Page 27 of You'll Be Sorry

She shrugged. “I know nothing.”

Theo frowned, then recovered. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Find the dog; otherwise, you’ll obsess all through dinner.”

Theo disappeared. She went back to searing.

She’d just finished slicing both breasts in a pleasing diagonal pattern when Theo reappeared.

“I need help.”

She regarded him intently. She knew her husband. He meant it. “All right.”

“Mr. Man is gone.”

“Okay, what would you like to do?”

“We need to go look for him!”

“You know it’s possible he returned home…”

“We need to search!”

“All right.” Raquel might not be into the stray canine, but so help her God, she did love her husband, meaning there was only one thing to be done. “Grab a pair of flashlights. We’ll find him.”

Without any information on where the dog had originally come from, Raquel was genuinely at a loss for where to begin. She and Theo spun in circles, taking turns whistling and calling. When that failed, Theo headed to the left and she headed for the right.

She could hear him from time to time, “Hey, buddy. We got dinner. I know you want dinner!”

Raquel continued to whistle, while scanning the bushes at the edge of the property, then working her way steadily around the house, toward the collapsed old barn/garage. The dilapidated structure struck her as a natural curiosity point for a canine, most likely filled with interesting smells and small animal activity.

She washed over it several times with her flashlight, came away with nothing. Finally, she heard a noise. Like scratching or digging. She picked up her pace, moving quickly beyond the caved-in structure until…

There, in the beam of the flashlight. One formerly washed but now completely mud-splattered mutt frantically tunneling to China.

“Hey! Crazy canine. Stop! Are you trying to break Theo’s heart?”

The dog didn’t even look up. She advanced, calling out to Theo that she’d found their runaway pooch.

Minutes later her husband appeared, loping through the gloom. “Oh, thank God!”

Mr. Man finally glanced up, then went back to urgently digging. After a moment, he moved back, sniff, sniff, sniff. Heavy sigh. The stray sat back on his now filthy haunches, regarding both of them seriously.

“Dear Lord…” Theo began.

“Apparently he really wants to bathe again,” Raquel agreed. She stepped forward. There was something about the intensity of the canine’s efforts. She had a vague feeling of dread. A property where six people had never been found…She half-expected to see a skeletal hand poking up, or the white gleam of an exposed skull.

She and Theo both drew closer, the dog studying them intently.

“What’s that?” she asked at last, peering down at what appeared to be several tightly joined wooden planks, stained dark from the damp earth.

Theo didn’t speak right away. He moved from right to left, left to right. “I think…”

He whirled around, flashing his beam across the ground until he spied a sturdy-looking stick. He grabbed it, striding forward.

The dog whined softly as Theo went to work clearing the remaining dirt and vegetation from what appeared to be a round wooden cover, now half rotten from age. Experimentally, Theo wedged his stick into one of the decaying ends and heaved. The board gave way with a groaning creak, crude nails jutting out like daggers. Theo pried up a second beam, a gaping black hole beginning to emerge.

Theo kneeled down, pointing his flashlight directly into the gloom.