Read Online This Dog for Hire by Carol Lea Benjamin - Free Book Online Page A

left cash in lots of his jacket pockets, Dennis, not a thousand dollars, but cash. There was a fifty in his jean jacket. He seems to have been careless with money. Not irresponsible, but careless. Again, maybe because it wasn’t in short supply when he was growing up.”
    “None of this makes any sense.”
    “It will. Give it time.”
    “But we know Magritte was there. That’s definite. And that he was left there. We know that, too,” he said, trying to take comfort in the fact that we had learned something about the night Cliff was killed.
    “Apparently. The money was left. The dog was left. Maybe something went wrong. Who knows? We don’t know the point of this, do we? But it’s my guess that Magritte was there at the time of the murder. From the looks of the leash, he jumped around and couldn’t break it, but finally backed out of the collar. What if, let’s say, Cliff had had a ro w with Louis, a big one, and maybe he went out to find someone for spite. It happens.”
    “Rachel, I—”
    “Dennis, you know how people driving by always stare at the pier when they’re waiting for the light to change. They hate what they’re going to see, but they’re compelled to look, like when you pass a car accident. Okay, suppose some nut job was driving by on West Street, no one’s around, and he sees a couple of guys in flagrante on the pier and loses it. He turns his car around, shoots back uptown, drives onto the waterfront area and back to the pier. Maybe by then, the other guy has left. Cliff is on the way to untie Magritte, and this poor excuse for a human being drives onto the pier and runs him down. He wouldn’t take the chance of getting out of the vehicle and checking his pockets. He wouldn’t expect to find so much money. Money isn’t the point, is it? He probably got the hell away as fast as he could. He probably never even saw Magritte tied up at the far end or heard him over the car’s engine.”
    For the second time he made that sound with his nose that would have caused Beatrice, the perfect one, to hand him a clean, ironed handkerchief.
    “I’m not ready to give up yet,” he said. “Are you?”
    “Of course not. I mean, even if it turns out to 1,% that it is what it looks like now, maybe we can catch the bastard. Maybe I can find a witness. The opening is tomorrow night. Let’s see what we learn there, okay? By the way, has the gallery been in touch with you about getting the paintings?”
    “No. They’re probably working with Louis. He's known Veronica for years. That’s how Cliffie got past the manila envelope and slides stage. Louis introduced them. Anyway, the art is his now, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. And he can get it? He has keys?”
    “He may be there right now, for all I know,” Dennis said. “Yeah, he has the keys. God knows why. He almost never came here. He claims he’s allergic to paint fumes. And dogs. Okay, so I’ll see you at the opening?”
    “You bet! Get to work, Dennis. You’ll feel better.” When I hung up, I needed to do something to clear my head, so I climbed on my exercise bike and began to pedal rapidly. I had gotten the habit of working out when I was a dog trainer, hauling around dogs that sometimes weighed as much as I did. It’s not really brute force that gets the job done. A great deal of getting through to a dog has to do with winning its respect, which is often done mentally, but it doesn’t hurt if you can impress the dog physically when necessary, stopping him or moving him, if not with your irresistible personality, then with a little muscle and some swell timing.
    I had told Dennis if he did something he’d feel better. But I had, and I didn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Christopher Street pier, how lonely it must have been that night, how dark. I wondered if there had been a moon.
    I thought about the sound of the place, too, the w ind, the car, the little bell on the dog’s collar, the sound it would have made as he pulled and