Bloodlines

are pulling one over on him, but he doesn’t know about her affair with Simms. So Rinehart scares the pants off her, and then he takes off after Simms.”
    “So Janice calls to warn Simms! Only, of course, Diane answers the phone, right? I mean, she owns the place, and her voice is on the tape. So did Janice talk to Simms?”
    “That wouldn’t’ve done it,” Kevin said. “Remember, like I told you about the dogs. If they know, they care. Janice calls Diane, and she wants to talk to Simms, and when Diane asks why, Janice makes a big mistake, not for her, for Diane. She tells Diane that Rinehart’s on his way and she has to talk to Simms, and she lets it slip that they’ve got this special relationship. Or maybe she says Walter is special to her. Something like that. She can’t remember exactly.”
    “So basically Janice told Diane. Diane thought Simms sort of belonged to her, and then she found out he was sleeping with her sister, too. Oh, okay! So Diane never passed on the message, right? She heard special, and she probably heard something in Janice’s tone of voice, and so she never told Simms that Rinehart was on his way.”
    “Cool customer,” Kevin said. “Businesswoman type.”
    “And then?”
    “Conjecture. Diane doesn’t pass on the word about Rinehart. She just tells Simms that she knows all about him and Janice, and while she’s yelling at him and maybe he’s yelling back, Rinehart shows up, and I think he comes to the back door. That’s where Simms’s van is, and Rinehart’s on a kind of back-door errand, anyway. So Rinehart’s at the door, and when Diane hears him, she knows who it is. She’s expecting him.”
    “And Simms could’ve... He could’ve thought it was her husband, I guess.”
    “Not if he heard Rinehart’s voice. Simms worked for Rinehart. He would’ve recognized his. So when Simms heard Rinehart holler to open the door, that’s when he decided to shut her up, and while he was at it, he decided to make it permanent.”
    “He knew Diane hadn’t warned him. He realized why Janice had called, and he knew Diane hadn’t warned him. Oh, and Simms hadn’t talked to Janice, so he didn’t know for sure that Rinehart had caught on, did he? And maybe Diane could’ve told Rinehart, I don’t know, more than he knew already, like how long it had been going on, whatever.”
    “Or maybe Simms just does what little Walter does when he’s really pissed off.”
    “I don’t—”
    “You will,” Kevin said.
    As predicted, at the intersection with Huron, the great sociogeographical divide, Kevin turned right instead of crossing over into Off Brattle. Rowdy darted toward a tree, raised a hind leg, practically wrapped himself around the trunk, lowered his leg, sniffed the tree, and then lifted his leg so high that he almost toppled over.
    “Macho,” Kevin said with approval.
    “So how did Rinehart get in? Did Simms open—”
    “Tire iron. We got that one wrong to start with. We figured that was part of the business of faking a robbery, like emptying the cash drawer and all, but the tire iron’s covered with Rinehart’s prints. Rinehart did that. Dumb guy, when you think about it. You know, I’ve been thinking about that, about him and Enzio, and I was thinking maybe what Enzio always had against him wasn’t that he wasn’t Italian. Maybe Enzio just always figured Rinehart was stupid. Anyways, he should’ve pulled his gun.”
    “Rinehart was carrying a gun?”
    “Ça va sans dire,” Kevin said and added, rather unnecessarily, “like the Frogs say.”
    “So then Simms—?”
    “Socked him one in the gut, gave him a swift kick where it hurts, and dragged him around the corner to this bathtub and banged his head.” Kevin paused. “Contusions. Not a lot of blood.”
    “So the plastic was to keep the blood off the van or truck or whatever. Hey, wait a minute. What happened to Rinehart’s car? If he drove from Janice Coakley’s to Puppy Luv...”
    The streetlight near Henry Bear’s toy shop showed Kevin’s grin. “Just like Mabelline.”
    “What?”
    “Coupe de Ville. Like the song. Mabelline. Cadillac Coupe de Ville.”
    “So where is it?”
    “Parked on the street, couple of blocks away, covered with tickets, tire iron in the trunk, right where little Walter put it. Like I said, we would’ve worked it out sooner or later.”
    “Okay, so what’s the ‘You will’? There’s something else, right? I can tell from your face.”
    “Little Cheryl,”