The Barker Street Regulars (27 page)

To approach unobserved, I couldn’t stride up the bluestone path with a big, flashy dog. No, I’d need to take a circuitous route. I wished I’d seen the yard in daylight. Looking uphill, I could see the bright alcove, of course, and the silhouettes of the house and, to its left, the low roof of the garage. The sundial was to my left. Near it was the semi-excavated resting place of Simon’s ashes. Jonathan Hubbell had not, of course, caught a foot in the grave and taken a mortal fall onto the sundial. If I tripped or bumped myself, I’d survive. But not necessarily in silence. I moved to my right. With Rowdy’s leash in my left hand, I stretched out my right and inched along until my fingers brushed the hedge. Ceci had said that the yard was fully fenced. We’d follow the perimeter. Any hazardous pieces of garden sculpture would be on display in prime locations, not tucked in the boundary shrubs. I’d let Rowdy move ahead of me. Dogs have excellent night vision and, of course, that uncanny sense of smell. I’d keep an eye on Rowdy’s white tail. If he moved to avoid an object, I’d avoid it, too. And if we needed to vanish, the
shrubbery would offer hiding places. If we needed to bolt, we could run like mad for the stretch of fence to the right of the house, and in seconds we’d be through the gate and on the sidewalk of Upper Norwood Road.

The plan worked perfectly for about thirty seconds. We followed our course to the right, turned left, and were starting uphill when the bright lights in the alcove suddenly went out. In the blackness, I heard the simultaneous sound of a door and the wail of Ceci’s voice in the open air. “Simon, come!” she screamed. Her voice had the high-pitched musical quiver that you hear when elderly women sing hymns. “Simon, come! Here, Simon! Here! Simon, come!” Caroling to her dead dog, she was heartbreakingly eager and desperate. “Simon, please! Please come back!” Then impatience crept in, as if the long-gone Newfoundland bounced and pranced just out of reach, happily engaged in some infuriating game of catch-me-if-you-can. “Simon!” Ceci scolded. “Simon,
come! Come here right now!
”

Although Ceci’s behavior now strikes me as ludicrous and pitiful, its immediate effect was bizarrely convincing. On visits to the Gateway, I often took part in present-tense conversations about dogs who had left this world decades earlier, but lived on in the lives of their owners. There was a woman named Gladys who always perked up at the sight of Rowdy and announced to me in the familiar tones of canine fellowship, “I have two French bulldogs!” The first few times Rowdy and I visited Gladys, I assumed that her dogs lived nearby with a relative and that she got a chance to see them every week or so. I started to catch on when she happened to mention that she drove a Studebaker. I also learned that Gladys was an enthusiastic gardener. She complained about how hard it was to get the soil out from under her nails. To prove her point, she held out a
clean hand. Gladys and I nonetheless continued to discuss her French bulldogs. I couldn’t bring myself to ask a brittle, cheerful, “And how are your dogs?” Rather, on each visit, I let Gladys reestablish the present-day reality of the two French bulldogs and all the rest. Once she did, I always felt perfectly comfortable. Relativity didn’t freak out Einstein, did it? On the contrary, he enjoyed it. So did I.

Gladys’s Frenchies lived where she did, in an internally consistent past made present by physiological change, which is to say by a merciful act of God. Her relationship with them was thus as harmonious as mine with Rowdy and Kimi. Gladys and I had been blessed by coincidence: Temporal relativity had granted us the comforting good fortune of coinciding with our dogs. Furthermore, as surely as I could have driven Kimi to the Gateway to introduce her to Gladys, Gladys could not have presented her dogs to me, because they existed with her in her time, not with me in mine except during brief visits when Gladys, Rowdy, and I coincided in space. Is this getting too cosmic? The point is that in listening to Ceci’s expectant, melodious calls to a dog whose ashes lay buried nearby, I entertained the fleeting fantasy that there were two spectral dogs: one the unwitting impostor, the other the true Simon, who might triumph over time, space, death, and human fakery to leap over the heavenly and earthly gates to sail past me and into Ceci’s arms.

Rowdy stirred. From the house, I heard soothing murmurs: Irene. The French door closed; the lights came back on. Rowdy and I resumed our uphill course, reached the level of the terrace, and inched our way from the shrubbery to the corner of the house, and from there toward the spot where Hugh and Robert had found the crushed flowers. Light spilled onto the terrace from
the French doors at the center of the alcove, but the immense pot and lush foliage of the tropical plant at this corner of the little conservatory created an ideal post for eavesdropping. I could already hear soft voices. As I’ve mentioned, dogs have good night vision, and the long down had always been one obedience exercise that Rowdy performed quite reliably, if rather more noisily than the AKC obedience regulations allowed. Even if he hadn’t been able to see the downward sweep of my right hand, he’d have sensed the familiar signal to drop to the ground and stay put. Mindful that malamutes are malamutes, I repeated the signal to stay. I knew he wouldn’t get up. And in the absence of an AKC judge and a crowd of entertainment-hungry spectators, he probably wouldn’t howl.

An obedience dog knows that when you start with your left foot, you expect him to move with you: Heel! Consequently, when you leave a dog on a long down, you start off on your right foot. I took three small steps in front of Rowdy, squatted, and peered into the alcove. A plant entirely blocked my view, but I could hear everything. Irene was, however, speaking about a topic so unexpected that I was tempted to put my ear to the glass to make sure I was hearing correctly. I’d assumed that Ceci and her psychic would be discussing Simon, of course, and Ceci’s impatience for his return. I’d hoped to overhear talk of Jonathan and his murder. Or evidence of blackmail? What I got instead was, of all things, a damned travelogue. Irene Wheeler was discussing California.

“The climate,” she said with emphasis, “in all senses of the word, is naturally appealing. The atmosphere is wonderfully receptive.”

“According to the papers,” Ceci replied, “the smog is absolutely terrible, you can hardly breathe, and police
brutality, and the cost of real estate is simply sky-high, you pay millions for a dismal little hovel of a place, and the people! Thinking of nothing but making movies and riding on surfboards and sending some harmless man to jail for life because he forgot to pay for a slice of pizza pie. And what do you call it? Silicon! Everywhere! It’s terrible! I can’t imagine why anyone, certainly not you, would want to live in such a place.”

After softly clearing her throat, Irene confessed that finances were a consideration. “The foundation,” she said in a reluctant tone, “is not on the solid footing I had hoped. The endowment campaign”—she let the phrase hang for a moment—“has fallen short of my goals.” Without giving Ceci a second to respond, she added, “I must remain focused on the crucial importance of the work as a whole. I cannot sacrifice my greater mission. The global possibilities simply must take precedence over my ability to meet the needs of a few individuals, no matter how deserving.”

“But Simon is so close!” Ceci protested. “You can feel his presence! You felt it only five or ten minutes ago!”

“This very evening, he may yet appear,” Irene said.

“I have waited and waited! I have done everything!”

“Perhaps there remains some small impediment we have overlooked.” Irene was stalling. Had Simon’s impostor failed to turn up for a scheduled appearance? “The impediment may be my own discord,” she confessed. “My worldly worries are perhaps creating a field of negativity.” In an unusual burst of what sounded like genuine frustration, she exclaimed, “How I loathe and despise being weighted down by these petty material concerns!”

Ceci was not to be diverted. “Could Jonathan be
interfering again?” She made her murdered relative sound like some bothersome character in a soap opera.

“Jonathan has repeatedly assured us,” Irene reminded his great-aunt, “that he is at peace. Now that his eyes are open, he fully understands and appreciates our earthly efforts to awaken him to beauty and fullness.”

“And,” Ceci added, as if speaking a line that Irene had absentmindedly forgotten, “he has forgiven me completely.”

“He has passed beyond blame. If he forgives you, you must forgive yourself.”

“If I’d had the least idea that he’d go wandering out chasing away the burglar, I’d have warned him not to trip and fall on the sundial. But whoever would have thought that he’d go out?”

“The workings of the universe are just that,” Irene said firmly. “Accept his messages of love and peace.”

“Oh, I do, but I still can’t help blaming myself, not enough to drive Simon away, but I keep wondering—”

Irene interrupted. “Yes! We are making progress now. Listen to yourself! Keep
wondering!
Maintain the sense of wonder! It is the great secret of childhood and the great secret of animals! The
wonder
of it all! Remind yourself of what Simon has told us. He has brought us messages of the wonder and awe of eternal love.”

Irene, it seemed to me, had gone a bit further than she had intended. Ceci was now crying audibly.

But Irene knew what she was doing. “We must not be selfish about those messages. We must not be miserly. It is our duty to share this miraculous reality with everyone. By temperament, I am drawn to helping individuals, spirit by spirit, to using my gifts to unite and reunite all creatures. But these gifts are not mine to
keep to myself or to share with the few I can help directly. A foundation is not my personal wish. As you know, the notion goes against my grain. But I am a very small part of the cosmos. It is only my mission that is large.”

“My only mission,” replied Ceci, “is to see my Simon again. I would give anything,
anything at all,
to see my Simon again.”

Neither woman spoke explicitly. Neither needed to. Irene’s threat? No check, no dog. Unless Ceci funded her foundation, she would move to California, taking with her the messages from Simon and all hope of his material return. And Ceci’s reply? No dog, no check. Stalemate.

I
HAD HEARD ENOUGH.
Ceci had not murdered her grandnephew. She blamed herself for Jonathan’s death, but only because she had failed to warn him about Simon’s half-open grave. Irene was conning her victim on a grander scale than I had realized. In assuming that Irene was a small-time operator, I had greatly underestimated her ambition. Irene didn’t want to spend the rest of her life grinding away at dog-photo thought transference, diagnostic hocus-pocus, and kitty-cat spirit rapping. Rather, her daily labor was a way to establish trust in her and in her psychic powers. All along, I’d thought of her as a
con
artist, but I hadn’t understood that the conning I’d observed was only a preliminary step in a true con game, the necessary phase of gaining a victim’s
confidence.
Irene wanted Ceci to endow a foundation. Ceci and how many others?

Rowdy had been a good, quiet boy. Transmitting unspoken words of praise, I stepped carefully back to him and rubbed his head in gratitude. Then I silently patted my leg to signal him to get up. As he rose, I took long strides away from the alcove in case he decided to treat
himself to the kind of full-body shake that might be audible through the panes. Distracted by my eager steps, he trotted with me to the corner of the house. When we reached it, I turned left, slowed my pace, and walked toward the fence in confident search of the gate to Upper Norwood Road. Why head back down through Ceci’s yard, where we would certainly have another encounter with Hugh and Robert, and might almost literally run into Irene’s confederate? Instead, we’d follow Upper Norwood to the fork. As we did, I’d make a new plan.

Confidence
was my word of the moment. Self-confidence, that is. I now knew that Ceci was innocent. And for the first time, I understood exactly what Irene was up to. Con artists, Kevin had insisted, are never violent. Irene, I now saw, was a true con artist on the verge of a major sting. Would a bona-fide grifter have allowed violence to ruin everything? But how much control did she have over her violent confederate? Watson had cured Holmes of the cocaine habit. The man with the bulbous forehead was no Dr. Watson. Did Irene depend on him for the means to commit violence against herself? Even if he had murdered Jonathan without her foreknowledge, she was an accessory after the fact. But had he murdered Jonathan at all?

Hugh and Robert remained a mystery to me. They were human snails: I knew their shells, but had only glimpsed the animals inside. Effective armor, I thought, always created an appearance of caricature. Armadillos, for instance, were foolish-looking, although probably not to one another. And real dog people? I’d known thousands of men and women almost exclusively as collie fanciers, top obedience handlers, AKC judges, Akita breeders, active members of kennel clubs, or Doberman people, for instance. I was equally at ease with presenting
myself dog first, so to speak. I was as malamutian as Robert and Hugh were Holmesian. In my case, the persona and the soul were one. A chromosomal examination would undoubtedly reveal that I possessed the canine complement of thirty-nine pairs instead of the human twenty-three pairs. If you scratched Hugh and Robert, what sort of Study in Scarlet would flow? Did the fluid run only along the surface of the extremities? Did it gush through the heart? Were their hearts set on Althea? Or on the character she represented to them—the former lover of the King of Bohemia,
the
woman in someone else’s life? The woman with
a face that a man might die for?
Had they killed for her? If so, for the person or the persona?

Hugh and Robert lurked downhill. Both were armed. The spectral Simon was apparently late for his scheduled appearance. He and his handler would approach from Lower Norwood Road. Reaching the fence that separated Ceci’s yard from Upper Norwood, I searched for the gate. Her house was to my immediate left. The kitchen was on the opposite side of the house. I had no idea what room lay beyond the dark windows on this side. The gate should be
here,
shouldn’t it? Midway between the house and the property line. The fence that ran along Lower Norwood was of some expensive variety of coated chain link. The gate there was iron. Here, a wooden fence that matched the style of the house presented an attractive face to Upper Norwood Road. I’d noticed it when I’d brought Kimi here. On the other side of the house, the wooden fence and gate that ran between the big colonial and the garage were topped with a foot or two of handsome latticework that I’d admired. Now, a gas lamp on the street let me see the same latticework atop the fence on this side. Shouldn’t the same light creep around the outline of the gate? But
this was a solidly constructed fence. Holding Rowdy’s leash in my left hand, I explored the heavy boards with my right. The gate could be anywhere, really, I told myself, here in the middle of the fence, next to the house, or next to the adjoining yard. Its latch was probably at waist level. I slowly worked my way from the center of the fence toward the house and found no latch, no handle, no hinges, no indication of a gate. Backtracking, I did a thorough search. Latches were sometimes set high up, weren’t they? My fingers felt for metal, for wooden contraptions, for any break in the uniformity of board after board. They found none. On inspiration, I dropped to the ground in the hope of finding a bluestone walk, a series of flagstones, or anything else that might mark a path to the gate. The grass ran right up to the fence. I hadn’t actually seen a gate on this side. I’d just assumed that there must be one here. In fact, there was no gate.