Free Bride & Groom by Susan Conant Page B

my. Never in his life had Steve taken a less-than-thorough look at an animal. Even so, a corn cob was a likely bet, and if Steve saw one on the radiograph, he’d call Angell Memorial Hospital and have the owner rush the dog there for surgery. By the way, should you care to promote veterinary prosperity at great monetary cost to yourself and possibly fatal risk to your dog, let your dog eat com cobs, or give him a chance to filch them. Those rough suckers are never happier than when they’re lodging in a canine gut.
    “I interviewed Victoria two times,” I continued. “Her mother was a famous dog artist, Mary Kidwell Trotter. I wrote an article about her. And I also interviewed Victoria about herself, about a dog tarot deck she published. I can show it to you if you want.”
    “Didn’t do her much good,” Kevin said. “If she’d seen the future, she’d’ve stayed indoors last night.”
    “We didn’t stay indoors,” I pointed out. Kevin had already told me that Victoria Trotter had been bludgeoned to death as she lay in a hammock on the front porch of her house. She’d apparently spent the hot summer evening lazing around outside, more or less as we’d done. Steve and I had sipped wine. Kevin had had beer. Victoria, however, had, in Kevin’s words, been slugging down Bombay gin on the rocks. Steve and I had taken our dogs outside with us. Victoria had left her two whippets in their crates indoors.
    The murder scene was easy to envision. I remembered the porch and the hammock from the visits I’d made to interview Victoria. Her house had interested me because it had reminded me a little of my own. Both were red, mine a barn red, hers a darker shade that had struck me as unwholesome, perhaps because it was the color of dried blood or perhaps because my dislike of Victoria had tainted my vision. Her house was somewhat older than mine and obviously Victorian, with yellow-cream trim in a pattern that suggested flowers without actually depicting them. I remember wondering whether my house, too, might once have had pretty trim and a front porch and whether I might someday install a third-floor skylight like the one on Victoria’s roof. I’d also been struck by the contrast between the front and the rear of her house, its public and private faces, so to speak. Her house sat on a small corner lot. The front of the house and the side facing the street were neat and well kept. The hammock was attractive, and potted plants decorated the steps to the porch. An evergreen tree near the porch was overgrown, but the foundation shrubs had been trimmed, and tidy hostas formed a thick border along the sidewalk. When I’d parked in the driveway at the rear, I’d been startled. An old radiator had been leaning against the back steps, and other pieces of junk had been strewn here and there.
    “Besides, her tarot is mainly for readings about dogs,” I said, “not people. And it’s not meant for fortune telling. It’s supposed to help you understand your dog’s past and present. She didn’t claim that it was some magical way to predict the future."
    “I got no use for all that mumbo jumbo,” Kevin said. “So, what was it you didn’t like about her? She say something bad about malamutes?”
    “She said that they conned law-abiding people into feeding them at the table,” I said. “Actually, I said that, and please stop it, all of you. Anyway, one thing I know about Victoria goes back... it must be twenty years, long before I had malamutes. I was a teenager. This happened at a show. I was with my mother and some of our goldens. My father wasn’t there, which was probably a good thing, because Buck would’ve been so furious that he’d’ve done God knows what and gotten himself in trouble. Anyway, Victoria Trotter had a greyhound she was showing in obedience. And she must’ve known that that isn’t the world’s easiest obedience breed. Everyone knows that.”
    Kevin guffawed.
    “Everyone who trains dogs. But