Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

elaborated, once again her voice growing stronger as she concentrated on work, I looked past her, back at Tracy. She didn’t seem to be paying attention to Cathy. Still, she was nodding, her eyes checking out the molding in one of the for corners of the room as her head bobbed up and down, up and down, as if she might be approving not of what the rest of us were hearing but of some private thought or plan, something, perhaps, of her own making.
    Maybe I’d made a mistake with the poker game. Maybe in order to keep the men safe, I should have organized a quilting bee.



MY MOTHER WOULD HAVE BEEN PROUD

    T here’s got to be a connection we’re missing between the killer and the victims,” I whispered to Chip after the panel, this time remembering to shut off my microphone. “There must be something that would tie all this together, that would explain it”
    “But how do you get to it, from the victims’ lives? We can’t get to it from the killer’s life. We don’t know who the killer is.”
    I got up to go.
    “Where to now?”
    “I have to go upstairs for a minute. I want to put on something of my own. This was careless of me,” I said, pulling on the front of the shirt he’d given me to put on after my bath. “I feel as if I’m waving a red flag in front of a bull.”
    We walked up to three, heading down the hall toward my room. But I stopped before I got there, staring at the door to 303.
    “What’s up?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Speak up, Rachel, don’t be shy. What do you need from me this time? A felony? Grand theft auto? B and E?”
    “Oh, no way. I have a passkey. But that’s not it. I’m just trying to recall something from a long time ago. But I need help. How much time is there before dinner?”
    He looked at his watch. “An hour and a half.”
    “Come on,” I said, heading back to the stairs. “We have to hurry.”
    “We do?” he asked.
    “Stop being cute. You’re with me, aren’t you?”
    “In sickness and in health. I just wish we were doing something less sick. Where are we going now?”
    “My house.”
    It must have been something in my tone, or the way I yanked on his arm. He didn’t say another word. When we hit the street, I went straight to the curb and put my arm out and, God bless New York City, a taxi pulled over to the curb to pick us up with both dogs.
    “Tenth and Bleecker, please.”
    The driver’s turban bobbed forward and back, and we were on our way.
    We rode downtown in silence, the dogs jammed between us. When the cab stopped in front of Kim’s Video, we got out and walked west, past the Sixth Precinct, jaywalking across the street to the gate that led to my cottage. There was a thin young man leaning on the gate, his nails painted a frosty blue, the blue arcing around platinum moons on each nail. It must have taken forever to do them so neatly. He moved away when Dashiell, followed by Betty, headed for where he was standing.
    I unlocked the gate, and we walked down the brick passageway into the garden. After Westminster, I’d often imagined Chip coming here. I even made up what he might say, and what I might answer back. I’d thought about it a lot after he said he’d call, but this afternoon, there wasn’t time for us to think about ourselves. Back at the hotel, someone could be in danger.
    Chip must have been thinking the same thing. He didn’t tell me how beautiful the garden was or how at home he felt in my living room. He didn’t look into my eyes until my body heated up and I ached for him to touch me. He didn’t touch me, either. Without speaking, he followed me upstairs to my office, and when I’d found the videos I was after and had put them inside the leather backpack that had been hanging on the back of the office door, he followed me back down the stairs. We whistled for the dogs, who were having a sniffathon in the garden, and headed back to the Ritz.
    “What do you expect to find in those?” he asked, this time sitting pressed against me, the dogs smudging up the windows on either side of the taxi as the city pulled by.
    “I’m not sure. Maybe the missing link we’ve been after.“
    „When and where are we going to look at those?”
    “I think we have to go to dinner. It would be pretty blatant for us to skip it. I don’t want to act strange in any way, or to call any more attention to ourselves than we already have.”
    “It’s a little late for that, Kaminsky.” He tugged on my shirt collar. Actually, his shirt