Bloodlines (21 page)

But he veered to face my headlights and broke the spell. Even over the Bronco’s engine and the loud roar of the van, his voice was loud, metallic, and inexplicably enraged: “Get the fuck out of here!”

Alaskan malamutes love people, of course, but every once in a while, their hackles rise at a tone of voice, a gesture, or maybe only a faint scent of something evil in the air. In the back of my car, Rowdy stirred. I could almost hear the hair rise along his back. To my amazement, he gave a single deep, soft growl. Rowdy is the friendliest dog I’ve ever known. He absolutely never
growls at strangers. Even so, I kept the windows closed, the doors locked, and my mouth shut. I tore down that rutted service road, headed home, and didn’t look back. Rowdy hadn’t been growling at a stranger. He’d been talking to me. He never speaks unless he has something to say. And he never lies.

When I arrived home, the burly, shrouded figure of Kevin Dennehy was pacing the sidewalk. Although Kevin considers our neighborhood his responsibility, he doesn’t actually walk a beat along Appleton and Concord, and if he did, he wouldn’t wear a torn sweatshirt and a pair of worn-out summer shorts over a set of Lifa polypropylene long underwear topped by a ragged scarf and a half-unraveled watchman’s cap and bottomed by a pair of million-dollar athletic shoes. Should you happen to notice him there, don’t be alarmed—he’s just cooling down after a long run.

As I was opening the tailgate, Kevin lumbered up and said, “Dog training?”

“No, for once,” I said. “I’ve been, uh, looking at vans. A Toyota van.”

“Yeah? That’ll cost you.”

“It’s used,” I said.

“Toyota, huh?”

“Yes.”

“You got something against Ford all of a sudden? Or Chevy?”

“Since you mention it,” I said, “I do have something against General Motors. Crash tests with dogs. You want the details?”

Rowdy and Kimi bounded onto the driveway and began sniffing around to find out who’d done what where while we’d been gone.

“You know,” Kevin told me solemnly, “if you’re not careful, one of these days you’re going to turn into one of these animal rights nuts.”

“Kevin, you know something? In China, they eat live newborn baby mice. By their standards, you’re an animal rights nut, okay?”

“You’re in a great mood tonight.” He kicked one of the rear tires of the Bronco. “Car trouble?”

“No, not really. It’s, uh, the mileage is getting up, and the interior …”

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “Smells like dogs.”

I corrected him. “Only in wet weather.”

“Hey, what’d they offer you for it? On a trade?”

“No one looked at it,” I said. “Rowdy, get your nose out of that this minute! Leave it!”

“Well, watch out,” Kevin said. “Before you let ‘em look at it, get it cleaned up, and don’t bring up the mileage. Some of these sharks … Hey, where you been looking?”

“In Westbrook,” I said slowly and deliberately. “Rinehart Motor Mart. Joe Rinehart.”

I was playing a hunch. Missy had come from Puppy Luv. Missy’s dam, Icekist Sissy, belonged to Rinehart, who had evidently leased her to the breeder, Walter Simms. Rinehart was a USDA-licensed puppy broker. If Kevin had been going over the paperwork at Puppy Luv, he’d probably seen Rinehart’s name. Kevin certainly wouldn’t volunteer any information about Puppy Luv’s sources of dogs, but if I dropped a name, he might show some response.

Some
response? Kevin hollered, swore, apologized, and then turned cold. “What did I tell you, Holly? These aren’t nice people.”

I rested my back against the Bronco. “No one needed to tell me that. I knew it already. You’re the one who just discovered it, I guess.”

“Do you know who Rinehart
is?”

“A guy who can’t tell the difference between a dog and a used car,” I said. “He’s a USDA-licensed puppy broker. I even know where he lives. As a matter of fact, I was at his house today. He lives in Burlington.”

“So you know everything there is to know about him, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” I said arrogantly. “Everything that counts. Except where he is now and what he’s doing with—”

Kevin interrupted me. “You know who his wife was?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t even know he had one.”

“Maria Guarini,” Kevin said. “Maria Guarini Rinehart. The late. Died of cancer a couple of years ago.”

The frigid air suddenly penetrated my parka and gloves. “Guarini,” I repeated flatly.

“Guarini. Enzio’s son-in-law.”

“Kevin, I’m freezing,” I said. “Come inside.”

“Hey, I’m all—”

“I don’t care if you’re sweaty! Come inside. Kevin, I’m not fooling around. Come in with me. You wanted to scare me, right? Okay, I’m scared. In fact, I’m scared off. I swear, I will never so much as set foot in Burlington again, all right? But you can’t take off now.”

If you ever share the confines of your kitchen with a large human male who’s cooling down after a long-distance run, you may find yourself remembering, as I did, that dogs sweat principally through their tongues and the pads of their feet.

“Hey, I’m stinking up your kitchen,” Kevin apologized. “Let me go—”

“No. I want to know what’s going on. Sit down, would you?” When I’d settled him at the table with a cold Bud I said, “Kevin, I need to know what’s going on. I’m not deep into this, and, believe me, Guarini’s son-in-law? I’m a dog writer, okay? I don’t know anything about people like that, and I’m not exactly eager
to meet them. So don’t turn paternal. I just need to know, uh, where I am. First of all, is Rinehart … Is he a sort of slim guy, early twenties, maybe? Good-looking in a kind of greasy way? Drives a dark van, and—”

“Where’d you run into
him?”
Kevin plunked the beer can onto the table and eyed me belligerently.

“Rinehart Motor Mart. So that’s Joe Rinehart?”

“Naw,” Kevin said. “Rinehart’s a long drink of water, and he’s probably pushing sixty. Sickly-looking guy, white hair with a lot of yellow in it, combed straight back and kind of, what do you call it, crimped. You know, with these rows of waves across the top like he’s been to the hairdresser.”

“Well, that’s definitely not … Kevin, tell me something. If Rinehart … Kevin, just how involved is the mob in this stuff? I mean, is this puppy mill and pet shop business one of their, uh, sidelines?”

Kevin flexed his shoulder muscles, gave a sly little grin, and said, “Course, this is supposed to be a deep dark secret, but the next time there’s an opening for special agent in charge of the organized crime squad, you better keep your ears open, ‘cause you’re going to hear the phone ringing next door, and then, if I’m not home, you’re going to hear them beating down my door.”

“Okay! Yeah, I guess the FBI or whatever doesn’t exactly delegate this stuff, but, Kevin, you do have some idea of what is and isn’t run by the mob. And you obviously have some idea of who these people are. So do they …? I mean, could it be some kind of money-laundering thing? Rinehart is a puppy broker, and if Guarini …”

Kevin shook his head. “There’s nothing these people won’t touch, but Joe and Enzio aren’t pals. What you hear is that when Joe married Maria, he was expecting Enzio to open up his arms and welcome him into the bosom of the family.” Kevin gave what I took to be a Don Corleone locked-jaw grin, embraced the air in front of him, and swooped it to his chest. “Only Enzio’s
no dummy, and he decided Joe was marrying his daughter for her family connections. It might’ve worked out all right if Joe and Maria had given Enzio some grandchildren.” Kevin paused.

“But they didn’t,” I said.

“No kids, and according to Enzio, it’s on account of Joe, and then when his daughter dies, that’s on account of Joe, too.” He tilted his head back and emptied the can of Bud.

As I got him another, I said the obvious, namely, “That’s totally senseless.”

“Tell that to Enzio,” Kevin said. “Take that back.
Don’t
tell that to Enzio.”

“So Joe doesn’t work for Enzio?”

“Like I said, they aren’t pals. But, of course, Enzio’s had a little trouble in his life lately. Maybe Joe doesn’t work for Enzio. Maybe he doesn’t exactly
not
work for him, either. To a guy like Enzio? So maybe Joe was a bastard, but he was Maria’s husband, and … These Italians are like that.” In case you happen to be a militant member of the Cambridge Committee on Political Correctness, let me implore you not to get Kevin fired. For one thing, Kevin’s best friend, Mickey De Franco, is also his cousin, and, like most other Irish people in Greater Boston, Kevin is part Italian himself.

“So this guy I saw tonight,” I said. “When I asked you if that was Rinehart, you didn’t just say no. You said something like, ‘That’s not
Rinehart.’
So it sounded like … I mean, I had this feeling that what you meant was that he was someone else. Not just not Rinehart?”

Kevin stood up and stretched. “He’s a tough little nobody.”

“Rowdy didn’t think so,” I said. “When … I’d turned my car around, and … really, I didn’t do
anything
to him. He’d pulled his van out of the back lot at Rinehart’s, and he got out to shut the gate, and I saw him in the headlights. And so he started swearing and yelling at me to get out of there. And Rowdy growled.”

The sound of his own name would rouse Rowdy
from a coma. He’d been stretched out on the floor in a deep doze, but now he stood up, shook himself, and padded over to me. Have I ever mentioned what a beautiful dog he is? As maybe you’ve noticed, he looks quite a lot like a famous malamute named Inuit’s Wooly Bully, who was called Floyd. Rowdy’s a pretty boy, too. I told him so.

“Probably a dog somewhere around,” Kevin said. He had a point. That van could have been packed with puppies. When Rowdy and Kimi are in
their
car, they’ll warn other dogs away. If they spot a particularly dominant-looking canine, they’ll roar, yell, and claw at the windows.

“I didn’t see one,” I said, “and if there’s a dog around, I notice. Besides, I could tell. Maybe you won’t believe it, but it’s true. Rowdy didn’t like the sound of this guy’s voice.”

Kevin’s big face crinkled up, and he said, “Oh, yeah?”

“Yes,” I said. “So what’s his name?”

“Simms,” Kevin said. “He’s Rinehart’s delivery boy. He’s the guy who brought the puppies to Diane Sweet. Walt Simms. Hey, Holly, like I told you, local dogs.”

Rowdy strolled to his water dish. He drank with loud splashes. The refrigerator hummed. Kimi yipped softly in her sleep. To hide my face from Kevin, I got up, filled the kettle, and put it on to heat.

“Oh,” I said, smiling. Smiling? You bet. Kevin would arrest Walter Simms for the murder of Diane Sweet; Simms’s dogs would somehow be confiscated; we’d get Icekist Sissy back; and we’d rescue the others, too. “Well, Kevin, if this guy was there that night, then obviously—”

“His story’s, uh … his story checks out.”

“He admits he was there?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And?”

Kevin’s smile was wry. “I’ll tell you something.”
Kevin’s eyes have a wonderful clarity. They locked on mine. “You hear the craziest things in this job. Amazing things. And every time I think I’ve heard it all, then I hear something else.”

“What did you hear this time?”

“Well, Sunday night, Monday morning, we figured what we were dealing with here was a rape and robbery.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” I said. “My God. That really is awful. Now I
am
sorry for her.” And I was, too. Yeah, I know. Murder didn’t elicit all that much sympathy, but rape did. I’m not trying to justify my feelings, you know. I’m just telling you what they were. “Kevin, what the hell are you smiling about? You know, I have read and heard a lot about how the police, at least male cops, don’t take this seriously, but I never, ever thought that
you—”

“It wasn’t rape,” Kevin said.

I was furious. “Oh,” I said, “I suppose she had on black lace underwear, so you guys decided—Kevin, I can hardly believe this. If anybody had asked me, I would have said that more than almost
any
other cop, including women, you would be—”

“Hey, hey.” Kevin raised both palms to stave off a tirade. “It all checks out. They had a regular thing going, him and Diane. Whenever Simms brought an order of puppies, uh, let’s say the puppies weren’t the only thing he delivered.”

“You’re joking. How do you know that? I suppose that’s what Simms said, right?”

Kevin patted his giant hands on his even more giant thighs and made clucking noises to Rowdy, who happily went to him. “This night business hit me right from the beginning. You have to ask yourself, why would she stay there late, washing dogs? Why not wait till morning? Why not get someone else to do it? Yeah, Diane did a lot of work, but she ran the place, and she could’ve got one of these kids who work there to wash and brush
the puppies. Only she didn’t. But the main thing is, all of them knew about it.”

“How could they know? I mean, they might have wondered or something, but …”

“One of these kids, Patty, her name is, nice kid, one time, back in December, she gets home from work and a couple of hours later, she can’t find her wallet, and all her money’s in it, driver’s license, and she’s going out. So she thinks maybe she left the thing at work, it fell out of her pocketbook, so she goes back to Puppy Luv.”