Bloodlines

one of those puppies because you didn’t—”
    “Like I said, Holly, go home. I don’t want to see you back here. Go home.”
    “Kevin, I’m sorry she’s dead, but that woman must have had a lot of people who hated her. You think this is a dirty business now? Well, it was always a dirty business. There are probably five hundred people in Cambridge who bought sick dogs from Diane Sweet, maybe more. And every one of them must’ve found out what her so-called health guarantee really meant, which was not a damn thing. She didn’t care where her puppies came from, and she didn’t care where they went, and she didn’t care what happened to them, because nobody who runs a pet shop gives a damn. They care about one thing, and that’s profit. Diane Sweet had enemies. She deserved them. So I’m sorry she’s dead, but I’m not sorry she’s out of business, and there are going to be a whole lot of people who agree with me.”
    “I got work to do,” Kevin said coldly. “Go home. It’s not just dogs that make me sick. It’s you. Get out of here. You make me sick.”
     

11
     

     
    When I stood on Enid Sievers’s doorstep, my cheeks were still as raspberry as the paint on her house. Maybe nobody had chosen that color after all. Maybe a good friend had looked the house in the eye and said, “You make me sick.” Did I deserve Kevin’s disgust? Maybe. While I waited for Enid Sievers to answer the bell, the medical examiner who’d been sickened by the stench in Puppy Luv was probably cutting into the body of its proprietor. I wondered whether Diane Sweet’s tongue still remained that peculiar shade of loud pink. My stomach turned over.
    Enid Sievers opened the door. She wore lavender. Her eyes focused on a spot above my head. “Oh,” she said vaguely to the spot, “I was going to call you.”
    As on my last visit, she invited me in, ushered me to the love seat, took a place opposite me, demurely crossed her ankles, and offered me candy. This time it was Russell Stover chocolates with cream centers. I declined.
    “Mrs. Sievers,” I said. “I’m in sort of a hurry?” Why did I make it sound like a question? It wasn’t. It wasn’t even the truth. “If I could just get Missy...?”
    “Missy isn’t here,” she said, exactly as if she’d already told me so and was irked at me for having forgotten. Then her face took on a weirdly coquettish little smile. “On Friday, my friend called. The gentlemanly see.” Friend and gentleman. She uttered the words with smug passion. I had the sense of someone revealing an unexpected and wondrous secret.
    “Yes?”
    She delicately cleared her throat. “When I go away, you see, the boy who walks Missy will usually come in and feed her.” As if to allay my presumed concern for the security of her home, she added, “He’s perfectly trustworthy. I give him a key. He’s perfectly reliable.”
    “So...?”
    “He’d gone skiing! He’d already left. He’d gone on a bus with a group from church.” As if his destination mattered, as if it were evidence of betrayal, she added, “To Stowe! That’s in Vermont!” Her voice was mildly outraged. The heretofore trustworthy and reliable boy had done the inexplicable. “So my friend phoned Mr. Coakley.” She sounded as if she expected me to recognize the name. I didn’t. “And that’s where she is.” She folded her hands in her lap.
    “And where is...?”
    Enid Sievers drew herself bolt upright and said sharply, “This is all very painful for me, you know.”
    I dipped my chin in a nod of fake sympathy. You know what happens to hypocrites? According to Kevin Dennehy’s mother, the earth opens and swallows them up. I listened for an ominous rumble. There was none.
    Enid Sievers went on. “And once she was there, it seemed easier to leave her. If I’d brought her back here, I’d’ve just had to give her up again, wouldn’t I? After all, I have myself to consider, too.” She raised a thin hand to her lavender bosom. “This is very painful for me.
    It seemed to me that it was more painful for Missy to be kicked out of the only home she’d ever known than it was for Enid Sievers to get rid of a dog she didn’t want, but for a change I kept my opinion to myself.
    “Where is Mr. Coakley?” I asked bluntly.
    “Westbrook.” Once again, she spoke with the annoyed tone of someone who is forced to keep repeating herself.
    “Westbrook, Maine?”
    “No, no. Massachusetts.”
    My mental map of the