Gaits of Heaven

consumed a large amount of vitamin and herbal supplements as well as soy milk and the juices of raw vegetables.
    Kevin disapproves of everything about the death of Eumie Brainard-Green. For a start, he hates weird food. He also disapproves of hyphenation. Although I have talked to him about Lucy Stoner, he disapproves of my having kept the name Winter when I married Steve. He disapproves of Eumie’s neighborhood, too, not because Avon Hill is populated by the gown side of the town-gown split but because, like other gownish areas, so to speak, it has been invaded by the very rich, who flaunt their wealth and who, far from parading around in academic gowns and driving venerable Volvos, wear designer clothing and drive BMW and Lexus SUVs. He almost wishes that the dead woman had worn peasant garb, denim, and three hats at once, had driven some ancient and eccentric vehicle—an adult-size folding tricycle, for example—and had been getting a Ph.D. in some useless and probably unspeakable foreign language, which is to say that Lieutenant Dennehy wishes that she had been a familiar Cambridge type and not one of the new ones, to whom he objects principally because they baffle him. More than anything else, Lieutenant Dennehy disapproves of unnatural death or, indeed, unnatural anything else that occurs within the city limits and especially within walking distance of his own neighborhood and thus near his own mother. He feels particular rage at the young officer who was first on the scene and who was so intimidated by the Brainard-Green house and the Avon Hill neighborhood that instead of immediately protecting the scene, he had allowed the surviving family members to meander around as they damned well pleased. Kevin Dennehy does not believe in policing by ZIP code. He does, however, approve of Mike’s Gym. The invaders belong to overpriced tennis clubs with swimming pools. At Mike’s, town and gown sweat together.
     

CHAPTER 13
     
    On Wednesday morning, Caprice slept until eleven o’clock. Steve and Leah had left for work at six-thirty, and by the time Caprice staggered downstairs, I’d vacuumed up dog hair, unloaded the dishwasher, and written a four-page article, complete with sidebar, about pet-stain removal. Healthy people Caprice’s age have an extraordinary capacity for sleep and can easily seem drugged when they finally rouse themselves. Caprice’s mother had just died. Still, the young woman looked so abnormally out of it that I had to wonder whether she shared the family fondness for prescription medication. But what did I know? Damned little. And most of that damned little was, of course, about dogs. For as long as I could remember, veterinarians had been prescribing sedatives for agitated dogs. The old-time favorite was ace-promazine, but these days, up-to-date vets prescribed some of the same drugs used for distressed human beings. According to Steve, all medications carried the risk of adverse reactions. He favored plain old over-the-counter Benadryl, an antihistamine that includes drowsiness among its side effects, but he occasionally prescribed tranquilizers, sedatives, and the same SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, that Rita’s patients used for depression. In fact, antidepressants were what had brought Rita and Quinn Youngman together. The circumstances were exceedingly unromantic. One of Rita’s patients had a manic episode in response to Prozac prescribed by the psychopharmacologist to whom Rita was sending those in need of medication. Rita blamed the guy for starting the woman on too high a dose, and she was furious at what she saw as his lack of sympathy for her patient, who, among other things, talked nonstop for thirty-six hours, racked up gigantic credit card bills, and ended up in a hospital emergency room. So, Rita found someone else to do her meds, as the expression goes, and that someone else was Quinn Youngman. Anyway, I knew a little about psychoactive drugs from Steve and Rita, but all I knew, really, was enough to wonder about Caprice’s grogginess.
    It also concerned me that instead of eating what I’d have considered a nutritious breakfast, Caprice had nothing but black coffee and half an English muffin spread with peanut butter and jelly. When Caprice entered the kitchen, Rowdy and Kimi were there. Both leaped to their feet and, ever alert to alterations in pack membership, signaled their willingness to include her by pealing loud, friendly woo-woo-woos. When