Bride & Groom (9 page)

Lessons Learned in Hearing the Soul Voices of Dogs

Instructor: Victoria Trotter

This innovative course examines the dynamic relevance of utilizing tarot-theory-based models of principles of trans-species intervention with behavior-affected dogs and their human guardians. Topics to be developed include:

• Effect of Trotter Tarot education about canine psycho-emotional concerns on human attitudes and spiritual beliefs.

• Effect of tarot-enhanced communication in elevating canine self-esteem and human resilience in behavior-conflicted relationships.

• Use of Trotter Tarot readings to promote interspecies communication and trans-species unity and global peace.

A short biography followed: “Victoria Trotter has worked with human-canine dyads throughout the Americas and Europe. Illustrator of the beloved Trotter Tarot and author of
Interpreting the Trotter Tarot,
Victoria Trotter is Senior Training Advisor to the International Tarot Foundation.”

There ended this dossier.

CHAPTER 11

“Victoria Trotter was a nasty woman,” I told Kevin Dennehy.

So much for saying nothing but good about the dead.

It was nine o’clock on the morning of Saturday, August 31, and Kevin was sitting at my kitchen table drinking coffee, eating his third English muffin, and sneaking bits of it to Kimi and Sammy. I didn’t take Kevin to task for breaking the house rule. He'd been up all night. Steve, too, was laboring on Labor Day weekend, although for only a short time, or so I hoped. His clinic had called a half hour earlier about a Belgian Tervuren suffering from an apparent intestinal obstruction. The X ray showed what the young vet at the clinic thought might be a corn cob. But could Steve take a quick look? Oh, my. Never in his life had Steve taken a less-than-thorough look at an animal. Even so, a corn cob was a likely bet, and if Steve saw one on the radiograph, he’d call Angell Memorial Hospital and have the owner rush the dog there for surgery. By the way, should you care to promote veterinary prosperity at great monetary cost to yourself and possibly fatal risk to your dog, let your dog eat com cobs, or give him a chance to filch them. Those rough suckers are never happier than when they’re lodging in a canine gut.

“I interviewed Victoria two times,” I continued. “Her mother was a famous dog artist, Mary Kidwell Trotter. I wrote an article about her. And I also interviewed Victoria about herself, about a dog tarot deck she published. I can show it to you if you want.”

“Didn’t do her much good,” Kevin said. “If she’d seen the future, she’d’ve stayed indoors last night.”

“We didn’t stay indoors,” I pointed out. Kevin had already told me that Victoria Trotter had been bludgeoned to death as she lay in a hammock on the front porch of her house. She’d apparently spent the hot summer evening lazing around outside, more or less as we’d done. Steve and I had sipped wine. Kevin had had beer. Victoria, however, had, in Kevin’s words, been slugging down Bombay gin on the rocks. Steve and I had taken our dogs outside with us. Victoria had left her two whippets in their crates indoors.

The murder scene was easy to envision. I remembered the porch and the hammock from the visits I’d made to interview Victoria. Her house had interested me because it had reminded me a little of my own. Both were red, mine a barn red, hers a darker shade that had struck me as unwholesome, perhaps because it was the color of dried blood or perhaps because my dislike of Victoria had tainted my vision. Her house was somewhat older than mine and obviously Victorian, with yellow-cream trim in a pattern that suggested flowers without actually depicting them. I remember wondering whether my house, too, might once have had pretty trim and a front porch and whether I might someday install a third-floor skylight like the one on Victoria’s roof. I’d also been struck by the contrast between the front and the rear of her house, its public and private faces, so to speak. Her house sat on a small corner lot. The front of the house and the side facing the street were neat and well kept. The hammock was attractive, and potted plants decorated the steps to the porch. An evergreen tree near the porch was overgrown, but the foundation shrubs had been trimmed, and tidy hostas formed a thick border along the sidewalk. When I’d parked in the driveway at the rear, I’d been startled. An old radiator had been leaning against the back steps, and other pieces of junk had been strewn here and there.

“Besides, her tarot is mainly for readings about dogs,” I said, “not people. And it’s not meant for fortune telling. It’s supposed to help you understand your dog’s past and present. She didn’t claim that it was some magical way to predict the future."

“I got no use for all that mumbo jumbo,” Kevin said. “So, what was it you didn’t like about her? She say something bad about malamutes?”

“She said that they conned law-abiding people into feeding them at the table,” I said. “Actually, I said that, and please stop it, all of you. Anyway, one thing I know about Victoria goes back... it must be twenty years, long before I had malamutes. I was a teenager. This happened at a show. I was with my mother and some of our goldens. My father wasn’t there, which was probably a good thing, because Buck would’ve been so furious that he’d’ve done God knows what and gotten himself in trouble. Anyway, Victoria Trotter had a greyhound she was showing in obedience. And she must’ve known that that isn’t the world’s easiest obedience breed. Everyone knows that.”

Kevin guffawed.

“Everyone who trains dogs. But anyone who shows greyhounds in obedience, or malamutes in obedience, for that matter, needs a good attitude. So, what happened was just that her dog quit on her. I saw this part. I was right outside the ring. It was no big deal. Not that it ever happened with my goldens or my mother’s, but on the off-leash heeling, Victorias dog just stopped and stood still and left her heeling along all by herself. She gave a second command—she told him to heel—which you can do and still qualify. 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 drive somewhere and get home after dark, don’t go to your back door alone. And by
alone
I mean without another human. Dogs don’t count.”

“Kevin, I’m more alone with most people than I am with my dogs.”

Kevin repeated his warning. “Stay indoors after dark, Holly. I’m a cop and I’m telling you that in Cambridge these days, don’t go out alone at night. Not for two seconds. Don’t get cocky. I’m telling you one more time: With what we’re dealing with here, dogs don’t count. And for all you know, one of your dogs could get killed, too.”

“I will murder anyone who even thinks about hurting one of my dogs.”

Kevin can be so corny. “Not if you’re dead first,” he said.

CHAPTER 12

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Subj: Mushing Boot Camp

Hi Holly,

I'll be traveling all the way across the country to New Hampshire for Ginny Wilson's Mushing Boot Camp. Any chance you'd be interested in going? It's from October 4 through October 6. This is the boot camp we normally attend, but we haven't driven this far before. It will be worth it. Ginny's my hero , definitely the "been there and done that but not gonna brag about it" sort. You'd learn a lot and love it. I'll have all eight dogs with me. I never go anywhere without North, and rarely do I attend dog-related functions without everyone. But you'd have fun with just your two. Think about it!

Twila

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Subj: Re: Mushing Boot Camp

Hi Twila,

Camp sounds like fun, but I can't go this year. Steve and I will be in Paris on our honeymoon! But I have a plan. We're getting married on September 29, the Sunday before camp. Could I persuade you to come to our wedding? You could stay here in Cambridge until camp. My house has three apartments. You could have the one on the third floor. My father and stepmother (she's anything but wicked) will be there from Friday though Sunday, but they'll leave right after the wedding, and you'd have it to yourself after that. My yard is small, but it's fenced, and you and the dogs would be more than welcome. In fact, would North like to attend the wedding? He's so beautiful that he'd be an ornament to the occasion.