This Dog for Hire

still Magritte stood on his friend’s lap and how he closed his eyes to concentrate on the pleasure.
    “How about expenses?” I asked. “That’s certainly fair.”
    “Well, he did chew up some shoes for me,” Henri said. He began to laugh. “I didn’t tell you that part, did I? Oh, he can be a devil, this one.”
    “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “I used to train dogs for a living. We call these ‘brat dogs’.”
    “I like that,” he said.
    I lifted the saltshaker and placed the fifty and my business card under it.
    “If you should hear anything that might relate to the murder, Henri, you can call me anytime. I should be getting him home now. I can’t thank you enough. Who knows what would have happened to this dog without you?”
    It was nearly eleven when I was ready to leave Henri s apartment with Magritte. Henri kept one toy, a bug-eyed green frog, “for memories,” he said, “and in case he come back sometime to visit his friend Henri.” He insisted I take the rest of the toys, as well as half a hag of Science Diet and two cans of Kal Kan chopped beef. Then he decided he had better drive me to SoHo, because how else was I going to get there with a bag of food and toys and two dogs? and anyway, he said, it would give him a chance to give Jimmy one more ride in the cab.
    We rode downtown in silence. Henri and Magritte were in the front. Dashiell and I rode in the back. Of course, the meter was off, so every few blocks someone stepped out into the street and tried to flag us down. Henri had asked where I live, and when I told him I lived in the Village, he insisted on waiting for me and driving me and Dash home. It took a bit of work, but I finally convinced him that Dashiell needed one more walk anyway, that I’d be perfectly safe walking anywhere with a pit bull, and that, if worse came to worst, I no longer had enough in my wallet to worry about. At that he laughed and finally agreed to let me off at the loft.
    I hadn’t done any of the work I had planned to do at Clifford’s loft, and I was too tired and much too hungry to start now. But as I hiked up the stairs with Dashiell and Magritte, I felt I had done well for my first day on the job. I hoped Dennis wouldn’t be spoiled and think the rest of the work would go this well or this quickly. And I hoped he wouldn’t catch on immediately that L hadn’t done anything at all to recover Magritte except listen to the messages on Clifford Cole’s answering machine, just as he would have done had he gone to the loft before me or even with me.
    What is detective work if not, at least in part, doing all the obvious things, looking at mail and listening to messages, talking to people who knew the victim, talking to people in the neighborhood and in the area of the crime scene in the hope that someone saw something, even if, at the time, they didn’t know if what they saw was significant, and just stabbing around in the dark, hoping to find something somewhere that will point you toward the light? Finding Magritte was wonderful and satisfying, but what, if anything, did he have to do with the murder? As for finding the answer to that and every other question, I hadn’t even begun.

5
    You Don’t Know Me

    IT WAS A cold walk home. I unlocked the wrought-iron gate and followed Dash down the narrow covered brick passageway between two town houses into the large, square garden, in the far left corner of which is the brick cottage Dash and I gratefully call home. Though it sounds grand, it isn’t. What is grand is the deal I got.
    Sheldon and Norma Siegal, who own the town house on the left and the cottage, are rarely around, so more than a tenant, they wanted a caretaker, someone to watch over the house whenever they’re away. In exchange for services rendered, the rent pay is nominal. Which is exactly what I can afford.
    The cottage has two floors of living space and a basement for storage. There are two small bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor, a living room with a fireplace and a small, open kitchen on the main floor, and one big room, with another bathroom, downstairs.
    Downstairs is where I keep all the things I still haven’t unpacked since I moved here four years ago. I simply haven’t found the need for good crystal in my current lifestyle.
    The house works well for us, storing all the books, files, and rawhide bones we need to keep us reasonably happy. But best of all is the garden, wonderful when it snows, because