Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

with two dogs in the room.”
    “Sophie said it was better for her to eat every other day. So if you were going to stay for her, you don’t have to.“
    “Still.”
    “I can come in and make sure she has water and mist her. If you want me to. I don’t care about the money or anything, Rachel. I’ll take care of the pets as long as I have to.”
    “Thanks, but I need to look through Sophie’s papers. It’s easier to do if I stay over.”
    “There was this guy, used to wear his iguana, here,” he said, tapping his shoulder, “take it to Washington Square Park. He’d sit on a bench and read, with this huge iguana draped around his neck, as if it were reading over his shoulder. Once in a while, if there weren’t any dogs around, he’d put the thing down on the grass. He had this harness on it, so it couldn’t run away. But it never tried to. It never moved an inch.”
    “Terrific. So what else did you forget to mention?”
    His arms flew up, as if he were about to take off. “What do you mean?”
    “Think, Mel. I’m hard up for facts here. In the past twelve months—”
    “How did you—”
    “I’m a detective.”
    He looked puzzled. News to him.
    “In the past twelve months,” I prodded, “you must have heard things, seen things, been told things. You must know things you haven’t told me.”
    “I can’t think of what. I mean, I’m sorry about the iguana, but how was I supposed to know Lydia was away? Anyway, even if Sophie had mentioned it, I was pretty shook up. I’ve never seen a dead person before. Except in the movies. And they’re not really dead, are they?”
    “Not usually.”
    “Oh, I just thought of something. I once took Bianca to the vet.”
    “And?”
    “Well, Sophie had to go to work. She tried never to miss it. The kids, she taught young ones, eight-year-olds, I think, she said they really missed her a lot if she didn’t go in. Other teachers, she said, took mental health days. They’d go to the movies. Or Bloomingdale’s. But she never did that. And Bianca was coughing. Sophie was afraid it was something serious and she asked me if I’d take Bianca in for a checkup. She offered to pay me extra,” he said, “but I wouldn’t take it.”
    “So where’d you take her?”
    I’d already gone through the old check registers. There were checks to three different veterinary practices. On all the checks to one of the practices, she’d written “acupuncture.” That was probably for Blanche’s arthritis. But I didn’t know which of the other two vets she’d taken the dogs to for the DNA test.
    “Dr. Cohen. Sandra Cohen, on Bleecker Street.”
    “Was she Sophie’s regular vet?”
    “She didn’t say. I mean, Sophie. Sophie didn’t say. She just asked if I could take Bianca there instead of taking her to the run. But I did both. Dr. Cohen said it was no big deal, probably an allergy. So it wouldn’t be contagious for the other dogs. So I took her from there to the dog run.“
    “That’s it?”
    He nodded. “Except that that was the first time Leslie was here and I wondered if maybe Bianca got sick from her. I heard you can, you know, get pretty sick from iguanas.”
    Something had been needling away at me ever since I’d seen Leslie sitting on the answering machine.
    “Salmonella,” I said. “From contact with their feces.“
    “But Sophie always washed her hands after touching Leslie.”
    I wiped mine down the sides of my jeans.
    “Still,” I said, “it wouldn’t take much to pick up salmonella from an iguana, especially one that seems to have had the run of the house. She might even have picked it up from the phone. It would be so easy to forget, to grab the phone when it rang, then touch your mouth with that hand before you got to wash it.”
    “She used an antibacterial soap,” Mel said. “I only know that because I cleaned the cage out for Sophie that time she was so sick. That’s when she told me to use the soap. She kept it under the sink in the bathroom. But I didn’t really need it. I’d used rubber gloves. Then I used the soap anyway. You can never be too careful.”
    “So what about Sophie’s boyfriend? Was he ever here when you came? Or when you brought Bianca back home? Or did she ever mention him, you know, when she was home?”
    “I’m the dog walker,” He whined. “No one was ever here but Bianca.”
    “So nothing on the boyfriend? Zip? She never mentioned him? You never met him at the dog run?”
    “The dog