Donally, Claire - Cat Nap (A SUNNY & SHADOW MYSTERY)

“Conditioned reflex,” Jane joked. “Lord knows, Shadow’s come in here with enough battle wounds and injuries. That’s a very adventuresome cat you’ve got there.” She leaned forward and examined the paw, paying special attention to the pads, looking at them through a magnifier.

“Was he outside recently?” she asked, glancing over at Sunny. “Since the snowfall?”

“He snuck out yesterday morning,” Sunny replied. “My dad says he came home limping.”

“I think someone in your neighborhood had a heavy hand with the ice melt.” Jane let go of Shadow’s paw. He immediately extended it again. That got a laugh out of Jane, who gently stroked his leg.

“There wasn’t all that much snow on the ground when I got up in the morning,” Sunny said. “But we have a couple of neighbors who really don’t want to find themselves stuck in their driveways.”

“It looks as if Shadow might have walked across one of those drives and picked up a few grains of ice melt between his pads. Hey, didn’t your dad deliver rock salt back in the day?”

“Oh yeah, he drove truckloads of salt all over New England before his heart attack. In the old days, they shipped the stuff here from India. Now I hear it comes from Chile,” Sunny replied.

Jane nodded, her expression grave, but her smile returned as she took Shadow’s paw again. “Well, the stuff you get in most stores now is more chemically active than plain old salt. Sometimes it can even crack the pads on a cat or dog’s paw. We usually close those up with a bit of superglue, believe it or not.”

She looked up at Sunny. “No sign of that here. On the other hand, while the pads on a cat’s paw are pretty tough, the flesh between them is more sensitive. Getting this stuff caught in there is like having a pebble in your shoe, except it’s not only getting stuck between your toes but burning them, too.”

“Is there a way to fix it?” Sunny couldn’t keep the anxious tone out of her voice.

“There’s a nice, simple home remedy you can try,” Jane said. “Just warm up a little mineral oil and work it in around the pads. I’ll show you.” She stepped over to a counter, picked up a bottle of mineral oil, and went to the built-in sink, running the hot water.

After holding the bottle under the stream of water for a couple of minutes, Jane opened the bottle, let a drop of oil fall on her wrist, and nodded. “Just right.”

She poured a little oil into her hand and returned to the exam table. “Could I see that paw again, Shadow?”

Shadow immediately obliged, and Jane rested his paw in the pool of warm oil she’d collected in her palm.

The cat gave a little mew of surprise and then settled into purring.

“So, that feels better?” Jane said, gently massaging the oil into and between the pads on his paw. She looked over at Sunny. “See what I’m going?”

Sunny nodded. “Looks as if he’s really enjoying it.”

“Yeah, do this every day for a week, and he should be as good as new.” Jane ran her free hand down Shadow’s back as he sat quietly, still trustingly giving her his paw. She smiled gently down at the cat. “It’s nice that something so simple can help a patient get better. This time on Saturday—well, after office hours—is when folks would bring in their pets to be put to sleep.”

Her smiled faded as she looked into Shadow’s upturned face. “Sometimes it’s necessary, or even merciful. But it’s a part of the job I’ve never enjoyed. There hasn’t been one in this office since I went off on my own. When I worked with my ex-husband, Martin, I always let him take care of that side of the business. He didn’t mind. Maybe that should have given me a hint of things to come.” Jane raised her eyes to look at Sunny. “I saw you over at the bar in the Redbrick last night. You probably saw how things have worked out with Martin these days.”

“That was Martin?” Sunny said in surprise. “He’s very good-looking.” The words came out before Sunny really thought about them. Her teeth clicked together as she shut her mouth a little too late.

Jane’s lips quirked as she ran a finger from between Shadow’s ears all the way down his back. “Yeah, Martin’s a handsome guy, and an excellent vet—but a piss-poor excuse for a human being.”

She gave Sunny an embarrassed smile when she looked at her again. “He could charm the pants off anyone, and he certainly did it with me. We were married less than a year after I apprenticed with him. Problem was, Martin also used the same magic on a lot of the women who brought their pets in for treatment.”

Jane took her hands off Shadow and leaned against the table, her fingers clenched into fists. Shadow, sensing her distress, rubbed his head against her arm.

“Martin was clever, too,” Jane went on. “He always figured he was the smartest person in the room and had all sorts of schemes to rake in piles of money. Problem is, they never worked. He ran the finances on our practice, and we were up to our eyeballs in debt when I finally discovered he was fooling around on me. Worse, he was actually milking some of his better-off lady friends for money.”

“Guess I can see why he’s your ex.” Sunny didn’t know what else to say.

“But not before we came up here for a new start.” Jane tried for a light touch, but her voice grew harsh even as she softly petted Shadow. “Martin managed to straighten out and fly right for a couple of months. Then he fell back into his old ways again—and somehow it was worse that he’d do it here, where I grew up!”

“Yikes!” Sunny said.

“There’s a difference between running around in wide-open suburbia and doing the same in a small town. I heard about what he was up to pretty quickly,” Jane said quietly. “And that was it. I made sure that the practice was in my name, and he couldn’t get anything out of it. So after the divorce, Martin set up shop on the other side of the river and did his best to poach as many of my patients as he could. He was pretty successful, with that patented Rigsdale charm.”

She gave a tight little laugh, but her face was flaming. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, except that you saw what I did to him at the Redbrick.”

And you really don’t have anyone else in town to talk to, Sunny realized. “There are a couple of guys I wish I could do that to,” she told Jane, thinking of the editor in New York she’d been involved with. The same editor who’d laid her off when things got tough.

“Well, Martin stayed true to form.” Jane sighed. “I thought he was being civilized, asking me out to dinner last night. Instead he hit me up for money—foundation money.”

Jane had recently wound up running an animal welfare fund with a sizable endowment. She’d put in a lot of work with animal control people throughout the area. With the financial help of the foundation, they established a no-kill policy at the local shelter and stepped up adoption efforts, not just in Kittery Harbor but all through Elmet County. Every week, Sunny saw advertisements with pictures of furry adoption candidates in the Harbor Crier and in other local papers. Jane was even trying to get some of the local TV news outlets onto the adopt-a-pet bandwagon, too. She’d made a couple of successful test appearances. With a gorgeous blonde as the spokesperson, stations were quite willing to try it out.

But Jane wasn’t trying to get herself on television; she really was trying to help stray and abandoned animals. She took her position seriously, and she certainly wasn’t getting a lot in pay.

“The way Martin saw it, I must be rolling in dough, and I ought to spread it around.” Jane’s voice grew almost jagged, earning her a concerned look from Shadow. “He thought I should bring him in as a consultant, with remuneration in line with all his years of experience. A low six-figure fee would be just fine.”