After showering, I gave Dashiell his dinner, then went back upstairs to my office and sat at my desk, now covered with the equipment my brother-in-law kept sending me so that “we could be a family again,” not understanding that a fax machine, a laptop, and a printer are not the route to this girl’s heart.
Why was I still so angry? Lillian wasn’t. She was acting as if they were kids again, as if they had just fallen in love, as if they didn’t have two pimply, whiny, selfish teenagers, as if Ted hadn’t cheated on her with one of his models.
I opened the laptop and turned it on, thinking about the case while it booted up, beeping and whistling to let me know how hard it was working on my behalf. Then I waited again while it dialed my internet provider, gurgling and flashing some more, making sure it had my attention.
When the home page was there, wiggling annoyingly, promising free upgrades and all kinds of other things I didn’t want, I typed in “puli rescue” and hit the search button, waiting while the computer found what I was looking for.
I left a message on the lost-and-found bulletin board of the closest group, hoping for some exposure, that someone checking my post might know where Lady was. Of course, there was no sense describing her, a thirty-to thirty-five-pound springy little black dog, cheerful, noisy, smart, easy to train, with dreadlocks. That wouldn’t exactly cut her out of the pack. But since she’d been a trained visiting dog even before she’d arrived at Harbor View, she probably knew some unusual commands. Those were the things I included—that she might do back-up and walk-up, commands sometimes used to position a dog close to a wheelchair. She might do paws-up on the knees of someone who wanted to pet her, and she wouldn’t get spooked by canes, walkers, or any other institutional equipment. She hadn’t been tattooed or microchipped. But she did answer to her name. Big deal. Lady is by far the most common name for a female dog, Ginger or Muffin only a distant second.
I also read the lists posted at the puli rescue groups, paying careful attention to the dates. But none of the found dogs could be Lady. Of the three on the lists found after Lady had gone missing, two were males, and the bitch was old, ten or eleven, hard of hearing, her teeth worn down to little nubs.
Downstairs, in the pile of newspapers on the far side of the couch, I found the two recent articles about Harry Dietrich, the small piece that ran in the Metro section the day after he was killed and a larger one, an obit, that I hadn’t paid any attention to the first time around.
When the phone rang, I was studying the photo that ran with the obit, Harry Dietrich’s grim, scrunched-up old face.
“It’s even hotter here than New York, but everyone pretends it’s not irritating as hell because it’s not humid. There’s not enough water in the whole damn state to fill a thimble. I don’t know how anyone can live here.”
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself,” he said.
“How are the boys?”
“Good. They actually like it here. Can’t be my genes doing that.”
“Tastes differ,” I said. I’m nothing if not insightful.
“So I find. Tell me about your case.”
“Oh, it’s the usual,” I told him. “Someone’s dead, and I don’t know why. Remember, Saturday, we heard it on the news, the man who was killed on West Street by a bicycle? The old guy who owned Harbor View?”
“He’s the dead guy?”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s a rich dead guy?”
“Very rich. I was just reading his obit. It says Harbor View cost him a million six a year to run and that he gave over a million a year to research and other charities.”
“Where the hell did all that money come from, and why aren’t we doing that?”
“It didn’t say. But you always think it’s something fabulous, like the guy’s great-great-grandfather found the cure for pneumonia, then it turns out he did something you’d never think of, like he invented Tupperware.”
“No, that was Earl Tupper.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know a lot of stuff,” he said.
“I wish I did. The woman who hired me, the manager of Harbor View, thinks Harry’s death wasn’t an accident and that her life is in danger. But she hasn’t explained why. Isn’t that weird?”
“No more weird than your average dog-training client—hires you to train the family dog, then accidentally on purpose leaves out the most important detail of the dog’s history.”
“That he’s a biter.”
“Exactly.”
“But that’s about money, Chip. They’re afraid you’ll charge more to work with a dog that could put you out of business for a good long time. Or that you won’t come at all—especially now, with all the so-called dog trainers who only handle puppies or refer if the dog shows any signs of aggression.”
“Maybe this is about money too. Or about you not taking the case if you heard the whole story up front.”
I held the phone to my ear, but I didn’t say anything.
“Rach?”
“Maybe both,” I said. “Get this—I have to meet her every day at her gym. She only talks to me on the treadmills, the two of us working up a sweat side by side. I’m going to be one skinny detective by the time you get home.”
“I love you just the way I saw you last,” he whispered into the phone. “Working up a sweat, side by side.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
“I have to go. I’m taking the kids out to dinner, some fish place they like on the Santa Monica pier. It should be fun. And Betty will get the chance to dip her toes in the Pacific.”
“How’d she do on the plane?”
“She lay down at my feet and slept right through takeoff, got up when the food was served, wisely decided it was unworthy of her attention, and didn’t get up again until we’d landed. Piece of cake.”
“And did they get it this time, that she’s a therapy dog flying to a gig, or did they bust your chops?”
“It wasn’t as bad as last time. Only two passengers asked if she was a Seeing Eye dog. I was reading both times.”
I laughed.
“What did you tell them?”
“After last time, trying to explain. It’s too…” He sighed. “I told them yes, she was.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. This one guy, he looks at her, he looks at me, he looks at the book, he says, ‘So you’re the trainer, and you’re transporting her?’ I told him, ‘Right.’ It made it easier all around. Look, Rach, it’s the only reason people know that a big dog can be in the cabin. They just want a little reassurance that they understand the world, that it’s not chaotic, as they fear, but orderly and safe.”
“Good luck on that,” I said. “So when’s your gig?”
“It starts Monday. I’m doing five sessions. If they need a few more, there’ll be time to add a few before I leave.”
“What’s the deal?”
“Training staff at a residential treatment center for disabled adolescents. They want to get a live-in.”
Like Lady, I thought. “There was a resident dog at Harbor View, Chip. She went missing a couple of weeks before Dietrich got killed.”
“And they weren’t able to find her?”
“No, I’m working on that, too. But she’s still missing.”
“I miss you,” he whispered. “I want to come home.”
I held onto the phone for a while after he’d hung up, then looked back at Harry’s picture, his weedy eyebrows, potato nose, Dumbo ears, big, fat lips—mean lips, I thought. A prune of a face, not a looker, this Harry Dietrich.
I started reading the obituary again.
“Harry Knowlton Dietrich, 74, died yesterday of head injuries incurred when he was hit by a bicycle on West Street as he was leaving Harbor View, the small, private residential treatment center he cofounded with Eli Kagan, the psychiatrist who had treated Dietrich’s younger sister, Betsy. Ms. Dietrich suffered from autism and died in 1957 at the age of twenty-two, two years before Harbor View first opened its doors.
“‘We are deeply shocked over the untimely death of Harry Dietrich, who gave of himself so generously to this population as well as other neglected and needy causes,’” Kagan was quoted as saying. “‘Harbor View will operate as always,’ he added, ‘continuing to offer care and shelter to people with special needs, the fulfillment of Harry Dietrich’s vision and his passion.’”
There would be a private funeral, the article said. It didn’t say where or when. It also mentioned that Mr. Dietrich was survived by a sister-in-law, Arlene Poole of Manhattan, a niece, and a nephew.
Dashiell had come up on the couch to sleep, his head leaning against my leg. I leaned down and put my cheek on his back, listening to him sigh in his sleep as I did so. I closed my eyes, thinking about Charlotte in her red gloves and earmuffs, following Dashiell down the stairs. There’d been a dark line on the wall opposite the banister, starting on the top floor and going all the way down to the lobby, about two feet from the ground, a grease mark from a puli’s coat, Lady rubbing against the wall, the way so many dogs do, as she ran up and down the stairs, visiting her charges, making sure everyone was taken care of every day.
Harry Dietrich was not the only one who would be missed at Harbor View.
Then all I could think about was Chip, how far away he sounded.
I hadn’t asked where he was—maybe at the new house, waiting for the boys to get ready?
I hadn’t asked about Ellen either, if she liked it there, that hot, dry place that had no seasons, if she liked it that Chip had come to visit, if she were listening on the other side of the door, if that’s why he had sounded so far away, almost like a stranger. Until the end, when he’d whispered.
Then I thought about waking up to the smell of pancakes, neither dog in bed, Chip standing in the doorway with the tray of food, a vase of flowers from the garden on it, how he’d put the tray down on the nightstand, how it sat there untouched while we made love, how after he and Betty had left for the airport I’d taken the cold pancakes out into the garden and put the plate down for Dashiell, watching him wolf them down without chewing, wondering if, given the way he ate, he tasted anything, or if all that begging, all that desire, was just about the pleasure of not being hungry.