Animal Appetite

work, or your interests? You praise your dogs every time they look at you, and you take him for granted. You aren’t hungry, so he doesn’t need to eat. He’s waiting to take you to Rialto, and—”
    “This is none of your business,” I said coldly.
    “Right. It isn’t my business. It’s merely my profession. I deal with it all day long. Do you at least have any wine in the house? Crackers and cheese?”
    “There’s a bottle of white burgundy in the refrigerator. And some cheddar. And I do have crackers.” Rita’s words bit into me. The wine was a present from Steve. The cheese was what I used to train the dogs.
    When Steve returned, he uncorked the bottle. Rita put the cheese and some crackers on a plate. All three of us drank the wine, but only Rita nibbled on the cheese and crackers.
    “So what’s going on?” Steve asked.
    Feeling selfish and guilty, I outlined everything I knew about Professor Foley’s death and most of what I suspected about its tie to Jack Andrews’s murder.
    “The police are treating it as a homicide?” he asked. “Well,” I said, “they’re at least treating it as an unexplained death. They didn’t really tell me anything, though. That," I said, glaring at Rita, “is why I need to talk to Kevin.”
    With a cool little smile, she said, “He’ll be back in a week.”
    “There’s enough gruesome mystery already about this whole business,” I snapped. “There’s no need for you to go around deliberately mystifying—”
    “I beg your pardon! I am merely respecting a confidence.”
    “Kevin is having an affair with someone! And he doesn’t want his mother to find out. Who? And how did he happen to tell you?”
    Rita’s face was blank.
    “With a woman of color! His mother will have a fit! Or is she Jewish? She’s not Christian, she’s older than he is, she drinks, and she eats meat! I’ve got it! He’s fallen in love with an elderly alcoholic kosher butcher! Mrs. Dennehy will—”
    Rita remained impassive. “Have you ever considered writing novels? It sometimes strikes me that fiction is your strong suit.”
    “If you recall, I’m a colonial historian.”
    Steve refilled Rita’s wineglass. To me he said, “Let me get a few things straight. The position of the body.”
    “Exactly like in that crime-scene shot of Jack Andrews’s body. Facedown. Twisted. Arm stretched out. All the rest. And, of course, the cup of coffee.”
    Steve was skeptical. “There are only so many ways to fall down.”
    “True,” I conceded.
    “The coffee could be incidental. It might have nothing to do with—”
    “It wasn’t incidental in Jack Andrews’s death. It was laced with sodium fluoroacetate. And that’s not exactly what I call—”
    “Where have I just heard of that?” Rita asked. “Or maybe read about it?”
    “I might have mentioned it,” I said. “It’s what killed Jack Andrews. Or what was used to kill him. It’s rat poison. Well, it’s not ordinary rat poison. It’s a banned substance now because it’s so dangerous. It’s colorless, odorless—”
    Rita raised her wineglass. “Got it! It’s in the book I’m reading. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It’s about Savannah. It’s full of strange characters, but one of them has a bottle or whatever of sodium fluoroacetate. What he talks about is putting it in the water supply and wiping out the entire populace.”
    “And does he do it?” I asked.
    “Obviously not,” Rita said. “Savannah is still there.”
    “I thought you were talking about a novel,” I said. “The book is nonfiction?”
    “Well, the names have been changed, but the story is supposed to be true. I keep wondering how much really is, though. A lot of it is so bizarre that it’s a little hard to believe. I wondered whether this bit about the poison could possibly be true.”
    Steve spoke authoritatively. “If it’s sodium fluoroacetate, almost none goes a long, long way.”
    Rita drank some wine. “A bottleful could poison a city?”
    Steve smiled. “Depends on the size of the bottle.” Rita emptied her glass. “Mr. Science strikes again.” He really had, too. My direct tactics had entirely failed to persuade Rita to divulge Kevin’s whereabouts. Steve had just kept refilling Rita’s wineglass. Before she revealed Kevin’s true whereabouts, she swore us to secrecy. “If either of you so much as whispers a word to Kevin about this—”
    “Never,” Steve promised.
    “Not a word,” I vowed. “Who