Scents and Sensibility (24 page)

“Daniel?”

Mr. Parsons gasped, started breathing again, first wheezily, then in a more normal way. From up close his breath reminded me of the air inside a certain broom closet, the broom closet at the end of the only missing-kid case we hadn't solved. Not quite true: we'd solved it all right, but too late. The kid's name was Gail. Mr. Parsons was much, much older, but his breath smell and that last lingering one in the closet were almost the same.

“I'm fine, Bernie, just a momentary . . . bump,” he said. “Like a bump in the road.” He patted a chest pocket again, patted it with the hand that held the keys, and this time stuck his hand in the pocket and withdrew the biscuit. He gazed at his palm, now holding the biscuit and the keys. He looked up with a kind of vague triumph in his eyes, hard to describe. “Knew I had 'em somewhere.”

I took the biscuit from his hand, as gently as I could. Bernie did the same thing with the keys.

“How about I do the driving?” Bernie said.

“You're not in our will yet,” said Mr. Parsons.

“I'm sorry?”

“We're putting you in the will as soon as the lawyer stops by. Can't believe we didn't think of it sooner.”

“I don't want to be in the will,” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons put a hand on his car, maybe to steady himself. “You don't?”

“It would be an honor, but there's no material thing we need.”

What were material things? C-notes, perhaps? If C-notes were material things, we needed them big-time. I made quick work of the biscuit and gave Bernie a nudge.

“In any case—oof,” he was saying, “let me drive you.”

Mr. Parsons glanced at his house. “Don't see why not.”

Bernie went to unlock the car, but it was unlocked already. He helped Mr. Parsons into the front passenger seat. I ended up on the backseat, happy to start out that way. Seating arrangements often changed, in my experience. Bernie got behind the wheel.

“Where to?” Bernie said, turning the key.

“The gym,” Mr. Parsons said.

Bernie nodded. I watched him in the rearview mirror. This particular nod was very close to the nod he has for when things make sense, the only difference being that his eyes shifted slightly, namely to the passenger seat side. “Any particular gym, Daniel?” Did that mean something didn't make sense after all? I would have wondered about that but around then was when I discovered a not-unsizable chunk of biscuit somehow forgotten under my tongue. Iggy's biscuit, which made it all the tastier. I hope that's not bad of me.

Mr. Parsons was silent for a bit. Then he said, “I'll have to think.”

“I didn't know you've been going to the gym,” Bernie said.

“Oh, no, not me,” said Mr. Parsons.

“Someone else has been going to the gym?” Bernie said.

“Well, maybe not going, precisely,” Mr. Parsons said. “But she has some association with it.” His voice sharpened, rose to a level I'd never heard from Mr. Parsons before, a level that made me nervous. “Let me think, goddamn it!”

“No problem,” Bernie said. He let go of the wheel, sat back, looking straight ahead.

Mr. Parsons snuck a glance Bernie's way. From that angle, I could see just one of his eyes, of course. Hope you can picture this; I'm doing my best. At first, that one eye was glaring and angry. At Bernie? I wasn't buying that at all. Then the glare and anger faded and that eye got moist. Mr. Parsons put his head in his hands. “You're such a good man, Bernie,” he said, or something like that, his hands muffling the sound. “I hate lying to you.”

“We're going somewhere else?” Bernie said. “Not the gym?”

“It's not that.” Mr. Parsons rubbed his face, leaving a snotty smear on one cheek, and straightened up. “Afraid you'd think me a fool, so I wasn't truthful about . . . about some of what I told you about Billy.”

“You mean his peripheral involvement?” Bernie said.

“Peripheral involvement? I don't understand.”

“In the kidnapping,” Bernie said. “Falling in with bad people, all that.”

“No, not that,” Mr. Parsons said. “Billy has the sweetest nature, down deep. Not even all the awful things that happened in prison can change that.”

“He told you about awful things in prison?”

“Not in so many words. But something's eating inside him, and that was never true before.”

Something eating inside someone? Oh, no. What could be worse? How I wished I hadn't heard that! And . . . and maybe I hadn't. I leaned in that direction, leaned as hard as I could.

“What did he say exactly?” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons shook his head. “Not much exactly,” said Mr. Parsons. “Certainly not in front of Edna.”

“Was this the same time when he asked for the money?”

“In the form of a loan,” Mr. Parsons said.

“To go to school, as I remember.”

“Forestry management. Edna found the program and recommended it. More wishful thinking on our part.”

“So what was the money for?” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons shrugged. “We sent him care packages—as many as they allowed. But after eight or nine years, our visits . . . tailed off. Edna's a trooper. It was hard. I'm talking about the maximum-security building, always with Billy behind glass. And then when the girlfriend came along, he preferred to schedule his visiting times with her. At least we thought so at the time. But maybe it was a rationalization. One of my biggest weaknesses, Bernie. I envy your strong-mindedness, can't tell you how much. Blinds you, in this case to Billy's anger.”

“Billy's angry at you?”

Mr. Parsons nodded, dabbing at his eyes. That spread the snot smear around a little more. Bernie fished under the seat, came up with a paper napkin, not too dirty, and cleaned up Mr. Parsons's face. Mr. Parsons didn't seem to notice. “Angry because we stopped visiting. We still called on the phone every Sunday. His anger caught me by surprise. And Edna . . . well, poor Edna. I just had no idea the visits meant so much to Billy. He was always monosyllabic, often cut them off early. But there I go again—rationalizing.”

“So Billy revealed this anger for the first time when he came to discuss the loan?”

Mr. Parsons stayed silent for what seemed like a long time. I don't mind sitting in an unmoving car if we're at Donut Heaven, say. But we were not. Right around then I noticed what you might call a tiny flaw in the rear seat upholstery.

“I don't like where you're leading me,” Mr. Parsons said at last.

“Where's that?” Bernie said.

“To a place where decisions get made on account of guilt.”

“What decisions are we talking about?”

“Edna's and mine,” said Mr. Parsons. He wrung his hands. That always bothers me, hands being a bit like tiny people, and you never like to see people in distress. “To fund Billy's business venture.”

“What kind of business venture?”

“A start-up,” said Mr. Parsons. “Now just give me a moment and I'll get this right.”

His lips moved, but no sound came out. Hey! My lips were moving, too! When it comes to leather upholstery there's a kind that looks like leather but smells like plastic. That was what Mr. Parsons had in the backseat of his car. I prefer real leather, although I'm not fussy.

“The securities recovery sector,” Mr. Parsons said. “That was it. Billy needed capital to hire some staff.”

“I'm not familiar with the securities recovery sector,” Bernie said.

“Neither was I. Now I am. But don't ask me to explain it.” He laughed, laughter that suddenly cut off. “Stiller's Gym! That's the name. It was on her jacket. Do you know Stiller's Gym, Bernie?”

“I know where it is,” Bernie said. “Whose jacket are we talking about?”

“Oh,” said Mr. Parsons. “The girlfriend. Didn't I mention her? She's very pretty.”

“What's her name?”

“Dee. She came by yesterday, wearing the jacket. The satin kind. I noticed the name on the back.” He leaned forward. “So shall we get started? That is, if you're still willing.”

“Was Billy with her yesterday?”

“He was at a staff meeting with the twins.”

“The twins?”

“He hired twin brothers. Billy says they finish each other's sentences! And Dee was only dropping off some papers.”

“What kind of papers?”

Mr. Parsons started patting his pockets again. “Thought I had them right here. Whole point of the exercise.”

Bernie's voice, gentle already, got more so. “What kind of papers?”

“Mortgage papers. A very smart kind of mortgage Billy found for us. It pays you instead of you paying it!”

“A reverse mortgage?”

“Something like that,” Mr. Parsons said. “Dee was going to come around for the papers in a day or two, but my thinking is let's move things along, start those checks flowing!” Then came more pocket patting. “Where in hell—?”

Bernie switched off the engine. “Let's go in the house and look for them.” He opened the door.
Yip yip yip
: Iggy had it dialed up to the max. “Chet? How about you wait here?”

Wait here? What sense did that make? I got to my feet, made my reaction clear.

“Chet? Need you to step up now, big guy.”

Barking can sometimes change to yawning in a flash, just one of life's little surprises. Bernie led Mr. Parsons into the house. Not long after, he came out alone, reading some papers. He let me out of Mr. Parsons's car, his eyes still on the papers, and we crossed over onto our property. Bernie stuck the papers in the glove box of the Porsche.

“Securities recovery,” he said, slamming the glove box closed so hard the whole car shook.

We hit the road.

T
ell you one thing right now,” Bernie said. “I don't want to get like that. But here's the catch—do you even realize you're like that when you're like that? See how life twists against you? It's not just a long road. It's a long road that yees and yaws and bends you like in a funhouse mirror.”

Of this I understood zip, except it was something about mirrors. Every once in a while I catch sight of a very tough-looking customer in a mirror and give him what for in no uncertain terms. Then those terms get less certain and soon after that a message comes through: it's me, Chet the Jet! Do I always tell myself this will never happen again? You bet! So no harm, no foul!

Bernie was quiet for a while. When he spoke, it was in a real quiet voice. “London. What could be so bad? We'd find something, right? You and me.”

Was this about finding things? At the Little Detective Agency we always found whatever was out there to be found. Don't forget we had my nose going for us.

After that, Bernie gave his head a quick shake, reminding me of me. “Here's where we are, big guy,” he said. Hmm. I could see perfectly well where we were: stuck in traffic at one of the ramps under or over Spaghetti Junction, primo territory for getting stuck in traffic. I waited for Bernie to say something about Spaghetti Junction, but instead he said, “Summer Ronich—did we like her? Not me, big guy—ostensible kidnap victim, is alive and well, all seemingly way behind her. Of the two kidnappers, one, Travis Baca, dies in a freak accident on his last day at Northern State. The other, Billy Parsons, in on the loose, with twenty grand of his parents' money and schemes for some business venture. Billy's also involved in the theft of a saguaro from state land. Someone—Billy being suspect one—killed Ellie Newburg, Department of Agriculture agent working the saguaro case. The detective on the murder is Brick Mickles, who solved the kidnapping fifteen years ago.” Traffic started up. “What else?”

What else? Wasn't that more than enough?

“The ransom,” he continued a little later, as we left the freeway for surface roads. “Half a mill, never recovered.” We parked in front of a gym—I could see shadowy weightlifters through the big window in front—and hopped out of the car.

“Stiller's Gym,” Bernie said. “Has a muscle-head rep. That's all I know.”

Maybe a bit too much knowledge, in fact? Muscle heads sounded not too good, made me a little uneasy. Bernie opened the door and we went inside.

I'd been in gyms before, some fancy—Leda's for example, always filled with fresh flowers—and some not. Stiller's was of the not fancy variety—dinged-up wooden floor, barbells, dumbbells, stands, and racks, everything colorless and worn-looking. Were those two dudes at the bench press muscle heads? Couldn't see it, myself. Muscle necks, yes, for sure—necks that would have amazed you, as thick as human thighs you sometimes see at all-you-can-eat buffets—but their heads seemed rather small.

“Seven, eight, one more, you pussy, one more,” screamed the muscle neck who was watching.

The muscle neck on the bench and doing the actual lifting made sounds, but nothing you could call human speech. The bar wobbled halfway up, and his face turned the color of a vegetable I have no time for whatsoever, namely beets. Bernie feels the same. We went past them, through an amazing air pocket practically boiling over with their smells, and headed for a boxing ring at the rear of the gym. There were no pussycats to be seen. I thought I came close to grasping what Bernie meant by muscle heads.

We're big boxing fans, me and Bernie, have a fine collection of great fights, which we break out when Bernie's in a certain kind of mood, like after we've had Charlie for a weekend and now he's gone. The Thrilla in Manila! And what about No Mas, and Ward-Gatti 1? Don't get me started!

We had no one like any of those guys in the ring at Stiller's Gym. What we had were two skinny-legged dudes huffing and puffing and throwing haymakers that made swishing sounds in the air and landed no place.

“Elbows in,” called a lean little man who sat on a stool behind the ropes, a towel around his neck, a pencil behind his ear, a clipboard on his lap. “Stick and move, stick and move. Basic physics, for chrissake.”