In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) by Neil S. Plakcy Page A

resources about dogs, and goldens in particular. I passed several hours that way, and when Rochester got up and stretched, I was free to back away from the computer—but only to take him outside.
    I was getting more and more puppy-whipped.
    It was most evident when I was out walking him, and we came upon another neighborhood dog. With Caroline, he’d met and befriended almost every Shih-Tzu, every Newfoundland, and every dog of any size in between. I could barely walk him a few hundred feet without him spying another dog ahead and dragging me down the street behind him like the streamers on a just-married car.
    “Are you walking him, or is he walking you?” one of my neighbors asked that evening.
    “He’s the only one who knows the answer to that, and he’s not talking,” I said, as Rochester tugged me onward.
    At home, he was establishing that he was in charge as well. I learned to secure my small objects, and we had entered a period of truce when I was no longer losing anything valuable to Rochester’s ravenous jaws.
    Now that I was a dog owner, I saw dogs everywhere I looked. Despite the on-campus signs, Tasheba wasn’t the only student at Eastern with a puppy; I saw big black dogs running around the parking lot, a mutt rolling on his back in the grass while his owner read nearby, a girl parading two Dachshunds who were so tiny they looked more like rats than dogs.
    At the mall, I saw the head of a teacup Yorkshire Terrier sticking out of a woman’s pocketbook, and a pair of white dogs so low and fluffy they looked like walking floor mops.
    I was also much more aware of crime news on TV or in the paper. Every time I saw a woman stabbed by a jealous boyfriend, a man whose car had broken down run over on I-95, or a convenience store clerk stabbed in a botched robbery, I remembered Caroline. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be doing more to find out who killed her, but I didn’t know what I could do.  I was resisting the temptation to go back on line and try to hack into different databases.
    Late Saturday afternoon, Rick Stemper called me. “My date bailed on me tonight,” he said. “Like I believe she has contagious gingivitis. Want to meet me for dinner?  We were supposed to go to some Chez Shithole in New Hope, but I’d be just as happy with a burger at The Drunken Hessian.”
    He was at the bar when I arrived, chatting up a busty blonde in a low-cut top. As I was walking in the door, she said something to him, shrugged, and walked away.
    “Women,” Rick said. “Can’t live with them, and can’t kill them.”
    “At least not if you’re a police officer. What was up with the blonde?”
    “Had to get home and finish grouting her bathroom tiles,” he said.
    We sat down at a table in the back, and ordered beers and burgers.  “I did a little computer searching on Caroline,” I said, after the beers had arrived.  “Did you know that her boss was fired, and she replaced him?”
    “By ‘a little computer searching,’ what do you mean?” Rick asked.
    I shrugged. “You know, Google, search engines, that kind of thing.”
    Rick fiddled with the handle of his mug for a minute. It was cheap plastic, embossed with the logo of The Drunken Hessian, a redcoat unsteady on his feet. “I know about your trouble in California,” he said, after a while.
    I felt an immediate adrenaline surge. “Oh,” I said.
    “You even supposed to have a computer?”
    “I am. My parole officer has some tracking software installed so he can make sure I’m not getting into trouble.”
    I didn’t mention that I’d figured a way around it, using Caroline’s computer and a neighbor’s network. Professional secrets, you know.
    “That’s good. Because I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble because of Caroline. I’ll admit, I haven’t made the kind of progress I’d like, but I’ve still got some things to look into, some leads to follow.”
    The waitress brought our burgers over, and I spilled some