Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

wanted to be near the school. To walk .“
    “She wanted the Village, the Village, so, what else, I bought her a condo,” David said.
    He took his checkbook out of his breast pocket. I began to protest, but his hand went up to stop me.
    “It’s just that—”
    “The police have looked into our Lisa’s death,” Marsha said as David wrote, “but they’re busy with many other things, there’s so much crime in the city, so much.”
    David looked up. “What we need,” he said, “it’s not really police business, Rachel. They’re finished now. But we’re not. We’re the parents. We have to know what happened, what went on. We need”—he practically bellowed—“to find out why our daughter took her own life .“
    “ David,” his wife said, trying to calm him.
    “Mr. Jacobs, I—”
    “David. Forget this Mr. Jacobs. You could be Lisa’s friend, you’re so young. You could be my own daughter.”
    “And call me Marsha, Rachel. We know your aunt so long, we feel we know you, too.”
    “David. Marsha. To find out something so intimate about a person, it might take a long time. Often the victim’s best friend, or her parents, had no idea she was depressed.”
    “Spend the time, Rachel. We can afford it,” David said. “Now tell me your fee, please.”
    I did. And asked for a thousand in advance.
    “Money I have,” he said. I heard the sound of a check being tom from a checkbook. “A daughter I don’t have, but money I have.” He handed me the check. Without looking, I folded it in half and put it into my shirt pocket.
    “Even if I do spend the time,” I said, “I might not find the answers you’re looking for.”
    “I can’t think of anything more important to spend money on than at least trying to understand what happened to Lisa. Can you, David?” But David Jacobs didn’t answer his wife’s question. He had turned his back to us, and I could see his shoulders trembling. With one hand he removed his bifocals. The other carried an ironed white handkerchief toward his eyes.
    “I’ll do my best,” I heard myself promise. I called Dashiell and heard the jingle of the tags on his collar as he got up.
    “We already know that,” Marsha said, squeezing my hand.
    “I’ll have to speak to people—”
    “Of course,” Marsha said.
    “I’ll need Lisa’s address book, her appointment calendar, and access to her apartment, if possible.”
    She slid her arm in mine, the way my mother always used to, to walk me out. There was a briefcase on the small table near the door, Marsha lifted it by the handle and gave it to me.
    “There are some letters she wrote to us in here, so that you will be able to see for yourself the kind of person she was, how bright, how thoughtful. Her keys are in the zippered pocket. You know the Printing House?”
    I nodded.
    “Anything else youneed , you just ask us.”
    Despite my willingness to travel as I always did, by foot or subway, David insisted I’d need a car for the duration of the investigation and had already paid a month’s rent in advance on the Taurus.
    Once out of their house and inside the car, I opened the briefcase and looked inside. There in the pocket, as promised, were Lisa’s keys. Her apartment, Marsha had said, was undisturbed. As I was leaving, she’d urged me to go there, where there might be cities, something, anything, that might help me discover what I had to do in order to help her understand what had gone wrong in the perfect life of her perfect child.
    Yeah, yeah.
    I wondered what Lisa had really been like.
    I started the car. Then I slipped the check out of my pocket to take a look. It was for three thousand dollars. I had been redefining hand-to-mouth for a month or so. Now if I found myself headed for the poorhouse, I’d be able to go by limo. Driving home, I thought about hiring a cleaning lady. And a gardener.

Don’t Mention It, He Said

    IN THE MORNING, after leaving a message for Avram Ashkenasi asking to see him about Lisa, I headed across the street to the Sixth Precinct to see if my friend Marty Shapiro was around. The officer at the desk said Marty was exercising Elwood and Watson, two of the bomb dogs he worked with. That meant he’d be in the wide alley that ran along the side of the precinct, between Tenth Street and Charles, where the cops parked official vehicles. I found him there, tossing a tennis ball “Look at El, Rach ,” he said as soon as he saw me. “No waistline, and a belly like he