“Where are you taking that and why?” Donoghue indicates the brown paper package he clutches.

“Oh now I wouldn’t want to bog you down in every little thing we’re doing here. But you can’t go in right now. I’m Doug Wade. And you’re?”

“Jill Donoghue. May I see your badge?”

“I’d be happy to if I had one,” he says. “But I’m just a revenue officer for the IRS. We don’t get badges, guns, nothing fun like that.”

WHEN I REACH MY ROOM I don’t step inside. But I make my presence known.

I stand in the open doorway watching two agents strip my queen-size bed, flipping the mattress over and halfway off the frame, piling the honey-colored Egyptian cotton linens on the floor. Their gloved hands feel carefully for any hint of a hiding place. They aren’t IRS unless they’re looking for a mattress full of untaxed money. They’re looking for something else. But what?

More rifles? A spear gun? My dive mask? Drugs?

Through the open closet door I can see my clothing, my shoes sloppily returned to shelves that were riffled through. I confirm that my iMac computer is missing from the desk inside my country office with its river view. Lucy worked hard to make my guest quarters exactly what she thought I’d like, a lot of glass, a colorful silk rug on the shiny cherry floor, copper light fixtures, a coffee bar, a gas fireplace and large photographs of Venice.

I’ve enjoyed many contented cozy times here, innocent gentle hiatuses that I may never have again. I feel my anger picking up steam as I think of the large brown-wrapped package I just watched go by. My mind races through what might be on the desktop or stored in documents. What might the IRS or FBI or some other agency see that could be a problem?

I’m diligent about dumping files and emptying the trash but that won’t stop government labs from recovering everything that was on my computer. Lucy could have scrubbed the hard drive and ensured that nothing deleted could be restored. But I assume she didn’t have time. She claims she didn’t know her property was being raided until Erin Loria called the house phone and announced her presence, and that would have given Lucy only minutes to take care of any security concerns. But I don’t know what’s true. She can be as manipulative and untruthful as the FBI. Maybe that’s where she learned it.

“Good morning,” I say and both agents look up at me, neither of them a day over forty, typically well groomed and buff in their cargo pants and polo shirts. “Am I being audited?”

“I sure hope not because that’s no fun,” one of them says cheerfully.