Bride & Groom

responses to the original post were expressions of shock and horror, together with requests for the names and addresses of relatives who should receive condolences. Although I still thought that Elspeth had been wrong to do a book about an elephant named Zazar, I felt guilty about the E-mail I’d sent to Mac and hastily sent him a message saying only that Elspeth had been murdered.
    As I chopped tomatoes, fresh basil, and mozzarella, and washed salad greens, I kept switching the radio back and forth between WBZ, an AM news station, and WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station. I first caught the story about Elspeth’s murder on one of WBUR’s news summaries. The announcer reported that the killer responsible for the deaths of two women in Cambridge and one woman in Brookline had struck for the fourth time. The victim, Elspeth Jantzen, had been killed outside her home in Belmont the previous evening. On WBZ, a reporter interviewed a gravel-voiced Belmont police spokesperson who gave brief answers. The police were cooperating fully with all authorities and agencies charged with investigating the serial homicides. Yes, the perpetrator had again used a blunt instrument to deliver a crushing blow to the head. Yes, the medical examiner had identified an injection site on the body, but the results of the autopsy were not yet available.
    In between feeding my dogs and Steve’s, and giving all five their turns in the yard, I finished dinner preparations and spent a little time searching the web. While the dogs were outdoors, I kept watch over the new picnic table, which I was determined that Steve and I would get to enjoy this one time before it got marked by dogs and had to be washed. Far more than the previous murders and more than my own Saturday-night scare, Elspeth’s murder frightened me in a personal way. I had known her; on Friday, she’d sat at my kitchen table. We’d been members of the same profession. We’d had acquaintances in common. Ordinarily, it would never have occurred to me to lock the wooden gate in the fence that led to the driveway. Now, while I scooped up after the dogs and carried out a tablecloth, plates, and silverware, I not only kept that gate locked but kept India at my side as I went in and out. Although the German shepherd dog is a popular choice for protection work, India’s education had consisted of training for the American Kennel Club obedience ring, where anything even remotely like protective or aggressive behavior would have been highly unwelcome. Good girl that India was, she excelled in obedience. In daily life, she showed her breed’s normal desire to watch out for her owner and his belongings, but she’d never been taught or even encouraged to protect Steve, never mind me. Still, I trusted India to inform me if a stranger approached the gate, and her strong, intelligent presence gave me the welcome sense of having a powerful ally. Also, unlike my own malamutes and Sammy the pup, India could be relied on to keep her jaws and her bodily fluids off the new table, and she wasn’t a food thief. If anything, she did her job too well to suit me. Sensing my need, she glued herself to my side, gazed at my face, and cocked her head to listen for sounds of threat. I was used to Rowdy and Kimi, who never worried about anything because they assumed that if trouble arose, a fight would ensue, and they’d win. Period. They made the same flattering assumption about the inevitability of my own victory in all possible situations.
    When Steve got home, I was putting candles in wedding-present candleholders. He’d never looked better, and I’d never been happier to see him. My love for him really had been of the at-first-sight variety and was as wholehearted as my love for my dogs. I’d often told him just that. How many men would have been pleased to hear such a sentiment? Damn few. A man like that was worth marrying. Anyway, I threw my arms around him, clung to him, and felt myself tremble.
    “I heard about Elspeth Jantzen,” he said softly. “You should’ve called me.”
    “I’m okay.”
    “Ms. Malamute.” Steve understood the limitations of words and the power of touch; he was, after all, a vet. He held me as if he held a dog in pain, as if he had the rest of his life to keep me in his arms, as, in a sense, he did.
    Finally, I said, “I’ve made dinner. Your uncle Leon sent us a picnic table from L.L. Bean. It’s in the yard. I thought we’d eat out there. I need to keep doing