Creature Discomforts

people and took a few steps beyond the trail, onto the ledge. There I paused.
    “And then she pulls out her camera and takes ghastly tourist snapshots of the vista,” Anita narrated.
    My camera had, of course, remained in my day pack, where I’d later found it, completely smashed. There’d been fog; it had been a bad day for photography. As to tourist shots of vistas, the most prominent feature in the otherwise spectacular view was the hideous sprawl of the Jackson Lab. Now I remembered exactly what those ugly buildings were. I’m not an animal-rights lunatic, but I am an animal lover. Research facilities that experiment on animals are not my prime choice of subject for vacation photos.
    “Move away,” Buck ordered me. “Head down the ridge, closer to where you fell from. You remember where that was? Because I don’t know.”
    I nodded and took a few steps. My heart pounded. I looked uphill to my tethered dogs. Both stood alert, their eyes on me. I’d glanced back at them yesterday, too. They wore the same expressions of watchful curiosity.
    “The parade of suspects,” Buck bellowed. “Isn’t that what they call it in the movies?”
    Anita groaned. Still, when Buck herded everyone a few yards down the path toward the Ladder Trail, she stayed near Steve.
    “Me first,” Buck volunteered.
    “Big of you,” Anita said.
    Ignoring her, Buck made a foolish show of striding up the path. Where the trail passed between the ridge where I stood and the trees where the dogs were hitched, he made a needless display of marching as if he were leading a parade. Kimi whined for his attention. Rowdy woo-woo ed. Gabrielle came next, with Molly bouncing merrily on lead at her side. Wally went by. Then Opal. Then Steve. My heart pounded. Anita. Effie took her turn. Quint took his. As I waited for Malcolm Fairley, I felt suddenly giddy.
    “Just walk on by?” Malcolm asked unnecessarily.
    “Like the song says.” Buck assumes that everyone is a country-and-western fan.
    Fairley looked puzzled. As he approached, I said, “You offered Norman Axelrod a lure. That’s what you told us last night. At the clambake. People wanted to know how you’d persuaded Axelrod to hike up Dorr. And you told them you’d offered Axelrod a lure. You did.”
    Fairley halted, blocking my view of Rowdy and Kimi. Rowdy has possibly the most beautiful malamute head in the world: correct shape, ideal ear set, lovely small ears, blocky muzzle, dark pigment, gorgeous bittersweet-chocolate-brown almond-shaped eyes with the sweet, soft expression that’s perfection in his breed. Kimi looks tougher than Rowdy does, mainly because her black mask hints at her willingness to obey no one’s laws except her own. At the moment, I didn’t want or expect either dog to do anything but serve as an emboldening sight for my frightened eyes. Regardless of how sweet or tough the appearance, an Alaskan malamute doesn’t back down. Ever. In contrast to my dogs, I am only an honorary malamute. Fortified by the sight of them, I could be tough. With their gaze on me, Fd be ashamed to back down.
    But I couldn’t see them. Without their strength, I felt paralyzed. As I’ve said, however, dog love is the real thing. Both dogs shifted, and catching their eyes, I did, too, until our views were unobstructed.
    “You offered a positive lure,” I told Fairley. “Axelrod confronted you with his suspicions about the Pine Tree Foundation. You offered the ultimate reassurance. At the same time, you offered him a lure be couldn’t resist: the chance to meet a celebrity. Bigger than Stephen King. Legendary! A household word! The magic name you keep warning everyone not to say aloud.”
    “Rockefeller,” my father boomed.
    “Anonymity!” Fairley pleaded with unmistakably genuine distress.
    “Tiffany,” I said, “your secretary, told me that she prepared agendas for your meetings with the benefactors, meetings at your house. Not at the foundation. She said that sometimes you went to see them, or sometimes you met them in the park.”
    Fairley nodded silently.
    “So, no one but you had seen them before.”
    Fairley’s nod was almost imperceptible. With sad eyes, he said, “I beg you to leave them out of this.”
    “I will, more or less,” I promised, “except for a little something you said to me at the clambake. We were talking about dogs. About loving dogs. You said that it’s in the genes. And that they were the same way. ‘Dog nuts all.’ That’s exactly