A Fistful of Collars

by Spencer Quinn

  “. . . and was just wondering,” he was saying to the two women, “if you were friends of hers.”

  The women nodded. They glanced at me at the exact same moment I was opening my mouth to the max, then quickly back to Bernie.

  “Had she mentioned me to either of you?” Bernie said. “Possibly about setting up a meeting?”

  One of the women shook her head. The other said, “Not me. You’re a detective?”

  “Private,” said Bernie, “formerly of Metro PD. Did she get in touch for any reason recently?”

  The women looked at each other. “Last time I spoke to her was at your baby shower,” one said.

  “Same,” said the other. She turned to Bernie. “That was back in May. What’s this all about? Are you trying to find out who killed her?”

  “Yes,” Bernie said. “I think some old friend of Carla’s, maybe going back to high school or even before, might have information.”

  “That’s not us,” said one of the women. “We both came here from Atlanta after college.”

  “But remember that ball game?” said the baby-shower woman.

  “Where Carla got those good seats?”

  “Right. What was the name of that girl—”

  “—who drank too much beer?”

  “Yeah, blonde with the ponytail. Wasn’t she an old friend of Carla’s?”

  Bernie glanced around the parking lot. “Did you see her today?”

  “No,” the women said.

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “Donna, maybe?”

  “Dinah?”

  “Dina. It was Dina, I’m sure of it.”

  “Last name?” Bernie said.

  “Sorry,” said the women. “But,” added the baby-shower woman, “didn’t she work in a bar?”

  “That’s right. She handed out those two-for-one coupons.”

  “Did she mention the name of the bar?” Bernie said.

  “Not that I recall,” said the baby-shower woman.

  “But,” said the other, “I bet I still have that coupon.”

  “Yeah?” said Bernie. “When was the ball game?”

  “Summer before last. But I’m a hoarder.”

  The baby-shower woman laughed, a tiny laugh, hardly a sound at all, but nice to hear. Her friend unlocked the nearest car, opened the glove box. Lots of stuff came spilling out. She sorted through it. “Here we go,” she said, and handed Bernie a slip of paper.

  NINETEEN

  Let’s eat,” Bernie said. We were back in the car, Suzie riding shotgun, me on the shelf, not good, but I wasn’t thinking about that. Or anything, really. All I knew was that the farther we got from that hole in the ground, the better I felt.

  Suzie glanced at Bernie, eyebrows rising, like he’d surprised her. “You feel hungry?” she said.

  “Not at all,” said Bernie. “But one thing I’ve been learning in this job”—Did his head make a quick little motion in my direction?—“is you’ve got to keep doing the normal routine.”

  Suzie thought that over, nodded her head. But what was there to think over? Eating had to be the most normal move out there, maybe even better than normal. As for Bernie not being hungry, that was the only part I didn’t get. I myself was famished. What had I eaten so far today? I couldn’t remember a single morsel, except possibly a bit of kibble, and maybe a biscuit on top of that. A Rover and Company biscuit, yes, best biscuits in the Valley—and wasn’t it about time for a revisit to their test kitchen?—but this biscuit, even if there’d been one, had been on the smallish side. Biscuits came in different sizes. What was the point of that?

  “How does Burger Heaven sound?” Bernie said. “Chet—easy!”

  Here’s a valuable piece of information, something I never forget: there’s more than one Burger Heaven in the Valley. In fact, there are lots. What a business plan! Suppose, for example, that the Little Detective Agency . . . something or other, a great thought turning into a dust pile just before I could get there. Sometimes at night when I fall asleep there are several of those dust piles in my mind; then, when I wake up, presto!—as Bernie once said when he thought he had the garage door opener all fixed, and the chain did work perfectly after that, so maybe the door falling off wasn’t important—all dust piles gone, and back to feeling tip-top.

  In no time at all, we’d pulled into a Burger Heaven. This was a particularly nice one, with a smooth, recently paved parking lot and fresh-painted white lines—those smells, tar and paint, sharpening my appetite like you wouldn’t believe, plus a pretty yellow plastic picnic table, which was where we sat. Bernie had a cheeseburger, Suzie a chicken salad, and me a plain burger with no bun. Trucks roared by on the freeway, which was raised up above us in this part of town. I loved picnics.

  “. . . didn’t quite catch that,” Bernie said, sipping his soda. “Can you speak up?”

  Suzie raised her voice. “I said I want to help.”

  “When do you have to be back in DC?” Bernie said.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  That Bernie! Right every time, just about. Not worrying was the best plan there was.

  “. . . meaning the next step,” he was saying, “is paying a visit to—” He took out the bar coupon. “—Red Devil’s Bar and Grill.”

  Suzie shook her head. “I want to help,” she said. “Not tag along.”

  What did that mean? Not too sure. Bernie and I tagged along with each other all the time, no problem. I polished off what was left of my burger, then did a bit of exploring under the table. And what do you know? An onion ring, perfectly round, completely undamaged, even still slightly warm.

  Up above, Bernie said, “Tell you what. How about looking into that flower warehouse?”

  “For what?”

  “Any connection it might have to Carla.”

  “How about a connection to Thad Perry?” Suzie said.

  “Yeah,” said Bernie. “That, too.”

  Then came a silence. Under the table, Suzie moved her foot, resting it on top of Bernie’s. I tried not to do anything about that for the longest time.

  We’ve got bars out the yingyang in the Valley. You name it. For bikers, how about Greasy Steve’s? Steve’s a buddy, and yes, pretty greasy, a plus as far as I’m concerned. Greasy Steve’s is at one end, sort of the watch-your-back end of Valley bars. At the other end is Amadeus, where Bernie started laughing when he saw the bill. He figured someone was playing a trick on him, and then—maybe he’d had one too many, but Bernie with one too many in him is even Bernier than ever, if you get what I mean, although I’m not sure I do, and in any case I don’t want to remember what happened next, the part with the maître d’ who turned out to be wearing a wig and all that, a wig that came from Paris and got added to the bill, which made Bernie laugh harder, and then came the bouncers. The point is that Red Devil’s was somewhere in between those two ends, maybe a bit closer to Greasy Steve’s.

  We walked in, Bernie taking off his funeral tie and stuffing it in his pocket. The floor felt sticky under my paws. Yes, closer to Greasy Steve’s. Red Devil’s had a few rickety-looking tables and a pool table on one side—don’t get me started on pool balls, so hard and slippery, plus the sticks were way too long for any kind of fun play, although they made good weapons in the hands of a certain sort of human, Jumbo Ogletree, for example, now breaking rocks in the hot sun—and on the other side a long bar with a mirror and lots of bottles.

  There was no one inside except the bartender, a woman with not too many tattoos for a bartender, her blond hair, the faded kind, in a ponytail. She looked up from a magazine as we approached.

  “Is that a working or therapy dog?” she said.

  “Yes,” Bernie told her.

  “That’s the only kind management allows in here.”

  “I understand.”

  “How come he’s not wearing his ID vest, you know, that says therapy or working right on it?”

  “Chet’s underco
ver,” Bernie said.

  No problem. We’d worked undercover before, including once when Bernie pretended to be blind. I’d had some seeing-eye training—this was before my days in K-9 school—seeing-eye training that ended a bit the way K-9 school ended, now that I thought about it, but I didn’t want to think about it, the point being I could work undercover, although Bernie didn’t show any signs of blindness at the moment—no stick, no shades—probably a good thing since that other time he’d pretended so well he fell off the balcony at the Ritz. Bernie: to the max. You just had to love him.

  “That’s some kind of joke, right?” the bartender said.

  “Not if you didn’t laugh,” Bernie said.

  The bartender gave him a long look, then said, “What can I get you?”

  Bernie laid the coupon on the bar.

  She squinted down at it. Humans never looked their best when squinting, and she was no different. “That’s no good anymore,” she said. “It’s from, like, years ago.”

  “Me, too,” Bernie said.

  Now the bartender did laugh, kind of a surprise. “Nice try,” she said, and ripped up the coupon, tossing the scraps behind her.

  Bernie laughed, too. He took out some money. “What’s on tap?”

  “I’m partial to the Andersonville,” said the bartender.

  “Sold,” said Bernie. “And one for you.”

  “Strictly against the rules,” she said. But she filled two glasses from the tap.

  “Cheers,” said Bernie. I always liked when he said that: just saying it made him seem more cheerful every time—you could tell from his eyes. “I’m Bernie Little.”

  “Dina,” said the bartender.

  “Nice meeting you, Dina,” Bernie said. “And this is Chet.”

  “Short for Chester?” said the bartender.

  Whoa! Not the first time I’d heard that one. Why couldn’t I be Chet, pure and simple?

  “Just Chet,” Bernie said.

  “Nice name,” said Dina.

  “Agreed,” Bernie said. “Can’t take any credit—he had it when I got him.”

  News to me, and of an interesting kind. Did it mean that someone else . . . A thought rose quickly in my mind, zipping through the clear part into the fuzzy part and then up, up, and out of reach, just like every bird I’d ever chased.

  Bernie took a sip of beer. Dina tilted back her glass, drained quite a lot of it. He watched her over the rim of his own glass.

  “You a baseball fan?” Bernie said.

  “That’s a funny question,” Dina told him. “Not really.”

  “How come?”

  “You some kind of sports nut?”

  Bernie thought about that. “Maybe a bit,” he said. “Ever go to a game?”

  “In my life? Sure. Why—you got tickets?”

  “That’s a bit of a problem at the moment,” Bernie said. “Something happened to my source.”

  “Oh?” said Dina. “Like what?”

  “She was a reporter,” Bernie said. “They’re always getting tickets.”

  Dina, raising her glass to drink, paused in mid-motion; a tiny wave of beer rose up and almost slopped over. Bernie saw it, too: I felt a little change in him, a change I’d felt before, hard to describe. But I knew what it meant. We were starting to cook. Not actual cooking, of course, and I wasn’t even hungry, what with our picnic at Burger Heaven being so recent; although Cheetos were nearby—out of sight just on the other side of the bar, very close to my nose—and who didn’t always have room for a Cheeto?

  “A reporter for the Trib,” Bernie went on. “Her name was Carla Wilhite.”

  Dina lowered her glass and set it on the bar, slow and careful. Then she raised her eyes up to Bernie’s, eyes that hadn’t really been friendly from the get-go and now were cold.

  “A lot of her friends showed up at the funeral,” Bernie said. “Not you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dina said.

  Bernie took out our business card, laid it on the counter. This was our new business card, the one with the flower, designed by Suzie. We were living with it for now.

  Dina glanced down at the card, said nothing. For a moment, I thought she was going to rip it up, just like the coupon, but she didn’t.

  “Carla was a friend,” Bernie said. “So we’ll never stop working on this, not until we nail the killer and anyone else involved, no matter how peripheral.”

  Dina met Bernie’s gaze, her face real stony. Then she crossed her arms. Humans sometimes did that when they weren’t going to say one more word.

  I barked, one of those barks that just sort of come out on their own, a loud, harsh bark. Did it take everyone by surprise? Certainly Dina, who jumped back a bit; and also me.

  Dina didn’t look so stony anymore. She put her hand over her chest. “Oh, God, this is so awful. I couldn’t believe it when I found out.”

  “How did you find out?” Bernie said.

  “On the news,” Dina said. “We were friends when we were little, in the same class.”

  “So how come you weren’t at the funeral?”

  Dina opened her mouth, closed it, tried again. “I wimped out,” she said. “I just can’t stand funerals.”

  Bernie didn’t say anything. Silence: one of those silences that seemed to grow, if that makes any sense, probably not, but the point is most humans can’t let them go on for long.

  “And also our friendship was only for a year or so,” Dina said. “Carla was real smart. She got into one of those magnet schools on the west side and we lost touch. I haven’t seen her in years and years.”

  “Except for the ball game,” Bernie said. “Where you handed out the coupons.”

  Dina glanced down at the floor, where she’d tossed the scraps. “Right, the ball game. A total coincidence—she was doing a story on the microbrewery on Airport Road and I was pouring. She had these box seats—from one of the radio stations, I think. I went. We had fun. And that was the last time I saw her.”

  “So that must have been when you told her about Thad Perry,” Bernie said.

  “Thad Perry?” Dina said. Although she didn’t say it right away, more after a moment or two, the time it took her to lick her lips. “The movie star?”

  Bernie nodded. He was a great nodder, if that hasn’t come up yet, had all kinds of different nods. I’d seen this nod before—not a friendly kind—mostly when we were dealing with perps.

  “I don’t understand,” Dina said.

  “Dina,” Bernie said. “Maybe you weren’t listening. We’re going to roll up every single person involved in Carla’s death, no exceptions.”

  “Bullying won’t make me understand,” Dina said.

  Bernie’s voice rose. “You think this is bullying?”

  Dina blinked as though tears might be on the way, but her eyes stayed dry. “You’re making a mistake,” she said.

  Bernie spoke more quietly. “Are you saying you didn’t tell Carla at the ball game—or at any other time—that Thad Perry was from the Valley?”

  Dina spread her hands. “My God, no.”

  “Or had spent time here?”

  “No,” Dina said. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  Bernie tilted up his chin, gave her a long look from that angle. I loved when he did that, although what it was all about remained a bit of a mystery.

  “How about the old Flower Mart in Vista City?” Bernie said.

  “What—what about it?”

  “That’s where we found Carla.”

  “I know. It was on the news.”

  “And?”

  “And?” said Dina.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Isn’t it closed down?”

  “Yes. What else?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing else. I’ve never been there in my life.”

  “Did Carla have any association with it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Bernie took a step back. “Okay, Dina,
” he said. “You’ve got my card,” He made a little clicking sound in his mouth, meaning we were hitting the road. The interview was over? Kind of a surprise, but Bernie was a great interviewer, one of the best things we had going for us at the Little Detective Agency. I brought other things to the table.

  We moved to the door. Bernie stopped and turned, so I did, too. Dina was watching us.

  “The name Ramon mean anything to you?” he said.

  “Not especially,” said Dina. “It’s just a name.”

  We walked out of Red Devil’s, took a few steps and stopped again, this time looking back through the window. Dina was grabbing a bottle off the shelf.

  TWENTY

  We were pulling away from Red Devil’s when the phone beeped. Bernie had tried some ring tones—the Foggy Mountain Breakdown banjo thing was his favorite for a long time, the longest time, in fact—but now we were back to the beep.

  “Bernie!” Leda said. “Charlie got his call!”

  “Call?” Bernie said.

  “To the set! Come on, Bernie—don’t sound so out of it all the time.”

  There’s a red button Bernie presses when it’s time to end a call. His finger shifted toward it.

  “Aren’t you excited?” Leda said.

  “Excited?”

  “For Charlie! He’s your son.”

  “Goddamn it, Leda, I know he’s—” Bernie shut himself up, got a grip. When he does that, his jaw bulges like he’s lifting something heavy; once in a while, something jumps or twitches in the side of his neck, too. Like now, both together, bulge and twitch. I never liked seeing both together. Press the red button, Bernie, press the red button! But he didn’t. Instead, he lowered his voice and said, “Is Charlie excited about it?”

  “He’s practicing his signature for when he has to sign the contract,” Leda said.

  Bernie smiled. “Okay,” he said. “See you there.”

  He pressed the red button, way too late as far as I was concerned, and turned to me. “Onetime thing—can’t see the harm.”

  Bernie was quiet all the way home, and then, just as we turned onto Mesquite Road, he said, “We were terrible together, Leda and I, yet somehow we produced a kid like Charlie. Does that mean we weren’t so terrible after all?”