The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

phantoms in my dreams. Even in wakefulness they floated through my head like tendrils of fog, impossible to catch and give meaning.
    They’d left me for years, left me in peace. I’d thought they were gone forever.
    I slumped onto the bed, massaging my suddenly throbbing temples. What was I thinking about before I went to sleep? The pictures. My father. What brought on the dream?
    Mother was right, I was stressed. My mind was jumping from one thing to another without logic.
    I needed rest. But I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time before I was willing to lie down in the dark again.

Chapter Three
     
    I walked into the clinic shortly before nine the next morning to find half a dozen staff members, including Dr. Campbell, clustered in front of the reception desk. Alison saw me, gestured with a flourish of her arm and exclaimed, “Dr. Goddard—our bat doctor!” 
    For a second I thought she’d said “our batty doctor.” Then I saw that the short man at the center of the group held a bird cage containing, yes, a bat. A tiny red one with a crinkled forehead, big shell-like ears, an upturned nose.
    “You the doctor for wild animals?” the man asked. He raised the cage for me to see. “My cat brought it in last night.”
    I sighed inwardly at this variation on a tale I heard too often. Somebody’s free-roaming cat was always dragging in something. I peered into the cage. The bat blinked.
    “Okay, come with me and I’ll look it over,” I said.
    “Can I watch?” Dr. Campbell asked.
    “Well, sure, if you want to.” A half-formed thought: was he checking me out because of what happened yesterday?
    I led the way through the waiting area and across the hall to an exam room. The man with the bat chattered, telling me he’d taken time off work and driven in from Herndon after the county animal shelter gave him my name. He was young, with a brown crewcut, and wore some kind of uniform, denim pants and a gray work shirt with the name Pete embroidered in blue on the pocket.
    While Luke Campbell held the cage in place on the exam table, I opened the door just wide enough to snake in a hand. Alarmed by the touch of my fingers, the bat scrabbled around on the cage bottom, tearing the newspaper lining, and began to unfold its wings. I caught both its thumbs to stop that, and removed the animal from the cage. The little body was warm in my palm and vibrated with the frantic pulsing of its heart.
    Acutely aware of Dr. Campbell watching me, I riffled through the rusty-red fur looking for blood or bite wounds. I found none. Next I gently extended the leathery membrane of each wing.
    The man talked nonstop and with high good humor about his cat running in the back door with the flapping bat in its mouth, about the hour-long effort by both cat and man to recapture the bat after it got loose in the house, about the damage done while this was going on. He didn’t seem to notice that neither Dr. Campbell nor I was the least bit amused. My boss had developed a pronounced scowl.
    “I think this little girl’s just shaken up from being caught,” I said. When I released the left wing it snapped back against the bat’s body with a small whap . “If you’ve had her since last night, she’s probably weak from hunger and dehydration by now.”
    He drew back, looking offended. “Well, I don’t know what to feed a bat. You tell me what to give him, I’ll see he gets fed.”
    “You won’t have to worry about it. We’ll take care of it.”
    “Hey, wait a minute. I’m gonna keep it. Just tell me what to feed it.”
    I glanced at Dr. Campbell, who seemed about to speak but decided against it.
    “You want to keep a bat as a pet?” I asked the man.
    “Well, yeah, why not? Don’t worry about my cat getting it. I’ll keep it in a cage all the time.”
    If I wasn’t careful, I was going to say something truly memorable. “Mister—” I didn’t know his last name. “Pete,” I began again. “You can’t keep a bat as a