Bride & Groom

by Conant, Susan

  Next came detailed material about exactly where in Brookline, Massachusetts, Bonny Carr lived. The Brookline Assessors Property Database had supplied four pages of facts about a condominium on Kent Street. -Owner: Carr, Bonny G. Residential Exemption: Y. Usage: 102-RESDNL CONDOMINIUM. Land Area: 0. Unit Number: 4. Building Style: LOW-RISE. The facts went on and on. Bonny Carr had bought her condo two years earlier. The building was three stories high and had been built in 1930. Her unit had a living area of 625 square feet. Its four rooms included two bedrooms. There was one full bath. Bath Quality was TYPICAL. So was Kitchen Quality. The building had hot-water heating, no elevator, no central air conditioning, and no fireplaces. The basement was unfinished. The parking was “open” rather than “covered.” Just in case all the numbers about Parcel-ID, Deed Book, sale price, residential values, beneficial interest, and so on failed to give a complete picture, the database had also provided a photograph of an unprepossessing three-story brick apartment building. One of these years, I suppose, web surfers will easily find interior photographs of every room in everyone’s house. For all I know, some databases already offer shots of people’s “typical”-quality kitchens, their living rooms with or without fireplaces, and their bedrooms, presumably with beds rated “made” or “unmade.”

  Next were pages from the database of Massachusetts corporations maintained by the Secretary of the Commonwealth. Bonny Carr was president, treasurer, and everything else of a domestic profit corporation with the “exact name” of HealADog; if she’d incorporated using an inexact, vague, or perhaps even fishy name, it wasn’t listed. In any case, although I’d never before heard or seen the name HealADog, Bonny Carr’s career as a practitioner of healing touch was how I’d known her. She’d published a book about using touch to relieve anxiety and pain in physically and emotionally traumatized animals, especially dogs. The web sites of the United States Copyright Office, the Library of Congress, and two major online booksellers agreed that the book had been published the previous year and that its title was Magical Fingers: Ideas Immediately Applicable to Using Human Touch to Treat Traumatized Animals.

  Bonny Carr also gave seminars, workshops, and lectures on the topic. Rowdy and I had attended one of her workshops about two years earlier. You won’t find my opinion of the workshop anywhere on the web. I’d intended to write about it in my Dog’s Life column, but I prefer to keep my column positive, and I always keep it truthful. In truth, Bonny Carr’s “healing touch” seemed to me identical to everything I already did in hugging, grooming, stroking, and otherwise making physical contact with my dogs. Furthermore, her supposed system was far less systematic than the well-known TTouch approach of Linda Tellington-Jones. But the real reason I couldn’t write about the workshop was Rowdy, who had always been a total hedonist about being held, brushed, massaged, or just plain patted. Here was a dog who adored everything from gentle little finger circles on his ears to vigorous thumps on the rib cage. And exactly what did the big boy do in public at Bonny Carr’s workshop on healing touch? Refused to rest on the floor. Sprang to his feet. Woo-wooed in an apparent effort to drown her out. Embarrassed the daylights out of me. Oh, and while he was at it? Wordlessly informed me that he’d spotted Bonny Carr for the phony that I, too, thought she was. My experience with her at the workshop was quite unpleasant. Instead of sensibly saying that my untraumatized Rowdy was an unsuitable test case for her “healing touch,” she announced that the method required time and patience with severely abused animals. Her implication, as was clear to everyone in the workshop, was that I, Holly Winter, was the perpetrator of the abuse. So, I wrote nothing about Bonny Carr. But I was tempted. Severely so.

  Next in the dossier came twenty or thirty web pages that documented, with tedious repetition, the seminars, workshops, and lectures Bonny Carr had given and was scheduled to give. Her older presentations had been like the one I’d attended; she’d focused on teaching pet owners, shelter workers, and veterinary professionals to use touch on dogs and cats in their care. In the recent past, she’d shifted to teaching people to teach her methods, what she called “training trainers.” It’s worth noting that this section of the dossier presented many pages that listed events of interest to veterinary professionals. On those pages, only a few lines were about a workshop, seminar, or lecture given by Bonny Carr. For example, on a web site about a veterinary conference held the previous winter in New Orleans, she’d been one of forty or fifty presenters; it was difficult for me even to find her name. It seemed to me that this portion of the dossier must represent an obsessive determination to record every reference to Bonny Carr on the entire World Wide Web.

  The final pages showed different versions of the same photograph of Bonny Carr. The first of those pages showed a small black-and-white photo next to a paragraph about a seminar she’d done on training trainers in treating animal trauma. On the following page, the same picture appeared alone. It could have been, and maybe was, a passport picture: accurate and unflattering. In it, Bonny Carr looked as I remembered her. She was coarse and exotic, with masses of dark Medusa curls. Her face was strikingly asymmetric, her eyebrows so thoroughly plucked that they almost looked as if they’d been burned off. She had full lips and a long neck with a peculiarly ribbed appearance, as if the skin were stretched over the bones of her throat with no tissue in between. Neither smiling nor frowning, she stared boldly at the camera, squarely meeting its eye. Next was an enlargement of the same picture that took up perhaps half the page. The photo was now blurred and grainy. Finally, there was a full-page blowup that broke Bonny Carr’s face, neck, and hair into tiny squares. Although Bonny Carr retained her brazen expression, the result was fractured and grotesque. She looked like a fiend. It was impossible to see the effect as anything but deliberate.

  CHAPTER 17

  On Thursday evening, while Steve and I, together with the other members of the Cambridge Dog Training Club, peacefully worked with our dogs in the brightness and safety of the armory near the Fresh Pond rotary, Bonny Carr was bludgeoned to death in the parking lot behind her condo building in Brookline. She must have died shortly before Steve and I returned home with Sammy and Rowdy. The evening was mild, and we’d gone to dog training on foot and paw. We finished at about nine, helped to put away the equipment, spent a few minutes talking with friends, escorted two women with small dogs to their cars, and walked back up Concord Avenue. On the way home, neither of us mentioned the murders of Laura Skipcliff and Victoria Trotter. It never occurred to me to feel afraid; I took security for granted.

  As we were about to turn the corner from Concord Avenue to Appleton Street, a car pulled to the curb in front of my house. The driver emerged and called out, “Holly? Steve? Olivia Berkowitz. I’m glad I caught you. I was going to drop off these CDs of Ian’s so you’d have a chance to listen to them.”

  “Mac and Judith’s daughter,” I whispered to Steve, who’d met Olivia at the launch party at The Wordsmythe, where he’d also met dozens of other new people. At normal volume, I greeted Olivia, and then Steve did, too. On our own, neither Steve nor I would’ve invited Olivia in, but Rowdy and Sammy teamed up to stage a performance of effusive malamute hospitality, and because of the newly installed lights on the outside of the house, Olivia got a fine look at the father-and-son big-brown-eyes routine and ended up exclaiming about how beautiful the dogs were and how much they looked alike. Since she was awkwardly clutching the CDs in one hand, patting the dogs with other, trying to keep her shoulder bag from tumbling down her arm, and asking questions about Rowdy and Sammy, it seemed discourteous just to grab the music and vanish indoors. Consequently, we ended up in the kitchen, where Olivia accepted my offer of a drink by requesting decaf coffee.

  As I was putting on the kettle, getting out a filter, and so on, Olivia talked nonstop about Ian, who, according to his sister, underrated himself. “Daddy belittles Ian’s accomplishments,” Olivia said. “Mommy and I try to compensate.” The childish terms for her parents suited her appearance. Her l
ight brown hair was in pigtails, and her loose blue-checked dress could’ve been a giant version of a baby outfit. I had to remind myself that Olivia was a married woman in her late twenties, old enough to drink the coffee I was making. It would’ve felt natural to prepare a children’s drink for her— say, hot cocoa with miniature marshmallows.

  “Mommy was happy that Ian showed up the other night,” Olivia said. “He and Daddy are both making an effort these days, and it’s good that Ian’s doing his part. Mostly, Ian just has the great original thing about his mother. Daddy just doesn’t appreciate... well, you’ll hear.” She patted the CDs. “There isn’t a stringed instrument that Ian can’t play better than everyone else who was ever born, and he has a pretty good voice, too, and he doesn’t even work at that.”

  “Your mother said he was real versatile,” Steve said. “Does he actually do weddings?” I asked.

  “Musicians have to take what they can get,” Olivia said. “Not that your wedding... really, he’d love to do it. He’s a gentle soul, and he could do anything you wanted if you just gave him a general idea, maybe early music before and during the service, and then bluegrass or Motown for the reception, if you want dancing. Or jazz?”

  “All this by himself?” I poured coffee. In my eagerness to hasten Olivia’s visit, I’d filled the kettle with hot tap water.

  “No, of course not, and his groups are almost as good as he is.” She tapped the CDs and sipped her coffee. I wished that she’d gulp it down and flee. Steve and I had dogs to take care of, and we wanted some time together. Alone! Olivia said again, “You’ll hear.” She took another sip of coffee and said, “So, Mommy says you’re making progress with your wedding.”

  “Excellent progress.” I tried to make the statement definitive, as if the matter required no discussion.

  “Mommy says you’re having it at someone’s house.”

  Steve laughed.

  I felt defensive. “It’s not just any old house. It’s on Norwood Hill in Newton. It belongs to two elderly sisters who are friends of ours. You must’ve met one of them, Ceci, at The Wordsmythe. Their house is beautiful, and it’s generous of them to open it to us. The caterer we want to use is a client of Steve’s, and some of the historic houses and so forth make you pick from a short list of approved caterers. And a lot of places don’t allow dogs. The Wayside Wildlife Refuge didn’t work out. Ceci’s house is big, and so is her yard, and we can use our caterer, and Ceci is crazy about dogs. It’s perfect.”

  You’d have to have known Steve to spot the subtle signs of restlessness. His eyes were only slightly glazed. He swallowed a yawn.

  “Thank you for the CDs,” I said. "We enjoyed meeting Ian.”

  “He’s so modest,” Olivia said. “He doesn’t promote himself. Obviously, Daddy’s gene didn’t triumph there. Ian is so much like Mommy. He practically models himself on her, including her dog thing. Uli just worships Ian. Dogs do. But when it comes to people... But his music is incredible. You’ll love it.”

  Having outstayed her welcome, Olivia finally left—and left us convinced that far from loving Ian McCloud’s music, we’d detest it. The main reason we decided to put on one of his homemade CDs right away was, as Steve remarked, “to get this over with.”

  As Steve loaded the coffee mugs into the dishwasher, I shuffled through the discs. “Country and bluegrass? Or jazz? Or early music.”

  “Country,” Steve said.

  We shared the unspoken assumption that Ian’s music would serve as the background for the nightly routine of letting the dogs into the yard to relieve themselves. We also shared, I confess, the expectation that the music would be all too appropriate to the activity. I popped a CD into the boom box, and within seconds, Steve and I were wide-eyed. The tune was "Wabash Cannonball,” a standard I’d heard thousands of times in hundreds of versions, none of which, including Doc Watson’s, was better than this instrumental on guitar, banjo, mandolin, and bass. For the duration of the song, we stood there grinning and tapping our feet and feeling like fools to have judged Ian’s music by his faded appearance and his sister’s oversell. Poring over the CD cases, Steve said, “That’s Ian on guitar. He’s another Doc Watson. He’s another Norman Blake.”

  And Ian could sing. He sang one of the best versions of “You Win Again” that I’d ever heard, different from the Ray Charles classic, but extraordinary and heartbreaking. Steve made a quick phone call to Ian, who was free on the twenty-ninth and agreed to play. We were so elated that we took the boom box and all five dogs out to the yard, where we just about couldn’t stop listening and exclaiming about what a genius Ian was and how incredible his groups were and how lucky we were that he’d do the music for our wedding. Rowdy, the most melodious of our five dogs, contributed accompaniments, and Kimi danced around with Sammy, whom she liked, instead of provoking India or bullying poor Lady.

  Except for the mild tediousness of Olivia’s visit—I’d now forgiven her—the evening was perfect: harmony in our pack and music that somehow made the wedding real for us as nothing else had done. With Steve’s dogs in the third-floor apartment and my two crated in my guest room, Steve and I had the bedroom to ourselves and took long, satisfying advantage of our privacy.

  As I often do as I fall asleep, I silently counted my blessings. I took nothing for granted, or so I imagined. I was grateful to be well fed and healthy. Nearby, in and around Harvard Square, homeless people slept in doorways and parks; I was in my own house. Millions of daughters were cursed with hostile, unloving, or boring stepmothers; in marrying Gabrielle, my father had blessed me. Judith Esterhazys literary fiction sold poorly, and Ian’s talent hadn’t yet brought him the success he deserved; by comparison, my career was thriving. Judith had only one dog, Uli, a wonderful old dog, but a dog horribly close to the end of his life; I had Rowdy and Kimi as well as Steve’s Lady, India, and Sammy. Sammy! Rowdy’s son! God receives odd thanks from fonciers of purebred dogs: All three malamutes had dark brown, almond-shaped eyes, warm expressions, blocky muzzles, heavy bone, and correct coats. As to my cat, Tracker, I was fortunate to have the resources and, yes, damn it, the moral fiber to give a good home to an animal no one else would want. I had dozens of friends. My cousin Leah went to college right down the street. Upstairs slept Rita, the best of friends, who was almost certainly being deceived and betrayed; next to me slept Steve, my love, my husband-to-be.

  Oh, yes, I was alive. It was a blessing I neglected to count.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Amitriptyline,” Steve informed Ceci. “Elavil. It’s a tricyclic antidepressant.”

  "That," Ceci said, “explains everything!”

  Althea said, “My sister is flirtatiously requesting explication.”

  It was Friday evening. Ceci and Althea had invited us to dinner to plan the wedding. Amitriptyline was not scheduled to play a role in the festivities, nor did it appear on the table around which we now sat. The food prepared and served by Ceci’s new maid, Ellen, was conventional: green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, Yorkshire pudding, and prime rib, which Steve was carving with surgical care. So far, Ceci had allowed little opportunity to discuss the wedding at all. Rather, like many other people in Greater Boston, she was obsessed with the murder of Bonny Carr, who, I should explain, had been bludgeoned to death and then injected with amitriptyline, hence Ceci’s interest in the drug and her interrogation of Steve, which began over drinks in the living room and now continued over dinner. In general, Ceci suffered from a tendency to latch onto topics that she blathered on about at great length; or maybe it’s more accurate to say that she herself enjoyed the tendency, thereby inflicting conversational suffering on others, especially Althea. By the way, when I refer to the big gabled white house on Norwood Hill as Ceci and Althea’s, I do so out of deference to Althea, who was, in reality, a permanent guest. Although I never knew Ceci’s late husband, Ellis Love, I always regarded him with tenderness, mainly because the principal feature of Ceci’s spacious living room was a monumental oil painting of
a Newfoundland dog of hers that hung over the fireplace, whereas the only visible tribute to Love was a small framed photograph that sat on a side table among six or eight crystal and china knickknacks. For all I knew, Ceci hadn’t even displayed the little photo until after the tolerant Mr. Love’s death. Like Althea, he had been a Sherlock Holmes fanatic rather than a dog zealot. Of course, for all I knew, when he’d been alive, the place of honor had been occupied by a monumental oil painting of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  Anyway, Althea was right about Ceci’s flirtatiousness. In contrast to her petite sister, Althea was immensely tall, with large hands and feet, and she made no effort to disguise her keen intellect. Ceci was, as Althea said, “the pretty one,” but by modern standards, Althea had a peculiar beauty. Age had given her skin and her blue eyes an otherworldly translu-cence, and her short, thin, curly hair hovered over her scalp like a white halo.

  “Holly is not offended,” Ceci said. “Are you? She knows I’m only joking, except that I have no idea what this amitriptyline is beyond being an antidepressant, but as a matter of feet, I have heard of Elavil because I knew someone whose dog was supposed to be taking Prozac because it shook all the time and hid under the bed, and Prozac was terribly expensive, so she tried Elavil instead, and it worked just fine, but now Prozac is generic, so why would someone take whatever it is instead?”

  Inadvertently echoing Ceci, Steve said, "As a matter of fact, I wondered about amitriptyline, too.” With his usual deliberation, he paused to serve the beef he’d been carving. Then he resumed. “I was curious. I looked it up. It turns out that there’s an injectable version of amitriptyline available for veterinary use. Not widely used, as far as I know. So, it was an odd choice. Th^ injection itself was odd, too, of course.”

  “Singular,” said Althea. “ ‘The most distinctive and suggestive point in the case.’ ” In quoting the Canon, she was quizzing me.