Paws before dying

coming, and I was talking it over with Rita, about Leah using the car. And it’s sort of corny, but there’s this pledge you both sign. Anyway, Leah thought it was corny, and I thought it was corny, and we both signed it. And we joked about it, but we both meant it. Whatever it is, it isn’t that. But some drunk could’ve been driving another car. I feel sick.”
    “You would’ve heard. This number’s in her purse or something?”
    “Yes.”
    “You would’ve been called. Let’s not get so alarmed just yet.”
    “Christ! They could’ve gone anywhere.”
    “Holly, come on. Calm down.”
    “She’s not your niece!” She wasn’t mine, either, but Steve was kind enough not to .remind me that she was only a cousin.
    “I know,” he said. “Look, it’s been a long, hot day. It’s possible they fell asleep somewhere. Not at Emma’s, obviously. At Jeff's? In the car?”
    “Why would they...? I mean, they could come here.”
    “They wouldn’t be alone,” he said.
    “I wouldn’t care.”
    “They don’t necessarily know that. Do they?”
    “Maybe not. I can’t believe I was upset about the stupid sweater. I mean, here she is. She’s a wonderful kid. She’s cheerful. She has a beautiful disposition. She’s friendly, smart, sensitive. She reads Jane Austen. She studies for her SATs. She doesn’t do drugs. She’s a genius with dogs. And what do I do? I get livid because she’s generous, basically. You thought it was funny, but did I lighten up? No, not me. Steve, you don’t think I scared her away? That I made her afraid to come home?”
    “Not a chance,” he said. “There are kids who’d be afraid to come home after something like that, and there are people who’d make them afraid. But she’s not like that, and you aren’t-Forget it.”
    “So what do we do? Call the police?”
    “To report she’s an hour late?”
    “There is that.”
    What we did was a little hard on Rita, who’d gone to sleep hours earlier and had clients scheduled for the next morning, but who wrapped herself in a flowered silk robe and settled on the couch in my hot living room to listen for Leah herself, we hoped, or for the phone. Then Steve and I put Rowdy in the
    Bronco and drove to Newton. We followed the river, the route Leah and I always used, but we took it very slowly. The Charles looked oily-dark under the black sky, but nowhere between Cambridge and Newton were there the ambulances I feared. No Oldsmobile station wagon was being hauled out of the water. Officers of the Metropolitan District Commission were not blocking traffic on Storrow Drive to make way for tow trucks and rescue vans. On Soldiers Field Road across from Martignet-ti’s, a cruiser idled peacefully, a speed trap catching nothing. I pulled over, and Steve awoke the dozing trooper. Maybe no news should’ve felt like good news, but it didn’t. It felt like no news.
    In Newton Corner, I found a phone booth. Rita had heard nothing. The Cohens’ answering machine was still operating efficiently. Their street, Beechcliffe, appeared on the Newton map in my dog-show-tattered guide to the communities of eastern Massachusetts. It was only eight or ten blocks from Eliot Park and the Eliot Woods, but, as it turned out, close only on foot. Park Street was one-way the wrong way, and so were what seemed like the next ten turns we tried to make. We eventually ended up on a street I knew, the one that led past the park entrance. According to the map, that street led to another that led to Beechcliffe.
    But we never got that far.
    “Slow down,” Steve said when we were opposite the park entrance. “Pull over, would you? I want to take a quick look.”
    “Steve, they aren’t going to be there.”
    “Hey,” he said. “Were you ever a sixteen-year-old boy?”
    He hopped out, ambled into the field, then trotted back.
    “Drive in,” he said. “When you get out, leave the headlights on.”
    They shone on the Oldsmobile wagon. The window next to the driver’s seat was shattered. Most of the glass had fallen out. I couldn’t see Leah or Jeff or Kimi. I couldn’t see anyone but
    Steve.
     

Chapter 25

     
    “LEAH? Jeff?” I bellowed, narrowing my eyes and peering into the blackness of the park. “Kimi, come! Honest to God, their driver’s licenses aren’t even valid after one. I don’t know how she thought she was going to get home, and his parents are just going to be thrilled to see what’s happened to the car. Leah!” Steve is more