Thirty-Five
With Ralphie and Errol possibly cruising the streets of Boise looking for me because I’d stolen their grenades and blown up
two of their snowmobiles, I kept my head down as I hustled Little Sister into the vet clinic. All the animals in the waiting
room were blessedly calm except for a healthy-looking parakeet that kept screeching, “I’ve been shot!” I checked in with the
bouffanted receptionist, then sat in a chair holding Little Sister by the collar. His ear didn’t look good, but I needed to
get this show on the road. I had to meet my kids at the bus stop at three thirty. (Normally I could ask Emmylou to meet them
for me, but not anymore. The thought gave me a pang—and not just because I needed the childcare assistance. Life was lonelier
without Emmylou.)
“I’ve been shot!” shrieked the parakeet.
“I don’t know about you, but that bird’s wreaking havoc on my nervous system,” the receptionist said, to no one in particular.
A moment later, a muscular guy in scrubs appeared behind the doggy gate. “Little Sister?” he called.
My whole body prickled with the sort of sensation you get when you walk into a coffee shop and see your ex behind the counter,
because I recognized the vet tech. The leash slipped from my fingers. Little Sister bounded toward the muscular man with arms
inked in tattoos of Labradors and wiener dogs, stopped short, spun in a circle, and barked.
“Snowflake?” Harlan said. “Where’s your pop?”
I had the urge to flee from the man I’d crawled under Connor’s bed to avoid. But when Harlan leveled me with a questioning gaze, instead of sprinting for the door, I followed Little Sister through the doggy gate. I hated to admit it, but I might have become a little bit attached to that dog.
Alone in the exam room, door closed, Harlan got to work taking Little Sister’s vitals. He leaned over to press his stethoscope
to the dog’s chest.
“Why do you have Snowflake?” he asked, not looking up.
“His owner was a friend of a friend who wasn’t up for dog ownership,” I lied. “Heard he was kind of a jerk.”
“Jerk about sums it up,” Harlan said, warming to me. “Not even Connor Johnson’s own dog likes him. Isn’t that right, Snowflake?”
He typed information about the dog’s vitals into a computer on a rolling cart.
Little Sister wagged his tail in agreement.
“Was Snowflake already a patient here?” I asked, my heart thrumming in my chest.
“Nah. Connor called me a while back and said the dog tore his ear on an old nail.”
“When was that exactly?”
“Maybe like Sunday before last,” he said, rolling a scrub tray over and beginning to clean Little Sister’s ear. “If I tell
you something, you won’t tell my boss?”
“Never,” I promised. Because Sunday before last was the day Connor died.
“I did these stitches. Off the clock. As a favor. To the dog, not Connor. Otherwise Connor wouldn’t have had Snowflake stitched
up at all.”
“That was kind of you.”
“Like I said, I did it for the dog. I can’t stand to think of an animal suffering. I had just enough lidocaine. Vets don’t
part with that stuff lightly—you could stop someone’s heart with it.”
My eyes widened, but I said nothing.
“Legally, I could sew up my own dog. But someone else’s dog, it’s practicing without a license,” Harlan continued.
“That makes sense,” I said. This guy should not be telling me any of this. My diagnosis: sweet, good-looking, dumb as a bag
of hair.
“So when Dr. Jehangir asks, you’ll tell her someone else did the first stitches?” he said, suddenly nervous he’d overshared.
“Totally. The dog tore his ear on a fence nail in Portland. And I got it stitched up there. I can’t remember the vet’s name.”
He looked relieved.
“So you and Connor were . . . I mean, are friends?” I ventured.
Harlan shrugged. “I know him from our four-wheeling club. Saw him try to run over a bobcat once. So I wouldn’t say close friends.”
“After that you bumped him down to acquaintance?”
Harlan laughed. “Pretty much.” He had a nice smile to go with his tattooed biceps. Maybe I could set him up with Layna. But
he seemed too na?ve for this world. Focus, Tilly. “But I’m never doing him a favor again.”
“Because . . .” I prompted
“He stole my Ambien while I was sewing up his dog’s ear.”
Here we go. “What a special person,” I said, and then, off his blank look, continued, “I’m a mom so I try not to swear. ‘Special
person’ is French for ‘asshole.’ Did Connor steal anything else? Like your lidocaine?”
“I didn’t have any more lidocaine,” he said. Dammit. “But he stole a bottle of pentazocine from me too. Not as big a deal
to me since I don’t use it, but still.”
“Penta—pentaz— What’s that again?”
“Pentazocine. An injectable opioid,” he said. Off my look, he added, “It’s not like that. I have a bulging disc. When I have
to pick up a bigger animal, it flares up. My girlfriend gave me the pentazocine. Well, my ex-girlfriend.”
I shivered. “Are injectable opioids generally prescribed for bulging discs these days?”
“My ex, she read on the internet that it’s fine if I don’t use that much,” he said. “I work here. I know better. But she insisted.”
He’d be easy to railroad, too sweet to refuse.
The door opened, effectively ending our conversation.
A bespectacled Dr. Jehangir breezed in. I gave her my canned story about the fence nail in Portland, then topped it off with more lies about how Little Sister had torn his stitches at the dog park.
While Dr. Jehangir set to work sewing up the dog’s ear, I considered what I’d learned from Harlan.
I wasn’t entirely convinced Connor had died of being tased. Maybe he’d shot up with the injectable opioid after the bouncer
chucked him out of the club. One thing I knew for certain: He’d been wheezing when he came at Miranda. Could there’ve been
OD levels of pentazocine in his system? I’d need a toxicology report to know for sure.
I knew someone who’d likely just aced her drug toxicity exam. Surely Gucci would be unsympathetic to a murdered sleaze like
Connor—after all, she’d left her own abusive uncle to rot in a field. And I had a feeling she’d be excited to do some real
forensics. Telling her I had a dead man in my playhouse was a calculated risk. But the time had come to take it.
“All done,” Dr. Jehangir said. “Little Sister is going to be absolutely fine. Aren’t you, boy?”
I thanked her, shot Harlan a grateful look, and headed out to the waiting room. After I set up a payment plan with the bouffanted
receptionist—who smiled amenably and said, “I get it, girl. My bank accounts on E too”—I hightailed it out of there with Little
Sister trailing behind me. I’d have to hurry to make it to the bus stop in time to meet the twins. And if things went as I
hoped, I’d have a long night ahead of me.