Edward waved them away good-naturedly. “I gave them a great tip and what do they do?” he said. “They walk away.”
“Well, I’ve got to get back to work,” Eleanor said, speaking up for the first time. She looked at Kim. “Don’t forget, you promised to come back to the lab real soon.”
“I’ll be there,” Kim promised. She was amazed Eleanor cared, yet she seemed sincere.
Eleanor started off toward the lab.
Edward stood looking down at Buffer. Kim averted her eyes. The sight was grisly and made her stomach turn.
“I’m very sorry about Buffer,” Kim said, putting her hand on Edward’s shoulder.
“He had a good life,” Edward said cheerfully. “I think I’ll disarticulate the back legs and send them to one of the pathologists I know at the medical school. Maybe he could tell us what kind of animal we should be looking for.”
Kim swallowed hard hearing Edward’s suggestion. Further mutilating the poor dog was hardly what she’d expected from him.
“I’ve got an old rag in the back of my car,” Edward said. “I’ll get it to wrap the carcass in.”
Not sure what she should do, Kim stayed by Buffer’s remains while Edward went for the old towel. She was rattled by Buffer’s cruel fate even if Edward seemingly wasn’t. Once Buffer was wrapped in the towel, she accompanied Edward back to the lab.
As they neared the lab a disturbing possibility occurred to Kim. She stopped Edward. “I just thought of something,” she said. “What if Buffer’s death and mutilation had something to do with sorcery?”
Edward looked at her for a beat, then threw his head back with howls of laughter. It took him several minutes to get himself under control. Meanwhile Kim found herself laughing with him as well, embarrassed at having suggested such a thing. “Wait just one minute,” Kim protested. “I can remember reading someplace about black magic and animal sacrifice going hand in hand.”
“I find your melodramatic imagination wonderfully entertaining,” Edward managed amid renewed laughter. When he finally got himself under control, he apologized for laughing at her. At the same time he thanked her for a moment of comic relief.
“Tell me,” he said, “do you really think that after three hundred years the devil has decided to return to Salem and that witchcraft is being directed at me and Omni?”
“I just made the association between animal sacrifice and sorcery,” Kim said. “I really didn’t think too much about it. Nor did I mean to imply that I believed in it, just that somebody did.”
Edward put Buffer down and gave Kim a hug. “I think maybe you’ve been spending too much time hidden in the castle going through the old papers. Once things are really under control with Omni, we should go on a vacation. Someplace hot where we can lie in the sun. What do you say?”
“It sounds fun,” Kim said although she wondered what kind of time frame was in Edward’s mind.
Kim did not care to watch Edward dissect Buffer, so she stayed outside the lab when he went in to do it. He came back out in a few minutes, carrying a shovel, with the carcass still wrapped in the towel. He dug a shallow grave near the entrance of the lab. When he was finished burying Buffer, he told Kim to wait a moment since he had forgotten something. He disappeared back inside the lab.
Reemerging, Edward snowed Kim a chemical reagent bottle he had retrieved. With a flamboyant gesture he placed the bottle at the head of Buffer’s grave.
“What’s that?” Kim asked.
“It’s a chemical buffer called TRIS,” Edward said. “A buffer for Buffer.” Then he laughed almost as heartily as he had with Kim’s suggestion of sorcery.
“I’m impressed how you are handling this unfortunate incident,” Kim told him.
“I’m certain it has something to do with Ultra,” Edward said, still chuckling over the pun. “When I first heard what had happened I was crushed. Buffer was like family to me. But the awful sorrow I felt passed quickly. I mean, I’m still sorry he’s gone, but I don’t feel that awful emptiness that accompanies grief. I can rationally recognize that death is a natural complement of living. After all, Buffer did have a good life for a dog, and he didn’t have the world’s best disposition.”