Free A Hell of a Dog by Carol Lea Benjamin Page B

a few extra towels. It could never have held the weight of a person.” She shook her head. “It pulled right out of the tile.”
    â€œSam, are the police finished with the room?”
    â€œYes, but they don’t want the hotel to release it yet, not for twenty-four hours. They said I could go in and pack his things, though, that that would be okay.”
    â€œLet me do that for you. You’ve got enough to do taking care of Beau. And yourself. Anyway, you have to be available to the others, in case there are some second thoughts later, anxieties to be dealt with, questions.”
    â€œThanks, Rachel. I certainly want to have everything ready for Elizabeth. I don’t want her to have to be in that room at all.” She reached into her pocket and took out two keys, checking the room numbers, and then handed one of them to me.
    â€œI’ll pack and leave the bag at the front desk, okay?”
    â€œWhy don’t you just bring it to my suite after you’ve cleaned up and changed?” she said. “I’m in 501. Of course, you already know that, don’t you? Thanks for this, Rachel. It’ll help a lot. The hotel offered to have it done, but I said no. I think we owe it to Alan not to have a stranger—”
    â€œNot to worry. I’ll see you later, okay?”
    I stopped on three for Dashiell, then took the stairs up one more flight. Standing in the empty hallway outside 408, I took a deep breath, preparing myself as if Alan’s body would still be in there, one foot sticking up out of the tub, his face locked in a grimace of pain and fear. But the room was empty, the curtains open, the sun streaming in onto the rumpled bed, the electronic collar and remote lying on top of the dresser.
    I put Dashiell on a down just inside the door so that I could look first. I could see that the nightstand was still pulled away from the wall. I guessed that Alan intended to return the radio to its place after his bath. There was a pair of pants over the back of a chair near the window, a pair of shoes near the bed, the socks he’d worn tossed over them. The bedcovers were in a great pile on one side of the bed, and the pillows were one on top of the other. I bent and looked under the bed, and found Alan’s shirt there. Perhaps he’d tossed it on the bed and it slipped off when he’d gotten up, then got kicked beneath the bed by accident. I pulled it out and did the best I could to fold it, pushing the covers over to make room for Alan’s suitcase so that I could pack up his things, as promised. I thought I’d do that first and save the bathroom for last.
    But when I pushed the covers over, I saw something that made me stop. Had I only been looking at Alan as someone whose training method I disliked intensely, that all changed when I saw the tennis ball pushed under the edge of the bedclothes, placed there by a hopeful dog who wanted one more toss. Many dog trainers have two sides to them, the one they show in public and one they keep private. But in most cases, the public side is the gentle one, and the rougher training techniques are used when no one else is watching. Here was a case where the public side was one many considered harmful to dogs. But, alone with Beau, Alan had played ball with him.
    Come to think of it, there’d been a ball just inside the door. I was so used to seeing dog toys on the floor, it hadn’t really registered. When I turned to look for it, it was between Dashiell’s paws. I picked it up and held it in my hand. Did he let the dog sleep up on the bed, too? I wondered, putting the ball in my pocket and running my hands on top of the spread to see if I picked up dog hair.
    I couldn’t find any fur on the spread, nor could I find any pajamas tossed anywhere. They were probably in the bathroom, I thought, wincing. He probably hung them on the back of the door before he got into the tub. Or if he didn’t wear any, no