The Barker Street Regulars (9 page)

“Ceci?” I asked softly. “I’m so sorry.”

Hugh dismissed my condolences. “No, no, not Ceci. Nothing the matter with her except the usual.” He rolled his eyes.

Evidently annoyed by Hugh’s slowness in breaking the actual news, Althea said, “My grandnephew, Jonathan, is dead.”

Tactlessly, I said, “I thought he was a young man.”

“He was,” she answered. I found her response impossible to read. She certainly wasn’t crying.

Robert seemed to speak for her. With a hint of drama, he announced, “Jonathan was murdered in Ceci’s yard.”

“Ceci asked us to inform Althea,” Hugh added, as if there were a need to explain his presence and Robert’s.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “We’ll go. This is no time—”

Althea protested, but I felt an internal pressure to leave. As I was about to excuse myself, Althea surprised me by asking me to bring Rowdy to her. He nuzzled her hand and solemnly rested his chin on the arm of her wheelchair. She placed the palm of her hand on top of his big head and kneaded his dense coat almost as if he were a mother cat and her huge, ancient fingers a litter of bony kittens. Watching her, I was jarred to realize that it would be all wrong for me to offer her the hug that, under these circumstances, I’d have given to a stranger my own age. Althea’s husband, the shadowy Mr. Battlefield, had died soon after she’d married him. Since then, her physical contact with other human beings must have been limited to Ceci’s sisterly embraces, the pokes and prods of doctors, the handshakes of friends and strangers, and, lately, the ministrations of the Gateway staff. Or so I imagined. Maybe she’d actually had torrid affairs with Hugh, Robert, and dozens of other Sherlockian men.

Hugh accompanied Rowdy and me to the door of Althea’s room and followed us a few steps down the corridor, where he gestured to me to wait a moment. After clearing his throat, shuffling his feet, smoothing his mustache, and making what seemed to be an effort to compose himself, he whispered very loudly, “There’s more that no one said!”

“Does anyone know who murdered him?” I asked. “Do you have any idea what happened?”

“As yet, very little.” Hugh’s eyes sparkled. His plump middle moved in and out as he breathed. He licked his lips. “But I must tell you that near Jonathan’s body were found”—here he paused for what I knew was effect—“the footprints of a gigantic dog.”

I suppressed the Robert-like urge to correct him.
Mr. Holmes,
I wanted to say,
they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.

R
OWDY AND KIMI BEING
the models of canine perfection that they are, I had a hard time dreaming up an excuse to consult Irene Wheeler. Yes, if I left a bowl of fruit on the counter, they staged a raid and scattered orange rinds and banana peels all over the house, and yes, I’d had to get rid of my bird feeder because Kimi caught songbirds on the wing, but who’d hire a clairvoyant to find out that malamutes were malamutes? Besides, to unmask Irene Wheeler as the fraud I knew she was, I’d do better to claim that one of the dogs was sick. Raw superstition held me back. How would I feel if my deception succeeded and, a week later, Rowdy or Kimi fell ill? Alternatively, I could blurt out the truth about missing my wonderful Vinnie and aching for one more glimpse of her. It felt wrong, however, to profane my bond with Vinnie by pretending that our spiritual connection depended on some joker who promised access to the Netherworld Web in return for this world’s currency. I’d settled on a compromise. When Irene Wheeler answered her phone on Monday morning, I was prepared to burble about my
concern for the dogs’ karma, auras, spirits, souls, and any other occult entities I could conjure up.

No explanation was required. On the contrary, Irene Wheeler seemed to take it for granted that I required professional help to understand my dogs. In a cordial, businesslike manner, she wasted no time in offering me an appointment at three o’clock that afternoon. The presence of the dogs, she explained, would be unnecessary. Indeed, she worked most effectively from color photographs. Irene Wheeler’s fee for an initial consultation was precisely what Rita charges for a fifty-minute hour of psychotherapy. Rita, however, bills her clients; she doesn’t ask for cash up front. Also, Rita doesn’t work from photographs.

Once having committed myself to being ripped off by Irene Wheeler, I employed myself in the manner of a hardworking freelance writer by taking Rowdy and Kimi around the block, refilling their water bowl, making fresh coffee, and reading the morning paper. The New England News Briefs column—truly that’s what it’s called, “Briefs,” just like underwear—carried a paragraph about the murder of Althea and Ceci’s grand-nephew, Jonathan Hubbell. I read:

New England News Briefs: not just underwear, but skimpy underwear, practically a g-string. For example, there was no mention of the paw prints of the gigantic dog. Or had Hugh and Robert imagined them? In spite of the scantiness of the newspaper account, I drew the obvious conclusion that this cocaine-dusted grand-nephew, Jonathan, had used his elderly great-aunts as an excuse to come to Boston for a drug deal and that he’d been murdered when it had gone wrong. Althea and Ceci had both deserved better than what this Jonathan had inflicted on them. Althea had been eager to welcome the only relative she and Ceci had left. For Ceci, too, the impending visit had probably been a major occasion. I could almost see her fussing around planning special meals and rearranging the pillows and the knickknacks in her guest room. And if this damned grandnephew had to do drugs and get murdered, couldn’t he have been considerate enough of Althea’s reverence for the Canon to pick an abusable substance other than Sherlock Holmes’s very own cocaine?

The phone interrupted my work. I’m always afraid not to answer it. I’m on the list of Alaskan Malamute Rescue people who get calls about dogs in trouble. If I don’t pick up, a malamute owner who wants to dump a dog may not bother to leave a message or may have the dog euthanized before I can return the call. Alternatively, the owner may give the dog away free to the
kind of “good home” that beats him, sells him to a research laboratory, uses him in the so-called sport of dog fighting, or simply dooms him to years of neglect tied outside on a rope or cable.

This call, however, was from one of Steve’s vet techs, Rowena, who cheerfully informed me that my cat was ready to go home.

“It’s not
my
cat.” A call about
any
Alaskan malamute is a call about
my
dog.

“There must be some mix-up,” Rowena replied. “We have her here under your name.”

“It’s like Winnie the Pooh,” I said, “living under the name Sanders. Remember? Pooh had a sign over his door that said Sanders. Well, that cat is living under the name Winter.”
Living
under my name. Instead of dying underwater. “I’ll pick it up this afternoon,” I said grudgingly.

“If you don’t pick her up by noon,” Rowena said apologetically, “we’ll have to charge you for another day.”

Twenty minutes later I was standing at the tall counter in Steve’s waiting room as Rowena entered my name in the computer, found the cat’s file, and asked whether I’d come up with a name for her yet. Three or four people with cats in carriers or dogs on leash waited on the benches. I felt ashamed to have them hear me admit that I was the kind of heartless person who doesn’t name a pet.

“It’s not my cat,” I said. Suddenly inspired, I gave Rowena a big smile. “Maybe
you’d
like it.”

Shaking her dark curls, she returned the smile. “Sorry, but I’ve got three already. The doctor wants to talk to you before you leave. He’s with a patient now. Could you wait a couple of minutes?”

Instead of taking a seat, talking to the human and
animal clients in the waiting room, or gritting my teeth at Steve’s mother’s embroidered and framed depictions of what are supposed to be terriers, I paced around, looked behind the counter, craned my neck, and scanned the notice board near the phone. Posted on it were business cards of dog trainers, contact information for humane societies and animal shelters, a list of obedience clubs, and notes and fliers about lost and found pets. Could I take the cat to an animal shelter? Every no-kill shelter I’d ever heard of avoided euthanasia by accepting young, healthy, adoptable animals while rejecting the old, the needy, and the difficult. The cat would never pass the screening. If I handed it over to one of the other facilities, it would probably be dead before I drove out of the parking lot. I was a person who rescued animals
from
shelters, at least from shelters where the staff really cared about the animals and called when a malamute came in. In contrast, a certain animal rescue league in Boston inexplicably refused to work with breed rescue groups. When the shelter manager told me that the policy was to euthanize dogs rather than to turn them over to rescue groups, I was insulted. I still am. Is a malamute better off dead than with me? And the organizations devoted to rescuing cats were so overwhelmed with stray and abandoned animals that I couldn’t bear to add another to the existing burden. No, I’d place the cat myself.

The lost-and-found notices suggested a wonderful new possibility. The despicable man in the dark van had yelled that the cat wasn’t even his. If he’d been telling the truth, maybe someone actually wanted the poor ugly thing back. Most of the lost animals whose descriptions and crudely photocopied snapshots were posted by the phone were dogs: a beagle mix, a terrier mix who looked like Benji, a Great Pyrenees, a Doberman. A
rabbit was missing. The only cat was a long-haired calico.

When Rhonda, another of Steve’s staff, ushered me into an empty exam room, she looked sad. “How do you think he’s doing?” she asked. She meant Steve.

“He’s holding up,” I said. “He’s making an effort. I wish he’d talk about it, but he won’t.”

“He got another letter from that woman today.”

“Gloria.”

Rhonda nodded.

“What did it say?”

“He tore it up. I didn’t see it.”

The swinging door opened, and Steve came in with the cat in his arms. When he’s about to discuss an animal, he always wears a serious expression. A stranger might not have noticed the tension in his jaw or the fine lines around his mouth. As he gently placed the cat on the metal exam table, he began to deliver one of his clear, maddeningly slow descriptions of the animal’s condition. A white bandage wrapped around the cat’s head covered the torn car, but highlighted the foolish splotch and birthmark that disfigured its face. From what Steve was saying, I gathered that the cat had lost a piece of the ear. I already knew that the missing piece wouldn’t grow back. Steve demonstrated how to apply ointment to the cat’s eyes. I was also supposed to put drops in the unbandaged ear twice a day.

“We had to assume that she’d never seen a veterinarian before,” Steve said, “so we went ahead and immunized her. Her feline leukemia test was negative, so we gave her …”

On the wall behind Steve was a huge poster that depicted dozens of breeds of domestic cats. My eyes drifted to it. A few months earlier, I’d happened to see a cat-food commercial on television that had made a powerful
impression on me. The feline star was a large, incredibly beautiful short-haired gray cat with what I’d later described to Steve as immense deep-yellow eyes. I’d told him everything about the gorgeous cat in the ad in the hope that he’d identify the breed so I’d know what it was I wanted if I ever decided to get a cat. He said it sounded like a Russian blue, but when I looked up the breed on the poster and in a book at the library, the Russian blue was somehow different from my immense gray cat with its stunning amber eyes.

“… most common birth defect in the domestic cat,” Steve was saying severely.

I hadn’t been listening. “You mean the birthmark?”

“Double paws.” Eyeing me, Steve delivered a short lecture about the presence of an extra toe. Then he asked whether I knew how to trim a cat’s nails.

“I’ve owned cats,” I said defensively. “Vinnie was absolutely wonderful with cats. So was Danny. So was Rafe. And if I do dogs’ nails, I can do cats’. Besides, at the risk of repeating myself, let me point out that
this is not my cat.
”

Ignoring the disclaimer, Steve explained that if I failed to give the cat regular manicures, the nails on the extra toes would grow in big circles and work their way back around and into the flesh of the toes. He’d trimmed the cat’s nails for me, but I was to remember to do it regularly. Also, the cat had roundworms and several other internal parasites for which it had received initial treatment, but I was to pick up medication on my way out. As to her teeth, which were in poor condition, he’d take care of those when he spayed her.

“You must be kidding,” I said. “How old is this cat?”

He shrugged. “Six, maybe. Eight.”

“Steve, it’s a hideous cat. I’m covered with
scratches from it. All it does is hiss at me.” I reached toward it. It cooperatively hissed. “You see? It’s missing half an ear, and now you’re telling me it has worms and bad teeth, it needs to be spayed, and it’s six or eight years old? Who on earth is ever going to adopt this thing?”

“You are,” he said. “Make an appointment in a couple of weeks for me to spay her and take care of her teeth. We don’t know what she might be harboring. I don’t want to take the risk now.”

“The dogs will kill it,” I said.

Steve smiled. “Not with you around.”

I
EXPECTED TO FIND IRENE
Wheeler in a shrouded sanctuary seated before a crystal ball. Or maybe her office would be a sham version of Steve’s, and she’d wear a white coat or even green scrubs. In fact, I encountered a thin, bright-eyed woman in a conservative navy wool suit who welcomed me to the front room of a pleasant, light apartment that occupied the ground floor of a three-story house almost identical to my own. My house is barn red, hers was white, and since I don’t have clients, I don’t have the kind of cupboard-size waiting room Irene Wheeler did, but if I furnished my living room as a prosperous Cambridge professional’s home office, it would look just like Irene’s. My own office, my study, occupies what was originally a small bedroom. Everywhere are pictures of Rowdy, Kimi, Vinnie, Danny, and lots of other dogs; and ribbons and trophies old and new. A gold-framed copy of Senator Vest’s Eulogy on the Dog hangs near my new computer. “Faithfull and true,” proclaimed Senator Vest, “even to death.” A wooden urn containing Vinnie’s ashes rests on a bookcase. Her collar is looped around
her earthly remains. I finger it now and then, and read her tags almost as if the information on them might have been updated since the last time I looked. I would dearly love to know her present address. Like most other rooms in Cambridge, however, my study serves principally as a repository for books, periodicals, and reams of photocopies and clippings, some in three-ring binders, some in folders, some in plastic file boxes, many, the unjudged, teetering in semipermanent purgatory in a precarious stack on top of a filing cabinet next to the wastebasket, their fate in the hands of God. Surveying Irene’s uncluttered office, I envied what was obviously her gift of prophecy. I wished I could forsee what I’d want someday and what I could safely throw away. Sherlock Holmes, I recalled, docketed everything. He was confident that he’d always want to be omniscient.