“What’s upstairs? More lab space?”
He looked at me again. “You are something, aren’t you? You were there, too?”
“Everywhere.”
He smiled that cold smile of his. “No, not quite, Ms. Alexander.”
“I sit corrected.”
He nodded. “There are some things you still don’t know. Isn’t that why we’re here rather than you being wherever it is you spend your time and me being in jail?”
“You didn’t mind, living at the office, no escape from it?”
“Not for a long, long time. Work is pretty much my life,” he said. He looked at his hands, the long slim fingers a pianist’s hands.
Only he hadn’t been the musician. Charles Madison had, Charles Madison whose sausage fingers had come toward me on the roof hours before, ready to send me flying into a cold, hard death so that his secret could remain so.
“Elizabeth?” I asked.
“She had nothing to do with any of it.”
“Is that a fact?” I said. Blondes, apparently, do have more fun, assuming this broomstick of a man could be considered fun. “How about when she was performing her play in three acts as the lovely, dark-haired Lorna? Did she have nothing to do with any of it then?”
“She was only trying to…”
“To?”
“Please her father. He wasn’t easy to…”
“Please?”
“She…” He swallowed hard. Something, it seemed, was stuck in his craw, whatever that means. “He was difficult to…Look, she only wanted to feel loved, the same as any kid does.”
“Touching,” I said.
He gave me a hard look. “There’s no need to be sarcastic.”
“Dr. Philips, it may have escaped your notice, but because of your employer’s massive ego, and your own, three people are dead, including Elizabeth’s father and brother. How did she handle that news?”
“How do you think?”
“Were they close?”
He turned the other way. In fact, he turned around, scanning the park, as if he had to see who might be listening before he could continue.
“Close? I wouldn’t say they were, no, not especially.”
“And the mother? Where was she?”
“No mother. He’d never married.”
“Raised by wolves?”
I got that look again.
“By a nanny. A loving—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You can tell by how secure and relaxed they both are, were, as adults.”
For a moment, he screwed up his face. Something was troubling him, finally, after all this time, after all he’d let pass.
“But she—”
“Yup. You can see it all around you, women in the park with children not their own, talking to other nannies instead of to the kid. Loving, you said? I don’t think so. Especially not with a prick like Charles Madison for an employer.”
He examined his hands again.
“So, you say other than her role as the seducer of my client, other than delivering her to the faux veterinary practice, other than that, and delivering the cloned puppy to Sophie, Elizabeth had nothing to do with any of this? By the way, was it you who harvested Blanche’s DNA, or was that Elizabeth?”
He shook his head dismissing my last question. “She knew what I was doing, of course. But she didn’t know anything about Sophie’s accident.”
“Good one.”
“She thought it was a seizure, a terrible mishap.”
“A mishap? But not you. You didn’t think it was a mishap.”
“Well, yes. I mean, no. I had no idea he planned to kill her.”
“With rat poison?”
“No idea. I never would have allowed him—”
“And how would you have stopped him, Dr. Philips?”
This time he turned slowly. I saw those long fingers gripping his thighs so hard his nails were white, trying to regain the control he felt he was losing.
“Well, I could have threatened to leave. He wouldn’t have liked that.”
“But you didn’t.”
“It was all after the fact, when I found out what he’d done, that he’d killed her.”
“He knew the amount to use? Clever, for a piano player, wouldn’t you say?”
He stood.
“I wouldn’t,” I said.
“You wouldn’t what?”
“Know the amount of Vacor to use, if I wanted to kill someone that way. But you would, Doctor. And I wouldn’t be standing if I were you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Of course,” I said, as much to myself as to him, “you wrote a prescription for the anticonvulsant Sophie used, emptied out all the capsules, filled them with Vacor, then left that vial near her bed, and after she was dead, you put her own undoctored pills next to her, so that it would seem the dog brought the pills too late to do any good.”
“Have you lost your mind. I never—”
“It wasn’t a matter of patience after all. Sophie was talking too much, way too much. She was going to blow your big secret if she kept it up. In fact, she already had, when she had the bullies’ DNA tested. No, you weren’t patient. Far from it. You wanted her dead yesterday, especially after you heard her call to me. You were so damn arrogant, all of you, assuming the police would be fooled, seeing an epileptic dead with her medicine vial at her side. You figured they might check out the pills, but you never thought they’d autopsy, did you?”
“You’re being ridiculous. I was never in that woman’s apartment.”
“Of course not. It was a joint effort. You’re a cooperative group, I have to give you that.”
He exhaled through his nose, turned, and took a step toward the gate.
“Uh, uh, uh. You’re upsetting me. You don’t want to do that.”
“Aren’t you being a bit foolish now, Ms. Alexander? Why would I care that I was upsetting you? You’re a stranger to me. And I have much on my mind at this time.”
“I bet you do. Now, sit down. I’m not finished.”
I pointed my left hand at him and nodded, not to him, to Dashiell.
Dashiell stood. But Dr. Philips only smiled that ice-cold smile of his.
That’s when I felt it, cold and hard against the back of my neck.
“Don’t turn around.” I smelled the stale tobacco on her clothing and in her blond hair. I didn’t have to turn to know who was there.
“Is that your father’s gun?” I asked. “Or did you have one of your own, perhaps a Christmas or birthday present from the old man?”
“Shut up,” she said. “I’ve had quite enough from you.”
“Well, I haven’t had enough from you, Lizzie. You never even thanked me for the flowers.”
I looked around the run. No one was paying the least bit of attention to us, Dr. Philips, who had cloned a dog, standing in front of me, Elizabeth Madison on the outside of the run, standing behind the bench I sat on holding a gun against the back of my neck. I wondered what she had over her arm. Surely, even here in Greenwich Village, someone would have noticed the gun if she hadn’t pulled it into the sleeve of her droopy sweater or tossed a jacket over her arm. After all, this wasn’t the Wild West.
“Tell him it’s okay,” she said, “and then get up slowly, and hand Rudy the leash. We’re getting out of here and you’re coming with us.”
“Hey, this is really interesting. You know the whole nature/nurture thing. For a while there, it seemed the nature people were way ahead, all those studies on twins who had been raised apart, ending up so similar anyway. But look at you, Elizabeth, a fucking paean to your adopted father, a walking advertisement for the power of nurturing to influence character.”
She jammed the gun into my neck. I had the feeling she would have done more if there hadn’t been so many people around. And if Dashiell hadn’t been standing there.
“Tell him it’s okay,” she said between her teeth.
“I beg your pardon?”
> “Your dog. Tell him it’s okay. Call him off. You think I’m stupid. I saw you sic him on Rudy.”
“Oh, yes. I nearly forgot.”
“Do it now. And don’t try anything funny.”
“Oh, I would never,” I told her. I looked hard at Dashiell. His eyes were on Elizabeth now. Whatever was hiding the gun didn’t fool him. He could smell the gunpowder, taste it on his big tongue.
“Okay,” I told him in no uncertain terms. I’m nothing if not obedient.
I let go of the leash and threw myself to the side, hitting the bench with my shoulder as Dashiell sailed over me, clearing the bench and the fence behind it, hitting Elizabeth square in the chest. I heard the rumble in his throat, muffled by her black sweater as he took the hand that had been holding the gun in his mouth and held tight. That was going to be one sore hand when he let go.
A dozen dogs had stopped what they were doing and run up to the fence; two stood next to me on the bench, all were barking wildly. One of them, an Irish terrier, cleared the fence the way Dashiell had and was pulling on Elizabeth’s pants leg. The people had gathered, too, some of them shouting, some of them frightened, hanging back, trying to see what all the commotion was about.
“Hey,” someone called out.
The gun was lying in the grass, near Elizabeth Madison’s hip.
“It’s under control,” I said.
No one believed me.
“What now, Ms. Alexander?” Philips said. “A citizen’s arrest for cloning?” He had that smirk on his face again. He was nearly gloating, not giving a rat’s ass about what was happening to Elizabeth just a few feet away.
I checked my watch, then looked over at the path that led to the dog run. Agoudian was right on time, towering head and shoulders above Burke and Burns, all of them coming our way fast.
“No, Doctor, it’s not a citizen’s arrest. It’s the old-fashioned kind. And the charge won’t be cloning. It’ll be murder.”
The gate opened. Philips’s mouth opened. Burke hadn’t come into the run. He’d headed for Elizabeth. I knelt on the bench and told Dashiell out. He let go of her hand and backed up, still watching to make sure she didn’t move a muscle. The terrier was another story. It took Burke to get him to let go. When I heard Burke scream and curse, I knew exactly what the dog had done afterward.
“In case it ever comes up again,” I said, looking down at Elizabeth, who was now holding her hand against her chest, “when you tell a dog ‘okay,’ it means he can do whatever he wants to.” I shook my head. “You tangled with the wrong dog, Ms. Madison. This particular dog, he doesn’t like it when someone points a gun at me. As a point of interest, ‘out’ is the command you need when you want to call a dog off. But unless there’s one of those outreach programs to teach dog training to women prisoners, you won’t need that information where you’re going.”
She didn’t thank me. In fact, she may have been in shock. Her eyes seemed dilated and looked a bit glassy, but hey, what do I know? I’m a detective, not a doctor.
She still hadn’t thanked me for the flowers, either. Possibly she hadn’t liked the note. What wasn’t to like? I wondered. It was short and sweet. Love and kisses, it had said. It had been signed “Mel.”
CHAPTER 34
I Climbed the Stairs
I called The School for the Deaf on my way over to Sophie’s apartment. When Ruth answered, I told her I had some good news for her.
“Did you find Side by Side?” she asked.
“I did.”
“And am I on the list?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“But I was hoping…”
“I was hoping you’d agree to take Bianca, Ruth.”
“Bianca? But I thought Bianca doesn’t alert.”
“She didn’t for Sophie because she had no need to. The job was taken. Blanche always beat her to the punch.”
“Oh. But then how do you know she’ll work for me?”
“She will. I’ve seen her do it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Her walker was shot. He seizured from loss of blood and just before he did, Bianca knew it was coming. She alerted him, but in this case, there was nothing we could do.”
“He was shot?” she whispered. “He’s dead?”
“He is, Ruth.”
I didn’t tell her he wasn’t really a dog walker, that he’d been there to please his father, to keep him in the loop. I didn’t tell her who’d killed him, either, or what Mel had done for me, not on the phone anyway. “Everything that happened, it’s not what we thought it was. I’ll tell you all about it when I bring Bianca. I could come by tonight if you like. I have your address from Sophie’s book.”
“Yes, yes. That would be wonderful. Oh, oh, I’m so excited, I, I don’t know what to say. It’s not just that I’ll have a seizure-alert dog, I’ll have part of Sophie with me, too.”
“I understand. That’s why I’m so glad it turned out this way, that Bianca can give you what you need and that I’m able to offer her to you.”
“Me, too.” She was crying.
“I’m on my way to Sophie’s now,” I said. “I’m going to pick up Bianca’s medical records for you and anything else I can think of that you might need—her pan, her brush, and the red cape.”
“Blanche’s cape?”
“Yes. She’s staying with me and she won’t need it, Ruth, but you and Bianca will. You’ll be taking her to work with you. You’ll be taking her everywhere.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll bring it all tonight.”
“And Bianca?”
“And Bianca.”
“At seven?”
“Seven’s fine. And, Ruth, I have something else for you, a gift for helping me.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Rachel. Truly. You’ve already done so much.”
“No, I do. I’m going to work with you, to help you feel comfortable and in control with Bianca, for as long as you need me.”
On my way down MacDougal Street, I thought about the time I’d seen Philips sitting in the run, the time the head count of dogs and people was off. I bet he’d been there before, watching the little clone play, awed by what he had accomplished. He could watch her in Sophie’s garden, too, from the top floors of the main house or from that little window in the back of the cottage. I bet he did it often, spying on Sophie and Bianca, never able to get enough of all three of the cloned dogs he’d created, wishing he could tell the world what he’d done.
Elizabeth was in on it with her father and, apparently, involved with Philips. From what I had seen, they were a perfect couple, too. And Mel had been in on it from the start, pretending to be a dog walker so that he could keep an eye on Bianca and Sophie, so that they’d be sure they’d gotten what they were after, and once they were, then Philips could work on the real project, his hubris, and Madison’s, getting full range. It must be nice to have money. You can be as crazy as you want to be, as long as you’ve got the bucks to pay for it.
But there were still a few things I didn’t know. Who was the woman in the park who’d told me she knew Herbie? Was there another adopted kid around to do Madison’s bidding, or was she his secretary or his personal assistant? And whom had I heard at the cottage? Was that also the woman from the park? Or did Madison have mice, really big ones?
I unlocked the door to Sophie’s building, letting Dashiell in ahead of me, then walking down the short hall to Sophie’s door and unlocking that. I looked around the living room for the last time, then began to gather the dogs’ things and pile them into shopping bags to take with me. Even if Wexford decided he wanted some of Sophie’s things, I was sure he wouldn’t need a couple of used brushes, a red leather collar, a nail clipper, and the medical histories of dogs he didn’t want.
When I finished, I straightened up the kitchen, packed up all the veggies and supplements, put away the blanket I’d left on the couch, put the towels I’d used in the hamper for someone else to wash or thro
w away. I smoothed the bed where Blanche had been, but left the dent in the pillow, her big head having rested where she could best smell the comforting odor of her lost mistress. I wondered about the windows, if I should leave them open or closed, but decided it didn’t matter. In a day or two, Sophie’s things would be taken out of here and the apartment would be painted and rented to someone else. I wondered who would empty the apartment and where her things would go, but I was dog tired, and it didn’t really matter now. What difference could it possibly make what happened to her towels or her toaster, as long as her dogs would be safe and loved.
And then, just like that, one of my questions got answered in the Zen way I had been taught on another job. I had paid attention to what I was doing, cleaning up Sophie’s apartment, letting my mind relax, not forcing anything, and the answer had come. JSB Realty and WAM Realty were branches of the same firm, both owned by Charles Madison, named for two of his favorite musicians. That’s how the veterinary office had appeared and disappeared on a Sunday. And how his son, without a real job, had a space worth thousands a month. And a piano he probably couldn’t play.
I thought about the music I’d heard over the phone and in the garden, opening the door and walking out, thinking that this was the last time I’d do that, too, the last time I’d stand in Sophie’s garden, protected by the ivy-covered wall I’d climbed, the building next door to the west and the fence to the east with the broken slat, the empty apartment, access for Madison when he was playing Joe and didn’t feel like coming in the front door. Or perhaps he’d sat there and listened to her talk on the phone when she did that out in the garden, when she’d called me and told me why she needed a detective. About that, I could only guess. I’d never know everything.
I sat on the stone bench, Dashiell at my side, no bull terrier to play with this time. And then I heard it—not the piano. The man who played the piano so well that he wanted to make sure he had an offspring to do so when the time came that he no longer could. I heard something else coming from the main house. It sounded like a dog whining. And I remembered Sugar, there all alone.
And then I remembered, she wasn’t alone.
The Wrong Dog Page 22