Sometime later, Iggy and I had followed the canyon all the way to where Rio Calor crosses it, and what did we find but actual water! And not only that but some Girl Scouts having a picnic! Hungry Girl Scouts with a fondness for burgers and sausages! Iggy went a little too far—his main problem, really—and the two of us ended up in a green van belonging to Freedy Ramirez, early in our relationship with Freedy, who then was only an assistant dogcatcher but has now risen to director in chief of the entire dog-catching department here in the Valley. The only reason I bring all this up is that Freedy had parked the van at a lookout over the canyon, and on the other side of the road from the lookout stood a car wash with a big sign featuring lots of foam and a happy lady in a bathing suit, and now we were passing right by it. Bernie turned onto the next cross street and stopped in front of a small lemon-colored house with a lemon tree in the yard and a nice shady porch. Weatherly was sitting on the porch, but she rose as we got out of the car.
You can feel some people from a distance—usually a very small distance, and lots of people can’t really be felt unless you’re actually touching them. Does that make sense? Never mind if it doesn’t. The point is that few can be felt from quite far away—Bernie’s the champ at that—and Weatherly was in that group. The Weatherly feeling grew stronger and stronger as we walked up to the porch.
“Hi,” Bernie said.
“Hi,” said Weatherly, looking down at us.
“Sorry about last night,” Bernie said. “Things got a little hectic.”
Weatherly nodded. Whoa! Her nod reminded me of one of Bernie’s, specifically the nod that can mean anything.
“But,” Bernie added, “I plumb forgot.”
One of Weatherly’s eyes narrowed very slightly. Was she having a bit of fun?
“Plumb, Bernie?” she said.
“Uh, well…”
“It’s okay,” Weatherly said. “You don’t owe me anything. You’re the reason I’ve got Trixie back.”
“How’s she doing?” Bernie said.
“Better every day. She just fell asleep.” Weatherly tilted her chin toward one corner of the porch. I saw a bushy black tail sticking out from behind a big potted plant.
“I’ve got news about what happened to her,” Bernie said.
Weatherly gave Bernie a long look. “Come aboard,” she said.
We climbed the steps. I went right over and checked things out behind the potted plant. Oh, poor Trixie! Not the cone! But it was the cone, all right. There are many great human inventions—the Porsche, for example—and also some bad ones, of which the cone is one of the very worst. Trixie lay on her side on the porch floor, her head in the cone—a clear plastic cone so I could see her eyes, open and staring at nothing. I squeezed in behind the potted plant and lay down beside her. A nice, shady spot as it turned out. My breathing fell right into rhythm with Trixie’s.
“What’s your news?” Weatherly said.
“Mickey Rottoni kidnapped Trixie to get back at you,” said Bernie.
“For serving the restraining order?”
“Yes. According to my informant, he was one of those types.”
“Who can’t rest if they think they’ve been insulted?”
“Exactly.”
There was a silence. Then Weatherly said, “I thank you, Bernie.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Something to drink?” she said. “Iced tea?”
“Sounds great.”
Weatherly went into the house. Bernie came over and gazed down at me and Trixie. A lovely look appeared on his face, impossible to describe. He went back and sat on a wicker chair. Weatherly came out with iced tea and sat on the chair beside him.
“I hope you didn’t wait too, uh, very long,” he said. “Um, at Dry Gulch.”
“Not long,” Weatherly said. “Forget about it.” She raised her glass and clinked his. “I did see that Suzie Sanchez was there.”
A tiny wave of iced tea slopped over the edge of Bernie’s glass. “You know her?”
“Not at all,” Weatherly said. “I’ve seen her on TV a few times.”
“She’s married.”
“I know,” Weatherly said. “I’ve done some research.”
“On Suzie?”
“On you.”
“Oh?”
“Not out of nosiness,” Weatherly said. “I wanted to check out the case of that little girl, Gail Blandina.”
Gail? They were talking about Gail? I’d been close to falling asleep, but now I wasn’t. That was the broom closet case, our very worst, the only missing kid case where we’d failed. Not that we didn’t find Gail. We found her, but not soon enough. Later that night, we’d taken care of justice ourselves, me and Bernie, also a onetime thing in our career. After it was over, Bernie had said we had to forget what we’d done and never think of it again. But that had never been easy, and it wasn’t going to be any easier if Weatherly planned on talking about it. I rose and moved closer to Bernie.
His voice got very quiet. “Why would you be doing that?”
Weatherly sat back. I’d seen that same sort of sitting back before, when somebody was sensing something in Bernie for the first time. “It’s a long story,” Weatherly said, “maybe not that interesting.”
“Anything about Gail Blandina is interesting to me.”
Weatherly put down her glass. “This was just before my suspension.”
“For insubordination?”
“Correct. Ellis just couldn’t let it go.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Forget it,” Weatherly said. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing someone like him could say about someone like you would”—she smiled a sudden smile, surprisingly big, sort of triumphant—“would ever convince someone like me.” The smile faded and she looked directly into Bernie’s eyes. “Not after what you did for Trixie. And how you did it.”
“I did the normal thing,” Bernie said. “And I still want to hear the story.”
Weatherly took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Ellis wanted to convince me that you were lying about Rottoni. He said either you never found him and faked the whole thing or you killed him and hid the body where it will never be found. His money was on that, the second possibility.”
“And why would I do either one?” Bernie said.
“Quote—you’re a tricky operator.”
“And why the second one particularly?”
Weatherly nodded. “I asked him that. He told me to check out the Gail Blandina case. Which I did. The poor kid was held for ransom, the department was getting nowhere, the family hired you, and you found her in less than a day. But too late. The kidnapper never turned up, and the case is still open. ‘Why isn’t anyone working on it?’ Ellis said.”
Bernie sat very still, not a single movement visible, except for a vein in his neck, throbbing like I’d never seen. Then very slowly he rose. “Can I leave Chet here with you for a little while?” His voice sounded hoarse, like he’d been shouting or didn’t feel well.
I rose, too.
And so did Weatherly. “Bernie? What is it?”
Bernie didn’t seem to hear her. He moved slowly toward the steps.
“Bernie?” She gripped his arm. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll be back in a bit,” Bernie said, his voice kind of strange, like it was no longer connected to him.
Weatherly stepped around, faced him, now gripped both his arms. “You’re scaring me. Why aren’t you taking Chet? What’s going on?”
Weatherly stood right at the edge of the porch, her heels actually over the edge. She was maybe not as tall as Suzie but looked quite a bit stronger. Nothing like Bernie, of course, especially right now. He was huge and wild and dangerous. And what was this about not taking me? He’d never needed me more in his whole life. I just knew it.
“Bernie? Where do you think you’re going? Not downtown? I hope it’s not downtown. How will that end? It won’t be good.”
Bernie was looking pa
st her, or maybe nowhere at all. Was he even hearing her? She squeezed his arms, digging in with her fingernails. Now, at last, he gazed down at her. He said something that came out as a hoarse little whisper, impossible to understand.
“Come on, Bernie,” Weatherly said. “Come inside and tell me the whole thing.”
He shook his head harder, suddenly reminding me of Charlie.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Weatherly said. “Just come inside.” She put her hands on his chest and gave him a little push. He didn’t let himself be pushed. “You’re a smart man, Bernie. Play the long game.” She gave him another push. This time, he let her. The next thing I knew, they were in the house.
And I was not! Normally, that would be an intolerable situation. But somehow, this once, I was okay with it. How odd life can be! I went and lay down by Trixie. She thumped her tail. I thumped mine.
Twenty-three
I was familiar with many games, but the long game was new to me. Had Bernie and Weatherly been playing the long game? If so, had he enjoyed it? It was hard to tell. As we drove home, or at least in the direction of home—I knew the direction home from pretty much anywhere in the Valley—I gave him several looks, just checking his mood. He had a dark look on his face and was deep in his thoughts, those beautiful hands taking charge of the driving all by themselves, but what kind of thoughts he was having, I couldn’t tell. One thing for sure: his body was very relaxed. That was nice to see.
Up ahead, I spotted Bandstand Park, where they sometimes had concerts for kids. Once, there’d been a concert where the whole band had been dressed up as ducks! It had taken me a while to put that together, and not long after, we’d had to leave quite suddenly, but Charlie had certainly enjoyed my … what would you call it? Performance, perhaps? Close enough. “Did you see what he did to that drummer duck, Dad? Did you see? Did you see?” And every time he thought about it for days and days, he’d laughed so hard, he fell down and rolled around. Even in school, apparently. There might have been a call from his teacher, Ms. Minoso. “Maybe Chet and I could visit the classroom,” Bernie had suggested. A great idea, but there’d been only silence from Ms. Minoso.
Bernie slowed down. There were no ducks on the bandstand, no musicians of any kind, just a silver-haired man with a mic, lots of red, white, and blue balloons, and a big crowd, many of them wearing buttons on their chests.
“Well, well,” Bernie said. We pulled over and parked. “In the mood for a speech?”
A speech? It hadn’t been on my mind at all. I had only slight experience with speeches—in fact had attended just one, Bernie’s keynote speech at the Great Western Private Eye Convention not too long ago. Some convention folks must have been called away during the speech because the crowd thinned out a bit, but there was definitely lots of applause. I was sure I heard at least some. Pretty sure.
We crossed the park, came to the crowd, much larger than I’d thought at first. Most folks were standing, but some sat on folding chairs up front. A short, round woman wearing a straw hat with a balloon attached by a long string made room for us.
“What a creature!” she said, taking me in for the first time. “Too bad dogs can’t vote.”
“They’re waiting for the right candidate,” Bernie said.
Was that one of Bernie’s jokes? If so, I got the feeling it was pretty good. But the woman didn’t laugh. She frowned instead, a tiny sweat bead trickling down her nose, pointed to the stage, and said, “There he is, standing in front of your face.”
I followed her gaze. Hey! The silver-haired man was Senator Wray! Hadn’t he called me a handsome pooch on our visit to the new PD HQ? I took a good look at his face and realized he was a bit of a handsome pooch himself. Was he somehow involved in the case? All at once, I thought I understood it completely. A voice in my head cried out, “Next case!” Whoa! What was that? A voice I’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again.
Meanwhile, Bernie was still talking to the woman. “I didn’t realize he was a dog person,” he said.
The woman blinked. “He’s an every-living-thing person,” she said.
“Ah,” said Bernie. “And does he have a dog at home?”
“The senator’s not a dog person in that sense. In that sense, he’s a ferret person.”
“Oh?”
“You don’t know about Griffie?” the woman said.
“Griffie?” said Bernie.
“He’s the cutest little guy.” The woman raised herself on her tiptoes. “Sometimes he pops up out of the senator’s pocket during one of these appearances, but I don’t see any pocket bulge, do you?”
“Afraid not,” said Bernie. Then, quietly, maybe just to himself—and to me, of course—he said, “So where’s Griffie?”
The woman heard. “Tell you what—if he takes questions at the end, I’ll ask him.”
“Good idea,” Bernie said.
We moved off to one side, got closer to the stage. Senator Wray had the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up and wore a bolo tie. “—can’t do it without you,” he was saying in his … how to put it? Handsome pooch voice? Yes, that was it exactly. He began pointing at folks in the crowd. “Not without you! And you! And you! And you! You, too, gentleman with the fat cee-gar! You, too, lady spittin’ image of Bette Davis! Gonna need all of you, each and every one, if we’re gonna get done what needs to be done here in our beautiful Valley and way back there in the corridors of D.C.”
“Boo!” went some people in the crowd. “Boo!” Booing is a human sound for when they don’t like something. Bernie says humans are related to monkeys! Has to be one of his jokes, but when you see a whole bunch of humans booing, you could almost believe him.
The senator held up his hand. “Yes, sir! What needs to be done. Wanna talk education? Ed-ja-cay-shun? Let’s talk ed-ja-cay-shun, my friends. Who’s brought over fifty mil of federal money back here to the state, earmarked for the ed-ja-cay-shun of our youngsters? Remember this—the youngsters of today are the oldsters of tomorrow! What’s more important than that, folks?”
Bernie glanced down at me. “We’re doomed,” he said, which I didn’t get at all. Meanwhile, the crowd began to chant, “Wray’s okay! Wray’s okay! Wray’s okay!”
We kept moving, still among the standers but closer to the stage—along one side, if you see what I mean. And the standers, kind of a thin line by now, curved around the sitters on our side and ended up quite near the stage. One of the very closest standers, leaning against a trash barrel, seemed a bit familiar. A little narrow-shouldered rubber-face dude who needed a shave and a haircut, or maybe just a comb. Instead of trying to remember the dude’s name, my mind wanted to think about a broken comb I’d seen in a gutter a few days ago. But then, beside me, Bernie went still, and in that moment, it came to me: Neddy Freleng! The comedian guy, possibly a onetime boyfriend of Mavis, who lived in a trailer over in New Mexico. Was he waiting to go onstage and do his routine? That was as far as I could take it on my own.
But maybe Bernie had a different idea. I could tell he was on high alert. How, you might ask, when his ears don’t suddenly point up and he has no tail to signal with at all? I go partly from a slight change in his smell—it gets more peppery—but mostly just from a feeling of what’s going on inside him. We headed away from the crowd, moving slow and silent, practically invisible, and made a sort of circle ending up almost right behind Neddy.
Neddy didn’t notice a thing. His gaze—his whole body, really—was focused on Senator Wray. The senator wasn’t looking our way. He was talking about his dreams, or possibly the American dream. I didn’t quite get it. Whatever it was, it seemed to be making Neddy very nervous. Human nervousness gives off a sweaty scent, not the fresh scent that comes after, say, a long hike but a sour, sweaty scent that gives me a funny feeling way up my nose. And Neddy’s sour scent was the sourest I’d ever smelled. He wore a white T-shirt, damp with yellowish sweat under the armpits, and it was also damp, although not yellow, between the shoulder blades. Neddy
wore cargo shorts, and his bare legs were trembling. I decided that whatever dreams the senator was discussing had to be scary ones, and was about to tune back in to his speech when something about those cargo shorts caught my attention.
Not the cargo shorts themselves, which seemed like ordinary cargo shorts, baggy with lots of pockets. Leda hadn’t let Bernie wear cargo shorts while they were together, but after the divorce, he bought a pair or two. Then along came Suzie, and cargo shorts were gone again. But not important. The important thing was the smell coming from one of Neddy’s front pockets, not the smell of a gun recently fired but a gun recently cleaned. I sat right down, eyes glued to that front pocket.
Bernie shot me one quick glance, all he needed. We’re a team, me and Bernie. Don’t forget that. Those that do tend to end up wearing orange jumpsuits. Bernie moved to Neddy’s other side, standing about a step behind him, making Bernie even with me, on the gun side. Many humans would feel a bit uneasy in the middle of that kind of setup—although by no means all, a surprising number of them often strangely unaware of what’s going on around them—but not Neddy. Was it because we were already in a crowded situation? Once, I heard Bernie say the best place to hide a tree is in the forest. No getting past Bernie’s brilliance, of course, but did that have anything to do with what was going on with Neddy? Or was the little guy just too amped up to notice anything? He had something on his mind, no doubt about that. I could feel it, like a small black cloud hanging over us.
“—so just think about it, folks,” the senator was saying. “Anybody here really believe Les Erlanger’s gonna bring home the bacon for you?”
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