Free Bride & Groom by Susan Conant

sober. “Dear God,” I said to Steve, who was closing the gate behind the departing Kevin. "Steve, I know Victoria Trotter. I wrote two articles about her. One, really. One about her, one about her mother. Mary Kidwell Trotter. The artist. She painted dog portraits. Victoria did that dog version of the tarot I own. I wrote about it. Victoria has dogs. Two whippets.”
    “Where’s Egremont Street?” he asked.
    “North Cambridge. Off Mass. Ave. on the Somerville side. In the direction of Davis Square. Not all that far from here.”
    Steve wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sounds like you lost a friend.”
    “No,” I blurted out. Feeling ashamed, I added, “The truth is, I didn’t like Victoria Trotter. I didn’t like her at all.”
     

CHAPTER 10
     
    The dossier on Victoria Trotter opened with five pages from web directories. All gave the same information. Victoria’s phone number had the same area code and prefix as mine. Her address was 37 Egremont Street, Cambridge, MA 02140. A page printed from MapQuest showed that Egremont was a little L-shaped street and that number 37 occupied the inner corner of the L.
    Next were two pages from the City of Cambridge Assessor’s Database. The first of those two pages was a plot plan with the property lines of 37 Egremont Street shown in solid black. The house appeared as a shaded area. Dotted lines showed the location of the driveway. On the next page was a table of information about who owned 37 Egremont Street—Trotter, Victoria—together with the block and lot numbers, the square footage of the lot, the assessed value, and so forth. The assessed value was high. The sale date of the property was four years earlier. The assessed value was now a hundred thousand dollars more than Victoria Trotter had paid. In Cambridge, a termite-ridden doghouse that would cramp a Chihuahua has a high assessed value, and correctly so because it also has a high market value that reliably ascends. Ridiculous! I mean, we mere human beings are of frail character, but any dog should have the moral fortitude to resist the lure of that institution with the crimson logo emblazoned with the famous motto and slogan. The motto: the word Veritas. The slogan: If you don’t have a Harvard education, you don’t have an education at all.
    According to AnyBirthday.com, Victoria Trotter would have turned fifty-six on October 27. The online version of the Social Security Death Index had provided the Social Security number of Victoria’s late mother, the famous Mary Kidwell Trotter, who had died twenty-two years ago.
    The next few web pages came from the alumni newsletter of a school of veterinary medicine. The lead story was about alumni participation in the dedication of a new administration building. Victoria Trotter had donated one of her mother’s paintings, which hung in the lobby. In one of the photographs that accompanied the story, a young Victoria Trotter stood on one side of a large oil painting of three golden retrievers. On the other side, beaming gratefully at Victoria, was the president of the alumni association, Dr. Mac McCloud. Victoria looked much better than she had when I’d interviewed her. She had a thin face with a prominent, aristocratic nose that should have seemed disproportionately large but somehow did not. Her hair was straight and dark. Her skin was light, her eyes almost black. In the photo, her smile looked proud. In person, she’d been arrogant and disdainful, or so I’d thought. She’d had a brittle laugh that she’d produced with grating frequency.
    Copies of my articles and pages about Victoria’s tarot formed the bulk of the dossier. Some were from the big online booksellers, others from comparatively obscure web sites about dog-oriented spiritualism, mysticism, and extrasensory communication. The Trotter Tarot, as it was called, differed from the traditional Rider-Waite deck mainly in substituting dogs for the usual people on the cards.