Scents and Sensibility

by Spencer Quinn

  “Chet! What the hell!” Bernie said. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, huh, Iggy?”

  Oh, boy. Just oh, boy. Let’s leave it at that.

  Knock knock.

  “Chet! Sit!”

  Things were coming at me from every direction. This was impossible. I felt like I was about to—

  “Chet?”

  I sat. And felt quite a lot better right away. Even well rested! Don’t ask me to explain.

  Bernie opened the front door. Without warning, Iggy took off and darted out—but no. Just when you might have thought that it was too late and the little bugger was gone, possibly for good, Bernie—without even looking!—reached down and grabbed his collar. Iggy’s stubby legs kept churning, but he went nowhere, a very pleasant sight I could have watched all day.

  But meanwhile we had a visitor: a woman of what Bernie calls the no-nonsense type, wearing a white nurse’s outfit. Bernie scooped up Iggy and—and held him in one arm, like a baby. Iggy wriggled wildly. Bernie held him with two arms.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Mr. Little?” said the nurse.

  “Call me Bernie,” Bernie said.

  “I’m from Valley General. Mrs. Parsons has come home and I’m getting her settled.”

  “She’s well enough to come home?” Bernie said. “That’s good news.”

  “I’m with the hospice department.”

  “Oh.”

  “Apparently there’s a dog named Iggy?”

  Bernie—how to put it? Brandished, maybe? Bernie brandished the little guy.

  “Not the other one?” the nurse said, looking past Iggy to me.

  “Nope,” Bernie said. “That’s Chet.” I sat up nice and straight, a total pro.

  The nurse’s gaze returned to the little wriggler. “I see,” she said. “In any case, Mrs. Parsons would like him to come home.”

  Chet the Jet catches a break!

  “Is she able to take care of him?” Bernie said.

  Bernie! Don’t argue!

  • • •

  The Parsonses had a little room at the back of the house they called a den. “A time machine back to 1956,” Bernie called it, not sure why. But that was where we found Mrs. Parsons, sitting in an armchair, feet up on a stool, a big smile on her face at the sight of Iggy. Let’s not go into their reunion, and all that tail wagging and slobbering, and the nurse cleaning up a bit of broken bric-a-brac before she left, and get right to when things had calmed down, Iggy fast asleep on the footstool, Mrs. Parsons sipping tea Bernie made her, Bernie on the little couch opposite the easy chair, and me beside Bernie, working on a special chewy Mrs. Parsons might or might not have bought for Iggy at the hospital gift shop.

  “Any news on Daniel?” Bernie said.

  Mrs. Parsons smiled. A big smile, although it sagged to one side in an odd kind of way. “He’s coming home, too! Maybe as soon as next week.”

  “Wonderful,” said Bernie.

  “We’re very lucky,” said Mrs. Parsons. “From appearances, would you take us for the type to afford hospice-at-home privileges? I’ll say not! But Daniel was always a big believer in insurance. We have the best.” Mrs. Parsons took a sip of tea, her pinky finger sticking out to the side, a sight I never tire of. She studied Bernie over the rim of her cup. “I trust you’re well set up in that regard,” she said. “What with your line of work and all.”

  “Um,” Bernie said, followed by, “uh.”

  He glanced over at me this way he sometimes does, like he wanted a little input on my part. I shifted the chewy to the other side of my mouth, all the input I could come up with on short notice. I hoped it was helpful.

  “Speaking of my work,” Bernie said, “I wonder if you’re up to talking a bit about Billy?”

  Mrs. Parsons’s pinky finger folded back up. “Our son Billy?”

  “Yes. But not if you’re . . .”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Mrs. Parsons. “Did you know he gave us a saguaro? A truly grand one. The stately kind, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  Mrs. Parsons twisted around to the side table, tried to place the cup on the saucer. The saucer and cup tilted, and almost went over the side, then righted themselves, a little tea slopping over the side of the cup, unnoticed by Mrs. Parsons. “But now it’s gone for some reason. I never got to see it, except on his phone.”

  “He showed you a picture when he came to the hospital?”

  “That’s right. You’re easy to talk to, Bernie. Like a river flowing right along. Has anyone told you that?”

  “Never.”

  “Of course, all talents can be used for good or evil,” Mrs. Parsons said.

  Bernie nodded one of his nods.

  “But I had a lovely visit with Billy,” Mrs. Parsons said. “That’s the main thing. All those parental clichés—like he’s still my little baby—are true. All the more so since he’s our only child.” She smiled that lopsided smile again, although at no one in particular. “He remembers the polka-dot socks.”

  “Are you a grandparent as well as a parent?” Bernie said.

  Mrs. Parsons’s smile sagged at both ends and then vanished. “Didn’t Dan tell you? Billy’s been . . . away for some time. He . . . wasn’t in a position to enjoy the normal things in life.”

  “I didn’t get many details,” Bernie said. “Does the name Dee Branch mean anything to you?”

  “I—I’d have to think,” said Mrs. Parsons. One of her hands reached over for the teacup, felt around, didn’t find it. The human hand has a mind of its own, kind of like the tail in the nation within. At that moment, I was struck by maybe the most amazing thought of my whole life: What if I had two tails? Wow! That stopped me in my tracks, even though I wasn’t going anywhere. I even forgot about my chewy, perhaps just letting it dangle out the side of my mouth. “Should it?” Mrs. Parsons went on.

  “Not necessarily,” Bernie said.

  “I hear a ‘but.’ ”

  Funny. I did not, and there was no way Mrs. Parsons had better hearing than me. For one thing, she was human. Second, she was old. Old humans say, “What? What?” and cup their ears with their hands, making other humans repeat things—like “a little ground pepper on that?”—over and over and over, reminding me of certain bad dreams I’ve had. And what’s with pepper? But forget all that. There were no buts: that’s the point.

  “No buts,” Bernie said. No surprise there. “It’s just that I’m concerned about Billy.”

  “Oh?” said Mrs. Parsons. “In what way?”

  “It starts with the saguaro,” Bernie said. “Turns out it was illegally transplanted from a protected area near Rincon City. That’s why the state came and took it away.”

  Mrs. Parsons’s eyes got all faraway. Normally, the eyes of old people look just as old as the rest of them, but not always, and Mrs. Parsons belonged to this second group. Her eyes, if you just concentrated on them and screened out the rest of her face, looked kind of young. “Are you saying he dealt with a dishonest landscaper?” Mrs. Parsons said.

  “That’s one possibility,” Bernie said.

  “There are others?”

  “None that I know of.”

  Her gaze went to Bernie, sharp and quick. “But you implied there were.”

  Bernie smiled. “My mistake. Let’s put it like this. Daniel did mention that Billy’s on parole, and I’ve seen it revoked for some real Mickey Mouse stuff.”

  Now we had mice in the picture? If so, they weren’t close by, making the Parsonses’ house unusual, in my experience. I’ve caught a few mice in my career, but it’s never easy. And here’s something odd: it’s a snap for cats. Why would that be? Even more amazing is the fact that cats can also catch birds. How I’d love to catch a bird, just once! Cats do it by pouncing. I can pounce, too, not that it’s one of my best moves. But it is in my repertoire. So maybe one day it will happen for me. You can always hope, and I always do.

  “You can’t mean they’d send him
back to prison,” Mrs. Parsons was saying.

  “I’d need more facts to answer that,” Bernie said.

  “But it wouldn’t be just!” said Mrs. Parsons. “Locking someone up for buying the wrong cactus? What country are we in?”

  A tough question. The Valley was in Arizona, a fact I’d picked up fairly recently. Also we were Americans, me and Bernie. That was as far as I could take it. Maybe not far, but farther than Iggy. He wriggled around on the footstool, getting more comfortable, and began to snore.

  “The same one,” Bernie said, “that put Billy away the first time.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Justice can be rough. Daniel also said that Billy wasn’t aware that a kidnapping was planned.”

  Mrs. Parsons gazed down at her lap. “What else did he say?”

  “That Billy’s crime, more or less, was to fall in with the wrong people.”

  “He’s a kind man,” Mrs. Parsons said.

  “You’re speaking of Billy?”

  Mrs. Parsons’s head snapped up. “Oh, no—Daniel. I’m speaking of Daniel.”

  “Uh,” Bernie said, “are you suggesting that—”

  Whatever it was, Mrs. Parsons interrupted before Bernie could get there, meaning I didn’t get there, either. “Certainly not!” she said. Her hand again felt around for the teacup with no success.

  “Can I get you some more tea?” Bernie said.

  “No, thank you,” she said. Then she said it again, more softly. “In fact,” she went on, “I’m getting a little tired.”

  Bernie rose. I rose, too, not forgetting my chew strip. “Do you need any help getting upstairs or anything?” he said.

  “I’ll just nap right here with Iggy,” Mrs. Parsons said. Sounded like a plan to me. Couldn’t ask for a better napping buddy than Iggy. He was world-class.

  “Just call if you need anything,” Bernie said.

  “That’s very nice, Bernie. I’m sure I can manage. The hospice people come three times a day.”

  “Good to hear,” said Bernie. He took a step toward the door. I did, too. “Meanwhile, I’ll be looking for Billy.”

  “Why?”

  “Aren’t you worried about him?”

  Mrs. Parsons’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s just a stupid plant,” she said.

  Bernie nodded. I was pretty sure this nod meant it was not just a stupid plant. Not that the plant was smart or anything like that. But before I could nail it down completely, Bernie said, “Daniel asked me to.”

  “To find Billy?”

  “To clear up the saguaro matter in general,” Bernie said. “But that’s going to mean finding Billy. I hope it won’t cause trouble between the two of you.”

  Mrs. Parsons’s eyes cleared. “It might,” she said. “But nothing we can’t handle.”

  Bernie opened the door to the hall, paused again. “Do you remember the names of any of those wrong people Billy fell in with?”

  Mrs. Parsons’s eyes had closed. She said nothing. Iggy whimpered in his sleep.

  FIFTEEN

  * * *

  Should I feel bad?” Bernie said, when we were outside the Parsonses’ house.

  Not for any reason I could see. Bernie should feel tip-top, now and forever.

  “To let Edna go on thinking it’s a cactus case, is what I mean. When it’s actually murder.”

  Murder? This was interesting. I concentrated my very hardest.

  “Suppose,” Bernie went on, “that Billy dug up the cactus himself. And then Ellie Newburg tracked him down. Stealing a saguaro would be a clear parole violation, meaning he’d be on his way back to prison and facing new charges. Did Billy snap? Does he have it in him to kill? Don’t forget that the weak can kill, too, Chet.”

  I made another mental note! Something or other about the weak, was it? I was in brand-new territory.

  “And if Billy doesn’t have it in him, those ’roided-up twins sure as hell do,” Bernie said. “We know that for a fact.”

  The twins? I could practically still taste the blood of Twin One. I was in the picture, but totally.

  Bernie went quiet for a moment or two, and then his face darkened. “Is it also a fact that Brick Mickles knows about the twins? And that he knew Billy’s whereabouts? See where this leads?”

  I waited to find out.

  “Mickles is working the case and he didn’t bring Billy in, Chet. Why not?”

  I searched my mind for answers, but it was my bad luck that at that same moment it was failing to hang on to the question. Does that ever happen to you?

  “Here’s a crazy thought—maybe Mickles knows Billy isn’t the killer,” Bernie said. “But if that’s the case, then . . .” He gave his head a quick little shake, maybe to change things up inside. I do the same thing. “One thing for sure, we need to learn a lot more about Billy Parsons.” He turned toward the Porsche, parked in our driveway. “Maybe time to pay a visit to Northern State Correctional. How does that sound?”

  • • •

  It sounded better than anything I’d ever heard. Hadn’t been to Northern State Correctional in way too long. I missed my pals up there, too many to mention. To get to Northern State Correctional you drive out of the Valley and head for the middle of nowhere, nowhere being lovely open country with nothing human in sight until you come to a gate in the road. We stopped. A guard stepped out of the guardhouse, came over.

  “Hey, it’s Chet!” She turned to the guardhouse. “Chet’s here. And Bernie.”

  “Hi,” Bernie said.

  “Looks like he’s grown,” the guard said.

  “We’re both still the same size,” Bernie said, which I didn’t get, and perhaps the guard didn’t either, because she showed no reaction. Meanwhile, another guard came hurrying over from the guardhouse, a nice surprise in his hand, the kind of surprise I’d actually been counting on.

  “Chet still partial to Slim Jims?” he said.

  Bernie grunted. His mood wasn’t tip-top all of a sudden. Was he tired from the drive? Poor Bernie, I thought, and then got busy with the Slim Jim. The answer to the Slim Jim question is that I’m as partial as they come.

  “Sure appreciates his food,” said one of the guards.

  “A real pleasure to watch him eat,” said the other. “No . . . what’s the expression?”

  “Food issues,” said the first one.

  “Exactly,” the second one said. “No food issues. We’ve lost the simple—”

  “Excuse me,” Bernie said. “Can we get through?”

  The guards turned to him, both of them blinking in a where’d-he-come-from sort of way. “Uh, sure, Bernie,” one said. “Here on business?”

  Bernie opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, a complicated move you didn’t see often from him. It meant he’d had something all set to say—maybe a real zinger, with fistfighting coming next—and changed his mind. “Yeah,” he said. “Business. Name Billy Parsons mean anything to you?”

  “Billy Parsons? Rings a bell.”

  “Wasn’t he the one—”

  “—running the meth lab out of his cell? You’re thinking of Bob Carson. Billy Parsons was that little dude—”

  “—finishing up his sentence over at the farm?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “The farm?” Bernie said. “That the minimum security annex?”

  “Even less than minimum.”

  “But the guy you’re looking for—”

  “—got released a few weeks ago.”

  “That’s all right,” Bernie said. “I’d like to talk to people who knew him.”

  “Need permission from the boss up there.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Assistant Warden Stackhouse—new guy.”

  “Transferred up from Central.”

  “Want us to call?”

  “That’d be nice,” Bernie said.

  The guards went into the guardhouse. One talked on the phone. The other yawned. Pretty soon the yawner came back with visi
tor passes to wear around our necks, one for Bernie and one for me. “Stackhouse says if he knew you were coming, he’d have turned down the job.”

  The gate swung open. We drove on through, rounded a curve, and there in a wide field was a wonderful sight: a whole big gang of dudes in orange jumpsuits, breaking rocks in the hot sun! As we got closer I saw that they weren’t actually breaking rocks—leaning on shovels and rakes was more like it. Also it wasn’t particularly hot. But the sun was out, no doubt about that. I wouldn’t trade this job for anything.

  • • •

  Assistant Warden Stackhouse turned out to be one of those short, thick guys, maybe the thickest I’d seen, not the popping-muscle type, more like he was all one big muscle. Also he was pretty much neckless. He and Bernie pounded each other on the back, Bernie wincing a bit.

  “And this must be Chet,” Stackhouse said. “Heard a lot about him. C’mon over here, pal.” He squatted down like a baseball catcher. I like when people do that. Plus he had nation within smells all over him. He gave me a nice pat, ran his hands along my sides. “A real specimen, huh? I’ve got a Malinois bitch at home just going on three. Ever thought of putting him out to stud?”

  Whatever that was, it sounded interesting, but Bernie said, “We’re taking a little break from that at the moment.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Nothing. What can you tell me about Billy Parsons?”

  “Billy Parsons?” Stackhouse shrugged, his shoulders like two hillsides going up and down. “Had him for six months, normal pre-parole step-down from Max. Quiet, no trouble, kept his nose clean.”

  Good to hear. Some humans—more than you might think—have problems with that. Why is it so hard, their noses generally being on the smallish side?

  “I’d like to see his paperwork,” Bernie said.

  “Sure thing,” said Stackhouse, turning to his computer. “He screwed up already?”

  “Looks that way,” Bernie said.

  “The record is eight minutes,” Stackhouse said.

  “Someone hijacked a car right outside the gate?”