it was an accident. My son didn’t do it on purpose.”

The woman didn’t look at him. “The way you treated the Halliburtons was on purpose, though.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mabel turned back. “It’s your right, of course, but in my opinion it was a wicked thing to do, and I know Nancy agrees with me.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who are the Halliburtons?”

At that moment the telephone on the desk rang. Mabel picked it up. “Creature Comfort.”

Wainwright hadn’t even looked at the name on the front gate of the clinic’s parking lot. He was about to go back to his children before they bailed out of the car and fled into the night alone in search of pizza without him when Mabel finished answering a question and hung up. “Um, do you have any idea how long Miss Mayfield is likely to be?”

“Why?”

He gave Mabel his most endearing smile. It nearly always worked on distraught parents. Didn’t work on Mabel, however. “I’m her chauffeur until we can get her a rental car.”

“No idea. Could be an hour, could be six.”

“I’m going to go feed my children some pizza. Where do you recommend?”

Grudgingly she gave him the name and address of a chain pizza place, and directions to get there.

He pulled out a business card. “Here’s my card with my cell phone number. When Miss Mayfield needs me to pick her up, just have her call me. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

“Don’t bother,” Mabel said. “I will personally see that Nancy gets home safely, and I’ll pick her up tomorrow morning and take her to a car rental place.”

The place was air-conditioned, but the ice in Mabel’s voice dropped the temperature another twenty degrees. He nodded. “Thanks, but I’ll have to rent the car for her. My credit card, you know.”

“Fine. See that you do.”

He started out, then turned back. “Um, could you tell me who the Halliburtons are and what I did to them?”

The woman in front of him actually swelled up. Since she was no lightweight to start with, she looked formidable. “You don’t even know the names of your tenants?”

“I’m sorry?”

“They’ve lived in your house across from Nancy for ten years. They’ve tried time and time again to buy it from you, and every time you’ve refused. Then out of the blue, you toss them straight out onto the street like so much trash so you and your family can invade.” Her eyes narrowed. “What happened? Chicago get too hot for you?”

Oh, great. He’d only met two people so far and both of them hated him. He’d never even heard the Halliburtons’ name. “My agent has handled the property ever since Granddad died.” He tried to sound conciliatory and wound up sounding even more arrogant and uncaring. Surely these Halliburtons didn’t actually wind up on the street. He’d have to find out somehow. His agent might know. He didn’t think this woman was the proper person to ask. “I knew the tenants had tried to buy the house, but it’s been in my family for over a hundred years. I’d never sell it.”

“You sure as shootin’ haven’t cared about it for the past ten,” Mabel snapped and dismissed him.

He gave up and went back to the car. He hoped his children hadn’t ripped up the upholstery while he’d been gone.

Eddy was asleep with his head against the side of the car. Angie was still jouncing to her silent music, but Jason was nowhere to be found. Oh, great. “Where’s your brother?” he asked Angie. Twice.

She waved a hand. “He went off that way around the back.” She pointed to the edge of the parking lot.

“If you ever expect to eat another pizza, don’t move and keep an eye on Eddy.” He trotted off around the building.

This clinic stretched a long way back from the modern brick building in front into a large metal building like a warehouse. Lights under the eaves showed him to where more light poured out from open garage doors at the side. He started to call for Jason, then saw him inside the metal building—must be a barn for large animals. He was standing beside some kind of pipe enclosure.

“Jason?”

The boy jumped. “I’m not doing anything,” he said sulkily.

Tim walked into the light. In the stall a large gray-and-white sheep stood placidly chomping hay while two—what?—sheeplets? No, kids. Or was that for goats? Lambs. He must be losing his mind not to remember. God, he was an English professor—teacher—now. Words were his thing.

He was simply too tired to think straight. The nine-hour drive from Chicago would be enough to exhaust anyone. That same trip with his three children would have exhausted an entire platoon.

“Hey, folks, can I help you?”

Jason started at the voice. A tall young man in hospital greens walked out of the shadows at the far end of the building. Surely he was too young to be a veterinarian.

“Sorry,” Tim said. “My son Jason here saw the lights. I came hunting for him. Come on, Jason.”

“Dad,” Jason said plaintively, “do we have to? I mean, I’ve never seen a live sheep before.”

“Of course you have. At the petting zoo, don’t you remember?”

Jason sulked. “It’s not the same. And it didn’t have babies.” He looked up at the young man. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing now.” The guy grinned at Jason. “Momma had a tough time having those twins. Happens, sometimes. Had to do a cesarean. You know what that is?”

Jason nodded. “Knock her out, then cut across her belly and take the babies out that way. I didn’t know you did that with animals.”

“We do when we have to.”

Tim expected Jason to be grossed out.

“Cool. Is there a bunch of blood?”

“Not much.” He turned to Tim. “I’m Kenny Nichols. I work here between semesters.”

Tim introduced himself and they shook hands. “You going to vet school?”

“First year. Mississippi State.” Kenny smiled proudly.

From somewhere in the shadows a horse nickered. Jason’s head went up. “What’s that?”

“Sally, a cutting horse. She’s recuperating from eye surgery. Want to see?”

“Jason, I thought you were hungry.”

He tossed his father a nasty glance and stomped off behind Kenny.

Jason’s giant shorts drooped below the waistline of his underwear and almost reached the heavy socks he wore under his high-tops. All that would have to go along with the earrings, Tim thought. Good riddance.

By the time Tim managed to pry his son away from the horse’s stall and get him back to the car, Angie was fuming. Eddy was awake, but as usual, he sat without saying a word.

“Jason,” Tim said, “tell Eddy and Angie what you saw.”

But all Jason’s enthusiasm had vanished. He stared out the window.

A lesser man might’ve lost it by now.

His children certainly thought he’d made a mistake dragging them from Chicago, their friends, their grandmother, their schools, to this backwater.

Tim prayed they were wrong.

MACINTOSH THORN, D. V. M., partner in Creature Comfort Veterinary Clinic, and his surgical assistant, Nancy Mayfield, knew one another so well that they seldom communicated verbally during a procedure. He’d already stitched the Jack Russell’s torn throat, now he was working on the gashes along the little dog’s side.

“Irrigate, dammit!” he barked. Nancy had already begun to do just that, but she didn’t take offense.

“It’s a miracle the pit bull didn’t snap his spine like a chicken wing,” Mac growled.

“Mrs. Marshall told Mabel he managed to squeeze between a packing crate and the garage wall.”

“Hell, look at that. Two ribs broken. Got to get the muscle reconnected. Sponge. Sometime this week.”

Mac was fast but neat. Nancy slapped instruments into his hand, kept blood and sweat out of his way. Fifty-five minutes later by the big clock on the wall above the oxygen tanks, Mac said, “Gotcha.” He looked over at Nancy. “Want to close?”

She shook her head. “I’m so upset I’d probably stitch his ear to his nose.”

She saw his eyes widen and his eyebrows rise above the surgical mask.

“No problem.”

She always enjoyed watching him stitch. For such a big man, he worked with the delicacy of a silk weaver. After he finished, he touched the small dog’s head with his index finger. “You lucky dog, you.”

“He’ll live?”

“Depends on how tough he is. From what Mrs. Marshall told Mabel before you came, he should make it. Call Big. He’ll need intensive care for a couple of days.”

Nancy dialed a number on the telephone beside the door while Mac stripped off his surgical gear and tossed it into the bin in the corner of the room. As she was taking off her own greens, the door opened to admit an elephant of a man. He made Mac Thorn look like a child. His white-blond hair was cropped short, and he stared with pale blue eyes at the little dog. Nancy thought he was the gentlest man she’d ever met. He made a tsk sound, scooped the small dog softly into his mammoth arms and shook his head.

“I’ll look after him, Dr. Mac,” he whispered, as though the dog were not too deeply asleep to hear him. “I flat out hate this. Folks like them ain’t got a lick ’a sense, ownin’a pit bull around a baby.”

Bigelow Little, man of all work at Creature Comfort, himself owned a pit bull bitch rescued with a number of other wounded animals from a fighting ring. Daisy was the sweetest dog in the world and worshipped Big. Even so, she was never allowed into the area where the sick and wounded small animals were kept. Nancy wondered what Daisy would do if anyone—a total lunatic, it would have to be—tried to harm Big or any of the clinic personnel. She suspected Daisy would go down fighting.

Just as the overmatched little terrier had tried to do.

“What happened to the pit bull?” Nancy asked as she arranged instruments in the autoclave and tidied up the surgical area.

Mac shook his head. “Poor devil. The owners had their vet put him to sleep. Thank God I didn’t have to do it.”

Thank God indeed. Mac would more likely try to put the owners down. He would certainly feel they deserved it.

“Not his fault, but I can see their point. Mrs. Marshall says they have a two-year-old grandchild.”

Nancy shuddered. “The pit bull could just as easily have attacked the child as the terrier.” Some two-year-olds could even set off a basset hound.

Nancy followed Mac into the break room. He pulled a couple of diet sodas out of the small refrigerator kept for the staff and handed her one, then sank onto the leather sofa and propped his feet on the scarred coffee table.

“Okay, so how come you’re too nervous to stitch up a dog?” he asked. Dr. Mac had a thirteen-year-old stepdaughter, Emma, and his wife, Kit, was heavily pregnant. He was much more aware of other people than he had ever been before he married. Not necessarily more sympathetic—just more aware.

Nancy dropped into one of the chairs at the conference table and took a long pull of her soda. “He’s arrived. My new neighbor, the man from Chicago. It’s worse than I thought.”

Mac raised his eyebrows.

She told him about the afternoon. “So, no car, no privacy, no Halliburtons any longer and three of the weirdest children I have ever seen in my life.”

“Weird how?”

“The one son is almost totally bald, that is, not naturally—and has what looks suspiciously like two holes in his ear where he might have worn studs.” She paused to consider that. “And may again. I didn’t inquire as to what other portions of his anatomy might be pierced. He also wears shorts that would be too big for Big.”

For a moment, Mac looked confused, then he laughed.

“The daughter, Angie, is no creature of light. More like the Angel of Darkness, if you ask me. Black fingernails and dyed black hair and eye makeup she’s entirely too young to wear, in my opinion.”

“Goth. Okay. You said three children.”

“The youngest is a towheaded boy about six or seven who looks perfectly normal, if you consider Damien looked perfectly normal. Mac, he doesn’t talk and he doesn’t blink. I’ve been plunged into some kind of Satanic nightmare.”

“You’re exaggerating. What’s the father like?”

She took a deep breath. The father was pheromone central. His ability to arouse her dormant sex drive, however, was not something she could share with Mac. “He’s almost as tall as you are, has a nice smile and seems fairly normal except that he’s raised a brood of alien monsters and doesn’t seem to care.” She shook her head. “And he’s a professional educator.”

Mac finished his soda, crushed the can flat and tossed it into the trash can across the room. “He’s a teacher?”

“He is now. Helen Halliburton told me he has a Ph.D. and an Ed.D. from the University of Chicago. He’s been some sort of administrator at some school in Chicago, but he’s going to be a plain, old English teacher at MaybreeAcademy starting this fall.”

Mac sat up. “Maybree? That’s where Emma goes.”

“Ah-ha,” Nancy said. “Got your attention at last.” Mac adored his stepdaughter, who in turn thought he hung not only the moon but the planets. Her biological father, a cop, was never there for her. Mac never missed a school play or a PTA meeting or a teacher’s conference unless he was up to his armpits in some dog’s stomach. He’d moved Emma from her less-than-adequate public school to Maybree Academy, despite the tuition, which ranked right up there with Harvard.

“How’d she do last year?” Nancy asked.

“Child belongs in Overachievers Anonymous,” he said with pride. “Wants to follow in her old man’s footsteps. Loves science.”

Nancy didn’t think he was talking about Emma’s biological father.

“Take a warning from someone who grew up with three truly rotten siblings,” Nancy said. “Watch out for puberty, drugs and bad company, not necessarily in that order.” She put her palms on the table and levered herself upright. One good thing. Her headache was gone. Adrenaline tended to do that.

“So go home to your happy household, and pray that we don’t get any more messes tonight.” She turned toward the door at the back of the clinic proper that separated the small animal area from the large. “I’ll check on the Jack Russell. What’s his name?”

Mac snorted. “Miracle.”

“If not before, then definitely now.”

“I sent the owners home. I’ll tell Mabel to call and update them.”

The recovery area and ICU were dimly lit. Big had laid the terrier on a thick rubber mattress in the middle of the room, and sat on the floor beside the little dog, stroking its small head and crooning softly.

“He’s coming around,” Big whispered. “You go on home, Miss Nancy.”

She smiled. “Thanks. How’s the mastiff?”

Big shrugged his massive shoulders. “He ain’t dead. That’s something.”

She was halfway down the hallway that led to the front reception area when she stopped. “I hope I’ve got a ride home.”

CHAPTER FOUR

NANCY TOOK LANCELOT out in her backyard on a leash at about eleven that evening to do his business. He kept pulling her toward her front yard and the lane, grumbling with annoyance. “Lancelot,” she commanded. “I know you want to go home, but Helen and Bill don’t live across the street any longer. You’re staying with me for the foreseeable future.”

He peered up at her in the light from her porch as though he didn’t believe her for one minute.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re smarter than I am?”

Eventually he finished, waddled up her back stairs, waited at the refrigerator until she gave him a bite of cheese—his evening treat was important to him, Helen had said—and settled into his basket. As she climbed into bed, she realized Poddy and Otto weren’t waiting for her. She peered around the corner of her bedroom door and saw them curled up against Lancelot’s belly. “Deserters,” she said, then grabbed her pillow, beat it into submission and propped it under her head.

As tired as she was, she should have slept instantly. No such luck. She felt guilty, as she always did when she was bad-tempered.

Tim Wainwright must think she was the world’s biggest bitch. She’d certainly snarled at him like a junkyard dog. She rolled over on her stomach and pulled her pillow over the back of her head. Then she rolled over on her other side. She couldn’t get comfortable. Finally she lay on her back, stared up at the ceiling and let herself actually contemplate Tim Wainwright as a male being, something she’d been consciously avoiding.