Read Online Fall Guy by Carol Lea Benjamin - Free Book Online Page A

to do with the fact that the Siegals, the couple who owned both the town house across the garden from me and the back cottage that I rented from them, were hardly ever here. They had several other houses and they loved to travel. The deal was that I got the cottage dirt-cheap for making sure their house and their possessions stayed safe in their absence. I usually checked the house at least once a week to make sure no one had broken in and that everything was working the way it should. They'd notify me when they were coming back, and at that time I'd hire a cleaning service and see that everything was ready for them when they arrived. I always took Dashiell with me to check the house. If anything was amiss, he'd know it much sooner than I would. I'd often give him his search command without telling him what I wanted him to find. In those cases, he'd alert for anything that didn't belong where it was, a perfect way to let me know if the house had been invaded. And working on command rather than just being nosy, he'd be sure to search every inch of the house, not just the places that interested him personally.
    One winter, a year and a half earlier, he'd spent a lot of time checking out a pair of shoes he'd found in the pantry. I might have missed them myself. Norma Siegal often slipped off her shoes when she came into the house. Like me, she preferred to walk around barefoot. I'd even seen her on the back deck that way and had a conversation with her in the garden, neither of us wearing shoes.
    After pawing at the shoes and turning them over, Dashiell took off. I could hear him on the stairs, hear him opening doors, then sneezing to clear his nose. Martha was on the top floor in a small spare bedroom, a homeless woman who must have noticed that while lights came on at night, the same lights always came on and went off at the same time. She'd only been there a day, and other than the fact that I'd had to replace the lock to the cellar door, she hadn't done any harm. She'd only been keeping warm and trying to survive, like everyone else. I hadn't called the cops. Instead, I'd got her into a halfway house in Chelsea and hoped their training program and support might help her get back on her feet. It was sort of a work/study program for the homeless I'd read about in the paper, and Martha and I both felt lucky that when I called, they were able to take her.
    I walked Dashiell first, and when we got back we entered the house through the front door, which was on Tenth Street, just east of the gate I used to get to the cottage. When we finished checking the house, we'd leave by the back door that exited into the garden. That way I'd be sure neither door had been jimmied since my last inspection. For my low rent, I also collected the mail, pitching out all the junk mail and forwarding the bills to their attorney, who would pay them in the Siegals' absence. The Siegals were thrilled to have a private investigator living in the cottage. It made them feel really secure. I was thrilled to have rent I could afford in the neighborhood where I felt at home. That made me feel really secure, a good deal all around.
    There'd been no call from Brody all morning. Maggie hadn't called again either. I was hoping she would. I hadn't called Dennis. I was sure Maggie would do that. Then I wondered if she would. Family relationships could be so weird. I thought I'd better ask her when I spoke to her next.
    I'd gotten three of the people from the group last night—Mel, Larry and Brian. Mel kept asking about Dashiell. He barely remembered Tim. Larry referred to Tim as „the Mount Rushmore guy.“ He said Tim hadn't said a word to him, not in the group, not out. And Brian said he was still having a tough time. He'd gone on Prozac, he said, and he wished he could get off it but when he tried, he was worse than before he started using it. He barely remembered Tim.
    I called Scott again and this time he answered. He seemed very upset when I told him that