Read Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog for Free Online

dark eyes scanning the room, looking for the most likely canine candidate to get into trouble.
    Sam gestured around the table with a graceful red-tipped hand. “Rick Shelbert, Audrey Little Feather, Martyn Eliot, Tracy Nevins, Woody Wright, Rachel Kaminsky Alexander”—she stopped and grinned at me, proud of her own detective work—“Chip Pressman, Boris Dashevski, Alan Cooper, Cathy Powers”—then she turned and beamed at her surprise—“Beryl Potter.”
    There was a round of applause, and one at a time, everyone stood.
    “Please, dear people,” Beryl said without smiling. “Let’s none of us make any sort of fuss now. ” With that, she took a chair at the near end of the oval table, then looked around for Cecilia, who was behind me, tugging on Dashiell’s tail.
    Sam walked to the far end of the table and pulled out her chair but remained standing. “Perhaps Audrey can address this issue when she delivers her talk on psychic communication,” she said. “We seem to have lost one of our participants—two if Bucky doesn’t show, but I’ve never known Bucky to be on time for anything. I believe that’s why his mother named him Baron, to get even with him for refusing to be born until she was two weeks past the due date.”
    She stood there doing a Jack Benny face, eyes big and innocent, one hand on her cheek.
    “You didn’t know his legal name was Baron? Well, now you do. That’s what happens when you’re late, people, you get talked about. But we won’t discuss his last name if he gets here before dessert I think that’s more than fair, don’t you?”
    There was nervous laughter, and one of the dogs on the other side of the table began to bark. I saw Tracy take some dried liver out of her fanny pouch and lean down to give it to her Golden.
    “Well, more to the point, I’ve been after Beryl to come and teach here, for how long?”
    “How old are you, Sam dear?”
    Laughter.
    ‘Well, nearly that long,” Sam said, leaning forward and lifting her wineglass from the table. “To Beryl,” she said, and once again we all stood, toasting Beryl.
    ‘Well, as luck would have it, just when I needed her most, to discuss breed character, which she does so brilliantly, she called me to say she’d heard of our symposium, I think we were written up in the Kmnel Gazette , among other places, and she chewed me out for not including her. Can you imagine!”
    Sam bent to pick up her briefcase and pulled out the symposium programs, handing them to Woody Wright, who took one and began to pass the others around. “You’ll see that Beryl is opening for the students tomorrow at ten sharp, in the Lincoln auditorium. And, as you all requested, don’t blame me when coffee arrives at five-fifteen; you are meeting at six, not six-oh-one, directly across the street for tracking. Alan is laying the track tonight after dinner. Well, not immediately after dinner. At four-thirty in the morning. So when he falls asleep in his soup at lunch, folks, you’ll know why.”
    “I can suggest something guaranteed to keep him awake,” Chip said, leaning close so that no one else would hear him. I didn’t respond. Everyone had started to applaud Alan for his willingness to be in Central Park in the middle of the night. Everyone, that is, except Boris.
    “As for the rest of you, listen up, folks, stay out of the park after dark unless you have the National Guard along to protect you. Of course, when we go as a group—”
    “Waiting a minute,” Boris said.
    “I know the shpeel, Boris. And I know Igor.”
    “Igor gone.Sasha now.”
    “Whatever. The point I am trying to make is that since you and Sasha are invulnerable, I was counting on you to go along with Alan tonight, staying off the track, of course, but making sure he’s safe.”
    “He’ll be as safe what he’s ever been,” Boris said proudly. “You not to worry.”
    “Good,” she said, taking her seat. “I’m glad that’s settled.” She nodded to the waiter to