Scents and Sensibility

by Spencer Quinn

  Hey! How did she know? The next moment—and this kind of thing doesn’t happen often—I’d figured it out all on my own. She must have lapped up some herself, probably just finishing when we showed up! Wow! I was on fire.

  “Why would that be?” Bernie said.

  Ellie pointed to puddle with her chin, second time I’d seen her point like that. We do some pointing in our world, too, but never with our chins. One of the best human moves out there, in my opinion. Ellie was doing all right in my book, although I had no books at the moment, and had really only possessed one in my life, much too briefly: namely an extremely tasty leather-bound volume that I’d sniffed out at the home of a—judge, was it?—where Bernie and I’d been invited to a big, noisy party. I myself spent a quiet evening, curled up behind a couch with my book. A very pleasant memory to this day! And if things had gone downhill later—some back-and-forth about first editions and Mark Twain autographs, whatever those happened to be—why let it spoil things? That’s one of my core beliefs.

  Meanwhile, Ellie was saying, “. . . because it’s as fresh as fresh can be—coming straight from the aquifer.”

  Bernie’s eyes got very bright, a sign that he was on fire, too. Both of us on fire at the same time? Look out!

  “The aquifer’s this close to the surface?” he said.

  “In a few places east of the arroyo, here being one, evidently,” said Ellie. “Another problem with this development. I’m shutting it down.”

  Back up. This was the aquifer? The aquifer I’d heard so much about? Bernie’s biggest worry? There was only one, he always said, and when it was gone, game over. I studied the puddle. Getting bigger since our arrival, but basically pretty puny. Bernie was too late. Game over. I sat beside him, pressed against his leg.

  “That’s funny,” Ellie said. “Shooter does that exact same thing when he thinks I’m upset about something.”

  “What thing?” said Bernie.

  “Like Chet’s doing now—pressing against your leg.”

  Bernie glanced down at me. “Yeah?”

  One of Ellie’s eyebrows rose in a way that reminded me of Bernie when he was about to have some fun. “Upset about something, Bernie?” she said.

  “No,” said Bernie. Which was just Bernie being brave. They don’t come any braver than Bernie, goes without mentioning. Good luck getting anything out of him, Special Investigator Newburg. But then came a surprise. “Actually,” Bernie went on, “there is something I’m—maybe not upset, but concerned about.”

  “And that is?”

  “Daniel Parsons,” Bernie said. “The old man with the—”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s completely innocent.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “I do.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “Just that he’s in no shape to get squeezed right now. You won’t find what you want, and he’ll be damaged.”

  “But you got what I want from him, didn’t you?”

  Bernie said nothing.

  “So why don’t you tell me,” Ellie went on, “and leave the old man out of it while I do my job?”

  Bernie stayed silent.

  “Because,” she said, bending down and popping the frog into the little cage, “I’m going to do my job.”

  “Give me twenty-four hours,” Bernie said.

  “You tried that already.”

  “I’m trying again,” Bernie said. “Now that we know each other better. We’re practically related.”

  Sometimes you get this strange kind of pause between humans where just about anything can happen. Including—maybe even especially—gunplay. But Ellie wasn’t carrying. Was that why she laughed instead? I had no idea. “You’re talking about Shooter and Chet?” she said.

  “I am.”

  That sounded interesting. I waited for more, but no more came. Instead, Ellie straightened and looked Bernie in the eye. “You married?” she said.

  “Divorced.”

  “Seeing anybody?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re in the exact same position,” Ellie said. She gazed down at the frog. The frog’s throat made some strange bulging motions. “You’ve got”—Ellie checked her watch—“twenty-three hours, fifty-eight minutes.”

  SIX

  * * *

  Not a whole lot of time, Chet,” Bernie said as we drove away from the construction site. “And traffic’s going to be . . .” He went silent, although I could almost hear his voice continuing inside him. “How about we take a short cut through High Chaparral Estates?”

  Sounded good to me, High Chaparral Estates being maybe the fanciest part of the whole Valley, meaning it had the fanciest smells. Also it was where Leda lived with her husband, Malcolm. And Charlie, of course, except for some weekends and holidays when he was with us. Those times were the best. Charlie likes everything I like, such as running around crazily. Hadn’t seen him in way too long!

  Then, all of a sudden, wouldn’t you know? We rounded a corner and drew up behind a school bus. A kid in the backseat had turned around so he could see out the window.

  “Hey!” said Bernie. “That looks like—”

  Charlie! No doubt about it. There was Charlie’s round little face in the window, although maybe not as round or as little as before. Also he had a new thing going on with his hair, a kind of sticking-up clump toward the back, a bit like an Indian feather. He looked great! Bernie leaned on the horn, kept leaning on it until finally Charlie lowered his gaze down to us. And then came an expression on his face that I can’t even begin to describe, so I’ll leave it like this: it was all about humans at their very best. Don’t see it every day, but when you do . . . well, you remember, and maybe cut them a little slack next time around the circuit. And I’m sure Charlie was happy about seeing Bernie, too. Let’s not leave that out.

  Soon Charlie was waving at us, and then a bunch of kids were crowding around him, all of them waving their little hands. Bernie beeped the horn—beep beep beep. I did this high-pitched thing I can do, not a howl, really, more like a faraway train whistle, or maybe not that far away. The fun we were having! But then the bus pulled over, stopped by the side of the road. We stopped behind it. A gray-haired woman in a baseball cap appeared at the back of the bus, sunlight glaring off the lenses of her glasses. Her lips moved, and all the kids except Charlie instantly disappeared from view. Charlie whipped around and faced front. The woman—had to be the driver, right? I was catching on fast—gave us a look, the corners of her mouth pointing straight down, and then strode back to the front of the bus.

  We followed at a distance, Bernie and I at our very quietest, heads down. You wouldn’t have noticed us. Soon the bus turned onto a street I knew and stopped in front of a house I knew, too, namely Leda’s. Charlie got out and the bus drove away. Bernie hopped—yes!—hopped out of the Porsche and ran over to Charlie. He scooped him right up—kind of scooping me up in the process, at least momentarily, since I’d reached Charlie first, as I’m sure you’ve figured out already. Next came hugging and kissing and laughing, and during all that I happened to glance over at the house, not just Leda’s, of course, but Malcolm’s as well and Charlie’s most of the time—and there was Malcolm watching from an upstairs window, his long, narrow face reminding me of the bus driver on account of the downturned corners of his lips.

  “Dad! Ms. Peoples is so mad at you!”

  “The bus driver?”

  “She didn’t even believe you were my dad!”

  “Oh?”

  “ ’Cause dads are more mature.”

  “Um.”

  The front door of Leda’s house opened and Leda stepped out, dressed for tennis, with a tennis racket over her shoulder and a pink visor on her head. How tan she was, her skin like mahogany, maybe the best of all woods in terms of gnawing, which I know from our one and only visit to the bar at the Ritz. She walked over to us, gave Bernie not the friendliest look.

  “Not more about the stu
pid key?” she said.

  “No, no, we’re all set on that.”

  “Small mercies,” said Leda. She turned to Charlie and gave him a smile. Leda has one of the biggest smiles you’ll ever see, lights up the whole world, except for wherever Bernie happens to be. Whoa! Where did that thought even come from? I had no idea what it meant.

  “Hey, there,” she said, licking her fingers and trying to flatten the Indian feather thing Charlie’s hair had going on, “how was school?”

  “Ms. Peoples is mad at Dad.”

  Leda’s smile started to disappear. That takes time, what with there being so much of it. “Ms. Peoples, the bus driver?”

  “She has a cat named Agatha.”

  “Why is she mad at da—at your father?”

  Charlie’s mouth opened like he was about to say something. Then he glanced at Bernie—who actually wasn’t even watching, his gaze having turned to the window, where Malcolm was just stepping back, out of view—and that little mouth closed right up.

  “Charlie?” Leda said.

  “Ms. Peoples thinks I’m immature,” Bernie told her.

  Leda’s smile was now entirely gone. “What did you do? Forget it—I don’t even want to know.”

  “He stirred the kids up!” Charlie said. Blurted: Could that be the expression?

  “Is that how Ms. Peoples put it?”

  Charlie nodded. “She doesn’t like when we get stirred up. She likes when we sit still and think quiet thoughts.”

  “Quiet thoughts?” Bernie said. “What the hell are—”

  Leda gave Bernie a look I remembered from the old days, and he went silent. At that moment a shiny new car drove up, a woman also in a tennis dress and pink visor at the wheel. “So if it’s not about the key,” Leda said, “to what do we owe this visit?”

  “Well,” Bernie said. “Uh, it’s Friday, right? Meaning tomorrow’s Saturday, when Charlie comes over. I was thinking, you know—hey, why not now? Since you’re playing tennis and all? If Charlie wants to, of course.”

  “I do,” said Charlie.

  But maybe not loud enough. “Now you know my tennis schedule?” Leda said. “What a detective you are!”

  She was dead-on right about that. But even I knew her tennis schedule: she was carrying her racket! Leda was making me real nervous, hard to explain how, exactly, and unless she was planning to spill more info on Agatha the cat, I wanted her en route to the tennis court, and pronto.

  Meanwhile, we’d fallen into one of those strange silences you sometimes get, and no one seemed to be in a good mood all of a sudden, except for me. Yes, Agatha was a bothersome new development, but other than that I was tip-top.

  The woman in the car looked over, caught Leda’s eye, and pointed to her watch. Leda adjusted her racket on her shoulder, her eyes going to Bernie, then Charlie—and finally me, for some reason. “All right.” She leaned down and gave Charlie a kiss on the forehead. “You’ll have to be the mature one.”

  • • •

  This was living! Me, Bernie, and Charlie zooming through open country in the Porsche. Yes, Charlie had the shotgun seat, and I was on the horrible shelf in back, but it was never as horrible when Charlie was the one up front. Also the sun was shining, but not too hot, and the cooler was loaded with picnic supplies. You can’t ask for more.

  “Where are we going, Dad?” Charlie said.

  “We’re on a case,” said Bernie.

  “Wow! You’re taking me on a real case?”

  “Well, yeah, sort of.”

  “Are we gonna catch a bad guy?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that. I just want to take a look at something out in the desert.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “A hole in the ground.”

  “With a body in it?”

  Bernie laughed, tousled Charlie’s hair, somehow making the Indian feather thing stand up taller and wackier than before. “Just an empty hole,” Bernie said. “But can you guess what was in it?”

  “Treasure!”

  Bernie laughed some more. It was great to see him so happy.

  “Easy, big guy.”

  That was me, or at least the front part of me, somehow in the front seat, sort of wedged in between Bernie and Charlie? What a nice surprise! But maybe not now, was that the point? I drew back to the horrible little shelf, tried to make myself comfortable. Sometimes pawing at a seat back makes you more comfortable.

  “Chet!”

  I got a grip.

  “Treasure’s not a bad guess,” Bernie was saying when I tuned back in. “In this case, the treasure was in the form of a cactus.”

  “A cactus, Dad?”

  “Saguaro,” Bernie said. “Like that one over at three o’clock, only not quite as big. Wonder if it has a chip inside.”

  “Huh?”

  “Some of them do.”

  “Chips—like to eat?”

  Bernie laughed again, went into a long explanation about chips, and GPS, and the whole history of mapmaking, which I’m sure was fascinating. When he was done, Charlie said, “Are there chips in the cooler?”

  “Barbecue flavored.”

  “Can I have some?”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mom hates that.”

  “Hates what?”

  “Me saying ‘why not.’ She says I say it too much.”

  “Why?”

  Silence. Then all of a sudden Charlie was laughing and laughing. Human laughter is just about the best thing they do, and kid laughter is the best of the best. We pulled over—two-lane blacktop, no traffic, picnic spots out the yingyang—popped open the cooler, and found the chips.

  “And maybe Chet wants a treat,” Charlie said.

  Charlie: had to love him, and I did.

  • • •

  My treat turned out to be a bone from Orlando the butcher. I’ve met a number of butchers, but Orlando is the best. He’s got a place down in South Pedroia, near our self-storage unit, packed to the roof with Hawaiian pants, none having sold so far, one of the reasons our finances are such a mess. People love Hawaiian shirts—today Bernie wore the one with mermaids, actually a bit scary to my way of thinking—so why not Hawaiian pants? That was how the whole business got started, Bernie knocking back a bourbon or two and suddenly asking that very question. I had no answer at the time and still don’t. All I know is that Bernie has never worn a pair of the Hawaiian pants himself. But back to Orlando, a little guy with huge arms and an apron that smells like you wouldn’t believe. “Hey, Chet, how about I saw off something real special for you?” That’s the kind of thing he says whenever we drop by. Why don’t we drop by more often? Why?

  “How come Chet just barked like that?” Charlie said. Or something close: hard to tell with his mouth so busy with potato chips.

  “That muffled kind of bark?” said Bernie, reaching into the potato chip bag. “It’s because he’s so busy gnawing on that enormous bone.”

  “But what was he barking about?”

  They gazed at me. I gazed back at them.

  “Hard to tell,” Bernie said.

  “It sounded kind of impatient, Dad.”

  “What’s he got to be impatient about?”

  Try not dropping by Orlando’s often enough. But who wants to sound impatient? Not me. I concentrated on my bone and forgot everything else. Was there some talk about saguaros and their red fruit and the drinks the Indians made from it? And about not calling them Indians, Dad? And all the ones I know actually do call themselves Indians, Charlie? And so how about coming to school and telling that to the class, Dad? And more back-and-forth like that? I couldn’t tell you. But if you’re interested in the bone: heaven.

  Next thing I knew we were back in the car. We drove deeper into the desert, smells of sage and mesquite and greasewood drifting by, the sky its very bluest. No complaints, amigo. Do you ever think: What if time stopped right now? I never do, but Bernie does. He’s mentioned it more tha
n once. I kind of hope he doesn’t again. It makes me a bit nervous.

  “Porsches are expensive, huh, Dad?” Charlie said after a while.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Daddy Mal.”

  “Daddy Mal?”

  “That’s what they—um.”

  “That’s what you call Malcolm?”

  “Uh-huh. He’s Daddy Mal and you’re, like, just plain Dad.” I caught Charlie shoot Bernie a quick glance. Bernie was looking straight ahead, eyes on the road.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said.

  Not long after that, we turned onto a narrow, unpaved track. Bernie slowed down, checked the screen of his phone. “Getting close.” We rounded a hill and rode down to a dry wash lined with trees, where the track ended.

  “Are we there?” Charlie said.

  “Not yet,” said Bernie. “But it’s as far as we can go in the Porsche.”

  “ ’Cause it’s so expensive?”

  Bernie laughed. “This is a real old one, Charlie. Got it dirt cheap. But it’s not meant for open country like this.” We got out of the car. Bernie stuffed some water bottles and my portable bowl in a backpack, and we crossed the wash and climbed up the far side.

  “But someone’s been driving here, Dad,” Charlie said. “See these tracks?”

  Bernie smiled. “A natural.”

  “What’s that mean?” said Charlie.

  “Nothing,” said Bernie. He got down on one knee, took a close look at the tracks. Charlie did the exact same thing. “At least five different sets here, some coming in, some going out. See how this one’s crumbled the tread marks of the others?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the latest. But it’s hard to say exactly when. Never rains out here, so marks can last a long time.”

  We followed the tracks across easy ground, not too rough or steep, even for a kid. This particular kid marched on ahead of us, but I had him in sight every moment, no worries about that. There was a little rise not far distant, with some saguaros growing on its slope. It was nice and quiet, not a trace of the whole big world of human noise.

  “What if this was olden days and we were the Spanish?” Charlie said.

  “Be pretty exciting.”