Scents and Sensibility (21 page)

Bernie sat at the desk, peering at the computer screen. He glanced up. “What's that look mean?”

My look? It meant let's go. Let's start sniffing the wide world. What was the holdup? And why was he even asking me? Wasn't it his idea in the first place?

“How come you're sniffing like that?”

Because! Just because!

“Hey! You're clawing the door?”

Clawing the door? I most certainly was not. All I was trying to do was simply and without fuss . . . I paused, one paw in midair, actually quite close to the door. Then I walked around in a circle for a few times and lay down with a sigh. Bernie was as close as they come, but nobody's perfect.

Tap tap tap
. I watched him tapping away through eyes half closed. A nice changeup when it comes to watching things. I recommend it. In this case, I saw how lovable Bernie was in a brand-new way.

“Bingo,” he said, leaning a little closer to the screen. Then he paused, rubbed his head, and looked my way. “Why didn't I think of this before? What's wrong with me these days?”

Wrong with Bernie? Nada. My tail started up, sending him the right sort of message. Bernie gave me a quick almost-smile and turned back to the screen.

“Archived in the
Valley Tribune
from almost sixteen years ago. ‘Kidnapped Teen Home Safe, Two in Custody. Summer Ann Ronich, daughter of Samuel and Marlene Ronich of Cottonwood Hills, was found unharmed last night in an abandoned service station on old Highway Six. Two men, William “Billy” Parsons and Travis Baca, both of South Pedroia, have been taken into custody. Detective Sergeant Brick Mickles of Valley PD, who found Ms. Ronich and later made the arrests, was unable to confirm reports that a ransom was paid. “This is an ongoing investigation,” Mickles said. When asked if more arrests were expected, Mickles had no comment. Ms. Ronich disappeared last Friday while—' ”

The phone rang. Bernie gave it a look that changed from unfriendly to real pleased. He hit the speaker button.

“Hi, Suzie.”

“Hello, Bernie.”

“Was just thinking of you this very moment,” he said.

“In what context?”

Bernie laughed. “How come you're so goddamn quick?”

“These things are relative.”

He laughed again, but in a doubtful sort of way. “Been looking at an archived
Tribune
piece. By . . .” He checked the computer. “. . . Rance Perth. Know him?”

“Rance was before my time,” Suzie said. “He took a PR job in Singapore. But that's what got you thinking about me? Something in the
Trib
?”

“Uh, yeah, actually.”

“Meaning the context was peripheral.”

“Well, I wouldn't—”

“By definition.”

“Uh-oh,” Bernie said. “Suzie? Is something wrong?”

Her voice changed, hard to say how. It didn't get loud or harsh or even edgy. More like cooler, maybe. “I'm not sure how to answer,” she said. “You can't have forgotten our last conversation.”

Bernie looked my way, as if for help of some sort. But what could I do? “Uh, of course I haven't.”

Then came a pause, before Suzie, her voice even less warm than before, but puzzled, too, said, “Were you planning to respond?”

Bernie shot me another
help me!
look. Maybe a long walk in the canyon was the answer? That was my only thought. “I was,” Bernie said. “I am. It's just that I've been so busy with this case and—”

“Who isn't busy?” Suzie said.

Another pause, longer than the last. Finally Bernie said, “You're right. I should have . . . no excuses.”

“I'm in London right now,” Suzie said. “Marv Lister just left me a message. He said something's come up at the London office of SecureX that's right in your wheelhouse. He wants to fly you over for a meeting. What should I tell him?”

Now came the longest pause of all. Bernie was looking my way again, but this time didn't appear to be seeing me, as if he was looking at something far away, even thought there was nothing behind me but the hall and the closed door to Charlie's room.

“I wouldn't do well in London,” Bernie said.

“What does that even mean?” said Suzie.

“I'm not suited.”

“How do you know? It's changed a lot. When was the last time you were here?”

“Never.”

“Excuse me?”

“I've never been to London.”

“I see,” said Suzie. “Then this conversation is really about something else, isn't it?”

Bernie shook his head. But he didn't say anything. You see that same combo from Charlie sometimes, and Bernie looked a lot like him just then. “My tongue-tied little boy,” Leda says. Meaning Charlie, not Bernie, in case I'm unclear. Meanwhile, over on Suzie's end:
Click
. That was when Bernie finally got his tongue free, perhaps too late, if I was following this right. “Does she think I don't love her?” He looked at me. This was a bad moment of some sort, no doubt about that. My tail started up in an encouraging sort of way. Bernie didn't seem to notice.

•  •  •

“We're like historians,” Bernie said, topping up his glass. “Or maybe anthropologists, even archaeologists.” Did you know bourbon can talk? This is what it sounds like. We were still in the office, the bourbon coming out not long after the phone call. Bernie was back at work, tapping at the keyboard, making a call or two, writing notes on scraps of paper, sipping bourbon from his favorite glass, the one with the trumpets on the side. Trumpets had come up in this case already; it was possible I'd remember the details later. I loved the sound of trumpets, especially when Roy Eldridge starts up at the end of “If You Were Mine,” one of our favorites. The fur on my neck stands right up! I lay on the office floor, trying to think of some way to get Bernie to play the song, and came up empty.

Shadows moved across the floor, inching toward me. I shifted away, more than once. Ice clinked, also more than once. Then Bernie was on his feet, sheets of paper in one hand, empty glass in the other. “Dig around long enough, big guy, and sometimes you hit pay dirt.”

Digging had gone on? Had I fallen asleep, somehow missed it? I smelled no dirt on Bernie, fresh or otherwise. Bernie digging without me was at the top of the list of things that make no sense. This had to be the bourbon, still talking.

“Turns out,” he said, leafing through the pages, “that Summer Ann Ronich got married five years ago, lives on a ranch east of the aircraft boneyard.” He looked up. “Old Highway Six would actually be a shortcut.”

Boneyard? I was at the door, bourbon, London, and even trumpets, all forgotten.

T
wo-lane blacktop, open country, cottonwoods growing tall in the deepest parts of the dry washes: old Highway Six was our kind of road. “Right there is where the old gas station must have been,” Bernie said, pointing out a foundation slab so overgrown it was almost invisible. “Killed off by the interstates.” The interstates? Brand new to me, but they sounded dangerous. I made another mental note, although I wasn't sure what to put in it. We rounded a curve at the top of a long rise, and there caught an unusual sight, rows and rows of airplanes stretching across the desert as far as I could see, the sun glinting off their wings in a dull way, like their wings had no shine on them at all.

“Had an English prof at West Point,” Bernie said. “He wrote a poem about this, kind of an ‘Ozymandias' thing.” He went silent. Ozzie Mendoza? Had I heard that right? I was fond of Ozzie, now sporting an orange jumpsuit at Central State on account of an ATM scam involving peanut butter, but he didn't seem like the writing type to me, not with the puzzled way his mouth hung open all the time. Meanwhile, Bernie gazed at the airplanes, dusty and droopy-winged, going no place. “The class had to write a poem on the same subject,” he said. “I took a different approach—more an Arlington National Cemetery comparison. C minus.”

Not easy to follow, any of that, always the case when poems came up. But C minus had to be pretty good, almost certainly top of the class and possibly best ever at West Point. That was my takeaway. A lone vulture glided down from the sky in that heavy way they do and landed on the nose of the nearest airplane. It stood there, spreading its wings wide and facing in our direction. I could smell the .45 in the glove box.

•  •  •

We drove through an open gate, one of those ranch gates with a wrought-iron sign overhead. “Moonlight Ranch,” Bernie said. “What's the point of naming a ranch if it's not a brand? And no one's going to brand Moonlight on the sides of their cattle.” I sure hoped not: it sounded horrible.

A grove of trees rose on one side, shading a big glass house backed into a hillside. “An
Architectural Digest
–style ranch house,” Bernie said. “Look out for an
Architectural Digest
–style herd.”

I sat up my straightest, understanding nothing, meaning you had to be ready for anything, a mind-set that had actually served me well in the past. No herds seemed to be in sight, but the track split, and off to one side stood a corral with a woman inside it. She seemed to be talking to some small creature I couldn't quite make out. We drove to the corral, parked, and got out. The gun stayed in the glove box. Why was it on my mind all of a sudden? I didn't know.

The woman was saying, “Who's the prettiest little princess in the whole wide world?” But not, I didn't think, to us, although she must have heard the car. Put it this way: I'd have heard the car in her place. At that very moment, I happened to be hearing a snake slithering through some bushes beyond the far side of the corral, plus a phone ringing in the ranch house, invisible from where we were. But forget all that. The woman heard us now for sure, and turned our way.

“Summer Ronich?” Bernie said.

Summer Ronich, if this was her, looked like the kind of woman who has an effect on Bernie. She had glossy hair, smooth, tan skin, big blue eyes, and wore a riding outfit with red cowboy boots and a red cowboy hat that hung down her back. But here's the strange thing: that look on Bernie's face when a certain kind of woman is having an effect on him wasn't there. All that was kind of interesting but got blown away by an amazing sight in the corral, namely the creature who was supposedly the prettiest little princess in the whole wide world. This creature stood facing the woman, eyes on nothing, tail swishing around in a lazy way you could almost call sloppy. I can't say I'd never seen a creature like this in my entire life because I had. This creature looked exactly like a horse, except smaller. A lot smaller. Smaller that me? Oh, yeah. About the size of Iggy. Hard to believe, but true. A horse—in this case a creamy-white horse with a golden mane and a golden tail, and smelling very horsey—the size of Iggy! I hunched down and pawed at the ground a bit, all I could think of to do.

“Ronich was my maiden name,” the woman said. “It's DeWitt now.”

“Bernie Little,” said Bernie. “And this is Chet.”

Summer turned my way for the first time. “What's he up to?”

“Chet? Nothing.” He shot me a glance that turned into a closer look. “Um, you mean that pawing thing? Not sure what that's about.”

“He's going to attack Lovely,” Summer said. “That's what it's about.”

“Oh, Chet would never do a thing like that. He's actually very gen—”

And something or other that I didn't catch. Several moments of what you might call unawareness followed, and the next thing I knew I was sort of poised over Lovely, if I'd caught the name of this tiny object, one of my paws raised somewhat highishly. Not to do it—or her, as seemed to be the case—any harm: more just to . . . just to . . . I wasn't sure what. Before I could find out whatever I was up to, I felt Bernie's hand on my collar, not gripping hard, just there. I backed away, with some help from Bernie, always there for me, and sat up still and straight. You wouldn't have even noticed me.

“Uh, Lovely, huh?” Bernie said. “Perfect name for such a . . . decorative little thing.”

“There's nothing decorative about her,” Summer said. “Lovely's a therapy companion in training.”

“Ah,” said Bernie.

“That's what I do—raise therapy minis.” Her gaze went to me—still doing the Little Detective Agency proud—and back to Bernie. “You don't look like a customer.”

“True. But he is a cute little critter, just the same.” Bernie reached down to give Lovely a pat. Lovely backed away. Horse eyes usually show fear or nothing at all, but I was pretty sure I saw annoyance in Lovely's eyes at that moment.

“She,” Summer said.

“Sorry,” said Bernie. “Of course—whoever heard of a boy named Lovely?” He laughed like something funny had just gone by. From Summer's face you'd think that just the opposite had happened.

“So if you're not a customer,” Summer said, maybe leaving the end unspoken, which humans do sometimes. You can feel those unspoken ends hanging in the air, usually not a pleasant sensation, like a dust storm on the way.

Bernie handed her our card. In the old days we'd had a card with a picture of a magnifying glass on it; now we had Suzie's redesign, featuring a flower. We weren't happy about it, me and Bernie.

Summer gazed at the card, then handed it back. She said nothing. Lovely flicked at a passing fly with her tail, missed by plenty.

“I want to talk about the kidnapping,” Bernie said.

Summer blinked. “My kidnapping?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Summer said. “It was such a long time ago I've practically forgotten about it. And there's nothing to investigate—I wasn't harmed.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you working for a malpractice lawyer or something? I don't have PTSD, if that's what you're thinking.”