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It was right before my client threatened to fire me during the recess, calling me, among other things, an amateur.
Hard to disagree with him.
Just like that, I’m restless.
Need to be in motion.
I get up, grab my bag, the car keys still in it. Lock the house, tell Rip I’ll be back, go outside, and get into the car, back it out of the driveway, pull up alongside Kenny Stanton’s.
“I’m going out for a bit. I’d rather you watch the house than stay with me.”
“Jimmy’s my boss,” Kenny says. “I’m supposed to take my orders from him.”
“And I’m his. I thought you cops were bears for chain of command.”
“You sure this’ll be okay?”
“I’m sure. Get some rest. Don’t think I’m not aware you pulled a double shift tonight.”
As I drive up the street, I see him move his car closer to the house. Then I make my way back to Abraham’s Path and head for the Springs. I haven’t called ahead. I really haven’t decided for sure that I am even going over there until I have the car in motion.
It has been a while, but I remember how to get there without using Waze.
The two-bedroom cottage, purchased twenty years ago before prices got jacked up in the Springs the way they did everywhere else in the Hamptons, is still sitting on a half acre that backs up to the bay. I’m willing to bet anything that the canoe is still at the same little dock, where the land ends and the water begins.
Lights on inside the house.
Car in the driveway.
First break I’ve caught all day.
I knock on the door and Dr. Ben Kalinsky opens it.
He smiles when he sees me standing there, almost as if telling me that everything is going to be all right before I even say a word.
“You lost?” he asks.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Forty-Nine
Jimmy
JIMMY SHOWS UP ATJane’s house at seven the next morning, with coffee and her favorite donuts from the M and R Deli over by the East Hampton train station.
“Kenny says you went out and didn’t come back till right before dawn,” Jimmy says when they’re in her kitchen.
“I went to see a friend.”
“Male or female?”
“None of your business.”
“That means male. You go see the vet?”
“What part of ‘none of your business’ is eluding you here?”
She is already dressed for court. And looks good, Jimmy thinks. Tired but good. Maybe tired from being out so late with Dr. Ben. Jimmy is fine with that, if that’s where she was. Ben Kalinsky is good people. And she needs somebody in her life.
