Bride & Groom (27 page)

The dossier then focused on a second person. According to Martindale.com’s Lawyer Locator, Daniel T. Langceil was a member of the Boston law firm of Seed and Trout, which was so famous and prestigious that even I had heard of it. Daniel had gone to Harvard College and Harvard Law School. His practice area was listed as “General Civil.” Find-Law.com presented a listing from the West Legal Directory. This one simply gave Daniel’s name, his firm, its address and phone number, and his area of practice, general civil law.

There ended the 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 Northern Exposure, CGC, WLDX, WTD, WPD, all of whose titles Buck immediately elicited and all of which he understood.
BISS
is Best in Specialty Show, a speciality being a show limited to one breed, in this case, the Alaskan malamute.
Ch.:
Champion is conformation competition, in which dogs are judged according to the ideal spelled out in official breed standard.
CGC:
Canine Good Citizen, a title conferred by the American Kennel Club for passing a test designed to evaluate the dog’s training and deportment, and the owner’s responsibility in taking care of the dog. The last three titles are given by the Alaskan Malamute Club of America: Working Lead Dog Excellent, Working Team Dog, and Working Pack Dog. As my father was irritatingly quick to point out, Rowdy’s and Kimi’s work in harness had been occasional and strictly recreational.

Gabrielle tried to insert a few brags about the titles my dogs did have, but Buck’s bellowing drowned her out.

“Gabrielle, don’t!” I whispered. “Let him. The more he stays focused on North, the less attention he’ll pay to the wedding, and—”

“An excellent plan,” said Gabrielle, who, I should mention, looked entirely unready to run sled dogs. Or to run, for that matter. Her fabulous bone structure and pretty gray-blond hair wouldn’t be assets on the trail, and she was distinctly plump rather than muscular. “North really is beautiful,” she went on. “It does seem a shame that he had to do all that work, though! Leading a team! How would you like it?” She patted the fluffy white head of Molly, her bichon, whom she held, as usual, in her arms.

Although Gabrielle probably addressed the question to Molly, I said, “I might love it. And North certainly does, and please don’t say any such thing to Twila. Working breeds like to work, and Twila positively dotes on North. She’d never ask him to do anything he didn’t love.” I paused. “Besides, aren’t you going to mushing boot camp next weekend?”

“Yes, of course,” Gabrielle said, “but that won’t really be work, will it? It’ll just be fun. A grand adventure! Molly and I can hardly wait.”

I followed the wise course of not interfering in my father’s marriage. By this time, my father was enthusiastically greeting the kennel help Twila had brought with her, a sturdy young woman who, as far as I could tell, reserved her powers of speech almost exclusively for dogs. He insisted on helping with the entire team, which consisted of North and seven other malamutes. As he did so, he got to examine the incredible box trailer.

In response to Buck’s questioning, Twila said, “It’s six thousand pounds. That’s because of all the stainless steel diamond plate.”

Gabrielle whispered in my ear. “Do the dogs have to ride in it?”

"That’s what it’s for,” I said, “and they’re a lot more comfortable than my dogs and I were in my old Bronco.”

Meanwhile, Twila was showing off the luxurious dog vehicle, which had drops, as they’re known, for twelve dogs, an elaborate venting and cooling system, and a gigantic sealed storage compartment for gear.

As the kennel girl let out one of the dogs, Hussy, and spoke softly to her, Gabrielle suddenly took an interest in the trailer and went so for as to stick her head into the box that Hussy had just vacated. “It’s really a little private room, isn’t it? And the door has louvers. It’s very cozy and comfy. And perfectly safe. With padlocks for each little room. There’s not a chance that someone could get hurt in there.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Twila is not about to endanger her dogs. Now we’d better unload everything. Everyone’s expected for drinks at seven.”

“Let’s just leave Buck where he is. He had some fanciful notion of doing a real lobster and clam bake, but there simply isn’t time, and you don’t want your yard dug up, do you? And nothing would be ready for hours and hours, and we’d end up eating raw lobster, so if you don’t mind—”

“Mind? I don't mind at all.”

For the next hour and a half, Buck had no opportunity to cause trouble. On the contrary, he made himself useful by carrying luggage to the third floor, toting in plastic boxes of lobsters and clams, feeding and walking all five of Steve’s and my dogs, and lending a hand as Twila and her helper fed and watered the dog team. When Steve got home, Buck acted glad to see him and happily introduced him to Twila and her crew. Meanwhile, Rita, Leah, and Steve’s best man, Pete, had shown up, and with their assistance and Gabrielle’s, Steve and I got pots of water going in my kitchen and in the kitchen in the third-floor apartment. Pete was a sandy-haired guy about six inches shorter than Steve, a veterinary oncologist with a cheerful, gentle manner. Recently divorced, Pete struck me as a possible match for Rita, even if only as a date. Despite her efforts, Rita looked exhausted. Her face seemed pinched, and she’d lost more weight than I’d have thought possible in so short a time. I prayed that my tactless father would refrain from commenting on her appearance. So far, he’d done nothing to embarrass me; for him, he’d been practically normal. Only one thing about Buck’s behavior struck me as odd—namely, that although he and Gabrielle were signed up for boot camp, he made no effort to enlist Twila in convincing Gabrielle that boot camp would be a fantastic learning experience and that fluffy little Molly would fit right in with the teams of malamutes, Siberians, and Alaskan huskies. On the contrary, whenever Gabrielle approached Twila, he seemed to insert himself between the two women. I was, however, too busy preparing for dinner to pay a great deal of attention to the matter.

At seven, on schedule, Uncle Don and Uncle Dave arrived in their rental car. They looked remarkably like each other and remarkably like aged versions of Steve: tall and lean, with.wavy hair and blue-green eyes. The picnic table and a couple of folding tables we’d put in the yard were set with paper tablecloths, paper plates, and plastic flatware, but we’d rounded up enough real wineglasses for everyone. White wine, bottled water, and soft drinks nestled in ice in two coolers. I’d been a little concerned that when Kevin Dennehy and his police-officer girlfriend, Jennifer Pasquarelli, arrived, she’d respond to the obvious presence of a great many dogs by making sure that we were abiding by the leash and pooper-scooper laws, as we, in fact, were. Not that Cambridge dog laws were any of Jennifer’s business. As I hoped not to have to remind Jennifer, she was a Newton cop and thus out of her jurisdiction. As it turned out, Jennifer was on good behavior. To my relief, she wore neither her uniform nor a Spandex running outfit. She did, admittedly, have a cell phone and pager clipped to the belt of her stretch jeans, but her lavender cotton sweater suggested neither law enforcement nor road racing. On the contrary, given her voluptuous build, it just looked suggestive. Her shiny, dark hair was loose, and her amethyst earrings and necklace had clearly been chosen for a purely social occasion. Kevin seemed proud to be with her. The two of them chatted with Steve’s uncles. Steve made drinks and poured wine. Everyone, even Buck, ate the appetizers we’d bought at the Armenian stores in nearby Watertown: hummus, baba ganoosh, stuffed grape leaves, and various kinds of cheese with fresh Syrian bread.

The lobsters and clams were eventually cooked and served, and the whole business of carrying them outside and providing everyone with clam broth and melted butter was wonderfully diverting. By seven-thirty or quarter of eight, our guests were seated and amply supplied with lobsters, clams, butter, broth, baked potatoes, and big helpings of salad. Leah charmed the uncles by giving a lesson on how to eat a lobster. Glancing around, I was happy to see Rita seated next to Pete. Her plate was full. I hoped she’d empty it. Indeed, everything went beautifully until Buck, at my request, went inside to get a new pot of steamers. He’d been sitting between Gabrielle and Twila, at the same table with Steve and me. Since Gabrielle and Twila were now, in effect, next to each other, they naturally began to talk of what they had in common, which was, of course, the upcoming mushing boot camp.

“I had my concerns at first,” Gabrielle told Twila. “I’m not a roughing-it type. I was very relieved when Buck explained that our cabin is going to be perfectly luxurious. You have a cabin, too, don’t you?”

“North and I will be sleeping out under the stars,” Twila said. “I’ve brought a bivy, but I probably won’t need it. North sleeps right next to me.”

“A bivy?”

“A bivy,” Twila repeated. She went on to extol the virtues of the particular brand she owned. Because it had three poles, it was almost like a tent.

Gabrielle looked baffled.

I translated. “A sort of portable shelter for people who don’t want to bother with a tent. It has just enough room for you and your sleeping bag, and it covers your head in case of rain.”

Gabrielle was aghast. “But why aren’t you taking a cabin?”

“There’s only one,” Twila informed her. “There’s the big cabin. I’d rather be outside, anyway.”