Page 31 of The Hamptons Lawyer

My house being tosseddoesn’tfrighten me, if that reallywas their intent. But not being able to find my dog, that’s different.

Rip isn’t under the bed, it was one of the first places I checked, sometimes he sneaks under there for a nap. He isn’t in any of the closets, or in the crawl space underneath the deck, or in the small tool shed in the backyard, whose door he can nose open if he gets the urge.

There have been times when I’ve accidentally left a door to the house open and he’s gotten out. But never once has he gone far, or not come when I called him.

The dog just wants to be where I am. He wanted to be with me even before I took him in.

So where is he now?

I walk out into the backyard and call his name again. All I hear are night sounds. The moon is still high in the sky, no cloud cover at all tonight, so there’s no need for me to throw on the floodlights. If he were back here, I’d see him.

But he’s not back here.

Was Harrington dumb enough and clumsy enough to send somebody here this soon after he walked out of Jimmy’s bar? Or has he done something even dumber than that and come here himself after I blew up the deal he thought he had on Eric Jacobson and Edmund McKenzie?

I plan to find that out eventually.

Just not now.

Now I just need to find Rip.

Jimmy has to be getting close. I walk around the outside of the house and out to the street.

“Rip!”

Yelling my head off now.

I’m probably waking up some of my neighbors. I don’t care.

My dog is either lost, or whoever came to my house tonight has taken him just as a way of violating me a little more.

Or that person has done something much worse.

I walk past our mom-and-pop neighborhood fish market tucked on a side street and up to Main Street and then back, a feeling of dread growing, rising up inside me, with every step.

I am walking back toward my house when I see Jimmy pulling up behind my car and getting out of his.

I see he has his own gun in his hand, as the lights over the garage come on automatically.

He starts toward the front door.

“Jimmy,” I say.

He sees me coming toward him and puts his gun away.

“Where’s Rip?” Jimmy says.

By now it is a well-known fact that he loves Rip as much as I do.

“I still can’t find him,” I say. “And believe me, I’ve looked all over.”

“We’ll find him,” Jimmy says.

“Where?”It comes out almost as a wail.

With everything that has happened, it would be too much if the dog is really gone.

Then I hear a bark in the distance.