The Barker Street Regulars Page 12

  I poured an Absolut for Rita and a Bud for myself. There you have us: her silk blouse, good wool suit, stockings, pumps, rings, earrings; my jeans, running shoes, and a faded blue sweatshirt and new white socks decorated with black paw prints, deliberately, that is, bought that way, not, for once, embellished by Rowdy and Kimi.

  Settling myself at the table, I apologized to Rita for having been so unresponsive to the problem of her client’s lost dog.

  “You weren’t unresponsive,” Rita said generously. “She found the material you gave me very supportive. She’d already called a lot of shelters and dog officers and vets’ offices, and she’d put up posters, but she’s got an ad in the paper now, and she hadn’t thought of asking children.” Yes, she, she, she. Rita avoids revealing the names of her patients.

  “Children really are worth enlisting,” I said. “They notice dogs. They notice a lot. Sherlock Holmes had the right idea. The Baker Street Irregulars. Neighborhood urchins. Street Arabs.”

  “Child labor,” Rita decreed. “Unfortunately, she still hasn’t found her dog, and the problem is compounded by her irrational conviction that the whole episode was her own fault.”

  “Was it?”

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t try to become a therapist,” Rita said. “She took the dog running with her, and when she got back to her car, she noticed she’d dropped one of her gloves. She’d taken them off only a minute or two before, so the glove had to be somewhere nearby. And then she did something that was nothing worse than a little careless. She’d hitched the dog to a park bench so she could do her stretching exercises without having the dog run off. When she went back to look for her glove, instead of taking the dog with her or putting him in the car, she left him tied there. Then she retraced her steps and found the glove. When she got back, the dog was gone.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s been more than a week, and she hasn’t seen him since.”

  “I meant, had he slipped his collar? Was his leash still there? Does she have any idea what happened?”

  “His leash was gone. It was an expensive new leash, and she’d looped it around the bench. She doesn’t think it could’ve broken, he wouldn’t have chewed on it, she’s ninety-nine percent sure it was really fastened to the bench, and so on, all of which leads her to the conclusion that it was her fault. And in desperation, she’s gone and consulted some pet psychic, who’s at least kept her hopes up, which is as therapeutic as anything I’m doing.”

  “Irene Wheeler,” I said coldly.

  Rita nodded.

  “Irene Wheeler is a crook.”

  “What harm can it do? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ Holly, ‘than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’” Rita sipped her vodka. “Besides, my client is taking action instead of passively accepting misery as her due, which is a definite advance. And the psychic assures her that the dog is safe, well, and nearby. Without that assurance, my client would probably feel too crushed to pursue the practical steps of actually looking for the dog.”

  “If you go out and look for the dog, and then you find it, it’s because you looked. It isn’t because you swallowed some psychic’s sugar pill. Rita, you know those people, Scott and Gloria, who are harassing Steve? This Irene Wheeler is the same person who told those people that Steve shouldn’t have spayed their bitch. She conned these people into believing that she could’ve cured their bitch, and she simultaneously conned them into acting as her unpaid publicists. You go to a show, and there’s Gloria handing out Irene Wheeler’s business cards and talking her up at Steve’s expense. Gloria is, admittedly, malicious, but she’s none too bright. On her own it would never occur to her to carry out this kind of organized scheme. It would never occur to Scott, either. Mostly he does what Gloria wants. The driving force there has to be Irene Wheeler. But the real con job she has going is worse than that.”

  I filled Rita in on everything I knew about Ceci’s involvement with Irene. “Rita, this Irene Wheeler is not harmless,” I concluded. “She saw Ceci’s loneliness and vulnerability and gullibility. Most of all, she saw Ceci’s money. And she stalked, and she pounced, just like a cat after a bird. To take advantage of Ceci like that is evil in itself. But there’s also Jonathan’s murder. From what I can piece together, Ceci blabbed to Jonathan about Simon’s return, and he immediately caught on that she was being conned, and he came here to put a stop to it. Jonathan met Irene. Irene went to Ceci’s house. And according to Ceci, Jonathan was very rude to her, meaning, I assume, that he told Irene to leave Ceci the hell alone. That same night, Jonathan was murdered. One and one?”

  Rita was stern. “Holly, you need to talk to Kevin.” “I will. I’m not keeping it a secret. But when I got home last night, all the lights in the Dennehys’ house were dark. I didn’t want to wake anyone up. And I haven’t been able to reach Kevin today. But I have left messages.”

  “Now,” Rita said with annoyance, “I don’t know what to do about my client. She—”

  The pronoun was starting to get on my nerves. I wished that Rita would relax her professional ethics and spit out the name of her client. I interrupted Rita to say so.

  Rita glared at me before continuing. “She, I repeat, she is really in agony, and I’ve been trying to support the reality part of this, taking steps, and so forth, and also working on her terrible sense of blame, which has to do with other issues in her life. And I saw the psychic, really, as a therapeutic ally. Although, I must say, so far, she’s done my client nothing but good.”

  “She’s slick,” I said. “I consulted her myself.”

  “You?”

  “I wanted to get a firsthand impression, which was—and is—that she is smooth. That’s the hitch about the murder. This murder doesn’t gibe with my take on Irene Wheeler. I can easily see her as a con artist. In fact, that’s how I do see her. But I can’t see her bashing someone over the head with a shovel. That’s apparently what the murder weapon was. Ceci left a shovel in the yard. It disappeared. Anyway, the murder weapon was a blunt instrument, and blunt is not Irene Wheeler’s style. Sharp, subtle, something that could go undetected—that’s her style. Gloria is the blunt instrument type. She’s coarse. She’s blatant. You practically get a concussion just from listening to her.”

  “Maybe her involvement with this psychic goes deeper than you realize.”

  “Maybe it does,” I said.

  But Rita, of course, always thinks that everything goes deeper than I realize.

  Chapter Sixteen

  HEY,” SAID KEVIN DENNEHY, “I’m not asking how much they took you for on that vacuum cleaner for dogs.” His gaze rose innocently and sanctimoniously to the overhead light fixture in my kitchen. Now and then, ex-acolyte Kevin Dennehy still locks baby blues with heaven.

  “Miss Manners would be proud of you,” I said. “But it isn’t a vacuum cleaner. It’s a blower. My old one quit, and I had to replace it. You can’t show-groom a malamute without one. It is an absolute necessity.”

  I might as well not have spoken.

  “And why is it,” Kevin continued rhetorically, “that a representative of the law stands idly by and keeps his mouth shut when a poor helpless citizen is being victimized by some door-to-door salesman out peddling vacuum cleaners for dogs?”

  “Kevin, really! I did not buy it from a—”

  “Because,” Kevin barreled on, “it’s your money, and you’ve got the right to throw it away on any crazy thing you want, that’s why. Take my mother.”

  The offer sounded genuine. “Are you planning a yard sale?” I asked.

  Kevin cracked a smile. “Trying to slip in ahead of the dealers?”

  “My own mother was enough for one lifetime. I’m not bidding on yours.”

  “A lot of people might consider my mother a crackpot,” Kevin said, eyeing me. “Good Catholic lady, raises her kids to be good Catholics, goes to Mass every day of her life, and boom! Out of nowhere, she’s a Seventh-Day Adventist.”

  “Your mothe
r had a conversion experience. She wasn’t duped. There was no coercion. And when I spend money on my dogs, it’s my choice. No one is taking advantage of your mother or me. The situation with Ceci is totally different. Ceci is being had.”

  As we talked, Kimi had been peacefully dozing on the new tile floor at Kevin’s feet. A few minutes earlier, Rowdy had vanished to my bedroom to engage in one of his favorite pastimes: sorting through the big basket of highly assorted dog toys to pick the exact one that suited his fancy. Now, with an air of calm satisfaction, he wandered back into the kitchen bearing a fuzzy stuffed dinosaur and happily settled himself about a yard from Kimi. Because these polyester fleece creatures were billed as chew toys, I’d special-ordered squeakerless versions that would be safe in malamute jaws. Neither dog, however, had tried to rip open the dinosaur or its kin, which included a duck, a featureless man, a teddy, and a lion. Kimi, in fact, was relatively uninterested in the fleece toys. Rowdy, however, took immense pleasure in the little stuffed menagerie, pleasure that seemed to consist mainly of simple possession. After carefully selecting just the right toy, he’d stretch out with his treasure between his forelegs and close to his chest, where he’d rest his chin on it, savor its scent, and nibble now and then like a puppy with a full stomach who still enjoys being close to Mama. And that’s how he settled himself now with the dinosaur until Kimi opened her eyes, rose, stretched, strolled over to him, snatched his toy, and casually returned with it to her original spot.

  “Why does he let her get away with that?” Kevin demanded.

  “She’s no threat to him. It’s a game she plays. He indulges her. I assume that in some way, he thinks that this is the price he pays for having her around.” I paused. “In other words, they both know what’s going on, everything is voluntary, and no one is being taken advantage of.”

  Wearing what I’ll admit was a hangdog expression, Rowdy patiently eyed Kimi, who clasped the dinosaur between her forepaws and eyed him back. “You are a good boy,” I told Rowdy. “You want another toy? I’ll get you one.”

  When I returned a few seconds later with a second toy dinosaur identical to the first, Kevin asked, “This old lady, she mentally competent?”

  “Ceci? Here, Rowdy, here’s your toy. You are a very good dog.” Peace between malamutes is not something I take for granted.

  “She know who she is, where she is?” Kevin was still pursuing the subject of Ceci. “What day it is? Whose money she’s spending? On what?”

  “Yes, absolutely, except that what she’s spending it on is—”

  “Her own business,” Kevin said. “She got any complaints?”

  “No, she’s overjoyed. There isn’t a more satisfied consumer in the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She’s totally delighted. And, Kevin, I understand that there’s nothing illegal about psychics. I don’t think there should be. I think that most psychics genuinely believe in their own powers and probably do a lot of good. But this business with Ceci isn’t about psychics in general, it’s about Irene Wheeler. And Irene Wheeler is a fraud. She isn’t just conveying spiritual messages that she might honestly believe were coming from the dog. What she’s done is to convince Ceci that the dog is appearing in the flesh, and if you ask me, that’s fraud. Furthermore, she is preying on loneliness and grief and love. And that is evil.”

  Slowly moving his big head back and forth, Kevin said, “If I gotta go and arrest everyone who’s out there promising resurrection, I’m—”

  “Be serious! Kevin, there is no comparison. Irene Wheeler has been deliberately staging the so-called materialization of Ceci’s dog in an effort to get more and more money from her. There is nothing religious about it. The whole enterprise is a travesty. If anything, it’s heresy.”

  “Lady left the gate open. A dog came in and peed.”

  “And, minor point, a man was murdered, a man who was trying to defend his elderly great-aunt from a con artist. You know, Kevin, there’s a pattern here, as Rita would say. This is the same thing you did, or refused to do, about the evidence I carefully preserved when I rescued the cat. I kept the pillowcase and the twine and the stone for you to send to the police lab, I showed those things to you, and for all you’ve done, I might as well have thrown them in the river. I do not understand why you are taking such an obstructionist attitude lately.”

  Huffing himself up, Kevin said, “Hey, obstructionist? Me? Is the lady being conned? Damned straight she is. But let me give you a couple of facts. First of all, when what you’ve got is a case that’s got nothing to do with religion, you still got trouble. Phony charities. Get-rich-quick schemes. Romance. Geez, Holly, the lonely people out there. Half the world’s a charter member of the Eleanor Rigby Social Club. Pretty housekeeper convinces her elderly gent he’s Cary Grant, marries him, he knows it’s for love, and what’s his family do? Drag it into court? Yeah, some of the time. She says she loves him, he says she loves him, family looks like a pack of piranhas. End of story. Or a smooth talker convinces an old lady to sign over her estate to build a palace for homeless pussycats.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  Kevin ignored my interruption. “Old-timer fancies himself a whiz at crossword puzzles, only these days he’s a couple of blanks short of an answer. Opens his mail. Special invitation to enter a crossword contest. All’s he has to do to enter is complete this puzzle and, by the way, send a check. Five dollars. Ten dollars. One across: three letters, furry pet that says meow. He’s still a genius. Writes the check. Mails it. Gets a letter back. Congratulations! He’s won. His prize is he gets moved up to the expert level. Entry fee: twenty dollars. Forty dollars. One down: five letters, four-legged animal that says neigh.”

  “Through the mail? That must be a federal offense. If it isn’t, it ought to be.”

  “You want it straight? In ninety-nine percent of these cases, you can’t prove a thing, and if you can, you can’t catch the perp, and even if you do, ninety-nine percent of the time, he gets off, and if he goes to jail, he’s out next week. Most of the time, no one hears a thing, because when these guys are good, hey, everybody’s happy, at least for a while. You used to be a lonely old nobody, or a lonely not-so-old nobody, and now all of a sudden, you’re a winner, you’re a financial wizard, you got the satisfaction of feeding starving kids in Boola-Boola Land, or you got romance back? Complaining is the last thing that’s going to cross your mind.” Kevin’s voice dropped. “For a while. And if you catch on, you’re going to knock yourself out making sure your relatives don’t find out, because if they do, you’re going to end up somebody’s ward, and where you’re going to end up is in a nursing home.”

  “Ceci is aware of that possibility,” I said, “except that she doesn’t see herself as a victim. What she’s afraid of is misunderstanding. That’s what she thinks about Jonathan, the grandnephew, the one who was murdered. What I think is that Jonathan got the full picture.”

  “Maybe Auntie did him in.”

  “Ceci? I really don’t …”

  Although Kevin had no connection with the official investigation of Jonathan’s murder, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything incriminating about Ceci. I couldn’t help thinking, though, that the murder weapon had presumably been the shovel she’d admitted to having left in her yard. I remembered how effortlessly she’d lifted and carried the heavy tea tray. Most of all, I thought of how dependent Ceci was on Irene Wheeler and how pitifully eager for a reunion with her beloved Simon. As to risk, it seemed to me that half the people who lived at the Gateway might’ve risked jail to stay out of the nursing home.

  “When it comes to murder,” said Kevin, “one thing you can forget is this pet psychic who’s conning the old lady. These vultures who prey on the elderly are dirt, they’re filth, you can’t touch them, most of the time you don’t even know they’re there, but if things start to go wrong, the world’s full of sitting ducks, and all’s they do is move on to a new one. These bastards are the scum of the earth, but there’s one thing they’re not, and that’s
violent.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  MY CONVERSATION WITH KEVIN took place on Wednesday. Over the next few days, one little incident after another echoed his disheartening message that no one would nail Irene Wheeler.

  The first incident consisted of my checking out and reading a tattered old library copy of a book published in 1924. Its title was Memories and Adventures. It was the memoirs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If I’d hoped to find proof that a belief in spiritualism was any indication of lunacy, I’d have been deeply disappointed in the book. It was the warm, charming, utterly cogent autobiography of a sane person whose assumptions about the possible and the impossible differed radically from mine. The creator of Sherlock Holmes had been a man bursting with energy and interests: crime and detection, of course, politics, war, friendship, love, travel, the sea, the Arctic, and that marvelous new invention, the bicycle. Gregarious and industrious, Conan Doyle was an incredibly prolific writer who penned his works while talking with family and friends. On several occasions, he’d played Sherlock Holmes; he’d investigated real crimes. Only at the end of his memoirs did he turn to what ultimately became the grand and generous passion of his life: his determination to share with the world the joyous news that the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living. His fervor was more technological than evangelical. A few weeks earlier, I’d heard Nicholas Negroponte preach on the radio about bits and bytes. Negroponte: the Billy Graham of computers. Half of Negroponte’s claims sounded more farfetched than Conan Doyle’s. I believed Negroponte; I’d experienced the miracles myself. Conan Doyle, of course, had persuaded millions of readers to accept Sherlock Holmes as a virtual reality. Yet he didn’t convert me to spiritualism. He did, however, convince me of his sincerity and his sanity. I’d have liked to consult him myself. I wondered what he’d make of Irene Wheeler. He’d encountered fraudulent mediums. Would he spot her as one? If so, as a man of vigorous action, he’d certainly expose her fakery. Furthermore, he’d devise an ingenious plan to identify and punish the scoundrel who’d tried to murder the poor cat that now occupied my office. As the perfect ally, Conan Doyle had only one drawback: He’d been dead since 1930.