All Shots

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