A Hell of a Dog (23 page)

“Shepherds are more prone to allelomimetic behavior than most other dog breeds,” he said, “and this is as good a place as any to begin this morning.” His posture was relaxed, and so was Betty's. When he looked around the room, making eye contact with one person in the audience and then another, Betty did too. Monkey see, monkey do. Which was the principle of allelomimetic behavior.

Dashiell was making his way down the aisle to where Sam was sitting, walking slowly, wagging his tail as he walked, the note I'd written her rolled up and stuck under his collar, sticking up over his head like a feather.

“This means that the dog views herself, in this case, as a member of a group, and acts the way the other group members behave, especially the highest-ranked member of the group. In Betty's case, that's me, and this morning we are going to talk about why that's appropriate, but also about how that can sometimes be the cause of the aggression we are trying to stop.

“It's mostly the attitude of alpha that is aped, which of course means that if you are alert, worried, angry, relaxed, frightened, or happy, your dog will tend to be, too. In Betty's case, well, she also tends to mimic postures and activities. Which is sometimes humorous. But it is the mimicking of attitudes and feelings that is the real issue for us today.”

I watched Sam pull the note out of Dash's collar, read it, and then turn around to look for me. She whispered something to Woody, then got up and followed Dashiell back to where I was sitting.

“I need to check the phone records. Can you get them for me?”

“Rachel, what on earth is happening here?”

“What did the police say?”

“Not much. They're asking questions, not answering them. Did they talk to you?”

I nodded. “They did. But I'm still on the loose.”

“We all are. But I'm starting to wonder if we all should be.”

“Me, too. That's why I need the—”

“I'll be right back.”

I looked around the auditorium for our dwindling group. I spotted everyone but Cathy, but I could pretty well guess where she was and what she was doing.

After Sam handed me the phone bills and went back to her seat in the front of the auditorium, I slipped out the back and headed for the elevator. After walking all the way up to the roof, I didn't want to see the stairs again for a while.

Jimmy tucked himself against the wall and pulled the gate closed.

“Three,” I said.

“I know. I know.” He was looking forward, not at me and Dashiell. “What's with you people?” he asked. “You're dropping like flies.”

We landed on three, and Jimmy opened the door. The hall was empty as far as I could see, all the way to the bend.

“How'd that feller get up on the roof this morning? That's what I want to know. It's locked up tight.”

“Was that what the police said, that he jumped off the roof?”

“Insurance,” he said, sounding just like his dad. “Got to keep it locked.”

“Is it possible someone left the door unlocked?” I asked him. “You know, last time they were up there, checking the exhaust fans or whatever.”

“Door self-locks. Just like the rooms. Closes and locks without a key.”

“Anyone missing a passkey?”

He stuck his skinny neck out of the cage, checking out the empty hallway. Then he stood straight as a lamppost in his little corner, chin in, hands on the wheel. “I wouldn't know about that, missus,” he said.

Yeah, right.

“I thought maybe your dad might have mentioned something,” I said, sticking my hand in my pocket, pulling out a twenty, folding it in half, then in half again. Money talks, they say. I wanted to see if it was so.

Jimmy cleared his throat. “Didn't,” he said. “The mean old coot. I hardly talk to him, if I can avoid it.”

“Well, thank the good Lord you're an adult. At least you don't have to live with him.”

“But I do. It's my duty, he says, as his son. What kind of a man would leave his old da alone? he asks me, any damn time I even think about moving out. He can read my mind, that one. And he's mean. Always has been. He's not going to change now.”

“Guess not,” I said. “Well, thanks for the ride. And for trying to answer my question. I know you would have if you could have.” I handed him the twenty and walked off the elevator. But then I stopped, because I didn't hear the gate closing.

“Maid said one was missing,” he told my back.

I turned around.

“Is that a fact?”

“Mercedes. The redhead? One that found the body in the bathtub,” he whispered. He stepped out of the elevator now, stood next to me in the hallway. “Asked me what to do. Was afraid she'd get fired.”

“How'd she lose it?”

“Didn't lose it,” he said. “Someone swiped it off her cart. Happens from time to time. A guest forgets to pick up the key at the front desk and doesn't want the bother of going all the way back downstairs again, so he picks up the maid's key. Wouldn't be so bad if he were decent enough to put it back. I told her it happens, told her just like I told you, but don't tell the manager, I said. He might not be so understanding. She said the door was propped open—you don't prop it, it locks. Always leaves it open when she's cleaning. Feels safer that way. Cart was right in front of the doorway. Someone would have had to move it to get in the room. Didn't see anyone near the cart. Doesn't know how it could have happened. I said, Don't you worry. I'll get you another one. Told Pop to go get hisself a coffee, I'd watch the front. She's supporting a little girl and her mum. Can't have her losing her job.”

We heard the buzzer ring inside the cage.

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

“Now, don't go telling nobody what I told you, get Mercedes fired.”

“You can trust me,” I told him, heading for my room to go snooping around in other people's business.

I got back downstairs in time to hear the end of Chip's talk. Sam was sitting in the back now.

“There you are,” she said. “I looked around for you in the break, but I didn't see you.”

“Headache,” I said. “I went upstairs for a while.”

She nodded. “Do you need an aspirin?”

“No, I'm better now. Any news?”

“Detective DeAndrea came by. He said they're going to handle Martyn's death as a homicide. I'm not sure what their thinking is. It's possible they're doing this because of the children. Martyn's wife can't collect on his insurance if his death goes on the books as a suicide.”

“They know about his children?”

“They asked about his family,” Sam said, “where they were, if he got along with them, if he'd had any phone calls in the last twenty-four hours, something that might have upset him, if he seemed depressed, all of that.”

“And you said?”

“That he was a devoted husband and father, that he didn't seem in the least bit depressed. What did you find in the phone records?”

“I haven't had the chance to look at them yet,” I lied.

She was looking up at the stage.

“He's so good at this. Listen to him, Rachel.”

“And you will have to keep reminding your clients—once will not be enough to say it,” Chip was saying, “that when they allow an aggressive dog up on the bed or couch, the message the dog receives, loud and clear, is, We are equals. It's far more appropriate for the aggressive dog to have to work for what he gets, to live in a no-free-lunch culture, because if he keeps getting the wrong message, the message that he rather than his owner is in charge, eventually his aggression will be impossible to contain.”

Betty was lying down, her pretty paws hanging off the front of the stage. Every once in a while she'd close her eyes. But you could tell she wasn't asleep. Her breathing pattern never varied.

I closed my eyes too, listening to the sound of Chip's voice but not his words. One of us was imitating behavior, too, the behavior of a professional colleague, blending in, acting like part of the group while carrying on some sinister project at the same time.

I knew how the passkey was stolen without Mercedes seeing anyone near the cart. The thief was short enough not to show when he or she was on the far side of the little wagon that held all the cleaning supplies, the free bubble bath, and the key that fit every lock in the hotel. It was a piece of cake for me to figure out how. Now all I needed to know was who: Who had sent the dog to steal the passkey, who had unlocked the door to the roof, whose aggression had become impossible to contain.

“He seems at ease in front of an audience. I don't know why he doesn't do this more often.”

“Well, after this experience,” I said, looking up at Chip on the stage, “nothing personal, Sam, but I wouldn't count on him ever doing it again.”

“He may not be the only one,” she said. She was picking the red polish off her nails. Little chips of it, like flakes of dried blood, were all over her skirt.

24

GOOD BOY, I SAID

I waited for Chip at the back of the auditorium, watching him taking people's hands as they spoke to him, looking at them as if each were the most important person on the face of the earth, and he had nothing more urgent to do than listen to their concerns.

When he finally got away, we left the empty auditorium and took the dogs across the street to the park.

“Something really strange is going on this week.”

“Tell me about it,” Chip said.

Dashiell had turned to look at me for direction. I nodded my head to the right, and he ran ahead off the path and into a copse of trees.

“I wish I could. That's the problem, I have all these pieces of information that don't fit together.”

“Wouldn't that indicate that there are still pieces missing?”

I thought about that. “Okay, suppose we don't rule out anything that happened,” I said. “What do we know? Three men have been killed, all after their ideas on dog training were expressed. Alan hadn't delivered his talk yet, but with Alan, it was coming out of his pores. Everyone knew how he worked, and they all hated it. In addition, he insulted everyone he could, given the constraints of the short time he had in which to do so.”

“What about Rick and Martyn?”

“You know how dog people are—love my method, love me. If the opposite was true in Alan's case, why not for Rick and Martyn? They surely had their detractors too.

He nodded. “And Boris. You think Sasha protected him, or he'd be dead, too? And that I'm next?”

“There's one more element here that I discarded with Sam's encouragement.”

“Ah, sex rears its ugly head.”

“Precisely. Each of the three victims spent the night before they were killed having sex.”

Chip looked puzzled, and then he began to laugh.

“And you think I might be next on the killer's list?”

I nodded.

“Did I miss something, Kaminsky? Did you molest me in my sleep? I hate when that happens.”

“In your dreams, Pressman.”

“Then why do you think
I
'm in danger?”

He'd stopped walking and had turned to face me, the humor now gone from his eyes.

“Because we're the only ones who know for sure what we did.”

“To the best of my recollection, we didn't
do
anything.”

“Okay, then we're the only ones who know for sure what we
didn't
do.”

“And we can't exactly advertise it, can we?”

I shook my head. “Who would believe us?”

“Not the cops,” he said. “I'm sure from the look I saw passing between DeAndrea and O'Shea.”

“What do you mean?”

“At first they only seemed interested in the fact that you were out of the room at the same time Martyn was.”

“But that was barely five minutes. Did you tell them that?”

“I did. And I told them that until Sam showed up to tell us about Martyn, you weren't out of my sight. So then they wanted to know what we were doing for all those hours.”

“And you said?”

“That we were talking.”

“We were.”

“Exactly.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, no big deal, right?”

“It didn't stop there.”

“It didn't?”

He shook his head. “They wanted to know what we were talking about.”

“That's weird. When they questioned me, they mainly wanted to know what I did when I was out of the room and if I saw anyone else in the hallway. But they didn't ask me what we were talking about.” I screwed up my face. “Did you tell them?”

“Of course. I told them we were discussing positive and negative reinforcement.”

“Good boy,” I said. “Did they buy it?”

“We're here, aren't we? Not in jail. But I doubt very strongly that they believe we were talking about dog training all night.”

“Then they don't know dog people.”

“Apparently not. They asked me about phone calls, too—did Martyn receive any during the poker game? Did he leave the game to make or receive a phone call?”

“And you said?”

“That there were no calls for anyone during the game, and Martyn left because he was still jet-lagged. At least, that was the reason he gave. If it wasn't the truth, well, how would I know that? They were making notes like crazy, as if I'd actually told them something important.”

“They were making a note to check the hotel's phone records. They'd have all the incoming and outgoing calls. It's SOP. I have a set right here,” I said, opening my jacket where the folded papers were sticking out of the inside breast pocket.

“Let's have a look,” he said.

He whistled to the dogs to let them know we were stopping, and we sat on a big rock that could have been flatter and more comfortable but wasn't. I pulled out the phone bills for each of our rooms and opened them up.