A Moment in Time (5 page)

"I don't know . . . ," Ducci said.

"I do," Valerie replied emphatically. "I
don't mean to be rude, but I know what I'm doing. If you could just
wait over there"—she indicated a bench near the door to the tack
room—"I'll call you if I need you."

Ducci shrugged. "Whatever you say," he said
gruffly.

With him out of the way, Valerie turned her
attention back to the stall. On its door was a brass plaque with
the horse's name engraved on it: Storm Warning.
How
appropriate
, she thought. She unlatched the stall door and
stepped inside confidently but quietly. She stood staring at the
magnificent creature a few moments before getting down on her knees
beside him, steering clear of his hindquarters. The horse was in
severe distress. Stroking his head, she began talking to him in a
soft, gentle voice. Her eyes swept his body as she continued,
assessing his general physical condition, seeing if he appeared to
present with anything other than what she thought. After her
cursory examination, she continued to stroke and talk to him for
another minute before slowly getting to her feet and retrieving her
medical bag and carryall.

She placed them near Storm Warning and got
back down on her knees, speaking soothingly to him the whole time.
Just as she opened her medical bag, there was a sudden crash of
thunder and flash of lightning. The lights flickered for a moment,
then went out, plunging the stable into complete darkness. The
horses reacted to the violent weather with noises of their own,
stomping, snorting, and whinnying.

"Dr. Rochelle?" Ducci called to her.

She stroked Storm Warning again. "Yes?" she
replied.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said. "Have you got a lantern
or something?"

"I'll be right there," he answered.

She heard him moving about, feeling in the
darkness. "There," she whispered, as her hands stroked the horse's
slick, well-groomed coat. "You'll be okay, Storm Warning. We'll
have you better in no time."

The minutes seemed to stretch interminably in
the pitch black of the stable, but she soon heard Ducci approaching
from the direction of the tack room.

"I'm on my way," he called. He appeared in
the stall a moment later, lantern held high in one hand.

"Is there some place to hang that?" she
asked.

He hooked it over an iron hanger in the wall.
"Right there."

"Good," she said. "If you don't mind, there's
a box of supplies in the back of my Jeep. It's on the left-hand
side, right inside the door. Could you get it for me, and another
lantern, if you've got it?"

"Right away," he replied. He sensed that she
knew what she was doing and turned to go, carrying a flashlight to
light his way.

In the halo of light cast by the lantern,
Valerie rummaged around in her medical bag until she found what she
was looking for. Then she proceeded to work on Storm Warning.
First, she felt his neck, ascertaining where his jugular vein was.
Then she injected him with Rompun. The sedative worked quickly,
putting the horse at some ease, as well as making the rest of her
work less difficult. Ducci returned and stood in the doorway with
the box and another lantern.

"Is there another hanger for the lantern?"
she asked without looking up.

"Right over here," he said, indicating the
wall to the left of the door.

"Hang it there if you would, please," she
said. "And you can set the box down next to my medical bag."

"I can hold the lantern for you."

"That won't be necessary," she replied. "I
think Storm Warning and I will be better off alone."

"Whatever you say." He set the box down and
hung the lantern up, then turned to leave. "You want me to wait for
you?"

"It's okay," she said. "If you have something
to do, go ahead."

"I'll be in the office for a minute," he
said. "Need to check on things at the house."

She didn't reply but resumed her running
whispers, trying to soothe the nervous animal, readying him for
another injection. This one was a painkiller, Banamine, and it was
injected, like the Rompun, in the jugular vein. She would wait a
bit and give the sedative and painkiller time to ease the
magnificent horse even more before she performed the next
procedure.

The storm ended almost as quickly as it had
begun. The stable fell silent as the thunder died out and the
animals resettled themselves for the night. She didn't stop
stroking Storm Warning or whispering her litany of soothing words
until he seemed to be in less pain and somewhat lethargic. Then she
retrieved the supplies she needed from the medical box and got busy
again. She passed a nasogastric tube through one of his nostrils
and down toward his stomach. Through the tube she poured mineral
oil. It would act as a laxative, relieving the horse's painful
cramps. She focused on her work in the quiet, losing track of the
time. She was almost finished when suddenly the hair at the nape of
her neck stood on end, and she felt a chill clutch at her
heart.

Somebody's watching me
, she
thought.

Jerking her head up, she looked behind her
into the pitch black of the stable. She could have sworn that she
saw a figure suddenly step back into the darkness, but she couldn't
be certain.

"Ducci?" she asked. "Is that you?"

There was no reply, and after a moment she
shook her head as if to clear it and turned her attention back to
the horse.
I guess the stormy night and the power failure have
me spooked
, she thought.
Just like the horses
. She felt
silly because ordinarily mere power failures and storms didn't
affect her in the least. They were common in the country.

Maybe it's simply the situation
, she
thought.
My first time at Stonelair. All of the crazy rumors
about the owner. And the giant, Ducci himself, though he seems
harmless enough. I wonder what happened to him anyway?
Then it
occurred to her that an estate like Stonelair, as lavish as it must
be from the look of the stables, surely had a backup generator
system.

She quickly finished her work on Storm
Warning, giving him the last of the mineral oil, then easing the
nasogastric tube back out of his nostril. She sat for a few minutes
more, whispering to him and rubbing him with long, patient strokes.
Satisfied that he was resting comfortably, she got to her feet.
Taking first one lantern, then the other, she set them down outside
the stall. Finally she repacked her medical bag and carryall and
box of supplies.

At the end of the brick walk between the
stalls, the glow of a flashlight appeared, and Ducci hurried toward
her. "Sorry," he said, "I've been trying to get the backup
generators going, but didn't have any luck yet."

"That's okay," she said. "I'm done here."

"What's the problem seem to be?" he
asked.

"Severe colic," she replied. "I've given him
a sedative and painkiller and mineral oil as a laxative. Let me
know if there's no improvement overnight."

"Okay," Ducci said.

"And if you don't mind, could you help me get
my things back out to the Jeep?" Valerie asked. She shouldered her
carryall and picked up her medical bag.

"No problem," he replied. He leaned down and
turned off the lanterns, then picked them up along with the heavy
box of supplies.

"Just follow me," he said, leading the way
with the flashlight.

When they reached the office, he held the
door open for her, and she saw that several candles had been lit.
But Valerie didn't linger. She headed toward the door that led out
to the parking area.

"Dr. Rochelle?" Ducci called from behind
her.

She turned to face him, her eyebrows raised
in a question. "Yes?"

"Should I give you a check now or—?" he
began.

"That's not necessary," she said, shaking her
head. "The clinic will send a bill. If you've got a business card
with the billing address, let me have one. I'll call tomorrow to
check up on Storm Warning, by the way."

"Great," he said. He went over to the big
desk, where he set down the lanterns, then flipped open a small
wooden box and extracted a card. He handed it to her, and Valerie
took it and tossed it into her carryall.

"Thanks," she said.

He walked her out to the Jeep and opened the
cargo door for her. She shoved her medical bag in, then Ducci set
the box down in its corner and closed the door.

"Thanks a lot, Dr. Rochelle," he said.

"It's okay," Valerie said. "Keep an eye on
Storm Warning, but I think he'll be fine."

She went around to the door on the driver's
side, tossed her carryall in, then climbed in after it. As she
glanced down toward the stable, a light caught her eye, visible
through the outside stall doors. It moved slowly from the end near
the tack room, down to the middle of the stable, and stopped in the
area where Storm Warning was housed.

Weird
, she thought.
Maybe Ducci and
I weren't alone in there.

She started the Jeep and nodded at Ducci, who
stood watching her leave. Going back down the drive the way she'd
come in, she wondered if that had been Stonelair's new occupant
who'd been going to visit the horse.

But why so mysterious? she asked herself.
For that matter, why didn't he come down and introduce himself to
me? Why wasn't he hovering around, like most horse owners would,
while I was working on Storm Warning?
She decided she didn't
have a particularly high opinion of an owner who would have an
underling deal with a sick animal and not participate in its
treatment himself.

Her headlights shone off the huge gates that
guarded the entrance to the estate, and before she could wonder how
to open them, they began to slowly glide apart as the car
approached.

"Open sesame!" she said aloud. She drove
through and on toward the country lane that passed the entrance to
Stonelair.

What a weird place
, she thought as she
pulled out onto the road. Mr. Clean, the giant who'd give anybody
the creeps. The storm and then the darkness. The feeling that she
was being watched.

She reached over to twirl on the radio. "I
could use some music after that," she said. "Maybe some loud rock
and roll."
Anything,
she thought,
to shake away this
creepy feeling.

The man had watched Santo take her to the
office. Then he'd stepped out of the empty stall across from Storm
Warning's and gone across the brick walk to the sick horse's stall.
He'd stood staring into it, unable to see the horse in the
darkness. When he'd heard them leave the office and go to her car,
he'd gone to the office and gotten one of the lanterns, lighting it
and returning to Storm Warning's stall.

He opened the door and hung up the lantern.
Then, much as he'd heard her do, he got down on his knees and
whispered soothingly to the enormous animal, stroking him lovingly
all the while. He'd always treated his animals with such
affection—who didn't?—but he'd never seen anyone with her ability
to calm an animal. Certainly not a high-strung horse like Storm
Warning.

It's
as if she could really communicate
with the animal
, he told himself.
Well, that's not so
unusual, is it? But it's almost like she's got some kind of weird
magic touch
. Then he smiled. Maybe
it's that whopping big
sparkler of a ring she was wearing
, he thought. It had picked
up the lantern light and flashed it all around the stables. "Maybe
that whopper has healing powers," he whispered to Storm
Warning.

Chapter Three

Valerie turned off the highway and began the
drive up to the veterinarian clinic, perched on top of a hill,
overlooking summer fields of green and verdant woods. It was a cool
morning, and a mist still hovered over the ground. The grass was
soaking wet with dew, but she knew that the mist would soon burn
off, and the ground would be quickly dried by a scorcher of a
summer day.

She pulled into her customary parking spot in
the back of the clinic and killed the engine. She was tired for a
Monday morning, and that did not sit well with her. She was usually
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when she went into the clinic, eager
to get to work. But not today:

It wasn't because she'd been on call this
weekend. There'd been only the one emergency at Stonelair and five
or six telephone consultations on Sunday, an easy weekend. It was
spending the weekend with Teddy that had been exhausting, she
decided. And not because of their vigorous physical activities,
either. No, it was the emotional toll that dealing with Teddy had
taken out of her that had left her feeling wrung out, limp, and
ineffectual. That and her own weakness in handling the situation.
She had come to realize that she and she alone was responsible for
her actions, and she felt that she had failed herself this weekend.
In spades.

"Elvis," she said, turning to look at the
mutt in the passenger seat, "I've got to snap out of it. I've got a
busy week ahead, and I've got to be on my toes." Elvis turned and
looked at her, wagging his tail sluggishly.

Valerie smiled and patted him, then put her
car keys in her carryall and got out of the Jeep. She held the door
open, allowing Elvis to jump out behind her. Letting herself in by
the staff door, she headed down the hallway toward the reception
area, where the door to her office was located. Elvis bounced along
beside her, exhilarated as usual by being here in one of his
favorite domains.

When she stepped into the reception area, the
chatter she'd heard in the hallway suddenly stopped, and there was
complete silence as four heads turned to stare at her: Daphne
Collins and Charles Bradford, fellow vets, and Tami Reeves and
Annie Wolsky, who doubled as secretaries and receptionists.