Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

mind, I’ll keep her here. She’s on a special diet. It takes about half an hour to get her food ready and it costs an arm and a leg. Anyway, we’re used to each other.“
    “Were you and Sophie close?”
    I watched as two tears landed on Blanche, leaving small gray spots on her fur.
    “Yes,” I said. “Very.”
    “Well, that would be fine,” he said.
    “What would?”
    “What you said about her dogs.”
    “And her things?”
    “Her things?”
    “You see, this is New York City real estate we’re dealing with here, Preston, so the landlord will want this place ASAP, so that he can raise the rent and get himself a brand-new tenant. But you talk this over with Detective Burke, okay? He’ll help you figure it all out.”
    “Okay,” he said, sounding seven.
    “She was a wonderful woman, your cousin. It’s sad she never called you. I know she thought about it, about calling you,” I said, thinking about the white lies she’d told Lydia, something to make herself feel less alone. “You would have liked each other a whole lot.”
    I dropped die phone on the marble table and got some raw, chopped turkey for Blanche. She ate it from my hand, but before I had the chance to offer her a medley of vegetables and yogurt, she was back asleep. I showered and changed, then sat upstairs in my office and made a list of what I knew. And more important, what I didn’t know.
    When I was still training dogs and I had a tough problem, one in which the solution wasn’t immediately obvious to me, I would let everything I thought I knew go, as if what I believed about the dog and what I’d been told were so many leaves I was tossing into the wind. Then I’d start from scratch, looking at the dog as if for the first time, making room for him and what he knew and what, if I paid careful attention, he would tell me about himself, about the world, and about me. And that, I knew, was exactly what I had to do now.
    I took out the list of inoculations that Bianca had been given, wondering who had written it. Then, with the list in my pocket, Dash and I headed over to Hudson Street to find Mel’s mailbox. I tried several places that had mailboxes for rent, including the post office, and fifteen minutes later found a box that had the same number as Mel’s key. Then I headed for Horatio Street with his spare key ring in my pocket, hoping the pocket could hold all that weight without tearing.
    It was one of those perfect September days, the sky a bright middle blue, the clouds puffy, like the ones you see on picture postcards. It was cool enough that we could walk quickly, and the air seemed charged with energy. Or perhaps that was just me, my determination and anger propelling me forward. Dashiell stayed at my side, looking up at me every so often. Whatever it was, he felt it, too. We didn’t know where we were going, but we were heading there at top speed.
    I stopped outside the building on the corner of Horatio and Washington, the place where cells and blood had been taken from Blanche, someone not taking any chances, someone who wanted to make doubly sure he had what he needed. But I didn’t go in this time, to look for an office I’d never find, one, I now thought, that had been set up for that one use, like a movie set. Instead, I stopped outside the building and read the plaque that was there, taking out a small pad and pen and writing down all the information. Perhaps someone at JSB Properties would be able to tell me who had rented an office on the ground floor for so short a time that no one could remember their ever being there.
    Of course no one would remember them. It had been a Sunday. There wouldn’t have been anyone else in the building.
    Next we headed a block north, to Gansevoort Street, to the place where Mel had seemed to vanish the night I met him back where the vet’s office was supposed to be. Unless started to run, the only way he could have disappeared was if he lived right there, in one of the lofts above street level. Standing on the comer, I looked at the other side of the street, a meat market on the comer, the little French bistro Florent a quarter of the way up the block, then an architect's office, and farther down the street, a bar named Hell. On the second story, on those buildings where there was one, there were apartments, and even more on the south side of the street, where Dash and I stood.
    I went into the little deli on the corner first, describing Mel in great detail, the hair that