Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

held it under the light and looked more closely, I saw part of a line at the upper right and again in the lower right-hand comer, lines designating where to write the patient’s name and where the doctor should sign his own. The list had been written on a prescription pad. Then the parts with pertinent information had been tom away.
    I slipped the note into my wallet, which was in the pocket of my backpack, in the other room.
    I hadn’t brought my things into the bedroom because I didn’t plan on sleeping in Sophie’s bed. It was a double and the sheets looked clean. Maybe she’d changed them that last day. There was a light quilt on the bed, a patchwork design with lots of blue in it. The sheets were blue, too, a color my mother used to call “sailor blue.” I was tired and the bed would have looked mighty inviting were the circumstances different. But they weren’t.
    Leslie was draped over a branch in her cage. I thought about taking her out; instead, I went into Sophie’s bathroom to check out what was under the sink. Just Mel had told me, there was antibacterial soap there. And a box of disposable rubber gloves right next to it. Still, I thought I’d call Marty Shapiro, my cop friend, and mention to him that there was a lizard in the house, and see if he wanted to mention that, and the issue of salmonella, to the detectives handling the case. I could have called Burns or Burke myself. But I wasn’t in the mood for any more cloning jokes.
    Is that ewe? they might have said.
    Or, We were hoping you’d stop baaaa.
    I looked at the rest of the dog file before putting it away, thinking that if Sophie had made any sort of arrangements for the dogs, there might be a note to that effect in this file. But nothing was there other than their medical records, some photos, and the original of the letter from the New York City Department of Health, registering Blanche as a service dog. Sophie probably carried a copy with her.
    I looked at the shoe boxes with three years’ worth of tax backup. I was tired, and it was late, but I told myself I could manage one more hour. I carried all three boxes out to the coffee table, sat on the couch, and began to look through the envelopes. It wasn’t as daunting as I’d thought it would be. I didn’t have to open all of the envelopes. And since Sophie was salaried, not a freelancer, she didn’t have nearly the number of receipts saved that I did.
    I was able to find the name of her doctor, Tanya Maas. Her address and phone number would probably be in the PalmPilot backup on the computer. I found no canceled checks made out to Side by Side, or to Loma West, or to the Horatio Street Veterinary Practice. So it seemed that most of what Sophie had told me had been true.
    Had there been a check written to Herbie, I could have learned his last name. But there weren’t any. All I could do was take his picture to the dog run and ask around. Beyond that, I was out of ideas.
    I worked on the tax backup for about an hour and then I was really too tired to do any more. I made a list of what I had to do in the morning, found Dr. Maas’s phone number, took the dogs out for a walk around the block, then got ready for bed. There was an extra blanket on the shelf in the bedroom closet and I took one of the pillows from Sophie’s bed. When everything was ready, I noticed that there were no curtains in the living room, but I still didn’t want to sleep in the bedroom. I can’t really explain it. At first, it just felt intrusive. Then I thought it might be too confusing for her dogs. Finally, it was fear that kept me out of Sophie’s bed, the fear that by sleeping there, I could somehow take on her fate.
    Whatever it was, I couldn’t talk myself into changing my mind. So I shut off the living room light and changed in the dark. Then I lifted the blanket and slipped underneath it, but not faster than Blanche. She burrowed down to the part of the couch where my feet would have gone had she not been there. Bianca lay on the floor, her back up against the couch. Dashiell waited until I was lying down. Then he lifted the blanket with his nose, squeezed onto the couch, and turned around so that I could lie against his warm back, both of us facing the garden, which mysteriously had gotten dark, too. Did that sensor shut off the lights when Sophie’s lights went out?
    But I didn’t have the chance to come up with an answer. My eyes were suddenly attracted up to the single small window in the