Bloodlines

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.”
    “And?”
    “And when she gets there—this is at the back of the store—she sees this guy Simms’s van, so she figures Diane is still there, so she knocks and whatever, and then when nobody comes to the door, she lets herself in. And back there, there’s this room where they wash the dogs, and that’s where they keep the coffee pot, take their breaks, hang their coats, that kind of thing. And that’s where this kid, Patty, keeps her pocketbook. Only she never gets that far, because when she opens the back door, she sees that the door to this dog washing room is half open.”
    “Grooming area,” I said. “And?”
    Sex embarrasses Kevin. His coloring is totally Irish, very fair, and when that Irish color rushes to his face, he turns scarlet. He looked at the floor and said quickly, “And there they were, going at it.”
    “On the grooming table?” I asked. It seemed like the logical place.
    But Kevin gazed upward, smiled, shook his head, and finally said, “They’ve got a funny kind of bathtub there, for washing dogs. Not down low, like a regular tub. Up high, sort of waist high, set in the wall.”
    “They’re always like that,” I explained. “So you don’t strain your back leaning over.”
    “Well, I don’t know if that’s why they were in it,” Kevin said, “but that’s where she says they were. Bubbles and ail. In a dog bathtub. Like I said, this is a crazy job.”
    “They probably weren’t too pleased when Patty uh... or...?”
    “According to her, they didn’t see her, never knew she was there. She just took one look and snuck out. And, uh, some of what Simms has to say confirms the whole story. And there’s, uh, material evidence to support it.”
    “What kind?”
    I could almost hear the grind as Kevin shifted to professional gear. “Her, uh, birth control device,” Kevin said stiffly. “Knows what she used, where she kept it, what she kept it in. He said she was wearing it. She was. And the, uh, case was where he said it was.”
    “That does sound... yeah, I agree.”
    “And the rest of Simms’s story checks out. He left his last place at around ten to nine, and he got to Cambridge, to Puppy Luv, around nine-thirty. The stop before was Diane’s sister’s place, this one you see the ads for, Your Local Breeder.”
    “I’ve heard of it,” I said.
    “And at around ten after ten, the sister, Janice, calls Diane, and Diane tells her that Simms has already left. And then Simms has this sister, Cheryl, he lives with, and Cheryl swears he got home around quarter of eleven, and that fits.”
    “Does it? Where does he live?” I asked casually. I hate a sneak, but what choice did I have?
    “None of your business.”
    “Near Rinehart,” I guessed. “His business.” I corrected myself. “Businesses. Plural. Westbrook. Then that is where Puppy Luv gets its dogs. From Rinehart. Believe me, from now on, I stay far away from him, okay? The whole idea of Guarini scares me. I don’t want anything to do with those people. I just want to know. You’ve seen the paperwork at Puppy Luv. Just tell me. That is where the dogs come