The Wrong Dog Page 8

  Ruth blew her nose.

  “Sometimes it’s hard for me to think someone really wants to talk to me.” She tried to bury her face in the small napkin.

  “But why?”

  “Because of the epilepsy.”

  “But Sophie had the same—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Being different, it does terrible things to your self-esteem. Oh, I know Sophie loved me. And most of the time I was okay, at least with her. But I was having a bad weekend and when I’d talked to her the day before, on Saturday, she sort of blew me off. She was so preoccupied.”

  “Did she say what it was about?”

  “Of course. She told me everything.”

  “Then you know why she hired me.”

  “I’m sorry about the mistake on the phone.”

  I waved my hand over my unfinished sandwich, to tell her not to give it a thought.

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I didn’t want to say, in case you weren’t the PI.”

  “I see. Well, don’t worry about it in either case.”

  “I don’t know what she told you, Rachel,” she said, not meeting my eyes, “but the real reason she hired you was to see if she could have me put on the list.”

  “The list?”

  “For a Blanche clone.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, but you don’t give up a good idea after trying only once, do you? And anyway, she said maybe the two other girls are alerting. That was one of the things she wanted to find out, once you put her in touch with Side by Side.” She picked up her soda but didn’t drink. “You will still do it, won’t you?” she asked. “Because Sophie thought if the other girls were alerting, she’d let them clone Blanche again and that this time I would get the free puppy.”

  When I didn’t answer her, she went on, leaning across the table and talking even faster.

  “I don’t have a lot of money. But I do have a steady job now, so I could borrow some. I don’t know what you arranged with Sophie, but if it’s a matter of money—”

  “I don’t understand something. Have you been looking for a seizure dog? Or did this just come up recently?”

  “I’ve always been a little afraid of dogs.” She started to tear little pieces off the damp napkin. “But I’m not afraid of Blanche.”

  Dashiell was using my left foot for a pillow. I wondered how she’d felt when I’d walked in with him.

  “What about…” I indicated Dashiell’s whereabouts with a tilt of my head.

  “I saw you coming down the block and he seemed so…”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Sweet. It’s the way he looks up at your face when you walk with him. He just didn’t scare me. Anyway, Sophie worked on me. She convinced me that if I had a seizure-alert dog, it would help me to live a normal life.”

  A normal life, I thought, what the hell was that?

  “And you feel you could overcome your fear,” I asked her, “and that you wouldn’t mind all the work?”

  “No. I’m sure I could do it. Sophie said I’d love my dog to pieces and I wouldn’t be at all afraid of her, that once I had her, I wouldn’t be afraid of anything.”

  “Of anything?”

  “Of living,” she said. “And she told me the work of taking care of my dog would get easier and easier as I bonded with her. She said she’d never had a dog before and she came to love the work she did to take care of hers. It’s part of it, when you have a dog, she told me, that you take good care of her and she takes good care of you.” She took two fries this time. I waited for her to go on. “You give them the best food you can afford, she told me, and lots and lots of exercise. She met Herbie at the dog run, you know.”

  “I wonder if he still goes there.”

  “Why not? Unless he moved away or his dog died.” She picked up another handful of fries.

  “What kind did he have?” I asked, figuring it would be easier to identify him by a description of his dog than one of himself—brown hair, medium height, you know, average looking. Good luck on that, unless he had a prominent scar or was six foot seven.

  “What kind of what?” she asked.

  “Dog. Did Sophie ever say?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, just a dog, I guess. Sophie usually talked about him, not the dog.”

  “Did she ever describe him to you?”

  “Brown. No, maybe black. I don’t remember.”

  “No, I mean Herbie. Did she ever show you a picture of him?”

  Ruth’s mouth was full. She shook her head.

  “She never mentioned how blue his eyes were or—”

  “He had blue eyes, Herbie? She never said.”

  I smiled. “I don’t know if he had blue eyes. I was just asking that as an example of something Sophie might have said.”

  She nodded. “Oh. So you would be able to recognize him if you saw him at the dog run.”

  “Exactly. It’s a slim chance, but a lot of what I do is. Sometimes you get lucky, despite the odds.”

  Ruth looked out the window for a moment, watching an old woman make her way in front of the coffee shop, all bent over, balancing herself on one of those aluminum walkers. I wondered if I was getting enough calcium in my diet and thought about eating some of Blanche’s Swiss chard when I got home.

  “Will you continue to look for Side by Side?”

  “I’m not sure. I want to see what I can find out when I get into Sophie’s apartment. Without Sophie’s help, this whole thing could come to a dead end in no time. But I’ll be in touch. I’ll let you know.”

  She nodded.

  “Sophie told me something strange the day she hired me.”

  “Sunday?”

  “Yes, on Sunday. She said that this woman who spoke to her about cloning Blanche, Lorna West, said she’d heard about Sophie from The School for the Deaf, that she’d called there looking for people with service dogs to interview for some sort of survey.”

  Ruth had her mouth full again, but she began to shake her head vigorously.

  “Were you the receptionist then, two years ago?”

  “Yes, but there was no such call.”

  “How can you be sure?” I asked her. “Like, for instance, now, while you’re having lunch, isn’t someone answering the phone?”

  “Actually, no. We have voice mail. When I don’t pick up, it’s done electronically. If you know your party’s extension, you can punch that right in and it’ll ring through to their phone. The system also gives you the extension to dial for different departments. You can leave your name and number for information on the school. Then when I get back, I take care of the messages.”

  “And when you’re out sick?”

  “The same. They’re not going to hire another receptionist. Basically, the school spends money on the kids. Everything else is no frills. As for the phone system, it works. It’s efficient and most people use it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We don’t get a lot of hang-ups.”

  “So one way or another, Lorna would have had to speak to you?”

  “Me or the machine. And she didn’t do either. I’d remember.”

  “Why are you so sure, with all the calls you must get? It’s been two years, and—”

  “There are only a few kinds of calls that come into the school. People call to speak with people they know, whether it’s business or personal. Or they call because they have a deaf kid and they want information about the school to help them decide if it’s the right place for them. Or they call to sell us stuff, anything from new phone systems to new devices for the kids, ‘hearing gizmos’ Sophie used to call them. No one calls about dogs, period. Only two of the kids use hearing dogs, and neither of them brings the dog to school. They don’t need them there. They need them everywhere but there. And since they come and go by special bus, the dogs aren’t needed for the trip. They can stay home. We signal with lights here. You don’
t need a dog to alert you that the bell is ringing. So how could I miss a call like that? Besides, the way Lorna told it, it involved my best friend. How would I forget something like that, or forget to tell Sophie about it if the call had come in?”

  “I guess you wouldn’t.”

  She took one last bite of her sandwich and wiped her lips while she was still chewing. I saw her look over at the clock behind the counter.

  “Time to get back?” I asked.

  “I still have five minutes.”

  “I only have one more question I can think of now. Do you think it would be possible for me to talk to the kids in Sophie’s class? She may have told them things about herself, something that might help me locate family. Teachers do that, sometimes to get the kids to open up and talk.”

  “Oh, I doubt it. The school’s very protective of the students. Especially now. Those poor things. They have a counselor talking to them. They’re very upset to have lost their teacher.”

  “I understand.”

  “But, of course, if you were around after school, at three o’clock, let’s say, no one would say anything if one or two of the children approached you, to pet your dog. I could meet you out front one day, to make sure you know which kids were hers.”

  “Thanks, Ruth. I’ll give them another day or two and then try it. What age are her kids?”

  “Third grade. Eight.”

  “And they all lip-read?”

  “They do. You won’t have any trouble talking to them.”

  I thanked her and paid for lunch. Then Dashiell and I walked home to wait for a message telling me that I could use the keys Mel had given me and move into Sophie’s apartment for a day or two to see what I could learn.

  CHAPTER 10

  Find It, I Told Him

  There were five messages waiting for me at home. The first was from Chip saying he’d be home around nine and would try to reach me then. He said to call his cell phone if I needed him. He left the number, as if I might have forgotten it. The third message was from Mel saying the police had released the apartment and told him he could take the animals back home. He said he and Bianca would be there about four-thirty, after his last walk. He left his cell phone number for me, too, just in case I needed to reach him before he got to Sophie’s.

  The other three messages were markedly less friendly. They were all from Sophie’s number. They were all hang-ups. Except the last one. On that call, the machine had recorded someone breathing before the call had been disconnected.

  I threw some clothes and my toothbrush into my backpack, put the dogs’ food into shopping bags, picked up the leashes, and headed for West Third Street, hoping I’d get the chance to surprise whoever it was who was leaving me those non-messages. That in itself made me walk as fast as Blanche would let me. But two blocks later, I discovered that the simple task of getting from one place to another by foot with a bull terrier was not as easy as it would have been with, say, a golden retriever. Whenever we passed a low wall, a bench, a compact grouping of trash bags, Blanche would choose the high road, climbing on top of things as if she were a mountain goat, Dashiell, a monkey-see, monkey-do kind of guy, following along behind her. I’d been a dog trainer. I could have asked them both to heel. But I didn’t. I knew that it was a good thing that Blanche, at least for the moment, was acting like herself.

  Even with the delays, we got to Sophie’s in fifteen minutes. I unlocked the door and called out into the apartment.

  “Is anyone here?”

  I was answered only by silence. Whoever had been here was gone. Or they weren’t speaking up.

  I tried again.

  “Is anyone home?”

  I unleashed the dogs. If there was someone waiting inside, Dashiell and Blanche would find him. But Blanche just walked slowly around to the far side of the sofa and began to sniff the place where her mistress had fallen and died. As if she was following a chalk outline of her mistress’s body, she began to slowly trace the area with her nose.

  Dashiell ignored her, heading immediately to the closed door off to the right. He looked back at me and when I nodded, he hit the door with his front paws, shaking the wall. But the catch held. So he took the knob in his mouth and slowly turned his head to the left. I heard the latch retract and let go. This time when he hit the door with his front paws, it flew open and Dashiell disappeared into Sophie’s bedroom.

  Blanche was still inhaling the fading odor of her beloved mistress when I went after Dashiell to see what had so captured his attention in the next room, but standing in the doorway, all I could see was Dashiell’s back. His front paws were up on Sophie’s desk, his hind feet were leaving the ground as if he was dancing, his short tail wagging in complete circles. For a moment, I thought he’d found a defrosting steak.

  The desk was against the wall, tucked under the sunny windowsill. I looked out the screened, open window into the garden, to see if anyone was there, if it was the anticipation of a chase that had gotten Dashiell so excited. But the garden was empty. And if someone had left suddenly by the window, they had taken the trouble to close the screen before hightailing it out of the yard. Unlikely.

  That’s when I spotted the cage, large enough to hold a baby gorilla.

  I called Dashiell to my side so that I could see what was so interesting, and there, sprawled sideways on top of the combination telephone and answering machine, standing as tall as he could, his tail swishing back and forth, was a miniature prehistoric monster, horny and green, his head and back covered with a crest, making him look like a small but formidable dinosaur. His mouth was open, his dewlap enlarged, and he was hissing. Good move, I thought. If I were at the very bottom of the food chain and facing a large, strange carnivore, I’d do exactly the same thing.

  Dashiell whined for the release word that would let him go back to where he’d been. Instead, I rudely shoved him into the living room and closed the door behind him.

  The moment Dashiell was out of sight, the iguana calmed down, turned toward the window, and resumed its sunbath. With the sun pouring in and the desk lamp on, the answering machine might just be the lizard’s favorite spot. In fact, standing there, I was willing to bet he’d been there and back several times in the past few days, his face inches from the screen, eyes closed, basking in the sunshine. His front feet, long-toed but with his nails nicely groomed, hung partway over the top of the machine. His back legs kept moving as he adjusted himself on the bumpy surface, trying to get comfortable on all those buttons, his left leg over the one that said reset, the right on the button that said redial.

  Sophie had called me once, on Sunday morning. Was it the iguana who’d called repeatedly throughout the night, and again this morning, never bothering to leave a message?

  The iguana didn’t seem to mind me at all. So I took a step closer and pressed the reset button. Then I pressed redial. Last I hit speakerphone. I heard the machine dialing. I heard the recording of Dashiell barking, then the beep.

  So, fine. It was the iguana who had been trying to reach me.

  Except for that last call. Because even when I held my breath and tried my damnedest to listen, I couldn’t hear any heavy breathing coming from Mr. Lizard.

  I took another step forward and rubbed the top of the iguana’s head, which felt like small cobblestones, the stuff they paved the Village streets with a hundred or so years ago. He didn’t hiss so I guessed he liked it. I rubbed his head some more, until he closed his eyes and wiggled his feet around, dialing my house yet again. Then I picked him up and carried him back to his cage.

  There was hardly any water in his bowl and no food. I didn’t know what the detectives thought when they found out they hadn’t gotten all the pets out of the apartment. But it didn’t seem they’d taken care of the pet who’d been left behind. If they had, they would surely have put him back in his cage and found a piece of lettuce for him. Or had they merely closed the bedroom door, thinking that that would be enough to keep the iguana out of trouble? Surely it had been
open when Sophie was having the seizure or how else would Bianca have been able to fetch the medicine? But I couldn’t remember one way or the other. I could only remember Sophie lying in front of the couch, the dogs lying there with her, one on each side.

  I opened the bedroom door and, keeping Dashiell out, slid out into the living room and headed for Sophie’s small kitchen, making a big circle around the place she’d fallen, just in front of the couch, got some greens, and, leaving the dogs where they were, slipped back into Sophie’s room.

  How did Sophie do this? If the iguana freaked when it saw a dog—and why wouldn’t it?—how did Sophie juggle these animals? And why had she taken on such a high-maintenance pet when she already had two dogs that needed care?

  That’s when I remembered the cat she fed on six. Maybe the lizard was also one of those little jobs she took on to help pay Mel for walking Bianca.

  As ironic as it seemed, taking care of someone else’s animal so that she could pay someone to walk hers, it made sense. It took far less effort to feed an indoor pet than it did to exercise an adolescent bull terrier.

  With the iguana fed and safe, I began my search for information by checking the nightstand, feeling both the excitement and the dread I always felt going into someone’s home and poking through their things when they weren’t there. There’s a terrible feeling of trespassing, even when there isn’t anyone around to mind.

  But if no one was around, who had called me and kept the line open long enough for my answering machine to record the sound of their breathing?

  And why?

  There was some Tylenol in the nightstand, a small hairbrush with long red hairs tangled in the bristles, a copy of My Dog Tulip with a place mark two thirds of the way through. I picked it up, then put it down, reminding myself to pay attention to the job and not get lost in thought. There was a nail file, a small silver ring, a picture of Sophie as a little girl, smiling, a box of tissues.

  Most of the snooping I would be doing would be about as interesting as getting stuck in rush-hour traffic. Still, there was some chance I’d get that question answered and all the others as well, a chance that by trying to decipher Sophie’s life via the paperwork she’d left behind I’d make some telling discovery. I might find a notation in her calendar, a canceled check, a letter from a former lover, the address of a long-lost relative, something completely unpredictable that would afford me a startling insight, some trivial piece of information that would turn out to be important.