Good news! Not the free country part—I already knew that, on account of it being something Bernie often said, but the Jewish part. Was I Jewish, whatever that happened to be, exactly? I doubted it, had never even heard of Jewish until now, but it didn’t matter because if Beasley was right I could still eat Jewish no matter what, and eating Jewish was all I wanted to do at that moment. Did Beasley look like the kind of human who tended to be right about things? He did not. That was worrisome.
“Yes, a free country—with liberty and justice for all,” Bernie said. “I want to discuss the justice part.”
“Huh?”
“Specifically as it relates to the Wendell Nero case,” Bernie said.
“What case?” said Beasley. “I closed it already, with some help from you. Got no problem sharing credit. What’s the matter? Didn’t get the honorary badge and T-shirt yet?” He crunched off another bite of pickle. “I could maybe get you a couple hunnert outa the tipster fund.”
A sort of iciness appeared in Bernie’s eyes, there and gone in a flash. You don’t see that every day—in fact, I didn’t remember seeing it ever. “It’s not about the money,” he said.
“Whoa? You really a PI?” A joke of some sort. Beasley laughed and laughed, spewing a few pickle shreds, useless to me although I snapped them up anyway. What was the joke? Bernie was the best PI in the Valley. He’d even given the keynote address at the Great Western Private Eye convention, and plenty of people had still been in the room when it ended, or at least some.
“I’m the kind of PI who doesn’t like loose ends,” Bernie said.
Beasley shrugged. “So what? You got a client?”
Good question. Clients were part of our business plan at the Little Detective Agency, possibly an important part.
“Client or not,” Bernie said, “there are loose ends in the Nero case.”
Client or not? Uh-oh.
“I told you,” Beasley said. “There ain’t a case. And the DA’s office says it’s a slam dunk.”
“Who’s handling it?”
“Some gal? Deena? Dinah?”
“Deirdre Dubois?”
“Yeah. A ballbuster if there ever was one.”
That didn’t sound good, but Bernie didn’t seem alarmed so neither was I. “Where’s the RV?” he said. “I’d like another look at it.”
“Why?”
“Unless you’ve already recovered any phones or computers Wendell owned.”
“Nope.”
“He was a scientist with a consulting business,” Bernie said. “He must have had a phone, a laptop. Where are they?”
“Search me.”
Wow! We were going to pat down a deputy sheriff? Had that ever happened before? Actually, yes. And had I enjoyed it or what! Maybe it would become part of our routine! I moved around the table, took up a spot right behind Beasley’s chair, standard procedure. Bernie shot me a quick glance, possibly a little puzzled. Was I being too obvious? I went as still as I could, hoping to look less obvious. Did that mean smaller? I tried to look smaller. But how? Think small thoughts? I tried to think small thoughts but came up with none at all.
Around then was when the waitress arrived with Bernie’s sandwich and Beasley’s fries. On her way back to the kitchen, without even looking—like a behind-the-back pass in basketball!—she slipped me a thick rolled-up slice of that lovely meat. Pastrami? Corned beef? Both? What a talented waitress, sort of the Steph Curry of the restaurant business! After that my memory of events isn’t reliable, although I did get the impression that those fries—maybe the biggest plate of fries I’d ever seen—put Beasley in a better mood. The fry or two or possibly more that I somehow ended up with certainly made me more cheerful, and I’d been feeling pretty cheerful to begin with.
“… don’t really care what you do on your time,” he was saying, dipping his napkin in his water glass and wiping his chin, which had become pretty greasy. “The RV’s still at the shed, last I knew. The exes are fighting over it.”
“Exes?” Bernie said.
“Turns out your pal the scientist had some ex-wives. Three? Four? Something like that. It’s a wonder he lived as long as he did.”
Deputy Beasley thought that was pretty funny. He was still laughing when we left.
* * *
The shed’s in the part of South Pedroia where the last boarded-up buildings end and the desert begins. It’s a huge fenced-in dirt yard, really, full of all the cars, trucks, SUVs, RVs, tractors, motorcycles, bicycles, and a few strange homemade wheeled things with no name, that end up in possession of the law. The shed itself is at the gate, where we were waved through no problem. We’re known in places like this, me and Bernie.
Wendell’s RV, with the beautiful waterfall on the side, was in a middle row between a smashed-up truck cab and a pile of motorcycle parts, some of them red-stained. A group of women had a big shaved-head dude backed up against the RV. The women were all new to me, but the dude was Itsy Bitsy Litzenberger, a perp at one time and now the junior assistant attendant of the whole shed experience, which just shows you. He saw us coming and called out over the heads of the women.
“Bernie! Help!”
“Hey, Itsy,” Bernie said. “What’s going on?”
The women all wheeled around. We had an old one, a not-quite-so-old one, and a younger one than that, although you couldn’t call her young. They all wore yoga pants and gold watches. I sensed trouble.
“Flat out goddamn theft!” said the youngest one.
“Look who’s talking!” said the not-quite-so-old one.
“Pot calling the kettle!” said the oldest one.
Bernie held up his hand. “Ladies, please.”
They all spoke at once. “Don’t call us ladies!”
I got ready to run.
“Uh, women,” Bernie said. “Please, women. Maybe Itsy here can fill me in.”
“Well, Bernie,” Itsy said, shifting from foot to foot, “these three … visitors are all former wives of the guy who owned this RV and—”
The middle one jabbed her finger, the nail painted bright red, at the youngest one. “He never married her. They were just shacked up.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” the youngest one said. “We didn’t need a ring to keep us together. We had heat in the bedroom, foreign territory to you as I know from the horse’s mouth.”
“I was never a professional like you, that’s true,” said the middle one.
“More like a semi-pro,” the oldest said.
Then came a lot of shouting, including a few words I hadn’t heard since an all-you-can-drink night at a biker bar we went to once by mistake, all of it impossible to follow. But if horses—prima donnas each and every one—were involved then we had problems.
“Excuse me,” Bernie said several times to no effect. Finally he added, “We were the ones who found him, Chet and I.”
The women went silent and turned their gazes on us. “Who’s Chet?” said the oldest.
Bernie pointed my way.
“What a handsome boy,” she said. The others nodded. Had we turned a corner? Simply based on my looks? I couldn’t think why not.
Bernie rubbed his hands together like we were getting somewhere at last.
“I’m guessing you’re all united in feeling, um, or having felt, a certain … fondness for Wendell.”
He paused. None of them said no.
“Wendell had asked us to call on him yesterday morning,” Bernie said. “He didn’t say why.” He took out our business cards, handed one to each of the women.
“Can I have one, too?” Itsy said.
Bernie reached over the women, gave Itsy a card. Itsy glanced at it. “Hey. Cool flowers.”
I missed Suzie, but those flowers? Nothing we could do about it, since it was Suzie, although now that things weren’t so good with her anymore, maybe … I didn’t want to go there. I’d already gone further than I wanted.
“You’re a private eye?” said the youngest one.
/> “At least you can read,” the middle one told her.
“Why did Wendell want a private eye?” said the oldest.
“That’s the question,” Bernie said. “Have any of you been inside the RV yet?”
They all turned on Itsy. “He won’t let us!”
Itsy raised his hands. “Just doin’ my job, Bernie. Gotta establish ownership.”
“The owner passed,” said the youngest one.
“Deceased,” said the middle one.
“Dead,” said the old one.
“In which case,” Bernie said, “maybe there’s something in his will.”
“There is no will!” the women said.
“How do you know?” said Bernie.
“We called the lawyer,” they all said.
“Um, one at a time or all at once?” Bernie said.
“Is that meant to be funny?” said the youngest one.
“Separately, of course,” the middle one said. “We haven’t talked together all three in years.”
“Thank Christ,” said the oldest.
The women exchanged glares.
“Who made the last call to the lawyer?” Bernie said.
“Me,” the oldest one said.
“What’s your name?”
“Felicia.”
“Let’s talk, Felicia, just the two of us, for simplicity’s sake.”
“Simplicity’s sake?” said the other women. I was with them on that.
Bernie led Felicia away, toward the smashed-up cab. I followed—and soon led—feeling the gazes of the other two women all the way.
“I need to search the RV, Felicia,” Bernie said.
“Why?”
“There are unanswered questions in this case.”
“But haven’t they caught the murderer?”
“Nevertheless.”
“Are you saying they got the wrong guy?”
Bernie gazed down at her. “I’m saying two things. One: I want no objection from you or the others when I ask Itsy to let me search the RV. Two: I’m going to need a client.”
Felicia gazed back up at Bernie, eyes narrowed and suspicious at first, and then just narrowed. She gave him a nod, very slight, hardly any movement at all.
Not long after that, we were inside the RV, me, Bernie, and Itsy—Itsy along not because he didn’t trust us, but because he wanted to see pros in action. We have fans, me and Bernie. With fans you need to throw them a bone from time to time. Whoa! An actual bone? Never. I mean an unactual bone, whatever that might be. Meanwhile our search, for a phone or a laptop, if I’d been following things right, was turning up nada. Bernie stood very still, gazing at something far beyond the walls of the RV. That seemed to go on for a long time, and then he snapped out of it, an inner snap I could feel, and now his gaze was on the actual wall, focused, in fact, on that thumbtacked photo of Wendell and the girl. Bernie took the photo off the wall, checked the back, and slid it into his shirt pocket.
We went outside. The women were waiting. Bernie shook his head.
“Does that mean you’re giving up?” Felicia said.
I was hoping Bernie would say, What a question! Instead he went with, “No.”
“Good,” said Felicia. “Because we want to hire you.”
Bernie swallowed. “Meaning … the whole lot of, um…?”
“Exactly,” said Felicia. “The whole lot of um.”
Eight
There’s a nice little park across from the courthouse. We waited there in the late afternoon, Bernie on a bench, me underneath, the heat of the day still strong but tiny breezes starting to stir. Were we going inside? I’d done some work in the courthouse during my career, once as Exhibit A. The judge had slipped me a Rover and Company biscuit, my very favorite, from under his black robe. I’d even gotten to know a few members of the jury. The walls of that little box they sit in is not high at all. They could have easily jumped out of it at any time. Why didn’t they? I’d been thinking along those lines when I … did whatever I did, and soon after that I’d been back out here in this very park! Wow! Sometimes you just have to sit back and say, What’s this all about? Although I never do.
From inside the courthouse came—at least to me—the sound of humans on the move—the heavy-footed, the light-footed, the sneaker-wearing, high-heelers, wing-tippers, and flip-floppers, all of them in a hurry. The front doors opened and out they came in a big mob, which was when Bernie became aware of what was going on.
“Five o’clock whistle,” he said. Whistle? There’d been no whistle, but if Bernie said … I listened my hardest and … and from far beyond the Valley, came the faintest, tiniest woo-woo of a train, one of those long, long trains you sometimes see out there, like a black line inking itself across the desert. “They just blow that whistle because they’re feeling lonely,” Bernie likes to say. But that’s not the point, which is about his hearing. True, Bernie’s ears aren’t small for a human, but was it really possible he’d heard that train whistle? If he had, then … then I really didn’t know my Bernie. But I did! I did know my Bernie! That had to mean he wasn’t himself for some reason. I gave him a close look, just to see what was going on. Did he seem a little tired? That had to be it.
“Chet? Something up? You’re kind of in my face, big guy.”
Hey! He was right! Our noses were practically touching. How had that happened? I had no clue, but why stop at practically? I pressed my nose right against Bernie’s.
He laughed. “What am I going to do with you?”
What a question! Same as always—chase down perps pedal to the metal! And weren’t we on a roll? First that rooftop dude, who I could hardly remember, and then Florian almost the next day. Or maybe exactly the next day, days having a way of sometimes merging into one another. But nothing beats chasing down perps. Who’s next? Who’s next? Who’s next? Perhaps I was getting a little too excited, almost to the point of pawing at the top of Bernie’s head, or … or, yes, I seemed to be at that point, not much question about it, but Bernie didn’t mind. He laughed again, patted my side, and then paused, his gaze on the courthouse door.
“I think that’s her,” he said, using his business voice. I climbed down at once, turned, and sat at his feet, facing forward, facing the world. When Bernie means business, I mean business.
A not-very-tall but strong-looking woman had appeared on the courthouse stairs. She was towing a wheeled suitcase behind her, with another suitcase on top of it; smallish suitcases or maybe biggish briefcases. Instead of bump-bump-bumping them down the steps, she just lifted them clear with one hand and carried the whole load down to the sidewalk, easy-peasy, all of this in high-heeled shoes. She came into the park, sat on the bench next to ours, took sneakers out of one of those briefcases—yes, a briefcase for sure, full of papers in different slots—and started changing her shoes.
Bernie rose. “Deirdre Dubois?” he said.
The woman turned to us. She had deep dark eyes that reminded me of Suzie’s except they didn’t shine. Suzie’s shone in a way that made me think of moonlight; this woman’s eyes were hotter.
“Yes?” she said, in the kind of tone most humans use for no.
“I’m Bernie Little and this—”
“I know who you are,” said the woman, Deirdre Dubois, if I’d been following this right.
“Have we met?” Bernie said.
“That seems to be happening now,” said Deirdre. “But you’re a PI. I have files complete with photos on every PI in the Valley, the licensed ones and the ones whose licenses I’ve stripped.”
That sounded not very friendly, but Bernie just smiled. “Then you know that Chet here’s my partner.”
“Correct,” Deirdre said. “His K-nine school summary report is part of your file.”
When Bernie gets surprised he looks much younger—you can suddenly find Charlie in his face. It’s an expression you hardly ever see because Bernie’s not easy to surprise, but it was there now.
“I’m thorough, Bernie,” Deirdre said.
“I even know he flunked out on the very last day.”
Oh, no! Why did that have to come up? I hoped her file included the part about a cat being involved. Please, Bernie, ask her about the cat part! Please.
But he did not. Instead he stopped looking surprised, instead looked just himself, his very best self. “That was a very lucky day for me.”
“Because you ended up together?”
“Correct.”
Deirdre’s gaze went to me. I gazed back, showing zip, a total pro. Had one of my ears turned inside out for some reason? Unfortunate timing perhaps. Sometimes you just have to carry on. I doubled down on my total pro look.
Deirdre turned to her bag, dropped the high heels inside. “Is this simply a chance meeting, Bernie? Or do you want something?”
“The second.”
“Let me guess. You’re feeling put-out that you made the collar on the Wendell Nero murder and ended up with nothing to show for it. I’ll have my office forward you a check for $500.” She zipped her bag closed. “Anything else?”
“I get it that you’re tough as they come, inside and out,” Bernie said. “So you can ease up a little.” Whoa! He sounded angry? Not by raising his voice—that wasn’t part of his angry sound, more like just the opposite. But why? Five hundred dollars was nothing to sneeze at, as humans like to say. Once I’d seen this coke dealer name of Snorter sneeze on an enormous pile of cash, way more than $500. This happened to take place on a high-rise balcony downtown, but no time for a description of what came next.
Meanwhile Deirdre had gone still. Her color didn’t change, no vein throbbed in her forehead, none of that stuff. But her eyes, hot to begin with, were blazing.
“I don’t want money,” Bernie said.
But … but surely money was part of our business plan. I didn’t understand. Maybe we would be paid in gold or diamonds from now on? I felt better right away.
“What I want,” Bernie went on, “is a meeting with Florian Machado, just the three of us.”
Deirdre’s head shifted slightly back. “Me, you, and him?”
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