Rory’s Rose Read online

  “Uh-huh,” Levi said. “We aren’t keeping them,” he warned.

  Ice walked in. Seeing Levi with a cup of coffee, she poured herself one too. She had barely put it on the table before she opened her arms and one of the puppies was handed to her. She cuddled it close and scratched its chin and around its eyes. The puppy obligingly licked her face and every other body part it could reach. With a wink to the other ladies, she dropped the puppy into Levi’s arms. “Don’t be such a grouch,” she said. “Love a puppy.”

  She took the mug from his hand so he didn’t spill it and turned her back on him just so he could spend a few minutes with the puppy. Rory watched and laughed. Ice knew exactly how this worked. Rory pulled up a chair, sat down and put Rose on the floor. She wandered off, looking for something to chew. Lately it had been somebody’s shoe underneath the table. No matter where they sat, the puppies looked for footwear to chomp on. Ice handed Rory a cup of coffee. He looked at it with surprise. “Thanks.”

  Bailey entered with two platters of muffins. She looked flushed from the heat of the stove. Rory glanced over at her and smiled. “Thank you.”

  She laughed. “You haven’t even tried them yet. Maybe they’re awful.”

  “I haven’t eaten anything from you and Alfred that wasn’t wonderful.”

  She smiled.

  Dakota joined her. He snagged a muffin off the tray in her hands, kissed her on the temple and said, “Thanks, sweetie.”

  She rolled her eyes at him and handed the tray around. “They are not just for you.”

  When a vehicle drove up, Stone’s voice was heard over the PA. “The vet’s here.”

  That just added to the excitement. When Louise walked in, Rose waddled over to greet her. Louise picked up the pudgy puppy, chuckled, gave her a good scratch and said, “I figured if you were too close to Alfred, that you’d gain weight very quickly.”

  As it happened, Alfred walked in with a platter of some fancy Danishes.

  Rory laughed because it seemed such an appropriate time for her to complain about Alfred’s rather wonderful cooking.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Louise frowned.

  Ice walked over with a big smile and a puppy and said, “Absolutely not. We’re just having coffee. Will you join us?”

  “I’d love to.” Louise sat down and asked Alfred, “Any problems with the puppies?”

  With a proud fatherly smile he shook his head. “They’re doing just lovely.”

  “I can see that.” Louise checked over the puppy in her arms while Ice retrieved a cup of coffee for her. “This one looks healthy.” She handed her off to Rory and said, “You’re still here, are you?”

  Rory laughed as he juggled the furry ball of love in his arms. “Yeah. I’m adjusting.”

  “This place is a zoo,” she said with a laugh. “But it looks like you’ve settled in fine.”

  “I’m adapting.” He chuckled and hugged Rose. Maybe the excitement got to her, or maybe she hadn’t had enough sleep, but she’d given up squirming to curl into the crook of his neck and fall asleep. He just held her close.

  The vet gave him a knowing look.

  He nodded. “I know. It’ll be painful to let her go.” He cuddled her close, not ready to put her in her bed with her siblings.

  Drinking his coffee, enjoying being at the compound, he settled back. The conversation shifted from animals to security before shifting lightning fast to muffins, pool engineering and back to renovations. He loved that here. Myriad topics were always covered on the go. Immense brainpower was housed here, and intelligent debate was everywhere. He loved the stimulation and openness. Only after the coffee did Rory realize something was bothering Louise. As soon as the idea caught hold, he studied her carefully, noting the pinched look on her face, the tense grip on her cup of coffee. He didn’t know her well, but she seemed ill at ease. As if she wanted to say something but didn’t feel she should.

  “Is this just an animal visit, or is something else behind it?” he asked in a low voice.

  She glanced at him and then quickly away.

  “A lot of people are here with a lot of skill sets, if you need help.” He leaned in closer. “And it’s confidential.”

  *

  Silence fell in the room as others tuned in. Louise looked around nervously, yet she only saw curiosity and acceptance. She settled into her skin somewhat. She hadn’t planned to talk about this, but, having seen this place, knowing the people, there was just something secure and dependable about them.

  “I don’t even know what I need.” She winced because that would only bring on more questions. “It’s probably a matter for the authorities anyway.”

  Ice was seated on the other side of the table. She leaned over and asked, “What’s a matter for the authorities?”

  “I think somebody is mixing up the wrong drugs for animals.”

  Silence returned as everyone stared. “What do you mean?” Levi asked, his voice stern.

  Louise took a deep breath. “I got a shipment of drugs from my usual supplier but with different labels on them. When I asked the driver about it, he couldn’t give me a decent explanation. He hurriedly grabbed the case from my arms and reloaded it on the truck. He apologized, saying it was a wrong shipment. Then he was gone damn fast.”

  It was probably a mistake to bring it up, but she couldn’t let it go in her head. At least Levi’s team would let her know if she was making something out of nothing. “The thing is, he left one of the cases behind. I tracked it back to the company and called them. They said they didn’t know anything about it. How it was obviously a mistake. I took a closer look. The medicine looked to be in the company’s packaging. As if somebody had opened the packages, dumped the contents of the bottles, filled them with something else, then resealed them.”

  “Is that possible?” Ice asked.

  “I never thought about it until I ended up with this case. So I’d have said no before, and now I feel like I need to say … maybe,” she admitted.

  “What made you think the wrong drugs were inside the containers?”

  Rory’s tone was calm, without making it sound like she was making this up. She appreciated that. As such it was easy to answer. “I used to sell a lot of veterinarian supplies. So I do know the company’s products. Plus I use them for my own work. The one I opened had a different texture to the powder. I checked with the company, and they confirmed they haven’t changed their formula. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but I don’t want to use the drugs, just in case, and now I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  Louise nodded. “Yes.”

  Silence once again fell in the big dining room. Even Alfred, who just arrived, froze midstep with a tray of something else delicious looking in his hands.

  Louise looked around the room and asked, “Why?”

  “Several reasons. First, if something is wrong,” Levi said, “we want to make sure the drugs aren’t administered to animals. What color is the substance inside the bottles?”

  “That’s part of the problem. When I looked at it, my mind immediately thought of something else. Because it was white.”

  “As in cocaine? Heroin?” Levi leaned forward, studying her face intently.

  “I don’t know the difference,” she admitted. “I’m not sure about anything. For all I know, it was my imagination. Like, when you notice someone who looks at you in a shifty way, as if they’re nervous, and they just want to get away. As if they realize they’ve made a mistake, and it’s a big one, and they quickly grab and run?” She shook her head. “The delivery man didn’t waste any time leaving the parking lot.”

  “What kind of vehicle was he driving?”

  “An old delivery truck. I don’t remember what was printed on the side of the truck, but it was one of the standard brown trucks we see everywhere. I didn’t look that closely,” she admitted. “Why would I? And when? After he took off, I couldn’t see anything on the back panel of
the vehicle.”

  “So, like a pickup truck, a delivery truck or a big semi-truck?” Rory asked beside her.

  “One of those smaller panel delivery trucks. But it wasn’t as big as what I’ve seen before.” She frowned, then she shrugged. “I really don’t have any way to measure it. I just gave it a passing glance.”

  “But you couldn’t see the license plate when he took off?” Rory asked.

  “I didn’t look. I’m not sure if it was even there. The truck was pretty muddy.”

  “Do you have security at the clinic?” Ice asked.

  Louise turned to look at her in surprise. “Yes. I do. I haven’t checked the feed to see if the truck shows up there or not.”

  “Somebody will go back with you. He can take a look, run through the camera feed and look for any sign of a license plate or what kind of truck it was and possibly catch the driver’s face.”

  “As for a description, all I can really say is he was Hispanic-looking and dressed in black jeans and a gray T-shirt. I don’t think he spoke English very well.”

  “So, no uniform?”

  She stared at Rory in surprise. “Actually no. He didn’t have on a uniform.”

  The others nodded.

  “You really think they’re smuggling drugs? Why deliver them to a vet clinic then?”

  “They could also be making regular deliveries, and the shipments got mixed up.”

  They asked her dozens more questions, but she was hard-pressed to answer any of them. Finally she stood and said, “I have to get back. I’ve stayed longer than I intended to.”

  Rory glanced over at Levi and raised an eyebrow.

  Levi nodded. “Rory will follow you back. Give him access to your security feed, and let’s see if he can find anything.”

  She hesitated. “Do you really think it’s something serious?”

  He gave her a flat stare. “If it is, and you don’t do something about it, it could be bad.”

  “In what way?” she protested. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “No, but that is the second issue we didn’t discuss. If one case of the product was left behind, is that driver or his boss coming back after it? If it’s drugs, like cocaine or heroin, it’ll have a high street value. Whoever is moving these drugs will want them back. They’ll retrieve them no matter what they have to do.”

  She could do nothing but stare at him. She hadn’t once considered that.

  “In other words,” Rory added quietly, “your life is in danger until this is settled.”

  Chapter 2

  Louise was still numb by the time she got into her small truck. She pulled out slowly from the compound and onto the main road. Rory was in another truck behind her. She could see the cowboy hat perched on his head. She didn’t know what to think. It was just unbelievable to consider it was illegal drugs. However, the more she thought about it, that had been her instinctive reaction. The driver’s movements and attitude had just been too nervous. As if he was doing something wrong. She honked the horn, as they all did, as she passed Anna’s place. Louise was due to stop in there in the next couple of days. Right now she needed to return to the clinic and make sure everything was okay. It was only a ten-minute drive, but it seemed like forever.

  She walked into the front office and smiled at everyone to let them know she was here. She had another vet working at the clinic. Thankfully he was in and working his way through the steady stream of patients. With Rory at her side, she headed to the rear of the clinic. It took her a moment to find the case of product, as she’d tucked it in the back with a sign not to open it. She pulled it down and showed it to him. “This is it.”

  She watched as he studied it carefully. “It looks professionally produced,” he announced. “Was the packaging still all around the bottles before you cut it open at the corner?”

  “Yes, I just cut the corner so I could get out the one bottle. It was very professional looking.” She nodded. “They are fair-size bottles though. Too big actually. That’s one of the things that made me suspicious.”

  “What size would you expect these to be?”

  “About one-third of that size.”

  He nodded. “Show me the video camera feed.”

  She led the way through to the office and brought up the cameras. He quickly ran through the security feed back to the time she had mentioned and watched as the delivery truck driver came into view. It was a simple exchange, but even Rory could see how nervous the driver was. “Well, he certainly takes off fast,” Rory said.

  “I know, right?”

  “Can I print some of these pictures?”

  “Sure. Whatever you need.” She walked to the door. “Do you need me for anything?”

  He glanced at her in surprise, then at the full waiting room and shook his head. “Go. You’re needed in the clinic now.”

  With a smile, she entered the waiting room, picked up the top file off the counter and started on her schedule. She did a lot of fieldwork and was often gone, but she always tried to get back in time to at least take some of the stress off Jimmy. He’d been working with her for close to a year now. He was help she desperately needed. The place was a beehive of animals. She loved her job, and the last thing she wanted was to have any dangerous drugs in circulation that could harm her animals.

  A few hours later, Nancy, her receptionist, walked into Louise’s office with a stack of folders as Louise returned after her last patient of the morning. “Okay, you get an hour’s break. Almost,” Nancy said with a cheerful smile as she dropped the stack on the corner of Louise’s desk. “No more patients for at least forty minutes.”

  Louise sat down with a sigh and rubbed her temple. “Now that’s good to hear.”

  The receptionist walked off, then turned at the doorway and said, “Your boyfriend left a long time ago. He had a note for you. Let me go get it.”

  Startled, Louise wondered who the hell Nancy was talking about. Louise didn’t have a boyfriend. Hadn’t had a boyfriend since she started the clinic five years ago. Who had time for that? When she’d hired Jimmy, she’d briefly wondered if he might be boyfriend material and quickly found out he was boyfriend material but already had a boyfriend himself. She chuckled at that. The two of them were good together. She, on the other hand, was alone, and she’d been alone for a long time now.

  Nancy returned and held out a small piece of paper. “You may not play around much, Doc,” she teased, “but when you pick one, you really pick a good one.”

  Louise looked up from the note as she unfolded it and frowned. “I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

  “Rory.”

  “Oh.” Louise could feel the heat rising up her neck. “He is cute, isn’t he?”

  “Cute isn’t the word I’d use. He’s adorable. That smile of his, well, that’s quite a heartbreaker there.” Nancy hesitated and then said, “Is there something between the two of you?”

  Hearing an odd tone in Nancy’s voice, Louise lifted her head and looked at her longtime friend and assistant. “Why?”

  Nancy grinned with impudence. “Because, if you aren’t interested, I might be.”

  “No,” Louise responded a little too sharply for her liking.

  Nancy took off, laughing.

  Louise just sat there and stared at the doorway. Rory was a nice guy, but why had she been so strong to deny her interest? Trying to refocus, she stared down at the note. It was short and to the point.

  Louise, I’ve printed out several images from the security feed, and I’ve taken photographs of the case of product. I’m pretty sure Levi will want this white powder sent out for testing. I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working, so I can come back later this afternoon and pick it up, if you agree to this. I can come back for any other reason too!

  Followed by a happy face.

  Wearing a foolish grin, she stared at that last line, trying to figure out what he meant. She tucked it against the side of her large writing pad and pick
ed up her files, but it was hard to focus on work. She wondered about the sense of giving the drugs to Levi. At least they would be off her hands. Somebody needed to get the contents tested. That was the only way for sure to know what was going on.

  She hadn’t tracked down anybody missing the case. Now she didn’t want to raise any alarms by asking too many questions. Things were touchy enough. Her gaze kept straying to Rory’s note. Finally she had to tuck it out of sight before she could get down to work. Just before she was due to resume her appointments in the clinic again, her phone rang. “Hi, Levi. What’s up?”

  “I’m sending Rory back for the case,” he said without hesitation. “I don’t like the look of the images from the photos.”

  She dropped her pen and leaned back in her big office chair. “You’re saying it’s not safe here?”

  “It’s not safe to have that package. It’s also likely not safe to not have the package,” he said quietly. “It’s hard to say which is worse. But, if these are drugs, we don’t want them in circulation.”

  “I have animals and staff here. I can’t have anybody endangered because of this.”

  “I’ll call the local authorities and ask them to make more frequent drive-bys of your area. In the meantime, any chance you can call the delivery driver and tell him that he missed one?”

  “No,” she snapped. “Even the company said they weren’t missing anything.”

  “What kind of an answer did you get?”

  “It wasn’t so much an answer as there was no data. They were missing nothing and had no record of this case of product.”

  “Interesting. Rory will be there soon. Sometime in the next couple hours.”

  “Thanks.” She hung up and headed back to the clinic. She had a lot of work regardless of whatever else was going on. But that didn’t stop her from keeping an eye out, seeing if Rory had shown up every time she made it back into the waiting room. When the afternoon passed by, and she saw no sign of him, she figured she had missed him.

  Finally she poured herself a cup of coffee and returned to her desk. The last patient was gone, and her whole life was very narrowed and focused on the business. She had lots of help, but it wasn’t enough sometimes. She had to do most of the paperwork herself. She went through files quickly, adding notes and making sure they were ready to be filed away again. After she was done, she checked her email. She took a look and shook her head as way too many appeared to be a priority.