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having to settle for a stud fee almost broke my heart.
    But I was rescued by sex and death, or at least by sex-gone-by and the death of... well, maybe I’d better explain. Early that past autumn, the man in my life and the vet in Rowdy’s and Kimi’s lives, Steve Delaney, had done the unthinkable by getting married. Not to me, I should add. Steve had asked me first. Second. Third.... I’d refused. Why? In retrospect, I think that the true answer is that it never occurred to me that he’d marry someone else. It certainly never occurred to me that Steve, the most honest, ethical person in the world, would marry a crook. Specifically, an embezzler. But that’s a whole other story. He was now getting divorced. And that’s yet another story. What’s relevant to this one, besides Steve’s upright character and touchiness about violations of the law, is that totally out of the blue—actually, totally out of the wolf gray and white—when he and I hadn’t spoken for months, he called to say that he was interested in a malamute puppy and had heard that Rowdy had been bred. Even if Steve had been a stranger, I’d have thought it was an excellent idea to replace his horrible about-to-be ex-wife with a wonderful dog. As it was, Steve was anything but a stranger, and he wasn’t proposing to replace the dreadful Anita with any old fantastic dog of any old splendid breed, either, but with a puppy of my breed sired by my dog. So, sex: Rowdy and Emma’s, death: the demise of Steve’s marriage.
    Careful breeder that she was, Cindy interviewed Steve at great length to make sure he was good enough to own one of Emma’s puppies, and let me just mention as a little aside that if Steve had been half as thorough about screening a wife as Cindy was about screening a puppy buyer... well, let me not add that after all, but jump to Logan Airport, where Steve and I arrived at eight o’clock in the evening on the day after Joey Cortiniglia’s murder. We were at Logan to meet the plane carrying Rowdy’s son, Emma’s son, Cindy’s puppy, Steve’s puppy, and therefore almost my puppy. The plane wasn’t due until 9:14. We were early because a certain impatient person was exuberantly excited at the prospect of getting her hands on Rowdy’s, Emma’s, Cindy’s, and Steve’s puppy. Since we were going to pick him up at the passenger baggage claim, we weren’t stuck waiting way out in the cargo area, which lacked the amenity of passionate interest to anyone genetically predisposed to develop malamute fever, namely, restaurants.
    After checking the arrivals monitor, Steve said, “On time. You hungry?”
    “I’m half malamute,” I said. Then I wondered whether it had somehow been the wrong thing to say. Maybe I should just have said yes. Or lied and said no.
    Steve didn’t seem to object. On the contrary, he said, “I’m joining the clan myself in an hour and fifteen minutes.” His voice was as deep and rumbly as ever, and in most ways, he looked the same as always, tall and sinewy, with incredible blue-green eyes. His hair was wavy and brown, and was looking like itself again now that he’d had it professionally clipped by one of his vet techs rather than by a Newbury Street stylist chosen by his almost ex-wife. I’d’ve bet that Anita had picked out the wool turtleneck he was wearing. Its sleeves had an odd shape that somehow looked expensively trendy, but I felt confident that he was wearing it now only because of its color, which was dark wolf gray.
    I pointed to a nearby cafeteria and said, “Is this okay?” The appealing alternative was the airport branch of a chain of seafood restaurants. A year ago, it would have gone without saying that we’d have a civilized meal instead of loading up two oily-feeling trays and then gobbling burgers and fries; in those days, we’d both have assumed that Steve would pay the bill. He had a successful veterinary practice in Cambridge, whereas my career in dog writing, otherwise known