Scents and Sensibility (15 page)

“Sure,” said Munchy, turning to his keyboard. “Is this kosher?”

“Don't see why not,” Bernie said, which was great news, kosher chicken being the best of all possible chickens. True, I hadn't quite polished off the roast beef sandwich, but isn't it nice to have something to look forward to?

“Here we go,” Munchy said, tapping the screen with his soft, plump finger. “Officer up at Indian Hills.”

“Name?”

“Mickles.”

“Mickles?” Bernie said, leaning closer to the screen.

“First name Garwood, eight years on the force. Some relation to Brick Mickles, detective captain up there, as I recall. Nephew, maybe?” He turned to Bernie. “You know Brick?” Then something changed in Munchy's eyes, like they kind of went private, and he looked away.

A
ny ideas?” Bernie said as we drove away from the East Arroyo precinct house.

Ideas? Since when were ideas my department? I brought other things to the table, such as grabbing perps by the pant leg. Did I expect Bernie to do the pant leg grabbing? No. But if he wanted ideas, then I'd get cracking on that, and pronto. I got cracking. No ideas came. I tried harder, tried so hard I felt this pressure in my head, right at the top part, quite unpleasant. I put a stop to that, tried to think of some other way to come up with ideas. Even that—trying to think of how to come up with ideas—brought the unpleasant pressure.

“What are you doing?” Bernie said, glancing over.

Me? Not a thing.

“Showing a lot of upper front gum line there, big guy. And your nose is all wrinkled up.”

Oh, no! How embarrassing! A real good shake was the only way to get out of this, not so easy in the shotgun seat, but I gave it my best shot. We swerved across the yellow line and over to the wrong side of the road, not sure why. Bernie was normally the best wheelman in the Valley.

“Christ Almighty!” he jerked the wheel, got us back where we belonged. He gave me a look—couldn't call it annoyed; no way Bernie could ever be annoyed with me—so it had to be something else, like maybe he was tired. Bernie needs his sleep.

“Let's go home,” he said. “Sleep on it.”

Whoa! I was right about Bernie being tired, of course, but this particular sleep was going to be a first, and maybe even not that safe, on account of the roof of our house being the slanting kind. Why couldn't we just sleep inside, like normal? I came very close to giving myself another shake, thought better of it, curled up on the seat.

We went home, walked through the house and out onto the patio. And there was Iggy, just where we'd left him, although you couldn't say things were right, exactly.

“Oh, Iggy!”

At which point I had an idea after all, zooming in from out of the blue. No effort on my part, no unpleasant head pressure, just a big and simple idea: I wanted Iggy back at his place, and fast. My best pal, yes, but living together? A bad idea: I never would have guessed how bad. Now I knew.

Some time later, we all lay down for the night—Bernie in his bed; me lying in the hall by the front door, the sounds and smells of the night leaking in through the crack underneath; and Iggy right beside me, for some reason. Whenever I tried to roll away, he rolled away with me. The difference was he slept more deeply than any member of the nation within I'd ever known, while I was up practically the whole night. At least we weren't on the roof. All in all, no complaints.

•  •  •

“Well, well,” Bernie said first thing next morning, Iggy bounding toward him across the hall, “who's looking chipper?”

And next he was giving Iggy a nice pat. As I got my paws under me and slowly rose—also trying not to yawn, which never works—I thought of wood chippers, no telling why. Iggy and I go way back, if I haven't mentioned that already.

I was on my way to Bernie and Iggy, all set to make some space between them, enough for me and no one else, when there was a knock at the door. A knock at the door and I hadn't heard anyone coming? What with security being part of my job? I whirled around and barked at the door, yes, savagely, like I was going to take it apart, and then take apart whoever was out there, and then—

“Chet! What the hell!” Bernie said. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, huh, Iggy?”

Oh, boy. Just oh, boy. Let's leave it at that.

Knock knock
.

“Chet! Sit!”

Things were coming at me from every direction. This was impossible. I felt like I was about to—

“Chet?”

I sat. And felt quite a lot better right away. Even well rested! Don't ask me to explain.

Bernie opened the front door. Without warning, Iggy took off and darted out—but no. Just when you might have thought that it was too late and the little bugger was gone, possibly for good, Bernie—without even looking!—reached down and grabbed his collar. Iggy's stubby legs kept churning, but he went nowhere, a very pleasant sight I could have watched all day.

But meanwhile we had a visitor: a woman of what Bernie calls the no-nonsense type, wearing a white nurse's outfit. Bernie scooped up Iggy and—and held him in one arm, like a baby. Iggy wriggled wildly. Bernie held him with two arms.

“Yes?” he said.

“Mr. Little?” said the nurse.

“Call me Bernie,” Bernie said.

“I'm from Valley General. Mrs. Parsons has come home and I'm getting her settled.”

“She's well enough to come home?” Bernie said. “That's good news.”

“I'm with the hospice department.”

“Oh.”

“Apparently there's a dog named Iggy?”

Bernie—how to put it? Brandished, maybe? Bernie brandished the little guy.

“Not the other one?” the nurse said, looking past Iggy to me.

“Nope,” Bernie said. “That's Chet.” I sat up nice and straight, a total pro.

The nurse's gaze returned to the little wriggler. “I see,” she said. “In any case, Mrs. Parsons would like him to come home.”

Chet the Jet catches a break!

“Is she able to take care of him?” Bernie said.

Bernie! Don't argue!

•  •  •

The Parsonses had a little room at the back of the house they called a den. “A time machine back to 1956,” Bernie called it, not sure why. But that was where we found Mrs. Parsons, sitting in an armchair, feet up on a stool, a big smile on her face at the sight of Iggy. Let's not go into their reunion, and all that tail wagging and slobbering, and the nurse cleaning up a bit of broken bric-a-brac before she left, and get right to when things had calmed down, Iggy fast asleep on the footstool, Mrs. Parsons sipping tea Bernie made her, Bernie on the little couch opposite the easy chair, and me beside Bernie, working on a special chewy Mrs. Parsons might or might not have bought for Iggy at the hospital gift shop.

“Any news on Daniel?” Bernie said.

Mrs. Parsons smiled. A big smile, although it sagged to one side in an odd kind of way. “He's coming home, too! Maybe as soon as next week.”

“Wonderful,” said Bernie.

“We're very lucky,” said Mrs. Parsons. “From appearances, would you take us for the type to afford hospice-at-home privileges? I'll say not! But Daniel was always a big believer in insurance. We have the best.” Mrs. Parsons took a sip of tea, her pinky finger sticking out to the side, a sight I never tire of. She studied Bernie over the rim of her cup. “I trust you're well set up in that regard,” she said. “What with your line of work and all.”

“Um,” Bernie said, followed by, “uh.”

He glanced over at me this way he sometimes does, like he wanted a little input on my part. I shifted the chewy to the other side of my mouth, all the input I could come up with on short notice. I hoped it was helpful.

“Speaking of my work,” Bernie said, “I wonder if you're up to talking a bit about Billy?”

Mrs. Parsons's pinky finger folded back up. “Our son Billy?”

“Yes. But not if you're . . .”

“Oh, that's all right,” said Mrs. Parsons. “Did you know he gave us a saguaro? A truly grand one. The stately kind, if you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

Mrs. Parsons twisted around to the side table, tried to place the cup on the saucer. The saucer and cup tilted, and almost went over the side, then righted themselves, a little tea slopping over the side of the cup, unnoticed by Mrs. Parsons. “But now it's gone for some reason. I never got to see it, except on his phone.”

“He showed you a picture when he came to the hospital?”

“That's right. You're easy to talk to, Bernie. Like a river flowing right along. Has anyone told you that?”

“Never.”

“Of course, all talents can be used for good or evil,” Mrs. Parsons said.

Bernie nodded one of his nods.

“But I had a lovely visit with Billy,” Mrs. Parsons said. “That's the main thing. All those parental clichés—like he's still my little baby—are true. All the more so since he's our only child.” She smiled that lopsided smile again, although at no one in particular. “He remembers the polka-dot socks.”

“Are you a grandparent as well as a parent?” Bernie said.

Mrs. Parsons's smile sagged at both ends and then vanished. “Didn't Dan tell you? Billy's been . . . away for some time. He . . . wasn't in a position to enjoy the normal things in life.”

“I didn't get many details,” Bernie said. “Does the name Dee Branch mean anything to you?”

“I—I'd have to think,” said Mrs. Parsons. One of her hands reached over for the teacup, felt around, didn't find it. The human hand has a mind of its own, kind of like the tail in the nation within. At that moment, I was struck by maybe the most amazing thought of my whole life: What if I had two tails? Wow! That stopped me in my tracks, even though I wasn't going anywhere. I even forgot about my chewy, perhaps just letting it dangle out the side of my mouth. “Should it?” Mrs. Parsons went on.

“Not necessarily,” Bernie said.

“I hear a ‘but.' ”

Funny. I did not, and there was no way Mrs. Parsons had better hearing than me. For one thing, she was human. Second, she was old. Old humans say, “What? What?” and cup their ears with their hands, making other humans repeat things—like “a little ground pepper on that?”—over and over and over, reminding me of certain bad dreams I've had. And what's with pepper? But forget all that. There were no buts: that's the point.

“No buts,” Bernie said. No surprise there. “It's just that I'm concerned about Billy.”

“Oh?” said Mrs. Parsons. “In what way?”

“It starts with the saguaro,” Bernie said. “Turns out it was illegally transplanted from a protected area near Rincon City. That's why the state came and took it away.”

Mrs. Parsons's eyes got all faraway. Normally, the eyes of old people look just as old as the rest of them, but not always, and Mrs. Parsons belonged to this second group. Her eyes, if you just concentrated on them and screened out the rest of her face, looked kind of young. “Are you saying he dealt with a dishonest landscaper?” Mrs. Parsons said.

“That's one possibility,” Bernie said.

“There are others?”

“None that I know of.”

Her gaze went to Bernie, sharp and quick. “But you implied there were.”

Bernie smiled. “My mistake. Let's put it like this. Daniel did mention that Billy's on parole, and I've seen it revoked for some real Mickey Mouse stuff.”

Now we had mice in the picture? If so, they weren't close by, making the Parsonses' house unusual, in my experience. I've caught a few mice in my career, but it's never easy. And here's something odd: it's a snap for cats. Why would that be? Even more amazing is the fact that cats can also catch birds. How I'd love to catch a bird, just once! Cats do it by pouncing. I can pounce, too, not that it's one of my best moves. But it is in my repertoire. So maybe one day it will happen for me. You can always hope, and I always do.

“You can't mean they'd send him back to prison,” Mrs. Parsons was saying.

“I'd need more facts to answer that,” Bernie said.

“But it wouldn't be just!” said Mrs. Parsons. “Locking someone up for buying the wrong cactus? What country are we in?”

A tough question. The Valley was in Arizona, a fact I'd picked up fairly recently. Also we were Americans, me and Bernie. That was as far as I could take it. Maybe not far, but farther than Iggy. He wriggled around on the footstool, getting more comfortable, and began to snore.

“The same one,” Bernie said, “that put Billy away the first time.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Justice can be rough. Daniel also said that Billy wasn't aware that a kidnapping was planned.”

Mrs. Parsons gazed down at her lap. “What else did he say?”

“That Billy's crime, more or less, was to fall in with the wrong people.”

“He's a kind man,” Mrs. Parsons said.

“You're speaking of Billy?”

Mrs. Parsons's head snapped up. “Oh, no—Daniel. I'm speaking of Daniel.”

“Uh,” Bernie said, “are you suggesting that—”

Whatever it was, Mrs. Parsons interrupted before Bernie could get there, meaning I didn't get there, either. “Certainly not!” she said. Her hand again felt around for the teacup with no success.

“Can I get you some more tea?” Bernie said.

“No, thank you,” she said. Then she said it again, more softly. “In fact,” she went on, “I'm getting a little tired.”

Bernie rose. I rose, too, not forgetting my chew strip. “Do you need any help getting upstairs or anything?” he said.

“I'll just nap right here with Iggy,” Mrs. Parsons said. Sounded like a plan to me. Couldn't ask for a better napping buddy than Iggy. He was world-class.