sound of gun shots, a means available to a great many people at the park. And used by a great many. Meanwhile, at this same park, the exhibitionist was engaging in criminal acts. Motive for murder: the victim could have been in a position to disclose the man’s identity. At the same time, the victim’s son, Eric, was making irreverent use of the urn containing his father’s remains to hide his stash. Lovely word, isn’t it? And at your inadvertent prompting, so Ceci tells me, the victim chose rather belatedly to scatter those remains, thus providing a motive for the son, who would presumably have tried to prevent his mother from throwing away his supply of whatever drug it was. Cocaine, dare I wonder? But there we have the fortuitous concatenation of motives. Wilson hated his mother-in-law. She needled him. He was greedy. He wanted her money. And Fate, the careless owner of us all, left unguarded before him this delectable smorgasbord of other people’s motives. Those motives were Wilson’s opportunity. He pounced. Like a big, hungry dog.”
Chapter 37
Subj:AfriCam
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] ------------------------------
Rita,
There's a web site you’ve probably visited that has cameras trained on waterholes in Africa. I spend a lot of time watching those murky waterholes, hoping to see lions or leopards. No luck so far.
That's my life lately—all mud, no big cats. The only thing worse than divorce was marriage.
Steve
Chapter 38
Subj: Re: AfriCam
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] ------------------------
Steve,
No big cats here, either—but you're not really a cat person, so what does it matter? I suspect you'd have better luck if you trained your sights on half-wild dogs.
Rita
Chapter 39
One evening in mid-January, my stepmother and I finally disposed of her first husband. The credit for our success belongs to Kimi, who created our excuse to linger in Harvard Yard when she marked the base of a certain famous statue in front of University Hall. Happily —God spelled you know how—Kimi thus chose a suitable and dignified resting place for Professor Beamon, who lies in perpetuity at John Harvard’s feet. Requiescat in pace. Good riddance! After what happened to Sylvia Metzner when she belatedly scattered the ashes of her late husband, I’d developed a superstitious dread concerning the sprinkling of dead spouses and was actually surprised when we dispersed Professor Beamon without being murdered.
Despite my gratitude to Kimi, I sent her to Maine with Gabrielle. Cindy Neely had phoned with the welcome news that Emma’s litter brother, Howie, had announced that the time was right to breed his sister. In Howie’s view, the proper stud dog was undoubtedly himself rather than Rowdy. Even so, Cindy and Emma were flying from Washington to Boston the next day. If you don’t breed dogs, perhaps I should mention a fixed rule of purebred canine etiquette, which is that the gentleman invites the lady home to see his etchings, and not the other way around. The custom is falsely believed to be based on the male’s preference for his own turf, where he feels so self-confident that he doesn’t keep interrupting the proceedings to gulp Viagra. Another myth I’d like to dispel is that stud dogs own large and expensive art collections and therefore have etchings worth seeing. Hah! The true explanation is that if he went to her house, she’d make him pick up his socks and empty the dishwasher instead of devoting himself exclusively to siring puppies, which is what breeding is all about, isn’t it?
Speaking of siring puppies, the plan was that Cindy would drop off Emma with me for the breeding and then go on to visit her family in Pennsylvania and friends in Connecticut. I felt honored to have Cindy entrust Emma to me. Kimi would’ve spoiled our carefully made plans. The feminist extremism that impels Kimi to leave her mark on public icons of human paternalism somehow fails to translate into a friendly sense of sororal obligation to creatures of her own breed and sex, especially when they are in standing heat.
Emma was an outrageous flirt. Rowdy was smitten. When Ira Gershwin wrote the lyrics to “Embraceable You,” the procreation of show dogs probably wasn’t foremost on his mind—was it?—but in Rowdy’s opinion, CH Jazzland’s Embraceable You lived up to her
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