Free Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog by Carol Lea Benjamin Page A

then handed one of them to me.
    “I’ll pack and leave the bag at the front desk, okay?”
    “Why 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—”
    “Not 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 wonder he wouldn’t let the dog in the bed, I thought. You can get some nasty scratches sleeping naked with a dog. I flipped up the end of the covers, finding Alan’s polka-dot boxer shorts there. So, no pajamas. He just kicked off the last article of clothing after he was already under the covers.
    I put Alan’s things in his bag, including his shorts, looking through his seminar notes and placing them in one of the pockets, using the plastic bag the hotel provided for his shoes, as if it mattered now, even folding the slacks as smoothly and neatly as I could, as if he were going to wear them again. Then I walked over to the bathroom, opened the door, and looked in.
    The tub was empty and looked as if it had been cleaned, so despite what my mother called my overactive imagination, I figured it would be safe to start breathing again after only a few seconds. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The stench of feces