Emily’s mystery-in-progress was inspired by her years walking dogs in Brooklyn Heights. Professional dog walkers had keys to their clients’ tony apartments, and the novel opened up with the murder of an Irish setter’s elderly owner. Emily constructed a world within a world of Brooklyn yuppies, irregular dog chips that stored nefarious information, mysterious paintings, and what she loved most, dogs.

I’ll never know how she intended her story to end. But catching Covid in the hospital and dying from it wasn’t it.