Oh. My leg. Forgot about it completely. But—not too terrible. I went over to the couch, snapped up the matches, brought them outside.
“Chet! You’re not supposed to be—Hey. What’ve you got there?” He took the matches. “Good boy.” He gave me a pat. We sat outside, Bernie smoking, me downwind with blue smoke winding its way to my nose, and night falling. He took a deep drag. “Want to know what I think?”
I did.
“We should reconstruct that first night, the nondisappearance, find out everything that happened, where she went, who with, why, the whole ball of wax.” That was hard to follow, and I kind of gave up, but then the ending grabbed my attention. I knew what a ball was, of course, one of my favorite things, and wax I also knew, on account of Leda being a candle lover, but putting them together? A wax ball: I could almost taste it. And was salivating a bit when I grew aware that Bernie was still talking.
“So what have we got, hard facts?”
A wax ball would probably be kind of soft, unlike our lacrosse ball, say, which made my teeth feel great every time I gave it a good hard squeeze. Other than that, I had nothing to offer.
Bernie took a deep drag, let smoke drift out through his nostrils. Ah. This was nice and relaxing, out on the patio. And what was that, lying under the barbecue, with a tiny end sticking out? Could it be? A possible bonus to this fine, fine evening? Yes, a forgotten hot dog, burned almost black, just the way I like it, although the name “hot dog” itself had never made sense to me. When was our last cookout? No idea. Was there a fly or two already at work on the thing? Maybe, but not for long. I gobbled it up. Mmmm. We were living the dream, me and Bernie.
“Two hard facts, as far as I can see,” said Bernie. “One—a young male appears at the line to the movie, and Madison leaves with him. Two—she tells her mother she got a ride home with Tim, a senior at her high school. Notice, Chet, I don’t state as a fact that was how she actually got home.”
I noticed. But what, if anything, he was driving at remained unclear, and besides, I was suddenly feeling a little pukey.
Bernie took another drag, tapped some ashes off his cigarette. They made a tiny whirlwind in the breeze. And what a breeze, coming off the canyon. So many smells, I’d never be able to separate them all, but one thing was sure: The fat javelina was close by. That brought bacon thoughts to my mind, and the next thing I knew, I was in the corner of the patio, coughing up the hot dog.
Bernie ran over. “Chet. You all right, boy?” He ran his hand lightly over my stitches. “Not hurting inside, are you? Maybe we should go to the vet.”
The vet? No way. Just look down, Bernie, you’ll see the hot dog, figure it out. But when I looked down myself, I realized there was nothing hot dog–like left to see, so I wagged my tail extra hard, out of ideas.
Bernie got the point, or sort of. “Good man.” He turned the tap on the garden hose, sprayed the corner of the patio. The garden hose always revved me up; Bernie sprayed me a bit, too, so refreshing. I shook off. He toweled me down. “What I’m trying to say,” he said, “is let’s start by testing the assumption that it was Tim the archer who approached Madison in the line at the movies.”
Fine by me. We went inside. Bernie brewed some tea. I had a chew strip. He found a home number for Tim the archer and called it. No answer. I heard a car drive slowly by.
No school, Bernie said—it was Saturday. Okeydoke. They were all the same to me. First thing in the morning, we got on the freeway, drove past the North Canyon Mall, took an exit that led to a development a lot like ours, except there was no canyon in back, just more and more houses. We stopped in front of one. It had a basketball hoop by the driveway and a grass lawn. A quick frown passed over Bernie’s face: He had a thing about grass lawns in the desert. We didn’t have even a shred of grass on our lawn. Everything was brown and spiky, except in spring.
Bernie opened the door for me. I got out, felt only the slightest twinge in my shoulder, almost nothing. I was all better! We walked to the front door, me actually trotting a bit. Bernie knocked.
The door opened. A little girl in pajamas looked out. “I’m up,” she said. She was holding a stuffed animal of some kind; in fact, could it possibly be a . . . ? Yes. This was something I never understood. I had no desire at all to pal around with a stuffed human.
“Is Tim at home?” Bernie said.
“Timmy sleeps till all hours,” the girl said. “Your doggie’s big.” She stuck her thumb in her mouth. If I’d had one, I’d have done the same every chance I got.
“His name’s Chet,” Bernie said. “He likes kids.”
“Can I pat him?”
“Sure.”
She reached out, touched my nose, so lightly I could hardly feel it. “His nose is cold.”
From inside the house came a woman’s voice. “Kayleigh? What are you—” The woman appeared. She wore a robe and had curlers in her hair and some green stuff smeared all over her face.
“Chet!”
Oops. I caught myself growling. Very bad, but she was scary.
The woman grabbed Kayleigh, pulled her back. “What’s going on?” she said.
“The name’s Bernie Little.” He handed her his card. “I’m a licensed private investigator, and I’d like to speak to Tim.”
“A licensed private investigator? My son, Tim?”
“Yes, ma’am. Tim Fletcher, if I’ve got the right address. There’s a little problem at Heavenly Valley High, and your son may have useful information.”
“Problem? Tim hasn’t mentioned any problems.”
“He sleeps till all hours,” said Kayleigh.
“Kayleigh,” said her mother, “please go to your room for a few minutes.”
“Don’t wanna.”
“I’m not suggesting this problem has any direct connection to Tim,” Bernie said. “It relates to the archery club.”
“Did someone get shot?” the woman said. “With an arrow?”
Kayleigh’s eyes opened wide.
“Not to my knowledge,” Bernie said. “Not yet. But we wouldn’t want anything like that to happen, would we? Think of the liability.”
The woman bit her lip. Bernie was great at making people do that, women especially. It always meant we were about to get somewhere. “I’ll wake him,” she said. “You can wait . . .” She glanced around, maybe about to tell us to wait outside, but at that moment a landscaper’s truck parked across the street. “. . . in the kitchen.” We started inside. “Just a minute. The dog’s coming inside?”
“He’s a trained police dog,” Bernie said.
“Chet,” said Kayleigh. “His nose is cold.”
We waited in the kitchen, Bernie at the table, me by the window. I heard voices upstairs. Bernie rose, opened the fridge, took a quick peek inside. That was Bernie, filling in the blanks. He was back in his place when the woman returned, trailed by a tall kid wearing boxers and a T-shirt; he had rumpled hair and puffy eyes.
“My son, Tim,” the woman said.
“Hi, Tim,” said Bernie. “Take a seat.”
Tim took a seat. We’d gone through a stage, me and Bernie, of watching zombie movies. Tim moved like that. He noticed me and looked puzzled.
“Mrs. Fletcher?” said Bernie. “It would be helpful if we could talk to Tim alone. It’ll only be a few minutes.”
“Alone? Why?”
“Standard procedure.” As he said that, he made a helpless shrug, like: Stupid, I know, but what can I do? We’re stuck in this together. Bernie could have been a great actor; at least his mother thought so. I’ll get to her later if I have a chance.
The woman blinked, started backing out of the room. “Call if you need me, Tim.”
Tim grunted something. He gave off strong smells. I kept my distance.
Bernie gave Tim a smile, the kind that looked friendly if you didn’t know him. “I see your mom brewed coffee. Want some?”
Tim shook his head.
“That your Mustang in the driveway?”
&nb
sp; Tim grunted.
“Cool car. I had one of those when I was about your age. What are you—a senior?”
Tim nodded.
“At Heavenly Valley High?”
Another nod.
“Got plans for next year?”
Tim shrugged.
“You must be sick of hearing that question.”
Tim gazed at Bernie, then spoke his first words. “I got accepted early at U of A.”
“Congratulations,” Bernie said. “Fine school. You’re looking at four of the best years of your life, I guarantee it—as long as you stay out of jail.”
Tim’s eyes, suddenly less sleepy, opened wide, just like his little sister’s, and out came another word. “Huh?”
“And the only way you can get in trouble on that account would be by holding back now.”
“Holding back, like . . . ?”
“Let’s start with last Wednesday night, when you drove Madison Chambliss home.”
Tim’s mouth opened, stayed that way for a moment.
“That was in the Mustang, I assume.”
Tim shook his head. He had sleepy seeds in the corners of his eyes. I get them, too.
“Some other car?” Bernie said.
“No,” said Tim. “No car.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Like, I didn’t drive her home.”
Bernie sighed. He was a great sigher, had different sighs for different occasions. “The problem is, she said you did.”
“I didn’t. What’s going on? I thought this was about the archery club.”
Bernie sat back in his chair. It creaked under him. “Early acceptance is the way to go with college these days, no question,” he said. “The only drawback is that it’s conditional, as you probably know, on keeping up your grades. And other things, too, such as good behavior. A letter to the admissions department about noncooperation in a missing-persons case might make them rethink.”
“Missing-persons case?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Who’s missing?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“See if you can figure it out.”
Tim’s eyes moved sideways. Thoughts pulled at human eyes like that. Bernie waited. Me, too.
“Maddy?” Tim said.
“Got it in one,” Bernie said. “She hasn’t been home in almost two days now. Know anything about that?”
“No. I swear.”
“Tell me about your relationship with her.”
“We don’t have a relationship. We’re friends.”
“Friends? What about the age difference?”
“She’s a cool kid.”
“In what way?”
“You know, different.”
“Different how?”
“Smart. Funny.”
His mother poked her head in the doorway. No more curlers, no more green stuff on her face, but there was still something scary about her. “Everything all right, Timmy?”
She didn’t scare Tim. “Go away, Mom.”
She shrank back, out of sight.
“And close the door.”
The door closed.
Tim gazed at Bernie. Bernie tilted his head up and raised one eyebrow. That was his encouraging face. It meant: Go! Tim lowered his voice. “Maddy told me not to say anything. But if she’s really missing . . .”
“Not to say anything about what?”
“Driving her home.”
“So you did?”
Tim nodded.
“From the movies?”
Tim shook his head. “She didn’t go to the movies—which was, you know, why her mom couldn’t find out.”
“Where did she go?”
Tim rubbed his face, started looking less like a zombie. “She ran into somebody, I think at the mall. Maybe she was planning to go to the movies, something like that.”
“Who did she run into?”
Tim looked down at the floor. I did, too, and noticed a few Cheerios under the table.
“Tim?” said Bernie. “Look at me.”
Tim looked at him.
“When people go missing, they usually get found quickly, or not at all.”
Tim bit his lip, actually chewed on it.
“We’re already getting past the quickly stage.”
Tim took a deep breath. “Ruben Ramirez,” he said.
“Who’s he?”
“This kid.”
“A student at Heavenly Valley?”
“Used to be. He dropped out. Has his own place.”
“What does he do?”
Tim looked down again. “Not sure.”
“But if you had to guess.”
Tim didn’t answer.
“How about I take a swing at it?” Bernie said. “He deals pot.”
Tim looked up, surprise all over his face.
“Did he bring her to his place?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is it?”
“Not sure. Over in Modena, past that racetrack.”
“Not sure?” said Bernie. “Didn’t you pick her up from there?”
“No. She called me, asked me to come get her at this convenience store on Almonte.”
“Next to a Getty station?”
“That’s the one.”
“Was she alone?”
“Yeah.”
“So you picked her up and drove her home?”
“Yeah.”
“What did she say?”
“Not much.”
“Did she explain why she left Ruben’s?”
Tim took another deep breath. “He came on to her.”
“And then?”
Tim shrugged. “She left. Went to the convenience store.”
“On foot?”
“Must’ve been.”
“That’s a bad area.”
“Yeah.”
“What was her mood like?”
“Hard to tell.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“Just not to say anything.”
“How upset was she?”
“Not too much.”
“Was she stoned?”
“Maybe a bit.”
Bernie rose. Me, too. Enough of this chitchat. It was time to crack this case the way we usually do, with me sniffing out the perp. Bernie handed Tim his card. “Anything new comes up, anything you forgot, call me right away.”
Tim nodded. “You think Ruben’s like, um . . .”
“We’re going to find out.”
We left. On the way, I made a quick detour under the kitchen table, scarfed up the Cheerios. The honey-coated kind: my favorite.
seven
Now entering Modena,” said Bernie, honking at a low-rider car that swerved in front of us. “What we’ve got here is waste-land, pure and simple.”
Wasteland smelled good to me: grease and nothing but, all kinds of grease—pizza grease, car grease, french-fry grease, human-hair grease. I was sitting up as tall as I could in the shotgun seat, taking in everything, my nose quivering. We were in a great mood, me and Bernie, on the job—not some horrible divorce case but our specialty, missing persons. Bernie was wearing one of his best Hawaiian shirts, the one with the martini-glass pattern. I wore my brown leather collar with the silver tags; I’ve also got a black one for dress-up.
“You know what this used to be, Chet? And not so long ago? Ranchland, as far as the eye could see.”
We’d gone to a ranch once, me, Bernie, Charlie, Leda. Don’t get me started on horses—prima donnas, every one, dim and dangerous at the same time. I preferred Modena just like this, greasy and horseless.
We turned onto a side street, the pavement all cracked and full of potholes, the houses on either side small and worn-down. Bernie stopped in front of one of them. He unlocked the glove box, took out the gun, a .38 special, stuck it in his pocket. That didn’t happen often.
“Just a precaution,” Bernie said. “Let’s go.”
I h
opped out.
“All better, huh?” said Bernie.
All better? All better from what? What was he talking—Oh yeah. I gave myself a shake. Bernie opened the gate. We crossed a dirt yard with a dusty couch in the middle of it, rusty springs sticking out here and there. Bernie stepped up to the door and knocked.
A voice sounded inside. “That you, Decko?”
“Yeah,” said Bernie.
The door opened. A guy looked out, a young guy, and huge. His eyes, narrow to begin with, narrowed some more. A real big guy with slitty eyes: I didn’t like him, not one little bit.
“You’re not Decko,” he said.
“Very acute,” said Bernie. I missed that one: He was calling this guy cute? That wasn’t Bernie. “I’m a private investigator,” Bernie was saying. He held out his card. The guy didn’t even glance at it. “I’m looking for a former Heavenly Valley High student named Ruben Ramirez.”
“Never heard of him.” The guy started to close the door. Bernie stuck his foot inside. I’d seen that move before, one of Bernie’s best.
“No?” Bernie said. “What’s the RR stand for?”
“Huh?”
“On the gold chain around your neck,” Bernie said. “That RR.”
The guy fingered the chain, the thick, heavy kind. His lips moved, but he couldn’t come up with anything.
“How about Roy Rogers?” Bernie said. “There’s one right around the corner.”
“Huh?” the guy said again. I was a little confused myself.
“Tell you what, Ruben,” Bernie said. “Now we’ve got the introductions out of the way, how about we go inside, sit down, sort this all out?”
“Sort what out?” said Ruben.
“This case we’re working on.”
“Don’t know nothin’ about it.”
“A missing-persons case,” Bernie said. He had a way of just plowing forward, a way Leda had never liked. But I did. “Turns out the missing person’s a friend of yours, a Heavenly Valley sophomore named Madison Chambliss.”
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