Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

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    Had I expected anything extraordinary, I would have been disappointed. Rick Shelbert was apparently pretty much of a neatnik, even away from home. The only glitch in the system was Freud. Saint Bernards are not neat dogs, and while Freud himself wasn’t present, traces of him were everywhere. Looking around the room, I could make a case for those hotels and motels that charge guests with dogs security deposits. Of course, the big dog wasn’t a chewer. Nor was he unhousebroken. But when loose-flewed dogs shake their heads, saliva flies. It sticks to the walls like chunks of plaster, stains most fabrics, and when it dries it resembles the foam the ocean leaves behind at low tide, a web of schmutzy-looking bubbles.
    The bed had been slept in, but Rick had pulled the covers and spread up before he’d gone downstairs for what would turn out to be his last meal. There were no clothes draped over the chair, the window seat, or the bureau. When I opened the dresser drawers, all Rick’s things seemed to be there, neatly folded, ready to use. So no one had packed his things yet either.
    His calendar and address book were in the top drawer of the bureau. I opened the address book to the front, and there, of course, he had filled in all the required information, including whom to call in case of an emergency. It was a Mrs. Rick Shelbert, a lady who apparently had not only not kept her maiden name but lost her first name as well.
    I opened the appointment calendar next, a current of excitement shooting down my arms as I did. But the week of the symposium was blank. I looked back at the weeks before, and they were filled with appointments: eleven-thirty, “Rog,” beagle mix, destructive chewing; one-thirty, “Chester,” Dalmatian, dog aggression; and so on. There was a check near each appointment to indicate they were kept. And at the bottom it said either cash or check to indicate the method of payment.
    I walked into the bathroom, wondering what it was I’d expected to find. The towels were all neatly folded on the racks, none lying on the floor as they were in my bathroom. I touched a couple of them that were still damp. God, I could have used this man for four hours once a week at home.
    I looked at Rick’s shaving things, his comb, his toothpaste. He used Sensodyne for sensitive teeth, and he had two extra inhalers with him, one in his dopp kit, the other that I’d seen sitting on the nightstand, along with a small bottle of Tylenol and a glass of water, ready for any contingency. I pulled back the shower curtain and looked at the tub. He had even rinsed the loose hair out before dressing and going downstairs, perhaps so the maid wouldn’t consider him messy. Such a precise person, I thought—why hadn’t he chewed his food more carefully? But suddenly I felt a chill down my back, as if I’d just gotten out of the shower and forgotten the air conditioner was on. In a milieu of envy and venomous competition, two of my former colleagues were dead, both dying accidentally. The shock collar trainer had been electrocuted. The foodie had choked on a piece of food. Right.
    I put my hand in my pocket and felt for Detective Flowers’s card. But if I called her now, what could I say? That the hair on my arms was standing up? That I thought there was something fishy going on at the Ritz Hotel? What if I were wrong? What would a phone call like that do to Sam?
    Walking back into the room, I released Dashiell and told him, “Find it.” While he checked the place out with his nose, because you never know, I poked inside Rick’s suitcase, which was empty, and then turned to look at the almost perfect bed. I looked under the pillows first, to see if Rick had folded his pajamas and put them there. He had. Then I pulled down the spread, to see if Freud had drooled on the dark gray blanket, and that was why Rick had put the bed back together. And then, as long as I was at it, I pulled down the top sheet and blanket and found not what I had discovered in Alan’s bed, the detritus of a last night of ecstasy. In this case, I found a sheet so clean the maid might have pulled it tight and left it on instead of changing it.
    I sat at the window, looking out at the park, waiting for Dashiell to finish his snooping. That’s when I heard the sound, his rabies tag hitting against the wastebasket at the far side of Rick’s bed, once, twice, three times. Something in there interested my dog, more than likely an empty