Thereby Hangs a Tail (34 page)

Meanwhile, I was already on my way up those stairs, charging full speed. Lester didn’t have time to clear the gun from the holster so he swung the bat at my head. He connected, got me a good one, but on the shoulder, not the head. Knocked me sideways, but I kept my footing, claws scratching deep into the stairs, and then I sprang and did some connecting of my own. We rolled down the stairs, Lester yelling, me growling my fiercest, and landed hard on the floor, me on top. Bernie stepped up, put the muzzle of the .38 Special right against the tip of Lester’s nose.

“Don’t shoot,” Lester said.

“Did you touch her?” Bernie said, his trigger finger bone-white. “I’m going to kill you.”

“No, I swear.”

“Suzie?” Bernie said, not turning to look at her, his face real close to Lester’s.

“Nothing like that happened,” Suzie said, in this new weak, scratchy voice of hers. “Not yet.”

The .38 Special stayed where it was, pressed to Lester’s nose but no longer quite steady; and now Bernie’s face was as bone-white as his trigger finger. Something real bad was about to happen. I heard a little high-pitched sound. Hey! That was me. Bernie glanced my way. Then he took a deep deep breath and lowered the gun.

We left Les chained up nice and tight down in his basement and went outside, Bernie’s arm around Suzie the whole way. The moon was gone, who knows where.

“You limping, Chet?” Bernie said.

Maybe I was a little. I took a few more limping steps, felt pain in my shoulder. Then all of a sudden, on the very next step, the pain vanished and I was fine. I ran around a bit for no reason.

“He looks okay,” Suzie said.

We found Earl Ford still cuffed to the wheel of his SUV. Bernie threw open the door, pretty angry.

“Glad to see the lady’s alive,” Earl said.

“Don’t want to hear it,” Bernie said. He unlocked the cuff from the wheel, pulled Earl out of the SUV.

“My arm,” said Earl.

“Least of your worries.”

“I could bleed out.”

“Not from that wound.”

“How do you know?”

Bernie didn’t answer, just led Earl into the barn. I stayed by the SUV with Suzie, pretty sure that was what Bernie wanted me to do. Suzie gave me a pat, looked me in the eye. “Good to see you, Chet,” she said. “Can’t begin to tell you.”

Good to see Suzie, too. I got the feeling this case was going well. We’d found Princess, and now Suzie. Then I remembered Adelina and the ants, and wasn’t so sure. I tried to think back over the details, but everything got hazy. I pressed my head against Suzie’s leg. “You’re the best,” she said. She leaned down so our faces were on the same level. Oh, no. Suzie didn’t look good, not good at all, especially her eyes. And there was a strong strange smell—kind of like milk gone bad—a smell of being so afraid. Poor Suzie. I gave her face a nice big lick.

And all at once her face got misshapen like it was coming apart and she started sobbing, wet tears streaming down. I licked and licked, trying to lick them all up, so salty. She went to her knees and held on to me. I stood strong, took her weight no problem. Suzie shook for a bit but then she stopped and the crying stopped and I could feel strength coming back to her body. She rose, wiped her face on the back of her sleeve, then leaned down again, this time kissing me, right on the nose. That tickles, but I love it.

Bernie came out of the garage, talking on his cell phone. “. . . and the other one’s in the basement,” he was saying.

He listened for a moment. Behind him I saw a faint band of milky light, low in the sky. The end of night, a real quiet time. I could hear Cedric on the other end of the phone. “You’ll be there, I assume?”

“Nope,” Bernie said, and clicked off.

“Where are you going to be?” Suzie said.

“Wrapping things up,” said Bernie. He gave Suzie a long look. “But first we’ll take you to the hospital.”

“Hell, no,” she said, wiping her face again.

“Sorry, Suzie. It could be dangerous.”

“That’s a joke, right? Under the circumstances?”

“Can’t let you.”

“I’ll sue.”

“For what?”

“Restraint of trade,” Suzie said. “This is a big story.”

Bernie was still for a moment, his face hard, the way it had been all night. Then he smiled, a big smile that brought him back to the usual old Bernie.

Which was good. The only bad part was how I ended up in the back of the SUV again, Bernie driving, Suzie now in the shotgun seat, my spot. But I was cool with it, especially after I got myself right up to the edge of the backseat, putting my head actually in the front, between Suzie and Bernie. Suzie’s hand rested on the console and his hand lay on hers. And then my paw was on top of both! How had that happened?

“Chet?”

I backed up a little.

“That was Cedric on the phone,” Bernie said.

“Figured,” said Suzie.

“You know Cedric?”

“You’re funny, Bernie.”

“Huh?”

“I worked the crime beat for two years. Go on.”

“Um,” said Bernie. “Cedric says Adelina and Borghese had a prenup. In the event of divorce—”

“—he got zip.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Research.” The milky band of light was turning orange: a brand-new day. I always liked watching that happen, and maybe missed some of the back-and-forth between Suzie and Bernie, kind of hard to understand anyway. Suzie said something like, “But her predeceasing him was a different story—he got it all. The moment I found that out I should have crossed Ganz off the list. Instead I heard about him owning that ghost town and went there on a hunch. Which turned out to be right, except for the Ganz part.”

“What happened?”

“I heard barking, up in that cabin. Thought it was Princess, of course, and started there on foot. Then these two guys stepped out of the shadows.”

“Earl and Les?”

Suzie nodded. “I called your number, couldn’t think of anything else to do. Later, when they had me tied up, I heard him telling Earl and Les to get rid of me, and Les said he’d handle it.”

“Who’s ‘him’?” Bernie said.

“Borghese,” Suzie said. “Haven’t you figured this out yet?”

“They’re in love?”

“They even finish each other’s sentences.”

“I noticed that,” Bernie said.

“You did?” said Suzie.

Bernie shrugged his shoulders. For some reason, that made Suzie laugh. Then she leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

The sun was up by the time we drove past the corral—the white horse watching us over the fence rail—and the putting green and parked in front of the big house at Rio Loco Ranch. “The deal is you stay here,” Bernie said.

Suzie didn’t answer.

“Deal?” said Bernie.

Suzie nodded, a very slight motion, almost none at all.

Bernie and I got out of the SUV. A beautiful morning, the air still, the house quiet. Sometimes, early in the morning like that, with the air so still, you can hear small sounds from far away, or at least I can. At that moment, I heard a faint clink, the kind of clink silverware makes on a plate. The sound came from somewhere behind the house and I headed in that direction. “Good boy,” Bernie said, coming with me.

We went around the house, through a big garden with lots of flowers, past some orange trees—oranges dangling from branches out of reach—and came to a huge swimming pool with a patio beside it. An umbrella stood on the patio, a table underneath. Seated close together at the table, legs touching, the count and Nance were having breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, orange juice, coffee: I smelled it all.

By the time they heard us coming, we were almost on them; we could be real quiet, me and Bernie. They looked up, first Nance, then Borghese. Then they moved farther apart from each other, the coffee slopping over the edge of the count’s cup.

“Morning,” Bernie said.

The count placed his cup in the saucer. “Mr. Little?” he said.

“To what do we, uh—”

“Owe this visit,” said Nance. Her purse lay on the table. She drew it closer.

“It’s about the case,” Bernie said. We stood by the table, Bor-ghese and Nance on the other side. The sun shone on a big glass jug of orange juice: a beautiful sight.

“The case?” said Borghese.

“What case?” said Nance.

“The three culprits are in jail, no?” Borghese said.

“And you’ve been paid,” said Nance.

“They won’t be in jail for long,” Bernie said. “At least not for this. That was so lucky, how fall guys kept popping up for you. Even Ganz—were you going to murder Adelina anyway, or did it only become irresistible when he sent that photo?”

“What is this nonsense?” said Borghese. “I’m afraid we must ask you to—”

Borghese cut himself off, gazed past us. So did Nance. Their eyes opened wide. I turned, and there, emerging from the orange trees, came Suzie. She had a little camera in her hand, now raised it to snap a picture.

Bernie had turned, too. “Suzie,” he said. “Get back.”

“Freeze,” said Nance.

Uh-oh. We both spun back around, me and Bernie. Too late. Nance had slipped a little handgun out of her purse. Her skin, so dark from the sun, and her eyes, shrunk down to points: she looked a lot like those dangerous gunslingers from the Westerns in our DVD pile, except she was a woman. She pointed the gun right at Bernie’s head. “I missed your dog, but that was at long range,” she said. “I won’t miss now.”

The muscle in Bernie’s jaw got hard and lumpy. “You were shooting at Chet?”

Hey! I remembered that, a real bad memory that made me mad. I leaped. Most of the time I’m a very good leaper, but this wasn’t one of my better leaps, in fact maybe my very worst, my legs letting me down for some reason. I cleared the table all right—the gun swinging over to point my way—but crashed into that big jug of orange juice. Did the gun go off ? Not sure, but the jug went flying, splashing orange juice all over the place, including— hey!—in Nance’s face.

“Ow,” she said, putting her free hand to her eyes.

The next moment, Bernie had her, twisting her arm up and behind, making her say, “Ow,” again, this time louder, and drop the gun. We’d taken down women perps before, but never this roughly. In this case I was all for it. Bernie kicked the gun away.

Meanwhile, Borghese had taken off, was running across the lawn. The count turned out to be a poor runner, one of the very worst human runners I’d ever seen. I had him by the pant leg in no time. Case closed.

Lieutenant Stine, a SWAT team, and a bunch of other cops soon arrived. By that time, we’d found the thirty-ought-six under some hay bales in the barn. Normally we tend to hang around in situations like that, accepting congratulations, free drinks, lots of pats, that kind of thing. But not this time. This time we were in a big hurry. Why? No clue.

Not long after, we pulled into the vet’s parking lot. The vet? I was fine, shoulder all better, not a scratch on me. We went inside, me, Bernie, Suzie. The vet’s name was Amy, a big round woman with a nice voice and careful hands, but I always started shaking the moment I entered the waiting room, and this time was no different.

They laid me on a table. Bernie stroked between my ears, very nice. Amy felt along my side. A lot of talk went on over my head—something about biopsies, whatever those were—and I thought about the tray of bacon we’d left untouched on the count’s table. I felt a tiny jab high up one leg, and then nothing.

Woke up feeling tip-top, out in Amy’s waiting room. Bernie was saying something like, “If you had to guess?” Amy looked away from him. “We’ll have the results in two days,” she said. Then they saw I was up and at ’em and gave me some pats. We left. I had no idea what that was all about, just felt glad to get out of there.

We went home, listened to a message from Chuck Eckel. “Big news,” he said. “Some peasant just stumbled on the biggest tin deposit they’ve ever found in Bolivia. Gonna drive the price down to practically zero. You’ll make a shitload.”

Bernie didn’t seem thrilled. I wasn’t either. It sounded kind of disgusting.

The next day we went to the Great Western Dog Show at the Arena. I sat with Suzie, the whole place packed. And where was Bernie? Down on the floor with Princess! There were a whole bunch of tiny dogs, some fluffballs, some not, but I only had eyes for two—Babycakes, with Mr. Ganz, and Princess, with Bernie. They got paraded around one by one. Babycakes did her little move, one paw raised, waiting patiently to get going. What crap! Then, last, came Princess, running in her blurry-legged style, Bernie kind of shuffling along beside her.

“He’s adorable,” Suzie said in a quiet voice.

Huh? Who? What? Missed that completely.

Down on the floor, all the dogs waited at their stations, a human standing beside each one; only the humans looked nervous. Then a big, scary-looking old woman in black started walking slowly past each one, staring at them. Now my guys looked nervous, too. She spent an extra long time gazing at Babycakes, who raised her goddamn paw again, and at Princess, who stuck out her little pink tongue right in the scary woman’s face. And then—and then! The scary woman extended her arm and pointed right at Princess!

Applause. Clapping and cheering. Princess, now wearing a blue ribbon, took Bernie on a victory run. He had this huge smile on his face and she had her head up in that determined way. Had I ever seen anything so exciting? I wanted to be down there so bad.

And the next thing I knew I was! I ran around crazily. Princess got free and ran around with me. Then all of them—all those midgets—were on the loose. Somehow that blue ribbon got eaten, possibly by me. We went wild.

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