Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

what to do next. Instead, I grabbed my jacket and took Dashiell for what I assumed would be a short walk, just to clear my head, ending up, to my surprise, but probably not his, in front of Sophie’s building. I checked my watch. It was eight-thirty. Most people would be home from work and it was Monday, a dead night even in Manhattan.
    Not counting Sophie’s, there were five apartments in the building. After reading the names next to each bell, I used the key Mel had given me to get in, figuring I’d start at the top and work my way down. Dash headed for Sophie’s but I called him back and pointed up the stairs, then followed him all the way to the top.
    BertShore’s apartment, larger than Sophie’s because she shared the ground floor with a shop, looked like a greenhouse, a huge skylight over the back room to give him even more light than the front and rear windows afforded. I stayed pretty near the doorway so that Dashiell could stay in the hall, and told Bert part of what I was doing, that I was trying to find any information that might help me find a home for Sophie’s dogs.
    “I didn’t know her, except to say hi at the mailbox or hold the door for her when she had both dogs. How’d she do that?” he asked. “They told me no dogs, no way, not even a Chihuahua. So I got Magnolia instead. But she had two dogs. It never seemed fair to me.”
    There were two little dishes just inside the kitchen doorway. One said, Kitty. I wrote “cat” in my little notebook. Born to the job.
    “She’s hiding.” He pointed at Dashiell. “From him. Don’t tell me you’re moving in here now, with that .”
    I shook my head. “So you never really talked?”
    “Not to speak of. Do they know who? ” he whispered. “The coppers wouldn’t say. You know how they are.”
    I shook my head again, handed him my card, and asked him to call if he thought of anything at all that might help me, even if it seemed “banal” I said. “Trivial. Don’t be shy. I don’t give grades.”
    I turned to go.
    “There is one other thing I should mention, but I don’t think it’ll help.” He took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his loose pants, hit the bottom, and offered me the one that popped out. When I declined, he just held the pack in his hand.
    “She fed Maggie for me when I traveled. I’m a choreographer,” he added.
    “And you travel a lot?”
    “A great deal.”
    “And Sophie would come up here and feed your cat?“
    “Yes.”
    “That’s pretty nice, from someone you hardly knew.“
    “It was business,” he said. “I paid her.”
    “But you never—”
    “I wasn’t here when she came. That was the point, wasn’t it? I’d call and tell her, ‘Thursday through Saturday,’ she’d say, ‘Okay,’ and I’d leave the money.”
    “She had the key?”
    “Still does,” he said.
    “I’ll look for it,” I told him.
    “It’s a Medico.”
    I nodded. He thanked me. I thanked him. On the way down to the next floor, I looked at my notepad. It said “cat.” I added, “Sophie fed it.”
    I was about to slip my card under the next door, with a note asking G. Pascal to please call me, when the door opened. There were two of them, arms wrapped around each other, Velcroed at the hip.
    “Sorry to bother you,” I said, which sounded lame, even to me.
    But they were fixated on Dashiell and didn’t seem to hear me.
    “He’s okay,” I said. “I’m here about Sophie, your downstairs neighbor, first floor?” If I was waiting for a look of recognition, I was bound to be disappointed. “I’m trying to locate friends of hers, or relatives. It’s about the dogs.”
    “Cop?” He had a tattoo of a knife dripping blood on his free arm. He may have had a lot of calls from cops. Unless it was a fashion statement.
    I shook my head. “I was hired by Sophie yesterday and now—”
    “Bummer,” he said.
    The girl’s hair was short and bleached nearly white. She watched him when he spoke.
    “I’m trying to find out—”
    “We just moved in,” he said. “We told the police that. There’s nothing we can tell you. We didn’t know her. I mean, I looked down at the garden sometimes and thought, Wow, cool. All that green, when you’re stoned, man, it’s really something. But I never even saw her out there, just some dog. Was she very old?”
    “Thirties.”
    “Overdose?” he asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    I handed him my card.
    “Research?” he said.
    “Yeah. I find answers for people who