Animal Appetite

naturally, and Jack’s office was on the third floor, so most of the time, if I had to ask him something or whatever, I just used the phone. Mostly what I was there for was to tell people that their checks were in the mail! But, no, Jack wasn’t one of the ones who want you running in and out all the time.”
    “When you went to his office, did he tie Chip to his desk?”
    “No. I like dogs.” She reached down and scooped up the kitten, which had abandoned the dangling pasta. “I like cats better, though.”
    “What about Shaun McGrath?”
    Estelle’s face clouded. “Let me tell you about Shaun McGrath. First of all, we were supposed to call him Mr. McGrath. Do you believe it? In this pigpen of an office? In Cambridge? And not just on the phone, to people who called, but to his face!”
    “And he called you Estelle.”
    We shared a smile.
    “Naturally. Even back then, Jack didn’t go in for any of that kind of bullshit. And it wasn’t like it was an insurance company or something. Even if it had been halfway organized, it would still have been pretty informal.”
    “What about that Monday? The day he was murdered.”
    “I went over that a million times. With the police. Really, there was nothing special. What I do remember is Friday, the Friday before, because that was the day when Jack got rid of the poison. That wasn’t just Shaun. I mean, it wasn’t just Shaun who told him not to keep it around. Everyone did. It really was dangerous. Obviously.”
    “And what did Jack do with it?”
    “Typical.” Estelle shook her head. “I didn’t see him do it, but apparently he just took the bottle outside and threw it in the trash. Elsie told me, I think, or someone else in the office. I remember we talked about it, but it was crazy, and it was just like everything else that went on there. Anyway, nothing special happened on Monday, not that I can remember, and not that I could remember back then, either. Jack and Shaun had a fight about something, but they had a fight about something practically every day.”
    “ Fist fights?”
    “No, sometimes they didn’t even raise their voices. Shaun would just go around sulking, and you’d know that Jack had told him to quit bothering people or whatever.”
    “Did they ever argue about the dog?”
    “Not that I heard.”
    “Do you ever remember hearing that Shaun forged Jack’s signature on an insurance policy?”
    Estelle raised the kitten to her shoulder. It started chewing her hair. “No, but it would’ve been just like him. He always struck me as a very calculating person. No one could stand him. I don’t know why Jack ever got hooked up with him, except that Jack was such a nice man—he was ready to like everyone.”
    “And on Tuesday? The day after the murder?”
    “I showed up for work. The police were there. I spent a long time answering questions. Then I went home. I never went back. The press is still in business, you know. They still hire temps, but not me! No way am I ever setting foot in there again! Of course, I’ve thought about the place a lot. Like the police? In Multitudes ? I think it’s always really vital to start with what you know.”
     

Twenty-One

     
    If I substituted the electric zap of a shock collar for my smiles, praise, and treats, neither of my dogs would throw a rivalrous fit of shrieking when it was the other dog’s turn to train for obedience. Rowdy’s pad cut had heightened the competition. Although we could work on attention, heeling, and retrieving, he was still forbidden to jump. Furthermore, he was starved for the vigorous exercise that’s the best cure for destructiveness in the house. When I trained Kimi in the yard, his keen ears picked up whispered commands, and when I put Kimi and our portable PVC jumps in the car and headed for a park or a tennis court, I’d return to find signs of Rowdy’s regression: damp remnants of chewed magazines, and unanswered and now unanswerable letters from strangers whose return addresses resided in Rowdy’s stomach. If I crated him, he battered the wire-mesh door so violently that I was afraid he’d reopen the wound. As I’ve said, training with punishment would’ve killed the rivalry and solved my problem by teaching both dogs to associate obedience work with a nonlethal version of capital punishment. Not for anything, however, would I electrocute my bond with my dogs.
    In the midafternoon on Monday, my cousin Leah’s arrival offered a temporary solution.