Scents and Sensibility (8 page)

“I think I've heard of this dog,” he said.

“Everybody knows Chet,” Stine said. “He's—”

“I have problems with dogs, ecologically speaking,” Conte said. “But that's neither here nor there.”

Whew. For a moment I'd worried we'd gone off the rails. But if something wasn't here nor there, it wasn't, so no worries.

“Uh, well then, Bernie,” Stine said. “How about you walk us through it?”

“Starting where?” Bernie said.

“Starting,” Conte said, before Stine could answer, “with how you got involved in my case.”

“Instead,” Bernie said, gazing across the desk at Conte, kind of just like me, “since you raised the subject of dogs, how about we start with Shooter? Where is he?”

“Who,” said Conte, “is Shooter?”

“Ellie's dog,” Bernie said. “She takes him everywhere.”

“She does?” said Conte. “I specifically forbade that.”

“Kind of moot, Carl, at this point,” Stine said.

Conte's face swelled up a bit, got reddish. “I'll be the—”

“And where's her pickup?” Bernie said.

Stine looked at Conte. “Hasn't turned up yet,” Conte said.

“Who's in charge of the investigation?” said Bernie.

“That's still being worked out,” Stine said. “But it'd help, Bernie, if—”

“How about sending a chopper out there?” Bernie said.

“We did,” said Stine. “Had to turn back—fuel pump crimped up or some damn thing.”

“Send another one.”

“All in the shop.”

“Can we put a lid on this, for chrissake?” Conte said. “Whoever ends up running this case, it's sure as hell not gonna be this guy.” He pointed at Bernie, even wagged his finger at him. Bernie hates that. A wagging finger is nothing like a wagging tail—took me some time to figure that out. “We need to know what you know, and stat.”

His finger stopped wagging but remained pointed at Bernie. Bernie gazed at it. The finger folded back up, and Conte lowered his hand.

“I met Ellie at my neighbor's place,” Bernie said. “She was investigating a saguaro theft that had turned up in your chip ID program. I guess she wanted to check the spot where it had been dug up. We did the same, which was how we found her.”

“Why?” Conte said. “Why did you, quote, do the same?”

“Curiosity,” said Bernie.

“You're a private investigator.”

“Correct.”

“Do you normally investigate on your own dime? Just out of ‘curiosity?' ”

“What are you trying to say?”

Conte leaned forward. “I looked into you. Some people around this town hate your guts. Others think you're the best thing since sliced bread. Somehow the mayor's one of that group, hard to believe. But I didn't get the impression you work on your own dime. Meaning there's a client. I want to know who.”

Whoa! Slow down. There were Bernie haters? First I'd heard of it. Even most of the perps and gangbangers like Bernie, after they get to know him. Plus what was so great about sliced bread? I've had it both ways, and guess what, dude—dude meaning Conte, not you. Tastes the exact same, a not very interesting taste in my opinion.

“No one's paid me to work on this case,” Bernie said.

Conte turned to Stine. “You always let him get away with this shit? We have a dead agent out there, murdered in the field, and this asshole is stonewalling.”

I didn't know what was going on with anyone else's teeth, but my own were getting this sudden urge that sometimes comes over them, namely the urge to bite. Was now a good time? I went back and forth on that one, except there was no back, only forth. In short, yes! It was a good time! All at once, I felt Bernie's grip on my collar, not grasping it hard or anything like that, but just there. Why would that be?

Stine raised his hands, palms out in the stop sign. “Guys, can we lower the volume on this?”

“There's only one of us raising it,” Bernie said.

Stine sighed. “Maybe. But you can understand why he's upset. And if that old man is in fact your client, then there's no point in stonewalling.”

“Old man?” Bernie said, real quiet.

“What was it?” said Stine. “Partridge?”

“Parsons,” Conte said.

“Right, Parsons,” Stine went on. “We've got people over there questioning him right now, and—”

“You what?” Bernie said, starting to rise.

“Why is that surprising?” Stine said. “Normal procedure, straight out of—”

Bernie smacked Stine's desk, real hard, like a thunderclap. Stine had a nice gold pen set. It jumped right off the desk and was still airborne as we zipped on out of there, me and Bernie.

“Hey,” Stine called after us. “Where the hell—”

“Arrest them!” Conte yelled.

Meaning me and Bernie? What a strange interview! Maybe the kind of thing to go over in my mind at some future time. Yeah, that was it.

•  •  •

We roared up Mesquite Road, hit the brakes in front of the Parsonses' house. Lots going on: We had a Valley PD cruiser, an ambulance, and—what was this?—an Animal Control truck? Yes, all parked on the street. The front door opened as we hurried up to the house and EMTs came hurrying the other way, rolling a stretcher. Humans rushing around in all directions: never a good sign. The stretcher flew right past us, Mr. Parsons on top, eyes closed, a breathing mask on his face. We followed the stretcher down to the ambulance where they threw open the back doors and slid Mr. Parsons inside. An EMT looked out as the doors were closing.

“What happened?” Bernie said.

The EMT shrugged. The doors closed and the ambulance took off. The driver hit the siren.

We turned toward the house. More action at the door? It was getting hard to keep up. Now we had a uniformed cop we didn't know followed by a Valley PD detective we did know, namely Brick Mickles. Was Bernie in the mood for Brick Mickles at the moment? I could see just from the way he stopped dead that he was not. Bernie and Brick Mickles went way back, back to the period between the end of Bernie's army days and the start of the Little Detective Agency. That was a time when Bernie himself had been with Valley PD. He never talked about it, so that was all I know, except that whenever we ran into Brick Mickles, things didn't go well.

Mickles saw us and also stopped dead. Then a smile spread across his face. He had a big face. Did I leave out that he was a huge guy, everything about him huge except for his tiny, round ears, actually quite beautifully shaped? Hardly anybody ever makes Bernie look small, but Brick Mickles was one.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “I'll be doggone.”

I'd never understood that one, just knew I myself wasn't going anywhere at the moment.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Bernie said.

Mickles shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Serving. Protecting. Et cetera.”

“They sent you?”

“Just my luck. Missing saguaro, but I heard cigar, so I volunteered, thinking I could score a box or two.” He glanced over at our place, then smacked his forehead. “That's your crib! Totally forgot. Now it's making sense.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The old duffer,” Mickles said, motioning down Mesquite Road in the direction the ambulance had taken. “Kept droning on about some goddamn neighbor. Neighbor was gonna sort everything out, if I'd just—how'd he put it?—be patient? But even a patient type such as myself gets a bit antsy in a murder case.”

“What did you do to him?” Bernie said. He began moving toward the house, not quickly, but powerfully—a slow glide that reminded me of a mountain lion I'd once encountered, and maybe mentioned already. Wasn't a mountain lion just a very big cat? If so, was Bernie moving like a cat? That was disturbing. I moved along beside him, but not like a cat. We stopped within easy leaping range of Mickles. Easy leaping range for me, anyway, can't speak for any possible cat person on the scene.

“Took the thumbscrews to him, of course,” Mickles said. “Only way to crack those tough old nuts.”

When two dudes are right on the point of throwing down—meaning two human dudes, although a similar thing happens in my world—you can't miss a sudden smell that comes rising off both of them, and now we had it big-time. I could feel their muscles loading up—mine, too!—and could also feel their hate for each other, hate being something you hardly ever saw from Bernie. I made sure my weight was nicely balanced, all set for whatever needed doing.

Mickles smiled that big smile of his again. “Fixing to take a swing at me, huh, Bernie? Remember what happened the last time?”

“Fondly,” Bernie said.

“Fondly?” said Mickles. “You forget how it ended your golden-boy career? But maybe it makes sense psychologically. Taking pleasure in the beginning of your life as a nobody—defines the self-destructive type, doncha think?”

Bernie came oh, so close to throwing his jab. There was a kind of quick bunching in his shoulder, there and gone. Mickles saw it, too, and flinched—just the tiniest bit, but I caught it. Then came a pause, a long one that ended with the uniformed cop—who'd been watching from the road, hand on the butt of his gun—sliding behind the wheel of the cruiser. After that, Bernie seemed to step back, although he actually didn't, and he and Mickles both seemed to get smaller. The fighting smell—really kind of a stench, if you don't mind me pointing that out—faded away.

“As for your elderly buddy,” Mickles said, stepping around us and heading toward the cruiser, “more likely a fainting spell than a heart attack, according to the EMTs. My bet's he faked the whole thing.” He opened the car door, turned to us. “But there's no question he knows something, meaning I'll know, too, sooner rather than later.”

He got in the cruiser. Bernie watched it drive off with a real hard look on his face, and was still watching when a yip-yip-yipping came from inside the house. We turned back to the door just in time to see Iggy emerge. He was on a leash, a leash held by a woman in a green uniform. I knew that uniform from the old days, before Bernie. It meant Animal Control. I remembered the Animal Control truck parked on the street and . . . and put one and one together! Wow! That was a first.

H
ey!” Bernie said. “Where are you going with Iggy?”

The Animal Control woman paused. Iggy did not, meaning he stretched out the leash to the max, came to a sudden stop, and fell flat on the stoop. “Iggy?” she said. She checked her clipboard. “Dispatch has it Izzy.”

“It's Iggy,” Bernie said.

“You sure?” The Animal Control woman looked down at Iggy, still lying sprawled on the stoop, his stubby tail somehow weirdly caught underneath him. “Iggy,” she said. “Sit.” Iggy didn't move a muscle. “Izzy,” she said. “Sit.”

Iggy scrambled up immediately and sat straight and still, like a total pro, which Iggy most definitely was not. But maybe . . . maybe Izzy was a total pro? What a strange thought! I got confused. Sometimes strange thoughts come tumbling in on each other's heels. Here was another: Why would the two of them, Iggy and Izzy, smell exactly alike? That did not happen in the nation within. I tried to shut my mind down, but totally. Meanwhile, the Animal Control woman was giving Bernie one of those human looks that means “I win.”

“Let's not argue,” Bernie said. “The point is we're neighbors and friends of the couple who live here. I'm taking him.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” said the woman. “Give little Izzy a day or two to get in the system and then you can start the adoption process.”

Once in a while, Bernie's voice gets very soft, just when you'd think it would be going the other way. “Is he in the system now, at this moment?”

“Why, no, not at this very moment. But he will be as soon as I get to the truck and—”

Bernie put his hand on the leash, gently, but there. “You've got a tough job. How about today you let me make it a little easier?”

The Animal Control woman tightened her grip on the leash. “What if something goes wrong?”

“I'll take full responsibility.”

She glanced around, appeared to see me for the first time. How come that took so long? “Is this your dog?”

“Chet's his name.”

The Animal Control woman gazed at me for another moment or two, then let go of the leash.

•  •  •

After she left, we rounded up some of Iggy's things, locked up the Parsonses' house, and crossed over to our place, Iggy marking several spots along the way, starting with his own front door. I'd never even thought of marking our front door, but that was Iggy for you, every time.

Old man Heydrich, our neighbor on the other side, was out watering his lawn. We have a desert-style lawn, me and Bernie, and so do the Parsonses, but Heydrich has a golf-course-style lawn, or even greener. Bernie got a real annoyed look on his face. Now that I'd seen the aquifer with my own eyes, almost totally gone already, I was just as annoyed as Bernie. How hard would it be to snatch that hose right out of his hand? A piece of cake. Let's leave out my thoughts on actual cake for the time being.

Old man Heydrich glanced over at us, through a tiny rainbow that hovered in the spray. “Parsons kick the bucket?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Happened to see the ambulance.” Heydrich turned the hose on a big flowerpot with one small yellow flower growing in the middle and watered it until it slumped over. “Happen to know he's been poorly. Added it up.”

“There's one aquifer,” Bernie said. “One and one only. Do the math on that.”

We went inside the house. Bernie came close to slamming the door, reeled that impulse in at the last second. He unclipped Iggy, said, “Just want you to relax, little guy. Everything's going to be—” Which was when Iggy took off down the hall and darted into the office. We hurried after him, got there just in time to find him scratching at the wall under the waterfall painting.