Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

were not accidents.
    I sat next to Chip. Boris was across from me, which is exactly where I wanted him, in full view, and Woody sat at my right, Bucky sat at Chip’s left, and Martyn, who had been the only voice of dissent in the group but gave in and came anyway, was sitting between Woody and Boris.
    I took a look at my cards. “In,” I said. I tossed in a five-dollar chip, the last of the big spenders.
    “Call,” Chip said.
    “Call.” Bucky picked up a chip with two fat fingers and tossed it into the pot
    “Boris calls.”
    There were two more pings as Martyn and Woody pitched a chip each toward the pot, nobody going out on a limb just yet.
    “How many?” Woody asked.
    “I’ll play these.”
    “Two,” Chip said. He peeled off a couple of cards and tossed them to Woody. Woody sent two back, only the three golden retriever puppies showing. I’m nothing if not appropriate.
    “One,” Bucky said, trying to look inscrutable.
    Boris held his cards from above, his fingers coming down over the top like ivy growing over a stone wall. “Three.”
    “Three?”
    “You heard Boris,” he said, looking irritated now.
    “One,” Martyn said. “No, make that two.”
    “I’m taking one,” Woody said. Then he turned to look at me and waited.
    Well, let him, I thought. I wasn’t here to play cards.
    “Weird week, isn’t it?” I said, easing in slowly.
    Rhonda had gotten up on the bed. She was snoring even louder than Dashiell does.
    “In or out?” Woody asked.
    “A full house beats a flush, right?” I asked.
    Woody slapped his cards down on the table and picked up a cigar.
    “It’s just that it’s been a while,” I said, having too much fun now to stop. “I only wanted to be sure.”
    They were all staring.
    “Never mind,” I told them, dropping two chips into the pot without bothering to look at my cards again. Hell, with my love life, who had to check my cards in the first place? Anyway, my ploy worked. I had their attention. “So here’s what I was thinking—”
    “Broads,” Bucky said, holding the cards close to his chest. “Let one sit in on a poker game, and what do you have? A quilting bee. Yadda, yadda, yadda, all night long.” He dropped his free hand to his lap and was moving it rhythmically. I hoped he was petting Angelo, but there was always that other possibility.
    “Hasn’t it occurred to anyone but me that two fatal accidents mean this isn’t a coincidence?”
    “It is unusual,” Martyn said, “losing two of our major players like this. But the police said—”
    “No, listen,” I said, “think about dog training, you know, when a client calls you up with a string of coincidences, a shopping list of all the dog’s bad behavior, and they don’t see any connection between, say, the growling and the urinating on the arm of the sofa. But it’s always connected. It’s never a case of—”
    I stopped and looked around the table. Bucky was rearranging his cards. Boris was staring across the table. Chip had turned sideways to get a better view of me. Woody was doing the same, except from the other side. And Martyn, who a moment ago had seemed interested and concerned, now looked as if he had gone on an out-of-body trip, imagining himself, perhaps, in a better place, or with a less irritating group of people. I picked up my vodka and tossed it down in one gulp. “Coincidence,” I said.
    “It is a bit of a stretch,” Woody said, looking not at me now but at the others.
    “Call,” Chip said, tossing in two chips.
    “Heavy,” I said. “What do you have, Pressman, a pair of threes?”
    Bucky laid down his cards and pitched three chips into the pot “See you and raise you,” he said. “Female hysteria is what it is. Always imagining more than there is.”
    “Maybe Bucky imagines more than there is in his hand,” Boris said. “I look at you. I raise you,” he said, picking up four chips and tossing them in.
    “Fold,” Martyn said, laying down his hand and taking one of the fat cigars Boris had put on the table. He slipped off the band, cut off the tip of the cigar, and reached across the table for matches.
    I didn’t care where this went now. I wanted them to know someone was looking at this differently than the police, that it wasn’t just going down as smoothly as ice-cold vodka. I thought maybe it needed one more touch to get the message across.
    “Think what you want, Bucky,” I said, “but who says you won’t be the next one to have an