“Spoon?” asked Samantha.

“I told you,” said her father. “I tuned my clogs to detect objects falling out of pockets.”

Samantha rolled her eyes and looked to her uncle for help. To her surprise, he nodded at both of them.

“I did give Nipper a mustache spoon last winter,” said Uncle Paul.

“A mustache spoon?” asked Samantha. “What’s that?”

“They used to be popular,” he said.

“The boy can’t be more than a mile away,” said Samantha’s dad. “Even modern electronics have limits.”

Mr. Spinner stepped down from the Snoddgrass porch and began to look up and down Thirteenth Avenue. He squinted at the water tower far off in the park. Then he turned to face the other direction.

“I think we should go back to our house,” he said. “I’ll start making a map of places to investigate. Maybe we make a list of playgrounds or places that sell New York Yankees merchandise.”

“Didn’t Buffy call you with my list?” asked Samantha.

“List?” he asked.

Samantha grunted. Her dad clearly had no idea what she was talking about. She wasn’t really surprised that Buffy didn’t bother to get him her list. Maybe if she had used gold ink and written it on the side of a shoe…

“Follow me,” she said, and began leading her dad and uncle up the driveway.

“Let’s look behind our house first,” said Mr. Spinner, stopping and pointing sideways to their backyard.

“Sure,” said Uncle Paul. “Maybe take the shoes off for a while, too.”

Samantha was starting to feel as if she was the only person in the world capable of paying attention to anything for more than three seconds.

“Is anyone serious about finding Nipper at all?” Samantha asked.

“We are,” her father and Uncle Paul said at the same time.

Samantha turned. They were both pointing sideways.

The bushes between the two houses were crushed flat. A trail of flattened twigs and grass continued off toward the Spinners’ house.

“See?” said her father. “There’s a hole in our back fence.”

Samantha looked over at their fence, and sure enough, in the distance, past the garage, at the far end of her own backyard, there was a hole in the fence. The fence was fine when she’d left for New York last week.

“We’ll find that boy soon,” said Mr. Spinner.

Samantha noticed that her father sounded confident for a change. She watched him step over the flattened bushes and head into their yard, shoes buzzing as he went. She took one more glance down the Snoddgrass driveway. Then she followed.

As soon as she cleared the bushes, she looked back. Uncle Paul was coming, too, but he walked at a much slower pace. Samantha guessed he was allowing a few extra yards between him and her father’s buzzing shoes.