Bride & Groom

“Conant’s readers—with ears up and alert eyes— eagerly await her next.” —
Kirkus Reviews

Praise for

The Dogfather

“A hilarious parody of
The Godfather...
extremely funny.” —
Midwest Book Review

The Wicked Flea

“Sheer bliss awaits the dedicated dog lover.” —
Kirkus Reviews

Fun, fast-paced... an independent, witty protagonist... faced with the most eccentric and quirky of characters.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Delightful and humorous.” 
—Midwest book Review

...
and for Susan Conant’s other mysteries featuring dog trainer Holly Winter

“Hilarious.” 
—Los Angeles Times

“A real tail-wagger.” 
—The Washington Post

“Amiability and wit enough to entertain even dog dilettantes. For canophiles, a must.” 
—Kirkus Reviews

“An absolutely first-rate mystery... and a fascinating look at the world of dogs... I loved it!” —Diane Mott Davidson

Don’t miss the first book in Susan Conant’s new Cat Lover’s Mystery Series:

Scratch the Surface

Dog Lover's Mysteries by Susan Conant

A NEW LEASH ON DEATH

DEAD AND DOGGONE

A BITE OF DEATH

PAWS BEFORE DYING

GONE TO THE DOGS

BLOODLINES

RUFFLY SPEAKING

BLACK RIBBON

STUD RITES

ANIMAL APPETITE

THE BARKER STREET REGULARS

EVIL BREEDING

CREATURE DISCOMFORTS

THE WICKED FLEA

THE DOGFATHER

BRIDE & GROOM

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

BRIDE & GROOM

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime hardcover edition / February 2004

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / January 2005

Copyright © 2004 by Susan Conant.

Cover design by Jill Boltin.

Cover illustration by Jeff Walker.

Text design by Kristin del Rosario.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 0-425-20074-4

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for the “stripped book.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the appearance of Alaskan malamute BISS American International Ch. Quinault’s Northern Exposure, CGC, WLDX, WTD, WPD, the amazing North, I am grateful to Twila Baker, who accompanies North herein. Bruce South-worth, B.S.I., responded with expertise and enthusiasm to my plea for help with a Sherlockian wedding ceremony. Thank you! I also owe profuse thanks to the American International Champion of editors, Natalee Rosenstein, to her assistant, Esther Strauss, and to Deborah Schneider, all of whom deserve special awards for patience and support. For generous help with the manuscript and proofs, many thanks to Jean Berman, Roo Grubis, Cindy Klettke, Roseann Man-dell, Dru Milligan, Phyllis Stein, Geoff Stern, Jolie Stratton, Anya Wittenborg, and Corrine Zipps.

My boundless gratitude goes also to my own Alaskan malamutes, Frostfield Perfect Crime, CD, CGC, ThD, WPD, my very own Rowdy, and her young companion, Django, formally, Jazzland’s Got That Swing. Like the malamute puppy in this book, Django is a son of Ch. Jazzland’s Embraceable You, the beautiful Emma, and was bred by Cindy Neely. Cindy, thank you for my new muse.

To my dear friend Meredith Kantor,

in loving memory of Abbey, the perfect mix.

To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

Solemnization of Matrimony,

THE BOOK OF COMMON PR A Y ER

CHAPTER 1

Between August 22 and September 2 7, as I was planning my wedding and promoting my new book, five women were bludgeoned to death in Greater Boston. The murders were premeditated. So, in a happy sense, was my forthcoming marriage to Steve Delaney, D.V.M. As for my book, its title invited the accusation of malevolent culinary premeditation. It was called
101 Ways to Cook Liver.
I am, however, entirely innocent of evil intent toward my fellow human beings. I’m a dog writer. Indeed, I may never recover from the fumes I breathed while testing what are, in fact, more than 101 recipes for dog treats.

My column runs in
Dog’s Life
magazine. Holly Winter? I do freelance articles as well, and I contributed the text for a book of photographs of the lavish Morris and Essex Kennel Club dogs shows of the 1930s.
Contributed:
gave in return for royalty payments insufficient to buy one of those coffee mugs you get for donating to public radio. Honest to doG Almighty, I’ve tried writing about people, but I lack the knack. Anyway, as dog books go,
101 Ways to Cook Liver
had gotten me a decent advance, and as Mac McCloud kept reminding me, my book would sell and keep selling if—and only if—I promoted it even half as energetically as I trained, exercised, groomed, and showed my dogs. Mac’s first book,
Dogs with Dr. Mac,
had been holding a solid sit-stay on the canine best-seller lists since its publication two years earlier. Bruce McCloud, D.V.M., who’d just published his second book,
Ask Dr. Mac,
did more for me than merely hand out advice: He suggested that we cooperate in making our work known to the dog-loving public and generously arranged to have me included at signings, readings, and interviews to which he alone had initially been invited. Readings. Well,
101 Ways to Cook Liver
didn’t exactly lend itself to public performance, but I was already getting pretty good at following a principle that Mac had drilled into me, which was always to refer to my book as
101 Ways to Cook Liver
and never as “my book.”

The first event that Mac and I did together was a launch party and signing on Saturday, August 17, at The Wordsmythe, a big, important bookstore in Brookline, Massachusetts, that probably wouldn’t even have stocked my book (pardon the lapse) without Mac’s influence. From an author’s viewpoint, August isn’t the ideal publication date, but then neither is any other month that falls outside the Christmas-shopping Advent, when even poverty-stricken or skinflint library addicts—me, for example—actually spend money on what they purport to love, thus enabling those of us who labor in the fields of canine literary endeavor to feed our dogs and, if the harvest is bounteous, ourselves. But, as Mac emphasized, August wasn’t outright bad. Our books would still be on the shelves when doting nieces and nephews browsed for the perfect holiday gift for Auntie So-and-So who was so-and-so crazy about dogs. On the other hand—paw?—my second-floor tenant and first-best friend, Rita, had to miss the launch party because she was away on vacation, as were millions of other potentially book-buying and indubitably fortunate residents of Greater Boston, where the temperature was now, at quarter of five in the afternoon of August 17, a stinking ninety-five degrees.