by Susan Conant
“Understandably. Two days’ notice? Why did the house sitter back out? Is there any chance that this woman somehow arranged—”
Our waiter appeared with Kevin’s burgers and soon reappeared with mine and with large platters of fries and onion rings that had to go directly between Kevin’s plate and mine because there was nowhere else for them on the little table. Kevin is good about sharing.
“The house sitter got offered a job in a chemistry lab at Harvard. We checked it out. This is a Harvard kid who got a better job and didn’t want to be bothered doing this one. No more to it. No connection with anyone else.”
“Well, if Dr. Ho had had any sense, he’d’ve hired a vet tech to feed the fish. Or a pet-sitting service.”
“His friends say he didn’t want the house empty. That was then. Yeah, he’d’ve been better off.”
“Any luck reaching him?”
“Not directly. Someone left a message at some place he’s supposed to get to on Wednesday or Thursday.”
“His friends. Did they know anything about the woman?”
Kevin was chewing on a mouthful of cheeseburger. Eventually, he said, “Barfly. Huh. Sushi barfly, like you heard. That’s what they say.”
“Loaves and Fishes,” I said.
“Help yourself to fries and onion rings.”
“Thank you. I have been.”
“No kidding?” Kevin grinned. “Not bad. Good.”
“Real food. Any possibility that Dr. Ho met her somewhere else? That he’d known her before?”
“Different types.”
I refrained from pointing out to Kevin that he and I were, too.
“She had some of these romance whatchamacallits, soft porn only not quite. Movie star magazines.”
“No one has suggested that he was seeking intellectual companionship. But I gather that he made a habit of it.”
“That’s what the neighbors say, but they hadn’t seen this one before.”
“I wonder what she was doing at Loaves and Fishes. Dr. Ho lives right near there, and lots of people shop there. I do. Your mother does. And so did Dr. Ho. And maybe this woman did, too. But another possibility is that…Look, if you’re driving to Cambridge or heading toward Boston on Route 2, the highway part of Route 2 ends, you pass the Alewife T station, and then you come to all those shops on both sides of the street. If you’ve been on highways, Route 95 or 495, and then Route 2, then those stores, including Loaves and Fishes, are an obvious place to stop. For food. Or a bathroom. And, of course, it’s a short walk from the Alewife T station, too. Anyway, just a thought. Kevin, when was she killed? Do you know?”
“Yeah. Not to the minute. But that Tuesday before you found her. September fifth. That evening. Night. That’s an estimate. These guys never want to sound sure of themselves in case it turns out they’re wrong.”
“No one heard a shot?”
“It’s not the quietest neighborhood.”
“People weren’t outside? It couldn’t have been raining. We had rain the day I found her, but all the plants were wilted. That was Thursday, so there couldn’t have been much rain on Tuesday. But if she was shot during the night…someone would’ve heard. Those houses are close together. Maybe when people were watching TV? She must’ve been killed where I found her, in the kitchen, and that’s at the back of the house. Most of those houses have living rooms at the front, near the street. If it was during prime time, the neighbors might’ve been in their living rooms.” Thinking of Francie’s mention of her media-free preschool, I added, “Except that some of them may not have been watching TV. But what do I know? The neighbors could have been anywhere. Out. Studying. Reading. Watching shoot-’em-up movies. Anything. What was the weapon?”
“Smith and Wesson .22/.32 Kit Gun. They’re pretty sure.”
That’s a revolver. “Huh. My father has one. So does practically everyone else in Maine. But Buck’s is a classic. It’s a Model 63. Stainless. They aren’t made anymore. The stainless was replaced by, uh, aluminum, I think. I used to use it for target practice.”
“Firing .22 short.”
“Are you asking me? Or telling me? Yes, because my mother hated the sound of gunshots, and compared with larger calibers…” I caught on. “And that’s one reason—”
“Plus contact shooting,” Kevin said. “Pressed the muzzle right up against her.”
“To muffle the sound. So the result would’ve been…well, far from silent. But easy enough to mistake for a car backfiring. Or some other city noise.”
On the subject of noise level, as I’ve mentioned, the tables at Bartley’s were close together, and by now every single seat was taken. The other customers were talking as well as eating, the waiters and cooks weren’t exactly keeping their voices down, and cooking sounds added to the din. Because the background noise was loud and because our table was in a corner, with Kevin against a wall, I hadn’t given a thought to being overheard by nearby customers, who were preoccupied with one another, but Kevin and I hadn’t been having the typical Harvard Square conversation about dissertations, classes, professors, books, papers, and films.
“Five bullets,” Kevin said. “Lodged in her. That’s a low-penetration bullet.”
At the table next to ours sat a young couple. At a guess, they were freshmen or sophomores, the woman tiny and pale, with light hair in a low ponytail, the man dark and serious, all in khaki. Woman. Man. The language of Cambridge! Truth: a girl and boy. Anyway, they kept darting glances at us, leaning their heads in over the platter of french fries that occupied the center of their table, whispering in each other’s ears, and sitting back with sour expressions on their faces. The cause of the pickle faces was not, I might mention, Bartley’s pickles, which are crisp, flavorful, and altogether outstanding.
“Kevin,” I said, “this conversation is a little graphic for our neighbors.”
Two seconds after I’d spoken, I realized that Kevin had already observed the couple and assessed their reaction. Practically before I’d finished speaking, he extended his gigantic right hand to the girl, shook it vigorously, and then repeated the act with the boy while saying, “Kevin Dennehy. Cambridge Police Department.” A big, terrifying grin appeared on his massive face.
“P-p-pleased to meet you,” said the girl. “We didn’t mean to—”
“Violence,” said Kevin. “Enough to rob you of your appetite.” This from someone who had just devoured two seven-ounce hamburgers topped with cheese and at least half of the fries and onion rings! “Line of duty,” he proclaimed solemnly. With that, he turned his attention back to the remaining food, thus leaving me the task of changing the subject.
“The dog,” I said. “Here’s what I can tell you about her.” I summarized my observations concerning the state of Miss Blue’s coat and nails, the choice of a rolled-leather collar, her readiness to enter a crate in the van, and so forth. “So,” I concluded, “none of these things alone means much, but the combination suggests a knowledgeable owner. I don’t think that Miss Blue has been spayed. Miss Blue. That’s what I’m calling her for the moment. Anyway, it’s remotely possible that we just can’t see a scar. One of the vets looked, and she couldn’t find one, but you can’t necessarily. For instance, if Miss Blue was spayed very early, say at six weeks, there might not be a visible scar. But it’s possible that someone wanted to leave open the option of showing her and maybe breeding her.”
“Rare blue malamutes,” Kevin said.
“I don’t think there’d be much market for them. Color doesn’t matter, really. It’s just a matter of personal preference. Someone out to make money might be able to create a market for all-white malamutes. But not blue. Most people don’t even know what it is when they see it. A naive puppy buyer who wants a supposedly rare malamute is going to want one that basically deviates a lot from the standard. A giant malamute. Or a long-haired malamute. A woolly, those are called. They crop up in careful breedings, but good breeders don’t deliberately breed them. Blue just isn’t different en
ough from gray to be a major selling point to the general public. No, her color wouldn’t be a reason to breed her. Her quality might. Her ears are a little big, but that’s trivial. Her lines, whatever they are. Someone might want to breed for that. If her hips are good. Her eyes. But I’m guessing. I still don’t know who she is.”
“Stolen?”
“Probably not. If she were stolen, I’d probably have heard by now. There’d probably have been something on one of the malamute lists. But I can’t rule that out. And I’m waiting to hear from a few people. Anyway, that’s all I know. Or all I can guess. Do you know any more about Adam? The Harley rider.”
“No, but I’ve been thinking about him. She was more his type than you are.”
“I’m flattered. Except that he wasn’t exactly…the stereotype of bikers? There are a lot of bikers who don’t fit it. And the Harley must’ve been far from cheap. Look, Kevin, just in Cambridge there are probably plenty of doctors and lawyers who’ve spent their lives doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do and who’ve made a lot of money and who decide that deep in their souls lurks James Dean or the young Marlon Brando. Che Guevara. So, they buy Harleys. Or classic Nortons. Triumphs. Not that Adam struck me as that type. But if what you’re thinking is some stereotype of motorcycle gangs, he didn’t fit that, either. No tattoos that I saw. No—” I broke off. Contemplating the remains of the fries and onion rings and savoring the miasma of Bartley’s, I reluctantly said, “No grease.”
“I got a job for you,” Kevin said. “Homework. Look on the Web and see if you can find a picture of the bike. If you do, print it out. Get me the model.”
“I’ll try. I think I’ll recognize it.” I paused. “Kevin, one other thing about the woman. And the dog. That ID tag? Kevin, she had that made, and she put it on the dog.”
“Someone did.”
“Okay, someone did. But the point is the same. Whoever put my name and my contact information on the tag wanted to make sure that if the dog got lost, as she did, or got in some kind of trouble, I’d be the person who was called about her. If you just wanted a tag, any old tag, you could invent a name and an address and a phone number. Or use your own, of course. Or pick a person at random. But when it comes to malamutes, I’m not just anyone. I’m active in malamute rescue, I belong to our national breed club, I’m on all the e-mail lists about malamutes, I show my dogs, and so on. In my column and in my articles, I write about malamutes all the time, my malamutes, other people’s malamutes, rescue malamutes, malamute history, malamute health, you name it. Do a Web search looking for me, and half of what you’ll find will be about malamutes. So, what I think is that whoever had that tag made and put it on the dog, on Miss Blue, was someone who knew about me and who cared about the dog. Yes, in a way, the tags were canine identity theft, but Kimi doesn’t have credit cards to steal or bank accounts to empty. She doesn’t have a Social Security number. The point wasn’t Kimi. The point was that I’m someone you could count on to do everything possible to help that dog. Why choose me? Because someone loved Miss Blue. And that’s the real point of the canine identity theft. Someone loved her. Someone loved her enough to pass her off, even briefly, as my dog.”
CHAPTER 21
Holly Winter and her mother make their way along Quincy Street, reach the intersection with Mass. Ave., pause to wait for a break in the traffic, and cross at the mother’s pace, which is slow. The mother, who is short and plump, is not, of course, my mother, Marissa, who was tallish, athletic, and notably swift of foot. The major difference between our mothers is, however, the difference between life and death: whereas the other Holly’s mother is alive, mine died a long time ago. If it had been my mother’s ghost and me who walked along Quincy Street and crossed Mass. Ave., it’s likely that we’d have been heading to Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage. I inherited my healthy appetite from both parents, but my metabolism is Marissa’s. When she used to take me to Harvard Square, we sometimes ate at Bartley’s, where she gave as little thought to calories as I do. In contrast to the other Holly Winter’s mother, mine was energetic. As she used to say, “You can’t work as hard as I do if you don’t eat.”
The other Holly Winter and her mother are walking, albeit slowly, toward a Thai restaurant that my mother would have hated. Steve loves the place, mainly because its menu items show little icons of peppers to indicate the spiciness or blandness of dishes. He is thus able to order and devour concoctions so blisteringly hot that they’d send me to the hospital. My mother hated hot peppers. In fact, Yankee that she was, she mistrusted even ordinary black pepper and used it sparingly, mainly as one of her rare concessions to the wants of other people. Or, I might add, the wants of dogs. Marissa met people’s needs, and she more than met the needs of our golden retrievers, but needs are not wants, are they? Well, maybe sometimes they are.
“I need you to take my arm,” says the mother. “It’s so confusing. I don’t know how you manage to find your way around.”
“It’s perfectly simple,” says Holly impatiently. “And we don’t have far to go.”
“This one must be good,” says the mother as Holly leads her around the line on the sidewalk in front of Bartley’s. “We could go here. What is it we’re having? Siamese food?”
“Thai.” She is about to say more when she catches sight of a couple emerging from the Harvard Square landmark that she wrongfully dismisses as a greasy spoon. As a statistician, she fully understands that statistical correlation does not imply causation. There is, however, nothing statistical about the association she is now observing. Rather, what she sees is a social association, the coming together of a Cambridge police lieutenant and a woman named Holly Winter, another Holly Winter, a Holly Winter who differs from herself in radical and suspect ways.
CHAPTER 22
As I maneuvered Steve’s van out of a Harvard Square parking garage built for compacts and as I drove home, I couldn’t help wondering what the other Holly Winter had made of seeing me with Kevin, or maybe what she had made of seeing Kevin with me. She knew who we were, at least in a superficial sense. Kevin had questioned her, and she’d paid a visit to my house. She’d obviously recognized us. No one ever misses Kevin. He’s a great big man with red hair, and although I don’t exactly believe in auras or energy fields, Kevin exudes such a strong sense of presence that it would be a gross understatement to say that he stands out in a crowd. The line outside Bartley’s had consisted mainly of late-adolescent students and of Harvardian adults with more brains than brawn. In that particular crowd, Kevin had looked like a woolly mammoth in a flock of sheep. I, perhaps, stood out as the sheepdog. In any case, there’d been no question about whether we were together. Kevin may be a mammoth, but he’s a gentlemanly one: he’d taken my arm as he’d made a path for us through the line. Catching sight of us, Holly Winter had visibly startled. In reality, Kevin and I were friends and next-door neighbors, but she must have seen only a Cambridge cop investigating the death of the woman who’d been stealing her identity and the woman who shared her name, the name that had been stolen, the same woman who had found the body of the would-be identity thief. It occurred to me that if the other Holly Winter searched the Web for information about Kevin and about me, she’d find nothing about our friendship. Furthermore, although Kevin lives next door to me, his mother is the one who owns the house, and the phone there is in her name; and whereas I’m listed as living on Concord Avenue, the Dennehys’ address is on Appleton Street. If the other Holly searched only for the Cambridge address of Kevin Dennehy, she might well fail to discover that we lived next door to each other. For all I knew, Cambridge had multiple Kevin Dennehys as well as multiple Holly Winters. When it comes to names, Greater Boston is as Irish as Dublin. Consequently, she might decide that my Kevin was some other Kevin Dennehy who lived nowhere near me.
When I arrived home, it was only seven thirty. Kevin eats early, and I eat anytime, as is indicative of our positions on the town-gown continuum: town has supper at five or five thirty, g
own has dinner at seven thirty or eight, and I eat when the people I’m with want to eat or, if I’m alone, whenever it suits me. The dogs are evidently town rather than gown. To maintain flexibility in my own schedule, I avoid feeding them at exactly the same time every day, but they nonetheless remain convinced that five o’clock means food. Consequently, I’d fed them before leaving for the Square.
When I returned, I put Rowdy and Kimi outside in the yard and gave Sammy and Tracker, my cat, some house time. Neither Rowdy nor Kimi had been raised with cats, and although I’d made some slight progress in teaching them to remain calm in Tracker’s presence, I’d had to accept my limits as a trainer. Rightly is it said that dogs build character! Malamutes specialize in instilling in their owners a deep sense of humility. Rowdy and Kimi had learned to exhibit calm behavior when Tracker was on top of the refrigerator or otherwise out of their reach, but it would never be safe to have her loose with either one alone, never mind both. Sammy, however, had known Tracker since he was a little puppy. I wouldn’t have trusted him with her outdoors, but when the two had the run of the house, he largely ignored her. Because of the dogs, Tracker spent most of her life in my study, which had a carpeted cat tree, a window perch, and a variety of cat toys as well as her food and water bowls and her litter box, not to mention my computer, filing cabinet, books, and so forth. When Steve was home, we sometimes banished the dogs from our bedroom and let her sleep with us there. Steve was the only person she trusted. One of her few obvious pleasures was curling up next to him on his pillow. It was never clear to me if she actually enjoyed the freedom to explore the house that I sometimes provided when Rowdy and Kimi were outdoors or in their crates. In fact, she did little actual exploration and sometimes returned to my study on her own. Even so, I felt guilty about sentencing her to solitary confinement in my office and insisted on letting her out now and then, perhaps more for my sake than for hers.
