The Dog Who Knew Too Much

by Spencer Quinn

  We have a high adobe wall at the back of the house, with a high wooden gate in the middle. High, yes, but not quite high enough to keep me from leaping over, a fact no one knows but me. I’ve only leaped it in emergencies, once on an interesting night when … hey, when I heard some she-barking across the canyon. All at once, I got the feeling that a brand-new thought, a real big one, was about to enter my mind. But it didn’t. I jumped over the gate.

  I landed—front paws touching down just ahead of the rear ones, feeling hardly any jolt at all—on the patio, and headed right to the swan fountain. Ah, the lovely taste of our very own water. The next thing I knew, I was wading around in the circular stone basin to my heart’s content. After lots of that, I hopped out, shook off, and went to the back door. Our back door is wooden at the bottom and glass on top. I rose up, paws on the glass, and gazed in at our kitchen and the entrance to the hall leading farther into the house. Nothing moved, except—except a mouse nibbling on a slice of toast that had been left on the counter.

  That was maddening. I barked and barked. The mouse paused for a moment and went back to eating our toast. I barked some more, the mouse now ignoring me completely. Bernie! Wake up! Let me in!

  But no Bernie. He wasn’t napping? Then where was he? All of a sudden—oh, no—I remembered the last time I’d seen him. Bad sights came popping into my mind. I didn’t want to see those sights again but couldn’t stop them. My front paws slid down the glass. I stood by the door, doing nothing.

  After some time, I noticed a flip-flop of Bernie’s lying under the patio table. I went over and sniffed it for a while, started feeling better; Bernie’s feet had a lovely smell—not something you could say of all humans—quite a bit more peppery than the smell of the rest of him, with a nice added suggestion of the scent that comes off those tiny bits of a pencil eraser that you find after lots of erasing has happened. When I’d done with sniffing, I picked up the flip-flop, getting a good taste of it, and felt better still.

  Carrying the flip-flop, I moved around the side of the house, meaning the side next to Iggy’s; old man Heydrich, no pal of me and my kind, lived on the other side. I passed the coiled-up hose, the trash barrel, and Charlie’s old bike, now too small for him. The fun we’d had when he was learning how to ride the thing, so wobbly! I’d raced round and round him, helping out as best I could. Sometimes, especially after a drink or two, Bernie says he’d like to make something else out of that bike and hang it on the wall; no idea what that’s all about.

  There’s a small gate at the side of the house, closing off the narrow space from the front yard. Not a high gate at all: I hopped over without really thinking about it, trotted into the front yard and started digging. Had I forgotten about that bushy-tailed squirrel burying something under my favorite tree, the shady one in the middle? That wouldn’t be me.

  I dug the thing up—turned out to be some kind of nut, which I reburied, but deeper. A job worth doing, Bernie says, is worth doing well. Bernie: always the smartest human in the room. After that, I went to the front door. Closed. I pawed at it for a while, not getting anywhere. I pawed some more.

  Sometime later, I walked over to the shady tree and marked it, saving some squirts for the other two trees—and keeping a reserve just in case—and sat down, the flip-flop still in my mouth. At that point, I saw Mr. Parsons at his front window. He had a cell phone to his ear and his eyes on me.

  The phone rang inside our place. And then I heard Bernie! “Little Detective Agency,” he said. Yes! That was us! “Please leave a message after the tone.” Oh. I’d forgotten about the message machine, also remembered what I’d been trying to forget, namely how Bernie had looked the last time I’d seen him. Now I couldn’t get it out of my head.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Parson’s lips were moving although the sound of his voice came from our place. How weird was that?

  “Bernie? Dan Parsons here. Uh, next door. Sorry to bother you, but Chet seems to be out on his own. Not complaining—we like Chet, Mrs. Parsons and myself—but he seems to be acting a bit strangely, like he’s … hard to say, really. Anyway, not to alarm you. If you’re away or something and I can help, give me a call.”

  I sat in our front yard. Darkness moved across the sky, kind of like night was slowly leaking in. What a thought! I forgot about it and just sat, facing Mesquite Road. There was nothing to do but wait for Bernie to drive up. And the moment he did, I’d go bounding over and jump right into the Porsche and climb all over him. Was it going to be soon? I listened for the Porsche. It has a very distinctive sound that I can hear from far away, a kind of growl a bit like my own.

  I growled; lay down; rose and marked the trees again; sat; growled. Stars appeared. Bernie had explained all about them to Charlie. All I remembered was the muffin part. Imagine poppy seeds in a muffin, he’d said. I could do that easily: I was familiar with exactly that kind of muffin, a specialty at Donut Heaven. I realized that I was getting hungry. When had I last eaten? There’d been a quick burger or two, snatched on the fly, but that seemed like a very long time ago. I got up and marked the trees again.

  “Chet?”

  I turned to Iggy’s place. Mr. Parsons stood in the doorway, the porch light shining on his worn old face. Somewhere behind him, Iggy was going crazy.

  “You all right, Chet?” Mr. Parsons said.

  No complaints.

  He gazed at me. I gazed at him. “Hungry?” he said. “Want to come inside?”

  What was he saying? That he was going to let me into our place? How was that possible? Bernie was the only one with the key. I could see it in my mind, hanging off the seashell key ring, the Porsche ring beside it. Keeping track of the keys was all about security, and security was part of my job.

  “Come on, Chet,” Mr. Parsons said. “Got a treat for you.”

  Iggy went crazier. I was wondering: Treat? What kind?

  “A nice treat.”

  I liked nice treats, no doubt about that. Come to think of it, I’d never known a not-nice treat. I rose, crossed Iggy’s yard—like ours, not a grass lawn, but full of desert plants, unlike old man Heydrich’s, whose sprinkler system went on twice a day, a sight that bothered Bernie no end—and stood in front of Iggy’s porch.

  “Come on in,” Mr. Parsons said.

  I stood there. Iggy went silent. Somewhere in the house, Mrs. Parsons said, “Daniel? What’s going on?”

  “Trying to get Chet to come in.”

  “Offer him a treat.”

  “I did.”

  “Tell him he can play with Iggy.”

  “He wouldn’t understand that, Edna, he’s—”

  And some more along those lines, which I missed on account of already being past him and inside the house.

  First time in Iggy’s house! Of course, I’ve been in lots of houses not my own, and knew the drill: best behavior and nothing but. Remember, Bernie always said, you’re a—something or other, couldn’t come up with it at the moment, and also too busy sniffing my way around this nice rug in the front hall. A nice rug, but wow, had Iggy messed up on it or what? All cleaned, in human terms, meaning no messes to see—or probably even smell, in their case—but there were traces left, believe me. That rug—soft and nubbly, with a pretty cactus and sagebrush pattern—reeked!

  I sniffed my way down the hall, hearing the front door close behind me, and Mr. Parsons saying, “All clear, Edna.” Old humans have a different smell from young ones. This house had that smell, sort of like newspapers when they get old and yellow; young humans smell milky. Also there was kibble, and not far from where—

  A door opened and out came my pal, Iggy! And was he flying or what, that strange stubby tail straight up and stiff, his tongue, so weirdly long, flapping all over the place. He barreled right into me, bounced straight back, somehow crashing into a tall sort of display table—we’d once had a similar one—with a flower vase on top. The vase wobbled one way, another, and then came down with a smash, plus a splash, on account of all the water in the vase. Iggy boun
ced up, now with a long-stemmed flower in his mouth. I wanted one, too, forgetting for the moment that I still had Bernie’s flip-flop in my mouth, and then I forgot about everything, and we were motoring, me and Iggy.

  Through the door Iggy had just come through and into the kitchen. Was that Mrs. Parsons in the wheelchair and with the oxygen-breathing thing in her nose? Maybe, but we were picking up speed, me and Iggy, side by side, ears flattened by our own wind, nipping at each other every chance we got, and in situations like that it’s hard to notice every single detail. Next we were bombing upstairs—what was that in my mouth? kibble chunks? I made quick work of them—and racing along a corridor and through a bedroom, the air suddenly full of down feathers, and pivoting as one, back down the stairs, through the kitchen—hey! the flip-flop, now on Mrs. Parsons’ lap? I snatched it back up and we rounded a corner and careened into a bathroom, our claws scratching deep in the hardwood floor. My pal Iggy, best friend from way back! Was it good to be with him or what? We stuck our heads in the toilet and had lapped up just about every drop when the door slammed behind us.

  Uh-oh. We turned. Yes, the door, definitely closed; and more bad news: that round knob, impossible for me. I heard Mrs. Parsons, somewhere down the hall. “God in heaven.”

  And then much closer, just on the other side of the door, Mr. Parsons, breathing heavily: “All over, Edna. I got ’em trapped.”

  “Where?” Mrs. Parsons’s voice, kind of wavery to begin with, was more so.

  “Powder room.”

  “Oh, Daniel. My soap collection’s in there.”

  “They’re not interested in soap.”

  Soap collection? Were they talking about all those itty-bitty brightly colored round things that had gotten into the toilet somehow? The toilet which now seemed to be filling up with water again, the water rising and rising? I looked at Iggy. He looked at me. What was this? He had the flip-flop? I snatched it back.

  “What’s all that crashing around in there?” said Mrs. Parsons; I heard the squeak of her wheelchair wheels, coming closer.

  “Not sure,” said Mr. Parsons. “Why don’t you lie down in the den? You’re not supposed to get upset.”

  “Daniel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Make sense.”

  “Sorry.”

  Iggy made a play for the flip-flop. I put a stop to that.

  “Maybe if I open the door just a crack—” Mr. Parsons began.

  “Don’t be a fool. Try Bernie again.”

  Bernie? Something about Bernie? I went still. Iggy snatched the flip-flop right out of my mouth. Meanwhile, my paws were getting wet, a bit of a mystery.

  I heard little beeps of a phone being dialed. Then, after a pause, “Still not picking up,” Mr. Parsons said. “I think he’s out of town.”

  “What about calling the ex-wife?”

  “That harridan?”

  “You never used to be so judgmental, Daniel.”

  “You couldn’t be wronger.”

  There was a pause. Then Mrs. Parsons laughed, a nice, musical sort of laugh that didn’t sound like an old person’s laugh at all. “You’re something,” she said.

  “Likewise,” said Mr. Parsons. I didn’t understand these people at all.

  “How about the girlfriend?” Mrs. Parsons said. “Suzie something. She’s nice.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Not long after that, I was walking out of Iggy’s place in the company of Suzie. I was so happy to see her, although Suzie herself didn’t look all that happy. Suzie had great eyes, dark and shining like our countertops, but now they’d lost the shining part.

  “Were you a good guest, Chet?” she said.

  Guest! That was the word I’d been trying to remember. We passed the plumber coming the other way.

  Suzie’s Beetle was parked on the street, and I was all set for a ride, but instead we crossed back over to our place and went to the front door. I didn’t know why: I’d given up on Bernie being inside. Suzie knocked and called, “Bernie? Bernie? Are you in there?”

  Our house was silent.

  “But of course he’s not,” Suzie said. “Otherwise the car would be …” Sometimes when humans went silent like that, you could almost hear their voices carrying on inside their heads. She glanced at the driveway. There was nothing to see but the oil stain from the leak Bernie could never quite patch.

  Suzie slid her phone from her pocket, dialed, checked the screen. “His phone’s switched off, or …” She reached into her bag, took out a key. Suzie had a key to our place? And I didn’t know? I felt my tail drooping: security was part of my job. Suzie unlocked the door and opened it. We went inside.

  Home. Home is the hunter: something Bernie often said when we came home, even though we’d never gone hunting, not even once, and I wanted to, pretty bad. Other times he said: No place like home. Amazing, the things Bernie knew. But what kind of place was home with no Bernie?

  Suzie switched on the lights. Everything looked the same as always, maybe not quite so messy, but don’t trust me on that: Bernie and I aren’t fussy about mess, unlike Leda, say, or Neatnik Nolan, this perp we’d cuffed who refused to get into the car until we’d cleaned out all the fast-food wrappers. My tail rose back up, just at the memory of him.

  Suzie sniffed the air. She had a beautiful nose for a human, finely shaped, her two tiny nostrils exactly the same, which you hardly ever saw in humans—but that was the point: tiny. Her nose was tiny. Could she actually sniff out anything? Hard to believe. But maybe—and here came a new idea, very slippery, about to slip clear away from me—maybe Suzie was thinking that there was something sniffable in the air, if only she could sniff it. What a thought! Had to love Suzie, although in this case there didn’t happen to be anything sniffable, other than that damned mouse.

  I charged into the kitchen.

  “Chet, Chet! What’s going on?”

  And there was the little bugger, caught red-handed, whatever that meant. You don’t need hands for catching perps, a fact I knew better than practically anything: cases at the Little Detective Agency almost always ended with me grabbing a perp by the pant leg, as I couldn’t have failed to mention. And this mouse—frozen for a moment on the countertop, not much toast left—was a perp, pants or no pants.

  I tore across the kitchen, flew up to the counter, leading with my front paws. The mouse unfroze but quick, darted around the toaster, and—what was this? Disappeared into a tiny hole where the wall joined the countertop, a hole I’d never seen before? I pawed uselessly at that hole.

  “Are you really that hungry?”

  I turned—there was Suzie, looking almost angry with me, an impossibility—and lowered myself down to the floor. This had nothing to do with hunger, was all about that pilferer trying to—

  I realized, too late, that I had the toast—what was left of it— in my mouth. I tried to wag my tail and drop the toast at the same time, but had trouble with the toast part.

  Suzie knelt in front of me, looked into my eyes. Poor Suzie: she was so worried. “Where’s Bernie?” she said. “Can’t still be up at that stupid camp—you’re here and you didn’t go three hundred miles on your own.” Her eyes shifted. “Is he shacked up with that woman?”

  Suzie rose and started walking through the house. I followed her. We went from room to room, entering the office last. The office is next door to Charlie’s bedroom, where Charlie sleeps on some weekends, not enough. A basket of kid’s blocks lies in one corner of the office—the room was meant for a little sister or brother that never came along; sometimes I played with the blocks myself. The rest of the office is mostly Bernie’s books—on shelves, in stacks here and there, sometimes scattered on the floor; plus the desk; the two client chairs; the wall safe, hidden behind the picture of Niagara Falls; and the whiteboard on the wall, where Bernie figures things out. Suzie went to the desk, picked up a framed photo and gave it a close look. I knew this photo because Bernie often gazes at it, too: Bernie and Suzie laughing, their eyes on each ot
her.

  Suzie put the picture back on the desk. “Bodyguarding duty,” she said. There was a little pause, and I had the strange idea that she would lay it facedown, but she didn’t.

  She turned to the whiteboard. Normally when we were working a case, there’d be lots of writing on the whiteboard, plus arrows, boxes, and even some drawings, often big ocean waves; Bernie would spend time on those waves, getting them just right. But there was none of that now, the whiteboard almost totally white.

  “Anya,” Suzie said, pointing to a bit of writing. “No last name. She would be the babe, no doubt. Then there’s this arrow to someone named Devin. And a second arrow to a nameless guy. ‘Check out guy,’ is all it says. What guy would that be?” She made a tut-tut sound. Love the tut-tut sound—loved, in fact, a lot of those human nontalking sounds. I hoped Suzie would do some more, but she didn’t.

  Instead she sat down at the desk, picked up the phone and started calling our pals: Rick Torres, Lieutenant Stine, Cedric Booker, Otis DeWayne, Simon Berg, Mr. Singh, Nixon Panero our mechanic, Prof down at the college, and lots more, and calling places, like Max’s Memphis Ribs, Dry Gulch, Donut Heaven, asking everybody if Bernie was there or if they’d seen him. I could see the answers on her face.

  Suzie hung up the phone. “Can I picture him shacked up somewhere with this Anya person?” she said. She got a faraway look in her eye. “My mom would say he’s a man and men do what men do.” Suzie’s mom? This was new. I liked new things, but was Suzie’s mom part of the case? It was getting complicated. “On the other hand, Mom’s a four-time loser when it comes to marriage, so maybe she’s not …” Suzie turned to me. “But one thing I can’t imagine is him letting you run off and doing nothing about it.”