“I don’t know. I only know that I always check the gates to be sure they’re closed.” Her hand stilled on the dog’s shoulder. “I’m not like other people, Isaiah.” Her voice quavered as she said his name. “I can’t even keep track of the scoops when I make coffee without my counting beans.”
He cautiously circled that, not entirely sure how her coffee-making ability pertained to the situation. He was about to ask when she added, “Knowing that about myself, do you really think I’d come in here, where all that I do is so impor-tant, and leave any-thing to memory? I’m more careful than other people. I have to be.”
A sinking sensation attacked Isaiah’s middle. He’d said almost exactly the same thing this morning to Tucker.
She waved her hand to encompass all the cages. “I love these dogs. I’d never take a chance with their safety. I have a strict routine, and I always, always follow it. Other-wise I might forget something.” Her larynx bobbed as she swallowed. “I was worried about Dusty last night and checked on him right before I left.”
“Isn’t it possible that you accidentally forgot to drop the latch when you exited the cage?” he suggested kindly.
“No.” She looked him dead in the eye. “This morning when we talked, I was upset and couldn’t recall the details clearly, but now I can.” She jutted her small chin at him. “I checked twice to make sure the latch was down after I left his cage.”
Isaiah drew up his knees to create a rest for his arms. Gazing into her bruised, hurt-filled eyes, he had no choice but to believe her. She was almost ritualistic about her little routines. Over time he’d noticed that she did exactly the same things in the same order, day after day. When she left the clinic at the end of her shift, for instance, she always followed a pattern—going first to check on the snack supplies when she entered the surgery, and then going to get her coat and purse before saying good-bye. Other people might deviate, saying good-bye first and stopping by the refrigerator last, but Laura never altered the pattern, undoubtedly because she might overlook something important if she did things out of sequence.
“I want to believe you,” he confessed, his voice gravelly with regret. “And if it had happened on day shift when other people were in the kennels, I would believe you. But I’m having a problem getting past the fact that you were the only person here last night.”
Tears shimmered in her eyes. She gazed at him for an interminably long moment, and then she looked away.
“What?” He leaned sideways to see her face. “You almost said something. What?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“No, I won’t. Spit it out.”
The tendons in her throat went taut. She drew in a deep breath. On the exhale, she blurted, “I think someone is sneaking in here at night.”
She was right; he thought she was crazy. “Why?”
“To get me fired.”
That was even crazier. So far as he knew, every-one at the clinic liked Laura.
“Why would someone want you to be fired? I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t believe you, Laura, but who would want you to lose your job?”
Her lips quivered at the corners. “I don’t know. I only know someone does. Maybe some-body who doesn’t like me because I have brain damage, and it’s easy to set me up. If the dog food gets mixed up, I must have done it. If a kennel gate is left open, I must have done it. Well, news flash: It’s true that I misread numbers sometimes, but I never get my threes confused with fours.”
Again, Isaiah didn’t get the connection.
“The dog in kennel f-four got the food for the d-dog in kennel three,” she explained, agitation slowing her speech even more. “A th-three is the same no matter how you turn it, and a f-four looks nothing like a three, upside down, inside out, or s-s-sideways.” She stopped petting Dusty to gesture at the seven painted in bold black high on the back wall of the enclosure. “It’s not like the numbers are small or hard to read. I’m brain-d-damaged, Isaiah, not blind.”
Isaiah stared thoughtfully at the seven, and then drew his gaze back to her pale face.
“Earli-er this week when T-Tucker chewed me out about mixing up the f-food, I wondered how I could have made such a d-dumb mistake. I’m always so careful. Now I’m almost sure that s-someone came in here and switched the bowls.”
Normally Isaiah was analytical to a fault, a man who dealt only in facts and carefully gathered data. But even though Laura’s allegations made no sense to him intellectually, he found himself believing her. She wasn’t a person to dream up something this wild, and for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything she stood to gain. She hadn’t lost her job, so this wasn’t a ploy to get it back. She was also smart enough to realize that making such allegations could easily backfire, casting even more doubt on her credibility.
“I knew you’d think I’m c-crazy,” she whispered accusingly. “Well, if you th-think that’s bad, you’re really going to think I’m n-nuts when I tell you the rest. I don’t think I s-set off the alarm Monday night.”
Isaiah slid the soles of his boots forward and plopped his rump on the cement. In for a penny, in for a pound. If he could believe that someone had sneaked in here to switch the feeding dishes and leave a gate open, it wasn’t difficult to go a step farther and believe someone else had tripped the alarm.
“I practiced s-setting the alarm with Val that day,” she hurried on. “She told me to watch the little light on the c-console. When it’s red, the alarm is set. When it’s green, the alarm is off.”
“That’s right.”
“Monday night it was all still new to me,” she went on. “I thought maybe I’d done something wrong, even though the light had turned the right colors. Now I know better. I did nothing wrong. The light never turns green unless the alarm is off, and it never turns red unless the alarm has been set.”
“You’re sure that the light turned green when you disarmed the system?”
She nodded emphatically. “And it was red when I left the console to go into the kennels. I was about halfway across the storage room when the siren went off.”
If the light had been red when she left the console, the alarm had indeed been set. “Have you ever seen or heard anyone in the building at night?” he asked.
She looked imploringly at him. “If I answer that qu-question, are you going to think I’m n-nuts?”
“No,” he replied, and sincerely meant it.
“After the alarm went off M-Monday night and I was talking to that lady on the ph-phone, I could have sworn I heard a crash in the one of the of-fices.”
“Which one?”
“I’m not sure. I just know I heard a loud c-crash. I never checked to see what it was. I was so upset about everything else that I forgot about it until later.”
Isaiah could understand that. “Anything else strange?”
“At night when I’ve been working, I’ve heard sounds. Sometimes soft footsteps like you might hear if someone was in ano-ther part of the building. Sometimes it was the faint sound of things being moved—scraping noises or thumps. Until today, I kept telling myself it was all in my head. Now I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“If you properly rearmed the system Monday night, opening a door or window is the only thing that would have tripped the alarm. Because of the animals, we don’t have motion detectors.”
She shook her head. “I was taking off my coat. I never touched a door or window. It just went off.”
Isaiah stared thoughtfully at the wall. “There are two alarm consoles in the building, one at the front and one at the rear. If someone had been standing near the front doors, watching that console, he would have known by the indicator light when you got the system rearmed. Then he could have hurried into one of the offices to open a window. Once the alarm went off, he could have closed the window and remained in the office until after the police came and left.”
Laura’s eyes went wide and filled with tears. “You believe me?”
“I don’t know who’s
crazier, me or you, but yes, Laura, I believe you. Why would you lie about something like this, and for what purpose?”
She squeezed her eyes closed. Tears spilled from under her dark lashes, making sparkling rivulets on her pale cheeks.
“Hey!” he said.
She opened her eyes and gave him a tremulous smile. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t think—” She broke off, caught her lower lip between her teeth, and shook her head again. “I didn’t think you’d believe me, is all.”
“Yeah, well, you thought wrong.” Isaiah reached out to brush the tears from her cheeks. Then he drew his feet back under him and pushed erect. “All that remains is for me to substantiate your story.”
“How can you do that?”
“By calling Harris Security.” At her questioning look, he smiled. “Nobody can enter or leave this clinic after the alarm has been set without leaving an electronic trail. The console sends a signal to Harris Security via a secure phone line every time the security code is used to activate or deactivate the system.”
“It does?” Her eyes went even wider. “So it’ll show that someone else was in here on Monday night?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
In that moment Isaiah knew he’d been right to believe Laura. She didn’t look frightened or uneasy, as a person might if she’d been lying and suddenly realized the game was over. She clearly believed that the security records would vindicate her.
“Want to come?” he invited. “You can listen while I make the call.”
Chapter Eight
Tucker’s Victorian farmhouse sat on forty acres at the east side of town. Some sections of the land were treed and others were in pasture, creating a perfect balance for a busy veterinarian who wanted to keep a few horses but didn’t have time to operate a full-scale ranch. The yard itself was defined by a white, ivy-draped picket fence. An old, dented mailbox on a post stood next to the front gate.
When Tucker had purchased the property, he’d taken a lot of razzing from his father and brothers. They’d asked him if his feminine side was coming out, teased him about getting a white cottage with a picket fence, and wondered aloud if Tucker would start serving tea in fancy cups when they came to visit. Finally, when their mother had been out of earshot, Tucker had held up all five fingers of one hand and cheerfully informed them it was a bouquet of F-yous, one for each of them. That had pretty much put a stop to the teasing.
Secretly, Isaiah admired his twin’s attitude. There was nobody tougher or more masculine than Tucker, but he wasn’t hung up on cultivating that image. He was who he was and didn’t worry about what other people thought. He’d liked this house and its location. Turrets, elaborate porches, gingerbread trim, and English gardens appealed to him. Isaiah was more into gleaming wood and simple architectural lines, but to each his own. If Tucker was happy, that was all that mattered.
As Isaiah strode up the stepping-stone path to the veranda steps, he scrunched his shoulders to push the collar of his jacket higher on the nape of his neck. In November, the nighttime temperatures in Central Oregon dived to freezing, crystallizing the air with particles of ice and frosting the pine branches. A full moon bathed the landscape in silvery light, making the trees look more gray than green.
Too cold for snow, Isaiah thought as he scaled the steps to knock on his brother’s front door. Faint light shone through the windows, telling Isaiah that Tucker was home and still up.
Moments later Tucker appeared in the large entrance hall, which encompassed a central curving staircase with runners of forest green. Through the oval of etched door glass, his silhouette was distorted, creating a copper-and-blue blur where his bare upper torso met with the waistline of his jeans.
He cracked open the door. “Isaiah? What’s brought you here?” He drew the portal wide, rubbing his furry chest as the chill air curled around him. “I was crashed in the recliner. It’s after nine.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Isaiah had known several sets of identical twins over the years, and a fair half of them hadn’t felt that they resembled each other all that much. Such had never been the case with him and his brother. Their coloring, features, and builds were so markedly similar that sometimes they both felt as if they were looking in a mirror. This was one of those moments for Isaiah. Maybe it was the soft glow of a lamp coming from behind Tucker, casting his face partly in shadow. Whatever the reason, Isaiah got the uncanny feeling, if only for an instant, that he was having an out-of-body experience.
Tucker retreated a step to allow Isaiah entry. “Everyone missed you at the party.”
“What party?”
“Earth to Isaiah.” Tucker pushed the door shut. “Natalie’s grandfather’s birthday party, tonight, six sharp. Does that ring a bell? Everybody showed but you.”
“Shit.” Isaiah remembered now. He’d gotten a gift and attended Sly’s party, but had forgotten to attend Natalie’s grandfather’s party. “I even have a present for him—a whole case of cheap burgundy to keep under his bed.”
Tucker grinned. “Drop it off and apologize. With a case of wine as a peace offering, he’ll forgive you almost anything.” With a shiver, Tucker asked, “What do you need to talk to me about?”
Isaiah swept off his Stetson. “There’s a situation at the clinic.”
“Shit. What’s happened now?”
“Nothing more has happened, exactly. I’ve just become privy to some information that we need to discuss.”
“Tonight?”
“It can’t wait until morning.”
Cursing under his breath, Tucker padded barefoot up the hall to the library, situated to the left of the stairs. He reached around the door frame to flip on the overhead chandelier before they entered the room. The sudden spill of light made the hardwood floor gleam like polished glass.
“I can tell by the look on your face that it’s not good news,” he told Isaiah. “As far as I’m concerned, bad news at this hour calls for a drink.”
It called for immediate action, but Isaiah knew his brother well and refrained from dropping that bomb until the moment felt right. He tossed his hat on a fancy settee that was new since his last visit. “Wow. Aren’t we getting classy? Actual furniture?”
“Wallpaper, too.” Tucker stepped over to an ornate liquor cabinet of hand-carved mahogany. “I liked the tea roses. What do you think?”
It looked as if a woman had taken up squatting rights, but Isaiah only nodded as he perused the little roses that trailed over a swirled hunter-green backdrop. “Pretty,” he settled for saying. Prissy stuff usually was.
Tucker drew two crystal tumblers from a shelf and sloshed a measure of Irish whiskey into each. He looked too big, dark, and rugged to be messing around with a crystal decanter. “I got tired of making do and hired an interior decorator.”
Isaiah swept a wondering glance over the mahogany office furniture that took up one corner of the room. There was even a secretary with curlicues across the top. The last time he’d been here, a cheap drafting table had filled in as a desk, and the only furniture had been two metal chairs and an apple crate serving as an end table. He crossed to stand before the hearth and chafe his hands.
“Why do people do that?” Tucker asked.
“Do what?”
“Warm their hands at a hearth when the fire’s dead out.”
Isaiah glanced down, and sure enough he was holding out his hands to nonexistent heat. He laughed and folded his arms. “Good question. Habit, I guess. It’s colder’n hell outside.”
Grinning, Tucker shook his head.
Isaiah studied a nature painting in an oval frame that hung above the mantel. “This is really great, Tucker.” And Isaiah realized he actually meant it. The house had a warm, lived-in feeling now. “Maybe I should hire a decorator. I’ve been in my place for over six months, and I’m still sitting on beanbags in the living room to watch TV.”
“That’s no way to impress the babes.” After handing Isaiah a whiskey, Tucker sank on
to a sage-green wingback chair set at an angle in front of the hearth. “Females go for well-established men with refined tastes.” A devilish twinkle entered his blue eyes. “Not to mention that it’s harder than hell to seduce a woman on a folding chair.”
The picture that formed in Isaiah’s mind brought a smile to his mouth. “I imagine so.”
“The gal’s name is Lisa Banning, if you’re interested.”
“Who, the woman you seduced on a folding chair?”
“No, lamebrain, the decorator.”
Isaiah took a seat opposite his brother. As fancy as the wingback seat looked, he was pleased to find that comfort hadn’t been sacrificed for appearance. The cushions were luxuriously soft, and deep enough to accommodate his large frame. “Maybe I’ll give her a call.”
Tucker took a sip of whiskey. After swallowing and giving an appreciative whistle, he asked, “So what can’t wait until morning?”
Isaiah leaned back, his drink balanced on one knee. “Laura didn’t leave that kennel gate open last night. We were wrong to jump to conclusions.”
Tucker didn’t immediately respond. He swirled the whiskey in his glass, his expression thoughtful. When he finally met Isaiah’s gaze again, all the laughter had left his eyes. “Do you realize how crazy that sounds, Isaiah? One person works the late shift. Last night that person was Laura. If she didn’t leave the gate open, who did, a mischievous gremlin?”
Isaiah refused to get angry. “She was set up, Tucker. I think someone’s trying to get her fired.”
Tucker sat forward on his chair. “Come on, Isaiah, get real. Who’d want to do that? As far as I know, everybody at the clinic likes Laura. I know for a fact that none of my techs have a beef with her. Lena sings her praises. That kennel keeper Danielle Prince, with the hair that changes colors once a month, thinks she’s the greatest thing since the invention of popcorn because Laura never leaves shit details unfinished for the next shift. Tina thinks she’s a saint. I repeat, who’d want to get her fired?”
“I don’t have all the answers yet,” Isaiah replied. “I only know she was set up.”