Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

close my eyes until you’re finished, then I’ll do the same. Afterward, we can do whatever you like.”
    I didn’t like the look in his eyes.
    Well, I did. But I had something completely different in mind.
    “Talk,” I told him.
    “Talk,” he repeated, trying to keep a poker face.
    Everything was aching. I decided on a bath instead of a shower. The radio was in the other room, where it belonged. I could hear it playing.
    I emptied the complimentary bubble bath into the tub. I didn’t think Chip would mind. Sliding into the hot water, I thought about what I wanted to say to him and how I’d put it The next thing I knew, I was waking up in chilly water, the bubbles all gone, my mouth tasting like a sewer, complete with alligators.
    I washed my hair, rinsed off, brushed my teeth with Chip’s toothbrush, and got dressed.
    The radio was still on, and Chip was lying on his side, his head on the pillow, both dogs up on the bed, mine pressed up against his back. They were all sleeping.
    Apparently Betty had changed her tune again. She’d not only allowed Dashiell up on the bed but her head was lying across Chip’s legs so that her muzzle was against Dashiell’s ear, whispering sweet nothings as he slept blissfully.
    I looked at the clock radio. It was morning—six-twenty-two, to be exact. We’d been asleep for nearly two hours.
    I woke Chip and walked over to the window seat, moved the drape back, and sat against the wall on one side. I listened to the water running, then heard the faucet squeak again as Chip turned the water off. A few minutes later, wearing a navy blue T-shirt and khaki pants now, his feet bare, he came over and sat on the other side, facing me.
    “I’m not here for the reason you think I am,” I said.
    With Chip sitting so close, his green eyes looking into mine, I understood what all those people had been doing here every night, leaving the loneliness of their own room and going to someone else’s, where under a veil of alcohol and excitement and in the suspension of reality of being away from home, they would fall into the arms of a stranger, and for a moment there was that silent promise that what would follow would be perfect and different and for a few hours would make the world go very, very quiet and seem very far away.
    “I’m here because Sam hired me to prevent the very thing that’s been happening since we got here.”
    “And what would that be?”
    “Murder.”
    “Rachel,” he said, taking hold of my arms and pulling me against his chest, “it’s all right You’re just tired,” he said as if I were one of his children. “There’ve been a couple of terrible accidents, but no one—”
    I pushed myself away. “No, you’re wrong. They weren’t accidents. Someone’s winnowing away the competition. You’ve heard all the fighting, all the—”
    “Rachel, are you telling me you think Bucky King or Martyn Eliot is a murderer? And anyway, what on earth do you mean Sam hired you to—”
    “I’m not a dog trainer anymore. Since my divorce. I just couldn’t go back to it. I don’t know why. Well, you know what they say. One door closes. Another door opens. I’m a private investigator now. Sam hired me to work undercover because she was afraid—”
    “A what?”
    “A private investigator. This is real, Chip. It’s not a joke.“
    “Okay. If it’s real, show me your license.”
    He was trying to keep it serious, but his eyes were dancing with what he saw as the humor of the situation, same old, same old. Didn’t we live to goof on each other? Hadn’t we always done that? Or maybe he thought it was different this time, that I was too drunk to know fantasy from reality, that because of the alcohol I was telling a whopper of a story.
    “I-“
    “Come on. If you’re a private investigator, show me your license.”
    I just sat there.
    “You know what a license is, don’t you? One of those little laminated things with your picture on it you keep in your wallet and whip out on occasions such as this.”
    “I never got one.”
    “I see.” The way he was grinning, you’d think he’d just won the lottery.
    “No, you don’t see. I work without a license. I didn’t want to do all the paperwork, but that doesn’t mean—”
    “Then your business card. Surely, you have a business card, Rachel. Show me.” He held his hand out.
    I took a card out of my wallet and handed it to him.
    “Rachel Alexander, research assistance?”
    “It’s just that... I