The Barker Street Regulars

assert that I was a complete dog nut.
    Eavesdropping on the detective’s end of the conversation, I said, “Tell Kevin that I absolutely have to see him tonight.”
    The innocent request generated a lot of guffawing back and forth. I didn’t try to straighten out the misunderstanding. I just wanted to get home to Cambridge so I could finally hand over to Kevin the crucial evidence that rested at the back of a closet.
    And as I’d begun to say before leaping backward, when I finally reached home and again presented Kevin with the evidence, he got understandably defensive. But then I explained that the cosmos is, after all, a harmonious whole in which people, animals, and objects communicate with one another all the time. I didn’t actually need to explain the phenomenon to a cop. Kevin understood it already. Cops know more than I do about trace evidence. You know that old saw about killing two birds with one stone? Well, maybe Artie Moore had it in mind when he tried to drown Tracker. The stone he’d used to weight the pillowcase communicated its history. It spoke to the police laboratory. The stone said that it had been in contact with the scalp of Donald Lively. And with Artie Moore’s hands. Oh, and the missing shovel used to bludgeon Jonathan Hubbell? Where would you guess it was? I guessed right. Kevin believed me. The police had no difficulty in dredging up the weapon in almost the exact spot where Artie Moore had tried to dispatch Tracker. Kevin was smug about the discovery. He’d always told me to beware of that lonely stretch of Greenough Boulevard.
     

Chapter Thirty-three
     
    I RENE WHEELER WAS APPREHENDED not in California, but at Logan Airport in Boston. She was, however, about to board a flight for San Francisco. In her possession was a large amount of cocaine. She was evidently making off with her confederate’s entire stash. Its value, I am told, was enough to endow a small foundation. Charges were also brought against her in connection with the murder of Jonathan Hubbell. In the apparent hope of saving herself, she tried to place all blame for the slaying on Artie Moore. Artie, she maintained, had acted entirely without her knowledge or consent. She was perfectly open about having enlisted Artie to manage Simon’s “appearances.” Indeed, she took pride in having made every effort to gratify an old woman’s wish for earthly reunion with her departed pet. Her instruction to Artie had been to acquire a Newfoundland. Until informed by the police, she had no idea that the dog had been stolen. Or so she claimed. When Artie showed up with a dog of the wrong breed, she was unhappy with him, but soon realized that the substitution of a live Great Pyrenees for a dead Newfoundland was nothing more than a kindly white lie.
    As to the murder of Jonathan Hubbell, Irene insisted that Artie alone was guilty. He had made a full confession to her, she stated, just before her final visit on Norwood Hill. As she had been horrified to learn, on the Saturday of Jonathan’s death, Artie had violated her client’s confidentiality by lurking outside the alcove during the discussion she’d had with Ceci and Jonathan. After her departure, Artie had returned to his van, which was parked on Lower Norwood Road, and had mulled matters over with a dusting of chemical assistance. From Artie’s point of view, nothing would look more natural than the apparently accidental death by overdose of the yuppie grandnephew. His boring old aunt goes to bed. He turns to coke. What else? To Artie’s stoned amazement, however, Jonathan spared him the trouble of breaking into the house or luring his victim out. Armed with a flashlight, Jonathan appeared in the yard. The beam slowly made its way down toward Lower Norwood Road. Cocaine had a less beneficial effect on Artie Moore’s reason than it did on Holmes’s. Artie impulsively revised his plan. Now, the yuppie grandnephew leaves the house to do his coke, he overdoses outdoors instead of inside. As Jonathan neared the bottom of the yard, Artie got out of the van. His eyes apparently focused on the vehicle unexpectedly parked on the dark street, Jonathan stumbled, dropped the flashlight, and fell, striking his head on the shovel that his great-aunt had abandoned on the ground after her abortive attempt to disinter Simon’s ashes. In response to Jonathan’s soft cry of pain, the false Simon, the Great Pyrenees incarcerated in Artie’s van, gave a low growl. The twin sounds