Chapter 7
When Bethany got up the next morning, not having heard from Conall, she had to admit she was disappointed. The man seemed to make miracles happen—or at least get things started. She didn’t know so much about whether he had the ability to finish what he was starting or not, but she liked what she’d seen. At first glance, he could be scary, yet he was definitely all heart, and there was nothing to not like about that.
She hadn’t mentioned anything to him about what time she would need him at the clinic and knew that it was a huge imposition to even ask him. Yet agreeing to it probably wasn’t the wisest thing for her to have done in the first place. Especially considering he didn’t know the lay of the land or anything about how the office worked. Yet, as she drove in a half hour earlier this morning, she found him standing outside her clinic, talking on his phone. She hopped out and looked at him in surprise.
He shrugged, “Reporting for duty, unless you’re not sure.”
“Of course I’m sure,” she replied, “but honestly I thought you might be too busy now.”
He tilted his head. “But I promised.”
“Right,” she confirmed, with a gentle smile, “and that means a lot to you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t it to you?”
“Yes,” she stated. “That is also why I cannot make too many promises because, when you get pulled too often, too far, it’s much too hard to ensure that you do everything that you need to do. Plus sometimes the you part—as in the me part—loses out.”
He looked at her for a long moment and nodded. “It’s all about balance, isn’t it? Sounds to me as if you haven’t had a whole lot of that either.”
“The ongoing staffing shortage has been pretty rough,” she admitted. “I do the very best I can for the animals in my care, but I still need help—and now I’ve lost one more helper.”
“Yeah, but that one you didn’t need.”
She unlocked the door, shut down the security system, and opened the front door, for him to walk in. “I mean, I understand if you don’t want to be here.”
“Stop it,” he told her. “I said I would be here, and I’m here.”
“Good enough,” she conceded, and she hesitated for a moment. “Can you handle phones?”
He plucked his cell phone from his pocket and waggled it at her.
“I know. I know,” she said, “but it’s a business phone, like a landline.”
“I’m not that old,” he argued. “Besides, it’s a phone. I can figure it out.”
She flushed, realizing that she was basically worrying over nothing. “Fine, just tell everybody that we’re very short-staffed and that I’ll have to get back to them.”
“That’s fine,” he said, with a nod. “Presumably you also have a schedule to follow, so I can check people in. Do you do anything with them outside of checking them in and getting them settled in the lobby, until a room is available?”
“That’s pretty much it,” she replied. “Obviously, if you had more training, I could put you to a lot more work.”
“Ha, don’t get so cheeky that you think I’m staying.”
She laughed. “Are you kidding? If you’re any good, I would be desperate to keep you as it is,” she admitted, “but I understand it’s not likely your thing.”
“I don’t know what my thing is anymore,” he admitted, with a lazy smile in her direction.
That smile stopped her in her tracks. “You should stop using that smile.” She wagged a finger at him. “That’s a dangerous weapon.”
He chuckled. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that.”
“Ha, you know you are way too cute already.”
“Ha,” he repeated, mocking her tone. “I really don’t think so.”
She smiled. “Anyway, we open at eight, and I do need to get the OR ready.”
“Do you have somebody to help you in surgery today?” he asked.
She nodded. “As long as Liza, my vet assistant, shows up, I should be good.”
Within a few minutes another woman joined them. She eyed Conall with suspicion. Then, when Bethany gave her the rundown of what had happened, her face immediately spiked with fury.
“That bitch,” she snapped. “That silly little child. I’ve caught her picking up things from the office and just taking them home.”
At that, Bethany turned and looked at her sharply. “What?”
“Yeah, just stupid stuff—a pen here and there, some paper clips—and I wondered at the time,… was she a kleptomaniac and had a real problem? I told her to knock it off, that you still had to buy everything that was here, but she just laughed and said, ‘Everybody steals from offices.’”
“Yet she didn’t need it, did she?” Bethany asked.
“No, she didn’t need it,” Liza declared. “I don’t know that she did it again. She hasn’t been here very long, but obviously… she graduated from that to something much bigger.”
“I had just topped up the petty cash too,” Bethany shared. “Close to one hundred bucks was in there.”
“And all for the boyfriend, all for the thrill,” Conall pointed out, “particularly if she’s also been busy helping herself to other things in the office. A lot of people don’t consider taking office supplies as theft.”
Bethany shook her head. “Yet all kinds of studies had been done about how many thousands of dollars go missing every year because of things like that. I honestly don’t care about the petty cash nearly as much as I do about what she did to create the cover disturbance. Causing all that stress to the animals and our clients was so irresponsible. I’m just thankful that none were hurt.”
“That was completely unacceptable,” Liza agreed. “I can’t even believe Mel did that.”
After discussing it for a few more minutes, Bethany headed back to prepare for surgery, while Liza looked over at Conall. “How the hell did she find you?”
“I’m here searching for Bacchus, the War Dog,” he replied, “and that’s caused so much chaos that I offered to give her a hand, while she finds somebody.”
“Good luck with that,” Liza muttered, with a headshake.
“Do you have anybody in mind who may know where the dog is?” If he hadn’t been watching her face, he wasn’t sure he would have caught it, but almost immediately there was the briefest expression change, then she shrugged.
“I don’t know about that,” Liza said. “I’m kind of surprised that nobody’s heard from him.”
“That’s the part I don’t know about either,” Conall replied. “The way it sounds, it’s as if Bacchus roamed around town, you would think somebody would have seen him somewhere.”
She nodded, then showed him around briefly. He had a five-minute tour of the place to get started. Then Liza disappeared, and Bethany popped her head in to add, “If it gets too bad, let us know.”
He waved his hand and smiled. “Go on. Take care of the animals.”
She smiled. “Okay, I’m about to open the front door, so it’ll get crazy pretty quickly.”
When Bethany saidto expect crazy, she meant it. Conall was happy for her because it meant that the clinic was successful and that she was obviously a good vet and well loved. People looked at him in surprise, while manning the front desk, but he just smiled and explained that he was the temporary help. That seemed to settle them down, and, for some, it made them seem a whole lot calmer.
He’d always been good with animals, and not one that showed up gave him any trouble at all. He did ask several people about the War Dog, if they had seen him at all. Everybody just shook their heads, and most weren’t even aware that Bacchus was missing.
Conall just nodded and kept on working. The copy machine was a bit of an anomaly to him, so he left that for later—when he had a chance to sort it out. Yet he got the coffeemaker down pat and in no time was rocking and rolling through his morning, and everything was going fine.
When he looked up a few hours later, Bethany stood there, her hands on her hips, staring at him. He looked at her in confusion. “So, that’s kind of an angry look. Did I mess something up?”
“No,” she said, her face softening. “Not angry at all. Not at you. I’m just wondering how the hell my temporary volunteer is better than the person I had hired.”
He smiled. “Because you can make a big job out of nothing, or you can just take a big job and get after it,” he explained. “I’ve always been a doer more than a talker.”
“And yet look at you,” she said, with a smile. “Almost everybody I’ve seen today has made a comment about your calming presence and how nice it was to see somebody, particularly a male somebody, behind the desk. I never knew anybody cared.”
“I don’t think it’s a gender thing at all,” he explained. “I get along with the animals, so maybe it’s not as chaotic.”
“And that blows me away,” she muttered. “Anyway, this is your time to grab some lunch.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I didn’t get that far.”
“Of course you didn’t, but you probably made sure Michael had food, didn’t you?”
He smiled. “I left him a bowl of spaghetti, all wrapped up in the fridge, ready to microwave.”
Just then his phone rang, and he dealt with it very quickly. When he hung up, he said, “Sorry about that.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Getting phone calls at work.”
She snorted. “It’s not as if you’re getting paid, and this is hardly your job, but I am curious as to what that was.”
“I’m getting Michael’s locks changed, so the nephew can’t come in and take anything else that he thinks might be worth a penny or two.”
“Good Lord,” she muttered, “and he would do that too.”
“You might want to consider it here too,… especially if Melanie has keys.”
She winced and immediately pulled out her phone and contacted Mel’s mother. “Hey. I’ll need the keys to the vet clinic back from Mel. Any chance you could bring them by yourself?”
“I haven’t seen her all day,” Kassie wailed, her tearful voice on the other end loud enough to reach Conall’s ears too.
Conall winced and asked Bethany, “What are the chances she took off with Page?” His voice carried through the phone, and Kassie started to cry even harder.
Kassie groaned. “In that case, I don’t know what to do about the keys.”
“Could you check and see if she left them behind?” Bethany asked Kassie. Whatever the answer was, Bethany didn’t like it at all. When she finally hung up, she looked over at Conall. “She doesn’t know if the keys are even there, but she assured me that she will look.”
“That would help,” he replied. “How long has Melanie worked for you?”
“Not long, but enough to settle in a little bit,” she noted, with a groan. “I really don’t want the added expense of changing all the locks, but I can’t take the chance of her doing something stupid either, especially if she’s still with Page.”
Conall nodded.
When the phone rang a few minutes later, it was Kassie, saying she found them. Turning her cell phone off and putting it away, Bethany looked at him with a bright smile. “She’ll bring the keys down.”
“Good, that’s helpful and one less thing to worry about.”
She looked at him. “Do you think we have a pair of budding thieves right now? Is this how they get started?”
“I don’t know about that,” he admitted, “but sometimes desperation makes people do all kinds of strange things.”
“Maybe,” she muttered, “it still feels very wrong. Do you think I need to change my locks?”
“You have a security system, and it’s always on, right?”
“I do, and it does tell me if anybody has accessed the building.”
“So, I’ll keep a close eye on your security for the next little bit, just as you did finding me in your parking lot last night,” he added, with a smile.
“You didn’t call me back.… I was waiting to hear from you.”
“There was nothing to say,” he stated. “Nothing was found.”
She nodded. “I didn’t really expect you to find anything because I couldn’t find anything either, but I was hoping for something.”
He smiled at her. “Oh, I’ll find Bacchus.”
When Liza came out, needing Bethany’s attention, the conversation ended.
He returned his attention to work but kept an eye out for Melanie or Page or even Bacchus. Not until the end of the day did Bethany come out from the back, looking tired, her fatigue evident on her face. “I really appreciate the help today,” she muttered, dropping in the chair in front of him. “It’s always worse when it’s a surgery day. I can generally handle the clinic if it’s just appointments because I can put up a sign saying I’m short-staffed and, if I’m not out here, I’m meeting with somebody in the back. Yet I don’t really like to leave the building wide open.”
“Not right now especially. If you are closing up the clinic now or just don’t need me at the front desk anymore, I’ll head out to look for Bacchus again.”
“I don’t understand where you can go and where you can look,” she admitted in confusion. “What can you do when nobody’s seen Bacchus in weeks?”
“I don’t know specifically, but I just keep at it. That’s what I’ll do.” She just nodded. He smiled, then turned and walked away.
“You never got lunch, did you?” she called out.
“I’ll get something in a couple hours when I’m done.”
“Make sure to call and let me know you’re okay.”
He stopped, looked at her in surprise, and then nodded. “I will.” With that, he turned and left.