Gaits of Heaven

pruned forsythia bush. At the sound of his name, he roused himself and came loping toward us.
    “Dolfo is an idiot,” Caprice said.
    In his defense, I said, “His intentions are good. And dogs feel grief, too. He could probably use your company.”
    Rolling her eyes, Caprice stretched out a hand to the dog, who took the gesture as permission to approach her. With a wry grimace, she tapped him on top of his head but didn’t speak to him. With the sense that I wasn’t leaving Caprice entirely alone, I hurried to the steps that led to the deck, ascended them, and beckoned to Kevin to join me.
    His mother, who is the actual owner of the house next to mine, takes an ethnographic view of the human countenance: she always describes Kevin as having the map of Ireland on his face, by which she means that he has red hair, blue eyes, and freckles. Ireland is, however, a rather small country, whereas everything about Kevin is big: his head, each facial feature, his arms and hands, his torso, his tree-trunk legs, his mammoth feet. Furthermore, his oversized presence shoves him front and center. You could take a group photo of fifty people with Kevin standing on one side in the back row, and if you asked anyone to pick out the central person in the picture, the respondent would reliably point to Kevin.
    “Hey, how ya doing,” he said.
    “Not too well, but better now that you’re here. I had an appointment to help train the dog.” I nodded in Dolfo’s direction. “Eumie wasn’t up yet.” Giving Ted no credit, I said, “I’m the one who found her. Kevin, I need your help. That’s Eumie’s daughter down there on the bench. Her name is Caprice. I want you to be the one who questions her. Please don’t delegate the job. She’s very vulnerable.”
    “Mr. Sensitivity,” Kevin said.
    “And keep Wyeth, the son, away from her. He’s her stepbrother. Ted’s son. Ted is Eumie’s husband. Anyway, I’m still reeling from the way Wyeth spoke to Caprice. When I found Eumie, it never occurred to me that the kids were in the house, and Caprice came in, and there she was, standing at the foot of the bed with her mother’s body right there, and this kid, Wyeth, was unbelievable. Kevin, it was emotional abuse. The term gets tossed around a lot, but this was the real thing. I’m taking her home with me. She doesn’t want to stay here with Ted and Wyeth.”
    “Ted,” Kevin said flatly. “ ‘That’d be Dr. Green to you, boy.’ ”
    “He didn’t say that.”
    “Close to. Not in those words. What he says is it’s an accidental overdose of prescription drugs.”
    “Not so long ago he was saying that Eumie was still alive, so I guess that in terms of his mental health, this is an improvement. Caprice says Eumie wouldn’t have taken an overdose, accidental or otherwise. She thinks that her mother was murdered. She’s very insistent.”
    “Hey, it’s her mother.” He shrugged.
    “Do you really need to question her?”
    “She was in the house, and like I said, it’s her mother. Just a couple of questions, and then get her out of here.” Kevin followed me across the deck, down the steps, and to the teak bench where Caprice was sitting. Dolfo was on the grass a few yards away from her.
    Kevin took a seat and said, “Kevin Dennehy, Cambridge police. You’re going to be able to go home with Holly if that’s what you want. Or somewhere else if you want.“
    “Another planet,” Caprice said.
    “Seeing that we can’t manage a spaceship, will Holly’s do?“
    “Yes.”
    “She warn you about all the dogs?”
    “I’ve met Kimi. Leah and I were in a class together. She brought Kimi with her a couple of times.”
    “There are four more at home. And a cat. You got any
    allergies?”
    “No.” She pointed at Dolfo. “It’s just this one I don’t like. He’s ugly and demented.”
    I resisted the temptation to defend Dolfo. For one thing, Kevin wasn’t just chitchatting; he knew what he was doing, and he was getting results in the sense that Caprice was visibly more relaxed than she had been. For another thing, Caprice didn’t fit an idealized image of beauty any more closely than Dolfo did; the less said about appearance, the better.
    With astounding disloyalty, Kevin said, “So is Holly’s cat.”
    I said, “Tracker is my cat. She is a member of our family.“
    “Dolfo was Ted and Eumie’s. Period,” Caprice said. “Slept in their bed,” Kevin remarked.
    “Peed on their bed,” Caprice said.