Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

ears.
    Dashiell wasn’t looking for a tiara, of course. He was looking for anything that was out of place, something that, in his judgment, didn’t belong where it was.
    In no time, there he was, the largest pair of underpants I’d ever seen hanging from his powerful jaws. I scratched his head and sent him back. The second time he didn’t come back.
    “Oh, saints preserve us, Your Highness, and here it is without me having to go all the way down to the dining room and look under every table and chair. The new dog found it for you, right here in your very own room.
    “I’m going to smooth it out just like this, and now I can get on with my work and you can get a good night’s sleep.”
    A moment later Homer and Dashiell appeared out in the hallway, Homer giving me a thumbs-up sign, me handing him Anastasia’s underwear, which he tossed back into her room. I was thinking fast, figuring this man must have the keys to everything; he could get me into Venus’s office. I was determined, even if I had to rappel down from the damn roof, to check her phone before I left Harbor View.
    “Oh, no,” I said, making it up as I was saying it, what my former mentor, Frank Petrie, said was my greatest talent. “Look at the time. I was so busy working on a routine for Dashiell to do with the kids in Sammy’s movement class, I didn’t pay one bit of attention to how late it is. I have to call my boyfriend. He must be worried sick. Is there a phone anywhere?”
    Homer pulled his key ring out of his pocket “I’ll let you into Miss White’s office. You can use her phone,” he said.
    That’s when we heard it, a plaintive cry from Bella’s room.
    “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
    I turned and started back up the stairs, but Homer grabbed my arm. When I looked, he was shaking his head. “But she’s fallen.”
    “Did you hear a thump?”
    “No. I didn’t”
    “She says it every night, ever since she heard it on the TV.” He shrugged. “They mimic things. Sometimes they don’t even know what the words mean.”
    I followed him down to the first floor, across the lobby, and to Venus’s door. He unlocked the door and held it open. I was just about to ask for a little privacy when he spoke first.
    “You don’t mind if I leave you a moment, do you? I have to do a bed check, make sure all my little ones are tucked in, doing okay. They get scared sometimes and need a bit of comforting. I got to know everyone’s hunky-dory before I start my cleaning. Dr. K., he always tells me, if anyone needs you, Homer, leave the dust. It won’t go anywhere, he tells me, it’ll wait for another day. But I like to make it nice for them, floors all spotless for when they come down for breakfast, everything just right.”
    “He sounds like he’s good to work for, Dr. Kagan.“
    “He’s a fine man, the doctor is, very good to us what works for him.”
    “How about Mr. Dietrich? Was he a good boss, too?“
    “Oh, absolutely, a saint of a man.” Homer crossed himself. “I won’t be but a few minutes,” he told me, not looking at me, still staring down at those buffed-up shoes of his, the way he had when he’d lied about Harry.
    ‘Take your time,” I told him, meaning it sincerely.
    “You’ll wait right here for me, Rachel, okay?”
    “You bet.”
    “I have a little treat for Dashiell. Least I can do to thank him for finding herself’s crown, now isn’t it?”
    I lifted the phone and dialed my house, listening to Dashiell’s barking, my outgoing message. When the sound of Homer’s shoes going across the lobby floor had faded, I depressed the button and unscrewed the mouthpiece, finding the bug I would have bet big bucks would be there. As I had before, I left it in place.
    It would be too much for anyone to hope that all the kids were sleeping. Luckily for me, that wasn’t what I was wishing for. I was counting on the fact that someone needed a bed change, a story, a cup of cocoa. I closed the door almost all the way, so that no one could look in but I would still hear Homer’s steps as he approached.
    The back of Venus’s door was plastered with drawings, the way the front of Harry’s door was, his to make his office seem less threatening, Venus’s for her, a peek at the hidden inner workings of her kids.
    There were two of Jackson’s paintings, color dripped in swirls and circles. The other drawings were done in pencil or crayon and looked like the work of little kids, primitive, charming, and