Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

down, then slowly got to his feet and came toward the back door, standing in the doorway again, this time looking all around the dark garden, then up at the buildings surrounding it. For a moment, I ducked even lower.
    Elizabeth was smoking, her face crunched into a scowl. Joe got up and went to stand next to Madison. He whispered something to him. Madison nodded. Then they locked the doors and went back to where Elizabeth was sitting. I could no longer see the dogs.
    I backed up, retrieved my shoe, and went quickly this time, and quietly, down the stairs, thankful that no one in the building had a pet that would bark and let people know I was there. At the bottom of the stairs I turned left, down the short hall that led back to Sophie’s apartment. I took out my keys, unlocked the door, and pushed it in carefully, tearing the yellow tape where it had gone across the door and onto the frame. Then I slipped inside and locked the door behind me, leaving the lights off.
    I went straight back to the dark garden, opening the sliding glass door, then quickly closing it behind me. Grateful I’d kept practicing the t’ai chi I’d learned while working on another case, I crouched as low as I could, then, hearing the voice of my old teacher, I sank even lower and skittered across the garden to the loose slats in the fence, pushing them open and squeezing into the garden next door.
    There was a single lamp lit in the apartment next to Sophie’s. I stayed where I was until my legs were burning, waiting to see if there was any movement, if anyone was at home. Then, staying low, I crossed the garden, slid up the bedroom screen, and when no alarm went off, no slathering Great Dane threatened to eat me, no gun was shoved in my face, did the same with the unlocked window and climbed in. I was nervous about the light, but when I looked back the way I’d come, I could see only the very top windows of the house on Fourth Street. If people stayed where they were, on the parlor floor, no one would be able to see into this apartment.
    Of course, I had no idea whose apartment it was, or when whoever lived here would return. I suspected that whoever it was had something to do with my case, but I wasn’t sure of that and didn’t know what that connection was. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find either, a signed confession, a checkbook or tax return pregnant with pertinent information, even some ID that would tell me the name of the tenant who occupied this apartment so that I could get the hell out before he or she occupied it again.
    But what I found surprised me completely. Except for the lamp, the apartment was empty, as in unoccupied, and from the looks of things, had been this way for ages.
    Leaving nothing, taking nothing, though the Crime Scene Unit would laugh themselves silly over that notion, I went out the way I’d come in, closing the window, then the screen, duck-walking back to the loose slat in the fence and quickly slipping into Sophie’s apartment where, halfway in, I changed my mind. I turned and there was the little back cottage, just begging to be explored.
    Staying low, I crossed the garden to the brick wall, pulling apart the thick ivy, hoping Mr. Rat wasn’t close by and checking out the wall. Mortar had been chipped away and pulled loose by the ivy. There were bricks missing as well. I could see enough footholds to encourage me to try to scale the eight-foot wall. In fact, I thought if I took enough of it, like Rapunzel’s hair, the ivy would serve as a rope to help me to the top.
    Only once did the ivy start to pull away quickly and that time, I was close enough to the top to grab on and pull myself up and over. There was a stone bench near the wall, under where I was flattened on top, like a bug. I shinnied over a few feet to avoid it, and, taking one deep breath, dropped to the garden floor, falling forward onto my hands ' but not hurting myself. From where I was I checked out the cottage—a wooden door, painted a bright blue, two locks on it, probably both locked, and a window, open eight or nine inches at the bottom.
    The sudden sound startled me and I went belly down in the pachysandra bed in which I’d landed. Madison and Elizabeth were still in the town house, at the table, talking loudly. She moved her hands a lot. He sat very still, unnaturally so, making my neck itch, making me sure I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where. Joe was nowhere to be seen, maybe