Chapter 37 Mack
Mack
The older policeman was as irritated with Hailey as Mack was.
Mack had just checked the last viable closet that could hide an intruder, had just about recovered from the biggest jolt of adrenaline he’d ever experienced, when he heard the sirens.
He knew immediately that Hailey had done exactly what he’d told her not to; now the question was how much she was going to tell them.
“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 was wealthy, 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.”
“He’ll be fine,” said the cop at last, and Mack’s weary conscience leaped to believe him. “You folks lock up tight now. We’ll put out an APB on the sausage dog, so call us if it turns up.”
“He,” said Hailey. “Gulliver is a he.”
* * *
Hailey was still outside when the twenty-four-hour locksmith had finished with the downstairs windows and doors.
She’d given up walking around calling Gulliver’s name, and once Mack had coaxed the exhausted, hysterical girls to bed, he took her out a hot chocolate and sat down next to her on the front step.
Underneath them, he knew, was a memento from one of the last days of construction before they moved into the house: four handprints and one pawprint, set into the cement with the date.
Mabel had drawn a crooked heart around their offering, and then Simeon (blech) had laid a solid concrete slab on top, to finish off the step.
Even Mack had felt a touch of excitement then, to be there at the beginning of something as significant and permanent as a whole house, though he would never have admitted it to Hailey.
“You’re going to end up with hypothermia because of that dumb dog,” he told her. He glanced over and saw that her eyes were red, and tiny ice crystals had formed on her lashes. “Oh, LeeLee, come on now.”
He hadn’t called her that in years; it must have been the sight of her tears that fired up some long-sleeping brain cell.
She started to cry for real, her gasps heaving little puffs of frost in the air that twinkled in the porch light.
Mack grew desperate for something to say. “He’ll find his way back—”
“Remember when we got him?”
How could Mack forget? Gulliver had been an impulse purchase at a pet store in Akron, a gift for Hailey—an early Christmas gift, actually.
He’d cost Mack $800 at a time when $800 was more than his monthly rent, and Gulliver had repaid this rescue from a life of cramped conditions in piss-soaked newspapers by pooping in Hailey’s lap on the way home, and then with over a decade of urine-sodden shoes and bed pillows and hardwood floors.
Mack was going to have to dig pretty deep to miss him.
“If he’s out here somewhere, he might freeze to death,” Hailey sobbed. “He’s so old and—”
“His fur will keep him warm.” Mack thought of the places on Gulliver’s chest and belly where the hair came together from opposite directions, like the seams on a teddy bear. He thought of Gulliver’s ridiculous wiry gray eyebrows, and how he liked to play hockey with a crushed-up Dr Pepper can.
“Gulliver!” he shouted, and at the same time, he reached for Hailey’s hand. He was surprised to feel the weight of her head against his shoulder, and without meaning to, he inhaled the warm, familiar scent of her hair.
“Would someone really take him? Hurt him?”
Mack had no answer for her, but he laid his cheek against her head, and she let him.
He felt her press closer, and after a minute he closed his eyes and tried to work up the courage to kiss her.
She would probably push him away. She might even scream at him for trying this now, but something told him that equally, she might not . . .
There was a crunch, boots on snow, and Mack’s eyes flew open.
Betsy Wakefield was crossing the strip of snowy grass between her driveway and theirs, and, thrust awkwardly out in front of her, stubby legs flapping in the air like fish fins, was Gulliver.
When the dog saw them, he yipped and squirmed harder, and Betsy rushed forward to hand him over.
Hailey took him in her arms, and Gulliver got the kiss that Mack had been hoping for.
“I found him in the back, in my rhododendron,” Betsy said. “He sure can whine. I thought someone had dumped a baby out there.”
“Oh my God, I can’t thank you enough,” said Hailey, even though all Betsy had done was walk across her driveway. “I’m going to get him inside to warm up, I can’t believe you found him. I owe you big time . . . we really have to have that coffee after Christmas. On me.”
“Definitely,” Betsy said, and Mack was left alone with her as Hailey went into the house.
“I’m really sorry for the commotion over here tonight,” he told her. “We uh, we had a break-in. They didn’t take anything, but still . . . I’d keep your house locked up. I think the police tried to knock to warn you or see if you heard anything, but—”
“We’ve been out most of the day.” Betsy frowned, and Mack couldn’t help but check for wrinkles; there were none. “Then I saw the police, but since they were parked on the corner, I assumed they were just trying to bust Allison again.”
“Allison?”
“Allison Murdoch—I think you met at the Christmas party? She’s the one with all the sons?”
Mack had no idea who Allison Murdoch was; he wanted to get back inside, back to stupid, stupid Gulliver, and to Hailey. He wanted to know if it was only fear that had thawed the ice between them or—
“They’re after Allison because she’s had two DUIs in the last couple of months,” Betsy was saying.
“She’s not supposed to be driving, but I’ve seen her out tons of times.
She’s going to kill one of those children of hers, or someone else’s.
Honestly, you think you’ve moved into a nice neighborhood, and then—” She stopped as her eyes met Mack’s, and he got the distinct feeling that she considered him part of the “and then.”
I got my job back! He wanted to scream at her. I didn’t do anything wrong!
“Damn,” was all he said. “You guys be careful. And thanks so much again; the burglars left all the doors open, and Gulliver must have taken off. Some guard dog, eh?”
“Wasn’t your security system on?” Betsy asked him, and Mack hoped to God that she’d never manage to schedule that coffee with Hailey.