Bernie put his hand on the leash, gently, but there. “You’ve got a tough job. How about today you let me make it a little easier?”
The Animal Control woman tightened her grip on the leash. “What if something goes wrong?”
“I’ll take full responsibility.”
She glanced around, appeared to see me for the first time. How come that took so long? “Is this your dog?”
“Chet’s his name.”
The Animal Control woman gazed at me for another moment or two, then let go of the leash.
• • •
After she left, we rounded up some of Iggy’s things, locked up the Parsonses’ house, and crossed over to our place, Iggy marking several spots along the way, starting with his own front door. I’d never even thought of marking our front door, but that was Iggy for you, every time.
Old man Heydrich, our neighbor on the other side, was out watering his lawn. We have a desert-style lawn, me and Bernie, and so do the Parsonses, but Heydrich has a golf-course-style lawn, or even greener. Bernie got a real annoyed look on his face. Now that I’d seen the aquifer with my own eyes, almost totally gone already, I was just as annoyed as Bernie. How hard would it be to snatch that hose right out of his hand? A piece of cake. Let’s leave out my thoughts on actual cake for the time being.
Old man Heydrich glanced over at us, through a tiny rainbow that hovered in the spray. “Parsons kick the bucket?” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Happened to see the ambulance.” Heydrich turned the hose on a big flowerpot with one small yellow flower growing in the middle and watered it until it slumped over. “Happen to know he’s been poorly. Added it up.”
“There’s one aquifer,” Bernie said. “One and one only. Do the math on that.”
We went inside the house. Bernie came close to slamming the door, reeled that impulse in at the last second. He unclipped Iggy, said, “Just want you to relax, little guy. Everything’s going to be—” Which was when Iggy took off down the hall and darted into the office. We hurried after him, got there just in time to find him scratching at the wall under the waterfall painting.
“Iggy?” Bernie said. “What’s up?”
Iggy did some more scratching of the wall. I gave him a low growl. If there were any walls that needed scratching in this house—a big no-no, by the way—they would be scratched by Chet the Jet, and Chet the Jet only.
“Chet! Knock it off! Can’t hear myself think.”
Me? Me knock it off! And how could a little low growling—possibly mixed in with a soft bark or two—disturb anyone’s thoughts, especially the thoughts of someone as brainy as Bernie, meaning as brainy as they come?
Bernie took down the waterfall painting, exposing the hole in the wall where the safe used to be. Iggy stopped scratching, sat down, and began howling, his flattened snout raised up toward the hole in the wall. Bernie crouched beside him.
“Iggy? You trying to tell us something?”
I squeezed in between them. There’s only so much you can take.
• • •
Iggy was still trying to squeeze me out, and I was still retrying to squeeze him back the other way, squeeze him but good, when the phone rang. The voice of old Mr. Parsons came over the speaker, sounding older than ever, a wispy sort of voice, more patches of blank air than of sound.
“Bernie? Bernie?”
“It’s me, Daniel. How are you?”
“Bernie?”
“Yes, Bernie,” said Bernie. “Are you all right?”
“Me? No. Well, physically, yes.”
“You’re all right physically?”
“Oh, I don’t want—nurse!”
“Daniel? What’s happening? Is the nurse with you?”
“I don’t want any damn—”
Silence. Then came a sort of crash and a woman saying, “Now, now.”
“Daniel?” Bernie said.
And suddenly Mr. Parsons was back. “Blood! Blood!” A shout, but so strange since it was mostly air.
“You’re bleeding?”
“Me?” said Mr. Parsons, a very wispy “me.” “Not . . . not so’s you’d notice. But Bernie?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“They want my blood.”
“Who does, Daniel?”
“The nurses, the docs. How much have I got to spare, answer me that?”
“I don’t know,” Bernie said. “Do they say—”
Then a woman was on the line. “Who’s this?”
“Bernie Little—a friend of Mr. Parsons. You’re the nurse?”
“I am. He’s very agitated. Possible heart attack, but we need to get some blood work, and he’s not making it easy.”
“Put him on.”
Then came some fumbling sounds, followed by Mr. Parsons’s wispy voice. “Bernie?”
“I’m here.”
“I don’t like this place.”
“Understood. But all they want to do is help you.”
“Then why won’t they take me to Edna? I want to see Edna.”
“What hospital are you in?”
“The one with the . . . with the . . .”
The nurse spoke up in the background. “County.”
“They’ve got you at County, Daniel,” Bernie said. “Edna’s at Valley General.”
“I want to be at Valley General. Nurse? Please call me a taxi.”
“Daniel,” Bernie said. “First, let them take some blood. That’s step one on getting you transferred over to General.”
“It is?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a good friend, Bernie.”
“I’ve got Iggy, so no need to worry about that.”
“You’ve got Iggy? But . . . but . . . he’s under my bed. Nurse? Isn’t Iggy under my bed?”
“Iggy?” said the nurse.
More fumbling, and the line went dead.
Bernie stood at the desk, one hand resting on its top, almost like he was holding himself up. Which wasn’t Bernie, and you can take that to the bank—although not our bank, where we were having problems with Ms. Oxley. You can count on Bernie to hold up his own self. You can count on Bernie for everything.
He looked over at Iggy, now curled up on the floor and trying to chew his tail.
“Easy, little guy, everything’ll be—”
The phone buzzed again.
“Uh, Bernie Little? It’s me, the nurse again. He’s calmer now. Meds kicked in. He wants to talk to you.”
“Bernie?”
“Feeling a bit better, Daniel?”
“I am,” said Mr. Parsons, still sounding pretty wispy to me. “And thanks for asking. But—” He lowered his voice to a whisper: not so easy to hear, a wispy whisper, even for me. “—I’m ashamed to say I have to release you from your promise.”
“Sorry, Daniel,” Bernie said. “Didn’t get that.”
Mr. Parsons cleared his throat, a nasty metallic scraping that made my own throat hurt. “I said I have to release you from your promise.”
“My promise about implicating Billy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why? Has he been in touch? Have you talked to him?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. The truth is I was a weakling.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I caved, Bernie. I broke the promise myself.”
“You implicated Billy?”
“To my disgrace. A detective came by my place. Not a detective like you, Bernie. More what you’d think of as a detective type, from Valley PD.”
“Brick Mickles?”
“I missed the name. A very large man. I told him I was under no obligation to answer any questions—I know my rights, Bernie!—but he backed me into a corner.”
“He laid hands on you?”
“Nothing like that. But worse in a way. He told me if I didn’t confess all I knew about the cactus, he was going to have Edna brought downtown for questioning.”
“For Christ sake, he can’t do—
” Bernie cut himself off suddenly.
“Edna might not understand her rights the way I do,” Mr. Parsons said. “I—I had to choose between her and Billy. That was hateful, if you see what I mean.”
“I do.”
“Hatefulness filled me up to the brim,” Mr. Parsons said. “I contemplated violence against him, I truly did. Then I heard a crack from inside like a twig, and I was on the floor.”
Bernie said nothing. His face was grim and angry. I tried to think of something to amuse him. Fetch, for example. I sniffed around under the desk where tennis balls often lurked but came up empty.
“And now here I am,” said Mr. Parsons. “Letting down the team.”
“No more of that talk,” Bernie said. “Your job is to get better. I’ll drop by later. Meanwhile, if Mickles or anyone else tries to question you, tell them you’ve got nothing to say.”
“You’re a smart man, Bernie,” Mr. Parsons said, his voice mostly air patches again. After some silence, Mr. Parsons added, “Who’s Mickles?”
Bernie’s eyes closed, real slow.
• • •
“All set, Iggy?” Bernie said, next morning. “Got everything you need?”
I should hope so: that was my only thought. Iggy had a big bowl of kibble, a big bowl of water, a chew toy that looked like a bone, plus an actual bone from Orlando the butcher—
“Chet! That’s not yours!”
—as well as a tennis ball and a lacrosse ball, both property of Chet the Jet. That’ll do you, Iggy?
“Now we’re just going to close this door, Iggy, keep you in the kitchen while we’re gone, just in case you . . . just in case.”
We left the kitchen. As Bernie closed the door, I glimpsed Iggy going right for the lacrosse ball in the most annoying way imaginable.
“Back real soon, little guy!”
And enough with the little guy stuff. Iggy was my best pal, no doubt about that, but . . . Let’s just leave it there: but.
• • •
We drove into the parking lot at Donut Heaven. Whatever bad thoughts had been bubbling up in my mind vanished at once. Bernie parked us cop-style beside an unmarked sedan, driver’s-side door to driver’s-side door. The sedan’s window slid down, and Captain Stine looked over at us.
“They’re out of crullers,” he said.
“No way.”
“Baker got deported last night. But Chet likes bear claws, no?”
Yes! Yes! He does.
“How can they have bear claws and not crullers?” Bernie said.
“Assistant baker trains on the bear claws. You want them or not?”
We do! We do!
Stine handed over a paper bag and a coffee for Bernie. Bear claws sound scary, especially if, like me, you’ve come close to seeing real bear claws in action, but the bear claws at Donut Heaven, every bit as real, come to think of it . . . I lost the thread, and very soon was curled up in comfort, busy with breakfast.
Bernie sipped his coffee. “You don’t look good,” he said.
“Baby was up all night.”
“What’s fatherhood like?”
“Huh? You’re a father. You know.”
“I meant at your age.”
“Fuck you, Bernie.” Stine drained his coffee, crumpled the cup. “What do you want?”
“You put Mickles on the Ellie Newburg case.”
“So?”
“Why him?”
“I don’t have to explain to you. He’s in the pool.”
“So are good detectives.”
“Maybe you have a history with him,” Stine said. “I don’t. Case closed.”
I looked up from what I was doing. Case closed? Had we even started yet? Cases at the Little Detective Agency almost always closed with me grabbing the perp by the pant leg. The only pants wearers in the picture at the moment were Bernie and Captain Stine. This can be a tricky job. I went back to the bear claw.
“How about what he did to Daniel Parsons?” Bernie said. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“Talking about the receiver of the stolen cactus?”
“If you want to put it that way. But he’s just a sweet old guy. Maybe Mickles got what he wanted, but did he have to put him in the hospital to do it?”
“No clue what you’re talking about.” Stine took out a notebook, leafed through, shook his head. “Mickles knocked on the door and introduced himself, at which point the old man keeled over and Mickles called rescue.” Stine looked across at Bernie. “He got zip, didn’t even ask question one.”
Bernie was sitting up real straight, his hands tight on the wheel, even though we weren’t moving. “Where are you getting that?”
“It’s Mickles’s report, for chrissake. He apologized and asked if I had suggestions.”
“Apologized for what?”
“Being nowhere on the case.”
“Nowhere on the case?”
“He’s got no leads. It’s like you don’t remember how this is done, Bernie. What’s wrong with you?”
NINE
* * *
Here’s a puzzle,” Bernie said as we drove away from Donut Heaven. “Outside the Parsonses’ house Mickles told us he suspected Daniel knew something and was going to get it out of him. Except according to Daniel, he’d already given him Billy’s name. I can understand Mickles keeping us in the dark, but now in his official report to Stine he’s claiming he has no leads. Mickles knows about Billy, but he’s keeping it to himself? What’s up?”
Uh-oh. Whatever that was, I’d missed the whole thing, hoped it wasn’t important. Meanwhile, we were crossing the canyon on the Coronado Bridge. “Why name it after him?” Bernie said every single time we were on it, except for now. Now he said, “Do we want Mickles finding Billy before we do? No. So Billy’s where we start.”
We entered a quiet neighborhood somewhat like our own, except hillier, a neighborhood I recognized from a rather exciting night in my past.
“Question one. What’s all the money for? Billy took twenty grand from his parents and almost certainly stole the watch. Adds up to a lot of green.”
Or something like that: I was pretty much lost in memories of that exciting long-ago night. How pleasant memories can be!
“One thing for sure,” Bernie said. “I smell a rat.”
All at once Bernie had my full attention. He had never smelled a rat before, not in any back alley, Dumpster, or landfill we’d ever investigated, almost all of them as ratty as you could wish for. Once we’d even worked our way into a sewer system. Rats out the yingyang down there, my friends. Invisible, yes, on account of the darkness, but they’d smelled the place up in a way that couldn’t be missed. But that was the point: Bernie had missed it. That was when I’d first been certain that his nose—really good-sized in human terms—was mostly for decoration. And now he was smelling a rat, when—trust me—there was no rat to smell? What was going on? I shifted my position a bit, keeping Bernie under close surveillance, waiting for some explanation.
But none came. After a while, he said, “We’ve got Billy’s number—how about we just ask him?” He tapped at his phone. A voice spoke. “Number no longer in service.” Bernie nodded as though that made sense. A moment or two later, he swung onto a cross street. “Wildheart Way—here we go.” And soon we were parked in front of a small house with a desert-style front yard, just like ours. We got out, looked around. “Shooter?” Bernie called. “Shooter?”
Whoa! Now he thought he was smelling Shooter? I could actually detect a bit of Shooter scent, but not recent. What was happening to Bernie? I went closer, my go-to move when I’m worried about him.
“Hey, big guy, a little space.”
I was already giving him space, more than he needed under these circumstances.
“Shooter!” he yelled. And maybe was fixing to do so again, what with me blanking out on how to stop him—Bernie! No Shooter on the premises!—when the door to the small house opened and a woman looked out.
“Who are you?” she s
aid. “What do you want?”
Her voice was all ragged, the way a woman’s voice gets when she’s angry. But also when she’s been crying, and this woman had been crying: I could smell the telltale mixture of tears and snot. Why do women cry more than men? Is it because they also talk more? That was as far as I could take it, probably too far.
“I’m Bernie Little,” Bernie said. “I was just, um, sort of checking to see if Shooter had turned up. That is, if this is where, uh, if this is the house . . .” He gazed at the woman, a gray-haired woman in jeans and a T-shirt, maybe overweight, but kind of strong-looking, too. “Are you Ellie’s mother?”
The woman didn’t nod or speak. A tear leaked out of one of her eyes and left a silvery track on her cheek.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bernie said.
Now she nodded, a single brief nod. “I didn’t get your name.”
“Bernie Little,” Bernie said. “I’m a private detective. I was working with her on the case that . . . on this last case. Chet and I—” He nodded toward me. “—are the ones who discovered—who found her.”
“A saguaro?” the woman said.
“I’m sorry?”
She raised her voice. She’d been crying, yes, but she was angry, too. “The case. You’re the one who brought it up.”
“Sorry,” Bernie said. “Yes, the case was—is about saguaros, illegally transplanted from the desert to—”
“Why the hell did she care so much about a goddamn cactus?” the woman said. Her voice rose and rose, ended up close to a scream. I heard a window open in some nearby house.
When Bernie answered, his voice was very soft. “Someone has to,” he said.
The woman went still. “That’s exactly what Ellie said, her very words. But I’ll never understand.”
“I think she meant that if no one—”
The woman waved her arm, like she was knocking Bernie aside. “Why her?”
“I don’t know,” Bernie said. “But we mean to find out.”
“Who is ‘we’?” the woman said.
“Valley PD, for starters. Plus Carl Conte from her department. And—”
“She hated him.”
“Hated Conte? Why?”
“She said he was just another scumbag politician.”
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