Animal Appetite by Susan Conant

“And do not tell me that you haven’t been doing it, because the other day when Steve opened a can of beer, they both came flying, and Rowdy opened his mouth and practically begged to guzzle.”

    “Hey, hey,” Kevin said to Rowdy, “didn’t the three of us swear it was going to be our little secret?”

    “Steve did not give them any,” I said emphatically. “He knows better. So do you.” Gesturing to the photocopied notes, I asked, “Any idea what kind of paper these were written on?”

    “Yeah. The one about the faults, ‘Love, Jack,’ was on plain white paper. Torn across the top. The other was on business letterhead. Same paper the company used. Also with the top torn off. Typed on the machine in his office. That one’d been folded, to go in an envelope. The other one hadn’t. The writing’s his. No question.”

    “Neither one had been crumpled up?”

    “Nope. He didn’t do that. Just threw things in the trash. Didn’t ball them up first.”

    “He didn’t have a secretary?”

    “Yeah, but he typed his letters himself.”

    “So anyone at the press could’ve kept going through his wastebasket for a letter that could pass as a suicide note.”

    “And the guy wrote a lot of letters, most of them telling people he wasn’t going to publish their books.”

    “Most publishers just use a form letter. He must have been a nice guy if he bothered to write personal rejections. These aren’t rejection letters, though. I guess the first one could be about a book he hoped would be a bestseller that didn’t make it and that he wasn’t going to promote anymore. But I don’t think so. Damned Yankee Press doesn’t exactly do bestsellers. Maybe he really did think about suicide. Hey, Kevin, Shaun McGrath was brought in to computerize the business. How come Jack was still using a typewriter?”

    “Computers cost big bucks in those days. Or maybe he liked to type. I wasn’t there.”

    “So tell me about this poison.” I repeated the words Kevin had said earlier. “Sodium fluoroacetate.”

    “Colorless, odorless, tasteless.”

    “I’ve never heard of it.”

    “Banned for years. Licensed exterminators used to be able to get it. Your friend Mr. Andrews had an uncle in the pest-control business.”

    “In Haverhill?”

    “Yeah. How’d you—?”

    “That’s where he grew up,” I said. “You’d think the uncle would’ve just come and poisoned the rats himself.”

    Kevin tapped a sausage like finger against his mammoth head. “Early stages of Alzheimer’s. He’d quit the business. He just happened to have this stuff back on a shelf somewhere.”

    “I hope that no one around here gets any stupid ideas like that.”

    “You seen any of them around here yet?” Kevin didn’t say “rats.”

    Neither did I. “No. Thank God.”

    “Saw one last night. Big as Rowdy’s head.” Kevin sounded as proud and happy as if he’d spotted a purple gallinule among the house sparrows at his mother’s feeder.

    “It wasn’t,” I countered “The Globe says that they’re sewer rats and that they practically never get bigger than a pound and a half.”

    “Five pounds if it weighed an ounce. Maybe ten. Big sucker.” He grinned. Civic pride certainly takes some peculiar forms.

    “Where?”

    “Corner of Appleton and Huron. Ran under a car parked right there.”

    My house is at the corner of Appleton and Concord. Kevin’s is on Appleton, right next to mine. Huron is the next major cross street.

    “Dear God,” I said.

    “Don’t hurt them, and they won’t hurt you,” Kevin proclaimed.

    “Kevin, please!”

    “You can catch a lot worse from a raccoon.”

    Rabies or no rabies, raccoons are cute. But rats? And somehow the knowledge that ours were mere sewer rats (as opposed to what? ) was no comfort.

    “So tell me exactly why Shaun McGrath killed Jack,” I said.

    “No proof he did. Ever heard of the presumption of innocence?”

    “The people I talked to said that