The Barker Street Regulars

for getting to Ceci’s house in Newton, I stayed on the Cambridge side of the river, took a right onto Arsenal Street, and then made an immediate left onto the strip of Greenough Boulevard where I’d saved the cat. I did not, of course, expect to come upon the tall, evil man with the bulbous forehead. I certainly didn’t expect to catch him abusing another helpless little animal. It occurred to me that in Kevin Dennehy’s mind, that stretch of road represented a sort of Great Grimpen Mire, the haunt of the hound of the Baskervilles. Remember the famous message sent to Sir Henry Baskerville at the Northumberland Hotel? As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor. Well, Kevin had never come out and warned me about valuing my life and my reason, but when he mentioned the area, he spoke in sinister tones, and his wholesome freckled face took on a sort of Baskervillian expression. Anyway, as I drove slowly along what actually was a dire-looking stretch of road, I wondered why Kevin had wasted his time scaring me when he could have been calling the Metropolitan District Commission or writing to the Boston newspapers to demand the installation of streetlights along the presumably dangerous stretch. As it was, the only illumination came from the big lights in the parking lot of the shopping mall; the area by the river was utterly black. I relied on my headlights to see that only a couple of cars and one pickup were parked in the turnouts; there was no sign of the evildoer’s dark van. The pointless detour left me feeling guilty. If the cat had been a dog, wouldn’t I be doing more to find out who’d tried to drown it?
    After crossing the river, I pulled over to consult the directions that Hugh had dictated. Ceci lived in a section of Newton called Norwood Hill. Following Hugh’s instructions, I cut through Brighton and, just after entering Newton, veered sharply uphill in more senses than one. Brighton was apartment buildings, triple deckers, and shops that sold lottery tickets, potato chips, and not much else. As a tangle of streets ascended Norwood Hill, the size of the houses increased with the gain in altitude, and dim gaslights replaced the bright electricity of the lower regions. At a four-way intersection of narrow streets, I came to a stop to figure out where I was, but couldn’t read the street signs in the darkness and realized that the gaslights carried a message: If you didn’t already know your way around, you didn’t belong in this neighborhood at all. After crossing the intersection, I pulled up, dug a flashlight out of the glove compartment, got out of the car, and found a small street sign that told me I was almost at Ceci’s. Another gaslit block and a couple of turns put me on Norwood Road, which, as Hugh had said, soon split into Lower and Upper Norwood. Bearing right on Upper Norwood, I passed a baronial stucco minipalace, a rambling brick Victorian, a Cape that looked little and cosy by comparison with its imposing neighbors, and, on my left, a colonial that obviously dated not to New World imperialism but to the twentieth-century colonization of the suburbs. Beyond that colonial was a second, this one big, white, and square, with three gables and two massive chimneys. To the right of Ceci’s house was a detached garage, and in the driveway that led to it was a car I recognized from the Gateway lot, the old Volvo with the bumper sticker that read THE GAME IS AFOOT.
    I hadn’t even turned off the ignition when the front door opened. Robert, tall and dignified, came down the walk bearing a big battery-powered lantern. I noticed that he, like my father, had an exceptionally large head. Looped around his neck was the wide strap of a camera that clunked against his chest. To my relief, he wore neither an Inverness cape nor a deerstalker hat.
    At his request, I left Kimi crated in the car and followed him into the house, which was all high ceilings, brocade chairs, shiny mahogany tables, oriental rugs, and dark wood floors. Ceci, dressed in layers of pinkish-beige jersey, was fluttering around offering tea and sherry.
    Hugh looked up from an assortment of paraphernalia that he was removing from a cardboard box and arranging on the floor of the spacious front hall. Robert, as usual, wore a suit. Hugh had on a plaid flannel shirt with pens and pencils stuck in the breast pocket. Exchanging glances with Robert, he looked like a carpenter consulting an employer about which door he