The Wrong Dog Read online

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Good boy,” I said. “What I want you to do is keep your mouth closed. And don’t give up those keys.”

  “Oh, no problem. I have another set. I never take a chance I’ll lose my keys and leave a dog without a walk. I have a mailbox on Hudson Street. That’s where I keep the spare set.”

  “Great.”

  “I never thought…,” he said, his neck immediately turning a splotchy red.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “She seemed really…” He bobbed his head. “Special,” he said.

  Dashiell turned toward the door and barked once. Bianca and Blanche were as still as concrete. Mel walked over to the open door to Sophie’s apartment and buzzed the detectives in. I saw two uniforms there, too, but, for now, they stayed outside, one on either side of the glass door to the street.

  “Just answer what they ask you,” I said. “Don’t volunteer anything. If we’re separated, bring Blanche and Bianca and meet me at the run as soon as you can. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  “And Mel…”

  The detectives had stopped a respectful distance from Dash. One of them was pointing to him, his way of asking if it was safe to enter.

  “Mel,” I said.

  He turned to me, his back to the detectives.

  “Sir,” the shorter one said, “I need you to move your animal out of the way.”

  “Tell them we’ll take care of the dogs until her family is located,” I whispered to Mel. Then I took Dashiell’s leash from his hand and made room for the detectives.

  “She has no family,” he said.

  And then it was too late for us to say anything else, at least anything we didn’t want overheard.

  CHAPTER 5

  We Sat for a While Longer

  I got to the run before Mel and sat where I’d been the day before with Sophie. When I saw him approaching with the two bullies, I turned on the tape recorder but left it in my jacket pocket. Dashiell went to the gate to meet him, immediately running off to play with Bianca again. There was an intact black Shepherd at the far end of the run, watchful as Dash headed his way. I watched, too, grateful when I saw his owner jump up, leash his dog, and walk quickly toward the gate, someone else who knew that too many testicles in a small, enclosed area was not a good idea. I noticed that the Shepherd’s hackles were up as he was taken past Dash. Boys will be boys.

  Mel slipped off his faded denim jacket and laid it on the bench for Blanche so that she would be between us, but instead of lying down there, she came into my lap, curled herself into a knot, and, with her back tight against my stomach, fell into a fitful sleep.

  I pulled the jacket up over her, watching her eyes twitch and blink as she wrestled in her dreams with the loss of her mistress.

  “They said I could take care of the dogs, as long as I do it out of Sophie’s apartment.” He looked over at Bianca, then down at Blanche, and shrugged. “I can’t take them back to Sophie’s until they call me, in a day or two. They said they’d try to hurry it up, because of the dogs, but I don’t think they will. I mean, dogs, why would they even care about them, or about us?” He glanced over at Bianca again, to make sure she was okay.

  “What happens to the dogs until the cops release the apartment? Short-term, can you take them home?”

  “No. Well, I can take Bianca. I’ve had her before, when Sophie and Blanche went to a conference, about six months ago. Margaret took to Bianca like a duck to Twinkles, but she’d be much too much for Blanche. It would be like having two Biancas to put up with.” He smiled at the thought. “Blanche’d be miserable. You see how she is, don’t you?”

  I didn’t have to look. I had fifty or so pounds of Blanche on my lap, her legs moving as if she thought she could run away from what must be the worst thing that had ever happened to her in her life.

  That’s when I remembered. Blanche had been a rescue dog. This wasn’t the first time she’d been abandoned.

  “I’ll take her,” I said. “Dashiell will be fine with her and I have a yard. It’ll be like home.”

  Mel looked stunned and I felt my stomach knot up.

  “I mean, she’ll be able to go out as much as she wants to. I didn’t mean that…”

  “I know. It’s just that…”

  “Yeah.”

  I reached out to touch his arm, but Blanche started slipping off my legs so I put my hand back where it was, to brace her.

  “Even when the cops release the apartment, then what?” he asked. “We can’t leave the dogs there alone.”

  “No—not even if we walk them four times a day. They can’t be left alone.”

  “Suppose I stay there with them. Well, with Margaret and Bianca.”

  “Thanks, Mel, but I need to get in there, to spend some time there. When the detectives call you, tell them you’re going to stay there for a few days, to take care of the animals, until we figure out what to do about them long-term. But I’ll be the one who’ll actually be there.”

  “You’re sure? I don’t mind doing it. Or maybe we could both…”

  I gave him a look, but he missed it. He’d apparently found something very important on the ground and was looking at that.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I think I can handle it myself.”

  He didn’t say anything. His neck was still a nice shade of red.

  “But you can help by answering some questions.”

  “Sure. Anything.”

  I took a breath, wondering what planet this guy had landed here from. “Did Sophie ever say anything about any arrangements she’d made for the dogs, just in case?”

  He shook his head. “She once told me you can have a fatal seizure, meaning she could have one. But she didn’t say what would happen to the dogs. ‘Who would I call?’ I asked her. ‘Who would take Blanche and Bianca?’ I figured, as long as she’d brought it up, I ought to ask. My clients tell me things like that, the ones who live alone. There’s a letter in the top drawer of the desk, one guy told me. It says who Pinky goes to, like you said, in case. But Sophie never said. She’d had a really bad seizure and she looked really depressed. Not that I blame her.”

  “She never mentioned any relatives to you? Not even that time? Or in passing—you know—I won’t be here next week, I’m going to Terre Haute to visit my sister? Nothing like that?”

  He shook his head. “Look, I was her dog walker. I hardly ever saw her. Even the money—she just left my check on that table near the door. Sometimes she’d call me to say Bianca had diarrhea and could I come as early as possible, or that she didn’t eat, her food was in the refrigerator, could I give it to her after I took her to the run. Except for one or two times when she was home, we never said a word to each other that wasn’t about the dogs. So maybe she has a sister in Terre Haute, but if she does, I don’t know about it.”

  “That’s why I have to get into the apartment, to check her phone book, any diary she might have. I’ll go over to the school, too, see what they know. I bet there are people here who know her,” I said, looking around the run. “You know how people talk here. It’s almost like airplane talk.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Um, movie-line talk.”

  He still looked confused. Maybe he didn’t talk to strangers no matter where he was. Or maybe he wasn’t playing with a full deck. Being a dog walker, as long as you didn’t lose them, who was going to tell if you were spaced out half the time?

  “You figure you’re never going to see the person again,” I said, “so you spill your guts.”

  He thought it over. “That doesn’t make sense. The same people come here every day. You are going to see them again. And again. You’re going to see them even if you’re sick of them. And even if you told them the most embarrassing thing you ever did in your whole life.”

  “Right. But the dogs are here. So people talk anyway. Haven’t you ever noticed that, when dogs are around, people open up more? That’s why pet therapy works.�
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  He nodded.

  “Have you done that, too?”

  “Yeah. I do it when I have the time. But sometimes, after the walking, I just need to be home, with Margaret.”

  “What breed is she?”

  “I don’t know. One with too much energy. I found her one day when I was walking dogs and took her home. I tried to find her owner, but I couldn’t. So then I tried to find her a good home.”

  “And you did.”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “We might have to do that with Sophie’s two. Find them a good home.”

  He looked at Blanche, sleeping on my lap, and shook his head, as if to say, An eleven-year-old dog with bad arthritis? Good luck on that.

  “First I have to talk to every single person Sophie knew. She must have thought about this eventuality. She must have. She was crazy about these dogs.”

  “More than you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wait till you find out what you have to do to feed Blanche. A couple of times, Sophie asked me to go to the health food store for her, when she couldn’t do it herself. She got tired easily and I didn’t mind helping her out. I always told her that.”

  “The health food store?”

  I raised my eyebrows, but didn’t get an answer until later, when he took ten minutes to write it all down for me. Finding a home for an old dog is always difficult. Finding a home for a dog on Blanche’s diet, I thought, looking at the list of things I’d have to buy on the way home, would take a major miracle.

  Dashiell came over to make sure I still smelled the same, then ran back to Bianca. Mel looked around, as if he didn’t know quite where he was, as if he was still figuring it out on the spot—dogs, people sitting on benches, a water bowl, ah, the dog run.

  “Did Burns ask you a lot of questions?”

  “Who?”

  He must have still been recovering from the shock of seeing Sophie dead.

  “The detective who stayed inside with you.”

  He pulled a card out of his pocket. “He gave me this but I never looked at it. I was too nervous. Right. Dennis Burns. No, not too many, once I explained why I was there.”

  “You wouldn’t think he’d have to ask, not with those.” I pointed to the keys hanging from his belt. There must have been at least thirty on the ring.

  “Could have thought I was the super,” he said.

  “Guess he could have. Burke asked me who you were, too.”

  Detective Burke, the smaller of the two detectives, a little guy the color of a walnut shell with muscles waiting in line to pop out. He’d taken me outside, to Third Street, to talk while Mel and Burke’s partner stayed inside.

  “Makes sense. They probably like to double-check everything. He asked me how long I knew you, too,” Mel said, giving me a sweet, sad little smile.

  “What’d you say?”

  “I asked him what time it was, so I could be entirely forthcoming with him.”

  “So what else did Burns want to know?”

  “What your connection to Sophie was?”

  “And you said?”

  He shrugged. “That I didn’t know. That you said you were worried about her because she hadn’t shown up at work today and she hadn’t called to say she wasn’t coming in. I told them you insisted on following me in, to see if she was home.”

  “Burke asked me the same question.”

  “What’d you say?” he asked, probably thinking he was glad he wasn’t the one who had to talk to the cops about a cloned dog.

  “I considered lying, for simplicity’s sake. But I decided against it.”

  “Too immoral?”

  “Too impractical. One way or another, you always get caught and then you’re in worse shape than if you’d told the truth in the first place.”

  He pulled his nose out to an imaginary point in front of him.

  “Yeah—that, too. Lie to the cops and you lose the chance to grow up to be a real boy.”

  Blanche was whining in her sleep again. I began to gently scratch the back of her head and neck.

  “So you told him why Sophie hired you?”

  “I did.”

  He whistled.

  “Worse than you imagine,” I told him. “Burke wrote it all down, then he looked at the uniforms who’d heard the whole thing. His smirk was a mile wide. ‘You may hear from Officer Lamb,’ he said, ‘DOC.’”

  “‘Department of Cloning?’ I asked him. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Been through this before?’

  “Then before I had a chance to answer him, he turned to one of the uniforms, young, blond guy with a sparse mustache, probably thought it made him look older but it had the opposite effect. ‘Joey,’ he says to him, stretching it all out, you know what I mean? ‘You know what the clone calls the original?’ So this kid Joey, he shakes his head. Then Burke says, ‘Ma-a-a-a.’ I tell you, the way the three of them laughed, you’d think it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Watching them laugh, I thought, Good. If they think it’s all a joke, they’ll leave me alone and I’ll be able to do what I’ve been paid to do without interference. Burns want to know anything else?”

  Mel nodded.

  “He made some phone calls. I’m not sure what they were about. You know how they talk, everything’s a number—I got a six-oh-six, I need a three-nine-two, shit like that. Then he wanted to know if I knew the names of any of Sophie’s friends or family. I told him I didn’t, that most always when I came, only Bianca was home and she never said much. Did you ever notice, cops have zero sense of humor when they’re interrogating you?”

  “Unless you mention cloning.”

  “What else did they ask you, Rachel?”

  “If we’d come together. I told him we met here by accident. Then I asked him if it would be okay for me to find the person who gave Bianca to Sophie, a woman named Lorna West, because Bianca was supposed to be a seizure-alert dog and wasn’t doing her job.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said he’d let me know. He said he wouldn’t want me to waste my time duplicating any of the work they were going to do. Everyone’s a comedian.”

  For a moment, I wondered if the vets’ jokes had been any better. I’d have to ask Chip.

  “There’s nothing funny about this. Sophie’s dead.”

  “You’re right. I guess they do that…Well, they see this kind of thing a lot more than the rest of us.”

  “She loved her life as much as anyone does.”

  “Of course she did.”

  “She was looking ahead, that’s why she wanted Bianca. You’ve got to look ahead.”

  I nodded, not sure where he was going with this.

  “That’s why she taught Bianca what she did. She figured it was better than nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When she saw she wasn’t alerting, she decided to teach her to fetch the medication.”

  “No kidding? I thought she always carried it with her.”

  “Not at home. She said Blanche would alert her and then stick to her like glue and not leave for anything. So she taught Bianca to get the pills from the top of the nightstand.”

  “That must have been something to see.”

  “Did you ever see her have a seizure?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Did you?”

  “Once—a bad one. I was so scared. I thought with all that thrashing around she was doing, I’d get my teeth knocked out.”

  “Were you able to help her?”

  He looked funny. Guilty, maybe. He’d probably stayed back until the seizure was over. Maybe he’d even thought it was contagious.

  “I wrapped her in a blanket so she wouldn’t get cold. Then I called nine-one-one. But by the time they got there, she was awake. She looked sort of stunned. I didn’t know if she even knew who I was. In fact, when the paramedics came in, three men and one woman, they started asking her all kinds of questions, like who’s the president of the United States, who’s t
he vice president, stuff like that, to see if she was compos mentis. That’s what the woman told me. Then she said Sophie was, but that she was temporarily disoriented. After they left, that was when she told me you could die from a seizure. I guess that’s what she was afraid of, maybe all the time.”

  I nodded.

  “She was right to worry about it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “You can’t be sure that’s what it was.”

  “When Burns told me I could go, and asked me to take the dogs, Bianca wouldn’t get up. When I went to pick her up, the vial of Sophie’s seizure medication was under her. She’d been lying on it.”

  “Oh, god.”

  “No way of knowing if Sophie had the chance to take it.”

  “The ME will know. But even if Sophie did, it was too little or too late.”

  “He took it. Burns. He put it in a little plastic bag and shoved it in his pocket.”

  “An evidence bag.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. An evidence bag. I should know that from T.V., right?”

  I nodded. “I’m surprised he did that.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t they want to have it, you know, as evidence?”

  “Yes, but they usually leave everything in place until the Crime Scene Unit comes and photographs the scene. You’re not supposed to disturb anything.”

  “What about the dogs?”

  I looked to see if he’d made a joke, but he hadn’t. He was serious.

  “That’s different. It would be cruel to leave the dogs there. No one would follow the letter of the law to that extent. Anyway, he probably figured it was just what it appeared to be, an epileptic dying from a seizure.”

  “After he took it, he looked her over again, and then he said, ‘Unofficially, she’s been dead since sometime yesterday evening, pending confirmation by the ME.’ Unofficially. Like I was a reporter or something.”

  He stood up so that he could get his hand into his pants pocket, then handed me two keys.

  “I stopped on the way here,” he said. “Don’t lose them. The police took my other ones.”

  We sat for a while longer, watching the dogs play. Bianca, running with Dashiell, had apparently been able to put the past behind her. At least for now. Blanche was another story. She was moaning in her sleep, her eyes moving and looking as if they were going to open, her paws twitching, her tail beating up and down against my legs. I wondered if she’d need a new home after all, or if she’d just die of a broken heart.