Bloodlines

brushed my teeth three times, and burned my lips and gums with full strength mint mouthwash.
    After I’d dressed and fed the dogs, I carried the portable TV from the guest room to the kitchen, made coffee, and drank it while I watched the five o’clock news. At least one of the vehicles in the caravan on Old County Lane had obviously carried a camera crew and equipment. The bad color of my little TV turned the Simmses’ house—and everything else—a pale, sickly green. According to the voice-over, today’s early-morning raid on a suspected puppy mill in Afton had resulted in the seizure of sixty-eight dogs from the home of Walter Simms and his sister, Cheryl. The coffee cup almost fell from my hand. Sixty-eight dogs?
    The camera now panned the back of the property, and the voice went on: The raid had taken an unexpected and sinister twist when authorities searching for dogs had come upon the body of a recently deceased man, identified as Joseph Willard Rinehart, 55, of Burlington. Miniaturized and washed in green, the shed appeared.
    Then the little TV showed tiny lime-tinted figures, human and canine, heading toward a row of vans and station wagons. The announcer said that the tip on what officials were calling a puppy mill had come from Jane M. Appleyard of the Eleanor J. Colley Humane Society, who credited an unidentified friend of the Simms family with serving as informant.
    A friend of the family? I wished the unrelenting flow of the story would stop and give me time to work things out. A friend? Someone who dropped by to watch the Celtics? Who sat around drinking Miller Lite? I couldn’t imagine anyone liking Walter and Cheryl enough to ignore the nauseating odor for the sake of their company. I couldn’t even think of Walter and Cheryl as a family, never mind as a family with friends.
    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 coccidia, 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