Bloodlines (31 page)

Mrs. Appleyard’s face filled the screen. Her hair stood up in rough clumps. In the powerful, dulcet tones of old Bryn Mawr, she said, “We’ve known about this situation for a long time, but, in the absence of probable cause, when one’s suggestions are ignored, there isn’t a great deal one can do.” The name, address, and phone number of the Colley Society flashed on the screen, and one of the TV anchors, a woman, said that the Colley Society was appealing for donations of money, supplies, and grooming services to care for the rescued dogs. She ended on a firmly conclusive note, as if she’d done her part, and the male anchor took over. I watched as a still shirtless Walter Simms ducked into a cruiser and was driven away. The polished male voice said that Simms had been taken into custody and that Rinehart’s death was being treated as a homicide.

The female anchor began to report on delays in the construction of the new harbor tunnel. I channel-hopped in search of more news about the raid, but found none. Then I checked my answering machine, which blinked red with messages. The first was from Betty Burley, who apologized for not helping with Missy, wondered if I’d made any progress, and suggested that if Missy hadn’t turned up, we might want to consider advertising for her and offering a reward. The second was from a guy who’d seen the Malamute Rescue notice posted at a pet supply and grooming shop in Newton and who wanted me to call him. Most of the
people who call about adopting a rescue malamute want an obedience-trained watchdog under a year old who’ll get along great with six cats and stay in the yard if he’s turned loose, but I wrote down the name and number, anyway. Next, Gloria Loss reported that she’d quit her job. Kevin Dennehy had called to ask where I was. Sally Brand wanted me to return the photos I’d borrowed from her.

The machine lacks a date and time stamp. I had no idea when anyone had called. The last message, though, was from Steve, who said that it was three o’clock and that the golden was loaded with whipworm and coc-cidia, among other things, but that he didn’t want to hit her hard with worm medication because she was within a few weeks of whelping. He’d wait until the puppies were born and then treat the whole family. What the bitch needed now was improved nutrition, and that’s what she was getting.

I erased the messages, went back to the TV, tuned in midway through another story about the raid, and learned that I’d missed most of the dogs because forty-eight of them were discovered inside Walter and Cheryl Simms’s little house. I gathered from the TV footage that the indoor dogs were small—I spotted some cockers, Shih Tzus, bichons, and dachshunds—and that only the big dogs lived outdoors. According to the announcer, the golden retrievers and what he crassly referred to as “huskies,” meaning malamutes and elkhounds, I guess, were in better condition than the little indoor dogs, whose small, filthy cages and boxes were stacked throughout the house. Bitches of big breeds are usually free whelpers. But tiny breeds? Forced to bear litter after litter? Their agony was unimaginable. I wondered how they’d survived at all. Many hadn’t, of course.

At the end of the story, the camera zoomed in on Cheryl, who stood on the sagging porch in her pink raincoat, her thin, blotchy face a mindless mask of rage. She opened her mouth and wailed directly at the camera.
“Me and Walter didn’t do nothing wrong. You’d’ve thought we was in Communist Russia the way they just come and took all our dogs away.” She fell silent for a second, then added fiercely, evidently as an afterthought, “And Walter, too.”

Kevin Dennehy appeared at my back door that evening wearing a rumpled blue suit and, as befit both his profession and the damp weather, a tan trench coat. Clutched between the thick fingers of his enormous hands was a heart-shaped box only slightly redder than the blush on his face.

He stammered his routine greeting: “Hey, Holly how ya doing?” Before I had a chance to answer, he added, “Where you been?”

“At a tracking test,” I said more or less truthfully. “Kevin, I had totally forgotten it was Valentine’s Day. This is—”

Let me say that Kevin was really embarrassed. He looked like an overage kid forced to serve as the ring bearer at the formal wedding of some despised relative. He thrust the candy at me, two pounds of dark chocolates with all soft centers. As Kevin had obviously remembered, I don’t like milk chocolate, and my fragile dental work won’t stand up to anything more solid than cream fillings and squishy cherries.

I thanked Kevin for the chocolates and offered to share, but he refused. I ate one, made happy noises, and then, to relieve Kevin’s discomfort, changed the subject.
“So Simms murdered Rinehart, huh? How come nobody noticed he was missing?”

While I was stashing the box of chocolates in the refrigerator, one hidey-hole that Kimi hasn’t yet learned to penetrate, Kevin said, “Joe was the kind of a guy who didn’t like people sticking their noses in his private business. The salesmen out there and the mechanics and the secretaries and whatever kind of wondered what happened to him, but what with Enzio and all and what with the economy and all, they weren’t going to come running to us and then have Joe turn up.”

“I guess it wouldn’t exactly have earned them any bonuses,” I said. “You want to help me walk the dogs?”

Kevin agreed to take Rowdy. Unlike Rita, Kevin considers the malamute a walkable breed. The policeman is your friend, right? Strong and brave. In fact, Kevin is always glad to take Rowdy, but he hates being in charge of Kimi. Although Kevin never admits it, I’m convinced that he doesn’t like being seen with a girl who lifts her leg.

The rain had started up again, but the air was warm, at least by the standards of coastal Maine, where
warm
is any temperature above forty degrees. I wore my yellow slicker and Wellies. Kimi and Rowdy wore matching red training collars and leads. The light over my back door showed a few crocuses breaking through the frozen ground in a patch of earth between the fence and driveway. Kimi cocked a hind leg over them. Ever the gentleman, Kevin looked away. Rowdy, though, watched, sniffed, and covered her scent. In his own way, he’s a gentleman, too.

“But, Kevin,” I said, “didn’t
you
notice that Rinehart was gone? I mean, Diane Sweet did business with Rinehart, Simms worked for him, Simms was at Puppy Luv.… So didn’t you try to …? I mean, I would’ve thought that a guy like that would’ve—”

“Yeah, yeah, they want to look like the upright citizen, got nothing to hide,” Kevin said, “but they’re kind of like a housewife with company coming. They want a
couple of days to get the accountant in there and get a little housework done. But even if his body hadn’t turned up, sooner or later, we’d’ve put it together. And if the scene hadn’t been such a godawful mess, they could’ve got it sorted out easier. They can tell dog hair from human hair, no problem, but it would’ve taken them a while, what with that much of it to look at. But once the body turned up …”

“Rinehart was
at
Puppy Luv?”

“Oh, yeah, Rinehart was there. No question. Everything matches up. The dog hair on him comes from there, traces of the dog shampoo they use. He’s got Puppy Luv written all over him. The head … when they found the body, the head was wrapped in a piece of this clear plastic, and it matches up. Covered with traces, Diane’s saliva, lipstick, an eyelash. And a piece torn out of the plastic fits with the little piece that got caught on her earring. No question.”

The dogs brought us to a halt at a lamppost on Concord Avenue that looks like every other lamppost in Cambridge, but obviously smells utterly distinct and fascinating. Kimi sniffed the base while Rowdy was checking out the area above her head.

“We’ll have to wait for them,” I said. “So it was Rinehart who strangled Diane Sweet? Kevin, that doesn’t make sense. Why would Rinehart kill her? She was a good customer, I think, and she was no threat to him. I mean, what kind of trouble could she have caused? Being a puppy broker is evil, but … Well, except that according to USDA regulations, Rinehart was supposed to hold the puppies for twenty-four hours, or something, and he probably didn’t. But, you know, when the USDA even bothers to inspect, they don’t do much. If they find a violation, all they usually do is tell the people to correct it. I can’t understand why Rinehart … Kimi, enough! Let’s go!”

Kimi lifted her leg on the interesting lamppost. Kevin hauled Rowdy away and looked back at Kimi. “You ever, uh, ask Delaney about that?”

“It’s perfectly normal,” I said. “A lot of bitches do it, but, of course, some of them just do it once in a while, and a lot of them don’t actually … And sometimes she squats. Anyway, it’s perfectly normal. So Rinehart—”

“Probably didn’t even touch her,” Kevin said. “Diane could’ve been dead when Rinehart got there. This plastic from the dog bed went from her to him. If Rinehart had been standing ten feet from her and sneezed, the lab could tell you, but Rinehart had on a dark suit, and Diane was wearing a fuzzy white sweater, so if he’d got close enough to strangle her, you could’ve seen it with your naked eye.”

“But, Kevin, I don’t see … The thing is, Rinehart … Kevin, on Wednesday morning, someone placed an order with Rinehart. Someone ordered puppies from him.”

“From his people,” Kevin said. “The business is still there. It’s an office, is what it is. Rinehart Pet Mart. Deals in cats, too. Kittens.”

“Jesus. So Rinehart got to Puppy Luv after—or probably after—Diane Sweet was dead? So Rinehart wasn’t—”

“Couldn’t’ve been,” Kevin said. “Rinehart tries to use this plastic on her, and that doesn’t work, so he strangles her, and someone comes along and grabs him and cracks his head on a bathtub, and wraps him up in the same piece of plastic he just-used …?”

“A bathtub?”

“The one in the back. Raised up high so’s the top is about level with your waist.”

“Right. So …?”

“Hair all over the place,” Kevin said, “including the drain of the bath tub, and, like you’d expect, most of it’s dog hair.”

“But?”

“But in the drain of the bathtub, we find a couple of strands of human hair. And just a little trace of human blood.”

“Thorough,” I said. “You guys are very thorough. From Rinehart?”

“From Rinehart,” Kevin agreed, “who happened to have had his head bashed against a solid object.”

“By Walter Simms,” I said. “Eliminating the middleman, right? So that was it? Brokers are the middlemen, and they’re the ones who get rich, and that’s what Simms was doing after all, right? Eliminating the middleman. Or wrong. I mean, I told you that Simms wasn’t trying to do that, because he couldn’t supply what Rinehart could, you know, that many puppies, all the breeds. But, Kevin, does Simms say … Look. Simms got there first, right? He got to Puppy Luv, and he killed Diane, and then—”

“You’re getting there,” Kevin said. “But you need to back up.”

“Janice Coakley? Simms goes to Your Local Breeder. He delivers the puppies Janice ordered from Rinehart, plus a few he’s selling her himself that Rinehart doesn’t know about.” Kevin said nothing. Then I got it. “But Rinehart
does
know! Rinehart knows. He’s caught on to Simms.” I paused. “And to Janice Coakley. And to Diane Sweet.”

For reasons perceptible only to dogs, Rowdy and Kimi had lost interest in the lampposts, fire hydrants, and trees, and were now setting a fast pace down Concord Avenue toward the Armory and Fresh Pond. Kevin and I were trotting after the dogs.

The words started to tumble out of my mouth. “And, Kevin, Janice Coakley knew! Or I think she did. On Wednesday, yesterday, Janice Coakley knew that Rinehart was dead, because yesterday morning, she placed two orders for puppies, some from Rinehart—or from Rinehart Pet Mart—and some from Walter Simms, and if she knew Rinehart had caught on, and if she thought Rinehart was still alive … So Walter Simms
told
her, right? Either he told her he’d killed Rinehart, or else he just told her that Rinehart was dead. Anyway, she knew it was safe to keep ordering from Simms.”

“You’re ten steps ahead,” Kevin said.

“So Rinehart had caught on to Simms and the whole deal. Rinehart knew they were cheating him.”

“How, I haven’t got that worked out yet, but, yeah, Rinehart caught on. More likely, he got told.”

“Okay. So Simms goes to Your Local Breeder, and … I’m lost. Anyway, he leaves there, and he drives to Puppy Luv. And then, he, uh, either he delivers the puppies first and makes love to Diane, if you can call it that, or he delivers the puppies after. And then, for some reason, Simms murders her. He gets this dog bed, and he starts to smother her, only he ends up strangling her? Anyway, for some reason, Rinehart is there, and Simms murders him, too, because … Well, for some reason, he does. And then, obviously, Simms isn’t just going to leave Rinehart’s body at Puppy Luv, because he wants it to look like a robbery, right? So he puts Rinehart’s body in whatever he’s driving. And then when he gets home, he dumps it in the shed. That part makes sense. The ground is frozen. Simms was waiting till the ground thawed to bury him.”

We turned onto Fayerweather Street, the Concord Avenue end, of course, which is like my block of Appleton Street, two-family houses, cops, writers, students, professors who live on their salaries. The neighborhood on our side of Huron Avenue is Fresh Pond, but once you cross Huron Avenue and head toward Brattle Street, twenty-room mansions replace the two-family houses, and … Well, congratulations! You’ve moved up in the world. Now you’re Off Brattle. Kevin voted for Governor Weld, who lives at the Brattle end of Fayerweather, but he avoids crossing Huron Ave. except in the line of duty.