All Shots (11 page)

“Kevin, relax,” I said as he hesitated outside Mr. Bartley’s
Burger Cottage, where we’d arranged to meet. “What do you think they’re going to do? Ask for Harvard ID? And not let us in if we don’t have it? It’s your kind of food. And when Jennifer gets back, you’re going to be eating bok choy and tofu again.”

“I’ve been here before,” Kevin declared.

“And you loved it.” I amended the statement. “You loved the food.”

He reluctantly nodded in agreement and held the door open for me. It was early on that same Monday evening. With Steve and Jennifer both out of town, Kevin and I were once again having dinner together. Bartley’s was my choice. I knew that Kevin would object. It’s on Mass. Ave. near the corner of Bow Street, just across from Harvard Yard, and in its own way it’s as Harvardian as University Hall, Widener Library, and the Fogg Art Museum, its own way being noisy, greasy, and crowded. What makes it Harvardian is the clientele, which consists principally, although not exclusively, of students. Alumni and alumnae show up, too, as do members of the faculty and administration eager for real food. No healthy person leaves Bartley’s hungry. That’s one reason it’s my kind of place. The other is that it helps to cure my homesickness for Moody’s Diner on Route 1 in Waldoboro, Maine, which, like Helen’s Restaurant in Machias, serves up traditional Maine fare, the defining ingredient of which is neither lobsters nor blueberries but good old dietary fat. If Maine tourist bureaus were honest about the nature of real Maine food, all of these lobster festivals and blueberry festivals would be subsumed by a single gigantic Annual Maine Grease Festival. I’d attend. It doesn’t yet exist, alas. In the meantime, there’s Bartley’s.

Bartley’s being the popular place it justifiably is, it was crowded. Even if there’d been no customers, it would’ve been hard for Kevin to make his way to the back because the tables were so close together. Since it took us a while to maneuver through the almost nonexistent aisles, Kevin had a chance to read the offerings chalked on the big blackboard and to observe the platefuls of food the servers were carrying, so by the time we were seated, with Kevin mashed in a corner, he’d quit looking uneasy. The menus presented to us by a hurried, hot-looking waiter listed all sorts of sandwiches named for celebrities and a variety of other items not on the blackboard, but Kevin ordered two burgers with American cheese, a side of french fries, a side of onion rings, and a Coke, and I asked for a mozzarella burger and a ginger ale.

Looking around and taking note of the multiracial clientele, Kevin said, “Ethnic. Sign of a good restaurant. But geez, some of these kids are wicked thin. Give ’em some time in America, and we’ll build ’em up.” He turned his attention to me. “So what’s going on?”

“A case of canine identity theft,” I said somewhat melodramatically. “I have the blue malamute. She was found wandering in Lexington. She’s at Steve’s clinic. Kevin, this is the dog in the picture. No question.”

“Tags?”

“That’s the strange thing, Kevin. That’s the really peculiar thing. Yes, she has tags. Two. One is a new ID tag with my name, my address, and my phone number. The other is Kimi’s old rabies tag. Kimi had a rabies shot, and when I put the new tag on her collar, I threw out the old one. The new ID tag on the dog must’ve come from a machine at one of the pet-supply places, but Kimi’s rabies tag came from my trash. Just like my bills and bank statements and stuff. Kimi got her rabies shot before Steve left, and that’s when I threw out the old tag. But the point is that that woman wasn’t just preparing to steal my identity. And the other Holly Winter’s, of course.
Preparing
is the right word, by the way. I checked my credit. It’s fine. Anyway, while she was gathering information on us, she was also stealing Kimi’s identity for her dog.”

“The dog wasn’t living there,” Kevin said. “At Dr. Ho’s. There was dog hair, consistent with a malamute, by the way, but it was on her clothes, stuff like that. Small quantities. Not all over the place. Not like at your house.”

“I beg your pardon! We own two Dyson vacuum cleaners, and I vacuum all the time.”

Let me pause here for a short commercial break. A household with three Alaskan malamutes, a German shepherd, a pointer, and a cat constitutes a tough test for a vacuum cleaner. Dyson doesn’t just pass the test; it gets an A plus. Every other brand fails.

I said, “Anyway, I don’t know how long the dog was loose. The people in Lexington said that she’d been around for a few days, but that’s just in their neighborhood. And they weren’t very observant. They thought she was a male. Do you know when this woman got to Cambridge? Or when she started living at Dr. Ho’s?”

“August twenty-ninth, give or take. That was a Tuesday. That’s when he took off. She wasn’t there on August twenty-seventh. Sunday. That was when his house sitter backed out. The guy called him Sunday morning. Dr. Ho had some friends there for one of these brunches, and the guy who was supposed to house-sit called while they were there. Ho was wicked pissed. Because of the fish.”

“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 enough 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.”