This Dog for Hire (23 page)

I wrenched open the door and told the driver my address.

And had I not looked out the back window as my cab pulled out into the street and seen the man who had been standing in the shadows run to the curb with
his
arm up like a flagpole and immediately get a cab, the creep, I would have thought I was okay.

Safe.

But now I knew I wasn't. The signs were in place that someone wanted to know where I was going. As clearly as the toilet paper that might be stuck to the bottom of his sneakers would have told the world where he'd just been.

All I could think of was how good it would feel to be home with the door double-locked and my own dog at my side.

There was only one thing to do. I offered my driver an extra five if he'd get me home in five minutes, and he nearly left my head on Eighth Avenue making the turn on West Thirty-third Street, past the north side of the main post office, to go downtown.

And all the way home, all I could do was hope that the man who had been following me hadn't thought to make a similar offer to his driver.

28

Who Wouldn't Make a Face?

When I was putting the key in the front-door lock, I heard the phone and nearly broke the key in half trying to get inside.

“Rachel, thank God you're okay.”

Magritte had run in. Dashiell had run out. Now they were both in the garden, the door open, the warm air flowing out and the frigid night air coming in.

“Dennis?”

The dogs came barreling in and headed for the food bowls.

“Hang on a sec,” I said, slipping off my coat and tossing the Flying Man into the living room.

“Hey, where were you raised,” I asked Dashiell, “a kennel? Close that door.”

He came from behind it, butted it once with his cinder block of a head, and then did a neat paws-up. The door slammed so hard, the house shook. I turned the lock and put on the chain.

“That's better.” He and Magritte were tugging on the new toy.

“I'm back,” I said into the phone, “what's up?”

“Thank God you're okay. I've been worried sick.”

“What's wrong? What happened?”

“You're not going to believe this. Gil didn't die of a heart attack. He was poisoned!”

“What? How do you know?”

“When I got home, there was a message from Marjorie, saying it was urgent she speak to me as soon as possible, even if it was in the middle of the night. So of course I called.”

“And?”

“A technician was moving the body, you know, Gil, because the ME has to autopsy to determine cause of death, and when he was getting him onto a rolling stretcher, he smelled bitter almond.”

“Cyanide.”

“Right. It wasn't a heart attack. It looks as if Gil was
murdered
.”

“Have they done the autopsy yet?”

“Hey, we're talking New York here. There's a major backup in autopsy. But get this, the technician starts checking everything, you know, really looking at the body carefully and checking all the clothes, the pockets, whatever, and finally he opens the pouch. Well, as you might imagine, it stinks to high heaven.”

“Of course, that's what liver's supposed to do,” I cut in. “That's why it works so well as bait.”

“But this liver smelled like bitter almond. This is where the smell was coming from.”

“So how come Gil didn't smell it?”

“Maybe because he was working, you know, concentrating really hard on what he was doing with Magritte. Anyway, he was a smoker. Cigars. Dulls your sense of smell.”

“And taste,” I added. “Not only that, once he popped it in his mouth, by the time he might have realized anything, it might have been too late. Cyanide is fast You don't get an awful lot of time to react.”

“Rachel, doesn't that mean Gil put the poisoned liver in his mouth while he was in the ring? Right in front of us!”

“Yes. And not only that, it means not all the liver was tainted.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I'm pretty sure he spit a piece to trip up the tri. So he would have died then if it was all laced with cyanide. And so would the tri if he'd spit it out before he went down.”

“But the toxicology lab said all the liver in the pouch was poisoned.”

“It was. But the liver in his pocket wasn't. That's how this was done, Dennis. Someone swapped the liver in the bait pouch for the doctored liver.”

“How? When?”

“While Magritte was being groomed.”

“You're kidding!”

“I'm not. Look, the pouch was where Gil kept his supply of liver, but he took some and put it into his jacket pocket so that he wouldn't have to wear the pouch until he was in the ring. He left the pouch with his stuff, in back of Magritte's crate. It was there, unattended, when we all trooped off to the grooming area. In fact, Doc left before we did. He also beat it away from the ring when Gil went down.”

“Who's Doc?”

“This hideous little man Gil was talking to when he came back to get Magritte ready for the ring.”

“Do you think
he
switched the liver?”

“All I'm saying is he
could
have. Dennis,
I
could have. Gil left all his things there when he went for coffee. But he had some liver in his jacket pocket, untainted liver, because he gave some to Magritte when he cut his nails. So, that means—”

“Magritte. Oh, God, you mean he could have—”

“No, Dennis, it went into his own mouth first, for a while, too. He kept swishing it around in his saliva to get it all juicy, and he teased Magritte to distract him from the indignity of getting his nails cut. That means the liver in his pocket was okay. That explains why the tri is okay, and why Gil wasn't poisoned in the group run.”

“So you're saying that when he took liver earlier from his pouch, it was okay. And when he used liver later, from the pouch, it wasn't.”

“Right. In fact, a moment after I saw him fish around in his pocket and then go into the bait pouch, I saw him make this awful face. I figured, shit, who wouldn't make a face, putting liver in his mouth. But, you know something, he didn't make a face in the grooming area, and he practically
ate
the fucking liver while he was grooming Magritte.”

“But when he got a piece with cyanide, he did notice it was bitter.”

“Apparently.”

“My mother used to make me eat liver when I was a kid, you know, for the iron, and I still remember that some of it was sort of sweet and some of it was really bitter.”

“So Gil could have thought he had just gotten a normally bitter piece. It's not like he had time to taste-test the whole pouch. He was in the ring, working. And anyway, he didn't have time for another reason.”

“The cyanide. It's too fast.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you think the killer planned it so that it would happen in the
ring
, right in front of everyone?”

“I don't know. But if he did, it would mean that whether or not he was there, he'd hear the results of his handiwork on the news that night. There's no way something this dramatic would go unreported.”

“Damn clever of him.”

“Or her. What else did Marjorie tell you?”

“That the technician sent the pouch to the lab for testing. Once there's suspicion of murder, there's no delay, and two hours later the toxicology results were in and, big surprise, the liver had been laced with enough sodium cyanide to fell a fucking horse. That's what they told Marjorie.”

Something was nagging at me, holding a part of my attention captive, but I couldn't get a grasp on what it was.

“They're sure it was cyanide poisoning?” I asked him.

“Pending autopsy results. But the doctor was sure enough of the cause of death to call Marjorie. Not his heart, he said. Cyanide.”

“Dennis, you said you hardly knew Marjorie. Why did she call
you
right away?”

“I told her to call if she needed me, Rachel. She asked me if I would talk to the police, see what I could find out. She said she'd given them my number, and she hoped that was okay. I mean, she's so far away.”

“Is she coming up?”

“I don't think so. You know how most people are. They figure if you just set foot in New York, next thing you know, you'll be murdered.”

“Where could people get an idea like that?”

I thought about Big Foot in the ladies' room.

“Dennis, I—”

“I guess
he's
off the hook,” he said.

“What did you say?”

“Well, if someone killed him, doesn't that let him off the hook?”

“We don't know for sure the two murders are connected, do we?”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose someone killed Gil, and it had nothing to do with Cliffs death?”

“Who would want to kill Gil? Well, except me?”

“How about anyone who had been in the ring with him? Didn't you see what he did to the little tri? There was also this handler he tripped in the ring. Ted Stickley. He fell and broke his arm. You can't handle dogs with a broken arm. Dennis, I wonder if he was at Westminster. Maybe he was biding his time, waiting for a way to get back at Gil. Did you save your catalog?”

“Of course.”

“Check it for me.”

“Hang on. Stickley, Stickley, Stickley. Yes. Ted Stickley. He handled a saluki.”

“Well!” I said, as if handling a saluki were proof of his guilt. “There are a lot of people who hated Gil. Everyone knew his habits, Dennis, I mean everyone knew that liver went into his mouth.”

“So you're saying maybe the person who hated him enough to kill him had nothing to do with Clifford's death?”

“Dennis, Gil's death doesn't
solve
this case. There's too much we can't explain.”

“What next?”

“Sleep. It's been a long day. I'll call you tomorrow, in Boston. Everything changed today. I need some time to think.”

“Be careful, Rachel.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” I told him.

But I hadn't even looked down the block when I'd gotten out of the cab, carrying Magritte, my keys ready in my right hand. I was just so happy to be home. Was I kidding myself to think we had really lost Big Foot?

When I hung up, I looked over at Magritte. He'd had three close calls, two the night of Clifford's murder when he could have been intentionally killed by whoever killed Cliff or accidentally killed crossing West Street after he'd gotten free of his collar. And another at Westminster, had Gil had the time to spit the tainted liver to him before he went down. That he hadn't may not have been an accident. Most show people care much more about dogs than they do about people.

Three close calls. Yet here he was. The
good
luck dog.

Magritte began washing himself, like a cat. Perhaps he had nine lives, too. If so, he was going through them mighty fast.

I poured a glass of wine and began to think about the loft and those three empty stretchers. Had Clifford changed his mind about three paintings, ditching them because they weren't good enough? I'd read that Picasso worked that way, painting quickly, creating many works, and keeping only the ones he liked.

Or was there some other reason those canvases were gone?

Who was Mike?
He
must have had a key to the loft, too, since he had left a message about picking up Magritte.

More important, who was Big Foot?

It had been easy to assume that Morgan Gilmore had been the killer. He had the motive and the opportunity. He had keys to the loft. He knew Cliff would do anything to get Magritte back.

My head was aching, the questions I couldn't answer eating at me. I picked up Marty's note, which, as usual, was on the green marble table, just outside the kitchen.

Rach,

Dash played with Elwood and had dinner at the precinct, two slices of pizza, a burger without the bun, and a cinnamon doughnut. Sorry. You know how the guys are with dogs.

Marty

I stroked my hand over Dashiell's big, round belly, then scratched the base of Magritte's tail. They were heaped in a pile, sound asleep, Dashiell's head on the Flying Man, as if it were a pillow. Suddenly sleep seemed the perfect idea.

29

Tunnel Vision

I never made it upstairs. I woke up at seven-fifteen, covered with my coat, the grayish light of winter slipping through the shutters, making stripes on everything.

I let the dogs out and watched them chase each other around, taking turns being hunter and prey.

Now that I knew it had been Veronica Cahill at the loft, I didn't need to check the
Young Detective's Handbook
to figure out why. But law seven says, Confirm your hunches.

I decided to catch Louis Lane before he left for school. That I most certainly did. He worked the late session and didn't have to be in until ten forty-five.

“Louis,” I said, not bothering to apologize for waking him, “I was at Clifford's loft one night, and someone in a camel coat, black beret, and white scarf came in and took the tape from the answering machine.”

Ba da boom. I never beat about the bush before I've had my first cup of tea.

“Oh, that was Veronica. She's so paranoid about people trying to cheat her out of her commission.”

“But—”

“I told her that it couldn't happen because
I
own the art now, and of course
I
wouldn't cheat her, but she still had to go and get the damn tape. I guess it means she doesn't even trust me.”

“She told you about going?”

“Of course. But only
after
she did it. She said there was some man-eating
beast
there and it nearly scared her to death, and I—oh!
You!
”

“Right. We scared each other.”

There are always people who try to get around the gallery commission by buying directly from the artist, and few people, if any, would know that Louis, not the Cole family, now owned the art. Perhaps Veronica was right to worry—some people will do anything for money.