Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me

13

I picked up Pearl at the Navy Yard and drove back to my office before the lunchtime traffic. Right before noon, I parked somewhere in the neighborhood of Commonwealth and Dartmouth, slipped her into a training harness, and took her out for a little stroll.

She was a handsome dog. Perhaps the most beautiful of all the Pearls. Slick brown coat and intelligent eyes, a long, regal nose that immediately found the grass along the mall. Many people offered compliments as we walked. Lovely women stopped jogging to bend down and pet her.

I was enjoying this arrangement.

The address I had for Peter Steiner was on the north side of Comm Ave, an elegant four-story brownstone that dominated a space usually reserved for three homes. I read it had once been a hotel before becoming a private school in the fifties. It was a lot of real estate for an unmarried man with no family.

It was shady and cool under the large trees as we walked. Every so often, I would stop and command Pearl to sit and stay. I would walk back five paces, leash in hand, and then ask her to come. When she got to me, she got a small treat. When she came without being called, I set her back into a sit. We did this over and over.

I furtively glanced at Steiner’s residence. I saw no one enter the door at the top of the stone steps or leave. The blinds in the home were half drawn, but as a professional investigator, I knew that peeping in windows was considered poor form.

Pearl and I crossed the street and walked around the corner of the building. I tried to look in the windows anyway, but the afternoon sun glared hard off the glass. Pearl sensed something, perhaps a clue, and dug her nails into the sidewalk.

I decided to let her take the lead. Ten yards later, we found half of a discarded bagel still in a wrapper.

I had to remove it from her mouth. No telling who’d eaten the other half and what they might pass on to Pearl. Pearl wasn’t pleased.

We kept walking and soon found the public alley behind Steiner’s place and decided to investigate.

On the backside, we found two cars parked outside. One was the Mercedes I’d seen drop off Debbie Delgado. The other was a light blue Rolls-Royce Phantom. Pearl and I noted the license tag on the Rolls. Or at least I hoped she did. She was still a detective-in-training.

I continued past the dumpsters and the other cars, still not being able to see inside the turreted windows facing the alley.

We continued along the alley all the way to Clarendon, heading back over Commonwealth to the mall. Pearl sat smartly at the corner until I let her know it was safe to cross.

She panted with the exertion as we crossed into the mall, and she promptly relieved herself. This was a lot of work for a puppy detective.

As I was jotting the tag number of the Rolls into my phone, it began to buzz.

“Where are you?” Mattie said.

“Teaching Pearl the finer points of investigating.”

“Can you get back to the office?”

“We are headed in that very direction.”

“Good,” Mattie said. “I found another one.”

“Another what?”

“Victim of that creep Steiner,” Mattie said. “Amelia Lynch. She’s eighteen now but says she was fourteen when it happened.”

“He expose himself to her, too?”

“Worse than that,” Mattie said. “Much worse.”

“Sure it’s Steiner?”

“This thing happened at his house,” Mattie said. “Big place on Comm Avenue.”

“I’m standing right in front of it.”

“She thought she was going for a modeling audition,” Mattie said. “It was that woman, Poppy Palmer. She talked her into taking some pictures in a bathing suit and all that kind of stuff.”

“If you found her in less than twenty-four hours,” I said, “how many you think are out there?”

“Didn’t you say the more victims we find, the more that’ll step forward?”

“That’s generally the rule.”

“Okay,” Mattie said. “Let’s keep looking. Let’s get this asshole.”