Free Chow Down (A Melanie Travis Mystery) by Laurien Berenson

bevy of besotted Poodles.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked.
    Aunt Peg loves to drop in without warning but usually she manages to make her visits coincide with times when someone’s home.
    “Holding down the fort, apparently.” Peg slapped her book shut and set it aside.
    Imagine that. I hadn’t even been aware that we’d needed holding down. Just in case I was missing something, I ran quickly through a mental checklist. The house was standing, the Poodles looked healthy, no Indians were attacking . . .
    Nope, we were good.
    “You’re white as a sheet,” said Aunt Peg. “Let me pour you a glass of tea. Maybe you’re pregnant.”
    She threw in that last bit like it was a casual afterthought. Nobody in the vicinity was fooled.
    “I don’t think so.” I poured my own glass of tea and added a mint leaf to it. “If I look pale, it’s probably because we just got back from the opening reception at the Champions Dog Food—”
    “I thought you were due back several hours ago.”
    “We were. The reception ended before noon. But unfortunately, as we were leaving the building one of the other contestants fell down the fire stairs and broke his neck. He was dead before the ambulance got there.”
    “Oh, dear.” Aunt Peg didn’t sound nearly as upset as most people would have under the circumstances. There’s nothing she likes more than a good set of complications. “Accident?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Let’s go back outside and sit down. You’d better tell me all about it.”
    As if from the moment that I’d first seen her minivan parked in the driveway, there’d ever been any doubt of that.
    Davey’s and my previous house had been a small Cape Cod in a tightly packed family neighborhood. Lots were cramped; privacy almost nonexistent. Sitting outside in our other yard, with houses so close on either side that we could almost reach out and touch them, Davey and I never knew whether we might be subjected to the blare of a nearby radio, the aroma of dinner cooking on someone’s barbecue, or uninvited visits from the neighbor’s cats.
    Things were very different at the new house. Our deck was beautiful, and the backyard was spacious and tranquil. If the residents of this neighborhood made any noise, they did so within the privacy of their own homes. Occasionally there were moments when I missed the constant bustle of our old block, but this wasn’t one of them.
    Now I wanted to sit down and have a serious discussion about murder, and having serenity for a backdrop suited me just fine.
    “First things first,” Aunt Peg said when we’d gotten settled. “Who died?”
    “Larry Kim. He and his wife, Lisa, are the owners of Yoda the Yorkie.”
    “Aside from that, what do we know about them?”
    I remembered our conversation about the other finalists at the dog show. Bertie had been the one who knew the Kims, not Aunt Peg.
    “Not much, I’m afraid. I’d only met them both an hour earlier. We were together in a conference room with our dogs for a group interview with the contest committee. Larry seemed like a nice enough man, I guess. Very protective of his dog.”
    “Nice enough people don’t usually get murdered,” Aunt Peg commented acerbically.
    “Well . . .” I admitted, “the police aren’t exactly calling it a murder.”
    “What are they calling it?”
    “They’re not sure. It was obvious that Larry died as a result of his fall. But they don’t know why he fell.”
    “You mean maybe he just tripped?”
    I nodded slowly. “That seemed to be what they were thinking before I told the officer that I’d heard someone in the stairwell with him shortly before he died.”
    “Well then,” Aunt Peg said happily, “the plot thickens.”
    “Oh please.” I’d injected enough exasperation into the comment to wilt a lesser woman. Peg wasn’t even daunted. “The only thing my information got me was the opportunity to hang around Norwalk a couple of extra hours and be interviewed two