Stepdog (16 page)

“She's Sara's dog,” I said. “You bought her for Sara. She was a gift for Sara.”

“Was she? Does Sara have any material evidence of that?” A sound of paper rustling. “It's my name on the contract with the rescue shelter. Yep, there it is. Happy to show you if you like.”

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded.

“Because she's my dog,” he said in a reasonable tone.

“I mean really,
why
are you
doing this
?”

“Let's meet for coffee and I'll lay it out for you, Rory.”

“I don't have time to meet for coffee—” I protested.

“Meet for
coffee
?” Sara nearly shrieked. “Get my
dog
back!”

“I heard that,” said Jay calmly. “Tell Sara hello from me. And explain that Cody is
my
dog. Women are faithless, a man's dog never is. My dog belongs with me.”

I could never have imagined Sara looking as she did now. Her skin was splotched red, she was breathing hard and fast, and she had a dreadful expression on her face, as if she were trying to make herself look ugly (although for the record she failed to achieve this goal). “She's registered in my name,” Sara said defiantly. “Tell him that. The city of Boston officially knows I'm her owner.”

“She's registered in Sara's name,” I said obediently into the phone, feeling very stupid.

“I had the registration transferred to my name,” Jay said smoothly. “You wouldn't believe how easy it was. You'd think they'd be more diligent about these things. The fact that I have her rabies vaccination number off her collar helped.”

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded for the third time.

“She's my dog,” he said, in a smooth, reasonable voice. “Sara
took her. I've reclaimed her. It's as simple as that. Go on to Los Angeles now and have a wonderful life. Get a new dog. One that you actually think of as
yours
.” There was a mechanical sound; I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the face.
CALL OVER
, said a banner.

For a long silent moment, I just stood there.

Then I looked up at Sara, stricken.

“I . . . I don't . . .” I began.

“We're going straight there,” said Sara. “Right now. Let's get in the car and go.” She snatched the phone from my hand and tapped redial even as she was grabbing her jacket. She tossed the jacket up in the air and then lanced her arm up the sleeve to start to get it on. “Let's
go,
” she ordered, and was already out the door. I hurried after her. Her body moved toward the car as her attention moved toward the phone. “I know you're not picking up,” she said into it, “but you're not getting away with this, Jonathan. I have a
lot
of questions about how this even
happened,
and I will get to the bottom of it, and I will get my dog back. I'm sure you are
very
pleased with yourself right now, but I would not rest easy if I were you. Call me if you are willing to negotiate.”

She hung up and was already halfway in the driver's seat. I had to ball up to fit onto the passenger seat, the well was full.

She didn't recognize the house we drove to; that really was a new purchase. She was too upset and furious to speak to me on the short drive over, which is good because I'd have had no idea how to answer her. “Let's get her back first and we'll discuss it afterward,” she said. “And I'm taking her with me on the plane. I can't leave her with you,
obviously
.” That was the closest she came
to expressing actual anger at me, and it stung like a badly macerated knife.

“I . . . Sara, I swear, I don't . . .”

“Not now,” she said grimly.

When we got to the building, the SUV was no longer in the drive, but there was an older-model Subaru Outback in its place. Sara parked behind it, and we both leapt out of the car and dashed to the steps. I began to buzz the buzzer; Sara pounded her fists on the door and then tried the knob. It opened and she bounded up the stairs, steam nearly coming out of her ears.

I followed quickly but meekly, my head still reeling, still getting my breath back from the karmic sucker punch. How could Jonathan be Jay and how could Jay have pulled all that off? Was it just dumb luck or had he shepherded me to this moment from our first encounter? How naive and stupid was I really?

“Excuse me!” Sara said loudly over the sound of vacuuming. As I came up behind her on the stairs, the noise stopped abruptly, and a short, stout, redheaded woman came out of the next room, frowning and dragging an upright vacuum cleaner.

“Can I help you?” asked Marie.

“What are
you
doing here?” I demanded, horrified.

Marie looked at me strangely. “I'm a housecleaner, you know that. I clean for Jay. He asked me to clean this afternoon.”

“Where is he?” Sara demanded fiercely.

Marie, a native Bostonian, was not impressed with fierce. “Isn't this your wife?” she said to me, pleasant but confused, pointing at Sara.

“Where is he?”
Sara repeated, more fiercely.

Marie shrugged. “Got me. I think he said he was headed out of town for a vacation, didn't he say Peru or something? Do you remember, Rory? Hey, aren't you leaving for California, like, today?”

“Not if we can't find Cody,” I said. “Jay has taken Cody.”

Marie seemed to think maybe this was
Candid Camera
. “What?” she said, grinning. “That doesn't make any sense. Why would he do that?”

“Have you seen him?” Sara said. Her intensity was finally permeating Marie's hearty indifference.

“Calm down,” said Marie firmly. “Not today. Today I was cleaning a house over in Cambridge, so I didn't even get to the park with the kids. Jay asked if I could come by around two. I just got here.”

“And he wasn't here?”

“Nope,” she said. “I have a key.”

Sara huffed with frustration. “I'm going to look around,” she said, moving past Marie and into the apartment.

Marie looked at me. “Hey—”

“Something really strange has happened, Marie, and we're trying to figure it out,” I said. “He's not answering his phone, he's got Cody, it's complicated.”

Marie looked displeased. “Jay? There must be some mistake.”

“How well do you know him?” Sara asked, almost accusingly.

Marie shrugged. “Just, you know, like everyone, from the arboretum. He found out I clean houses, he asked me to be his cleaner, that was, I dunno, maybe six months ago. He pays cash, he's neat, he remembers my kids' birthdays, which is sometimes more than my husband does.”

“He's taken Cody and run off with her,” said Sara.

“That doesn't make sense. There's got to be a misunderstanding,” said Marie, with a dismissive wave, but Sara cut her off.

“No, we've talked to him on the phone, he has confirmed that he is not giving the dog back.”

“Why?”

“Because he wants to keep her,” said Sara, her fuse shortening.

“He can't do that,” Marie said in a so-there tone, as if this fact alone would prevent it from happening.

“I agree,” said Sara. “So does Rory. But Jonathan—Jay—he doesn't agree. He's going to keep the dog unless we can find him and take her back. Do you have any idea where he is?”

“Does he drive a white SUV?” I asked, so grateful I had something to say.

“Yeah, a Lexus,” said Marie, nodding. “It wasn't here when I got here.”

“We're going to look around to see if there are clues to where he went,” Sara announced. To me: “I bet he left clues. He loves mindfucks like that. That's why he was singing the Leonard Cohen song. When I was packing up my stuff to leave him, he moped around the house singing
that
verse of
that
song over and over again. I bet he
always
sings that song, that
line,
when you're around him.”

“Jesus,” I said, realizing.

“So we're just going to look around,” Sara told Marie.

“You're kinda putting me in an awkward position here,” said Marie.

“How about this,” I said to Marie. “You know me, you know that Jay and I know each other, you know I've been in this house at his invitation—”

“How would she know that?” asked Sara.

“Because of the time Cody ate the chocolate cake?” said Marie.

Oh, fuck me, I didn't think this could get any worse.

“What?” Sara gasped.

I gave Marie a pleading look. “Oh, I get it,” said Marie, and continued briskly: “Yeah, okay, so Rory can look around, but I don't know you, I'm really sorry, I don't know what your relationship is to Jay—”

“So I'll look around in here and you ask the neighbors when they last saw him,” I suggested urgently.

Sara stared at me. “What about Cody eating chocolate cake?”

“I will explain that when we're not running against the clock,” I said.

“Oh God,” she muttered under her breath, but then ran back down the stairs and outside.

Marie looked at me. “Sorry I mentioned the cake.”

I shrugged. “You didn't know she didn't know.”

“She's very upset.”

“Her ex-boyfriend stole her dog.”

Marie's mouth opened very wide. “What? Jay and your wife—”

“I only realized myself a few moments ago.”

She was perversely amused. “That's crazy! So he—wait—so he—”

“They bought the dog together and now he's taken it back. I'm supposed to be driving Sara to the airport right now so she can fly to Los Angeles. Please can I just check around and try to get some clue as to where he might have gone?”

“This is
crazy,
” said Marie. “I thought he was one of my
normal
clients.” She sighed. “Okay, ten minutes, leave everything exactly
how you found it and you didn't hear me say that.” She pushed the vacuum so that the upright part clicked into place and stood by itself. “I'll help you.”

“Really?”

“He's either a sack of shit or he isn't. If he is, I want to help you. If he isn't, he never needs to know this ever happened. I have permission to go through his stuff as his cleaner anyhow.”

We found nothing. His place was very neat—“every cleaner's dream,” Marie said. He worked only with a laptop. The dock for it was in his study, but the laptop itself was gone, as was the hard drive. If he ever wrote anything on paper (which in my imagination is how he would keep track of everything), the paper was gone, too. There was nothing in the kitchen except kitchen stuff. He was so fastidious about his mail that there was none lying about. I could imagine him and Sara as a couple—Mr. and Mrs. Particular. They must've had filing competitions as foreplay.

See, that's the other part of this I could not get my head around—not just that the dog was gone, not just that I'd been so completely played for a fool, but that
he used to be Sara's lover
. They had lived together. They'd slept and played and ate and
trained Cody
together. They'd made
love
. He was the bloke who'd bullied her out of pursuing her painting career, told her to get a real job. What did she
see
in him?

Or, the question another part of me wanted to ask: Why the hell did she leave him? He was a much better match for her than I was. They were both highly educated and . . .
organized
. They probably came from similar backgrounds. He was about ten years older, but that wasn't so much, and he was charismatic and cultured—now
I noticed the great art in his apartment and wondered if Sara had helped him pick it out . . .

“Jesus, I remember that painting,” said her voice just behind me, with uncanny timing, as she came back up the stairs. She was pointing to something that looked like a Sargent knockoff from his Spanish phase. “The neighbors say he threw some bags in the car and drove off before lunch.” She sounded like she was about to be sick. Oh Jesus, this was a nightmare. “So,” she went on, swallowing her bile and rubbing her hands along her temples briskly. “Here's what has to happen. We have to file a claim of stolen property—”

“He said he changed her registration to his name,” I said.

“Well then, I have to contest that,” she said. “We have a car full of raggedy old dog stuff that proves she's been living with us. Even if he went out and bought her a bed and toys and stuff, that will all be new. We have her stuff. I have years of photos of her being with me. I can absolutely contest ownership if it comes to that, but first we have to
get
her, so we need the police to be looking for him. Do we know his license-plate number?”

She glanced at Marie, who looked almost affronted.

“No,” said Marie. “But it's a white Lexus SUV. If you know that and his name, you can file a report. I guess. Do I look like someone who knows about this stuff?”

“Isn't Alto's dad a cop?” I said.

“I think he's a fireman,” said Marie, “but I bet firemen and police are familiar with each other's MOs.”

“Great,” said Sara. “Rory, call Alto—”

“I don't have his number. But I think he's at work now. I could drive over to Centre Street and ask him.”

“All right,” said Sara. “Do that. I'm going to call Jay's family and a couple of friends of his that I might still have numbers for and see if I can get any information from them. Thank you,” she said to Marie. “Thank you for letting us look around. If you get any leads at all, please let us know.”

“I have to get you to Logan,” I said, wondering even as the words came out if this was a ridiculous thing to say.

It was. She looked at me as if I'd just shat on the rug. “I'm not leaving Boston until we've found her,” she said, clearly appalled she'd even have to say that. “I'll cancel the flight. Right now.” She held up her phone, but gave me an urgent, whisking gesture. “Go on, go talk to Alto. I'll meet you over there.”