This Dog for Hire (29 page)

I was able to roll away, and as I picked myself up, I saw Peter Cole, his face gray with terror, a gray not unlike the one his brother used to paint him as the revolting pervert he was, holding his arm now not around my aching throat but up in front of his own face.

Dashiell was standing over him, the sound of an outboard motor coming from somewhere deep in his massive chest. Then, his face inches from Peter Cole's, he barked twice. His tail was wagging. He was triumphant.

“Get him off me,” he cried. But I ignored him. I turned to look at Magritte, and he was licking his lips. I panicked.

“Where's the liver?” I shouted.

Peter tried to move his arm, and Dashiell grabbed it in his jaws, stopping the movement.

“Don't move. Is it still in your hand?”

I could barely hear him. “No.”

I turned back to Magritte, who was just sitting in the snow, watching us. Then I saw it, grayish brown, lying in the snow. I picked it up and walked over to where Peter Cole was lying on his back, terrified, under Dashiell, who never once took his eyes off his prey.

I wondered if he was as scared as he could possibly be. Or if there was room for improvement.

“Open wide, asshole,” I said, holding the liver over his mouth.

For a moment, I saw what I had wanted to see. I could leave the rest up to the police. I pulled a plastic bag from my pocket and dropped the liver in, knotting it securely on top.

“Excuse me,” I said to Peter. “I hope you won't consider me rude, but I have to use the john.”

I turned and headed for the cottage and, after making the phone call I had to make, grabbed my sheepskin coat and went back out to the yard to wait for the police.

35

Up to Scratch

It was snowing lightly on Saturday. In the morning Dashiell and I walked over to Bailey House to see Billy Pittsburgh and tell him the white man he'd seen commit murder was in jail. We saw Ronald, too, and we got to meet Jimmy McEllroy, who was only twenty-two and loved Dashiell, but we never did get to see Sivonia LeBlanc. She had died early on Thursday morning.

In the afternoon Dashiell and I went over to Dennis's loft to take Magritte home and collect our check.

“I still can't believe it was his own brother who killed him,” he said after I'd caught him up on all he'd missed.

“Why not? It's the second-oldest crime. Right after stealing fruit.”

If ever I'd heard an exit line, that was it. I stood and picked up my coat.

“Wait up,” he said. “You never told me how Dashiell got out of the house.”

“Dashiell,” I said, and when he looked up from wrestling with Magritte, I pointed to the door.

He was up in a flash. He grasped the knob, turned his head, and, carefully keeping his grip, backed up.

“Only their door opens out, so he had to push instead of pull.”

“Brilliant!” he
k'velled
.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said modestly.

I had known Dennis less than two weeks, but it seemed I'd known him ages. I sometimes think detective work is like summer camp. You make friends and enemies in record time.

“I was at the Sixth yesterday,” I told him as I put on my coat. “They have the tapes, the slides, and the piece of tainted liver Peter tried to shove into my mouth.”

“We did so
well
, didn't we?” he said, sharing the credit as he leaned to kiss me good-bye. “We could be partners, Rachel, you know, a politically correct Nick and Nora Charles. And Dashiell—”

“Yeah, yeah. Dashiell could be fucking Asta.”

“Exactly,” he said with a grin, those lovely crooked teeth looking like piano keys after an earthquake.

But I already had a partner, I thought as I followed him down the stairs, his ears bobbing as he descended toward the street. One who had proven himself up to scratch.

Once upon a time I had saved his life. He had recently returned the favor.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Rachel Alexander and Dash Mysteries

1

If You Weren't Careful

Dashiell stood motionless on the dark, wet sand, his eyes cemented to the driftwood log I held up over my head. Just before I moved to send it spinning over him and into the ocean, as if he were able to read my mind, he turned to mark its fall; then, all speed and power, he ran flat out into the surf. Looking beyond him at the vast, gray-blue Atlantic Ocean, flattened under a bright spring sky, I remembered myself as a child playing fetch on this very beach with some other dog, now long gone.

I used to come to my aunt Ceil's house in Sea Gate, the gated community just beyond Coney Island, when I was a kid. I would race for the water the minute we hit the beach, shedding flip-flops and T-shirt as I ran, staying in until Beatrice, my mother, standing on the shore about where Dashiell stood a moment ago, hands on her hips, a line showing over the center bridge of her sunglasses, would shout to me that my lips were turning blue, and why didn't I come out and play on the sand like a good girl, as my big sister Lillian had long since done.

“I can't hear you,” I'd call back, bobbing like the stick I'd just thrown for Dashiell.

“You'll be the death of me,” Beatrice shouted, her voice like the roar of the waves from far away on the shore.

Playing on the hot, gritty sand under my mother's scrutiny held no charm for me. The ocean was the lure—all that power, beauty, mystery, and life. Even death, if you weren't careful. At least that's what Beatrice used to say, as if being careful could do the trick and keep you safe.

Beatrice found the scary side of everything, the don't instead of the do. That's why I grew up looking for trouble, just to defy her. At least that's what my shrink used to say. That sad fact, according to Ida Berkowitz, Ph.D., would explain what I was doing here today, even though my mother, like that pup I had played fetch with when I was a kid, was long gone.

Dashiell was riding a foamy, frigid wave back toward me, the driftwood crosswise in his mouth.

I had hesitated for only the moment it took for the guard to call ahead and make sure I had actually been invited to come to this private and protected community that occupies the point of land where the Atlantic Ocean meets Gravesend Bay. By the time he had lifted the barrier and motioned me to drive in, I knew I had a stop to make before keeping my appointment, for my sake as much as for Dashiell's. I'd headed here, to the deserted beach, so that my partner, the other unlicensed PI with whom I was in business, could dig in the sand, swim in the ocean, and roll in dead fish and used condoms, reminding me as he always did precisely how delicious it was merely to be alive. Soon enough I'd be immersed in less expansive feelings, because it was a case that had brought me to Brooklyn on this cool, clear April day.

Dashiell stood squarely in front of me, holding the stick dead center, eyes locked on mine, water running off his underside and down his legs, his one-track mind on the task at hand.

“Out,” I told him. I have a way with words.

He dropped the driftwood heavily into my hand and, hoping for another toss, retreated to where the incoming waves could just reach him, washing over his feet from behind, then swirling in front of his ankles before returning, as eventually we all must, from whence it came. I gave him one last swim, sending the driftwood high and far over the waves, watching him watch it, electrified with pleasure. We saw the splash. Dashiell, the quintessential pit bull, charged forward with sufficient grit, strength, and tenacity to bring the damn ocean to its knees, if need be. Work or play, it was all the same to him. He'd use whatever force he deemed necessary to meet a challenge.

We ran around on the sand to dry off, then headed back to the black Ford Taurus that David and Marsha Jacobs, Aunt Ceil's neighbors and friends, had rented for me so that I could drive here to the quiet community where they had lived for forty-seven years and listen to them tell me about the sudden, unexpected, and violent death of their only child.

2

We Could Hear The Kettle Whistle

Marsha Jacobs was one of those women who wear stockings and heels even in their own homes. She'd answered the door in a dark gray silk dress, the uneven piece of black grosgrain ribbon that signified a death in the family pinned to her chest. It would leave holes in the silk, I found myself thinking, then silently berated myself for the frivolous thought.

Driving home along the Belt Parkway, I couldn't get the image of Lisa Jacobs's mother out of my mind. For that's what she was, first and foremost, the devoted Jewish mother of a beautiful, blue-eyed, curly-haired thirty-two-year-old who ten days earlier, with no clues to foreshadow the act, had opened one of the oversize windows at the t'ai chi studio where she studied and taught and jumped five stories to her death.

“We want to show you our Lisa,” Marsha had said, welcoming me into the living room time forgot. “Come and sit, Rachel. Can I get you some tea?”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling chilled by the room and my wet clothes. Dashiell had body-slammed me several times right before we left the beach, and my leggings felt as if I had been in the ocean, too. I wondered if we'd each get a different pattern of bone china from which to drink our tea, like the cups my mother had collected.

David Jacobs was sitting on one side of the couch, a thick, leather-bound photo album on his lap. He patted the middle seat, and hoping I wouldn't leave a big, wet ass print on their sofa, I sat next to him.

“This has been very hard on her,” he said as soon as Marsha had left to make the tea. “She—” he began, but then hesitated. “She's up all night,” he whispered, “pacing, pacing. She's driving me
crazy
. She—” he sighed before correcting himself—“we,
we
,” he repeated, “would like you to help us, Rachel. We cannot understand what could have possessed Lisa, what made her do this awful thing.” He sounded angry. “We don't have a guess. Not a clue.”

David placed the album on the coffee table, stood, and went to get his cigarettes from the top of the piano. His suit pulled across his potbelly and hung too loosely around his arms and shoulders, as if he had recently lost a good bit of weight, a supposition that, considering the circumstances, I would not have had to be a detective to make.

“Lisa never complained, never complained. She never spoke of any problems. She was always cheerful, kind, a happy girl. Ach,” he said, stopping to light his cigarette, “how could this have happened? We gave her everything.”

I could hear Marsha talking to Dashiell in the kitchen, where she'd suggested I stash him, even though he had already stopped dripping by the time we'd arrived. Dashiell's tail tapped out his answer on the tile floor.

“She was studying to be a Zen Buddhist priest, my Lisa,” Marsha said, standing in the archway at the rear of the living room. “The study and the t'ai chi gave her peace. Peace. That's what she told her father and me. So why—”

“Sit, Marsha,” David said, blowing smoke into the middle of the room. Marsha sat next to me. Now I had their grief on both sides. In our silence we could hear the kettle whistle, and Marsha left again to make the tea.

“Are you cold, Rachel?” David said, as concerned as if
I
were his daughter.

“No, no,” I lied, “I'm fine.”

“Are you sure? Marsha, bring her a sweater,” he shouted in the direction of the kitchen.

“No, thank you, I'm fine. Really.”

“It's no trouble,” he said, half to himself. “We have plenty of sweaters.”

He moved the album closer but didn't open it.

“Ceil said you used to be a dog trainer. Before.”

I raised my eyebrows.

David looked at me and puffed on the cigarette, ashes dropping onto his suit pants. “Before your—before you were married.” He brushed at his trousers, leaving a dry, gray trail where the ashes had been.

Marsha arrived with the tray and placed it carefully next to the photo album. She handed me a cup with yellow tulips on it and gave David one with purple irises, saving the one with the tiny red rosebuds for herself.

“Marsha—the sweater, the sweater,” David said impatiently.

Suddenly I had the eerie feeling I was in some relative's suffocating home. I reached for a cookie. Marsha returned with a navy blue sweater and handed it to David, who handed it to me. I put it over the arm of the sofa.

“So—” David said. “You married again? Your husband approves of this kind of work, de
tec
tive work?”

Marsha was biting a small biscuit. She looked up, curious.

Ceil would have told them I hadn't married again, wouldn't she?

I reached for another cookie. “Lisa was single, wasn't she?” The eighth law of private investigation, according to my erstwhile employer and mentor, Frank Petrie, is, Don't
give
information.
Get
information.