Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

dog even before she’d arrived at Harbor View, she probably knew some unusual commands. Those were the things I included—that she might do back-up and walk-up, commands sometimes used to position a dog close to a wheelchair. She might do paws-up on the knees of someone who wanted to pet her, and she wouldn’t get spooked by canes, walkers, or any other institutional equipment. She hadn’t been tattooed or microchipped. But she did answer to her name. Big deal. Lady is by far the most common name for a female dog, Ginger or Muffin only a distant second.
    I also read the lists posted at the puli rescue groups, paying careful attention to the dates. But none of the found dogs could be Lady. Of the three on the lists found after Lady had gone missing, two were males, and the bitch was old, ten or eleven, hard of hearing, her teeth worn down to little nubs.
    Downstairs, in the pile of newspapers on the far side of the couch, I found the two recent articles about Harry Dietrich, the small piece that ran in the Metro section the day after he was killed and a larger one, an obit, that I hadn’t paid any attention to the first time around.
    When the phone rang, I was studying the photo that ran with the obit, Harry Dietrich’s grim, scrunched-up old face.
    “It’s even hotter here than New York, but everyone pretends it’s not irritating as hell because it’s not humid.
    There’s not enough water in the whole damn state to fill a thimble. I don’t know how anyone can live here.”
    “Hey.”
    “Hey, yourself,” he said.
    “How are the boys?”
    “Good. They actually like it here. Can’t be my genes doing that.”
    ‘Tastes differ,” I said. I’m nothing if not insightful.
    “So I find. Tell me about your case.”
    “Oh, it’s the usual,” I told him. “Someone’s dead, and I don’t know why. Remember, Saturday, we heard it on the news, the man who was killed on West Street by a bicycle? The old guy who owned Harbor View?”
    “He’s the dead guy?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So it’s a rich dead guy?”
    “Very rich. I was just reading his obit. It says Harbor View cost him a million six a year to run and that he gave over a million a year to research and other charities.“
    „Where the hell did all that money come from, and why aren’t we doing that?”
    “It didn’t say. But you always think it’s something fabulous, like the guy’s great-great-grandfather found the cure for pneumonia, then it turns out he did something you’d never think of, like he invented Tupperware.”
    “No, that was Earl Tupper.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I know a lot of stuff,” he said.
    “I wish I did. The woman who hired me, the manager of Harbor View, thinks Harry’s death wasn’t an accident and that her life is in danger. But she hasn’t explained why. Isn’t that weird?”
    “No more weird than your average dog-training client—
    hires you to train the family dog, then accidentally on purpose leaves out the most important detail of the dog’s history.“
    „That he’s a biter.”
    “Exactly.”
    “But that’s about money, Chip. They’re afraid you’ll charge more to work with a dog that could put you out of business for a good long time. Or that you won’t come at all—especially now, with all the so-called dog trainers who only handle puppies or refer if the dog shows any signs of aggression.”
    “Maybe this is about money too. Or about you not taking the case if you heard the whole story up front.”
    I held the phone to my ear, but I didn’t say anything. “Rach?”
    “Maybe both,” I said. “Get this—I have to meet her every day at her gym. She only talks to me on the treadmills, the two of us working up a sweat side by side. I’m going to be one skinny detective by the time you get home.”
    “I love you just the way I saw you last,” he whispered into the phone. “Working up a sweat, side by side.”
    For a moment, neither of us spoke.
    “I have to go. I’m taking the kids out to dinner, some fish place they like on the Santa Monica pier. It should be fun. And Betty will get the chance to dip her toes in the Pacific.“
    „How’d she do on the plane?”
    “She lay down at my feet and slept right through takeoff, got up when the food was served, wisely decided it was unworthy of her attention, and didn’t get up again until we’d landed. Piece of cake.”
    “And did they get it this time, that she’s a therapy dog flying to a gig, or did they bust your