Thereby Hangs a Tail (3 page)

Not long after, we were sitting in the office—Adelina Borghese in one of the client chairs, Bernie behind the desk, me beside it. Bernie was dressed now—khakis, tucked-in shirt, loafers—and looked much better. He’d also brewed coffee; loved the smell of coffee, but the taste didn’t do much for me. Water was my drink, although once, out in the desert with some bikers, I’d had a fun evening with beer. But no time to go into that now. Bernie was a great interviewer. His interviewing skills and my nose: if you want my opinion, that’s what raised the Little Detective Agency above the rest. I settled in to watch Bernie work.

“Cream? Sugar?” he said, pouring coffee.

“Black,” said Adelina Borghese.

“Me, too,” said Bernie. “We have something in common.”

See what I mean? Brilliant. Although maybe this woman was going to be a tough customer, because from where I was, her lips seemed to purse in a way that said, “Dream on.”

Bernie sipped his coffee, his hand not quite steady. “Ah,” he said. “Hits the spot.”

Adelina Borghese sipped hers, said nothing, and didn’t touch it again.

“I take it you’re the owner of Queenie,” Bernie said.

Now Adelina Borghese’s mouth looked like she’d just tasted something bad. “Queenie?” she said.

“Uh,” said Bernie, “wasn’t that the name of the ri—” He stopped himself. “What am I saying? Princess, of course. I take it you’re the owner of Princess.”

“Correct,” said Adelina Borghese. “Although I don’t really think of the relationship in that owner-slash-possession way.”

“More like a team?” Bernie said.

There was a pause, and when Adelina spoke again, her voice wasn’t so icy. “You might say that,” she said. “Princess is very special. She’s a great competitor.”

“At what?” said Bernie.

“Dog shows,” Adelina said, her voice refreezing fast. “What kind of briefing did that policeman give you?”

“A good one,” Bernie said. “The competition angle didn’t come up, that’s all.”

“What other angle is there?” said Adelina. “Dog shows are about competition and Princess is like . . . like Michael Jordan.”

Bernie loved hoops, had lots of old tapes, so I knew about Michael Jordan, but was Adelina expecting us to believe that the little fluffball in the photo could dunk? A basketball was a very difficult kind of ball for me and my kind, as I’d learned, maybe more than once.

“What kind of prize money’s involved?” Bernie said.

“Prize money?” said Adelina.

“If Princess wins.”

“She gets a blue ribbon.”

“No money?”

“What could be better than a blue ribbon? She loves them.”

Bernie smiled, a little smile there and gone very fast. He took another sip of coffee, his hand now steady, I was glad to see. “I look forward to meeting her,” he said. “But I have to warn you, Chet and I don’t do much bodyguard work and we’ve never guarded a dog before.”

“Chet?” said Adelina.

“We’re a team, too,” said Bernie.

Adelina bent forward, stared down at me. “Can he be trusted?”

Now Bernie’s voice got a bit icy, too. “What do you mean?”

“Around small dogs,” she said. “He looks big. I don’t recognize the breed. And what’s the story with his ears?”

My ears again? How rude. I didn’t think hers quite matched either. And so what about the odd notch nipped out here and there? Getting into a scrape now and then went with the job, and you should see the other guy. Bernie’s voice grew icier. “There are many private detectives in the Valley,” he said. “I can recommend some if you wish.”

“There’s no goddamn time for—” Adelina caught herself.

“No need for that,” she said. “You come highly recommended.

They’ve even heard of you in New York.”

I twisted around to see Bernie’s face: eyebrows up, a look of complete surprise. But he said nothing.

“Are the terms satisfactory?” Adelina said. “Two thousand a day from now till the end of the show?”

Plus expenses. Come on Bernie: plus expenses.
But he didn’t say anything, just nodded.

“I suppose you’d like some sort of retainer,” Adelina said.

“Not yet,” said Bernie.
Not yet? Why not?
“First, we’ve got some questions.” Did we? That was interesting. I waited to hear.

“What sort of questions?” Adelina said.

Bernie started numbering them on his fingers. I loved when he did that! Bernie was always the smartest guy in the room, even if some people missed that. “One,” he said: “Is it customary for show dogs to have bodyguards?”

“No,” said Adelina.

“Two: is it just your custom?”

“No,” she said, “and please don’t number the questions on your fingers. My husband does that and I can’t stand it.”

Bernie’s hands folded up and sank down on the desk. “So there’s a Mr. Borghese?” he said.

“Not exactly,” said Adelina. “My husband is a count.”

Bernie leaned forward. Maybe he thought she’d said something else. “Say again?”

“A count, Mr. Little. A member of the minor European nobility.”

“Ah,” said Bernie. “A
conte,
in Italian.”

“Correct,” said Adelina.

“Making you a contessa,” said Bernie.

“Let’s not get into any of that,” she said. “You can call me Adelina.”

“And I’ll be Bernie,” said Bernie, with a little laugh, as though he’d cracked a pretty good joke. No laugh from Adelina, and in truth I didn’t get it either. Bernie cleared his throat—I can do that, too, much more noisily—a habit of his that usually meant the failure of whatever had gone before. “It’s not your custom to retain a bodyguard for Princess, but you want one now,” he said. “Why?”

Adelina bit her lip. Then, big surprise, her eyes filled with tears. The crying thing: always a bit of a mystery to me. Humans cried sometimes, women more than men—Leda, for example, had had a crying episode every day—but I’d seen Bernie cry once, if crying meant just the tears part with no sound: that was the day Leda packed up all of Charlie’s stuff. Adelina’s crying was the same—just tears, no sound. She opened her bag, took out some tissue, dabbed at her eyes; they seemed darker now. “Princess’s life is in danger,” she said.

“Why do you say that?” said Bernie.

Adelina dug into her bag again, handed him a folded sheet of glossy paper. “This came in the mail.” I got up, watched Bernie unfold it, moved around the desk so I could see.

“A page from a magazine?” Bernie said.

“
Show Dog World,
” said Adelina. She glanced at me and blinked, as though not quite believing her eyes about something, exactly what I had no idea.

I turned my attention back to the glossy page. There was a bit of writing, useless to me, of course, but mostly just a big color photo of Princess on a satin pillow, maybe the same photo I’d seen last night. The difference was that someone had inked in a bull’s-eye target over her tiny fluffball head. I had only one thought: we were in business.

THREE

B
ernie says he hates guns, but he happens to be a crack shot. We’ve got a rifle and a shotgun locked in the office safe—it’s behind a big framed photo of Niagara Falls, you’d never guess— and a .38 Special in the glove box of the Porsche. Bernie loves waterfall pictures, by the way; we’ve got a bunch. But back to the guns. Sometimes Bernie goes to the range for practice. I love the range, although the fact is I’ve only been once on account of the whole experience turning out to be a little too exciting. But that’s how I know bull’s-eyes—from watching Bernie at the range. He gets a look in his eye at the range—cool and still—and then bam! Bull’s-eye! Bernie had a look like that now, as he gazed at Princess’s picture.

“How did you get this?” Bernie said.

“It came in the mail,” said Adelina Borghese.

“In Italy?”

“Italy?”

“Isn’t that where you live?”

“We have a villa in Umbria, yes. But the letter came to our place in Manhattan.”

“When?”

“Last week.”

“Do you have the envelope?”

“No.”

“Where is it?”

“An assistant opens the mail. He throws out the envelopes, junk mail, all that.”

“Did you try to find it?”

“Too late—everything goes in the shredder.”

“Did you show this to the police?”

“The Manhattan DA lives in our building. He told me not to worry about it—most likely just a mean-spirited joke, he said.”

“But you didn’t take his advice,” said Bernie.

“He doesn’t have a dog,” said Adelina.

Bernie nodded as though that made sense to him. Personally, I was losing the thread, maybe because it was getting past breakfast time and there were no signs of breakfast happening. I rose, had a nice stretch—the kind where I get my front legs way out, head down, butt up, can’t tell you how good that feels—wandered into the kitchen and nosed behind the trash bin. You can sometimes find the odd tidbit there, but today wasn’t one of those times. All I spotted was a wine bottle cork. Not food, but I picked it up and started gnawing anyway, hard to explain why. Meanwhile, I tried to remember the last wine-drinking occasion. Had to have been on a night Suzie came over—she liked red. Wine smells are pretty interesting—even humans are on to that. I love when they stick their little noses in the glass and go on about blackberries and chocolate and lemongrass—trust me, they haven’t got a clue.

Hadn’t seen Suzie in a while, now that I thought about it. Suzie was the greatest! She always had biscuits in her car, for one thing. Suzie was a reporter for the
Valley Tribune
. She’d done a story on Bernie, back when we were working the Madison Cham-bliss case. Bernie hadn’t liked the story much. What was the word? Shambling. What the hell’s that? Bernie had said. She’d written that Bernie was a big shambling guy like an athlete past his prime, but she hadn’t mentioned that Bernie had actually been an athlete, pitching for Army back in his college days. Pitching was about baseball and Army was about fighting, kind of confusing, and all of this before Bernie and I got together, but I can tell you one thing—he can throw a tennis ball a long way when he wants to; not so far that I can’t get it in a flash, of course. We can play ball for hours—whatever those are, exactly—me and Bernie. Also Frisbees—what a great invention! Once old man Heydrich, our neighbor on the other side, not Iggy’s, a neighbor who doesn’t warm up to me and my kind, didn’t quite see the Frisbee coming, nobody’s fault really, but try telling that to old man Heydrich.

Back to Bernie and Suzie. The point was that although Bernie hadn’t liked Suzie’s story, he’d ended up liking Suzie. Plus she liked him. Everything was going along swimmingly—I love swimming, by the way, understand that expression perfectly—until an old, or possibly not so old—boyfriend of Suzie’s showed up, name of Dylan McKnight. Don’t get me started, but I can tell you that he and I didn’t hit it off from the get-go, though I’ve liked just about every human I’d ever met, except for perps and gangbangers, and even some of—

“. . . meet the plane,” Bernie was saying. I looked up, saw him moving toward the front door, Adelina beside him.

“I’ll let my husband know,” Adelina was saying. “Sure you don’t want a retainer?”

“Not necessary,” said Bernie. “This’ll be all over soon. We’ll bill you then.”

Oh, Bernie.

We had a late breakfast, bacon and eggs for Bernie, kibble for me. And some of Bernie’s bacon, to tell the truth. Bernie had gotten this idea, no telling from where, that too much bacon was bad for him. The idea of too much bacon made no sense to me and I was happy to help him out.

After breakfast, Bernie went into the office and started tap-tapping at the computer. I sat by the tall, narrow window in the front hall, gazing out. Time passed and then I heard a truck coming. FedEx or UPS? An important difference, because the UPS guy always tossed a biscuit on the lawn as he blew by and the FedEx guy never did. The trucks sounded almost the same, except for a soft tick-tick-tick that meant FedEx, and a moment later I heard that damn ticking: no biscuit. Soon the FedEx truck drove past; I barely looked at it. But then, what was this, right on its tail? A motorcycle. Motorcycles were always interesting, and this one especially, since it stopped in front of our house.