Kat Wolfe Investigates, Page 3

  ‘You didn’t mention the cottage, but that’s fantastic news. I can get started more quickly if we don’t have to hunt for somewhere to live. Your advert did say something about capuchins. Are there a couple in the area?’

  ‘Seventy-nine, to be exact. They were rescued from a medical laboratory and are now in Monkey World, a local ape sanctuary. I daresay they have their own vets, but I know that Dr Baker helped out from time to time. As well as the usual cats, dogs, sheep and horses, you’ll be dealing with the pets of tourists and other folk who visit the area. Geologists and the like. And soldiers. Their pets, I mean. There’s an army base nearby.

  ‘And, of course, you’ll be travelling out to farms. Lionel Baker had a four-wheel-drive vehicle. If you’re interested, his family have agreed that it can be included in your salary package.’

  ‘Sounds too good to be true,’ said Dr Wolfe.

  There was a chuckle behind the files. ‘I can assure you it’s not, but I think it’ll be a happy match – you, Katarina and Bluebell Bay Animal Clinic. Are you agreeable to the terms I offered in my letter, Dr Wolfe?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And you can start by mid-March or before?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Excellent, excellent. Then, if you don’t mind stopping at reception on the way out, Radhika will give you your contract. Please sign it before you leave. Any questions?’

  Dr Wolfe took a deep breath. ‘Mr Mells, the terms and conditions in the contract. What are they exactly?’

  ‘Eh?’ The eyebrows dipped out of sight. ‘Ah, the terms and conditions! Nothing to worry about. There’s just the one.’

  ‘And what is it?’ prompted Dr Wolfe.

  The eyebrows crept above the files. ‘You want to know what it is? Yes, naturally, you do. Like I said, it’s just the one condition. A tiny one, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘How so?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Dr Wolfe. Lionel Baker was obsessed with his cat – a rescue. His mother has made it a condition of the job that whoever takes it must take the cat too. She won’t countenance anyone running the practice and living in Lionel’s former home unless they promise also to cherish and look after the cat.’

  Inside, Kat was turning ecstatic cartwheels. A cat! The world’s most perfect job came with a cat!

  Dr Wolfe couldn’t disguise her relief. ‘That’s it? That’s the condition?’

  ‘It’s trickier than you might suppose. A staggering number of vets don’t like or appreciate cats. Or they have allergies.’

  Kat thought about Edwina Nash and Vince Craw, who seemed to loathe all animals equally.

  ‘We’ve had one or two hurdles trying to find the right candidate for the job,’ Mr Mells went on. ‘I’ll admit that until I received your letter I was beginning to despair.’

  ‘Well, we love cats,’ Dr Wolfe said firmly. ‘My daughter, especially, adores them – don’t you, Kat?’

  Kat nodded. ‘I promise you, Dr Baker’s cat will get all the cherishing it could possibly want. What’s its name?’

  The eyebrows pivoted in her direction. ‘His name is Tiny. A tabby, I’m told.’

  ‘Who’s been taking care of Tiny?’

  ‘Margo Truesdale, a local shopkeeper. I hired her to take care of the place until I found a replacement for Dr Baker. I gather it’s been a bit of a strain trying to manage everything, so she’ll be glad we’ve found you. As am I.’

  A hand came over the top of the files. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another client to see. The very best of luck to you, Dr Wolfe and Katarina.’

  As they made their way back out to the wintry lights of Covent Garden Piazza, where a juggler on a unicycle was wobbling around the cobbles, Kat couldn’t stop pinching herself.

  For years she’d dreamed of living in the country or by the sea and having a pet of her own. Now she’d have all three at once. Within weeks, she and her mum would be living in the Jurassic Coast’s prettiest bay, surrounded by rolling fields. Best of all, she’d have a little tabby cat – she’d already decided that Tiny was her cat – to play with during the day and cuddle up to at night. If he’d only had part-time care for the past three months, he’d need a lot of love and attention.

  Kat bent to pick up a yellow gerbera daisy left behind by the market flower sellers. She presented it to her mother.

  ‘Congrats, Mum. I’m soooo proud of you.’

  ‘Thanks, honey. That means the world. It’ll be a new chapter for both of us – that’s what I’m most thrilled about. Happy to be moving to the seaside, Kat?’

  ‘I cannot wait. Most of all, I can’t wait to meet Tiny.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ said her mum. ‘Neither can I.’

  5

  Dark Lord

  ‘I could walk to the Jurassic Coast quicker than this,’ despaired Kat as pulsing brake lights once again made a scarlet sea of the motorway. Rain played percussion on the roof of the Ford Fiesta. It didn’t help that the car was laden down with books and possessions that hadn’t fitted into the moving van.

  Her mum reached for the flask of coffee, thought better of it, and replaced the lid. ‘It’s another one hundred and fifty-four kilometres to Bluebell Bay. If you get there before me, send a postcard. I’ll stay in the car where it’s warm and dry.’

  Kat slumped in her seat. ‘When you put it like that . . .’

  She sat up again as sirens drowned out the music in the car. Three police cars and an ambulance screamed past on the hard shoulder.

  Her mum turned off the radio. ‘Must be a major incident up ahead. I do hope no one’s badly hurt.’

  ‘There are more police cars than ambulances,’ Kat pointed out. ‘Maybe there’s an escaped convict in the crash.’

  ‘Could be. Or someone famous is involved.’

  The cars in front grumbled to life. Dr Wolfe started the engine, and they crawled forward. The wiper blades beat back silvery tadpoles of rain. Kat squinted through the gloom as they neared the accident. She knew it was none of her business, but she wanted to see who or what had caused it.

  A white van had rear-ended a black limousine. The van had come off worst, spinning out across two lanes. It had a crumpled wing and a blown front tyre. A woman in a Honda Civic had also been caught up in the crash. The van driver and the Honda woman were arguing in the drizzle while a traffic officer refereed.

  A short distance away, a smart chauffeur held an umbrella over the limo passenger. It was immediately obvious that his boss was the Very Important Person. A thicket of police surrounded the pair. As Dr Wolfe steered past, Kat couldn’t resist trying to catch a glimpse of the passenger. A celebrity maybe? But he had his back to the road and was on his phone.

  The traffic picked up speed. Just when she thought that the identity of the VIP would forever remain a mystery, the ambulance moved to make way for a tow truck, revealing the limousine’s custom plate: DRK LORD.

  Kat bit back a gasp. Her gaze shot to the VIP as he ducked out from beneath the umbrella, lip curled, jaw clenched. His silver hair was as thick and well groomed as ever, his suit taut across broad shoulders. Only the slightest stoop betrayed his age.

  An anxious officer escorted him to a police car and opened the passenger door for him. Before getting in, he turned and stared hard in Kat’s direction. Her window was blurry with rain, and there was no way he could see her, but she scooted down in her seat anyway.

  A moment later, the jam cleared. Her mum, who’d been focused on the road, put her foot down flat, and they whirled away from the scene.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Dr Wolfe. ‘I was beginning to think we were going to be stuck in traffic forever.’ She gave a joyous whoop. ‘New life, here we come!’

  And Kat did not have the heart to say that she’d just seen Lord Dirk Hamilton-Crosse, a man so rich, powerful and arrogant that he had a custom-made number plate to confirm it.

  No doubt he found it amusing.

  To
Dr Wolfe, there was nothing funny about the ‘Dark Lord’, as the tabloids called him. She hadn’t laughed eleven and a half years ago when he’d turned up at the hospital, the day after she’d given birth to Kat, accusing her of being a gold-digger. He’d refused to accept that his son Rufus was Kat’s father and had told Ellen Wolfe that if she ever tried to claim a penny from the billion-pound Hamilton-Crosse estate, he’d wipe her and her daughter off the face of the earth.

  To protect Kat, Dr Wolfe had kept this to herself for over a decade. Kat’s first inkling that there might be more to her dad’s background than surfing had come a year ago when a limousine had pulled up beside her as she walked home from school. A blackout window slid down, and a man who seemed more falcon or cyborg than human leaned out.

  ‘Hello, Katarina,’ he’d said. ‘I’m your grandfather.’

  Kat, who’d been told her grandparents were dead, had got such a shock that she’d cleared a picket fence in a single bound and escaped through two gardens and a council estate. She’d arrived home looking as though she’d been crawling through hedges, which she had. When she relayed what happened, her mum had gone nuclear.

  Shortly afterwards, Dr Wolfe had left Kat in the capable hands of Naska and gone out. When she returned three hours later, she’d seemed lighter. She’d sat Kat down and told her everything. Well, nearly everything. She’d refused to reveal what she’d said to Dirk Hamilton-Crosse. All Kat knew was that the gleaming limousine never again prowled the streets of their scruffy London suburb.

  She’d seen the Dark Lord several times since, but only on the news. As Minister of Defence, he was hard to avoid.

  That their paths should cross today of all days seemed a freakish coincidence. Kat couldn’t help wondering where Lord Hamilton-Crosse had been going and what he’d been doing when the accident happened. She shivered when she recalled how he’d turned his hard, brilliant gaze on their rusty Ford Fiesta. She’d never forgiven him for being so hateful to her mum all those years ago.

  So, when Dr Wolfe cried, ‘New life, here we come!’ Kat cheered with her. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t, say a word about the VIP in the bulletproof limo. Not for anything would she wipe the smile off her mum’s lovely face.

  Determined to shrug off the encounter, Kat concentrated on counting down the kilometres to Bluebell Bay. She wanted to remember every detail of their journey to Dorset, from the flat, urban outskirts of London, to the New Forest’s dainty spotted deer. She wondered if Tiny would sleep on her bed in her new room that night. Probably not. It might take him a couple of days to get comfortable with her.

  A lot of people had the notion that cats did not want or need affection the way dogs did, but in Kat’s experience the opposite was true. Cats craved love. It’s just that they were picky about who they wanted it from, and they did it on their terms.

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She knew without checking that it was her daily reminder from the Way of the Mongoose website. She’d made it her mission to learn two new WOM moves a week and to practise those she already knew in between.

  Unfortunately, it was proving tricky to learn them on a small screen. It would be ages before her mum could afford to buy her a laptop of her own, so Kat planned to save up for one herself. As soon as they were settled in Bluebell Bay, she was going to figure out a way to earn pocket money. Dog-grooming was at the top of her list.

  The sun came out as they crossed the Dorset border. The colours changed with the landscape. Gone were the greys and dirty browns of the suburbs. The sky was cobalt silk. Fluffy cream lambs wobbled through meadows as green as a brilliant bird’s wing. Red campion and yellow gorse lit the hedgerows.

  A sign flashed by: BLUEBELL BAY 2 KM.

  Kat nearly bounced out of her seat with excitement.

  Another sign: WARNING! SUDDEN GUNFIRE!

  She twisted round. ‘What was that?’

  ‘What was what?’ asked her mum. ‘Oh, honey, look! Just look! It’s the Jurassic Coast.’

  Kat faced forward as they ramped over a rise. Below them was an aquamarine bay so sparkling it looked as if a galaxy had taken up residence in the ocean. Caramel cliffs hugged the cove. From a distance, it could have been California.

  ‘That’s our new home?’ she said in wonder. ‘That’s Bluebell Bay?’

  From there, the road dropped steeply. High hedges shut out the view. When the sea reappeared, they were on a narrow lane, winding past twisted hawthorn trees and thatched cottages, their gardens bright with daffodils and bluebells.

  A snarling iron dinosaur skeleton bared its fangs on a front lawn. Kat smiled at it as they went by.

  The town was arranged in a half-moon around the cove, with the higher houses clinging to the slopes. Her eye was caught by the sleek, ultra-modern one nearest the cliff edge. It had a glass front and a wooden deck.

  ‘Left turn in a hundred metres,’ intoned the sat nav. ‘Summer Street.’

  ‘This is it,’ said Dr Wolfe as they rounded the corner. ‘Fingers crossed that it’s all that Miles Mells promised.’

  At the far end of the cul-de-sac, set against the slopes of the hills that curved around the town, was a low, white building. A friendly blue sign announced it as BLUEBELL BAY ANIMAL CLINIC. A small crowd was gathered in front of it.

  As they approached, their faithful Ford Fiesta backfired, did a series of bunny hops and began coughing up smoke. With its last gasp, Dr Wolfe managed to steer it into a parking spot. Under normal circumstances, Kat would have died too – of embarrassment – but she didn’t get a chance.

  Before she could open the door, it was yanked open for her. Smiling faces crowded around. A banner billowed: BLUEBELL BAY WELCOMES DR ELLEN WOLFE! Everyone spoke at once.

  ‘So nice to meet you, Dr Wolfe . . .’

  ‘Dr Wolfe, my schnauzer puppy . . .’

  ‘Our son’s guinea pig . . . a red swollen eye . . .’

  ‘. . . lambing emergency . . .’

  ‘Chloe, she’s called . . . can’t stop scratching . . .’

  ‘Listless, not eating . . .’

  With everyone focused on her mum, Kat had time to take a gulp of sharp, salty sea air and look around. There were five thatched cottages on Summer Street, each trimmed in a different shade of pastel and facing the cove. Number 5 was next door to the animal clinic. It was built of golden stone and had blue window frames and a matching door. A dormer window was cut into weathered thatch. As Kat looked up, a shadow streaked across it.

  The front door burst open, and a young woman fled across the lawn, discarding an apron and a feather duster as she went. Something electrical had happened to her blue-black hair. She looked as though she was wearing a fright wig.

  A stout woman with cheeks the colour of an overripe nectarine raced to head her off. It was hard to hear above the clamour of competing pet ailments, but Kat distinctly made out the words ‘rabid tiger’.

  She wondered if she should draw her mum’s attention to the unfolding drama. No one else seemed interested in it.

  She edged nearer. The stout woman pleaded, ‘Just this once, and I’ll pay you double . . .’ but in vain. The cleaner wrenched herself from the woman’s grasp with a volley of reproaches and vanished between the cottages.

  The other woman rearranged her features from dismayed to delighted before hurrying over. ‘Heather! Bernie! Mrs Percy! What did I tell you about letting Dr Wolfe have a cup of tea before you bombarded her with problems?’

  The crowd parted. She wrung the hands of Kat and her mum. ‘Such a thrill to meet you, Dr Wolfe. And this is your daughter, I presume. I’m Margo Truesdale, owner and proprietor of the Jurassic Fantastic Deli. I’ve been caretaking Dr Baker’s cottage. As you can tell, he’s sorely missed. We’re in dire need of a vet in Bluebell Bay. There’s no other practice for miles.’

  She turned to the agitated group. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing so urgent it can’t wait until tomorrow.’

  Dr Wolfe interrupted: ‘Thank you, Mrs Truesdale . . .’

&
nbsp; ‘Margo.’

  ‘Margo, I’m afraid there are two things too urgent to wait. Mrs Percy, from what you’re describing, Lucky might be unlucky enough to have meningitis. Give me two minutes to freshen up, then let’s go to him as quickly as we can. Bernie, I’m guessing that the muddy Land Rover is yours. If you’ll give us a ride, we can go straight from Ruth Percy’s house to your lambing shed.’

  She raised her voice above the chorus of protests. ‘The rest of you will have to wait until Monday, I’m afraid. Our moving van will be here within the hour, and if I leave it up to my daughter the only thing that’ll get unpacked is the books. However, Kat is going to be helping out at the animal clinic until I can hire a veterinary nurse. If you call in the morning, she’ll make you an appointment.’

  She turned to Kat. ‘Hon, I’m so sorry. This is not quite what I had planned for our first day. Would you mind waiting with Margo till the removal men arrive?’

  ‘Course not, Mum! Go and do what you do best. You can tell me all about it over dinner.’

  6

  A Leopard in the Attic

  Walking up the path to the cottage, Kat had the curious feeling she was being watched – and not just by the neighbours. Inside, the sense that all was not as it seemed was even stronger. She could see nothing to explain it, particularly since Margo Truesdale had gone to huge lengths to make the place welcoming.

  The fiery-orange Aga and cream-painted kitchen cupboards were spotless. The flagstones shone. There was a loaf of bread, a Dorset apple cake and some farm vegetables in a basket on the counter. A vase of daffodils brightened the worn table. Pots of coconut cream and homemade strawberry jam sat beside a plate piled with fat scones. When Kat bit into one, it was still warm.

  ‘Is Tiny around?’ she asked as Margo Truesdale took a sip of tea. ‘I’m longing to meet him. I—’

  The deli owner’s mug smashed to the ground, splattering them with hot Darjeeling. She threw up her hands. ‘Oh, I’m such a clumsy goose! Excuse me a moment while I sweep this up. Don’t want you cutting yourself on your first day.’