SHE WENT OUT TO WALK THE DOG - AND NEVER RETURNED

 Search for Svetlana

New York Daily News; New York, N.Y.; Mar 6, 2003; RALPH R. ORTEGA, MICHELE McPHEE and TRACY CONNOR DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS With Melissa Grace and Mila Andre;

A chicken dinner on the stove. A glass of fresh-squeezed apple juice. A missing cocker spaniel. A little girl locked out of her apartment. A man stranded at the airport.

The doctor's wife who vanished in midday from an upscale Manhattan neighborhood left behind a jumble of clues and a mystery that unravels like an episode of the TV show "Without a Trace."

Russian migr Svetlana Aronov, 44, a dealer in rare books and mother of two, hasn't been seen since she left her York Ave. co-op to walk the family dog at 2:30 p.m. Monday.

Her family says she had no enemies or reason to flee. Bloodhounds lost her scent four blocks from home. Detectives acknowledge they're baffled - and very worried.

"This is a woman who left that apartment fully expecting to come back," one high-ranking police official told the Daily News as cops blanketed the area with flyers. "Did she jump into the river with the dog? We don't think so. Something bad happened to her. We just don't know what yet."

A pall settled over the Aronov home yesterday as Aronov's husband, Dr. Alexander Aronov, chain-smoked Parliaments, and her older daughter, Polina, 22, worked the phones.

"She fell off the planet," said Polina, a fashion-show producer who inherited her mother's blond good looks. "It makes absolutely no sense." Family mystified Alexander Aronov, an oncologist with offices in Murray Hill and Brooklyn, said that nothing in his wife's personal or professional life explained her disappearance.

"Someone suggested maybe there was a Russian connection - the Russian mob," he said. "It's just as good an idea she was taken away by a UFO."

When she got out of bed Monday - after a weekend ski trip to Vermont - Aronov had a busy day ahead of her.

She drove her 9-year-old daughter, Veronica, to the exclusive Lycee Francais on the upper East Side, then picked up her father's dog, Bim, from a family friend.

She had an appointment to get a mole removed from her face, so she rushed home, dropped off the dog and gave her husband a lift toward the subway, the family said.

She met an antiques dealer at 11:30 a.m. to discuss a Russian artifact, police said. At noon, she phoned her husband to tell him to skip the gym after work.

By early afternoon, she was back at the apartment, trying to finish chores before she had to pick up her father, Anatoly, from Kennedy Airport.

She prepared chicken for dinner and put it on the stove. She squeezed some apple juice and left the full glass on the counter.

Then she put on her coat, grabbed a cell phone and went out with Bim, police said. She left behind her wallet and the house keys she was supposed to leave downstairs for Veronica.

Veronica's grandmother picked her up from school and brought her to the building. When they couldn't find the keys, they called the girl's father at his Sheepshead Bay office.

He found the lapse puzzling but wasn't worried. He called his wife's cell phone, got no answer and told his mother to take Veronica to her home in Queens.

By the time he left work, there was still no word from his wife, and he headed to Queens to meet his daughter.

When a dozen calls went unanswered, the doctor said, he grew uneasy but figured she had been held up by traffic or Customs.

So when he and Veronica returned to Manhattan a couple of hours later, he was stunned to see his wife's father waiting at the York Ave. building alone.

The 65-year-old former documentarian, returning from a visit to Russia, had waited for Aronov at JFK for hours and finally took a cab to Manhattan. Grim realization Alexander Aronov said he rushed to the garage to check on their car and found the 2001 Jeep Cherokee in its spot. He went upstairs and saw the food on the stove and the juice on the counter.

"That's when I knew something was wrong - terribly wrong," he said.

Two days later, police said they had no promising leads.

Though the Aronovs are Russian - they married in St. Petersburg 25 years ago - they have no apparent ties to organized crime, investigators said.

And while the couple is well-off - they just bought a home in Southampton, L.I., and their apartment is crammed with original art and pricey porcelain - there's no ransom demand.

Aronov's business was only a sideline, relatives said. In a good year, she made $50,000 selling books and lithographs.

Friends describe the couple as happily married. A receptionist at the Brooklyn medical office said they were taking merengue lessons and had a 10-day ski vacation in Italy planned.

"There is no clear path on this case," the police official said. "Could her father have business associates who are out to get him? Absolutely. Could her husband have hired someone to kill her? Absolutely. Could she have gotten into a car with a serial killer? Absolutely. We just don't know what happened."