Animal Appetite

look at the consequences. Where would Claudia be now if Jack had lived? She’s far better off with him dead! Jack’s life insurance is what got the family f through. Oscar Fisch told me that. Shaun wasn’t the only one due to benefit. Because of that insurance, Claudia has her doctorate, she lives on Francis Avenue, and she’s an associate professor at Harvard.”
    Rita dresses like Manhattan, but her attitude is pure Cambridge. “Still doesn’t have tenure,” she remarked snootily.
    Unjust, isn’t it? Only the full professors have tenure,: and hardly any of them are women. And exactly what song is sung at commencement each year? “Fair Harvard.” The nerve!
    “Just the same, Rita, Claudia is a lot better off than she’d be if Jack had lived. Furthermore, Claudia knew Professor Foley very well. Tracy Littlefield doesn’t even know he existed.”
    “Did you ask her?”
    “No. Why would I?”
    “Jack Andrews never mentioned Professor Foley to her?”
    “Why would he?”
    “Because Foley was an old, dear friend, of his, my friend. Foley was the kind of person she could subsequently have gone to for help in rearing Jack’s second son.”
    “She raised Drew herself.”
    “College tuition? She shows up on Professor Foley’s doorstep with pictures of a boy who looks, according to you, exactly like Foley’s esteemed late friend? And Professor Foley puts the pieces together: the boy’s age, Jack’s murder, her need for money, any doubts he might have harbored about Shaun McGrath’s guilt.”
    “We don’t know that he had any doubts. We don’t even know that he’d ever heard of Tracy’s existence, let alone Drew’s. What do you think Jack did? Went to Professor Foley and said, ‘Oh, by the way, George, I’m leading a double life’?”
    “Why not? And even if Foley learned the story last week from this Tracy person, he might have worked it out then and there, and simply confronted her and accused her of murdering Jack.”
    “Damn! I’ll tell you something, Rita. George Foley really could have answered a lot of questions. I don’t understand much else, but I really am sure that the reason to get rid of him was to shut him up. When I talked to him on the phone, all I asked him about was Hannah Duston. I should’ve asked him about Jack Andrews.”
    “Holly, it’s also possible, you know, that your professor died a natural death.”
    The kettle whistled. I made tea-bag tea, which Rita doesn’t really like, in mugs that Rita frowns on because they’re not tea cups and also because they’re decorated with pictures of Alaskan malamutes and not covered with hand-painted roses, violets, and stupid gilt squiggles. I missed Kevin. He’ll happily drink any beer out of anything. I resentfully handed Rita her cup.
    “What are you saying, Rita? Purely by coincidence, Professor Foley picked that time to die of a heart attack? The police didn’t assume that. I don’t know why you should. Speaking of which, if Kevin would only get back here, I could find out what’s going on in the Foley investigation. I never thought he’d stick it out this long.”
    “He isn’t due back until tomorrow.”
    “In theory. In fact, I’ve been expecting him to show up since Saturday morning. I don’t know why he didn’t at least leave me the phone number.”
    Rita examined her mug with distaste. “So you couldn’t call him.”
    I took a big sip. “He’d probably love a call. He’d be a lot happier at a homicide investigation than he is out there in the Berkshires chewing seaweed and burning his feet on—”
    “Your capacity for stereotyping astounds me.”
    “I am not stereotyping Kevin. He’s a Cambridge cop, he eats meat, he drinks beer, he’s obsessed with his job, and I have never once heard him do anything but make fun of any of this ‘Eastern alternative body-mind holistic fitness crap.’ That’s a direct quote.”
    “As it happens, I was referring more to—”
    My doorbell interrupted her. The dogs, as usual, leaped to the defense of their pet biped by flying silently to the front door, where they stood wagging their tails ready to welcome whatever robber, rapist, or Jehovah’s Witness was trying to spring an attack on me. Mail-order dog-supply companies unwittingly reward this mala-mute version of guard-dog behavior by including free bonus dog biscuits with every order. The positive-reinforcement history is so strong that Rowdy and Kimi are convinced that the sound of a van outside