“No. She was only here for a couple of years—her parents were at the base. I really didn’t know her at all. She was a beautiful girl, could have had her pick of the boys—captain of the football team, all that. Instead, she took up with the class clown.”
Clowns were in the picture? An interesting development. I’d seen a number of clowns on TV, the sight always making me do my backing-up-and-barking-my-head-off move, but then I’d actually gotten to know one and he’d turned out to be a nice guy and a very good head scratcher. I felt much better about the case.
Wynona sipped her beer. “Well, that’s not fair. Neddy Freleng was the class clown, but he was also head of the drama club—and a very good actor. They did The Crucible, and he was amazing as John Proctor. I can still see his face when they march him off to the hanging. Mavis played the servant girl, Abigail something-or-other.”
“Williams,” Bernie said. “Was she talented, too?”
“Not like him. When you see Mavis in real life, you can’t take your eyes off her. But when she was onstage you could. Isn’t that weird? And Neddy’s the opposite. In the end, they went off to Hollywood with big dreams. I don’t think Mavis got anywhere at all, but Neddy did some stand-up. He came back a couple years ago.”
“By himself?”
Wynona nodded. “Mavis was already in the Valley by then. Neddy persisted in LA a little longer.”
“What does he do now?”
“He’s a substitute teacher at De Vaca Elementary, maybe has some tutoring gigs on the side—although there’s not much demand for tutoring around here.”
“Why not?”
“Good question, although I don’t see what it has to do with Johnnie Lee and Mavis.” Wynona gave Bernie a sideways look. “I’ve never dealt with a private detective before. Are they all like you?”
What a lucky lady! Her very first meetup with a private eye and it’s Bernie! I waited for him to say, “None of them are like me, pally, not even close.” Instead, he went with, “More or less.” Bernie! Come on! You’ve got to toot your own horn, as his mom was saying on her last visit. Bernie has a ukulele—which he plays beautifully, especially around campfires with a glass of bourbon on a log beside him—but he doesn’t have a horn. A ukulele instead of a horn: Was that somehow why the finances part of the Little Detective Agency never seemed to do as well as the rest of the operation? What else could it be? I made what Bernie calls a mental note: be on the lookout for horns, big guy.
“As for tutoring,” Wynona said, “parents here are like everywhere—they want their kids to do well. They know how to raise them just fine, but the ins and outs of slotting them for success in the big world is still a mystery. Also that costs extra money. The folks pulling the strings are always the ones with extra money—ever noticed that?”
Bernie smiled. He picked up his glass, clinked it against Wynona’s, and drank. “If anyone else comes looking for Mavis or Johnnie Lee, you know nothing.”
“Anyone else like who?” said Wynona.
“Like anybody.”
Wynona nodded. They clinked again.
“Where do I find Neddy?” Bernie said.
* * *
“Poor Ms. Drubbins was the sub teacher in fifth grade,” Bernie said. We drove back into town, through a nice neighborhood, into one not so nice, and came to a trailer park. Trailer parks are a great human invention, in my opinion. Lots of outdoor cooking goes on in trailer parks, meaning scraps are there for the taking. This particular trailer park was also quiet and shady, the trailers, of which there weren’t many, spread out in a small sort of forest, the trees green and leafy, the air around them moist on my nose. Bernie parked in front of a yellow trailer that was all by itself in the deepest part of the woods. It was up on blocks, a bicycle on a kickstand by the door. “We stuck gum on her chair,” he said. “Day after day. It never got old.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but the sound of his voice in this quiet little forest was lovely. We walked up to the door of the trailer, and Bernie knocked. Time passed, and he knocked again.
“Maybe no one’s home,” he said.
What about that snoring sound? I supposed it could be someone snoring on TV, although actually it couldn’t because TVs do all kinds of buzzing and whining when they’re on—and also when they’re off, by the way—so there was only one possibility: Bernie did not hear the snoring. Was it an especially quiet sort of snoring? I didn’t think so. It was human male snoring with a snorting in-breath, followed by a strange pause, just long enough for you to think the snoring was over, and then a high and wheezy out-breath that ended with a hint of lip flapping. In short, unmissable. I barked a bark that was also unmissable. Time, you often hear, is money. A bird in the nearest tree took off and soared away. Whoa! Had I done that? Just with my voice? I barked again, amping it up a little. And caramba! Multiple birds took off from multiple trees! I, Chet, turned out to be … what would you call it? A bird whisperer? Well, not really, since I wasn’t whispering, more like the furthest thing from it. I was more like a bird herder, herding birds across the sky. What a life! I wondered whether bees or butterflies or other flying things could also be herded in this same way. Their ears had to be smaller than birds’ ears, meaning that I’d have to reach back and give it my all.
“Chet! What the hell?”
And inside the trailer, a man was saying the exact same thing. Not the Chet! part. Just “What the hell?”
Bernie heard that, no question. His face changed slightly, became the Bernie face for when others are around, not just him and me. Bare feet pat-patted to the door, and then it opened.
You see a lot of big, tough, dangerous dudes in this line of work, but the guy in the doorway wasn’t one of them. Big? No. Quite the opposite. Short, but some short types can be very quick and powerful. Take Nguyen “Tank” Tong, for example, who once ran right through the wall of a dive bar down in San Dismas, an amazing feat, and Tank seemed quite pleased with himself until he noticed me waiting on the other side. This little fellow had narrow shoulders—easy to see since he was only wearing boxers—and thin arms with knobby wrists.
Tough? Sometimes hard to tell just by looking. An unshaven face might be a sign, but not this type of unshaven face, which was more hipsterish. Also rumpled, like his hair, and unmarked by any past dustups.
Dangerous? There’s a smell that men who are ready for a fight give off, and this guy didn’t have it. He smelled like someone who was still partly asleep and also needed to pee. Dangerous dudes tend to be hard around the mouth. This guy’s mouth was soft.
He blinked at us, then gave me a second look and backed up a bit. Some humans aren’t comfortable around me and my kind. If it’s a kid or if we’re not on the job, I try to show them I’m just a big softie, maybe by doing one of my tricks, charging around a lawn, for example, with razor-sharp cuts. If we’re on the job, I wait for some sign from Bernie.
“Neddy Freleng?” he said.
“Um, yeah?”
“Sorry to wake you.”
Neddy rubbed his face. He had one of those rubbery faces that changes shape a lot when it’s rubbed. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he said.
Not the first time I’d heard that one, a very common response from a human awakened by day, although never by night. What’s that all about? It can only be that when humans sleep in the daytime, they don’t realize it! Humans can amaze you, but not always in a good way, no offense.
“I’m Bernie Little, and this is Chet,” Bernie said.
“Uh-huh,” said Neddy, covering up a yawn with his hand. Another strange bit of human behavior right there, but no time to go into it, on account of something else was going down. When a dude recognizes our names, there’s always some reaction, reaching for a gun, say, or taking off at top speed. “Uh-huh” and a yawn means they haven’t heard of us. Then why was Neddy suddenly so nervous? I mean deep inside where you can’t see. Human nervousness has a sour smell I never miss.
Bernie handed him our card. He squinted at it
. “Cool. I’ve never met a private eye.”
“We’re looking for two women you know,” Bernie said. “Johnnie Lee Goetz and Mavis Verlander.”
Neddy scratched his skinny chest. “I knew them back in high school, and Mavis later than that. But I haven’t seen either of them in years.”
He stood in the doorway, gazing at us pleasantly, in no hurry to get rid of us or head back inside. I got the feeling we were done with Neddy, so it was a bit of a surprise when Bernie said, “Maybe you’ll be able to help us anyway. Can we come in?”
Sixteen
“No problemo, ordinarily,” Neddy said. “But it’s so messy right now. I’ve been too busy to clean up.”
“Yeah?” said Bernie. “Doing what?”
“Oh, just working on an idea or three.”
“What kind of ideas?” Bernie said.
By that time, I was inside the trailer. It just seemed like the right move. Bernie wanted in. That was all I needed to know. Why complicate things?
“Hey,” said Neddy. “Your dog’s, um—” He turned to me. “What’s the matter, buddy? No comprendo plain English?” He laughed a little heh heh out the side of his mouth.
“What’s the joke?” Bernie said.
I was with him on that. A disturbing thought popped up in my mind. Could Neddy be the bad guy? We’d dealt with many bad guys, but never one as wimpy as him. Was he even worth cuffing? I’m the type who takes pride in his work and who could be proud of cuffing Neddy and sending him off to break rocks in the hot sun? Was he even capable of breaking one single rock?
“Well,” Neddy said, “first rule of stand-up—never explain a joke. If you have to explain, it’s not funny.”
“You do stand-up?” Bernie said.
“Done stand-up, certainly,” said Neddy. “Currently doing? Not so much. I—”
His head swiveled around in my direction. I was now comfortably inside the trailer, in the middle of the living room, which smelled of weed and Chinese food. Chinese food comes in cartons, small ones that you tip over to spill out the contents, and bigger ones you can squeeze your muzzle into. I’m partial to General Tso’s chicken, and there was a definite General Tso smell in the air.
“Um, here, boy,” Neddy said. “Not a good day for a visit, nice doggie, so how about—”
We have some cool little tricks at the Little Detective Agency. Take, for example, the two-on-one. Pretty simple. We just separate a bit, me and Bernie, making some space between us. Here’s how we learned the two-on-one: one of us tossed a treat into the corner of a room and the other one went and got it. That’s all there is to it! After a while, you won’t even need the treat! That’s where we were now, me and Bernie nicely spaced in the trailer and Neddy in between. He had maybe the skinniest calves I’d ever seen. My teeth took no interest in them whatsoever.
“See, uh, Bernie, was it?” Neddy said.
Bernie didn’t answer. He was studying a framed photo on the wall.
“Why don’t you let me clean up a little and you can come back later, like in a couple hours or so?” Neddy said.
Bernie didn’t look at him. He pointed to the photo and said, “You and Mavis?”
Neddy glanced at the photo, rubbed his face, changing its shape a little. In the photo, Neddy was all dressed up in what I believe is called a tuxedo. Bernie used to have one, and still does, at least the pants. There’d been a problem with the jacket, as I recalled, not so much owing to the taste of the lapels—made of satin, it turned out, a material unknown to me until one afternoon when I’d ventured into Bernie’s closet for reasons unknown—as the texture. Some textures have the irresistible power to flip the switch on what might be called the clawing urge. Well, let’s not put it that way. How about the examining urge?
But forget all that. The point was that Neddy, here before us in his boxers, came close to looking like a different guy in the photo. Tuxedo instead of boxers, and although his hair, so messy now, was also messy in the photo, it was messy in a cool way, all gelled and spiky. As for Mavis’s hair, it wasn’t in a ponytail, but sort of fluffed out like a tiny golden cloud. She actually reminded me of an actress in a movie Bernie and I once watched, something about two dudes pretending to be women, her name and the movie’s name forgotten if I’d ever known them, and the movie itself incomprehensible.
“What’s it say on that background screen?” Bernie said.
“Northeastern Utah Film Festival,” Neddy said.
“I don’t know that one.”
“Up-and-coming. On a bit of a hiatus but coming back loooong and stroooong.” Neddy smooshed his mouth to one side and whispered in Bernie’s direction. “Silicon Valley cash on the way. Very hush-hush.”
“Hush-hush cash?” Bernie said.
“Heh.” Neddy shot him a sideways look. “Heh heh. That’s kind of funny—in an offbeat way, right?”
Bernie shrugged.
Neddy went over to a lumpy chair, shoved away this and that, came up with a yellow writing pad and a pen. “Okay if I steal it?”
This was a first. We’d dealt with way too many thieves to remember, but none of them had ever asked our permission to steal stuff. Not only that but steal stuff from their own home! My ears and tail rose straight up, on high alert, ready for anything. I myself was the same, but just didn’t show it. I’m a cool customer, in my way.
“For what?” Bernie said.
“My routine,” said Neddy.
“There’s stand-up around here?”
“Out at Rumbles on the county line, Thursday nights.”
“We’ll have to catch your act.”
“There’s a tip jar—nothing hush-hush about it. Heh heh.”
Bernie laughed. Bernie has one of the best laughs out there—not quite as good as Charlie’s when he really gets going and falls down, laughing so hard he can’t breathe—but this particular laugh didn’t even sound like him. As though … as though someone else was inside Bernie, doing the laughing.
“You’re funny,” he said.
“Yust my yob, amigo,” said Neddy.
“Ha.” That laugh, very brief, sounded more like Bernie. “What about your substitute teacher gig at De Vaca Elementary?”
Neddy went still, the first moment of stillness I’d seen from him. “Who’s been talking about me?”
“We never burn our sources,” Bernie said. “Especially in a missing persons case.”
“Who’s missing?”
“I told you—Mavis Verlander and Johnnie Lee Goetz.”
“You only said you were looking for them. You didn’t say they were missing.”
“My mistake,” Bernie said. “Didn’t realize I was dealing with a lawyer manqué.”
Neddy looked very confused, and even though he was almost certainly headed for the slammer, I was with him on that.
“But now that we’re on the same page, where are they?” Bernie said.
“Like right now?” Neddy said. “No idea. I haven’t seen Mavis in over a year and Johnnie Lee way longer than that. Last I heard, they were roomies out in the west Valley someplace.”
“They moved out a few days ago,” Bernie said.
“And you don’t know where they are?”
“Correct.”
Neddy’s face got into a thoughtful arrangement. “Did you ask the landlord? Maybe they left a forwarding address.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Bernie said.
“Don’t beat yourself up. It’s not that obvious, and I’m sure eventually you’d—”
He came to a sudden stop. Was it because of a certain look in Bernie’s eyes, a look you don’t see in them often but means, Messing with me, buddy? Or was it because Neddy had suddenly realized that Bernie was not the type to beat himself up? I’d only seen two dudes beat themselves up, both of them perps hoping that if they took care of their own punishment, we’d cut them loose. One night at the Dry Gulch Steakhouse and Saloon, Bernie had told that story to a judge we knew, a hanging judge—whatever that is, ex
actly—named Maria Valdez. She’d laughed until tears rolled down her face.
“Let’s put it this way,” Bernie said. “Where would you start looking if you were me?”
Uh-oh. If Neddy was Bernie? Then … then I didn’t want to think about it. All I knew for sure was that I was done with New Mexico. It was time to haul ass back to the Valley, just me and Bernie, and never see Neddy again. I moved toward the door, just giving Bernie the hint.
“Hmm,” Neddy said. “That’s a head-scratcher.” Maybe, but no head scratching took place. “Like I said, I haven’t laid—”
“How about taking us through your relationship with Mavis?” Bernie said.
“But why?” said Neddy. “I don’t get it. Who’s looking for her?”
“We are.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Chet and I.”
Neddy gave me one of those double takes. I’d never understood them and now found that I still didn’t.
“But you’re a private eye,” Neddy said. “That means you’re working for someone who wants to find Mavis. So who is it and why?”
“The identity of the client is something we keep to ourselves,” Bernie said. “All I can tell you is that Mavis’s safety—and Johnnie Lee’s—are the client’s only interest in this case.”
“Meaning they’re in danger? Who from?”
“Any ideas?” Bernie said.
“Why would I have any ideas?”
“Wasn’t she your girlfriend?”
“Is that little factoid from your so-called source? Or the so-called client?” Neddy got a clever look on his face. “Any chance they’re one and the same?”
Bernie smiled. “You’re a smart guy, Neddy. That’s going to help us.”
“How?”
“Because a smart guy like you is bound to have insights on Mavis.”
“Such as?”
“Did she have any enemies, for example?”
“Not that I know of,” said Neddy.
“How did the two of you break up?”
Neddy leaned back a little, almost like a boxer avoiding a punch, although he resembled no boxer I’d ever seen, and I knew plenty from down at Stillers Gym. “Whoa,” he said. “What are you implying?”
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