Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

wearing my shirt. But even if you weren’t, Boris, Woody, Bucky, and Sam knew we were alone in my room. And no one would imagine that you would have been able to resist me.”
    I opened my mouth, but he put one finger over my lips.
    “That actually worked to our advantage with the cops. Since they think we were multiplying like fruit flies last night, they don’t think either of us pushed Martyn off the roof.”
    “But—”
    He nodded. “Exactly my point Why would someone want to kill us for spending the night together? We’re both adults. Whose business would it be but ours?”
    The dogs waited for us at each landing, bounding on ahead just before we caught up to them.
    “Wait a minute,” I said, taking Chip’s arm. It was quiet below. The dogs had stopped too.
    “What’s up?”
    “What if it’s not business?”
    “We’re back to the black widow spider? I still don’t see how that puts me in danger, Rachel. I haven’t been with anyone but you.”
    “What if it’s a man, someone who’s «of getting lucky, someone who’s so envious he could kill?”
    “You mean Boris?”
    “Or Bucky?”
    “But, Rachel, how could you find out something like that, that one of them was trying to join the party, so to speak, and foiling?”
    “I don’t know.”
    But that wasn’t true. I did know. Because given half a chance, people talk.
    But if that was how I was going to find out who had gone over the edge at this symposium, someone had better start talking soon, before another of the men ended up dead.



SHE WAS NODDING

    O ur abbreviated panel sat behind a long table covered with a white cloth on the stage of the auditorium. I was on the left side of the table, with Chip to my right; then there was Cathy, her eyes still red; Tracy, her face strangely hostile; Bucky, who always had to sit in the middle of things; Beryl, in her tweed jacket and plaid woolen hat; Woody, who kept looking at Sam in the front row; Boris, looking red-faced and ready to pop; and on the far end, Audrey, who appeared as small as if she were a child sitting on a grown-up’s chair. Magic, of course, was on her lap. The other dogs were lying in front of the table on down-stays, a visible show of our consummate skills. In fact, Sasha was asleep and snoring, the best testimony on earth to his master’s talent. It meant the dog understood he wasn’t going anywhere without a word from Boris, so there was no compelling reason to stay awake.
    I was as tired as he was, but unlike Sasha, I had work to do.
    Having been to panels before and knowing as well as Bucky did that the best-known trainers would be asked most of the questions, I had the printouts from Sam’s computer and the phone records, all tucked inside a copy of Modern Maturity I’d pilfered off the lap of an old geezer who was asleep on one of the chairs in the lobby. I held it on my lap so that I could study the material while the panel went on. I told Chip to poke me if I missed my name or on those occasions where we were all expected to give an opinion on the same topic. Or if I just needed to look up and smile.
    I opened the magazine and began to study the lists in earnest, first the list of people in this audience, checking all the other participant lists for the last two years to see if any name popped up in a telling way. But while there were people in attendance here who had been to a Bucky talk or a Martyn weekend symposium, there was no name that appeared in the audience of all three deceased colleagues. This was not to say that perusing the lists wasn’t worthy of my attention. Not at all.
    Of note, it seemed to me, was that while Bucky was the most demanding of the speakers—spelling out the publicity he had to have, demanding first-class travel and lodging, requiring limos and escorts instead of taking cabs, even submitting his own introduction, which was three pages long, single-spaced—his draw, and consequently his fee, had gone not up but down over the last two years. Despite all the self-inflation, Bucky’s popularity was slipping. And Bucky, I’d guess, was not a man to take that lightly.
    I remembered that quite a few years back Bucky had had a nice gig as a steady guest on some daytime TV show, and Rick Shelbert had wheedled his way in there with some little tap dance about what he could do, causing Bucky to get fired and Rick—Dr. Rick, as they called him on the show—to get the job.
    Had he had a bone to pick with Alan and Martyn as well? Where