Read Online Dog Helps Those (Golden Retriever Mysteries) by Neil S. Plakcy - Free Book Online Page A

sniffed the fresh mulch laid around the newly trimmed boxwood hedges, I sat on a wrought iron bench.
    Despite the aggravation of working in a complex organization, I liked my job, and I thrived on the energy and enthusiasm of a college campus. Sure, I worked with some difficult people—like Verri Parshall; the idiot in the payroll department who screwed up the direct deposit of my paycheck; and a bunch of the faculty, who sometimes seemed to forget that the students were our whole reason for being at Eastern.
    Which reminded me of Rita Gaines, and made me wonder again what she was doing on the Board of Trustees. Why was she wasting her time with us, if she didn’t care about students or have fond memories of Eastern? Was there something good underneath the hard surface she showed to the world?
    Rochester circled back and hopped up on the bench. He rested his head in my lap. “What do you think, boy?” I asked. “Was Rita Gaines a good person because she liked dogs?”
    Suddenly he sat bolt upright, then lunged off the bench. I grabbed his extendable leash just in time to keep him from chasing a squirrel with a death wish all through the campus, though it felt like my arm had been jerked out of its socket in the process.
    Maybe he wasn’t so focused on crime-solving as I thought.

8 – Anatomy and Physiology
     
    I picked up a sandwich from one of the food trucks at the bottom of the hill, then spent my lunch hour at my desk transferring “To do” list items from my pad into my office computer and my iPhone. Sadly, the two can’t talk to each other because I’d have to get the Preventer of Information Technology to allow a tech to come to my office and install the relevant software. She told me she didn’t “see the necessity as reflected in the college’s priority statements for informational technology.” That’s bureaucrat speak for “leave me alone, jerkwad.”
    I know that language well, because I spent close to ten years, right up to my unfortunate incarceration, in the corporate world myself. If I wanted, I probably could have hacked into my desktop computer and installed the software myself—but I had promised Santiago Santos and Mike MacCormac that I’d keep my nose clean.
    Rochester was bored by my concentration on the computer, and he got up and nosed against my leg. I had gotten to know his moods, so I knew this was a “play with me” moment, rather than a “take me outside” one. What the hell, I couldn’t do anything on the computer until the sync process was finished.
    I grabbed a blue plastic ball from my top drawer and squeezed it. It let out a couple of little shrieks that drove Rochester wild, and I tossed it across the room. He scampered after it, his toenails clicking on the wood floor. He grabbed the ball in his mouth and made it squeak again. “Bring me the ball,” I said.
    He ignored me. Every couple of seconds the ball would slip out of his mouth, and he’d grab it again. “Fine, be that way,” I said. “I have work to do.”
    I looked at my to-do list. Next up was another graduating student profile, this one of Boris Oxhoff, a business major who had done an independent study project during his junior year on microfinance, the practice of loaning small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in the developing world and other economically deprived locations.
    During the summer break between his junior and senior year, Boris had run his own microfinance project in North Philadelphia. He began raising money with a series of yard sales, asking Eastern students for their castoffs. Then he caught the attention of a wealthy alumnus who staked him to ten grand.
    Boris loaned $250 to an immigrant from Senegal who wanted to start her own tailoring business. He advanced $500 to a guy who did yard maintenance in the Northeast and who needed a new lawn mower. Boris had his own website, with a whole list of those whom he had helped, accompanied by their testimonials. According to the