Fall Guy

been outside. I could hear the sound of traffic, a dog barking, a snippet of a passing conversation. „Not tomorrow,“ someone said. I heard Parker strike a match. And then he hung up.
    „This message is for Rachel Alexander. This is Dennis O'Fallon calling from Paramus Lexus. You didn't say what you were calling about, whether it was business or personal.“ He sighed. An impatient man. Then he repeated his name again and left the work number and an extension, saying both twice.
    There was a call from someone who wanted to handle my investments, someone who had a method for clearing up my credit card debt who was surprised I hadn't responded to his last three calls, and from someone who said I had been selected to have a free weekend in Florida. I hadn't won any dance lessons or the lottery. But Parker Bowling had called twice more. And he was starting to sound annoyed.
    I dialed Maggie O'Fallon and got her machine again. This time I told her I was home and that I'd be staying home. Just in case she called while I was walking Dashiell, I left my cell phone number as well. I couldn't return Dennis's call. He hadn't left his home number.
    Parker Bowling hadn't left a home number either. No matter. I wasn't in any rush to talk to him.
    I decided to work downstairs, where it was cooler. The brick cottage I rented was small, but had three floors. There were two small bedrooms upstairs, one of which I used for an office, and the bathroom was there, near the top of the stairs. The living room and tiny kitchen were on the ground floor, and there was a large room downstairs that I rarely used. I had a dining room table there but never seemed to invite enough people to dinner to use it. Sometimes I thought I had better skills with dogs than with people. Sometimes I wasn't sure which kind of company I preferred.
    I thought about cooking something, but I wasn't in the mood, so I ordered a pizza and took the briefcase to the round table just outside my kitchen. I took out O'Fallon's checkbook first, starting at the latest check in the register and going backward. He'd not only recorded his checks and deposits, but his ATM withdrawals as well. Unlike the way I kept my checkbook, with more than one item on a line—a check and a deposit or a check and an ATM withdrawal—he gave each item a line of its own.
    The checks were fairly ordinary—his rent, his electric bill, his phone bill. There were regular checks to a Marie Sanchez, fifty dollars every two weeks. I guessed that she was his cleaning lady. She'd gotten a check the Thursday before. I'd have to make sure to call her sometime before she showed up again.
    There were checks to several liquor stores, a recent check to a florist, one to a doctor, or dentist, a small amount meaning it was a co-pay. There was a check for twenty-five dollars to Rob Rosen. Tim had written „garden“ after Rob's name. The deposits were evenly spaced, one a month, always the same amount of money. It was the ATM withdrawals that interested me. There had been seven in the last month, totaling $820. On the line adjacent to five of the eight withdrawals, there was a notation: „For Parker.“ Three hundred and seventy-five dollars in cash had gone to Parker in June.
    Tim had an IRA at the bank where he had his checking account. There was $41,654 dollars in the account, not an awful lot to show for twenty-one years of service, but there must have been a retirement account connected to the job as well. I wondered if he'd thought of retiring. So many police suicides seem to occur around that time and he'd put in his twenty years-plus.
    The bell at the gate rang. I grabbed some money and Dash and I headed through the garden to fetch our pizza. The delivery kid handed me a card from the pizzeria. Ten of them, he told me, and I'd get a free pie, regular, nothing extra on it. I was sure I'd qualified for several already.
    When we got back inside, I put three slices on a plate to cool for Dashiell and pushed O'Fallon's papers aside to keep them clean. Dash watched me eat, a bit disappointed. Maybe even resentful. He usually ate a souped-up diet of raw meat and grated raw vegetables, except when I ate pizza. But he never seemed to remember that each time he had to wait for his slices to cool.
    After I had finished two slices, I walked out into the garden, putting Dashiell's plate down on the ground. No sense having to clean up the living room floor when he'd be just as happy eating out-of-doors.
    There