Keller wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed to him that she had a means of support, and that it was all too visible. If she wasn’t making a living as a dominatrix, she ought to make an appointment right away for vocational counseling.
There was no way to lurk outside her brownstone without looking as though he was doing precisely that, but Keller had learned that lurking wasn’t required. Whenever Cuppering took Fluffy for a walk, they headed straight for the park. Keller, stationed on a park bench, could lurk to his heart’s content without attracting attention.
And when the two of them appeared, it was easy enough to get up from the bench and tag along in their wake. Cuppering, with a powerful dog for a companion, was not likely to worry that someone might be following her.
The dog seemed perfectly well behaved. Keller, walking along behind the two of them, was impressed with the way Fluffy walked perfectly at heel, never straining at his leash, never lagging behind. As Evelyn had told him, the dog was unmuzzled. A muzzle would prevent Fluffy from biting anyone, human or animal, and Aida Cuppering had been advised to muzzle her dog, but it was evidently advice she was prepared to ignore. Still, three times a day she walked the animal, and three times a day Keller was there to watch them, and he didn’t see Fluffy so much as glower at anyone.
Suppose the dog was innocent? Suppose there was a larger picture here? Suppose, say, Evelyn Augenblick had found out that her husband had been dillydallying with Aida Cuppering. Suppose the high-powered attorney liked to lick Cuppering’s boots, suppose he let her lead him around on a leash, muzzled or not. And suppose Evelyn’s way of getting even was to…
To spend ten thousand dollars having the woman’s dog killed?
Keller shook his head. This was something that needed more thought.
“Excuse me,” the woman said. “Is this seat taken?”
Keller had read all he wanted to read in the New York Times, and now he was taking a shot at the crossword puzzle. It was a Thursday, so that made it a fairly difficult puzzle, though nowhere near as hard as the Saturday one would be. For some reason-Keller didn’t know what it might be-the Times puzzle started out each Monday at a grade-school level, and by Saturday became damn near impossible to finish.
Keller looked up, abandoning the search for a seven-letter word for “Diana’s nemesis,” to see a slender woman in her late thirties, wearing faded jeans and a Leggs Mini-Marathon T-shirt. Beyond her, he noted a pair of unoccupied benches, and a glance to either side indicated similarly empty benches on either side of him.
“No,” he said, carefully. “No, make yourself comfortable.”
She sat down to his right, and he waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t he returned to his crossword puzzle. Diana’s nemesis. Which Diana? he wondered. The English princess? The Roman goddess of the hunt?
The woman cleared her throat, and Keller figured the puzzle was a lost cause. He kept his eyes on it, but his attention was on his companion, and he waited for her to say something. What she said, hesitantly, was that she didn’t know where to begin.
“Anywhere,” Keller suggested.
“All right. My name is Myra Tannen. I followed you from Evelyn’s.”
“You followed me…”
“From Evelyn’s. The other day. I wanted to come along to the airport, but Evelyn insisted on going alone. I’m paying half the fee, I ought to have as much right to meet you as she has, but, well, that’s Evelyn for you.”
Well, Dot had said there were two women, and this one, Myra, was evidently the owner of the twelve-year-old Yorkie of whom Fluffy had made short work. It wasn’t bad enough that he’d met one of his employers, but now he’d met the other. And she’d followed him from Evelyn’s-followed him!-and this morning she’d come to the park and found him.
“When you followed me…”
“I live on the same block as Evelyn,” she said. “Just two doors down, actually. I saw the two of you get out of the taxi, and I was watching when you left. And I, well, followed you.”
“I see.”
“I got a nice long walk out of it. I don’t walk that much now that I don’t have a dog to walk. But you know about that.”
“Yes.”
“She was the sweetest thing, my little dog. Well, never mind about that. I followed you all the way through the park and down to First Avenue and wherever it was. Forty-ninth Street? You went into a building there, and I was going to wait for you, and then I told myself I was being silly. So I got in a cab and came home.”
For God’s sake, he thought. This amateur, this little housewife, had followed him home. She knew where he lived.
He hesitated, looking for the right words. Would it be enough to tell her that this was no way to proceed, that contact with his clients compromised his mission? Was it in fact time to abort the whole business? If they had to give back the money, well, that was one good thing about working for chump change: a refund wasn’t all that expensive.
He said, “Look, what you have to understand-”
“Not now. There she is.”
And there she was, all right. Aida Cuppering, dressed rather like a Doberman pinscher, all black leather and metal studs and high black lace-up boots, striding along imperiously with Fluffy, leashed, stepping along at her side. As she drew abreast of Keller and his companion, the woman stopped long enough to unclip the dog’s lead from his collar. She straightened up, and for a moment her gaze swept the bench where Keller and Myra Tannen sat, dismissing them even as she took note of them. Then she walked on, and Fluffy walked along at heel, both of them looking perfectly lethal.
“She’s not supposed to do that,” Myra said. “In the first place he’s supposed to be muzzled, and every dog’s supposed to be kept on a leash.”
“Well,” Keller said.
“She wants him to kill other dogs. I saw her face when my Millicent was killed. It was quick, you know. He picked her up in his jaws and shook her and snapped her spine.”
“Oh.”
“And I saw her face. That’s not where I was looking, I was watching what was happening, I was trying to do something, but my eyes went to her face, and she was…excited.”
“Oh.”
“That dog’s a danger. Something has to be done about it. Are you going to-”
“Yes,” he said, “but, you know, I can’t have an audience when it happens. I’m not used to working under supervision.”
“Oh, I know,” she said, “and believe me, I won’t do anything like this again. I won’t approach you or follow you, nothing like that.”
“Good.”
“But, you see, I want to…well, amend the agreement.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Besides the dog.”
“Oh?”
“Of course I want you to take care of the dog, but there’s something else I’d like to have you do, and I’m prepared to pay extra for it. I mean, considerably extra.”
The owner too, he thought. Well, that was appropriate, wasn’t it? The dog couldn’t help its behavior, while the owner actively encouraged it.
She was carrying a tote bag bearing the logo of a bank, and she started to draw a large brown envelope from it, then changed her mind. “Take the whole thing,” she said, handing him the tote bag. “There’s nothing else in it, just the money, and it’ll be easier to carry this way. Here, take it.”
Not at all the professional way to do things, he thought. But he took the tote bag.
“This is irregular,” he said carefully. “I’ll have to talk to my people in Chicago, and-”