Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

the front walk. There was a tricycle here, a friendly mailman there. The American dream was alive and well.
    The taxi stand was across from the station. The driver told me Bellamy Road was only a few minutes away. “It only runs a block,” he said. “Park across the street. You like ducks?” he asked.
    “Love ’em,” I told him.
    I could see the ducks as we approached, only they were geese. On the side opposite the park there were little clapboard houses with small front yards. Except for my taxi, there was no traffic.
    The driver began to shake his head.
    “You sure you got that number right?” he asked. “These don’t even go up to a hundred, looks like forty-two’s the highest number.”
    I looked at the paper I’d been given.
    “Can you wait?” I asked the driver.
    “Meter keeps running, I can wait.”
    I told him that was as it should be. I rang some bells. There was no number 1132. There wasn’t another Bellamy Road, or anything that sounded like it. There were no new neighbors either. No one had moved to or from this street for at least five years.
    I stood outside the last house and looked up and down the block at the green lawns and the curtained windows. Then I walked back to the cab, told the driver to take me back to where he’d found me, and waited twenty-two minutes for the train that would take me back to New York.
    Sitting near a window again, I took the picture of Herbie out of my pocket. He had a bland face and the sort of smile you’d see in high school yearbook pictures. But, of course, he wasn’t a teenager.
    And whoever he was, this pleasant-looking man with wavy hair, he hadn’t been Sophie Gordon’s boyfriend either.
    Turning the photo over, I looked at where someone had written his name, to make sure I’d look for the man in the picture. To make sure I’d go on not just this one, but many wild goose chases.
    I was sure now that if I looked carefully at the printing on the back of the photo and compared it to Sophie’s writing, I’d see it was different. I knew just where to look, too, because she’d written the names of her dogs on the backs of their photos and those pictures were in a file in her desk. And if by some chance I couldn’t tell if the handwriting was different or the same, I knew someone who could.
    But why bother? I was sure now that neither the photo nor the handwriting was genuine.
    I’d been manipulated. Someone was orchestrating what I found. And, more important, what I didn’t find.
    Sophie had expunged all mention of Herbie from her calendar. She wouldn’t have kept his picture on her refrigerator, not unless she expected him to come back. And in that case, she wouldn’t have deleted his phone number. His birthday would still be noted on her PalmPilot. Their first date would have been in her calendar, perhaps some little notation there, too, indicating how special the night had been.
    The train arrived at Penn Station and once again, I was swept along by the crowd, moved onto the escalator, and then I rose up into the music. I took a deep breath that smelled of soft-baked pretzels, Dunkin’ Donuts, and coffee. I was back in New York. I was home.
    But I didn’t know anything more than I’d known before I’d left. Except that someone was playing games with me. Someone knew I was on the job.
    Was he trying to scare me away?
    Or did he have plans for me, like the plans he’d had for Sophie, plans that required great patience and included the thrill of the wait?

Chapter 19
    One Thing Kept Coming Back

    Standing in the rotunda of Penn Station, travelers all around me, numbers rolling over on the huge board that displayed departures, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Chip’s pager. But I couldn’t get through. I was in a dead zone. When I got outside, I tried again. My phone rang as I was walking downtown on Ninth Avenue, passing the Italian specialty shops, the aroma of garlic coming at me like a sledgehammer. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Hey, yourself.”
    “Where are you?” Now I was one of those people talking on the phone in the street. What was the world coming to?
    “In the car, heading north on the Palisades, client in Sneden’s Landing with a biting Chow. So where are you? I hear heavy traffic. Doesn’t sound like the Village.”
    “I’m on Ninth Avenue, walking downtown from Penn Station and heading for the Village, but I have this awful feeling that when I get there,