The Barker Street Regulars Read online

  By city ordinance, Cambridge requires each household to maintain a minimum of one wall of books per person, including babies. Dogs and cats are exempt. The floor-to-ceiling shelves behind Irene Wheeler’s desk thus contained what was for Cambridge an ordinary number of books, with a run-of-the-literary-mill ratio of paperbacks to hardcovers, say fifty-fifty, but incredible though it may seem, and astonishing though it was to me, I swear that she owned more books about the occult than I do about dogs, and that’s saying something. The titles of my books follow a somewhat repetitious pattern: The Complete Alaskan Malamute, The New Complete Alaskan Malamute, This Is the Alaskan Malamute, Your Alaskan Malamute, Successful Obedience Handling, Expert Obedience Training for Dogs, Schutzhund Obedience, The No-Force Method of Dog Training, Improving the Obedient Dog, A few of Irene Wheeler’s titles followed a similar pattern. She had Animal Talk, What the Animals Tell Me, and Stories the Animals Tell Me. Although she also had Strange Powers of Pets, most of her books seemed to be more about the former than the latter: telepathy, channeling, past life regression, etheric bodies, ancient healing arts, eternal spirals, cosmic pyramids, flower remedies, the energies of gems. The names of the books gave the only visible clue to Irene Wheeler’s profession; in other respects, these might have been the premises of a freelance computer consultant or a psychotherapist in private practice.

  Unless the polished stones on Irene Wheeler’s chunky necklace exuded some mystical force invisible to me but visible, perhaps, to the psychically gifted, the only mystery about her appearance was how anyone managed to stay so thin. Mindful of her fees, though, I was reminded of the Duchess of Windsor’s famous remark that you can’t be too rich, either. Like the late Duchess, Irene Wheeler had the build of a sight hound, and her shoulder-length fawn-colored hair would have looked at home on a saluki’s ears. Her eyebrows, however, were overplucked, and I noted a nervous awkwardness about her gait; in the ring, she’d have been faulted for a subtle lack of refinement. When we shook hands, hers felt like a bony paw. Probably because of self-starvation, she was very pale. She couldn’t have been more than thirty.

  She took a seat behind the big desk, which was the kind you see in warehouses that sell discount office furnishings: yards of wood veneer designed to impress at first glance and to be ignored thereafter. “You’re here for a reading.”

  “For two dogs.” Heaven forbid that one of the two be rivalrously marooned in whatever state of psychic frustration might result from an unread mind.

  Luckily, Irene Wheeler assured me that she charged a flat fee for an initial reading. I fished in my bag, counted out a painful number of twenty-dollar bills, and said, “Ceci Love recommended you. She gave me your card.”

  Rita and the other Cambridge therapists I knew through Rita were obsessed with client confidentiality. Steve, for that matter, didn’t blab about his intimate knowledge of the innards of particular dogs, cats, and ferrets. Irene, however, said, “Oh, Cecil And Simon, of course. He has had a great deal to share with her. It’s been tremendously satisfying to channel his messages. She was really a mess, you know.”

  I nodded in what I hoped was a meaningful and even conspiratorial fashion.

  “Ceci was bereft without the ties they shared. She had lost all sense of perspective and purpose.”

  “She must be terribly upset again now,” I said. “You do know that her grandnephew was just murdered?”

  As if giving a factful report on a recent conference call, Irene Wheeler assured me that she and Ceci had already been in touch with Jonathan. “Jonathan is, of course, in a temporary state of considerable imbalance,” Irene informed me, “but a radical change at the physical level is far easier to accept when seen in its spiritual context. Ceci is finding great comfort in the continuation of contact.”

  “I didn’t know you did people,” I said. “I thought—”

  “What I do, as you put it, is cosmic balance. We are a hierarchy, you see, each of us with a particular place, each perfect in that place, provided that it is known and cherished.” She paused. “And your pets?”

  The word always throws me. In my cosmic hierarchy, dogs occupy the pinnacle. Pets always makes me think of creatures incapable of such splendidly unique canine accomplishments as precision heeling and perfect empathy. I mean, did Senator Vest deliver a Eulogy on the Goldfish? Well, there you have it. Without protest, however, I presented Irene Wheeler with two color photographs. One showed Rowdy and Kimi on a pebble beach by the ocean in Maine. The other had been taken indoors at home. Its quality was so-so, but I’d caught the dogs in a characteristic pose, stretched flat on the kitchen floor facing each other, their forepaws almost touching. “Rowdy and Kimi,” I said. “Rowdy is the male, and—”

  Irene Wheeler put a finger to her lips. “They will speak for themselves.” Resting a hand a few inches above each photograph, she closed her eyes. I kept mine open and thought about what Rowdy and Kimi were undoubtedly thinking about, namely, the cat, which I’d locked in my study to prevent if from reclaiming its refuge under my bed.

  Irene opened her eyes. Her face bore a mildly accusatory expression. “Their color is not blue.”

  “Oh.” Had I said that it was? Casting my eyes downward, I realized that I’d dressed for the appointment by wearing a blue denim skirt. I usually wear jeans. Blue jeans. With pockets full of cheese, roast beef, and liver. If blue made the dogs feel anything, the anything was hungry.

  “They wish to be children of light.”

  A primordial longing for the midnight sun? Nonsense. What dogs care about is not color, but odor, the worse the better. If consulted about my wardrobe, Rowdy and Kimi would advise me never to change my clothes.

  “They are close to nature,” Irene continued.

  “That’s true,” I admitted. “The closer, the better.” The dogs are especially crazy about chasing down nature when it’s small and furry. If pressed, however, they’ll settle for feathers.

  Abruptly switching topics, Irene announced that she was sensing something about teeth.

  “What?”

  “Teeth,” she repeated. She apologized for not being more specific.

  “There’s nothing wrong with their teeth,” I said.

  “It’s the message I’m receiving,” she said. “I have no doubt whatsoever. Teeth.”

  I was startled. The dogs have wonderful teeth, strong, white, and clean. Because my father thinks that fluoride is part of a Communist conspiracy, I, however, grew up without it and have to go to the dentist all the time. The weird thing was that my teeth look fine. The psychic couldn’t have noticed anything. And the dogs and I are genuine kindred spirits. Was it possible that they or I had somehow radiated vibrations about my teeth?

  “Teeth,” I said. “Well, I’ll bear it in mind.”

  In another abrupt shift, Irene said, “These animals are ancient souls.”

  Give me a break. One look at malamutes, and you can tell they’re ancient souls, the essence of dog primeval.

  Irene then launched into a lecture about—and I’m not making this up—dogs and the solar plexus, of all things. Let me repeat: solar plexus. According to my definition, the solar plexus is the place in your middle that hurts if it gets punched. But according to Irene Wheeler, the solar plexus of the dog radiated cosmic energy that united with human consciousness and raised it to new levels of constancy, loyalty, and bliss. What was special about dogs was that their solar plexuses were cosmically better than anyone else’s. I’m always happy to hear a new theory about the benefits of dogs, of course, but frankly I’d have been equally willing to believe that the power of dogs sprang from the pasterns, the stomach, the pancreas, or a really likely spot such as the brain or the heart.

  Unasked, Irene then began to tell me about myself. I liked navy blue. I responded positively to challenges. I was experiencing a conflict in my love life. As I’ve said, I was wearing a blue denim skirt and, as I haven’t said, a navy sweater embellished, I might add, with undercoat Kimi had just started to
shed. My parka was also navy blue. Anyone with two malamutes is by definition someone who likes a challenge. As to my love life, whose is without conflict?

  So, I was ready to dismiss Irene’s powers entirely when she startled me by tapping on one of the photographs of the dogs. I stood and peered. One of her thin fingers was rapping on the picture taken by the ocean and, specifically, on Rowdy’s face. Closing her eyes, Irene murmured that this one was of special interest to her. Since her eyes were shut, it didn’t seem to matter where I stood or what I did. I loomed over her and stared. This one had great force, she asserted. He was deeply connected. “Yes!” she cried out.

  I sat abruptly.

  “Yes!” Her voice vibrated. “This one is a special gift. He is a gift from one who had departed. Here is a connection! Here is a guide!”

  Rowdy, in fact, entered my life soon after Vinnie left. I had never told any human being, not even Steve or Rita, that Rowdy had always felt like a gift from Vinnie. The idea had always seemed too crazy to speak aloud to anyone but a dog. I’d never told Kimi. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings. I had told no one on earth but Rowdy. I caught my breath.

  Opening her eyes, Irene Wheeler gazed at me and then again at the photographs. Tapping Rowdy’s picture, she murmured, “Both are ancient beings. This one, however, has the purer soul.”

  I felt enraged. Purer, indeed! Kimi is my dog, too. Furthermore, Kimi is short for Qimissung, which means snowdrift, as in “pure as the driven,” damn it, and I do not like to hear her disparaged. Purer soul! Irene Wheeler was, I decided, a complete fraud.

  Chapter Eleven

  HUGH SEARLES HERE.” The Holmesiai’s voice on the phone was brisk. As if taking me up on an any-old-time offer to borrow my car, Hugh added pleasantly, “We want Rowdy at once. Let’s say we’ll pick him up in half an hour. Would that be convenient?”

  It was five-thirty on that same Monday. Rowdy and Kimi had eaten dinner, and I had no plans. Even so! “Pick him up?”

  “In the manner of Pompey,” Hugh said hurriedly. “Toby.”

  I felt myself inducted into what’s known as the Great Game: the playful pretense that Sherlock Holmes had been a real-live person and that Watson’s tales were accounts of actual events. By now, I’d read or reread maybe three quarters of the stories—whoops!—three quarters of the factual reports. Missing from my personal version of the Canon were the tales I’d never read at all or had unforgivably, even sacrilegiously, forgotten. Deliberately deleted from my version were a few tales I just didn’t like. I knew, however, that Toby and Pompey were tracking dogs rather blithely borrowed by Sherlock Holmes. In the Great Game, those dogs were as real as Holmes and Watson. Ah, but in which adventures? For once, my near-total recall for dogs had deserted me, and I was unable to dredge up the sort of subtle acknowledgment of comprehension that would have pleased Hugh. Although I had no intention of trying to pass myself off to Hugh as any sort of Sherlockian, I felt oddly ashamed of my inability to return what would be, in effect, the correct password or secret handshake, some countersign of forceful commitment to the Canon.

  Without spoiling the game by announcing that even the Master Detective himself wouldn’t be allowed to help himself to one of my precious dogs, I explained that Rowdy was, as I tactfully phrased it, something of a handful. “He doesn’t necessarily listen to anyone but me,” I said, without adding that he doesn’t necessarily do more than take my opinions under advisement. “What do you need a dog for?” I asked.

  Robert and Hugh, it emerged, had seized on the murder of Jonathan Hubbell to play the Great Game in real life or—and here’s what troubled me—in real death. The police, Hugh informed me, had finally finished their so-called examination of the crime scene, doubtless after destroying vast amounts of valuable evidence. Despite “the depredations of the Gregsons and the Lestrades,” as Hugh phrased it, Ceci’s property might contain important clues about Jonathan’s murder. Ceci was being most obliging in the matter. Although Ceci was, according to Hugh, a functional illiterate, her husband, Ellis, had been an active member of the Red-headed League of Boston. And Ceci was, after all, Althea’s sister. Rowdy was to play Toby or Pompey to Robert and Hugh’s Holmes and Watson. For all we knew, Hugh asserted, the murderer, accompanied by his gigantic dog, had arrived and departed on foot. A mere forty-eight hours or so later, the trails of the two were surely fresh enough for another dog to follow. Furthermore, Ceci had no idea what had prompted Jonathan to leave the house. When she’d gone to bed, he’d been listening to music. She was certain that he’d made no plans to go out. That Saturday night had been brutally cold; Jonathan obviously hadn’t just gone out to enjoy the night air. And if he’d decided to use Ceci’s car, without her permission, of course, or to take a cab or even to go for a walk, he’d have left by the front door, and he’d have closed it after him. As it was, a French door at the rear of the house had been found ajar, and his body had been discovered in the backyard. Between the time Jonathan left the house and met his end, what had his movements been? Hugh and Robert were determined to put a dog on Jonathan’s trail.

  “What you’re looking for,” I told Hugh, “is a highly trained search and rescue dog. Every single thing you’ve mentioned is an extremely difficult task.” As I was about to say that Rowdy would be absolutely useless, it hit me that in taking the request seriously, I was playing into the Great Game. In the case of a real murder, the pretense struck me not as a harmless pastime, but as a morbid and ghoulish confusion of fact and fiction. If Kevin Dennehy had been silly enough to ask for Rowdy’s assistance as a tracking dog, I’d have told him to find a canine with an educated nose. But Kevin was the real thing, a police lieutenant; he’d never have made such a request. Hugh and Robert, in contrast, would probably go marching off to the crime scene with deerstalker hats on their heads, magnifying lenses in their hands, and the Sherlockian cliché on their lips: “The game is afoot!” They didn’t need a tracking dog; all they wanted was one more stage prop. What prevented me from refusing to participate in this mockery was, of all things, Hugh’s touchingly genuine faith in the methods of Sherlock Holmes. As if reading my mind over the phone line, Hugh said, “You must imagine that we’re a pair of old jackasses having fun at the expense of this unfortunate young man.”

  Precisely.

  “Not at all!” I countered.

  “We may be a pair of old jackasses,” he said proudly. “Well, I may be one. I can’t speak for Robert. But there is nothing asinine about the methodical collection of empirical evidence. And I assure you that we see this murder for the horror that it is.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Perhaps I could persuade you to accompany Rowdy.”

  I gave in, but insisted on driving to Ceci’s myself and also substituted Kimi for Rowdy. Kimi was anything but a real tracking dog—I’m not claiming otherwise—but I’d taken her to a couple of tracking workshops, where she’d shown considerable aptitude for the sport. With her tracking harness on, she might satisfy Hugh and Robert’s desire for a Toby or a Pompey by putting her nose to the ground. To Rowdy, a harness meant pull.

  After digging out Kimi’s red tracking harness and an old thirty-foot army-green tracking lead, I bundled up in my parka and then remembered that I had to check on the cat. After locking the dogs in my bedroom, I eased open the door to my study, slipped in, and quickly shut the door without giving the cat a chance to escape. As it turned out, the cat hadn’t been hanging around looking for the opportunity to bolt. Rather, it had installed itself, appropriately enough, on the mouse pad next to my new computer. At the sight of me, it glared, hissed, and then vanished in the tangle of cables under the printer. The mouse pad was covered with cat hair and oily medicine. “Nice little kitty,” I said hypocritically. Then I produced those stupid squeaking noises that no self-respecting person makes to a dog that weighs over five pounds. Not that I don’t like cats. Not that I’m superstitious about them, even about really hideous black cats like this one. But cats are not my specia
l mission. Dog spelled backward? Yes. But cat? Tac? I don’t see the cosmic significance.

  Nonetheless, instead of following Hugh’s precise instructions for getting to Ceci’s house in Newton, I stayed on the Cambridge side of the river, took a right onto Arsenal Street, and then made an immediate left onto the strip of Greenough Boulevard where I’d saved the cat. I did not, of course, expect to come upon the tall, evil man with the bulbous forehead. I certainly didn’t expect to catch him abusing another helpless little animal. It occurred to me that in Kevin Dennehy’s mind, that stretch of road represented a sort of Great Grimpen Mire, the haunt of the hound of the Baskervilles. Remember the famous message sent to Sir Henry Baskerville at the Northumberland Hotel? As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor Well, Kevin had never come out and warned me about valuing my life and my reason, but when he mentioned the area, he spoke in sinister tones, and his wholesome freckled face took on a sort of Baskervillian expression. Anyway, as I drove slowly along what actually was a dire-looking stretch of road, I wondered why Kevin had wasted his time scaring me when he could have been calling the Metropolitan District Commission or writing to the Boston newspapers to demand the installation of streetlights along the presumably dangerous stretch. As it was, the only illumination came from the big lights in the parking lot of the shopping mall; the area by the river was utterly black. I relied on my headlights to see that only a couple of cars and one pickup were parked in the turnouts; there was no sign of the evildoer’s dark van. The pointless detour left me feeling guilty. If the cat had been a dog, wouldn’t I be doing more to find out who’d tried to drown it?