By the time they heard us coming, we were almost on them; we could be real quiet, me and Bernie. They looked up, first Nance, then Borghese. Then they moved farther apart from each other, the coffee slopping over the edge of the count’s cup.
“Morning,” Bernie said.
The count placed his cup in the saucer. “Mr. Little?” he said.
“To what do we, uh—”
“Owe this visit,” said Nance. Her purse lay on the table. She drew it closer.
“It’s about the case,” Bernie said. We stood by the table, Bor-ghese and Nance on the other side. The sun shone on a big glass jug of orange juice: a beautiful sight.
“The case?” said Borghese.
“What case?” said Nance.
“The three culprits are in jail, no?” Borghese said.
“And you’ve been paid,” said Nance.
“They won’t be in jail for long,” Bernie said. “At least not for this. That was so lucky, how fall guys kept popping up for you. Even Ganz—were you going to murder Adelina anyway, or did it only become irresistible when he sent that photo?”
“What is this nonsense?” said Borghese. “I’m afraid we must ask you to—”
Borghese cut himself off, gazed past us. So did Nance. Their eyes opened wide. I turned, and there, emerging from the orange trees, came Suzie. She had a little camera in her hand, now raised it to snap a picture.
Bernie had turned, too. “Suzie,” he said. “Get back.”
“Freeze,” said Nance.
Uh-oh. We both spun back around, me and Bernie. Too late. Nance had slipped a little handgun out of her purse. Her skin, so dark from the sun, and her eyes, shrunk down to points: she looked a lot like those dangerous gunslingers from the Westerns in our DVD pile, except she was a woman. She pointed the gun right at Bernie’s head. “I missed your dog, but that was at long range,” she said. “I won’t miss now.”
The muscle in Bernie’s jaw got hard and lumpy. “You were shooting at Chet?”
Hey! I remembered that, a real bad memory that made me mad. I leaped. Most of the time I’m a very good leaper, but this wasn’t one of my better leaps, in fact maybe my very worst, my legs letting me down for some reason. I cleared the table all right—the gun swinging over to point my way—but crashed into that big jug of orange juice. Did the gun go off ? Not sure, but the jug went flying, splashing orange juice all over the place, including— hey!—in Nance’s face.
“Ow,” she said, putting her free hand to her eyes.
The next moment, Bernie had her, twisting her arm up and behind, making her say, “Ow,” again, this time louder, and drop the gun. We’d taken down women perps before, but never this roughly. In this case I was all for it. Bernie kicked the gun away.
Meanwhile, Borghese had taken off, was running across the lawn. The count turned out to be a poor runner, one of the very worst human runners I’d ever seen. I had him by the pant leg in no time. Case closed.
Lieutenant Stine, a SWAT team, and a bunch of other cops soon arrived. By that time, we’d found the thirty-ought-six under some hay bales in the barn. Normally we tend to hang around in situations like that, accepting congratulations, free drinks, lots of pats, that kind of thing. But not this time. This time we were in a big hurry. Why? No clue.
Not long after, we pulled into the vet’s parking lot. The vet? I was fine, shoulder all better, not a scratch on me. We went inside, me, Bernie, Suzie. The vet’s name was Amy, a big round woman with a nice voice and careful hands, but I always started shaking the moment I entered the waiting room, and this time was no different.
They laid me on a table. Bernie stroked between my ears, very nice. Amy felt along my side. A lot of talk went on over my head—something about biopsies, whatever those were—and I thought about the tray of bacon we’d left untouched on the count’s table. I felt a tiny jab high up one leg, and then nothing.
Woke up feeling tip-top, out in Amy’s waiting room. Bernie was saying something like, “If you had to guess?” Amy looked away from him. “We’ll have the results in two days,” she said. Then they saw I was up and at ’em and gave me some pats. We left. I had no idea what that was all about, just felt glad to get out of there.
We went home, listened to a message from Chuck Eckel. “Big news,” he said. “Some peasant just stumbled on the biggest tin deposit they’ve ever found in Bolivia. Gonna drive the price down to practically zero. You’ll make a shitload.”
Bernie didn’t seem thrilled. I wasn’t either. It sounded kind of disgusting.
The next day we went to the Great Western Dog Show at the Arena. I sat with Suzie, the whole place packed. And where was Bernie? Down on the floor with Princess! There were a whole bunch of tiny dogs, some fluffballs, some not, but I only had eyes for two—Babycakes, with Mr. Ganz, and Princess, with Bernie. They got paraded around one by one. Babycakes did her little move, one paw raised, waiting patiently to get going. What crap! Then, last, came Princess, running in her blurry-legged style, Bernie kind of shuffling along beside her.
“He’s adorable,” Suzie said in a quiet voice.
Huh? Who? What? Missed that completely.
Down on the floor, all the dogs waited at their stations, a human standing beside each one; only the humans looked nervous. Then a big, scary-looking old woman in black started walking slowly past each one, staring at them. Now my guys looked nervous, too. She spent an extra long time gazing at Babycakes, who raised her goddamn paw again, and at Princess, who stuck out her little pink tongue right in the scary woman’s face. And then—and then! The scary woman extended her arm and pointed right at Princess!
Applause. Clapping and cheering. Princess, now wearing a blue ribbon, took Bernie on a victory run. He had this huge smile on his face and she had her head up in that determined way. Had I ever seen anything so exciting? I wanted to be down there so bad.
And the next thing I knew I was! I ran around crazily. Princess got free and ran around with me. Then all of them—all those midgets—were on the loose. Somehow that blue ribbon got eaten, possibly by me. We went wild.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Heartfelt thanks to my friend, Alan Cohen, my agent, Molly Friedrich, and my editor, Peter Borland.
Table of Contents
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY–ONE
TWENTY–TWO
TWENTY–THREE
TWENTY–FOUR
TWENTY–FIVE
TWENTY–SIX
TWENTY–SEVEN
TWENTY–EIGHT
TWENTY–NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY–ONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thereby Hangs a Tail Page 26
