The Barker Street Regulars

responded, “you did not raise Rowdy yourself. He is a malamute. Therefore, despite his gentleness with people—”
    Hugh interrupted. “Including, of course, Althea.”
    “He is a predator,” Robert resumed. “Had he been brought up with cats—”
    “And just how did you deduce that I did not raise Rowdy myself?”
    With a smug little smile, Robert said, “Canine nomenclature merits a small monograph. The name ’Rowdy’ is of an era that predates yours, my dear. Like ’Rex,’ it bespeaks the twenties and thirties.”
    “Rowdy,” I said, “is a traditional malamute name. Rowdy of Nome was the first registered Alaskan malamute.” I refused to give Robert the satisfaction of admitting, first, that Rowdy of Nome had, indeed, been born in about 1928 and registered in 1935 and, second, that my Rowdy had been given his call name by a man of Robert and Hugh’s generation. “You’re right about the cats,” I admitted. “Rowdy wasn’t raised with them. Neither was my other dog, Kimi. It would be difficult for me to get a cat, but it could be done. And, okay, if I had a cat, you’d see cat hair on me, maybe, but for all you know, I could have a tank of fish. An iguana. A ferret! They’ve just become legal in Massachusetts and—”
    “Possibly,” conceded Robert with a smile. “As practiced by those such as ourselves, the science is not exact. Watson, for example, was notably unsuccessful in applying the Methods.” Really, you could hear the capital letter.
    I tried to remember whether I’d told Althea that Rowdy and Kimi were my only animals. Althea’s roommate, Helen Musgrave, preferred cats to dogs. If I’d told Helen that I didn’t have a cat, Althea would have overheard. “But I’ve been thinking a lot about a cat,” I said, as if proving to Hugh and Robert that my mind, at least, was unreadable. “And I don’t necessarily live in Cambridge. I could live on Beacon Hill or in Allston, Brighton, Somerville, Belmont, Brook- I line—”
    “Denim jeans,” Hugh countered. “Hiking boots. No trace of cosmetics on the face. Hair not recently trimmed. In combination with your choice of reading material? We couldn’t help noticing. Indeed, we make every effort to do so.”
    “Everyone reads Cynthia Heimel,” I said defensively. “She’s the funniest woman in America.”
    “Unmanicured nails,” Hugh responded. “Your Navajo ring.”
    “I didn’t buy the ring. It was a present.” From Steve Delaney. Steve is my vet. My lover. He lives in Cambridge, too. Come to think of it, he’d bought the turquoise ring in the Square.
    Hugh, undaunted, said, “When we lamented the demise of Elsie’s, you agreed.”
    Hugh looked so pleased with himself that I didn’t bother to argue. Elsie’s was a lunch place in the Square that made world-famous roast beef sandwiches. Anyone anywhere could have agreed that the closing of Elsie’s was a loss to the Square. “You looked me up in the phone book,” I charged. “And just because I live in Cambridge, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m a writer,” I said mendaciously. Hah! It’s true that not everyone in Cambridge is a published writer. My next-door neighbor Kevin Dennehy, for instance, is a Cambridge cop, and he’s never published anything. Being not just any cop, however, but a Cambridge cop, Kevin is convinced that there’s a book to be written about his experiences on the force. Kevin is probably right. He just hasn’t gotten around to putting the words on paper yet. “And not everyone who owns dogs writes about them,” I pointed out. “Am I covered with ink and hair?”
    With a languid Holmesian sigh, Robert pointed out that I was free in the daytime and walked around with a steno pad tucked in the outside pocket of my shoulder bag. “You are Holly, not Dr. Winter, not Professor Winter,” he said. “Cambridge being what it is, had you a title, you would use it. Therefore, you are not an academic. You own an exceptionally well-trained dog of a notoriously difficult breed.”
    “Malamutes are not difficult. They’re interesting.”
    “On Rowdy’s collar,” Robert continued, “Hugh observed an extraordinary number of tags. The average dog wears, perhaps, two: a dog license and a rabies tag.”
    “And an ID tag with the owner’s address,” I added, without admitting that Rowdy wore so many tags that I could hardly remember what they were: license, rabies, my name and address, his therapy dog tag, one proclaiming him a