Of Mutts and Men

by Spencer Quinn

  “You okay, Chet?”

  How embarrassing!

  * * *

  We were in a small reception area—desk, file cabinets, no receptionist. Through an open door we could see a room where a man with his back to us was writing on a white board. Bernie didn’t speak, or cough, or clear his throat. Sometimes when there’s a chance to simply watch, that’s what we do. We’re really pretty good, in case you’re still wondering.

  All at once, the man’s posture changed just the littlest bit. Right away, Bernie said, “Hello?”

  The man turned, not one of those quick turns you see from an alarmed human. “Hello?” he said, smiling a friendly smile. “Can I help you?”

  He had a pinkish face, fair hair graying at the sides, wore khakis and a button-down shirt and tortoiseshell glasses, pushed up on top of his head. I’ve come across more than one tortoise out in the desert, harmless dudes and oh so slow. That would just kill me! Did you know that if a tortoise somehow tips over onto its back the little fella has a tough time getting back up? Bernie told me to knock that off and pronto, and what Bernie says I do, right away if possible. As for this guy in the tortoiseshell glasses, I made him out to be harmless from the get-go. Funny how the mind works.

  “Hoskin Phipps?” Bernie said.

  “C’est moi,” said the man, losing me completely. Hoskin Phipps, yes or no? It was a simple question. At this point I picked up a scent flowing on an AC current from his direction toward us—specifically the scent of cat. Harmlessness? Did I have to rethink that already? I’ve never enjoyed rethinking.

  “My name’s Bernie Little,” Bernie said. “And this is Chet.”

  Since we were continuing with the interview—if that’s what this was—I assumed the smiling man was in fact Hoskin Phipps. And I was also assuming this was an interview. Uh-oh. Back in the time after the saguaro case—oh, the horrible saguaro case—when Bernie was in Valley Hospital and I was staying with our buddy Rick Torres who worked missing persons at Valley PD—some perp we’d collared said, “I assumed I had permission,” and Rick said, “Assumed? Assume makes an ass of you and me. Know what an ass is, pal? A donkey.” And that particular perp had resembled a donkey in some ways, although that’s not what I’m trying to get across, which was that I’d had some experience with donkeys in my career and had no desire to be one.

  “I’m a private investigator looking into the murder of Wendell Nero,” Bernie went on.

  “A terrible thing,” said Hoskin Phipps. “I was sick when I heard the news.”

  “You knew him, then?”

  “Not well. We weren’t friends or anything of that nature, had met once or twice at conferences. But I stood—I stand—in profound admiration of his work.”

  “Any idea what he was working on?” Bernie said.

  “That’s no secret,” said Hoskin. “Wendell was creating a hydrological summa of the Great American West during the entire Quaternary up to present day.”

  “Um,” said Bernie. “Was that what he’s been doing recently?”

  “Recently and always—it was his life’s work,” said Hoskin. “May I ask how your question relates to the murder? Didn’t I read that the murderer is in custody?”

  “There’s a suspect in custody, yes.”

  “Do I hear a but?”

  How many times had that come up, people hearing a but from Bernie when there hadn’t been a but? Maybe if you couldn’t bring much to the table in the hearing department—a human thing, not your fault, please don’t feel bad—you sometimes imagined sounds that weren’t out there. That was as far as I could take this problem on my own.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Bernie.

  Of course not! It wouldn’t have been true, and no one was truer than Bernie.

  “It’s just that we like to get as complete a picture of a case as we can,” Bernie continued.

  Hoskin nodded. “I understand that sentiment completely. It’s the essence of good science.” He smiled. “Sure you’re not a scientist, Mr. Little?”

  “Very,” Bernie said. “And call me Bernie.”

  “May I see your business card, Bernie?” The smile stayed on Hoskin’s face, broadened, if anything.

  Bernie looked surprised but he went over to Hoskin and handed him our card, with Suzie’s flower design.

  Hoskin glanced at it and laughed. “I would have expected a pistol of some kind.” He made his hand into a gun and went “Pow pow” right at Bernie. He laughed some more, then shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I get carried away. The bookish life will do that to you.”

  “The bookish life?” Bernie said. “Are you still at Veritan?”

  Hoskin reached up, lowered his tortoiseshell glasses down over his eyes. “Completely retired from academe,” he said. “But you’ve done your homework on me.”

  “Not really,” Bernie said. “Your name came up.”

  “In what context?”

  “Hydrology. I’m trying to get a handle on that aspect of Wendell’s life.”

  “Hmm,” said Hoskin. “Didn’t you already ask me about that? Didn’t I answer, to the best of my ability, I hope?”

  “But you were both doing the same thing in the same place—hydrological consulting here in the Valley.”

  “Well, the embarrassing truth is I’m just keeping my hand in. Did some surveying for the light-rail project last year, for example, but I’m really not a businessman. Plus I’ve spent most of my life back east.”

  “At Veritan.”

  “That’s right. I haven’t built a network here.”

  “There must be a lot of Veritan alums in the Valley.”

  “Oh, sure—and in every big city. Some like to socialize at the Veritan Club, over on Ponce Street, and some—like me—don’t. And here’s a secret. Promise not to tell. I spent my undergraduate years at Yale.” He laughed again. Laughter always carries a handy breath sample, in this case revealing that although Hoskin’s teeth were nice and white, there was something rotten going on.

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” Bernie said. “What’s more, I’d like to hire you.”

  “My goodness,” Hoskin said. “To do what?”

  I was with him on that. Had we ever hired anybody in our whole career? Well, yes, there’d been Vitoriana de Castilla y Leon, a famous international fashionista, whatever that was, exactly, who’d helped us with the design of our Hawaiian pants and according to Bernie was worth every penny of the home equity loan, whatever that was, the actual selling of the Hawaiian pants turning out to have been a bit of a problem, and Vitoriana herself turning out to be Bonnie Dorfman from Key West, where she probably was now if she’d served her time. But other than that we’ve hired nobody. Why would we? We’ve got me and Bernie.

  “Are you familiar with Dollhouse Canyon?” Bernie said.

  “Only on the map.”

  “I’d like you to come up there and walk us around, hydrologically speaking.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “That’s where Wendell was working when he was killed.”

  “I’d be happy to,” said Hoskin.

  “How’s right now?” Bernie said.

  “Perfect. And there’ll be no charge.” Hoskin went to a shelf where a few laptops lay in a stack. He took the top one. “Ándale.”

  * * *

  Out in the parking lot, there was an attempt to get us all in the Porsche, me, Bernie, and Hoskin, but it just didn’t work out, so Hoskin ended up following in his car. Hoskin’s car was actually something of a surprise, a Porsche, in fact, and not new, although not as old as ours, and also lacking the martini glasses decoration on the front fenders. Bernie checked the rearview mirror way more than I’d ever seen him do, all the way up the West Valley freeway and onto the two-laner. Traffic thinned out as we entered the hills and then with a ROAR that would have made me jump, if I was the jumping type, Hoskin pulled out and zoomed past us like … like … we were slow! And that’s so wrong! We’re the fastest, now and forever.
Nothing more irritating had ever happened in my whole life.

  Bernie! But before I could even think that thought—meaning Bernie, although I did think it anyway—Bernie said, “Well, well,” and floored it, pedal to the metal. Now we were going to show this … this professor! A professor, of all things. Time to teach this professor a lesson. Wow! Had I made a sort of joke? There really was no stopping us. Now we were doing some roaring of our own, wheels hardly touching the ground, which was certainly what it felt like, getting closer and closer to … and if not a whole lot closer, then at least somewhat. Had to be. We were the fastest. Case closed.

  Hoskin’s Porsche, a black one, came to the big red rock, swerved onto the dirt road, fishtailed wildly and spun off—but no. In fact, no fishtailing or spinning off, not even much of a swerve. And neither did we—no swerving, no fishtailing, no spinning, not that you’d notice, and we would certainly have shot past Hoskin in the next moment or two, but before we could, a dust cloud came down on us and we couldn’t see a thing. Bernie took his foot off the pedal. That dust cloud was raised by Hoskin, of course. Cheating? You tell me.

  * * *

  Hoskin, parked by a lone cottonwood, was leaning on the hood of his Porsche. “What fun!” he said, as we parked beside him. Our Porsche was all dusty. His was not. We were dusty, too. I gave myself a good shake, but Bernie just didn’t know how. He patted his pants a bit, and his shirt, but what about his eyebrows and his hair? They remained dusty.

  “You’re an excellent driver, Bernie,” Hoskin said. “We’ll have to do this more often.”

  “That would be … nice,” said Bernie.

  * * *

  We walked around Dollhouse Canyon. “A classic box canyon, of course,” Hoskin said, “and what is a box canyon if not a type of valley?”

  I had no answer to that question. If only Hoskin had asked, “Has a javelina been by lately?” The answer to that was a big yes. You really can’t miss their smell, mostly skunky but with some piggy mixed in, and this one was especially smelly. Just to be doing something, I followed the smell around the cottonwood, and toward a little jumble of rocks.

  “Hydrogeologically speaking,” Hoskin was saying, “we’re always interested in valleys. Gravity attracts water, Bernie, meaning all water would flow to the center of the earth, if it could. But what stops it? Impermeability, that’s what. Have you noticed we’ve got a few cottonwoods growing here?”

  Bernie nodded.

  “Cottonwoods are a good sign,” Hoskin said. “Willows even better. It suggests, but does not prove, that we’ve got water somewhere down below.” Hoskin flipped open his laptop. “So let’s go to the map, in this case the last USGS survey, dated 1977. And what do we find?”

  Bernie and Hoskin huddled over the laptop. Bernie pointed. “Is that the aquifer?”

  “An aquifer, Bernie. We have more than one.”

  Whoa! Impossible! How many times have I heard Bernie say we’ve only got the one aquifer? Way way more than two times, two being the highest number I can work with, although once on an amazing day I somehow jumped from two to four. Maybe that would happen again. You can always hope and I always did.

  “In this case we have what I’d call a small, perched aquifer, overlaid on a granite base at about five hundred feet,” Hoskin went on. “The water down there is probably seven thousand years old—as you can see from this footnote re tritium and carbon-fourteen analysis. But the key point is the small volume. And that was in 1977. Let’s take a look at that cottonwood.”

  They walked over to the cottonwood tree. “Note the dead branches at the top,” Hoskin said. “The dead leaves.” He picked at the bark. A strip came right off. He handed it to Bernie.

  “The tree’s dying from lack of water?” Bernie said.

  “And so is that one, and those over there,” said Hoskin, pointing to the other cottonwoods. “How much rain has fallen out here since 1977? Thirty inches? Forty? Whatever the number, it’s not close to replenishing a small aquifer like the one we’ve got here.”

  “What about the vineyard?” Bernie said.

  “Vineyard?” said Hoskin.

  Bernie gestured at the steep slope at the closed end of the canyon. “Just on the other side.”

  “I was unaware of that,” said Hoskin. “But grapes won’t be growing over there much longer.”

  Bernie was giving Hoskin a close look, which Hoskin, snapping the laptop shut, didn’t see. I went back to what I was doing, namely sticking my nose into a tiny space in the jumble of rocks, where I knew for sure that—OUCH!

  “So what was Wendell doing out here?” Bernie said.

  “Probably just what we’re doing,” said Hoskin. “Getting depressed about the water situation in the American desert.”

  I licked the end of my nose, which stung a bit. Normally that does the trick, but for some reason my tongue was dry.

  Nineteen

  “Searching down deep for perched aquifers,” Bernie said. “A pretty good metaphor for what we do, big guy. So why aren’t I feeling good about the case?”

  I knew the answer at once: metaphors. Don’t think for a moment that I know what metaphors are exactly, or even roughly, but metaphors entering the conversation always means we’re off track. Right now we happened to be in the Old Town part of Pottsdale, meaning Old Town was off track. Bernie parked on the side of the street opposite a solid and fancy-looking pink adobe building, with potted flowering plants lining broad stairs up to a huge wooden door. Then we just sat there, Bernie thinking and me feeling him think.

  “Where did he learn to drive like that?” Bernie said.

  I wondered who he was talking about, but I didn’t wonder very hard. I reserve my best mental efforts for when we’re on track. When we’re off track I ease off the gas a bit. Take a tip from a pro.

  Bernie laughed to himself, a quiet little laugh that’s half-snort. I loved that snort part, wished he’d do it more often. “Malcolm was right about one thing.” Bernie patted his pockets. That meant he wanted a cigarette, must have forgotten that he’d quit. Bernie’s a champ at quitting smoking—sometimes he smokes one and throws the whole rest of the pack away. Now he gave up on the patting, took a deep breath. “That exhibition game against Veritan. It was at the old ballpark in Vero Beach. We did win and I remember. Well, not everything, but my inning, yeah.” Bernie got a look in his eyes that I’d never seen and suddenly he was a college kid, at least to me. “Spring training, each of the pitchers got an inning. I started, so I had the top of the order.” He rubbed his hands together, then looked at the palm of his pitching hand. “This was before the elbow problems. Nine pitches—eight heaters and then the slider. A slider, which I didn’t even have, except for that one time.” He pointed at the fancy old building across the street. “The Veritan Club, Chet.” The look in his eyes changed and college kid Bernie vanished, just like that. “How about we go inside, check out the elite.”

  The elite? A new one on me, but if Bernie thought it was a good idea then I was on board, case closed. He reached for the door handle and paused to watch a taxi pull up in front of the Veritan Club. A passenger got out. It was Suzie. Bernie’s heartbeat changed. I heard it happen, clear as clear.

  The taxi drove off. Suzie stood on the sidewalk. She glanced one way, then the other. It was so good to see her. She looked great, standing so straight, the sun on her face, her dark hair longer now, her eyes shining and black like the countertops in our kitchen. She glanced both ways down the sidewalk, then checked her watch, put on sunglasses, and just stood there.

  Bernie got out of the car. Me, too, goes without mentioning. We crossed the street. Suzie wasn’t looking our way, not until we stepped onto the sidewalk.

  “Bernie!” she said. “Chet!”

  “Hi, Suzie,” Bernie said.

  Meanwhile I was saying hi myself, up close, sniffing up her smell, one of the nicest human smells I’d ever smelled, all about those little yellow flowers that grow by the dry washes, and she was bent forward and st
roking my head like she’d really missed me. Well of course! I’d have missed me, too, if that makes any sense. I’d have missed me big time. Right around then was when I spotted Bernie’s reflection in Suzie’s sunglasses. His hands were half-raised like he was about to hug her.

  Suzie straightened and raised her arms like she was going to hug him back, but that wasn’t quite what happened. Instead she gripped his upper arms in her hands—diamonds flashing in the sun—and gave him a squeeze, although keeping a space between them.

  “You look terrific,” she said.

  “Right back at you,” said Bernie. “Times ten.”

  She grinned. “How you talk!” And then she lowered her hands. The sun again caught the diamond ring on her finger. Bernie saw it and his heartbeat changed once more. And, in his eyes, what was this? The tiniest flinch, there and gone. You’d have to know Bernie really well to catch something like that, and I did.

  Suzie noticed him noticing. She took off her sunglasses, and there were those eyes of Suzie’s, the real deep kind.

  “He’s a good man, Bernie,” she said.

  For a moment, I thought she was saying Bernie was a good man, true for sure, but why even bother saying it in a tight little group like this? Then I began to maybe see what was happening.

  Bernie smiled, at first not a very happy smile, but then it changed and seemed a bit happy, and then it changed some more and ended up being actually happy.