Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

feel like coming in the front door. Or perhaps he’d sat there and listened to her talk on the phone when she did that out in the garden, when she’d called me and told me why she needed a detective. About that, I could only guess. I’d never know everything.
    I sat on the stone bench, Dashiell at my side, no bull terrier to play with this time. And then I heard it—not the piano. The man who played the piano so well that he wanted to make sure he had an offspring to do so when the time came that he no longer could. I heard something else coming from the main house. It sounded like a dog whining. And I remembered Sugar, there all alone.
    And then I remembered, she wasn’t alone.
    I pulled out my cell phone and hit re-dial.
    “Ruth, it’s Rachel again. Do you by any chance know of anyone else who might need a seizure-alert dog?”
    “I, well, no, not offhand. But my doctor would. Why?”
    “There are two more clones I’d like to place and they might as well go where they can do some good. It would seem a shame to let talent like this go to waste.”
    Wasn’t that how it all started, Madison feeling that way about his own talent?
    “I’ll call him. I’ll find two people who need the dogs. I promise.”
    I told Dashiell I’d be right back and, leaving him in the garden, once again I hoisted myself up over the ivy-covered wall.
    The door to the cottage was open this time so I just walked in, without knocking. The lab was there, undisturbed, the man who’d worked there at the precinct now, telling stories. The cottage was dead quiet, but I went upstairs anyway, to see what was there, finding a small bedroom with a pale blue blanket on the bed, a tiny bathroom next to it with a tiled shower, a smaller than usual sink, everything blue. The dog bed was blue, too, one of those denim-covered round ones from L.L. Bean. Her name was on it, so I had the answer to one more question now. It had been Smitty who I’d heard on the stairs, not a person. Had she been the surrogate? I wondered. And where was she now?
    I heard that sound again, the creaking of the stairs, and whipped around to see who it was. It wasn’t Smitty this time. It was a dog far more clever and way more agile.
    He cocked his head and wagged his tail.
    “Great,” I told him. “We’ll be even more unobtrusive than I planned.”
    I bent and kissed the top of his head. Then together we headed out of the cottage and across the garden to the main house to rescue Sugar and her sister the way I’d once liberated Dashiell from people who didn’t deserve to have him.
    Dashiell was looking up at me. What difference did it make if he came along? There were only dogs in the main house. Everyone else was either dead or in jail.
    The French doors were latched but opened easily when I shook them back and forth to loosen the lock. When we stepped into the open living room, I heard the sound again, that whining noise. Sugar and her sister were in the living room to greet us and neither one was whining. Their tails wagged rapidly from side to side. So what was that sound? Was there another litter of clones?
    I climbed the stairs, the two bullies running on ahead to lead the way, Dashiell sticking with me. We continued on up, past a floor with a study and a small bedroom, to the next floor where there was a master bedroom suite. The sound got louder, and then I heard something else. A woman speaking. Well, crooning. After a moment, the whining sound stopped. I heard a dog bark. Then the whining started all over again.
    I climbed the last staircase to see what it was, and there she was, the woman from the dog run, the one who’d told me the story about Herbie and sent me running off to New Jersey to try to find him. She’d just tiptoed out into the hall and looked startled to see me, but instead of acting frightened or indignant and asking why I was there—perhaps she knew—she lifted one finger to her lips, to stop me from speaking. But it was no use. The noise started up again, louder than ever.
    I passed her and opened the door she’d just pulled closed, stopping in the doorway, Sugar and her sister at my right, Dashiell at my left, heads up, noses going. Smitty stood when the door opened but she didn’t come toward us. She seemed not to know what to do, and so she did nothing. Would that human beings could be so wise.
    He was in his crib, his face red, his small arms pumping, his legs, too. When I bent over the side, he reached for me, but I didn’t