Stepdog Read online

  “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.”

  Chapter 16

  Two hours later, we finally reconvened, but not at Bay State Caffeine. James’s Gate, read Sara’s text. I need a drink.

  It was late afternoon, so it was quiet in the pub when I entered, and the only light was from the frosted windows. Sara sat at the bar with a half-finished glass of wine. I ordered a coffee. Somewhere in the frenzy of the day, she had lost her jacket.

  “First I called his parents,” she began in a low voice, after a kiss of greeting. “They loved me, they didn’t want to see me leave him, so that’s good and bad. They’re in Florida. I asked them about his plans to go to Peru and they didn’t know of any, and I checked all flights from Boston to Peru and they’re all morning flights, so I think that was a red herring, or at least, he hasn’t left yet. They haven’t heard from him lately. I told them I had something to give him, and created the impression we’ve started chatting a bit and are back on friendly terms, so they were happy to offer to let me know if they heard from him. I also called a few mutual friends we’re both occasionally in touch with and explained to them what’s happened, none of them had any leads, or at least, none of them was willing to confess to any. Two people commented on how attached he was to Cody and how devastated he was to lose ‘both his girls in one fell swoop.’” This, with air quotations and rolled eyes.

  “I can’t believe he’s your ex,” I said.

  “I can’t believe you gave him Cody,” she said. “We are going to have a very serious conversation about all of that, too, but first we get her back. So: no leads from his people. What about the police?”

  I shrugged. “Filing a report is about as useful as throwing a match down a well. I know people who have been mugged and beaten up and gone to the cops, and the cops acted like they were filing a weather report.”

  “But we can file one, right? And describe the car and all that.”

  “I already did,” I said, reveling in the fact that I’d been useful.

  “But she’s not your dog.”

  “She’s my wife’s dog,” I said. “That makes her my dog.”

  Sara’s face suddenly crumbled and she started crying. She grabbed me hard around the waist and started sobbing into my shoulder. I hope it doesn’t make me a prick to say that pleased me. Finally I was doing something right. I put my arms around her, and rubbed her back slowly.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said into her ear. “We’ll find her. I’ll find her. I screwed up but I’m going to make it right. And at least you know he’s not going to hurt her.”

  “I don’t know that,” sobbed Sara. “Medea killed her own children to get back at Jason.”

  I’d never done Medea, so I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. So I didn’t say anything, just hugged her tighter. In the midst of all the trauma and stress, it was one soft and peaceful moment.

  Until she suddenly cried out, and jerked away from me, spastically pulling her light blue, long-sleeved T away from her skin because somehow in the course of our hug, she’d dumped the rest of her burgundy all over it. Her face screwed up as tight as a raisin. She growled between clenched teeth and then nearly exploded with “Fuck it!” to the ceiling of the Gate, startling the barman and the few patrons huddled at the other end of the bar. “Sorry,” she added quickly, head still upturned, eyes glancing down at worried faces. A few murmurs of sympathy and people returned to their own personal programming.

  I was in such a ragged state that to be honest, the first thought that went through my mind was, Thank God it wasn’t me who spilled it.

  “Here,” I said, immediately unzipping my Manchester United hoodie and handing it to her. “Go to the restroom, take your shirt off and wear this.”

  Pressing her eyes to make the tears stop, Sara took the sweatshirt, sniffled, and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks,” she said, and jogged through the swing doors into the restaurant.

  THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR hours, I have to tell you, were a blur of adrenaline, anxiety, waiting, bureaucracy, hope, and fear. Jay never called, and never answered when we tried calling him, no matter what number we called from. Alto’s father, as it turned out, worked for EMS—Emergency Medical Services, those folks forever shredding the humming streets of Jamaica Plain with sirens. He was a terrific help, knew the people that we needed to speak with, helped Sara file even more reports than what I’d done—changing licensure of Cody back to her name, for example—and talked to certain people in certain offices about tracking down Jay’s car at tollbooths or stoplights. Alto played go-between once he was off his shift and he didn’t smoke all evening. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and no time for conversation. Sara and I went to Lena’s that evening, where Danny, Steve, and Elliot joined us for a strategy session. I was firmly put through the third degree, having to confess the whole story of the chocolate cake. Sara simply buried her face in her hands, but Lena lit into me a bit, in the unflinchingly direct-but-matter-of-fact manner of a Filipino woman, and I snapped back at her in the hotheaded reactionary style of an Irish man.

  In the end, Sara took the guest bedroom, I took the couch. This was Lena’s terse directive, but I got the feeling that it came from Sara, who by that point—following an impromptu dinner that she didn’t touch—was so enervated she mostly just wanted to curl up into a ball. A ball that had no room for me.

  Early in the morning we were at it again. We called every vet’s office and shelter in eastern Massachusetts; every newspaper and radio station, e-mailing photos of Cody to the papers and offering a cash reward for assistance. Marie stalked Peters Hill with flyers, leaving a pile when she had to pick Nick up from preschool. Alto organized some friends (I’d no idea Alto had friends) to st
ake out Jay’s flat, should he or anyone else return to it, and then he himself went to post flyers all over town. The MFA gang did useful stuff involving computers that I didn’t really understand—I suppose when you make your living seeking out the provenance of obscure artwork, or (on the other extreme) reaching out to ask wealthy powerful people for assistance, you can transfer these skills into other arenas. Danny put the word out on the street to be looking for a dog of Cody’s description and anyone in a white Lexus SUV. So, the point being: it was heartening how seriously everybody took this, and turned out to help.

  But nothing came of it.

  Sara had her interview in Los Angeles (rescheduled) and I had my meeting in New York. It seemed callous to suggest that either of us pursue these things, and yet sitting around Lena’s guest room hoping to get a lead seemed rather pointless, almost masochistic. Somehow—I don’t know how I did this, because I’m pretty shoddy at staying calm in stressful circumstances—I convinced Sara she should go out to California in time for her interview, and then fly back. I promised her I’d go to the meeting in Manhattan but then turn around and come back to Boston, too, and we two would absolutely not leave again until we got the dog back. I had to be in L.A. by mid-May, but if need be, I’d just hop a JetBlue flight last minute. Sara, looking terribly haggard, with the buoyancy of a popped balloon, dully agreed to all this, and then immersed herself in seeking the most unattractively timed flight out of Logan.

  She found one that left Boston at five A.M. and reached LAX at seven, on the day of her rescheduled interview, which was also the day of my morning meeting in Manhattan. It was some airline that I’d never heard of, which sounded a bit dodgy to me, but she pointed out that I was in no position to judge dodginess.

  We were up late at Lena’s the night before, or rather she was, scouring online stolen-pets sites. It would have seemed unfeeling of me to sleep while she was doing this, so together we stayed up until nearly one A.M., and then (having slept, again, in different places) we woke up at three thirty so that I could get her to Logan Airport in time for her to get her flight.