Animal Appetite

announced. “We were meant to. And at first we did. But Shaun made one major error!”
    “Shaun McGrath,” Professor Foley murmured. “Jack’s partner. Died before he went to trial. Never even arrested.”
    “His murderer!” Claudia corrected fiercely, as if Professor Foley had declared Shaun McGrath innocent. “Jack had a dog, you see,” she continued in the tone appropriate to proclaiming that the dead man had doted on a pet tarantula. “And the dog went everywhere with him. Everywhere! But when Jack was alone in his office, the dog was always running around loose. It was only when Jack had someone else there that he tied it up.”
    I nodded.
    “To keep it from bothering people.”
    I nodded again.
    “And that’s how we eventually realized that Jack hadn’t committed suicide.”
    “Yes?” I asked.
    “He’d been murdered!” Claudia again proclaimed, “We knew! Shaun tried to disguise it as suicide, but we knew! We knew someone else had been there! Because when we found Jack’s body, the dog was still tied to his desk.”
    “Oh,” I said. Then, without censoring what must have sounded like an odd query, I asked the question that’s a reflex with me: “What breed of dog was it?” Claudia blinked.
    I clarified: “What kind of a dog?”
    “A golden retriever,” she answered, raising her hand and pointing a finger in a manner that reminded me of the statue of Hannah Duston. “It was a golden retriever.”
    My parents raised golden retrievers. I, Holly Winter, grew up with the breed. Jack Winter Andrews. A golden. Claudia’s Hannah-like gesture felt like the finger of fate. The finger pointed directly at me.
    Claudia brandished an empty fork. “Everyone knew. There was no mystery about it. As soon as we saw that it was murder, we knew immediately that it had to be Shaun McGrath.”
    “It’s common knowledge,” said Oscar Fisch.
    “Written up,” Professor Foley commented. “Chapter in a book.”
    Claudia almost leaped on him. “A dreadful book! Written by the prototype of the pompous ass!”
    “All I meant, my dear Claudia, was that Shaun McGrath had been identified in print.” Professor Foley paused. “Not that it matters at all.”
    “Certainly not,” said Oscar Fisch. “The man was undoubtedly guilty. In any case, one can’t libel the dead.”
     

Three

     
    The canine press abounds with stories of dogs that detect drugs or arson, rouse trauma victims from comas, or entice children from autistic states. Dog’s Life alone must have published two dozen articles about family pets I that awakened households when the smoke alarms failed, valiant canines who dragged sleeping infants from flame-licked cribs. In revealing Jack Andrews’s aparent suicide as murder, however, his golden retriever had served humankind in what struck me as a fresh and publishable way. I should be able to whip off a little piece about the heroic golden in no time at all. Hannah Duston represented a radical career change; dog writing was my real metier. Until people writing started to pay off, I couldn’t afford to quit my day job, not yet.
    On Sunday, the day after Marsha’s bat mitzvah, I checked the phone book for Claudia and found her listed (“Andrews-Howe, Claudia & Oscar Fisch”) on Francis Avenue in Cambridge. Our Fair City, as it’s: known, has two fancy neighborhoods. The famous one, the area surrounding Brattle Street, is only a few blocks from my house, but on the patrician side of Huron Avenue. Francis Avenue and the other streets that begin at Kirkland and run back toward the American Academy of Arts and Sciences are a sort of quiet version of Off Brattle. The houses are just as discreetly immense, the vegetation just as lush, the residents just as reliably university-affiliated, and the walk to Harvard just as short as from high-traffic Brattle Street. Furthermore, there’s no disguising the monied exclusivity of Brattle Street; but from Francis Avenue, it’s only a couple of blocks to a decidedly working-class section of Somerville, so if you’re both very rich and very egalitarian, you can take comfort in your proximity to those who work with their hands.
    When I reached Claudia and asked how she’d feel about my writing up the story of Jack and his revelatory dog, I made the mistake of saying “heroic,” and she churlishly pointed out that the dog hadn’t actually done anything at all, really. Rather, in remaining tied to the desk, the dog had been nothing more than a