Saddled with Murder Read online

  Also by Eileen Brady

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2020 by Eileen Brady

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Heather Morris/Sourcebooks

  Cover illustration by Brandon Dorman/Peter Lott & Associates

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Brady, Eileen (Veterinarian), author.

  Title: Saddled with murder / Eileen Brady.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, [2020] | Series: A

  Dr. Kate vet mystery ; 5

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020003606 | (paperback)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.R34294 S23 2020 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020003606

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To our beautiful Emily. Keep dancing on those tables—

  no matter what they tell you.

  “Whoever said a horse was dumb, was dumb.”

  —Will Rogers

  “No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.”

  —Abraham Lincoln

  Prologue

  A wish can be many things: optimistic, greedy, or a simple request for a favor from the vast unknown. We look up to the heavens when we wish.

  Some of us look down.

  Three wishes made in jest might bring three presents to Dr. Kate Turner, a bit of cheer during the holiday season. Of course, you can’t wrap dead bodies in red and gold Christmas paper and shove them under the tree—but it’s the thought that counts.

  A simple card would have to do.

  Gossip will run rampant if the wishes come true. So easy to drop a hint here, a confusing lie there—sprinkling suspicion in the streets of Oak Falls like dirty snowflakes.

  Always show the world a normal face, but under the surface something dark lurked, tightly tied and bound by societal expectations. Kept in check.

  Time to set it free.

  Chapter One

  “Who wants a slice of litter box cake?”

  With that provocative question the Oak Falls Animal Hospital Christmas party shifted into overdrive. It was Friday afternoon, the weekend awaited, and bonuses were being given out along with presents from a Secret Santa. The staff laughed and noisily lined up for a taste of this ever-popular veterinary and/or Halloween treat.

  Only weeks before Christmas, and outside the Hudson Valley glimmered with a soft layer of snow. The blue-gray mountains, their dark green pine trees dusted in white, resembled greeting cards, and the village of Oak Falls took advantage of it. Lushly festive decorations evoked a storybook feeling meant to entice tourists to enter the stores and buy buy buy. It was impossible to escape the relentless cheeriness.

  This time of the year I morphed from Dr. Kate Turner, friendly veterinarian, to grumpy Dr. Kate Scrooge. The music, the decorations brought back difficult memories. Just before Christmas, the year I turned fifteen, my mom and brother, Jimmy, were killed in a hit-and-run accident. My father and I didn’t deal well with our tragedy. I embraced anger, and he embraced another woman. The Christmas tree stayed in the house, all the presents wrapped but untouched, until February, the following year, when Gramps came and took it down.

  “Come on, Dr. Kate,” my cheery office manager/receptionist Cindy said, waving a red paper plate. “Dig in. You know you’re dying to try it.”

  Putting away my own thoughts and knowing that tasting this mess was inevitable, I plastered a smile on my face and stood up. The treatment room, the hub of the animal hospital, glittered and glowed with twinkling Christmas lights shaped like dogs and cats. A silver garland composed of hundreds of tiny reindeers draped over the IV stands and hung pushpinned around the windows. Jolly holly Christmas music poured out of the hospital sound system inviting all to sing along.

  The infamous litter box cake rested on a Santa-and-his-elves-themed tablecloth, which covered our stainless-steel table, making it as festive as stainless steel can be. The baker, my technician, Mari, had strived for realism—succeeding beyond her wildest nightmares. Tootsie Rolls and Baby Ruth bars starred as the cat poop, while some kind of granular sugar/graham cracker mix stood in for the litter. A partially melted piece of chocolate artistically draped over the side of the litter box represented the kitty that—“oops”—had missed the mark.

  And, yes, she had tran
sferred the “cake” into a real litter box, complete with plastic liner, uncomfortably close to the ones we actually used.

  “You’ve outdone yourself,” I told Mari. “Now, if only you had buried a tiny Santa Claus surprise in the middle of this…masterpiece.”

  Cindy raised a carefully enhanced eyebrow while she thought about that comment but proceeded to cut the cake to the delight of the group and present me with the first piece. “To your first Christmas in Oak Falls, Dr. Kate. Ice cream?”

  “Why not?” I slid the red paper plate with my generous portion toward her. “What flavors do you have?”

  “Only one. I made it myself in our ice cream machine.”

  When she paused I knew something was up.

  Wondering how you top a litter box cake, I asked, “What flavor did you make?”

  “Reindeer Crunch.”

  Score one for Cindy. Medical humor across the board is pretty strange to outsiders, but it helps defuse what can often be a stressful job. “I hope no reindeer were injured in the making of this ice cream.”

  Mari, busy capturing the fun with her phone, said, “All reindeer are present and accounted for. It’s a blend of milk chocolate, which stands for their coats, with vanilla-and-dark-chocolate-covered wafers mixed in to resemble their hooves. Oh, and a couple of Red Hots. They help blast you to the North Pole.”

  “They sure do,” chimed in our kennel helper Tony, always ready with a comment.

  “Are the Red Hots an homage to Rudolph’s nose?”

  “You’ve got it, Doc.”

  As soon as I returned to my seat, I tasted an overloaded forkful of litter box cake topped with melted Tootsie Rolls and Reindeer Crunch.

  It was delicious.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later with everyone well fed, the party started winding down. Cindy updated me on two angry clients, one of whom refused to pay his bill. Mari and Greta, the shy intern, were comparing notes while Tony explained something, complete with hand gestures, to the new kennel worker. At the back of the room next to a bank of cages sat our next-door neighbor and snowplow guy, Pinky Anderson. Pinky had brought his senior citizen dog Princess in to see me several times, but today he’d come in to talk about the holiday plowing schedule. Cindy insisted he stay for the party. Our hospital cat, Mr. Cat, meanwhile, managed to dislodge the red bow scotch-taped to his collar. No attempt to dress him up withstood the power of his claws. Terribly annoyed, he parked himself under an IV stand festooned with a loop of sparkly garland and vigorously began to groom his fluffy tail.

  I jumped up and stashed the bow in my pocket just as Cindy announced it was Secret Santa time.

  Blond-haired, blue-eyed Cindy had been a cheerleader in high school, and you could tell. Her genuine upbeat attitude made her popular with both clients and staff. Today she wore what she called her traditional ugly Christmas sweater, an explosion of badly knit reindeer and lumpy trees with an unintentionally evil-looking Santa suggestively nestled over her chest.

  Almost all the staff were here, including our perennial student, Tony Papadapolis, along with a new part-time kennel helper, Aaron Keenan, and college intern, Greta Weber.

  Mari scrambled up to the front to help clear the empty pizza boxes, jingling as she walked, thanks to the two dog collars she’d woven around her neck. She shot an evil eye at her personal nemesis, Tony, who merely turned his back.

  I’d forgotten what they were feuding about at the moment.

  Before exchanging the presents, Cindy insisted on playing a holiday game. “Well, it’s not exactly a game,” she said, qualifying her statement. “There’s no prize.” She clapped her hands to get our attention. “Everyone has to reveal their secret selfish holiday wish.” Mari raised her hand with the inevitable question that went ignored.

  “And no peace on earth or anything like that. Your wish has to be down and dirty, and it has to involve the animal hospital.”

  “What if you don’t have one?” asked the somewhat shy Greta, sounding worried she might offend someone.

  Cindy smoothed down the front of her sweater, inadvertently rubbing Santa the wrong way. “Just try. It will be fun.”

  “We all have selfish wishes,” good-looking Tony piped up. “I’ll go first if you want.”

  Dead silence confirmed that no one else wanted to start.

  “Okay. I wish that all the dogs in the kennel,” he paused dramatically, confident in front of the group, “took self-cleaning poops that smelled like roses.”

  A round of cheers greeted his statement, since everyone knew how often he complained about his cleaning duties.

  “Good one,” acknowledged Mari. “Next? Cindy? Come on, you started this.”

  Cindy immediately accepted the challenge. “I know it’s selfish, but I wish the parking space next to the front door had my name on it.” With that she covered her face with her hands, embarrassed.

  “Maybe we can arrange that,” I announced and stood up. “Presto.” I waved a pretend magic wand. “The first space to the left along the sidewalk will be reserved for Cindy.”

  Everyone clapped.

  “What about you, Dr. Turner?” our pre-vet student asked.

  “Yeah,” seconded Tony.

  “Wait a minute. Let me record this for posterity.” My assistant stood up and began to scan the room with her phone.

  “Well,” I began, definitely feeling on a sugar high, between the cake and the ice cream. “Since I have my magic wand out already,” I lifted my finger in the air, “I wish that two dissatisfied clients of mine…who will remain anonymous…”

  Mari loudly interrupted by shouting out, “Frank Martindale and Eloise Rieven.”

  “And Raeleen Lassitor,” added a voice from the back of the room.

  I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. Instead, with arm raised and magic index finger pointed, I continued. “I wish that my Secret Selfish Santa would make them all…disappear.” With that I drew a few circles in the air and cried, “Abracadabra, poof. They’re gone.”

  Cindy clapped her hands, and Mari called out loud to me, “Well, we can all dream, can’t we?”

  * * *

  Party over, Mari and I stayed to clean up and do treatments on Goober, a diabetic dog, and Fluffernutter, a rabbit whose nails and teeth we’d trimmed. Both were being discharged in the next half hour, leaving me with an empty hospital. After checking Goober’s blood sugar, we fed him an early dinner, then administered his adjusted insulin dose.

  “You surprised me today,” Mari confessed as she cleaned the gray laminate countertops.

  “What do you mean?” I was busy entering Goober’s latest values into his chart and writing up instructions for his owners.

  “Your wish.”

  My fingers paused over the keyboard. “I surprised myself, and not in a good way. Honestly, I don’t know what or who possessed me. Maybe I should wish that wish would go away.”

  “It was a joke,” Mari said. “Everyone knew it. You almost never complain about clients, so the universe owes you one.”

  “Two. Make that three, thanks to Pinky. What exactly was he doing here, do you know?”

  She put the plastic covers over the microscopes. “He dropped by to talk about plowing schedules and some hole in the parking lot. Cindy felt sorry for him and invited him to stay for pizza and the cake. I mean he lives right next door.”

  “True.”

  “You know, Doc Anderson used to complain every week that his clients were driving him crazy.”

  “That’s probably why he hired me and went on a round-the-world cruise.” I finished up my notes and logged out.

  “Well,” Mari said. “I’m glad he did. If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have met you.”

  “Ahhh. That’s so nice. Thank you.” A tiny piece of that icy grumpiness I secretly carried around started to melt. “
Okay.” I stood up next to the computer station. “That does it.” Raising my hand, I enthusiastically swirled it around in the air then pointed my finger at my tech. “Abracadabra. I wish everything would go back to normal. There. My magic wand is hereby officially retired.”

  Chapter Two

  On my way to the reception desk the next day I heard the familiar voice of Frank Martindale complaining about his bill, his annoyed tone clashing with the sleigh bell music.

  “I didn’t authorize this test.” The words grew even louder.

  Hidden from sight in the pharmacy, I listened in.

  “Frank,” my receptionist, Cindy, replied patiently, “it’s right here in the treatment estimate, like I told you before.”

  “Well, estimate doesn’t mean you actually do it.”

  “That’s exactly what it does mean. See, you signed it, giving us permission.”

  “No. I signed the estimate for the permission,” he answered triumphantly.

  The scope of that statement baffled me. When I’d first started treating Frank’s cat weeks ago Cindy had warned me about him.

  “Everyone in town knows good old Frank Martindale,” she’d explained. “Half the town won’t do business with him, they’re so fed up. I can’t tell you how many people he’s taken to small claims court. He’s always playing some kind of angle or get rich scheme. Listen, my older brother went to high school with him. Frank was a pain in the ass then, and he’s a bigger pain in the ass now.”

  Safe in my pharmacy cubbyhole, I waited for Cindy’s response to that last convoluted statement but heard nothing. Instead, my phone vibrated with a text message. H E L P.

  After a deep, cleansing breath, I strolled into reception. Cindy looked like steam might escape out of the top of her head. I deliberately headed toward her, the reception desk separating both of us from Frank. He had a tendency to spit out his words when he got worked up.

  “Anything I can do to help?” I crossed my fingers and hoped he hadn’t heard about the Secret Selfish Santa wish.

  Dark, angry eyes punctuated by thick eyebrows stared into mine. In his late forties and about seventy pounds overweight, he vainly tried to disguise his receding hairline with a grayish-brown comb-over that seemed to have a weird life of its own.