Animal Appetite

what it could have been. So he ended up taking in this sleazy little person! And somehow or other, McGrath talked Jack into signing a life insurance policy with himself as the beneficiary!”
    I nodded. “So that’s how you suspected—”
    “We did not suspect! We knew! Once we learned about the insurance policy, we put it together with the dog and the desk, and it was perfectly obvious. The police knew, too. Everyone did. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Everyone loved Jack. And it had to be someone who worked there.”
    I raised my eyebrows.
    “They’d had rats in the building.”
    When I was growing up, the local dump had rats. Remarkably enough, even after it became a sanitary landfill, it still had rats. Until a few months earlier, I’d never seen one anywhere else, unless you counted a few ailing white rats in cages in Steve’s waiting room. My own neighborhood, however, was now experiencing what The Boston Globe called a “rat invasion,” a sudden and occasionally visible proliferation apparently attributable to construction on Huron Avenue, where a new water main and gas line were being installed. In Owls Head, Maine, target-shooting rats was a socially acceptable, if gruesome, local sport. As a new Cambridge pastime, however, it had all the promise of pre-Columbian proto-soccer played with a human head. We’d been warned not to poison the rats, either. Cambridge being Cambridge, we were probably supposed to conduct an ethological study of rodent behavior in a natural urban environment.
    “Rats,” I echoed.
    Claudia nodded. “Jack foolishly decided to deal with the problem himself. He got hold of this horrible, very powerful poison. Everyone knew it was there—everyone at the press. And Shaun McGrath laced Jack’s coffee with it. He planted a couple of letters that purported to be suicide notes. But when we found the dog tied to the desk, well, that was the first hint we had. Once we saw that, we realized that Jack couldn’t possibly have been there alone.”
    “He always took his dog to work?”
    “Always.”
    “This was a golden retriever.”
    “Yes.”
    I wished she’d expand. I had the sense that without the audience she’d played to at Marsha’s bat mitzvah, she’d lost interest in dramatizing the murder.
    I prompted, “A male?”
    Claudia nodded.
    “And what was the dog’s name?”
    She looked startled. When she ran a finger slowly back and forth over her lips, I saw that her nails were chewed to the quick. “Skip,” she finally said.
    “And what happened to him?” It goes without saying, I hope, that I meant the dog.
    “Oh, everyone knew he was guilty, but before the police could arrest him, he ran his car into a tree. He was killed instantly.”
    Reluctantly shifting my mental gears back to Shaun McGrath, I asked, “Suicide?”
    “No, there were dozens of witnesses. It was on Memorial Drive, actually, only a few blocks from here. He was driving a convertible. He was speeding, and he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He swerved to avoid something and ran head on into one of those trees by the river.”
    “And when did this happen?”
    “Eighteen years ago. Almost to the day.”
    “Do you remember the exact date when...?”
    “Jack died on November fourth. It was a Monday. Monday evening. He didn’t come home, and I ended up
    going over there. And that’s when we found him. Monday, November fourth.”
    A tap sounded on the door. Claudia sighed. “Office hours. Come in!”
    A young woman’s head appeared.
    “Another two minutes, Cynthia!” Claudia told her. “I’ll be right with you.” Fishing around in a canvas tote bag crammed with books and file folders, Claudia produced a manila envelope. Thrusting it at me, she said, “The pictures I promised you. Is that everything?”
    “Just one last thing. Skip?”
    Claudia looked puzzled.
    “The dog,” I reminded her. “I wondered whatever became of the dog.”
    “Oh,” Claudia said blithely, “I found him a good home.”
    After thanking her for her help and accepting her assurance that I could call if I had any questions, I departed. I took the elevator to the first floor. Among the various notices taped to its walls was one that advertised a career panel for Ed School women about balancing career and family. One of the four speakers would be Associate Professor Claudia Andrews-Howe. I’d never even asked whether she and Jack had had children. She hadn’t mentioned any.
    When I got outside, the wind