Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

Again she twirled her hand. “I’m still nervous. Makes me dizzy like you. Police come here, ask questions, take Vacor from cellar. Now Sergei has to buy more. But I don’t understand, all the questions, what it means.”
    “I guess they have to check out everything,” I said, taking a bite of bread as an excuse to stop explaining the activities of the Sixth Precinct.
    “Two tenants complain, they hear mice in walls. This building is so old.”
    “Shush, Carla. We have home. I have job. We have freedom.”
    At the north end of the apartment, there were two windows high up on the wall, like the kind you’d see in a dungeon. They were openings where the ground had been dug out and shored up in the garden so some light and air came from above to this subterranean paradise Sergei and Carla gratefully called home.
    “What did the police ask?”
    “Nothing, nothing,” Sergei said. “Not for you to worry about. They check everything.”
    “Did they take anything else, besides the Vacor?”
    “No, nothing else.”
    “Well, thank you for the tea.” I put my napkin on the table and stood. “I feel much better.”
    “You take pager number,” Sergei said. “When you need tools, you page me.”
    I took the slip of paper he’d written his pager number on and waited for him to open the door for me. Then I thanked them both and took the stairs back up to the entrance hall, feeling surprised that it was still daytime, the way you are when you come out of an afternoon movie.
    It was getting late and there was still so much I needed to do. I headed home to pick up the dogs and walk them back to Sophie’s. Unless the police insisted on keeping the apartment intact for a while longer, there wasn’t all that much time left for me to look through her things. Once her place was packed up, God knows what done with her stuff, it would be all the more difficult to try to find any family to take care of the animals or to find out who wanted Sophie dead, and why.

Chapter 21
    Are You Staying Over, He Asked

    I unlocked Sophie’s door, stepped aside, and let the three dogs charge in ahead of me. The cool north light coming into the living room from the garden gave the room a solemn feeling, but it didn’t seem to dampen canine enthusiasm one bit, at least not for Dashiell and Bianca. But instead of heading for the garden door, so that they could continue the wrestling they’d done at home to celebrate my arrival, they were at the door to Sophie’s bedroom, whining and scratching, Dashiell turning back to look at me to see if he could open the door and see Leslie. Before I was able to remind him that the iguana had gone home, the door opened and there was Mel, looking almost as startled to see me as I was to see him.
    “I didn’t know if you’d remember to mist her.” He had the spray bottle in his left hand. “Or if she was warm enough. They’re more delicate than they look and I know you’d feel awful if anything happened to her, Rachel.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Leslie. Where is she?”
    “That was very thoughtful of you,” I said, the dogs busily sniffing his shoes and pants, “but why didn’t you just call? I would have told you that Lydia’s back. She came for Leslie early this morning.”
    He shrugged. “I was in the neighborhood anyway.”
    I opened the door to the garden so that the dogs could go out if they so chose, then went into Sophie’s small kitchen and began to take vegetables out of the refrigerator for their dinner. I didn’t see Mel move and when I had everything ready and turned to look, he was still standing in front of the door to Sophie’s bedroom.
    “Can I help?”
    “I can manage.”
    Bianca had lured Dashiell out. Blanche was sitting in the entrance to the kitchen, her big head tilted up, her small eyes focused on the counter, where the food was. I gave her a carrot to eat while she waited and she slid down right where she was, holding it between her front paws as if it were a bone.
    “I only thought, you have so much to do and all.”
    He was still holding the spray bottle. He seemed to notice it then. He raised it up, gave me a lopsided grin, and disappeared into the bedroom, Blanche leaving her carrot and trailing after him. He closed the door behind him but I could still hear him talking to Blanche. Then there was silence. A few moments later, he was talking again, the words so muffled I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Perhaps he was telling her