Free Paws before dying by Susan Conant

expansive suburban evening air felt and smelled like the polluted miasma of a hermetically sealed kitchen in which someone was running the self-clean cycle of a heavily soiled oven. Sprawled on his back in the hope that a nonexistent breeze might fan his belly, Rowdy maintained a sour, stolid expression. It was too hot for him to bother chasing the Westies and too hot for them to bother provoking him. Rowdy and I had already had our individual turn with Tony, and it was so hot, we’d skipped the Jumps. My skin felt greasy, and sweat was dribbling down my neck.
    “And,” Tamara went on, “the Donovans swear up and down that lightning did not strike.”
    . “The people with the English cocker?” I asked. “Davy, fight?” I remembered because I’d noticed on the list Nonantum ad mailed after last week’s class that these people had given he dog their own last name. If I name a dog Holly’s Fuzzy Wuzzy or Winter’s Arctic Storm or whatever, fine. That’s normal. But an English cocker named David Donovan? When it comes to dogs, some people get carried away.
    She nodded.
    “How do they know?”
    “They live right over there,” said Tamara, pointing toward the park entrance. “The yellow Victorian with the coral trim. And they were home, too. Ask her. There she is. Lisa?”
    Lisa Donovan turned out to be a tan, athletic-looking young woman in white shorts and a green Izod shirt. She had a round, smiling face and straight blond Dutch-boy hair.
    “I was just saying you were home Friday night,” Tamara told her, “and you didn’t hear lightning strike, you or Bill.”
    Lisa’s face turned serious. She sat cross-legged on the ground next to Rowdy and ran a hand over his head. “Shedding,” she remarked.
    “Just beginning,” I said.
    “Yeah, we were home. We had guests. And you know what’s odd? The house has lightning rods. If it’d hit near here, wouldn’t it’ve hit them? I asked the police, but they’re a lot of help. When we got broken into, they said they knew who did it, and did they catch him? No. So I ask a simple question like, ‘If we’ve got lightning rods, isn’t it going to strike us first?’ and they clam up.”
    “Maybe they didn’t know, either,” I said out of loyalty to Kevin, who complains that people don’t want to tell the police anything and then expect them to know everything.
    “Oh, they knew,” she said suspiciously. “They just weren’t saying.”
    I tried to get her off the police and back to the lightning. “If it hit here, wouldn’t you hear it? Or notice something!“
    “Naturally, we heard thunder. Who didn’t?” She was scratching Rowdy’s flanks and gathering bits of his white under-coat into a little ball. “And before the rain started, we sat out back, and there was a lot of that whatever you call it, sheet lightning? Heat lightning? That overall kind, where there’s a big, even flash. And, sure, we heard some crashing and cracking, but not practically next door. And wouldn’t we have felt it? I call that very peculiar.”
    I was about to call it pretty peculiar myself when she switched the subject. Holding up Rowdy’s fur and rubbing it between her fingers, she asked, “You save this?”
    “No.”
    “One of my neighbors would love it, is why I asked. She’s a weaver. She’s into natural fibers. You want me to ask her about it?”
    “I guess so.” The prospect of wearing Rowdy or Kimi felt repulsive. Then I had another thought. “Actually, does she make things?”
    “Sure.”
    “My father would love that. A scarf or something. Would you ask her about it?”
    “Yeah. Or maybe you know her. She has a border collie.”
    “Is her name Cohen?”
    But that would have been too much of a coincidence. “Marcia Brawley. I’ll ask her. I’ll let you know.”
    Then Tony Doucette, dapper in spite of the heat in a 1930s pre-air-conditioning seersucker suit, summoned us for the group exercises. Instructors like Tony are practically as eager to see