The Dog Who Knew Too Much Read online

  Howie slept on what looked like a cot, or a youth bed. It was as neatly made as if Howie were in the army, the single pillow fluffed, the striped blanket pulled tight and tucked in with hospital corners. Howie’s slippers were lined up next to the bed on a little mat. I walked in, waited for Dashiell, and closed the door behind us as well as I was able.

  There was an old upright bureau on one wall and a small desk on the other. I sat at the desk, turned on the lamp, and opened the top drawer, looking at the neatly lined up pens and pencils, the checkbook, the little packet of rubber bands, the small dish of paper clips, and the box with stamps in it, all carefully torn from their sheets and stacked in neat compartments, everything just so.

  The drawers to the left held Howie’s business files, every payment and expense neatly recorded. And envelopes of receipts, all marked and ready for tax time. Behind the receipts were letters. I pulled the file and looked through the lot of them, all from patients and doctors relating to the conditions Howie was supposed to treat. And behind that a folder with photographs in it, only three of them, Howie kneeling with a bunch of other boys, perhaps a team shot but without the identifying paraphernalia, Howie’s grim little high school graduation picture, and one really good photo, a black-and-white enlargement of Howie doing t’ai chi. It reminded me of the photo of Lisa in Avi’s office, the way the subject was off center, the way the light hit the hands, caught in a graceful pose as the subject moved slowly through the form. Howie looked through the Tiger’s Eyes, loose circles made by his powerful hands, which in the photo looked as chiseled as the David’s.

  I checked my watch. It would be nearly halfway into the next appointment, if there were one. Still no Howie. But for how long, I couldn’t say.

  I became aware of my breathing then, shallow and quick, my head clear, my ears alert to any sound from elsewhere in the apartment. I shut off the desk light and was ready to go when I got one last idea. I knelt and looked under Howie’s neat bed, then slid out the magazines I’d had the feeling would be there, carefully sliding them back when I had seen enough silicone and whips to last me a lifetime.

  I stopped in Howie’s office on my way out. His appointment book was lying open on the cabinet near the head of the massage table. I checked my watch. It was four twenty-eight. Someone was due in just two minutes, on the half hour. Just then, the bell rang. I signaled Dashiell, and we made it out the door before the second ring, a longer one, had summoned Dora.

  There was a tense-looking young man waiting to be buzzed in. Walking past him, I thought about her, about Howie’s mother. She had looked as if she’d fall asleep, mesmerized by the TV. I wondered what would happen to the cigarette, but whatever would, it had happened countless times before, and Dora the lush was still here to tell any stranger who’d listen what a fucked-up loser the son who cared for her in her old age was.

  24

  There Ought to Be a Law

  Leaving Howie’s, I felt that crick in my neck he had warned me about the first time we’d met. I had thought about going over to the Club to see Paul. I could say I’d lost Lisa’s work keys, ask if I could borrow his set, see what he said, watch his eyes while he said it.

  Then I thought about the envelope. What had he thought when he’d reached into his pocket and found it missing, when he’d realized I knew that it had been he who’d been so anxious to get married, not Lisa? All she had wanted was to go to China, no matter what it cost her. So I thought maybe I shouldn’t go and see him. I thought perhaps he needed some time.

  But then I found myself thinking about the way his skin smelled, about the long, smooth muscles of his back, about the warmth and softness of his hands, about the way he’d said my name, over and over again, like a mantra. Then I knew I better not go see him, because the sixth law of investigation work is, Don’t get caught with your pants down, and I didn’t want to break it again. I cared much too much for this man, considering all I didn’t yet know, and I didn’t want to break my heart either.

  I could hear the phone ringing when I was still in the garden, but by the time I got the door unlocked, it had stopped. It was probably just someone asking me if I wanted to switch back to AT&T. They call at all hours. There ought to be a law.

  I went upstairs to run a bath, and while the tub was filling with water too hot to dunk anything in other than a lobster on its way to becoming bisque, I checked my answering machine and found that an unusual number of calls had come in since I’d left home that morning. Eleven. But when I rewound the tape, I discovered they were all hang-ups. As if someone were trying to find out whether or not I was home.

  I was tempted to dig my revolver out from the shoe box on the top shelf of my closet where it had been for over a year, but I told myself that that was too paranoid, even for me.

  I turned off the phone and turned down the volume on the answering machine. Soaking in the steamy hot water, without the agitating noise of the telephone, I quickly fell fast asleep and stayed that way for over an hour, until the water had cooled off enough to wake me.

  It was nearly eight o’clock when I got out of the tub, turned the phone back on, and, still feeling exhausted, plodded downstairs to feed Dashiell. When the phone rang again, I grabbed it on the first ring. This time the person on the other end didn’t hang up.

  “Rachel?”

  “Marty?”

  I looked out the small kitchen window into the garden, a tangle of dark shadows at this hour. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I need to see you, kid. Can you come over for a minute?”

  “Now?”

  “It won’t take long.” Sounding like a cop.

  “Sure,” I said, looking at the kitchen clock. Eight twenty now. What was Marty even doing there at this hour? He worked days. “Is anything wrong? You okay? Are the dogs okay?”

  “I’ll wait for you at the front desk,” was all he said. And then I heard the click. He had hung up.

  Had he made all those other calls? Had he been waiting, for some reason, for me to get home and pick up?

  I pulled on one of Lisa’s black sweaters and some leggings, stepped into a pair of clogs, combed back my wet hair, and poured some dry dog food for Dashiell. In less than five minutes I was out the door.

  Marty was standing near the front desk, and when he saw me, he took my arm and led me to a desk in back where there was no one else within earshot.

  “There’s been a murder, Rachel. In the neighborhood. Close by.” I felt my heart start to race. Who was I, for the Sixth Precinct to suddenly be filling me in on their most up-to-date bad news? “The victim was found on Bank Street, in that outdoor area at Westbeth.” He paused, as if the location of the body would be so pregnant with significance I’d burst out with the name of the killer.

  “And?” I said.

  He was watching my face. I watched his, not blinking, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Across from the school,” he added, “where your clients’ daughter used to work.”

  “Yes. But what’s—”

  “He had your name on a card in his shirt pocket, Rachel.”

  “You mean my card? Maybe it was someone who needed help, you know, a work contact.”

  “It wasn’t your card, Rachel. It was actually his card. He’d written your name on the back of it. And there was something else written there, too.”

  “Something else? What else?”

  “Something in Chinese.”

  Suddenly I got a strange rush to my head, as if I were breathing pure oxygen, and the air tasted metallic, the way it does when you take antibiotics.

  “Xiao yue?” I asked.

  But he didn’t reply. Instead he took my arm and backed me into a molded plastic chair next to the empty desk. He pulled the desk chair around so that he could sit in front of me, so close our knees were touching.

  “Paul Wilcox is dead, Marty?”

  He nodded.

  I looked back toward the desk, at the uniforms milling around, at the line of ci
vilians, there at any hour of the day or night to report the kind of minor irritations that build up in a city like New York, things that drive people to the brink of insanity, or over it. I reminded myself where I was and what was at stake here.

  “How? What happened?” I asked him, as if we were talking about some stranger and not a man I’d gone to bed with, my voice sounding as if it were coming from far away, or from the other side of a closed door.

  Marty took my hands.

  “A couple of the detectives want to talk to you. I came back in so that I could do this.” He squeezed my hands. “So like I said, he was carrying a card with your name on it, Rachel. Looks like you were pretty important to him.”

  I felt my face flush, but the rest of me was as cold as a corpse. I had come out without a coat, and my hair was still wet, I thought as I felt myself shiver, my fingers like icicles in Marty’s hands.

  “Rachel?” he said. He stood, slipped off his jacket, and put it around my shoulders.

  “How, Marty? Help me out here, will you?”

  “ME says broken neck, unofficially, of course, pending autopsy. They’re working on him now.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Mid to late afternoon. Best guess? Weather conditions weren’t unusual, so by the deceased’s temperature, he figures four to five, give or take.”

  I winced, thinking of the medical examiner slipping the thermometer next to Paul’s eyeball. Keep your mind here, I told myself.

  “Who’s on?” I asked him. “Who do you want me to talk to?”

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “He was Lisa Jacobs’s sweetheart,” I told him, “until a few months before her death, her suicide. I met with him in connection with the case, to try to find out what I needed to know about Lisa, for her parents.”

  Marty nodded.

  “So that I could help them to understand what had happened, I mean, why what had happened had happened, so that I could give that information to her parents.”

  “And?”

  “He wasn’t very forthcoming when I first went to see him. He just seemed angry. Turned some of that on me.”

  “So you tried another approach? Something less threatening, more friendly.”

  “Swimming,” I said, feeling my throat closing.

  “Swimming?”

  “He was a swim coach. I went over to the gym where he worked, the Club on Varick Street, and went swimming.”

  “And?”

  “And then he was more forthcoming. He opened up,” I said, swallowing hard, “about their relationship. I guess that’s why—”

  “He had your name in his pocket, over his heart?”

  I nodded. “How did it happen, Marty?”

  “Looks like a mugging. The sort where you not only take the individual’s credit cards and cash, you also inflict as much damage as possible, given the constraints of time and place. Sometimes the mugger gets scared off in time, and the victim lives. No such luck this time.”

  “Was there anything else on him, Marty, besides the card?”

  “Handkerchief, key ring, driver’s license, small change, nothing much.”

  “Show me.”

  “His belongings? What for?”

  “Please, Marty. This has to do with my case. It’s really important.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You don’t think I—”

  “Rachel—”

  “So show me.”

  A moment later I was looking through a plastic bag at Paul Wilcox’s handkerchief, driver’s license, two quarters, a dime and two pennies, and a key ring with eight keys on it, three of them Lisa’s, three of them for Bank Street T’ai Chi, one for downstairs, two for upstairs, though nobody ever locked the bottom lock.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “Just what you see,” he said.

  “Rachel, you know anything about this man’s life, any enemies he might have had?”

  “No,” I said. “No friends either. We only spoke about Lisa, about his feelings for Lisa.”

  “If you think of anything—”

  “Right,” I said. “Can I go now?”

  “Rachel—”

  “What? You don’t want me to leave town?”

  “I want you out of this.”

  I nodded.

  “Unless you think of something he said, anything he said that might—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I’ll call you first thing. I’ll beep you. Whatever.”

  “Or Matthew. He and Dave are in charge of this. They might want to talk to you, but I’ll talk to them for now.”

  “Thanks, Marty.”

  “Sure thing, kid.”

  I started to go, but Marty took my arm and stopped me.

  “Hey, I meant to tell you, Rach. You were right on the money about Elwood’s thyroid.” He made a fist and pointed to the floor with his thumb. “Way down. He and Gluck are taking the same pills now. We keep telling Gluck he better watch it, he’ll be out of a job, we’re going to put Elwood on the phone. The doc says it’ll take a few months for his weight to go down, but his energy is way up. You gotta see him. He’s like a new dog,” he said. “I’ll call you as soon as he gets back.”

  The bomb dogs worked one week, then had two weeks off, what a lot of their fellow officers considered an enviable work schedule.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. That’s good. You take care now. And call me if you think of anything.”

  It was nearly ten when I got back home, and I couldn’t remember having just walked across from the precinct. There were two more messages. Both hang-ups. Of course the calls hadn’t been from Marty. He would have left a message.

  I sat in the living room for a while, thinking about Paul. There wouldn’t have been a wallet. When he’d paid for the Chinese food, his cash had been loose in his pocket. He wouldn’t go out without money. No one would. So the mugger had taken whatever cash he’d had on him.

  I made a pot of tea, heating the pot with boiling water the way he had. But when it was ready and I’d carried my cup back to the couch, I just let it sit there, untouched.

  He’d had the keys to the studio. Had he used them that night? No, of course not. He wouldn’t have been so surprised to learn about the note if he had.

  The phone rang, and I picked it up, but oddly, whoever was on the other end had nothing to say. That’s when it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember if I’d locked the garden gate. I grabbed my keys, put Lisa’s jacket back on, and walked outside, Dashiell following. We headed toward the dark tunnel that led to the gate. I was going to try it, to make sure it was locked. I was going to shake it, to see if it held, then finally go to sleep. But what I saw stuck in a curlicue of the wrought-iron gate stopped me dead in my tracks.

  There, wrapped in floral paper with a layer of waxy green tissue paper underneath, were yellow rosebuds, twelve of them, each perfect. Their perfume filled the night air.

  After making sure the gate was locked, I looked at the bouquet very carefully, even turning it upside down and shaking it. But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a card.

  25

  We Don’t Need the Money, He’d Said

  The phone rang again. I could hear it as I carried the flowers back toward the cottage and laid them on the steps.

  Someone had been sending roses for a while now. Someone had waited across the street from Lisa’s, watching her windows. And someone knew that I didn’t live at Lisa’s house, that I lived here. That when the time came, this is where I was to be found.

  But it hadn’t been Paul. Then who was it? And what was he after now? Or who?

  Leaving the roses on the steps, Dashiell in the garden, and the door open, I went upstairs, took the little stool from my office, and carried it into the bedroom closet. Then I climbed up on it and pulled down the Joan & David shoe box, a relic of my eight-month marriage to Dr. Fashion, a box much too heavy to have shoes in it, and put it on the
bed.

  Under some circumstances, my shrink Ida used to say, paranoia is not such an inappropriate response.

  I went down to the basement where I had the formal dining room table I never used and all the cartons of stuff I’d never opened from when I split with Jack and moved here, saltcellars and linen napkins, a dozen sterling silver iced-tea spoons, stemware, Rosenthal china, wedding presents from people who apparently thought Jack had married Martha Stewart. I squeezed my way past a mountain of boxes to the sideboard against the far wall, which held only bullets for my gun and the boxes of gadgets Bruce Petrie used to give me, so full of formal dinner parties was my life. With a box of thirty-eights in hand, I began to pick my way back to the stairs. But then I stopped.

  Why was this stuff still here, still part of my life? More to the point, how had I fooled myself into thinking I could be happy spending my days hanging up the clothes someone else tossed over the dresser the night before and finding new things to do with cilantro?

  I had moved into Jack’s Victorian house in Croton, overlooking the Hudson River, a sort of mirror image of Lili and Ted’s modern house on the other side of the river. Lili, cradling her morning coffee, could watch the sun rise over Westchester, pink turning to gold, all brightness and hope. I could watch the sun set over Rockland County, brilliant orange and flaming red, the colors of dying leaves in fall.

  Having closed my dog school in the city, I’d figured, no problem, I’d train in Westchester, closer to home. But when I told Jack my plans, he became as still as marble and just as cold.

  We don’t need the money, he’d said, as if that were all that work was about. Then, after a long frost, he spoke again. He wanted me home when he got home, not running around at all hours of the night getting myself bitten. He wanted to sit down to a nice, home-cooked meal with me and discuss his day. That’s what marriage was, wasn’t it, for chrissake, he’d said. He hadn’t married me, he added, to come home to an empty house.

  Where, I remember wondering, was the man who’d found my occupation quirky and endearing? Get a load of this, he’d told his cretin brother Alan, she trains dogs for a living. And while I’d answered all his brother’s inane questions, he’d looked proud. But as soon as we were married, he’d changed.