Bride & Groom

dossier. I found the ending anticlimactic. In fact, this dossier had a vaguely perfunctory quality, as if the compiler had surfed the web without bothering to rise to its heights or plunge to its depths. Missing was the sense of compulsive completeness that I’d perceived in the previous dossiers, the driven determination to discover everything. But perhaps I was reading in to this dossier and, in reading the others, had merely projected my own sense of compulsion and drive. After all, each of the dossiers was incomplete. In each case, the true last page was murder.
     

CHAPTER 35
     
    At three-thirty on Friday afternoon, when all five freshly shampooed dogs had had their turns on the grooming table, I banished all creatures to the house and began to ready the yard for human use, namely, a lobster dinner. I can’t help wondering whether Steve and I could have saved Claire’s life by inviting Daniel, Claire, and Gus to our party. The invitation would’ve been strange. For one thing, I didn’t particularly like Claire. For another, the Langceils hadn’t been invited to our wedding; they were acquaintances rather than friends of ours. The party was for family members, close friends, and a few out-of-town guests. My father and Gabrielle expected to reach Cambridge at about five o’clock and were bringing real Maine lobsters and steamer clams. Twila Baker had called from New York State to say that she, too, should get there at about five. Two of Steve’s uncles from Minnesota, Uncle Dave and Uncle Don, were flying into Logan. They were renting a car and staying at a motel. The uncles, as well as Leah, Rita, Kevin, Jennifer Pasquarelli, and Steve’s best man would arrive at about seven. The Langceils would’ve been out of place at the gathering. They might have declined the invitation. As I later learned, Daniel and Gus spent the evening at the Museum of Science, where they visited the exhibit halls and had pizza at the Museum’s Science Street Café. Meanwhile Claire had an early dinner with Mac McCloud. Anyway, it’s simply impossible to draw up a guest list with the goal of preventing murder.
    That afternoon, I was preoccupied with thoughts about my wedding and specifically with my strategy for preventing Buck from ruining the festivities that he was generously paying for. My father didn’t choose to be more moose than human being, did he? Well, maybe he did. In any case, no matter where he was, he always took up more space than everyone else combined. Fact! I’d seen him do just that at Madison Square Garden during the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. My house was, of course, a lot smaller than Madison Square Garden, as was Ceci’s, and the entry at our wedding was a lot smaller than the entry at Westminster. Besides crowding everyone else out of any area, no matter how large, Buck bellowed in mooselike fashion. Finally, although I can’t prove it, it seemed to me that he always breathed in more air than everyone else combined and then exhaled some odorless chemical that made all dogs worship him, but had peculiar and unpredictable effects on people. He irked both Steve and Rita, whereas Gabrielle had fallen in love with him at first exposure. My hopes for moose control rested in part on Gabrielle, who was a civilizing influence, but were pinned mainly on Twila Baker’s dog team and especially on her lead dog, North.
    The plan got off to a splendid start. Buck, Gabrielle, their two dogs, and fifteen live lobsters pulled into my driveway at five. When Buck got out of the car and greeted me, as usual, by asking about Rowdy and Kimi, he was immediately distracted by the rather startling appearance on narrow little Appleton Street of a big SUV towing a sixteen-foot-long dog-box trailer that was somehow going to have to fit in my urban driveway. Buck was at his best. He wore casual L.L. Bean duds rather than the hunting outfit I’d feared. Twila brought her car and trailer to a stop in the street, and my father immediately took charge. He moved my car and his own, and capably directed Twila as she, in effect, moored an ocean liner at a dock meant for rowboats. Buck took to her and to North immediately. Twila had long, dark hair and, in contrast to some of my Cambridge friends, was healthy-looking and vigorous. Women who supposedly run with wolves have got nothing on women who run teams of sled dogs.
    What really impressed Buck, however, was North, properly, BISS American International Ch. Quinault’s