Lizette came into the hall, a glass of white wine in her hand. She glanced at me, then looked out into the night. “He came back by himself?”
“Chet can do all sorts of things,” Suzie said, kicking the door closed with her heel, one of my favorite human moves.
“Your friend Bernie seems very attached to him,” Lizette said.
“They work together,” Suzie said. “You could almost call them partners.”
I understood everything except “almost.” Things not understood are best forgotten: that’s one of my core beliefs, and it’s the core beliefs that keep you operating at a tip-top level. Another of my core beliefs is that Bernie is the greatest, now and forever. If I have any other core beliefs, they’re not coming to me at the moment.
“I think you told me Bernie’s a private eye,” Lizette was saying.
“That’s right,” said Suzie.
“Does he have any police training?”
Suzie nodded. “He was a lieutenant with the Valley PD.”
“And decided to go out on his own?”
“Something like that,” Suzie said. “This was long before he and I got together.”
“At least he’s got some contacts in law enforcement,” Lizette said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that they may come in handy,” Lizette said. “Going down the road.”
Suzie voice sharpened. “There won’t be any going down the road, Lizette. I told you—Bernie’s innocent. He was asleep in this house when Eben was killed.”
“Oh, I believe you, of course,” Lizette said. She took a sip of wine. The wine’s reflection seemed to turn her green eyes yellow in a way that reminded me of cats. I don’t like being reminded of cats. “But can he prove it?”
Suzie gazed at Lizette, didn’t answer.
“Sorry if I’m being too nosy,” Lizette said. She gazed back at Suzie. “You’re in love with him—I can see it—and sometimes that clouds the judgment.”
“My judgment is unclouded,” Suzie said. “Bernie’s innocent, and if we have to prove it, we—”
There was a knock at the door. I knew that knock, the best knock in the world, the knock of a guy who could put his fist right through the door if he wanted to, but hardly ever did. Bernie!
“Who is it?” Suzie called.
Humans! They don’t have an easy time.
“Me,” Bernie called back.
Suzie threw open the door. And there was Bernie, all by himself and uncuffed, looking just great, except for being so tired and worried and angry. But not angry at us, goes without mentioning. He gave us a quick little smile. Even though he was facing Suzie at the time, the smile was meant for her and me both, actually a bit more for me.
“They let me go,” he said, stepping inside. Leaping into his arms even harder than I’d leaped into Suzie’s was next on my list, but before I could make a move, Bernie put his hand on my head with the exact pressure I like, and the next thing I knew he was scratching the spot I can’t reach, and right away scratching the spot I can’t reach became my whole list, A to Z, whatever that might mean.
“On bail?” Suzie said.
He shook his head, at the same time closing the door with his heel just as Suzie had done. Whoa! Was there something alike about them? What a thought!
“All charges dropped,” Bernie said. “I’m no longer a suspect.”
Suzie stepped forward, gave Bernie a hug. Because of how I was standing, I could see Lizette, standing at the entrance to the hall. She seemed to lose control of her wineglass, almost dropped it, some wine slopping over the rim. The movement caught Bernie’s eye, and he looked her way, maybe noticing Lizette for the first time.
“Uh,” he said, “didn’t realize . . .”
“I’ve been keeping vigil with Suzie,” Lizette said. “So glad this . . . this misunderstanding is all cleared up.” She turned to Suzie. “You two need some time.”
Lizette moved toward the door. Bernie stepped aside to let her pass. “Thanks for helping,” he said.
“I really didn’t do anything,” Lizette said.
Bernie opened the door for her. She walked out, wineglass in hand, the wine making tiny waves, back and forth.
• • •
We hung out in Suzie’s kitchen, Suzie at the table, Bernie leaning against the counter, me lying by his feet. He was wearing his favorite sneakers, the ones with the paint smears. I lost myself in their smells.
“. . . right through the screen door,” Suzie was saying, or something like that. I searched my mind for anything having to do with screen doors, came up empty.
“How long was he gone?” Bernie said.
“Hours and hours.”
This sounded like somebody’s fun adventure, but I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. You’d think a big strong dude like me could keep his eyelids—real tiny things, when you came down to it—open as long as he liked, but you’d be wrong. No offense.
So lovely to sleep in the world of Bernie’s sneaker smells. The first little smell stream that came along was all about the desert back home: mesquite, greasewood, those lovely little flowers with a scent a lot like Suzie’s, and javelina, best of all. I followed that desert smell stream until a nice fat javelina appeared on a butte made of cloud. I rose into the sky, a wonderful feeling that happened only in dreams.
Meanwhile, I could hear Bernie, somewhere down on earth, so . . . so I had the best of both worlds! Hey! I finally got what that meant! What a life!
“. . . definitive evidence it couldn’t have been me,” he was saying.
“What definitive evidence?” Suzie said.
“No idea. All Soares told the lawyer Cedric found me was that definitive evidence had turned up, and they were letting me go. He wouldn’t answer any questions.”
“This is crazy,” Suzie said. “Is Soares saying he has definitive evidence that you were asleep in this house when the murder happened?”
“How could he?” Bernie said. “It must be something else.”
“Like?”
“I don’t know. But it must have been ironclad. The murder weapon was mine, at least in a sense, and it had my prints on it—normally a slam dunk.”
“What does ‘in a sense’ mean?”
Bernie started in on a long and complicated story about some biker bar down in bayou country. It seemed vaguely familiar, but back out in the desert I was soaring through the blue sky, the cloud javelina in my sights. Just as I was coming down on him, he saw me and snarled, showing his tusks. Whoa! Tusks that were way bigger than normal, and . . . what was this? Made of buzz saw blades? I flapped my wings frantically to get higher in the air, out of reach, but of course, I had no wings, so I didn’t go higher, instead drifted down and down toward those horrible—
“What’s he whimpering about?”
“Sometimes he has bad dreams. Chet? Wake up, big guy.”
I opened my eyes. Bernie was leaning over me, giving me a gentle shake. No whimpering was going on, and no whimpering had been going on—you can bet the ranch. Whimpering is not my style. I went over to my water bowl and lapped up water, lapped it up as noisily as possible, for reasons unknown to me.
Bernie went over to Suzie, still sitting in her chair. He raised his hands like he was about to lay them on her shoulders, then seemed to change his mind, and stuck them in his pockets instead. Was something wrong between them? I tried to remember.
“I don’t like being set up,” Bernie said.
“But how could it be a setup?” Suzie said.
They were talking to each other but not looking at each other. Instead, they were both facing in my direction, eyes on me. I stopped drinking—all the water was gone now, or at least not in the bowl—and eyed them back.
“Why not?” Bernie said.
“No one knew you were going to b
e here, not even me,” Suzie said. “Plus assuming someone took the gun from your glove box, how could they have counted on a gun being there in the first place?”
Bernie was quiet for a long time. Then he shrugged and said, “I don’t like being set up.” His voice got quieter and harder at the same time in a way that made the fur on the back of my neck stand straight up. “And I’m going to do something about it.”
“Like what?” Suzie said.
“Like track down Eben’s killer,” Bernie said. “What else?”
“How are you going to do that? Can you even operate in DC?”
“I hope I can operate here, at least,” Bernie said.
“Here?”
“In this house.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s what worries me,” Bernie said.
Suzie rose and faced Bernie. “Are you trying to scare me, Bernie?” she said.
He gazed down at her. “Last thing I’d want,” he said, his voice kind of husky, like something was in his throat. “But suppose Eben was killed because of the story you two were working on.”
“I wasn’t working on a story with Eben,” Suzie said. “He was a source.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
Bernie raised his hand. “Okay, okay, have it—”
“And I don’t like being talked to like this.”
“Huh? Like what?”
“Talked down to,” Suzie said. “Patronized. I don’t need protection.”
“Everybody needs protection at some point in their lives,” Bernie said.
“Yeah? What about you?”
Uh-oh. Something was wrong between them, no doubt about it. How could that be, now that we were all back together? I started panting, nothing I could do about it, and turned to my water bowl again. Empty. Right, I’d known that. But there seemed to be lots of water pooled on the floor, so I got going on that.
There’s a vein in Bernie’s neck that jumps sometimes—hardly ever, actually—and what happens next tends to be very bad if you’re a perp. But no perps were around, so therefore? Whoa! We’d come to a so therefore. The way we have things divided at the Little Detective Agency, Bernie handles the so therefores, me bringing other things to the table. I was home free.
Bernie took a deep breath. The neck vein throbbed one last time and went invisible. “Yes,” he said, “sometimes I need protection, too.”
And who was always on the spot to do the protecting? It’s not a secret.
“Give me a for instance,” Suzie said.
“Right now,” Bernie said. “Right now is a for instance. When a setup falls apart, it’s in the interest of whoever’s behind it to wipe out the traces. The point is we’re in this together, Suzie. Even if that sounds like a stupid cliché.”
Suzie gave him a long look. Did her eyes soften? Maybe just a bit. But they both began smelling more like their normal selves. I stopped panting.
“You’re not the smoothest talker, Bernie.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“It’s actually one of your best characteristics.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“And there’s another good one.”
Uh-oh. Suzie had gone way off course, probably because she hadn’t caught Bernie’s keynote speech at the Great Western Private Eye convention, sometime back. True, there’d been some snoring in the audience, but not in the front rows, and there’d definitely been applause at the end. Don’t forget about my hearing, better than yours. I’m sure you bring other things to the table.
If Bernie was upset that Suzie had dissed him, he didn’t show it. That was Bernie, every time! In fact, he had a little smile on his face, was even shuffling his feet a bit, the same way Charlie had when he’d won the fifty-yard dash at field day. The last field day that I’d be attending, according to Bernie, but that’s another story.
“All right,” Suzie said. “You win.”
“I don’t want to win,” Bernie said.
“No?”
The little smile left Bernie’s face. He and Suzie watched each other in an unblinking sort of way that made me want to blink. I could feel their thoughts, sort of mingling in the air between them. Suzie went to the cupboard and took out . . . what was this? A bottle of bourbon? I’d never seen her touch bourbon. Wasn’t wine her drink? This town—Foggy Bottom? Had I gotten that right?—was turning out to be a strange place where strange things happened.
Suzie put the bottle and a couple of glasses on the table. “I got this in case you ever came.”
“I came,” Bernie said.
That was followed by more gazing at each other, and then they sat down. Suzie opened the bottle and poured a little into her glass, quite a bit more in Bernie’s.
“I talked to my editor,” Suzie said.
“About what?” said Bernie, swirling his drink around. Bourbon smell got stronger right away.
“Confidentiality agreements in our business and what happens after a source dies.”
“And what did he say?” Bernie said.
“Sheila’s her name,” said Suzie.
“Damn.”
“Yeah, damn.” Suzie took a pretty big sip of her drink. “She said it’s a judgment call.”
“Sure,” said Bernie. “Otherwise reporters could end up taking important secrets to their graves.”
“People take important secrets to their graves all the time, Bernie. You must know that.” She drained her glass.
Bernie was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “What’s your call?”
Suzie was silent.
“If it helps at all,” Bernie said, “I’m going to work this case, with you or without.”
“See right there?” said Suzie. “That’s bullying.”
Bernie lowered his head. I hated seeing that.
Suzie breathed in a long, slow breath, let it out even slower. “Eben was still sizing me up, as I told you. But what I didn’t tell you is that he had some contact he was gearing me up to meet.”
“Who?” Bernie said.
“He didn’t say,” Suzie said. “Eben had to be very cautious because the contact’s life is in danger.”
“Why?”
“On account of what he knows.”
“Which is?” Bernie said.
“Quote, something that will change the course of history,” said Suzie.
“That’s Eben talking?” Bernie said.
“Yes.”
“Kind of on the melodramatic side.”
“I thought so,” Suzie said. “At the time.”
ELEVEN
* * *
Step one,” Bernie said at breakfast, bright and early the next morning. “World Wide Solutions.”
“What about it?” Suzie said.
“The name,” Bernie said. “It has solutions right in it, and solutions are what we’re after.”
Bernie’s always sharp, but it was clear right from the get-go that today he was at his sharpest. Is that why Suzie balled up her paper napkin and threw it at him, as a kind of prize? I always like a prize myself, and without really knowing how—although a leap right over the kitchen table might have been involved—I’d somehow snatched that balled-up paper napkin out of the air. I stuck a twisting landing, and sat up nice and straight facing Suzie, whose eyes were open wider than normal, and Bernie, who’d reached out to steady an orange juice glass that had gotten a bit tippy for some reason. Meanwhile, the paper napkin was dissolving in an unpleasant sort of way in my mouth, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I’d completely forgotten that I actually disliked chewing paper! Can you believe it?
“He’s a big ball of id, isn’t he?” Suzie said.
“Id?” said Bernie.
Suzie reached for another napkin like she
was going to do the same thing all over again—which would have suited me just fine, doing the same thing all over again being one of my go-to moves—but then thought better of it. I was with Bernie on this id thing, totally out of the picture. At the same time, I liked the sound of it. Big ball of id—why not? I couldn’t have been in a finer mood when we stepped outside and headed toward the Porsche.
A beautiful day, sunny, not too hot, all very nice except that some of the trees seemed to be turning from green to yellow and brown and red, a new one on me, and somewhat unpleasant in a way I couldn’t possibly describe. I let Bernie and Suzie go on ahead and took a moment to do what I had to do, first against a lovely-smelling bush at one end of Lizette’s garden, then a quick splattering back and forth over one of those flowering vines that climbs the side of a house, reserving just a splash, as high as I could manage, right into a sort of raised-up bowl. What were those raised-up bowls called? Birdbaths? I wasn’t sure, but before I got anywhere on the problem, I noticed Lizette, sitting motionless on her screened porch, eyes on me. I paused, one rear leg raised way up, and gave her one of my very friendliest looks. She turned away and picked up her phone.
I trotted out to the street and . . . and what was this? Suzie settling into the shotgun seat? I love everything about Suzie except her forgetfulness in this one little area. I went over to let her know in the nicest possible way that—
“Chet! You’ll wake the dead!”
Uh-oh. I got a grip and pronto. I’d seen it happen once already in my career—a perp name of Wixie Fryar getting lowered into a coffin by these other perps who thought they’d done him in, when all at once . . . I didn’t even want to go there and for sure never wanted to see another dead dude wake-up scene again. Those fluttering eyelids and nothing but the whites of the eyes behind them? Uh-uh. I hopped onto the tiny shelf behind the front seats—totally inappropriate for a hundred-plus pounder such as myself—without the slightest objection and sat up straight and tall, a no-nonsense pro and on the job. Bernie stepped on the pedal and we were off.
“What do you think goes on in his mind?” Suzie said. Or something like that. I had no idea who they were talking about, soon lost interest in the conversation. High above I caught a quick silvery flash, saw the strange bird making a turn in our direction. Birds had tried to poop on me more than once, but this one didn’t. That didn’t make me trust him.
Paw and Order Page 8
