A Moment in Time (38 page)

wire cage, which was entirely covered with a
heavy blue cotton cloth that blocked out all light. That way the
nocturnal creature wasn't bothered by the kitchen's bright
daylight. She lifted the cloth and peeked in. "Hayden, darling,"
she cooed. "Did you have fun last night? Spinning away on your
little wheel?"

She didn't see Hayden or any movement
indicating that he was there. He was hidden by toys perhaps, or
burrowed deeply under his blanket. African pygmy hedgehogs couldn't
stand cold, and Hayden always slept on a heating pad burrowed under
a little blanket. Colette straightened up and worriedly removed the
cloth from over his cage entirely, putting it down on a chair.

"Hayden?" she called again. "Are you there,
darling boy?" There was still no movement, so she opened the cage's
door and carefully grasped his blanket, looking under it. Nothing.
She took the blanket out and moved her fingers gingerly about the
cage, searching in vain for the missing creature.

"Hayden? Hayden!" she began to cry. "Where
are you, darling?"

She removed her hand from the cage and closed
the door.
How on earth?
she asked herself in a panic.
I'm
certain I had the cage door secured when I went to bed last night.
Or did I?

Then another thought occurred to her
. Oh,
dear! Maybe Hayden's loose in the house somewhere
, she worried.
He's very enterprising and may have ventured out of his
cage
. She'd often let him out at night and let him explore the
kitchen, so it wasn't altogether strange territory for him. But the
kitchen door was open to the porch. She rushed over to it and
looked about the screened-in porch. No sign of Hayden there.

She closed the kitchen door firmly and began
searching the baseboards around the room.
He always seemed
partial to the baseboards
, she thought, exploring the perimeter
of the room. She looked and looked, but there was no sign of
Hayden.

With a sigh, she turned to the notepad she
kept on the kitchen counter to look at the list she'd started
yesterday. All the things she had to do, the groceries and other
items that she had to shop for.

Iced tea, she remembered. She had intended to
make a big pitcher to have on hand for herself and Val, if she
happened by later today. It was a green tea jazzed up with a
delicious, rather rare kind of honey. She put the to-do list down
and decided to get busy.

She retrieved a big glass pitcher on the
ancient Welsh dresser, then going to the side-by-side
refrigerator-freezer, she held the heavy pitcher in one hand and
opened the freezer compartment with the other. She always filled
the pitcher to the brim with ice cubes to start. Reaching her hand
into the pile of ice that the ice- maker had churned out, she took
a handful from the reservoir and put it in the pitcher. She took
another handful and placed it in, then reached in for another.

"
Merde!"
she cried aloud. She must
have nicked her hand on a sharp piece of ice. She removed her hand
with the offending ice from the ice-maker's big reservoir and
started to toss it in the pitcher, looking down at it first to make
certain she hadn't gotten blood on it from her hand.

Suddenly her eyes grew enormous, and she
dropped the pitcher of ice to the floor, where it shattered into
dozens of pieces at her feet. Puff Puppy barked in alarm, but she
didn't hear him. Her mouth widened into a blood-curdling scream of
shock and fear and horror, and she dropped the piece of ice in her
hand—
no, not ice!
she told herself—to the floor, where it
landed amidst the broken glass and ice cubes.

Colette stepped back, the scream still rising
from deep within her. Looking down at the floor, her screams turned
to wails of anguish, then into sobs of utter despair. She clutched
the lapels of her bathrobe as if hanging on to them would somehow
protect her from whatever evil had done this. Tears began to pour
from her old eyes, running down her face in rivulets of sorrow.

On the floor, atop the broken glass and ice,
lay Hayden, frozen to death, his quills as hard and sharp as
knives, his beautiful gray color frosted pale, his tiny dark eyes
open in a look of eternal horror.

Colette covered her own eyes and continued to
sob, choking on her sorrow, until she could finally make her way to
the kitchen table, where she sat down heavily in a chair, the tears
still flowing.

Who could do something so demonic?
And why, oh, why?
She had no answers to her questions, but
they continued to roar at her.

She had no idea how long it was before she
quietly rose to her feet and methodically took a tea towel from the
kitchen counter, then picked up Hayden's lifeless little body and
wrapped it in the towel. She placed the bundle in his cage and
closed the door. Then, retrieving a broom and dust pan from a
closet, she cleaned up the broken glass and ice.
Puff Puppy
mustn't hurt himself
, she thought.

That accomplished, she picked up the Maltese,
clutching him to her as if she were still on automatic pilot, and
went out onto the screened-in porch and sat down, staring off into
the garden. She had to call Val at the clinic, but she felt so
dispirited that she decided to wait a while. Nothing Val could do
would bring Hayden back. She would spend some time alone with Puff
Puppy, trying to come to terms with the evil that she'd been forced
to confront.

Valerie had just finished her morning rounds
of the local horse farms and had gotten out of her dirty coveralls
and boots and changed into a fresh lab coat and sneakers. She was
washing up, getting ready for the rest of her day, when Tami rushed
into her office.

"Val," she gasped, "it's your mother. She
says it's an emergency."

Val's eyes widened in alarm. She turned off
the water at the sink in the little bathroom. "An emergency?" she
asked, stepping into her office. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Tami said, "but she seems to
be in an awful state. She's on line three, okay?"

"Thanks, Tami," Valerie said. "Tell her I'll
be right there."

"Will do."

Valerie quickly buttoned up her lab coat,
then approached her desk with trepidation.
What could the
emergency be?
she asked herself, wondering if there really was
an emergency at all.

Seated at her desk, she pressed the button
for line three and picked up the receiver. "Hello, Mother," she
said as calmly as she could. "Tami tells me there's an emergency.
What's going on?"

"I must talk to you at once, Val," her mother
said in a voice that was uncustomarily anxious. "Before you cut me
off, I must tell you that it's of the utmost importance."

"What is it, Mother?" Valerie asked.

"I thought you were going to marry Teddy,"
her mother began, "and—"

"I don't want to discuss that, Mother,"
Valerie said in no uncertain terms.

"That's not what I want to discuss, either,"
her mother hurriedly said. "
Please
, Val, hear me out for a
minute before you rush to judgment. It's vitally important."

What on earth?
Valerie wondered.
"Okay," she said, "I'm listening."

"What I'm trying to say," her mother
continued, "is that because I thought you were going to marry
Teddy, I signed a power of attorney and turned over my entire stock
portfolio for him to manage. I—"

"You what?" Valerie asked, not quite
believing her ears.

"You heard me correctly," Marguerite replied
with a heavy sigh. "Because I thought you were marrying him, I
turned everything over to Teddy to manage. I took it all away from
Dock Wainwright."

"I can't believe you did that," Valerie said.
"Dock Wainwright has always handled the family's affairs. And quite
conservatively, like Dad wanted him to, I might add. You know as
well as I do that Teddy trades in dangerous territory. Maybe he's
had success. I don't really know anything about it, but I do know
that Dock always seemed to take very good care of you and Dad."

"Be that as it may," Marguerite said, "I've
done what I've done, and now I'm . . . well, frankly, I'm a little
disturbed. I don't think I would be if I knew you were
marrying—"

"I said I don't want to discuss that,"
Valerie said with fire in her voice. "If you've made a decision you
regret, I'm not taking the blame for it. And if you're trying to
talk me into marrying him just because you've invested with him,
then you might as well stop right there. There is not a chance in
hell I'll marry Teddy."

"I'm well aware of that," Marguerite said,
"although I don't think you have to use such harsh language to get
your point across. In any case, that's not what I'm trying to do.
I'm certainly not trying to convince you to marry him because I've
invested with him." She sighed.

"Okay," Valerie said. "Then what is it? What
can I do?"

"I'm telling you because I'm beginning to
worry about the whole thing," Marguerite said. "I've just had a
talk with Suzy Brooks. She and Harry have taken their account away
from Teddy, she told me." Marguerite paused as if gathering the
courage to go on.

"I guess people do that all the time,"
Valerie said. "I mean, you just did it with Dock Wainwright."

"Yes," Marguerite said, sighing again, "but
in any case, Suzy said that Teddy had been handling a substantial
amount of money for them, several million dollars, in fact. She
said that everything had gone swimmingly for a while, but that
lately their statements had been arriving late or not at all."

"You mean they hadn't been getting anything
from him?" Valerie asked. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," Marguerite said. "Suzy would
never have made this up. She said that when they asked Teddy about
it, he assured them it was all due to some sort of new accounting
procedure they were switching over to in the office. Anyway, to
make a long story short, they finally decided to bail out, and it's
taken them months to recover their money from him. They practically
had to threaten to file a lawsuit against him to get him to pay
up."

"I see," Valerie said, genuinely alarmed
now.

"Not only that," Marguerite continued, "but
when they got their final statement and check, all sorts of highly
debatable charges had been made to their account, reducing it by
several thousand dollars."

"Oh, my God," Valerie moaned. "Are they going
to try to do something about it?"

"They haven't come to a decision," Marguerite
replied. "But I have. I want my money to go straight back to Dock
Wainwright and as quickly as possible. I was going to try and get
Jamie working on it this morning, but I can't find him."

"What do you mean you can't find him?"
Valerie asked. "Where does he go?"

"I ... I don't really know," Marguerite
confessed. "He has friends nearby, I know."

"Look, Mother," she said. "I'm sure it'll be
just fine. He's only had your money a very short time, right?"

"Yes," Marguerite said, "but I can't help
worrying after Suzy's call. I thought I was doing the right thing,
and having Jamie as a sort of watchdog over everything, well, how
could I go wrong?"

"Jamie as a watchdog?" Valerie asked. "What
do you mean? How's he involved?"

"He was transferring some money to Teddy as
well," Marguerite replied. "And Jamie knows a thing or two about
money management, so I signed papers giving Jamie the power to make
decisions regarding stock trades and such. He is supposed to be
consulted before Teddy makes any final decisions regarding changes
in the portfolio. That sort of thing. But I haven't been able to
reach Jamie. He's visiting friends in Saratoga, I believe."

It gets more Byzantine by the minute
,
Valerie thought, but didn't say. "In that case," Val said,
"everything ought to be all right, Mother. If Teddy can't do
anything without Jamie, then you should be okay until a transfer
back to Dock is made."

"I hope so," Marguerite said. "I just don't
know. Teddy is certainly an underhanded schemer."

Pot calls kettle black
, Valerie
thought. Did it never occur to her mother that if those two would
scheme with her, they might very well scheme against her?

"I don't know how I can help you," Valerie
said, "but if there's anything I can do, say the word."

"I was hoping that you might be able to talk
to Teddy, and tell him I've changed my mind," she said. "Tell him
it's because your father would be terribly disappointed to know
that I'd transferred control to someone other than Dock. I
certainly don't want Teddy to think that I'm suspicious of him. It
might offend him. I want this done in a very civilized way."

The way you planned my wedding
,
Valerie couldn't help thinking. "Well," she said, "I don't think
there's a chance that I'll get to talk to Teddy before you do, but
if he calls I'll broach the subject."

"That would be awfully helpful, Val, dear,"
she said. "I've already talked to Dock Wainwright, by the way, and
told him that I want the money transferred back to his firm. So he
said he would get the paperwork ready at his office, and he's
waiting to hear from Teddy. He's already left word with Teddy's
secretary."

"Okay," Valerie said. "Is there anything
else?"

"No," Marguerite said, then she added, "but
it wouldn't hurt if you'd be nice to Teddy, only until this is
over, I mean, so that it works out smoothly."

Valerie wanted to scream, but instead she
said, "Of course, Mother. I'll be nice to Teddy. For your
sake."

"It's for your own as well," Marguerite
pointed out. "After all, Val, dear, you are my sole heir."

"I'll do my best," Valerie said. "Now, I'd
better get off the phone because I've got a very busy day."

"Yes," Marguerite said. "I won't keep you.
Goodbye, then."