The Long Good Boy

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PRAISE FOR THE RACHEL ALEXANDER AND DASH MYSTERIES

This Dog for Hire

Winner of the Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel

“A strong female character and lots of action … Snappy dialogue and a fast-paced story will hold readers' attention.” —
School Library Journal

“
This Dog for Hire
will grip you and hold you like a puppy with a rag.” —John Lutz, author of
Tropical Heat

“[A] spirited debut … Benjamin writes with a wit nearly as sharp as Dash's teeth.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Joy! Rejoice! Carol Lea Benjamin has arrived and
This Dog for Hire
will be celebrated by murder-mystery buffs, the hydrant set, and all eclectic readers.” —Roger Caras, former president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

The Dog Who Knew Too Much

“Delightful … Rachel brings to mind a young, wisecracking, East Coast Kinsey Millhone.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Crisp, clean, and focused, with a great heroine and canines; an enjoyable read.” —
Library Journal

A Hell of a Dog

“Expertly blend[s] dog-training lore with an excellent and satisfying mystery.” —
Publishers Weekly

“The writing is excellent, as always, with a nice touch of humor.” —
Library Journal

“Boasts appealing human and canine characters, light humor, an attractive New York City setting, and a readable pace.” —
Booklist

The Long Good Boy

A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery

Carol Lea Benjamin

For Victoria and Stephen Joubert,
mishpocheh

Trying to define yourself

is like trying to bite your own teeth
.

—
ALAN WATTS

1

I Know What You Mean

I shouldn't have been awake, but it was one of those nights. I was in the garden, with Dashiell, watching the blue-black sky, waiting for dawn and the false feeling of safety that comes with the light. When my cell phone rang, I sent Dash for it, wiped it off on the leg of my jeans, and flipped it open.

“I got to get to sleep,” someone said.

The wind blew. I shivered. The dry yellow leaves that had clustered against the back wall of the garden lifted and eddied.

“I know what you mean,” I told her without bothering to ask who she was or who had died this time.

“What I was wondering,” she said, a heavy smoker, a rich, raspy Lauren Bacall voice, “is if you're going to the run with Dashiell tomorrow.”

He was over at the back wall, poking his big head into the pile of leaves, trying to figure out what had made them move.

“Who wants to know?” I asked.

“Never mind that for now. This is about work. For you.”

I waited for more. She waited for me to comment.

“This here's Rachel, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well.” Pleased with herself.

I had a nearly overwhelming urge to talk, to tell her that maybe I was awake because the wind had made the windows rattle, that the noise had gotten me up. Or maybe not—maybe something else, the holiday blues arriving earlier than usual this year, before Thanksgiving this time, ask if she ever got them, and if she did, what she did about it. I could have gone with it, told her the story of my life. Four in the morning, you'll talk, period. You'll order a pizza to talk to the deliveryman. You'll say anything to anyone who'll listen.

Instead I said, “Two-thirty.”

“No good.”

“Then when?”

“Before work. Eight o'clock.”

“That's less than four hours from now,” I said, more to myself than to her, thinking I wouldn't get any sleep at all, a hell of a way to start a case.

“Not
that
eight. The other one.”

“Eight
P
.
M
.? But you said—”

“Right. I'm a health care professional. Night shift.”

“Okay. Eight
P
.
M
. it is, but then not at the dog run. Too many aggressive dogs late in the day. Name another spot.”

“You the fussy one. You name one.”

“Farther west okay?”

“Whatever.”

“Abingdon Square Park, Twelfth and Hudson.” I figured it wasn't all that far from St. Vincent's Hospital. If that's where she worked. If not, then the hell with it. Let her take the subway.

“You got it.”

“How will I know you? I mean, just in case someone else decides to take a load off at eight o'clock, enjoy the scenery.”

“Are you kidding? You don't got a dog to exercise, some other pressing reason to be out, you staying inside, watching HBO, you're not sitting out in no unheated park. It's November, woman. Where you been, hibernating?”

“Still.”

“Girl, you too much with your questions. Take something, okay? Help yourself relax. It's not gonna be your problem. I'll know you. Okay?”

“And how will you do that?”

She sighed. There was some whispering then, but her hand must have been over the mouthpiece, because I couldn't make out the words.

“Honey, you was described, in detail. No stone was left with moss on it. You wanna skip the park, walk around the Village with your dog, keep moving to keep warm, it don't make no difference to me, I'll find you, jus' make up your mind. What I can't do is keep standing here yammering about it. My feet's killing me.”

“Okay. Abingdon Square it is. And what did you say the job was?” Wondering what kind of a person calls at this hour of the night, wondering what she had in mind for me to do.

“You see what I mean about you? I din't say. But it's undercover investigation. What'd you think I was goin' to say, nucular physics? We'll tell you all about it tomorrow.”

“We?”

But there was nothing more. The line was dead.

2

I'm LaDonna

I slept for three and a half hours, from just after light to nearly eleven
A
.
M
. Then I shopped for organic meat and vegetables for Dashiell and me, did the laundry at the main house while checking to make sure no one had broken in and that all systems were operational, the job that gives me a rent I can afford. I raked the last of the fallen leaves, trimmed back the herbs for winter, and vacuumed the cottage from top to bottom. At a quarter to eight, Dash and I headed over to Abingdon Square, the small triangular park where Hudson Street and Eighth Avenue play kissy-face for just a moment.

I sat to the right of the Twelfth Street gate so that I could see both entrances, turned up my collar, opened the
Times
, holding it high, the way you do when you read in the subway, except there the paper gets folded like a road map in large accordion pleats so that you don't take up the room of three people. Here, alone on a park bench, I spread the paper out and slumped down behind it. Very B movie. Not to mention pointless. I was not only the only person there with a pit bull, I was the only person there. Besides that, it was way too dark to read.

I didn't have long to wait. She was on time. Rather, they were on time. I knew they were my clients the moment they showed. It wasn't the white uniforms either, because, truth be told, they didn't look much like nurses.

The one holding the dog, a wirehaired mini dachshund the color of bread crust sticking halfway out of her short, red leather jacket, had big hair, loose, frizzy, and a shade of blond that was closer to white than yellow. Her skin was pale, too, coffee with much too much milk in it. She wore a short, tight, shiny black skirt, lacy stockings, and pointy-toed stiletto heels. Her compatriots, one on each side, weren't wearing white either. The biggest one, head and shoulders above the other two, was wearing a halter top and matching miniskirt in a floral pattern, a faux fur jacket over it, her bronze hair piled high on her head, loose curls falling forward against her shiny ebony skin. In the light from a streetlamp, I could see she had glitter along her prominent cheekbones. A nice touch. I thought I might try that sometime. The smallest of the three, her skin the color of walnuts, eyes as small and dark as currants, wore spandex, a kind of cat suit, except the pants ended mid-thigh, as if she were about to do a cross-country bicycle race. But had that been her plan, the shoes were all wrong. They were little strappy things with the highest heels I'd ever seen, heels as sharp as needles that made a metallic peck-a-dee-peck sound as she approached, like a hungry chicken with a stainless-steel beak. Me, I couldn't sit in those shoes, let alone work as a health care professional in them.

They spotted me and tottered over. I dropped the paper onto the bench, stood, and smiled. Or maybe I gaped. Who knows?

The big one stuck out her enormous hand. I felt sure she was going to say her name was Alice, because Lord knows, I was in Wonderland. But I was wrong.

“I'm LaDonna.” She was tall, dark, and gorgeous, six-one, maybe even six-two in stocking feet. Only she wasn't—she wore thigh-high pink boots and matching lipstick. We shook hands, her grip, like her broad shoulders and narrow hips, at odds with the message her outfit was trying so desperately to convey.

“Chi Chi,” the frizzy-haired one said. “And this here's Clint.” She jiggled the dog. “Same deep-set, dark eyes.” She nodded slowly. “I could go for him,” she said.

“Aren't his blue?” the one in the cat suit said, wagging one long finger to and fro.

“Whose?”

“Clint's.”

Chi Chi looked down at her dog, then shook her head. “No way. They brown.”