Animal Appetite by Susan Conant Page A

everyone knew McGrath did it. His family. His friends. They said the police knew. And apparently there’s a book with a chapter about Jack’s murder, and it says that Shaun McGrath killed him. I just haven’t been able to track it down yet.”

    Kevin shrugged.

    “So, Kevin, if Shaun McGrath did it, what went on? I heard it was for insurance money—that Shaun was the beneficiary on a policy for Jack’s life.”

    “Thirty thousand dollars,” Kevin said.

    “So that was true.”

    “They tell you it was vice versa?”

    “What was?”

    “Two policies. These guys were business partners. Bought all this computer stuff. Took out policies on each other. Guy at the station who knows about this stuff says it’s common practice.”

    “I didn’t know that,” I said.

    “Yeah, well, strictly between us, neither did the asshole, pardon my French, who ran this investigation.”

    “Was that all there was to it? The insurance money—was that the only motive?”

    “Naw, there were personal disputes. About business, but the thing turned personal. Jack was the good guy. Nice to everyone who worked there. Friendly. Gave everyone time off. Let ’em bring their kids to work. Brought his own. Brought his dog. Casual with the money. Transferred funds between 6the business account and his own, back and forth. Easygoing kind of a guy. Harvard grad: not safe out alone. McGrath was the bad guy. Wanted the business run like a business. Tightassed nerd. Obvious suspect.”

    “But McGrath’s death really was an accident?”

    “No question. Happened right on Memorial Drive.”

    “I know. He swerved to avoid something and ran his car into a tree.”

    “Convertible. Dead on impact. They tell you what he swerved to avoid?” Kevin’s tone was infinitely smug.

    “No,” I admitted.

    “Siberian husky,” Kevin informed me. “Ran into a tree so’s he wouldn’t hit a loose dog.”

CHAPTER 7

    Just west ofi Boston proper, downtown, sprawls Allston-Brighton, which is actually two separate sections of the city, Allston and Brighton. No one except the U.S. Postal Service knows where one ends and the other begins, and it won’t tell. Brighton Avenue is evidently an urban no-man’s-land claimed neither by Allston nor by Brighton, nor by the City of Boston, or so I assume. What I know for sure is that no one assumes responsibility for filling the potholes. Even at twenty miles an hour, my old Bronco jounced and rattled so violently that the empty metal dog crates in the back were compelled to take up the cries of the shocks and springs, and I almost wished I’d brought Rowdy and Kimi along for ballast. For obvious reasons, auto body shops thrive in the area, but there are also lots of Irish bars, student nightspots, Vietnamese restaurants, Asian shops, and extraordinary Russian grocery stores where you can buy big glass bottles of sour cherries, whole dried fish in every size from minnow to the-one-that-got-away, and plastic containers of a sweet-cream version of sour cream so scrumptious that I wish I knew its name, but I don’t, because my Russian vocabulary consists of three words—sputnik, babushka, and borzoi—and the grocers don’t speak English.

    Bronwyn Andrews’s piano-moving business was located at the end of an alley off Brighton Avenue that must have been wide enough to allow the two big black moving vans parked outside to clear with maybe an inch to spare on each side. On the sides of the vans and on a black panel truck, gigantic old letters spelled out:

     
MUSIC HAUL
HARMONIOUS PIANO TRANSPORT
KEYED TO YOUR RANGE

     
When I’d phoned Claudia to ask whether someone else in the family might have a picture of Jack’s dog, Skip, Claudia hadn’t mentioned the son, Gareth (whose name had appeared in his father’s obituary), but had conceded that her daughter, Bronwyn, might have a photo. She’d given me Bronwyn’s phone number. When I called to explain my quest, Bronwyn sounded gruff—her voice was