“You’re sure nothing is missing?” Even though they were inside, the policeman’s breath was visible in the freezing family room. The house could have been wide open all day.
“I told you.” Hailey sounded to Mack like she might cry. “The dog is missing.”
“We’ve seen a real increase in pet theft ever since the pandemic,” the younger cop said solemnly. “Was this a new puppy, by any chance? Had you posted anything about it on social—”
“No,” said Mack. “We’re talking about an aged dachshund. No one stole this dog, I assure you. This is not about the dog. Someone’s trying to scare us.”
“By opening all of your doors and windows and letting your dog out?” The older cop had somewhere else he wanted to be. “Look, I know you said you’re sure you left the place closed up, but there’s no sign of forced entry here. Check with your keyholders, and I’ll file a report on the pet,” he said gloomily. “But if the doors were open, it might just be out and about in the neighborhood. If it doesn’t turn up tonight, if I were you, I’d put up some posters in the morning.”
The girls were huddled on the sofa, crying for Gulliver. Hailey flitted between them and the two cops, winding herself up more and more as she circled.
“My parents are the only ones with a key,” she said after she’d tucked a blanket around Mabel and Gigi. “But...” Hailey looked unsure of herself. “There is someone local, a client of mine—client’s husband actually, I’m a divorce attorney.... Anyway, I think this guy’s been harassing us, sending us threats.”
“Sending threats how?” The younger cop’s interest was piqued, and Mack was afraid of the silence that stretched out after his question.
“Letters, mostly,” Hailey said finally. “We don’t have them anymore. I threw them away.”
This was a lie; the letters were in Mack’s desk drawer.
Please not the iPad,Mack thought, glancing toward his daughters. Please Hailey. Not until we know about the boy.
“But it could be this man who broke in,” Hailey finished. “Or someone he sent.”
“Name?” The old guy took out a coffee-stained notepad; the younger cop took out his phone.
“David Rainier. He has an address here in Bratenahl, but he’s a resident of New York. Listen, it’s probably nothing, so if you could be discreet... I don’t want to get in trouble at work, you know?”
She sounded so paranoid that Mack knew something had gone wrong in her meeting. Something very wrong, if she was suddenly so afraid to take on David Rainier. But really, could it get much worse than this?
“I get you,” said the senior cop, taking David Rainier’s contact information from Hailey. “I’ll look into it—discreetly, as you put it—and see what he has to say for himself. In the meantime, get yourselves a security system.”
Mack tried not to notice the way Hailey looked at him.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” the younger cop said, mistaking Hailey’s disgust for fear. “We’re in the neighborhood all the time, and so are the local Bratenahl guys. We’ll keep an eye on things for you.”
There was the window of opportunity Mack had been hoping for ever since the cops had arrived, and he seized it: “Yeah, I gather it’s been a pretty wild holiday season around here,” he said.
Both sets of cop eyes landed squarely on his face.
“I mean, what with the fire on Thanksgiving and everything...”
“Yeah,” said the old cop. “But we’re mostly over here on traffic violations.”
“Right.”
Leave it. Leave it,Mack told himself, and then he couldn’t:“But was the boy from that fire okay, do you know? I read that a kid got hurt.”
“I heard smoke inhalation,” said the younger cop. “Nasty business.”
The older one kept his gaze on Mack, his expression unreadable.
Mack pressed on, avoiding Hailey’s eyes: “Is he out of the hospital yet? I saw that he’d been taken to Metro... and then I never heard anything else about it, after that. I guess he wasn’t a local, so it didn’t make the papers...”
“Nah, they’re keeping the details schtum.” The senior cop was still staring at him, and Mack’s pulse quickened with every word he spoke. “On account of they think it was arson. Now don’t go blabbing that around the country club, okay? But they found some fancy-ass footprints around the ignition point, probably some rich brat smoking out the invading riffraff, know what I mean?”
Something dawned on Mack then that made him want to lean over and kiss the huge chip on this guy’s shoulder: This cop’s suspicious tone was because he thought Mack waswealthy, not because he had the slightest notion that the yuppie dad in front of him would burn down a building. It was hard not to laugh at the irony of it, though the thought of the incriminating Sauconys fifty feet away on the front porch helped a lot. He made a mental note to put them in the trash as soon as these two were gone.
Mack tried one more time: “Anyway, all I know is, I sure hope the kid is okay. As a parent, you know, you worry about these things.”
