Free Testing Kate by Whitney Gaskell Page B

periwinkle-blue Greek Revival home. Showing up on his doorstep with an injured dog in tow—particularly one that I had just run over—was not going to make the best of first impressions. But what choice did I have? I started to reach forward, ready to pick up the basset hound, but quickly realized it wasn’t possible. This was a dog who liked his kibble, and there was no way I was going to be able to lift him, much less heave him all the way up McKenna’s front walk.
    “I’ll be right back,” I told the dog, and I ran up to McKenna’s front door. A gas lamp hung next to the door, the light already glowing, even though sunset was still hours off. I rang the bell and could hear the chimes—which, bizarrely, sounded like the first few bars of the
William Tell Overture
—and waited.
    The door swung open, and there was Armstrong McKenna. He was a small man—short with a slight frame—but extremely elegant. I guessed that he was in his fifties, although his thin face was youthful. His hair was streaked with gray and brushed back off his face, and he was wearing a beautiful blue broadcloth shirt—which looked, even to my uninformed eye, as though it had been hand tailored—tucked into pressed khaki chinos. He grinned at me.
    “Kate Bennett, I presume,” he drawled.
    “Yes. I…I just hit a dog. Out on the street. I think he’s going to need a vet. Could you please call someone?” The words came out of me in a great rush.
    “Who, Elvis?” he asked.
    “What?” I replied, puzzled, and then noticed the crystal glass in his hand, half full of what looked like bourbon.
    Oh, great, I thought with dismay. McKenna must be drunk. So drunk he was suggesting we call a dead rock star. Obviously, I was going to be on my own in this crisis.
    My thoughts must have been reflected in the incredulous look I was giving him, because Armstrong McKenna shook his head impatiently and gestured with his glass. “Elvis is my dog. Well. He’s a dog that lives in my house, in any event,” he said.
    My heart sank. I had just run over my prospective employer’s dog. Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse.
    “He’s standing right behind you,” Armstrong continued.
    I whirled around. The brown-and-white hound was standing on the front walk, gazing at the stairs disconsolately with red watery eyes.
    “He hates climbing stairs. He’s always trying to talk me into lifting him up, but he’s gotten so damned fat, I can hardly budge him these days.”
    “But…but…I hit him! Or, at least, I think I did. And when he was lying on the road, he seemed like he was in a lot of pain,” I exclaimed.
    “It happens all the time,” Armstrong said. “He’s been hit at least ten times that I know of. He likes to nap in the middle of the street, the old fool. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now.”
    “But shouldn’t we take him to a vet and have him examined?” I asked.
    “He looks fine to me,” Armstrong said.
    Elvis had tired of waiting to be lifted up onto the porch and began slowly climbing the stairs. When he reached the top, the hound sighed heavily before passing through the front door.
    “Come on in, darlin’,” Armstrong said to me. “You’re just in time for cocktail hour.”
    I glanced at my watch. It was not yet four-thirty.
    “I’m here for the interview,” I reminded him.
    “We’ll get to that. But you can’t get to know someone properly until you’ve seen what they’re like after a few drinks,” Armstrong pronounced, and waved me into the house. “You do drink, don’t you? I can’t abide teetotalers. Or vegetarians or yoga fanatics, for that matter. You’re not any of those, are you?”
    “Um, no,” I said, wondering if this was part of the interview.
    “Thank God for that.”
    The house was large and opulent—and looked like it had been furnished by a color-blind lunatic. It was stuffed near to bursting with enormous crystal chandeliers, heavy Victorian furniture upholstered