Heart of Barkness

by Spencer Quinn

  “Swann,” said Bernie. “Did you find anything?”

  “Zip,” Boomer said. “I see Grimble purportedly has a confession. Hard to believe.”

  “You know him?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Of Grimble?”

  “Yes.”

  “You already know, Bernie.”

  “Because you said ‘purportedly’?”

  Whoa! This conversation was getting hard to follow. But way more disturbing was the fact that all I had left of my treat—the tastiest treat of my career!—was one last tiny morsel. I chewed the smallest possible chew. But still too much! And just like that, my treat was gone. I turned to the door. How to make the robot return: that was the question, the big question, my one and only.

  “You know and I know we could do big things together,” Boomer was saying. “Feel free to revisit your decision any time. Agreed?”

  “I’ll agree to that,” said Bernie.

  “My man.” Boomer raised his glass. “Sorry I don’t have anything on Lotty. But very smart of her to hire you.”

  “Actually, she hasn’t.”

  Boomer sat back. “No? You’re confusing me.”

  “I have a client, but it’s not her.”

  “A client who hired you regarding Lotty’s present situation?”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t ask you the name of this client—”

  “Good.”

  “—but what’s the goal?”

  Bernie thought for a moment or two. “To find out what happened. And why.”

  “Don’t tell me we’re philosophers all of a sudden.”

  I waited to find out, hoping the answer was no. We’d worked a complicated case involving two philosophers over at the college who got into a fistfight about something called free will, or maybe a perp called Will Free—I never got that straight. Two roly-poly bearded dudes in a fistfight! If you could still call it that when no actual punches landed, although they both got chest pains and had to sit with their heads between their knees for a bit.

  “Certainly not me,” Bernie said.

  “So what’s going on?” said Boomer. “Especially if she’s going to cop a plea.”

  “Maybe there are mitigating circumstances.”

  “Such as?”

  “It’s just a feeling so far,” Bernie said. “But that’s why I’m here. You knew her in high school. What can you tell me about her?”

  “Going way way back, Bernie, my friend.”

  “Humor me,” said Bernie.

  “All right.” Boomer gestured with his glass at Bernie. “But you owe me.”

  “I said I’d pay.”

  Boomer shook his head. “Just squeezin’ your nuts. Your money’s no good here.”

  Uh-oh. That first part sounded horrible. But Bernie and Boomer were still sitting in their chairs, pretty far apart, nothing much happening, definitely not anything horrible. Sometimes humans just could not be understood. That was one of the first and most important things I’d learned about them.

  Boomer downed another slug of bourbon. Bernie had hardly touched his. What was up with that?

  “High school and Lotty Pilgrim,” Boomer said. “Every boy in the goddamn place was in love with her.”

  “Including you?”

  “Hell, yes. She was the most beautiful girl in town, plus that voice. We all knew she was special. I even dated her a time or two.”

  “You were QB on the football team?”

  Boomer smiled. “You’re very thorough.”

  “Not really. That fact happened to come up.”

  “In conversation with your client?”

  “Yes.”

  Boomer nodded. “He—or she—got that right. But none of that football hero shit cut any ice with Lotty.”

  “How long did the two of you go out?”

  “I wouldn’t say we went out at all—not on an exclusive basis. As for intimate details, don’t go there. Back then a gentleman protected a lady’s honor.”

  “Admirable,” Bernie said. “Although chivalry means you’re in the power position.”

  “Point taken,” said Boomer. “You’re an interesting guy, Bernie—even more interesting than I was led to believe.” He drained his glass, licked his lips. “How does one hundred and twenty-five grand to start sound?”

  “Way too much,” Bernie said. “How did the two of you break up?”

  “Me and Lotty? There was no formal breakup, not that I remember. We weren’t an item—thought I made that clear.” He gave Bernie a steady look.

  “Got it,” Bernie said.

  “Meaning we just drifted apart,” Boomer said. “I headed over to Lubbock right after graduation to catch the tail end of spring practice. Had a full ride at Texas Tech, sat for three years and then broke my goddamn leg in my first game as a starter. Typical college football story. Far as I remember, Lotty left town as well, maybe for Nashville.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Most likely at that graduation.” Boomer’s watch made a little chiming sound. He checked it, and looked up. “Afraid I’ll have to cut this short, Bernie.”

  “You’ve given us a lot of time already.” Bernie rose. And me, too—goes without mentioning.

  “Whoa!” Boomer pointed at Bernie’s glass. “Turning down my money and my liquor, too?”

  “I get into these ruts,” Bernie said. Boomer laughed. Bernie drank up, set his glass carefully on the armrest. “Do you recall anything about Lotty dating someone after you?” he said.

  Boomer was silent for a moment or two. Bernie turned to him. Boomer scrunched up his face. For a moment he looked almost like a kid thinking his very hardest. “Nope,” he said.

  “Possibly a Mexican,” Bernie said.

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” said Boomer.

  His watch chimed again. Chimes yes, bells no. I was keeping up with the humans, maybe even nosing slightly ahead of them. Nosing—that’s a little joke, just between you and me. It won’t happen again.

  Seventeen

  “Here’s a theory,” Bernie said, as we headed out of town, roof down and the wind in our hair. “Clint beat up Jordan after the C-note incident. Can’t see Clint as much of a fistfighter, but Jordan’s probably worse. Maybe Clint took him by surprise. And after, what if Jordan snapped? Or Rita convinced him that any man with a backbone should snap after that kind of provocation? So Jordan goes over to Lotty’s ranch to settle the score. Rita goes with him to make sure it gets settled. Things get out of hand and the knife comes out of the drawer. And now Lotty’s taking the fall for her grandson. It’s like a distant cousin of ‘Long Black Veil,’ or some other murder ballad.”

  Bernie’s always the smartest human in the room. There shouldn’t be any disagreement on that by now. But sometimes he soars up to such a high level that he’s like a super Bernie. I went over what I’d just heard: backbone, knife, murder. It made total sense. Any moment now I’d be grabbing a perp by the pant leg and then we’d be celebrating at the Dry Gulch Steakhouse and Saloon, where I had many friends among the waitstaff. I gazed at the face of super Bernie. Super Bernie looked just like my Bernie, meaning you’d never guess the brainpower just humming away inside. Sitting there beside him, I listened for that hum, but heard nothing, surely on account of all the highway noise.

  He glanced over and smiled. “Your mind on Kobe beef and truffle oil?”

  Most certainly not! And then it was! Stuck on Kobe beef and truffle oil and nothing but. And suddenly I made an astonishing mental leap: we needed a robot of our own! Did you go somewhere to buy robots? Or did you just meet them in a bar and get friendly? Either sounded fine to me. I barked a bark that meant Let’s get cracking on this!

  Bernie laughed and said, “I knew it.”

  * * *

  Bernie turned on the radio. “Two-lane blacktop and country music—who can resist?”

  Not me, amigo. Especially when Bernie’s doing the suggesting
, but even if he’s not, resisting is not my best thing.

  He fiddled with the buttons. “Should be able to pull in that little country station from Silver City, unless some big outfit—”

  There was a crackle and then a woman’s voice came through the speakers.

  “… strange news from over in the Valley today, where one-time country songbird Lotty Pilgrim has been arrested in the stabbing death of her manager, Clint Swann, both of them residents, it says here, of Rancho Corazon, Arizona. Some of you old-timers might remember her big hit ‘How You Hung the Moon’—the Loretta Lynn version’s my personal fave—but here’s the locked-up lady herself with ‘One Bad Day.’”

  “Locked-up lady—for god’s sake,” Bernie muttered. And then came Lotty’s voice.

  In a little border town

  Where we were staying

  You went out to make a call

  And that’s not all,

  Cause when you came back I knew

  That you’d been straying,

  And I grabbed your shootin’ iron

  Down off the wall.

  “Whoa,” said Bernie. “Didn’t know about this one.” He leaned in closer as the pedal-steel player started up. I love pedal steel myself—it does something to my ears I couldn’t possibly explain—but just as Lotty’s voice came in again, the sound got all fuzzy and then faded away completely. Bernie tried the radio buttons again but it was no use.

  “Damn.” He fished a pen out from under his seat and wrote on his hand, at the same time saying, “‘One Bad Day.’”

  * * *

  “But,” Bernie said after a long silence—maybe very long since we seemed to be back in Phantom Springs, “what about the fact that Leticia’s house got trashed? Didn’t that big slick dude do the trashing? And leave the courtesy call note? Could he have been working for Clint, sending Jordan a warning through his mom? Did that set Jordan off?” Bernie shook his head. “I bungled that encounter at Leticia’s house, big guy.”

  Which had to be one of Bernie’s jokes, since he’d never bungled anything and never would. As for this big slick dude, I had no idea who he was talking about. But then I remembered—hair gel and baby powder!—and it all came back to me. I could even see him in my mind—that strong-featured face and eyes in no hurry—and hear him, too: Have a nice day. You hear that all the time. Once Bernie and Rick Torres had a whole discussion about have-a-nice-day, over a beer or two, or more. “Some folks mean it,” Bernie had said. And Rick had replied, “And some mean the exact opposite.” That had completely lost me the first time around, but now I sort of got it. If you just hang around long enough, does everything become clear? Wow! I had a game plan at last!

  “And another thing I bungled,” Bernie said, as we pulled up in front of the yellow house on Bluff Street—Leticia’s house, if I hadn’t forgotten the facts of the case, at least not all of them—“was that lunch with Eliza.”

  Lunch with Eliza? At Max’s Memphis Ribs? There’d been no bungling at all—Cleon’s ribs were perfect every time. I gazed at Bernie. Was he okay? He looked okay on the outside, easily the best-looking human on the planet. So why worry? I stopped at once.

  “Maybe I should call her, straighten things out.” Bernie took out his phone. “What’s a good way to start?” We sat in silence. Before a good way to start occurred to him—I myself was thinking about other things, namely ribs—the phone buzzed. Bernie checked the screen and said, “Whoa.” Then he touched a button.

  “Uh,” he said, “hi.”

  “Hi, Bernie.”

  Hey! It was Suzie! Hadn’t heard her voice in way too long. Was there a reason for that? I tried to remember, but it wouldn’t come.

  “Busy?” she said. “Hope I’m not bothering you.”

  “Yes,” said Bernie. “I mean no. No bother.”

  “But you’re busy.”

  “Yes. No. I mean no.”

  “Chet with you?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Suzie laughed. “What’s he doing?”

  “Right now?” Bernie gave me a quick glance. “Looking highly alert.”

  Suzie laughed again. Then she said, “Wait—you’re not in danger?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that.”

  “Working on a case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “An interesting one? Not that any of them are dull. I love what you do.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s so firsthand. Unlike mine. Anyway, I won’t keep you. Just wanted to say hi. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Uh, no. Why would I mind?”

  There was a pause. Then Suzie said, “I can think of reasons.”

  “Well, there’s that,” said Bernie.

  Suzie laughed one more time, a different laugh from the others. I liked the others better. “Anyway, I won’t keep you,” she said. Which she’d said already. In fact, there’d been lots of that kind of thing in this conversation. A helpful development, from my point of view, made it easier to understand.

  “Bye,” she said.

  “Bye,” said Bernie. And then, “Hey—where are you?”

  But too late. She was gone.

  “Wonder what that was about,” Bernie said, as we walked up to the front door.

  I thought that over, came to the conclusion it had been mostly about me. How nice of Suzie! I missed her.

  Leticia’s chimes, hanging by the door, chimed in the breeze. There was a lot of chiming in this case. Bernie knocked. No one came to the door. “I really hope,” he began, but then a car came climbing up the street.

  Not the little yellow car that had been part of this case from the get-go? Or just about from the get-go, the actual timing of get-gos not always clear in my mind. Forget all that, the point being it was that little yellow car, and with Jordan at the wheel. He stuck his fuzzy, baby face—still a bit swollen—out the window for a good look at us. His eyebrows rose way up.

  “Jordan!” Bernie raised his hand in the stop sign. “We need to—”

  Jordan didn’t stick around to find out what we needed to do. Instead he booked, tires smoking as he zoomed up the hill, maybe not zooming on account of the hill being steep and the car being what we motoring types would call a shitbox. I’d run into some confusion when first learning that term, but that was long in the past, remembered by nobody, least of all me.

  We hopped in the car, Bernie coming close to hopping himself, deciding to use the door at the very last second, or even later, maybe why he got his tie stuck in it—yes, still in his suit and tie from the church, what a long day we were having, but so much fun!—and took off after Jordan. At the top of Bluff Street, the pavement ended, as we already knew, becoming rough and narrow, as it zigzagged down to a distant highway, shimmering below. Jordan was zigging and zagging down with surprising speed, raising a long zigzaggy dust cloud.

  “Not bad at all,” Bernie said. “Or maybe that’s just desperation—the desperation that comes with guilt.” Wow! One of his most brilliant puzzlers, but no time to spend on it now. We stepped on the gas, Bernie doing the actual stepping, and started after Jordan. Zigzagging up and down steep mountain roads was one of our best things, right up there with shooting dimes out of the air and grabbing perps by the pant leg. Maybe we’d be doing them all at once, and soon! Except I wasn’t smelling the .38 Special, meaning it was back home in the safe and we weren’t carrying. There are disappointments in life. You just have to find a way. For example, was there any reason I couldn’t grab Jordan—or any perp—by both pant legs at once? Wow! Why had it taken me so long to think of that?

  We roared down the back side of the mountain. Was it the mountain all that silver got taken out of? I kept an eye out for silvery glints but saw none before we were caught up in the dust cloud and I couldn’t see a thing. Could Bernie? It didn’t matter. Bernie’s the best wheelman in the Valley, as you must know by now, and doesn’t need to see. The Porsche roared its lovely roar. I howled my lovely howl. Bernie laughed his lovely laugh. Life gets no better!


  Down and down we went, the yellow car closer and closer with every glimpse we caught through the dust. But surprise! Just before the highway, Jordan made a sharp turn—fishtailing so much the car slid sideways—and took another track I hadn’t spotted, even rougher than the one we were on, and headed back up the mountain. We made a sharp turn of our own—but no fishtailing with Bernie at the wheel—and stuck to Jordan like glue. I myself once had a bit of a problem with glue, but no time for that now. One of those things that smells better than it tastes, let’s leave it at that.

  “Knows he can’t match us on the straights, big guy.”

  Well, of course not! Not on the straights, the crookeds, or anyplace else. He was dealing with the Little Detective Agency, my friends.

  Back up the mountain we roared, closing in on Jordan, and big-time. On a ridge line near the top, he glanced back—and, oh yeah, glanced back again in that uh-oh way we love to see—then hit the brakes and tried the right-back-attya! Had to admire him: the right-back-attya, where you wheel around and zoom back in the direction you’d just been zooming from, is an expert move. Was Jordan an expert? At first I thought yes, but it ended up being no, easy to see the moment the yellow car began doing donuts, which means spinning round and round. As for donuts, Donut Heaven, crullers, and bear claws, we’ll have to get into all that later.

  The here-and-now problem was Jordan, donutting down upon us along the narrow track with a cliff on one side and—what was this?—a cliff on the other? When had that happened? Sometimes, especially when you’re having fun, things go by so fast you can miss a detail or two. I glanced over at Bernie, just to make sure we were doing all right. And there he was, one hand on the wheel—actually only a couple of fingers of one hand—and sitting, well, pretty, like we were on our way to a picnic. Was that possible? This day just kept getting better.

  That was how I came to be thinking about picnics as Jordan barreled down on us, the yellow car spinning in the center of a boiling cloud of dust and blue smoke. I caught a glimpse of Jordan’s face, eyes and mouth opened wide like he was screaming, although the scream itself was lost in all the noise. I could actually see that weird pink thing that hangs from the back of the human mouth! And then—KA-BOOM!