Arf

by Spencer Quinn

  “Do you like him?” Birdie said.

  “He seems like a nice man.”

  “Does he like you?”

  “I believe he does. But no one’s in any hurry to … to be in any hurry. And a woman in my position has to be very sure in her mind.”

  “What position is that, Mama?”

  “A position of, well, potential loneliness.”

  Birdie pushed away from the desk, walked over to Mama, and hugged her. “I don’t want you to be lonely.”

  “Oh, I’m most certainly not.” Mama patted Birdie’s head. She was looking over Birdie’s shoulder, in fact in my direction. “I have everything I’d ever want or need.”

  That sounded nice. But shouldn’t the person saying it have looked happier about the whole thing? That was my only thought—one of the biggest I’d ever had. I let them hug for what seemed like ages before I squeezed in between. She’s my Birdie, after all.

  “And remember,” Mama went on when I had them nicely separated. “Curiosity—back burner. That means no poking around by yourself.”

  “I’ve got Bowser,” Birdie said, the most obvious thing I’d ever heard from her.

  “Good thing,” said Mama. “But the point is—no poking around.”

  Not long after that, we went for a walk, me and Birdie. Like most of our walks, this one began on the breezeway.

  “Bowser! What are you growling about?”

  That was easy: I was growling about the snake that lived under our breezeway, its scent particularly strong today. Also, I could hear it slithering around down there. Why? What was on its snaky mind? I did not want a snake living at 19 Gentilly Lane. Nineteen Gentilly Lane was just for me, Birdie, Grammy, and Mama. Actually, just me and Birdie would have been perfect.

  “Bowser! Come!”

  If Birdie calls, I go, maybe not immediately, but always eventually. You can take it to the bank.

  We walked up Gentilly Lane. When we walk, me and Birdie, I like to be on the side closest to the road. That means that when we cross over to the other side, I have to do a sort of double crossover, a tricky move—

  “Oof! Bowser!”

  —that I’ve gotten pretty good at. Soon we came to a dirt road, cane fields stretching away on both sides, the air full of sugary breezes. How nice! We walked along side by side, not a care in the world.

  “Oh, Bowser. I’m so worried.”

  Uh-oh. Did that mean we did have a care in the world? News to me, but if Birdie was worried I was worried. My tail slumped down right away, dragging along behind me. I got it back up to its proper place. You’ve got to show some pride in this world, or else … I couldn’t think of the “or else,” but I’m sure it’s all about a very good reason for keeping your tail up.

  “No poking around, but Drea would never do those things, Bowser. Like breaking into our house. And what about the break-in at the Richelieus’? Drea didn’t even know the—” She stopped talking and stopped walking at the same time, one foot hovering for a moment above the ground. “Oh, no.” She lowered her foot. “Remember when Drea asked if we’d seen a boat going under the bridge? And then later, when I mentioned about the pearls, she seemed pretty interested?”

  I remembered none of those things, but since Birdie remembered I didn’t have to. You really can’t beat our arrangement.

  “Did she know the Richelieus after all?” Birdie said. “Do I have to tell the sheriff? I don’t want to see him, Bowser, not ever.”

  I was totally with her on that. So everything was cool. Meanwhile, the dirt road we were on had led us to the gate of Mr. Santini’s campground. Mr. Santini was out front, a garden trowel in one hand and a pencil behind his ear. Birdie sometimes stashed gum behind her ear, still the coolest thing I’d ever seen in this life, but a pencil wasn’t bad. I was starting to like Mr. Santini.

  He was talking to an old man who stood leaning against the open door of a car. The old man was very thin, had a few thin strands of hair on top of his head, and seemed to be trembling a little bit. Because he felt cold? That was hard to believe on a day like this, but he did have his shirt buttoned right to the top.

  Mr. Santini looked our way. “Birdie? What are you doing here?”

  We drew closer. “I was wondering what happened to her things—like the tent and the motorcycle. Maybe her family should, um …”

  “Problem being,” said Mr. Santini, “Drea Bolden doesn’t seem to have had much in the way of family. The sheriff’s workin’ on that, supposedly. Meanwhile, he’s impounded all her stuff down at the station. This here”—Mr. Santini pointed the trowel at the old man—“is Mister—didn’t quite catch your handle.”

  “Volk,” said the old man in a thin old voice. “Sidney Volk.”

  “Mr. Volk, like you to meet Birdie Gaux, local girl who figured out where the body was.” Mr. Santini turned to Birdie. “Mr. Volk is Drea’s accountant, from down in New Orleans.”

  “Not exactly her accountant,” Mr. Volk said. “I was her father’s accountant. Now I’m retired.” All this time he kept trembling. I wanted to help in some way, tried to think how. While I was getting nowhere with that, Mr. Volk looked my way. His eyes were washed-out like Grammy’s, but her gaze had lots of force behind it and Mr. Volk’s did not. “I had a dog like this one once. Think he’d let me pet him?”

  “Bowser,” Birdie said. “Go see Mr. Volk.”

  I went over to Mr. Volk. He reached out and patted my head with his cold, bony hand. His trembling seemed to die down a bit. We were a good team, me and Birdie.

  “I was just explaining the whole story to Mr. Volk,” Mr. Santini said. “He hadn’t heard about her … being deceased and all. But I’m still not clear on the purpose of your visit, Mr. Volk. Like why you came all this way. If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Not too sure myself,” Mr. Volk said, now just resting his hand on my head. “Don’t know if you’re aware that Henry Bolden—her father and my former client—was a real estate developer. Seems he had a safe-deposit box no one knew about till the bank got taken over last month. It contained only one document, which Ms. Bolden hired me to examine. I was unable to come to any conclusions. I called to tell her that a couple of days ago and she asked me to bring the document. Here I am.”

  “Hmm,” said Mr. Santini. He tapped his potbelly with the tip of the trowel. “You say you have it on you, this document?”

  “I do.”

  “Any chance I can take a quick gander?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Mr. Volk. He took a folded sheet of paper from an inside pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to Mr. Santini.

  Mr. Santini unfolded the sheet of paper and looked it over. “Hmm,” he said. “Would appear that just about ten years ago, Mr. Bolden made a personal loan for ninety-five thousand dollars.”

  “Appears that way,” Mr. Volk said.

  “To some outfit name of the Cardinal Fund.”

  “Correct. But there’s no such entity registered with the state of Louisiana, then or now.”

  “Hmm,” said Mr. Santini. “Did you know about this loan at the time?”

  “I did not,” Mr. Volk said. “But I only did the books for Mr. Bolden’s business interests, not his personal accounting.”

  Then we just sort of stood around for a bit. A breeze sprang up, carrying the smell of Mr. Santini’s pond. All of a sudden I wanted to go home.

  “Ninety-five big ones, huh?” Mr. Santini said.

  “According to the document,” said Mr. Volk.

  “And at an interest rate of thirty percent, says here.” Mr. Santini looked up from the document. “That’s a mobster-type number.”

  “Mr. Bolden was no mobster,” said Mr. Volk. “Not in my dealings with him.”

  “There’s them that have secret lives,” Mr. Santini said. “Any evidence that the loan got repaid?”

  “That was Ms. Bolden’s question,” Mr. Volk said. “I found no evidence of repayment. But of course the trail has grown sketchy after all this time.
”

  “Hmm,” said Mr. Santini, handing back the sheet of paper. Mr. Volk said good-bye, gave me one last pat, and drove away.

  NINETY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS IS A lot of money, Bowser,” Birdie said as we walked back up the dirt road, away from the campground. “But what’s it all about? What was Drea doing?”

  I had nothing to offer on that one, but I was happy being away from the pond, far enough distant now that I could only smell it if I tried, which I did not. Except for once or twice. Funny how sometimes you can’t stop yourself from doing something you already know has zero chance of working out!

  “What is the Cardinal Fund? Was Drea’s dad a bad guy?” Wow! Those sounded like tough questions, each and every one. “You know how Grammy says don’t go stirring up a hornet’s nest?” Birdie went on. “Maybe that’s what Drea did.”

  Oh, no. Anything but hornets! Once I’d stepped on a hornet, completely by accident. Your poor paw doesn’t forget things like that. I listened my hardest for the buzz of hornets, heard none. What I did hear was the pound-pound of human running footsteps. A few moments after that, a runner came into view around a bend on the dirt road up ahead. He was a big guy—or maybe a big kid, of the teenage type—and he was a very fast runner. Not fast compared to me and my kind, but fast for a human. As the runner came closer, I saw that in fact he was a big kid of the teenage type, wearing gray sweats despite the heat. A big teenager with a broad face and heavy eyebrows, eyebrows that struck me as pushy. Hey! Did I know him?

  “Preston Richelieu,” Birdie said quietly. Yes, I knew him, all right: the dude who liked to make his hand into a gun and point it at us. Birdie veered over to the side of the road, giving him plenty of room. The distance between us and him closed fast. Pound pound, pound pound. I could feel Preston Richelieu’s strength right through the ground. His hair flopped up and down, drops of sweat spraying into the air. They caught the light in a way I’d normally find beautiful, but right now—here on this dirt road, just the three of us—I did not.

  Preston, in the middle of the road, pounded toward us, his gaze straight ahead. Most runners look like they’re zoning out. Not Preston. He looked like he was annoyed about something. Was he annoyed with himself for wearing sweats—dark with moisture—on such a hot day? That was my only thought. We kept walking, me and Birdie, me in between her and the middle of the road. Preston’s rapid breathing grew louder and louder, and then he zoomed past us, never once looking our way.

  We walked on, me and Birdie, and—

  Whoa. The pounding stopped, and so did the vibrations beneath my feet. I looked back, and there was Preston, no longer running. He was gazing at us, his big chest heaving.

  “Hey!” he called.

  Birdie turned and looked at him.

  “Hey!” Preston said again. “You that Birdie kid?”

  Birdie nodded.

  “Thought so.” Preston moved toward us. For one moment I thought Birdie was about to turn and run the other way, but she did not. And then it was too late.

  Some humans stand a little too close, don’t give you enough space. Preston turned out to be one of those. He stared down at Birdie, sweat dripping off his chin. The whole world seemed to smell of Preston’s sweat, out there on the quiet dirt road between Mr. Santini’s campground and the first houses in town.

  “Know who I am?” he said.

  “Preston Richelieu.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Quarterback of the Hornets,” Birdie said. Very softly, she added, “Woo-woo.”

  Whatever that was about, it might have been a mistake, because Preston’s face reddened and he loomed in even closer.

  “You’re a troublemaker,” he said.

  Birdie’s lower lip quivered a bit. I could smell how afraid she was. But she didn’t back away. Also, she stood very straight. She didn’t speak, just shook her head in a quick little shake meaning No, I’m not a troublemaker.

  Preston raised his hand and pointed his finger right in Birdie’s face. Preston’s finger was thick and strong and had dirt under the nail. “That’s a lie. You’re making trouble for my family.”

  “I’m not.”

  Preston’s voice rose. “You are!”

  Birdie was shaking now. This was bad. How about we end this chitchat and go our separate ways? I wondered how to make that happen, and came up with no answers.

  Preston jabbed his finger at Birdie, got real close to actually touching her. His eyebrows, dark and thick, were all bunched up in a very agitated way. “You sure are! And if you don’t stop you’re gonna pay. Pay big-time.”

  “Your family,” Birdie said, even softer than before, “made its own trouble.”

  Preston seemed to swell up and hover over us like a storm cloud. “What did you just say? What did you just say?”

  My guess was that this would have been a good moment for silence on Birdie’s part, and maybe she came close to keeping her mouth shut. But then, so quietly that even I could barely hear, she said, “What’s the story with the pearls?”

  Preston stabbed her with his finger, stabbed her real hard in the chest. Birdie gasped like she’d had the wind knocked out of her, lost her balance, and fell backward, landing on the road with a hard thump. Preston strode forward, stood over her, and lifted his foot like he was going to do something awful. She raised her hand—so small compared with Preston’s foot—to protect herself. I saw red.

  Redness took over my whole mind. I had no more thoughts. All I knew was that this red-minded Bowser was now in midair, springing at Preston full strength, nothing held back. And Bowser’s a pretty big guy, don’t forget, the kind of big guy who eats you out of house and home—just ask Grammy. Red-minded Bowser smashed into Preston’s chest, knocking him away from Birdie. He staggered but didn’t lose his balance, then yelled a wild yell, spun around in the sort of martial arts move you see on TV, and launched a kick at red-minded Bowser.

  What he didn’t appreciate was red-minded Bowser’s speed. Which was why Preston ended up with his thigh caught between powerful jaws. Red-minded Bowser squeezed on those jaws and sank his big strong teeth into Preston’s leg. Preston let out a high-pitched scream that seemed to fill the sky. Then, in a desperate sort of panic, he wriggled free and shot off down the road. Red-minded Bowser took off after him, nipping at his heels. Preston: real fast for a human, but red-minded Bowser wasn’t going full speed, not even close.

  “Get him away from me! Get him away from me!”

  Like that was going to work. Preston ran and screamed. Red-minded Bowser ran and nipped. Then, from up ahead, meaning the direction of town, appeared a strange sight, namely an approaching kid, beating on a small drum hung around his neck. A skinny kid with a Mohawk? Yes. Had to be Junior Tebbets. His eyes widened in surprise, and were still widening when Preston ran right over him. Junior flew one way, his drumsticks another, and the drum a third. Red-minded Bowser got a bit confused. He gave Preston’s heel one more nip—

  “ARRGH!”

  —and then turned back toward Junior, lying in the road. Red-minded Bowser stopped seeing red.

  Junior sat up. “Bowser?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Much too complicated to explain even if I’d had the ability, which I did not. But what a good mood I was in! The taste of human blood? Not bad at all, if on the salty side. Still, probably best not to make this a habit. Perhaps just on special occasions.

  Birdie came running up. “Oh, Bowser!” she said. “My hero!” She gave me a big kiss, right on the nose. My good mood got even better.

  “Birdie?” Junior said. “What happened here? Was that Preston Richelieu?”

  Birdie helped Junior to his feet. She started explaining things. He asked questions. She explained some more. All of this? Impossible to follow, at least for me. At the same time we picked up Junior’s drum and one of the drumsticks, then started searching among the sugarcane stalks for the other one.

  “What were you doing with the drum?” Birdie said.

&n
bsp; “Taking it to the campground,” Junior said. “I was going to sit out there by the pond and see if I could make up a song about Drea.”

  Birdie gave him a long look. “Good idea,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  She poked around a cane stalk. “Here it is.” She handed him the second drumstick. “Let’s go home, Bowser.”

  “Maybe I’ll come with you,” Junior said. “Do the song on another day.”

  “Sure,” said Birdie. “Let’s go, my hero.”

  They started up the road.

  “Meaning you, Bowser.”

  I took a step or two toward them, then stopped. What was that smell? Leather? One of my favorites. I nosed around the base of a cane stalk and found a small leather wallet. A sweaty wallet, and the sweat smelled of Preston. I picked it up anyway and brought it to Birdie.

  “What did you find, Bowser?” she said, taking it from me.

  “Looks like a wallet,” said Junior. “Any money in it?”

  “Even if there is it’s not ours.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  Birdie opened the wallet. “There’s a driver’s license.”

  “Let’s see.” Junior grabbed the wallet, took out the license. “Hey! It’s Preston’s.”

  “He must have lost it when he bumped into you,” Birdie said.

  “Bumped into? That’s what you call it?” Junior gazed at the license. “One ugly dude,” he said.

  “Let’s see.” Junior handed Birdie the license. She looked at it. Her eyes widened. “His middle name is Pardo?”

  “Huh?”

  “Pardo,” Birdie said. “Says it right here—Preston Pardo Richelieu. Oh my god!”

  “What’s so amazing?” said Junior. “I don’t get it.”

  “How come his middle name is Pardo?”

  “Parents must have given it to him.”

  Birdie said nothing, went on staring at the driver’s license.

  “For example, my middle name is Earl,” Junior said. “What’s yours?”

  “This has to mean something,” Birdie said. “Something important.”