Scents and Sensibility (6 page)

“What you got there?” Bernie said.

Ellie glanced at Bernie. Did her eyes—pretty icy, as I recalled—warm up a bit? That was my impression, but I've been wrong before. Take the time a perp name of Ticface Fescue jumped off the Rio Arroyo Bridge rather than let me take him gently by the pant leg and close the case. I hadn't had a clue that was coming. And the next thing I'd known there I was in midair myself! Lucky for me we had water down below, it being monsoon season at the time. I'd ended up grabbing a soggy pant leg, no harm done.

Meanwhile, Ellie, in answer to I had no idea what, was saying, “Chiricahua leopard frog, Bernie. A mature male of the species.”

“Cute little critter,” Bernie said, leaning in closer.

The frog looked at me. I looked at him. I would never attack a little froggy or harm one in any way, certainly not by biting or anything of that nature. Was pawing at him another story? Could pawing even be called attacking? I thought not. One of my front paws got this feeling that sometimes comes over it where it just has to paw. Just has to! Paws paw! And then my other paw got it, even worse. While they tried to make up their minds who was going to do the actual pawing—uh-oh, we had more than two minds involved here all of a sudden?—I shifted my position a bit, sort of narrowing in. And what was this? Bernie shifted his position, too, kind of blocking me off? Not on purpose, of course: the thought didn't even occur to me.

“The question is,” Ellie said, “what's it doing here?”

Bernie glanced down at a small puddle at the very bottom of the hole we stood in. Hey! Was it growing a bit? I went over, the mud feeling nice and cool on my foot pads, and licked up some of the water. It looked kind of muddy but tasted terrific.

“Don't frogs like water?” Bernie said.

Ellie nodded. “And these leopard frogs also like excavations. But this one's a good twenty miles from the nearest known leopard frog habitat. The kicker, of course, being that they're on the endangered list.”

“Didn't know that was part of your job,” Bernie said.

“There's overlap,” said Ellie. “And a lot of calls seem to come my way, who knows why.”

“Maybe because . . .” Bernie stopped himself.

“Because what?” said Ellie. They exchanged a look, kind of complicated on both sides.

“I mean this in a nice way.”

“Uh-oh.”

Bernie smiled. “You get calls because people can see you're a bulldog.”

What a stunner! I know bulldogs, of course. Take Tyke, for example, not a tyke at all but a massive dude with rippling muscles and drool pretty much always streaming from his mouth, a mouth constantly open, maybe on account of the size of his teeth. We'd had some interesting encounters, me and Tyke, and finally worked out an arrangement, although he needed reminding about that arrangement every time we met. But that's not the point. The point is that no matter how closely I looked, I found no similarities between Tyke and Ellie Newburg. No drool, teeth on the small side, even for a human, although very white, and while she looked in decent shape, I'm afraid you couldn't call her massive, not a rippling muscle in view.

I watched Bernie carefully. He's hardly ever wrong about anything, and if he is it's because he's tired or we hadn't had water in too long—like one time out in the desert, when Bernie had wanted to go one way, but I could clearly hear a highway in the other. Was that it? Dehydration? I took a few noisy sips from the puddle, hoping he'd get the idea.

Which he did not. But it ended up not mattering, because Ellie said, “I'll take that as a compliment.”

“Whew,” said Bernie. And I thought the same. Often happens: We're a lot alike in some ways, me and Bernie. Don't forget.

Meanwhile, Ellie's gaze had swung over to me. “Chet seems to like that water. Probably tastes extra good.”

Hey! How did she know? The next moment—and this kind of thing doesn't happen often—I'd figured it out all on my own. She must have lapped up some herself, probably just finishing when we showed up! Wow! I was on fire.

“Why would that be?” Bernie said.

Ellie pointed to puddle with her chin, second time I'd seen her point like that. We do some pointing in our world, too, but never with our chins. One of the best human moves out there, in my opinion. Ellie was doing all right in my book, although I had no books at the moment, and had really only possessed one in my life, much too briefly: namely an extremely tasty leather-bound volume that I'd sniffed out at the home of a—judge, was it?—where Bernie and I'd been invited to a big, noisy party. I myself spent a quiet evening, curled up behind a couch with my book. A very pleasant memory to this day! And if things had gone downhill later—some back-and-forth about first editions and Mark Twain autographs, whatever those happened to be—why let it spoil things? That's one of my core beliefs.

Meanwhile, Ellie was saying, “. . . because it's as fresh as fresh can be—coming straight from the aquifer.”

Bernie's eyes got very bright, a sign that he was on fire, too. Both of us on fire at the same time? Look out!

“The aquifer's this close to the surface?” he said.

“In a few places east of the arroyo, here being one, evidently,” said Ellie. “Another problem with this development. I'm shutting it down.”

Back up. This was the aquifer? The aquifer I'd heard so much about? Bernie's biggest worry? There was only one, he always said, and when it was gone, game over. I studied the puddle. Getting bigger since our arrival, but basically pretty puny. Bernie was too late. Game over. I sat beside him, pressed against his leg.

“That's funny,” Ellie said. “Shooter does that exact same thing when he thinks I'm upset about something.”

“What thing?” said Bernie.

“Like Chet's doing now—pressing against your leg.”

Bernie glanced down at me. “Yeah?”

One of Ellie's eyebrows rose in a way that reminded me of Bernie when he was about to have some fun. “Upset about something, Bernie?” she said.

“No,” said Bernie. Which was just Bernie being brave. They don't come any braver than Bernie, goes without mentioning. Good luck getting anything out of him, Special Investigator Newburg. But then came a surprise. “Actually,” Bernie went on, “there is something I'm—maybe not upset, but concerned about.”

“And that is?”

“Daniel Parsons,” Bernie said. “The old man with the—”

“What about him?”

“He's completely innocent.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“I do.”

“What else do you know?”

“Just that he's in no shape to get squeezed right now. You won't find what you want, and he'll be damaged.”

“But you got what I want from him, didn't you?”

Bernie said nothing.

“So why don't you tell me,” Ellie went on, “and leave the old man out of it while I do my job?”

Bernie stayed silent.

“Because,” she said, bending down and popping the frog into the little cage, “I'm going to do my job.”

“Give me twenty-four hours,” Bernie said.

“You tried that already.”

“I'm trying again,” Bernie said. “Now that we know each other better. We're practically related.”

Sometimes you get this strange kind of pause between humans where just about anything can happen. Including—maybe even especially—gunplay. But Ellie wasn't carrying. Was that why she laughed instead? I had no idea. “You're talking about Shooter and Chet?” she said.

“I am.”

That sounded interesting. I waited for more, but no more came. Instead, Ellie straightened and looked Bernie in the eye. “You married?” she said.

“Divorced.”

“Seeing anybody?”

“Yes.”

“We're in the exact same position,” Ellie said. She gazed down at the frog. The frog's throat made some strange bulging motions. “You've got”—Ellie checked her watch—“twenty-three hours, fifty-eight minutes.”

N
ot a whole lot of time, Chet,” Bernie said as we drove away from the construction site. “And traffic's going to be . . .” He went silent, although I could almost hear his voice continuing inside him. “How about we take a short cut through High Chaparral Estates?”

Sounded good to me, High Chaparral Estates being maybe the fanciest part of the whole Valley, meaning it had the fanciest smells. Also it was where Leda lived with her husband, Malcolm. And Charlie, of course, except for some weekends and holidays when he was with us. Those times were the best. Charlie likes everything I like, such as running around crazily. Hadn't seen him in way too long!

Then, all of a sudden, wouldn't you know? We rounded a corner and drew up behind a school bus. A kid in the backseat had turned around so he could see out the window.

“Hey!” said Bernie. “That looks like—”

Charlie! No doubt about it. There was Charlie's round little face in the window, although maybe not as round or as little as before. Also he had a new thing going on with his hair, a kind of sticking-up clump toward the back, a bit like an Indian feather. He looked great! Bernie leaned on the horn, kept leaning on it until finally Charlie lowered his gaze down to us. And then came an expression on his face that I can't even begin to describe, so I'll leave it like this: it was all about humans at their very best. Don't see it every day, but when you do . . . well, you remember, and maybe cut them a little slack next time around the circuit. And I'm sure Charlie was happy about seeing Bernie, too. Let's not leave that out.

Soon Charlie was waving at us, and then a bunch of kids were crowding around him, all of them waving their little hands. Bernie beeped the horn—
beep beep beep
. I did this high-pitched thing I can do, not a howl, really, more like a faraway train whistle, or maybe not that far away. The fun we were having! But then the bus pulled over, stopped by the side of the road. We stopped behind it. A gray-haired woman in a baseball cap appeared at the back of the bus, sunlight glaring off the lenses of her glasses. Her lips moved, and all the kids except Charlie instantly disappeared from view. Charlie whipped around and faced front. The woman—had to be the driver, right? I was catching on fast—gave us a look, the corners of her mouth pointing straight down, and then strode back to the front of the bus.

We followed at a distance, Bernie and I at our very quietest, heads down. You wouldn't have noticed us. Soon the bus turned onto a street I knew and stopped in front of a house I knew, too, namely Leda's. Charlie got out and the bus drove away. Bernie hopped—yes!—hopped out of the Porsche and ran over to Charlie. He scooped him right up—kind of scooping me up in the process, at least momentarily, since I'd reached Charlie first, as I'm sure you've figured out already. Next came hugging and kissing and laughing, and during all that I happened to glance over at the house, not just Leda's, of course, but Malcolm's as well and Charlie's most of the time—and there was Malcolm watching from an upstairs window, his long, narrow face reminding me of the bus driver on account of the downturned corners of his lips.

“Dad! Ms. Peoples is so mad at you!”

“The bus driver?”

“She didn't even believe you were my dad!”

“Oh?”

“ 'Cause dads are more mature.”

“Um.”

The front door of Leda's house opened and Leda stepped out, dressed for tennis, with a tennis racket over her shoulder and a pink visor on her head. How tan she was, her skin like mahogany, maybe the best of all woods in terms of gnawing, which I know from our one and only visit to the bar at the Ritz. She walked over to us, gave Bernie not the friendliest look.

“Not more about the stupid key?” she said.

“No, no, we're all set on that.”

“Small mercies,” said Leda. She turned to Charlie and gave him a smile. Leda has one of the biggest smiles you'll ever see, lights up the whole world, except for wherever Bernie happens to be. Whoa! Where did that thought even come from? I had no idea what it meant.

“Hey, there,” she said, licking her fingers and trying to flatten the Indian feather thing Charlie's hair had going on, “how was school?”

“Ms. Peoples is mad at Dad.”

Leda's smile started to disappear. That takes time, what with there being so much of it. “Ms. Peoples, the bus driver?”

“She has a cat named Agatha.”

“Why is she mad at da—at your father?”

Charlie's mouth opened like he was about to say something. Then he glanced at Bernie—who actually wasn't even watching, his gaze having turned to the window, where Malcolm was just stepping back, out of view—and that little mouth closed right up.

“Charlie?” Leda said.

“Ms. Peoples thinks I'm immature,” Bernie told her.

Leda's smile was now entirely gone. “What did you do? Forget it—I don't even want to know.”

“He stirred the kids up!” Charlie said. Blurted: Could that be the expression?

“Is that how Ms. Peoples put it?”

Charlie nodded. “She doesn't like when we get stirred up. She likes when we sit still and think quiet thoughts.”

“Quiet thoughts?” Bernie said. “What the hell are—”

Leda gave Bernie a look I remembered from the old days, and he went silent. At that moment a shiny new car drove up, a woman also in a tennis dress and pink visor at the wheel. “So if it's not about the key,” Leda said, “to what do we owe this visit?”

“Well,” Bernie said. “Uh, it's Friday, right? Meaning tomorrow's Saturday, when Charlie comes over. I was thinking, you know—hey, why not now? Since you're playing tennis and all? If Charlie wants to, of course.”

“I do,” said Charlie.

But maybe not loud enough. “Now you know my tennis schedule?” Leda said. “What a detective you are!”