The Barker Street Regulars (8 page)

“If it weren’t for me, that cat would be dead,” I pointed out. “If it were a dog, it would be
grateful.”
After pausing to pull my chair forward to make room for someone taking a seat directly behind me, I added, “Well, at least it’s a female. I won’t have it spraying all over my bedroom until I find it a home.”

“Some female cats spray,” Leah informed me.

“Is that true?”

“Yes. And if it’s ugly and sickly and unfriendly, who’s going to—?”

Before she finished, a loud, raspy, penetrating, and all-too-familiar voice bellowed almost in my ear, “Crooks, all of them! Out to do nothing but empty your wallet. And the worst of them is that Delaney. You heard about our Gigi?”

Leaning across my tuna casserole, I whispered to Leah, who knew all about the trouble poor Steve was enduring. “Say nothing!” I ordered. “Not a word!”

She mouthed silently, “Gloria?”

I nodded.

Behind me, Gloria continued. “Spayed her! Ruined my bitch! Spayed her! What am I supposed to do with her? She’s no good to me now.”

In Cambridge, no one remarks on Leah’s clear voice or perfect articulation. Althea Battlefield spoke with the same precision and in the same ringing tone. For reasons I’ve never quite fathomed, it’s highly educated women who always sound as if they want to make sure that hearing-impaired foreigners seated across the room won’t miss a single word. The men, in contrast, sometimes murmur so softly that I have to lean forward and strain to understand them. Oh, yeah. Maybe that’s the idea. Anyway, ever since I’d first started taking Leah to dog shows, I’d been trying to convince her that if she simply couldn’t help projecting her voice to the most distant reaches of the show precincts, she should either keep her mouth shut or watch what she said. In particular, not until we were safely back in the car headed home was she permitted to utter an even mildly derogatory comment about anyone’s dog. Indeed, the word she now enunciated had nothing to do with anyone’s precious female show dog. “
Bitch!
” Leah sang out. At a
dog show, thank heaven,
bitch
is utterly unobjectionable; it’s practically every other word you hear.

Oblivious to Leah’s assessment, Gloria switched from slandering Steve to extolling the powers of Irene Wheeler. “She could of fixed up Gigi, only by the time we got to her, it was too late. An animal communicator’s what she is. Better than all of those vets combined. Ought to be stuck with their own needles, if you ask me.”

Over my left shoulder, I heard loud male guffawing. “You tell ’em, Gloria,” said Scott.

Egged on, Gloria added, “If you ask me, all that Delaney cares about is what he can rip you off for.”

I’d heard all I could take. So, I suspected, had Leah. Her freckles had disappeared into the crimson that suffused her cheeks.

“All done, cousin?” I asked brightly.

In disgust, Leah balled up her paper napkin and pitched it into the remains of her lunch.

“Nothing,” I reminded her in a whisper.
“Do nothing.”

As we rose and carried our trays away, I was careful to avoid looking in Gloria and Scott’s direction. The sight of the pair would undoubtedly shatter my control over the impulse to upend my plate and deposit the remains of my casserole on Gloria’s head. Also, I didn’t need a refresher on what the vile couple looked like. They were in their mid thirties, I suppose. Somewhere on Gloria, something always glittered where no glitter belonged: fake rubies on a T-shirt, sequins on sneakers, gilt flecks in a thick layer of green eye shadow. At no more than five two, she was about ten inches shorter than Scott, but she was almost as starved-looking as her hollow-cheeked husband. His scrawny face always wore a smile that suggested hidden knowledge of dirty
secrets, maybe his own, maybe other people’s. His hair was lank, and he had dandruff. Perhaps because he favored western-cut polyester shirts and often fingered things—his earlobe, his belt, his wife’s neck—I always imagined that Scott played incompetent guitar in what tried to pass itself off as a hillbilly band.

“This is monstrous,” said Leah as we left the cafeteria. “But I can’t believe that anyone listens to her.”

“You’d be surprised. People don’t always consider the source.”

“I’ll bet they have awful dogs,” Leah said hopefully.

“Wrong. Their dogs are quite decent. None of this is the dogs’ fault.”

“Steve won’t do anything?”

“Leah, he’s entitled to deal with it in his own way. And at least he isn’t here to have to listen to her.”

Ah, but at about one-thirty, Steve turned up. He found me in what could hardly be called a romantic setting. Been to a show lately? No, not Broadway. A
real
show. A dog show. If so, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that old-fashioned chewies like bones and rawhide are being rapidly displaced by the moderately gruesome and, in some cases, by the outright macabre. The trend started with pig ears. Then it was hooves and cow ears. Then what are called “muscle chews.” And what
are
muscle chews? Hunks of cattle neck. Ligaments. Muscles. Yes, body parts cooked in their own gravy. Ick! And now it’s tracheas, great big dead-white tracheas removed intact from beasts of heaven knows what species and—enough!

“The problem with these tracheas,” I said to the vendor, “is that they look
human.
Are you sure they’re …?”

“A hundred percent digestible,” the vendor assured
me without actually answering my question. “And dogs love them.”

Just as my right hand rose protectively to my throat, Steve appeared at my side. Although he’d been up in the night with the ugly cat, he looked more rested than he had for a week. He wore new jeans and a navy sweater I hadn’t seen before. I love being seen with him. Superficial? Yes. But then I love being seen with Rowdy and Kimi, too, and there’s obviously no question about the depth of my devotion to them. I ran a hand over Steve’s cheek. He’d shaved today.

“Caressed with fingers fresh from tracheas,” he said.

“Sterile tracheas. What are you doing here?”

He has the most beautiful smile. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen it. “Leading a normal life.”

I smiled back. “Good.”

“I heard Rowdy took the breed. Someone called Buck, and he called to leave a message for you. I thought I’d drive out and watch the group.”

Translation: the judging of the Working Group.

“He isn’t coming, is he?” I was filled with alarm. Buck is my father. Even if he weren’t, he’d still be
the
most mortifying person to be seen with on the liver-littered surface of the dog-show world. If he were small, quiet, introverted, and mortifying, it wouldn’t be so bad, but Buck’s appearance, demeanor, and voice are overwhelming in a remarkably mooselike fashion. He crashes through life as if it were underbrush. He bellows. Worse, everyone not only knows him, but knows whose father he is or soon finds out. If I’m in the ring, he looms just outside radiating paternal pride and criticizing every move I make. The one time he didn’t do it was the day he stood outside the obedience ring and watched my Vinnie score a perfect 200. I expected him
to lecture me about the handler errors the judge had missed, but he didn’t. He said, “Well, I guess that’s all right.” His behavior toward me is a little like Robert’s toward Hugh. He considers himself a member of an elite group from which I’ve been excluded, and he scrutinizes me for the equivalent of misquotation.

To my relief, Steve said, “No such luck.”

“Rowdy’s not going to go anywhere in the group,” I said.

“Then why stick around?”

“Because I’m a good sport. Besides, he just might. So, where’s your new cat?”

“At the clinic. Under your name. They’re working on that ear, and I want to keep an eye on her for a couple of days.”

As we made the rounds of the booths, I wondered whether to warn Steve about Gloria and Scott, but decided against it. After the hullabaloo they were making about how he’d ruined their show dog, he obviously knew that they might be around. With luck, they’d gone home by now.

They hadn’t. It was outside the ring during the judging of the Working Group that we encountered them, if that’s the right word for suddenly hearing Gloria holler from only a yard or so in back of us, “Jesus Christ! Hey, you! You, Delaney! You got a nerve showing your face here.”

Standing next to Steve, I could feel his whole body tighten. But he kept his eyes on the ring and on Rowdy, and said nothing, even when Gloria muscled her way through the crowd and planted herself right next to him. “You deaf or something?” she demanded. “You didn’t hear me saying you got a nerve showing your face here?”

“It’s a dog show,” I informed her. “Not a face show. If it were, you wouldn’t have been allowed in.”

I was immediately sorry.

“Oh, yeah?” Gloria roared. She reminded me of the gruesome dog treats. She looked like an emaciated sow that had sacrificed its ears.

Steve gently took my elbow and, murmuring gentlemanly apologies to everyone we passed, moved me away from the ring and out of Gloria’s range. “Rowdy looks good,” he said placidly.

“The judge doesn’t think so,” I grumbled.

“You ought to handle him yourself. He responds better to you than he does to Faith.”

“Faith is a thousand-times better handler than I am. Rowdy adores her.”

As if to vindicate me and retain his handler, Rowdy surprised me by going third. Kimi’s win? Rowdy’s Best of Breed? Now, a group placement? It takes a lot to ruin a day like that. Well, Gloria almost succeeded. As I thanked Faith and took Rowdy’s show lead and ribbon from her, I noticed Gloria making her way from person to person. She was handing out cards. For once, her voice was quiet. And I assure you that people were listening to her. She was talking about Irene Wheeler. She was handing out Irene Wheeler’s business cards. I didn’t need a card, of course. Ceci Love had already given me one. I intended to use it. Tomorrow, I vowed, I’d make a phone call. I’d make an appointment. Gloria lacked the brains to plan the campaign she was carrying out. I wanted to meet the power behind her. Who was that power? Irene Wheeler. No shit, Sherlock.

I
WAITED UNTIL NOON.
For all I knew, psychics lolled in bed on Sunday mornings. Or did they go to church? Besides, I didn’t want Steve to overhear. As I puttered around killing time until he left, it occurred to me that when Holmes undertook an investigation, he never had to hang around until Watson departed or worry that his partner would tell him to mind his own business. On the contrary, whenever Holmes announced that the game was afoot, Watson sprang up like a walk-hungry dog at the sight of a leash. Rowdy or Kimi, I decided, would make a far better Watson than Steve. My game, after all, was seldom afoot. It was almost inevitably a paw. Sorry about that.

I got Irene Wheeler’s answering machine. Her message was disappointing. “This is Irene Wheeler,” said a pleasant, ordinary voice. “I can’t come to the phone right now, but please leave your name and number after the beep.” What did I expect? Weird background music, that’s what: silver trumpets, creepy violins, harps plucked by angelic canine loved ones. Just how was the caller supposed to know that the angelic harpists were
canine? Irene Wheeler was supposed to say so. “Irene Wheeler,” I wanted her to whisper breathlessly, “cannot come to the phone because she is fully occupied in marketing the hope of eternal companion-animal life while practicing veterinary medicine without a license.” I hung up without leaving a message. I didn’t want my call returned when Steve might answer the phone or overhear me as I made an appointment.

Frustrated in my effort to schedule a consultation with Irene and thus to meet the damned troublemaker face-to-face, I decided to settle for secondhand information. Last Sunday afternoon, Ceci had been paying what might be a regular weekly call on her sister, Althea. With no encouragement, Ceci had been voluble about Irene Wheeler’s psychic powers. Maybe I’d find Ceci at the Gateway today. If so, I’d pump her.

When Rowdy tried to bound ahead of me into Althea’s room, I came to a halt, heard a male voice, and finally remembered that on Friday, Althea had been eager to see her grandnephew. What was his name? Jonathan. Her late brother’s grandson. Calming Rowdy, I decided to step in, say hello, and assess the situation. If I found Althea engaged in a happy reunion with Jonathan, Rowdy and I would make a swift departure; maybe Jonathan read Sherlock Holmes, and he and Althea were having a cozy Holmesian gossip. On the other hand, maybe Ceci was preventing Althea and Jonathan from enjoying exactly that kind of exchange. If so, I’d persuade Rowdy to distract Ceci, and then I’d lure her aside and get her to tell me everything about Irene Wheeler.

I found neither Althea’s sister nor her grandnephew, but Hugh and Robert, whose chairs faced Althea’s wheelchair. The male voice had been Robert’s. He was speaking now, but not of Sherlock Holmes. Missing
from Robert’s tone and from the faces of the three old friends were the quickness and lightness I’d admired when Althea, Hugh, and Robert shared their passion for Conan Doyle. When the three had exchanged their scholarly banter, their expressions had turned playfully grave. Questioning me about my homework, as I thought of it, Althea could play the stern English teacher. I remembered our discussion of the tongue-in-cheek “Watson Was a Woman.” Rex Stout’s error? Althea had demanded. Had I spotted it? No, I’d confessed, I hadn’t. In fact, I’d just been tickled by the essay. Althea had frowned, clicked her tongue, shaken her head, and assigned me “The Dying Detective,” in which, I was to note, we are indeed shown Holmes in bed.

Now, all three old faces were serious. My first thought was that Althea was dying. On our next visit, Rowdy and I would find her room as depersonalized as we’d found Nancy’s, stripped of the person and her few belongings. Worse, we’d find here someone other than Althea. But didn’t the dying belong in bed?

Recovering from my lapse, I prevented Rowdy from pawing Hugh, who rose from his chair, stroked his pale mustache, absently thumped Rowdy’s head, and said, with a note of suppressed excitement, “There’s been a death in the family. We were asked to break the news.”