To Fetch a Thief

by Spencer Quinn

  “And?” Bernie said, at the same time putting his hand on me, in fact around my collar.

  Amy’s voice came through the speakers. “And—the results were negative.”

  The blood drained from Bernie’s face. All at once he went from looking great to looking terrible, like this sick old guy who sometimes goes past our house in a wheelchair. “Oh, God,” he said. “Negative?”

  “That’s good news, Bernie,” Amy said. “The best. Negative is good.”

  “Negative is good?”

  “It means no malignancy,” Amy said. “It’s just a benign growth, may shrink and vanish on its own, and easily removable if not.”

  The blood came rushing back to Bernie’s face. It turned bright red—I had no doubt about that, no matter what anyone says about me and color—and he smiled a smile so big his eyes practically disappeared. What the hell was going on? “Thank you,” Bernie said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Amy laughed and said good-bye. Bernie patted my head, kind of hard, actually. “Good boy,” he said. “Way to go.”

  Nice, but what had I done? Was this about taking down Lumpy Clumpinello, or something else? The Lumpy Clumpinello case seemed like a long time ago, but maybe it wasn’t—time plays tricks on you, Bernie says. I didn’t know, didn’t really care, but Bernie was excited about something, so I started getting excited, too. At that moment we came to a stop sign. Looking back, I could still see the fire hydrant, partway down the block. Have I mentioned that the Porsche is a convertible, in fact it has no top at all? The next thing I knew I was lifting my leg against that hydrant, marking it from top to bottom and then back up again, doing a proper job. The air filled with soft splashing sounds, kind of like a fountain. I love fountains. One of my favorites is in the lobby of the Ritz, this fancy hotel in Beaumont Hills, the nicest part of the Valley, where Bernie and I once worked a case, although that particular fountain had actually led to problems with the management, too complicated to go into now. A woman in a passing car gave me a look, maybe not friendly. I gave her a look back, not friendly or unfriendly, just this polite look I have for when my mind is elsewhere.

  * * *

  Home is our place on Mesquite Road. Our part of the Valley isn’t fancy like Beaumont Hills, but who would want to live anywhere else? For one thing, we’ve got the canyon out back, open country that goes on and on, plus more lizards, javelinas, and coyotes than you could shake a stick at. That’s something humans say, but I’ve gotten lots of sticks in my mouth and could have shaken them at all kinds of creatures if I’d wanted. Once I actually did shake a squirrel. Was that bad? I was so surprised I’d caught the little bugger, first and only time!

  Another good thing about our place is that my bowls are in the kitchen. And then there’s Iggy. Iggy’s my pal. He lives next door with this old couple, Mr. and Mrs. Parsons. Not too long ago they got an electric fence and Iggy had some problems with it. Now he doesn’t come outside, just watches from the window, which was what he was doing when Bernie and I drove up. He barked and wagged his tail. I did the same. Iggy barked back and wagged some more. I did the same again. We could keep this up for ages, me and Iggy, and I was looking forward to that, when he suddenly disappeared from the front window. A few moments later he popped up in the side window. Maybe he could see me better from there or maybe—what was this? Now Iggy had something in his mouth, possibly a bedroom slipper. Yes, a bedroom slipper for sure. I wanted badly to take it away from him, but how could I? So when I heard Bernie saying, “For the last time, Chet, get in here,” I went bounding into the house.

  “This calls for a celebration,” Bernie said. I knew celebrations—and wasn’t at all surprised when Bernie opened the cupboard over the sink and took out a bottle of bourbon—but why were we having one now? He also took out a box of chew strips from Rover and Company—a great company where I’d once spent some time in the testing kitchen—and tossed me one. Beef-flavored—I could tell while it was still spinning in midair. I caught it and darted under the kitchen table, like . . . like it was the bedroom slipper or something. I worked on the chew strip, a bit confused. An ice cube in Bernie’s glass made a tiny hiss and then a tiny crack. I loved when that happened. I forgot whatever I’d been worrying about and polished off that chew strip.

  And was wondering if I could have another one, and if so, how to make that happen, when someone knocked at the door. Uh-oh. I hadn’t even heard whoever it was coming up the walk, and that was part of my job. I ran to the door, barking this sharp-sounding bark I have, a bark I’ve noticed scares some people, kind of strange since I mostly do it when I’m a little mad at myself. But then, at the door, I smelled who it was and went quiet.

  Bernie opened the door and blinked, the way humans do sometimes when they’re taken by surprise. “Uh, Leda?” he said.

  “What the hell is wrong with your phone?” she said. Leda has pale eyes, like the sky in winter. She was one of those humans who never seemed to look at me, like I wasn’t there. “Both phones, home and cell. I’ve been calling and calling.”

  “You have?” said Bernie. He took his cell phone from the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt. Leda’s pale gaze took in the shirt; for a moment I thought she was going to say something about it—she’d said plenty about Bernie’s Hawaiian shirts, and his clothes in general, when they’d been married, but she didn’t. Leda herself wore dark pants and a short jacket with interesting buttons, the color of bone. What would one of those buttons feel like between your teeth? You couldn’t help wondering. Meanwhile, Bernie was giving his cell phone a smack, the kind of smack he gives the toaster when the toast starts smoking and won’t come up, but not so hard. “Something seems to be . . .”

  “Did you forget to pay the bill?” Leda said. “They probably cut off your service.”

  “No, I’m sure, almost sure I—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Leda said. “I’m here now.”

  “Right,” said Bernie. His expression changed, like he’d had a thought, maybe a big one. I’d seen that before, and got ready for anything. “Did you want to, uh, come in?”

  “Come in?”

  “Like, inside the house.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  Bernie raised both hands, palms up; something he hardly ever did. “I don’t know,” Bernie said. He cleared his throat, but that didn’t mean he had a bone stuck in it, which is the only reason I have for clearing my throat. I was pretty sure it meant something. “How are things?” he said.

  Leda squinted at him. Squinting never makes people look better. “How are things? What kind of question is that?”

  “Just routine.”

  “Routine?”

  “You know. Polite back-and-forth.”

  Leda stopped squinting, tilted her head back. “Making fun of me, Bernie? That never gets old?”

  “I wasn’t. Sorry if . . . and I never—”

  “Skip it.” She made a little backhand gesture. “I had a proposal I thought you’d like, but if this is your attitude, I don’t—”

  “Something about Charlie?” Bernie said.

  “Yes,” she said, her face smoothing out, looking not so irritated anymore, “something about Charlie. I know it’s not scheduled, but can you take him for the weekend?”

  Bernie’s eyebrows—he has nice thick ones; you can tell a lot by watching them—went up and he smiled at the same time. I always like seeing that one! “Yeah, sure,” he said, “of course.” Bernie gave her a quick look, not the kind of look I’d ever seen before from him to her, more the kind of look he had when we were on the job. “Something come up?”

  “A weekend getaway,” she said. “We’re leaving tonight.”

  “You and Malcolm?”

  “Who else? Of course me and Malcolm.”

  “Going anywhere interesting?”

  “Isn’t that the norm for weekend getaways?”

  Back in the house, Bernie tried the kitchen and office phones, pressed buttons, smacked the phon
es around a bit. Then he started digging through a big pile of papers on the desk. That got me going a bit—especially when the pile tipped and all the papers went sailing—so I had to take a little break out back on the patio. We have a nice patio, surrounded by a high fence and a high gate at the back. And beyond the gate: the canyon. I went to the gate right away. Locked. A very high gate, but what no one knows is that I’ve jumped it more than once. There was an episode with she-barking, for example. I stood still, ears up, listened for she-barking now, heard none. We have a small lemon tree in one corner of the patio. I lay down in its shade, took in the lemony smell. My eyelids suddenly got very heavy very fast. Don’t you find it hard to keep them open when that happens? And also, why bother?

  I had a dream about that she-barker, a very exciting dream, but for some reason at the most exciting moment of this exciting dream, my eyes opened. The dream broke into little pieces and the pieces faded fast. I was on the patio, under the lemon tree, and Bernie was sitting at the table, the checkbook open in front of him. I knew the checkbook. It’s a small thing with a cover that looks like leather, but I happen to know is not; a small thing that always seems to cause big problems.

  “Can’t believe I did that,” he said. I rose, gave myself a real good stretch, getting my front paws way out and arching my back—did that feel good or what? Bernie glanced up at me. “My goddamn handwriting. I took a three for an eight and bounced the phone bill check.” Three? Eight? Those are numbers, but what they mean isn’t exactly clear to me. I don’t go past two. Two is enough. I went over and stood by Bernie. He scratched between my ears. I hadn’t realized how much I needed scratching right there. Ah. He was an expert. “How can I be so dumb?” Bernie said. Bernie? Dumb? No one dumb could scratch like that. He gazed off into the distance. “We need a case, big guy.” I went closer, sat on his foot, waited for a case.

  Soon after that, the doorbell rang. We went to the front door, opened up—and there was Charlie, wearing his backpack. “Hi, Dad,” he said.

  “Hey,” said Bernie. He looked past Charlie to the street, so I did, too. Leda was watching from the passenger side of a car; the dark sedan, actually, that we’d seen earlier at the motel. And I could make out Malcolm beside her, at the wheel. A strange feeling, a kind of pressure, sometimes happens in my head, especially when things are getting complicated. I was feeling it now. Leda gave a little wave. Bernie waved back, a funny look in his eyes. But no time to figure that out, because the very next thing, Charlie had thrown his arms around me, and right after that I was giving him a ride on my back, charging all over the yard.

  “Chet the Jet!” he yelled. “Chet the Jet!”

  Was anything better that this?

  We went inside and had a snack. Charlie loves snacks and so do I. “Guess what I’ve got?” Bernie said.

  “What, Dad?”

  “The circus is in town,” said Bernie. “Out at the fairgrounds.” He laid the tickets on the counter.

  “Yes!” said Charlie. He examined the tickets. “Do they have elephants? We’re studying elephants in school.”

  “Got to have elephants,” Bernie said. “What’s a circus without elephants? But we can check.” He flipped open the laptop, tapped away. “Here we go. How about we watch this on the big screen?”

  We went into the living room. Bernie tapped away some more, played with the remote, said “What the hell?” a few times, hit more buttons, and then a man appeared on our wall TV. He had a big head, wore a big top hat, held a cigar in one hand and a whip in the other.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he called out, “and children of all ages, I’m Colonel Drummond and it’s my pleasure to welcome you to the Drummond Family Traveling Circus, the biggest and greatest and oldest and most award-winning, family-owned three-ring circus in not just the good ol’ U. S. of A. but indeed in the whole world and the solar system to which it—”

  “Let’s fast-forward,” Bernie said. Images flew by on the screen: a dude on a one-wheeled bike—the name of those bikes escaping me—juggling lots of bowling pins; tigers jumping back and forth through a ring of fire; a crowd inside the huge tent clapping their hands; a woman standing on the head of a man who was standing on the head of another man who was standing on the—; a woman in what looked like a bathing suit riding two horses at once, a foot on each one—and was she really keeping all those plates spinning at the same time? I wasn’t sure. Everything went by too fast, a woman breathing fire, and was that possible? a man getting shot out of a cannon and flying through the—? and a bear on a motorcycle—whoa!—and then Bernie said, “This should be it,” and the speed slowed down to normal.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages,” said Colonel Drummond, “if you will direct your attention to the east ring, the Drummond Family Traveling Circus is proud to present the world’s greatest elephant tamer and the world’s greatest elephant, brought together under the Drummond Family Traveling Circus big top at great expense for your viewing pleasure. Please welcome Mr. Uri DeLeath and Peanut!”

  A light shone down in the darkness behind Colonel Drummond, music played ta-da!, and there stood an elephant and a man in a tight sparkly costume. I knew elephants from Animal Planet. Would I ever forget that show they did on when good elephants go bad? And that whole house falling down? The man in the sparkly costume—Uri DeLeath, unless I’d missed something—had a big smile on his face, a dark face with big dark eyes and one of those pencil mustaches, always interesting. He looked tiny next to Peanut. Peanut’s face was hard to read. I couldn’t get past that trunk, so amazing. Peanut raised one of her huge front feet. Uri DeLeath lay down under it. Peanut lowered her foot onto him, just touching and no more. After a moment or two, she raised it, stepped back, and in one quick but gentle motion of her trunk scooped him up and set him behind her head. Then Peanut started walking around the ring, Uri DeLeath smiling and waving his sparkly hat, and what was this? Peanut reaching her trunk into the stands and grabbing somebody’s popcorn right out of the bag and offering it up to Uri DeLeath? He ate a handful and then Peanut’s trunk curled to her mouth and she scarfed down the rest, and . . . and now she was, yes, kind of prancing, like she’d pulled a fast one. Hey! I knew that prance, meaning Peanut and I had something in common. The crowd laughed and cheered. Peanut returned to the center of the ring and bowed and Uri DeLeath slid off, bowing, too.

  “Wow,” said Charlie. “I can’t wait.”

  I knew that one.

  THREE

  Peanut is an African elephant,” Charlie said. “That’s the biggest kind.”

  “Yeah?” said Bernie. We were in the Porsche, and everything was great except Charlie was in my seat, the shotgun seat, and I was on the shelf in back. But I loved Charlie, so I was being pretty good about it, hardly nipping the back of Bernie’s headrest at all.

  “She has big tusks, Dad. The Asian females don’t. And her ears are big, too. The Asian ones have smaller ears.”

  Bernie shot Charlie a quick glance. “Had a pretty good look at that video, huh?” Bernie said.

  “Ms. Creelman says their ears help cool them down. We have to protect the elephants, Dad.”

  Protect the elephants? I didn’t get that. Even if they don’t go bad, just think of the size of them. Why couldn’t they protect themselves?

  We drove across the Valley, the sun shining bright, warm breeze blowing across my coat. I was feeling tip-top, lost in all the freeway smells going by: burning oil, grease, gasoline, hot rubber, hot pavement. Love freeway smells! Before I knew it, we were on an exit ramp, headed toward the fairgrounds—I could tell from the giant Ferris wheel in the distance. We’d worked a case at the fairgrounds once, not sure what it was about, maybe cotton candy. That was what I remembered most, the trouble I’d had with cotton candy, the way it got stuck all over my nose and even up inside: I’d had to breathe through my mouth, and the smell of cotton candy stayed with me for days.

  “There’s the big top,” Charlie said as we drove through the
gate. I could see it, too—a tent beyond the Ferris wheel, not far from the hills that rose at the back of the fairgrounds. We have a tent for when we go camping—my job is to carry the mallet for hammering in the pegs—but there’s a stuffy smell I don’t like inside the tent, so I always sleep outside. Bernie often leaves the tent in the middle of the night. He loves to sleep under the stars. He tells me lots about them, not easy to follow, but no problem: his voice is so nice to hear that often I don’t even bother trying to understand.

  We came to the big top and parked near the ticket booth. “The big top kind of looked bigger in the video,” Charlie said.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Bernie.

  “And whiter,” Charlie said.

  People were milling around the ticket booth in the way groups of humans do when something’s not quite right. Charlie pointed to a sheet of paper stuck on the window of the booth. “Hey,” he said, “does that sign say ‘No Show Today’?”

  “Yeah,” said Bernie, stepping up to the booth; it was empty inside. “‘Please come back and see us tomorrow.’”

  “How come, Dad?” Charlie said. “What’s going on?”

  Bernie looked around. “No idea.” He took Charlie’s hand and walked away. I trailed behind, smelling lots of smells, some of them completely new to me. They all seemed to be coming from inside the big top. Soon I was right alongside the big top, sniffing along the bottom where the canvas met the ground. Animal smells for sure, but what animals, with smells so ripe, so rich, so strong? I squeezed my nose down under the—