Bride & Groom

You lose points, but you don’t wash out. But in this case, the dog ignored her. He just stood there.” I shrugged. “So what! It wasn’t as if he’d lifted his leg on the judge or attacked another dog. But Victoria’s response—and I didn’t see this part—was to take the dog out to the parking lot and beat the daylights out of him. And someone saw her. An incident like that is very serious. The American Kennel Club has strict rules of all kinds about conduct at shows, but in terms of how people react to violations of AKC rules, mistreating a dog is the worst possible thing an exhibitor can do. It enrages people. And this was the daughter of Mary Kidwell Trotter! So, Victoria lost her AKC privileges for I don’t know how long, and it was a major scandal. As far as I know, Victoria never showed a dog again. I’d pretty much forgotten about her until I got the assignment from Dog’s Life to do an article about her mother, and my editor, Bonnie, told me that Victoria lived right here in Cambridge and that I should interview her. That was only a few years ago, just about the time Victoria published her tarot deck and the book that goes with it. And then I got the assignment for the article about her tarot.”
    “So you stroll into her house and say, ‘Hey there, Vicky, how you doing? When did you quit beating your dogs?”’ “Kevin, I did no such thing! I knocked myself out to have an open mind. I told myself that I’d seen her in the ring at that show, but I’d heard about everything else fourth- or fifth-hand. Maybe someone lied. And if not, it happened ages ago. People change. I tried as hard as I could to be fair to her. Not that I believed that anyone had lied. The person who saw her happened to be a guy named Harry Howland, who was and is very reputable and ethical. If Harry Howland said that Victoria was beating her dog, then she was.”
    “And you tried to forget all that, but you hated her on sight.” Kevin leaned down to rub his big chin on the top of Sammy’s head. Kimi shoved her way in. Kevin wrapped his gorilla arms around both dogs.
    “Not exactly. But it didn’t take her long to start condescending to me. She obviously wanted to be a celebrity, even in Dog’s Life, but she made fun of the name, which was stupid, because it’s supposed to be funny. Both times I was there, her whole manner was disdainful. Arrogant. And she was very restless, very edgy. For all that she was the queen bee of animal mind reading, her New Age studies obviously hadn’t brought her any peace of mind. Also, her dogs were hand shy. And they were nice dogs. Whippets. That’s a sensitive, affectionate breed. They were very sweet. There’s no excuse for hitting any dog, but what kind of vicious person hits gentle little dogs like that? And they had been hit. No one could’ve missed it. So, I kept the interviews short. Professional. I asked my questions, got answers, and left. With a very low opinion of Victoria Trotter.” I refilled Kevin’s cup and mine.
    “Thanks,” he said. “Fact is, her dogs weren’t in good condition.”
    “In what way?”
    “Locked in their crates in their own filth. No water. Like you said, whippets. Two of them.”
    “Kevin, you lied to me! When you walked in here, I asked you whether she still had dogs and whether they were okay. And you said they were all right!”
    “They are now. And I wanted to hear what you had to say without you knowing about the dogs. She’d only been dead maybe an hour when we got there, and the dogs’d been locked up a lot longer than that.” He beamed at Kimi and Sammy. “None of that around here, is there, boys?”
    “Kimi is not a boy. But there’s certainly no animal neglect around here. That is disgusting.”
    “Party girl,” Kevin said.
    "Kimi? She’s never been bred.”
    “You got dogs on the brain. Anyone ever tell you that? Victoria. That’s what the neighbors say. Lot of men, lot of booze.”
    “Lots of suspects,” I said. “So maybe Victoria’s murder has nothing to do with Laura Skipcliff’s.”
    “Woman alone at night in Cambridge. Bludgeoned. No weapon found.”
    “A copycat crime?”
    Kevin wasn’t beaming now. He was looking straight into my eyes. “I don’t want you out alone after dark.”
    “Steve and I own five dogs. Besides, I’m not about to loll around at night in a hammock on an open porch drinking gin.”
    “Don’t walk the dogs. Don’t take out the trash. Don’t go to your car alone. If you