The Barker Street Regulars

been able to reach Kevin today. But I have left messages.”
    “Now,” Rita said with annoyance, “I don’t know what to do about my client. She—”
    The pronoun was starting to get on my nerves. I wished that Rita would relax her professional ethics and spit out the name of her client. I interrupted Rita to say so.
    Rita glared at me before continuing. “ She , I repeat, she is really in agony, and I’ve been trying to support the reality part of this, taking steps, and so forth, and also working on her terrible sense of blame, which has to do with other issues in her life. And I saw the psychic, really, as a therapeutic ally. Although, I must say, so far, she’s done my client nothing but good.”
    “She’s slick,” I said. “I consulted her myself.”
    “ You?”
    “I wanted to get a firsthand impression, which was—and is—that she is smooth. That’s the hitch about the murder. This murder doesn’t gibe with my take on Irene Wheeler. I can easily see her as a con artist. In fact, that’s how I do see her. But I can’t see her bashing someone over the head with a shovel. That’s apparently what the murder weapon was. Ceci left a shovel in the yard. It disappeared. Anyway, the murder weapon was a blunt instrument, and blunt is not Irene Wheeler’s style. Sharp, subtle, something that could go undetected— that’s her style. Gloria is the blunt instrument type. She’s coarse. She’s blatant. You practically get a concussion just from listening to her.”
    “Maybe her involvement with this psychic goes deeper than you realize.”
    “Maybe it does,” I said.
    But Rita, of course, always thinks that everything goes deeper than I realize.
     

Chapter Sixteen
     
    H EY,” SAID KEVIN DENNEHY , “I’m not asking how much they took you for on that vacuum cleaner for dogs.” His gaze rose innocently and sanctimoniously to the overhead light fixture in my kitchen. Now and then, ex-acolyte Kevin Dennehy still locks baby blues with heaven.
    “Miss Manners would be proud of you,” I said. “But it isn’t a vacuum cleaner. It’s a blower. My old one quit, and I had to replace it. You can’t show-groom a malamute without one. It is an absolute necessity.”
    I might as well not have spoken.
    “And why is it,” Kevin continued rhetorically, “that a representative of the law stands idly by and keeps his mouth shut when a poor helpless citizen is being victimized by some door-to-door salesman out peddling vacuum cleaners for dogs?”
    “Kevin, really! I did not buy it from a—”
    “Because,” Kevin barreled on, “it’s your money, and you’ve got the right to throw it away on any crazy thing you want, that’s why. Take my mother.”
    The offer sounded genuine. “Are you planning a yard sale?” I asked.
    Kevin cracked a smile. “Trying to slip in ahead of the dealers?”
    “My own mother was enough for one lifetime. I’m not bidding on yours.”
    “A lot of people might consider my mother a crackpot,” Kevin said, eyeing me. “Good Catholic lady, raises her kids to be good Catholics, goes to Mass every day of her life, and boom! Out of nowhere, she’s a Seventh-Day Adventist.”
    “Your mother had a conversion experience. She wasn’t duped. There was no coercion. And when I spend money on my dogs, it’s my choice. No one is taking advantage of your mother or me. The situation with Ceci is totally different. Ceci is being had.”
    As we talked, Kimi had been peacefully dozing on the new tile floor at Kevin’s feet. A few minutes earlier, Rowdy had vanished to my bedroom to engage in one of his favorite pastimes: sorting through the big basket of highly assorted dog toys to pick the exact one that suited his fancy. Now, with an air of calm satisfaction, he wandered back into the kitchen bearing a fuzzy stuffed dinosaur and happily settled himself about a yard from Kimi. Because these polyester fleece creatures were billed as chew toys, I’d special-ordered squeakerless versions that would be safe in malamute jaws. Neither dog, however, had tried to rip open the dinosaur or its kin, which included a duck, a featureless man, a teddy, and a lion. Kimi, in fact, was relatively uninterested in the fleece toys. Rowdy, however, took immense pleasure in the little stuffed menagerie, pleasure that seemed to consist mainly of simple possession. After carefully selecting just the right toy, he’d stretch out with his treasure between his forelegs and close to his chest, where