EIGHTEEN
Back in the office, Bernie got busy with some maps. “San Anselmo, maybe,” he said. “Or possibly San Quentin. Not uncommon south of the border, big guy, those Sans.” Didn’t I know San Quentin, a faraway jail where we’d put a perp or two, maybe including Crock Mullican? What a great guy—a real fan of my kind, gave off a huge scent of aftershave—and we were getting along great until Bernie brought up the matter of the missing stamp collection, and then his mood changed and the AR-15 came whipping out. We’ve still got Crock’s AR-15, locked in the safe with all our other guns. The safe’s right here in the office, hidden behind this picture of Niagara Falls, but that’s just between me and Bernie. Bernie likes waterfall pictures—we’ve got lots at our place.
“Tenuous,” Bernie said, a completely new one on me, “but except for Darren and that phone call, what else have we got?” I waited to hear. “Maybe we could go the puff adder route, or . . .” He went silent. The puff adder route? Anything but that.
Bernie turned to the computer, started tapping at the keys. I went to lie down on the rug, caught sight of those elephants, and moved out of the office and into the hall. I’ve always loved lying on the rug, but now, for some reason, I didn’t.
“Chet? Everything all right?”
I just stood there, doing nothing. That happens sometimes.
The phone rang, and I heard Rick’s voice on the speakerphone. “That baseball bat and the elephant hook?” he said. “We got a match.”
“Who?” said Bernie.
“Didn’t say we had an ID,” Rick said, “just a match. Whoever it is isn’t in the system.”
“That’s still helpful,” Bernie said.
“Yeah?”
“It means something’s not right.”
“Like what?”
“Probably a lot of things, but the most important is DeLeath wasn’t acting on his own.”
“Don’t see the connection,” Rick said.
Bernie started explaining. Rick kept interrupting. Their voices rose. I lay down in the hall, back against the wall, got comfortable. Maybe the puff adder came into the conversation. Rick might have said something about the puff adder getting brought into the country by a reptile nut. Bernie might have said that all the reptile nuts were accounted for. Rick might have said so what? After a while, I got up, gave myself a good shake, and went into the office.
Bernie was at the whiteboard writing, drawing boxes, making arrows and other shapes I didn’t know the names of. I know arrows on account of having one shot at me by a bow-hunting survivalist whose name isn’t coming at the moment. Those survivalists—maybe later. In the meantime, it was fun watching the whiteboard turn black. “Round about now,” Bernie said, “it’d be nice to have a theory of the case. Know what I’m saying?”
Of course. Bernie was talking about the case. How were we doing? Pretty well, I thought.
“But I can’t come up with a theory,” Bernie said, “so how about we do some digging?”
Love digging: one of my very best skills.
“San Anselmo’s closer—we’ll start there.”
Fine with me. There’s the front-paws method and also the all-paws method, for big jobs. I was ready either way. Bernie took down the Niagara Falls painting, spun the dial on the safe, brought out the .38 Special. A breeze sprang up. In no time at all I realized that was me, wagging my tail. The .38 Special plus digging—your tail would be wagging, too.
Whatever San Anselmo was, we didn’t get there right away, because as soon as we stepped outside Suzie drove up in her yellow Beetle.
“Suzie?” Bernie said as she climbed out of the car and walked toward us. The streetlight shone on her in a funny way, leaving her eyes in shadow, making me uneasy. “I’m not, uh, quite ready,” Bernie went on. “I mean, I’ve been thinking, of course, but I want to put it just right, and, well . . .”
“Bernie? What are you talking about?”
Bernie looked surprised. “What you said before, putting it into words, relationship et cetera and how it means to you. Me. I mean, means to me.” Was this making any sense at all?
“Maybe some other time,” Suzie said. “Right now I’m working on the DeLeath story.”
“Oh,” said Bernie. He has a way of saying just oh sometimes when he’s talking to women, maybe a thing I’ve mentioned already. If I did, did I also point out it’s never a good sign?
“Do you have time to answer a couple of questions?” Suzie said.
“Like?” said Bernie.
Suzie took out a notebook. “I’m trying to nail down the motive,” she said. “What made him do it?”
“Do what?” Bernie said.
“Take off with Peanut, of course,” Suzie said. “Unless you know something else he did?”
“Nope,” Bernie said.
Suzie moved closer to our garage light, turned a page. “I’m getting conflicting accounts,” she said. “Colonel Drummond seems convinced that the animal rights people made some sort of successful appeal to DeLeath’s conscience. Nadia Worth of FAAN acknowledges speaking to DeLeath on several occasions but denies getting any sort of positive response.” Suzie brought the notebook a little nearer to her eyes. “In fact, she didn’t show much sympathy for what happened to him, gave me this quote, re that diamondback—‘not an unfitting ending for an exploiter of animals.’ And there are no red flags in his personal life. He and John Poppechevski—is that how you say it?—”
“Everyone calls him Popo.”
“—appear to live—make that used to—a cozy, domestic existence. So—what am I missing?”
“I don’t know,” Bernie said.
“Do you agree that something is missing?”
“Yes,” Bernie said. “Here’s something I can tell you, but not for publication—the snake was a puff adder, not a diamondback.”
“Thanks for the correction,” Suzie said, “but not-for-publication corrections are unusual in my business, maybe even unique.”
Bernie laughed. “See?” he said. “Right there is why I want—”
But whatever Bernie wanted didn’t get said, because at that moment another car came barreling down Mesquite Road, made a squealing turn into our driveway and braked to a rocking stop. Out jumped Leda. She hurried up to Bernie—not looking at Suzie or me at all, maybe not even seeing us—grabbed his hand in both of hers and said, “Thank God you’re here, Bernie. I need you.”
“Well,” said Bernie. “Uh.” Have I gotten to his eyebrows yet? Very good-looking eyebrows, nice and thick, and also expressive, with a language of their own—a language I know, and right now it was a language all about surprise, confusion, and being real real uncomfortable.
Meanwhile Suzie, who has nice eyebrows, too, although not as thick or expressive as Bernie’s, was looking at Leda, then Bernie, then Leda again, and her eyebrows were doing the same things as Bernie’s, although in smaller ways. Bernie seemed to be trying to back away from Leda, or at least get his hand free, but Leda was hanging on. He turned to Suzie, his mouth opening like he wanted to say something, but nothing came out.
Suzie’s eyes hardened. “I was just leaving,” she said.
“No, no,” Bernie, “I, uh . . .”
But by that time, Suzie was walking fast toward her car. She got in, closed the door, maybe more of a slamming, actually, and tore off.
Leda blinked. “Who was that?” she said.
“Christ,” Bernie said, “what do you want?”
“You won’t tell me?”
Bernie’s voice rose in a way I hadn’t heard since just before the divorce. “It’s none of your business, Leda. Why are you here?”
Leda let go of Bernie’s hand, let go real quick, like she’d had hold of something way too hot. That happened to me once, at a picnic when I spotted a blackened hot dog—what a strange name, totally beyond me what that’s about—at the edge of the fire and went for it.
But back to Leda, who was saying, “You don’t care at all, do you?”
“Huh?” said Bernie. He has a beautiful face, but for an instant it looked almost ugly.
“In that case, let’s keep this on a professional basis.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Fifty percent of the Little Detective Agency belongs to me,” Leda said; they were talking quicker and quicker and louder and louder. “It’s in the agreement, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“And you get your share of the profits every—”
“Profits? There’s a concept. Did it—”
“You want more money? That’s why you drove up uninvited and inter—”
“—ever occur to you that the name Little Detective Agency might be a turnoff marketing-wise?”
“What was I supposed to do? Change my name to Big?”
No time to think about that even though I wanted to—Bernie Big? Big Bernie?—because a light went on in an upstairs window next door and Mrs. Parsons peeked through the curtains. Hadn’t seen Mrs. Parsons in a while—something the matter with her, couldn’t remember what—and she was wearing a strange pointy cap and looked kind of scary. Bernie and Leda both glanced up at her and went quiet, the kind of real quiet that comes after lots of noise.
Leda lowered her voice almost down to a whisper. “What I came for—mistakenly, that’s obvious—was your professional help.”
“Professional?” Bernie lowered his voice, too.
“I think I’m being stalked, not that you give a good goddamn.”
Bernie took a deep breath. “What makes you think you’re being stalked?”
“You never believe me, do you?”
“Leda,” Bernie began, voice rising again. He paused, got it back down. “If you’re being stalked, I need the facts.”
“Facts? How about this pickup that stayed right on my bumper for twenty miles on the Cross Valley Freeway yesterday, and then tonight when I left a meeting downtown, there it was again? Enough facts? I saw your exit and jumped off, didn’t signal, didn’t even slow down.”
Bernie looked up and down the street: quiet, dark, no pickups in sight, no traffic at all. “Sure it’s the same one?” he said.
“Of course I’m sure.”
“What color is it?”
“Some dark color, blue, black, I don’t know. But there’s an antenna on the roof and it’s crooked.”
“Can you describe the driver?”
“I never got a good look at him. He was wearing sunglasses and had the visor down the whole time.”
Bernie had a thought; I could tell from his eyes. The thought made his body tense up, changed his voice, too. “Was he wearing a bandanna?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Where’s Charlie?”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
“At home.”
“With Malcolm?”
“With the sitter.”
“Where’s Malcolm?”
“Away on business.”
That muscle in the side of Bernie’s face that sometimes jumps jumped now. “Who’s the sitter?”
“Kennedy.”
“Who’s Kennedy?”
“A neighbor kid.”
“How old?”
“She’s very responsible.”
“How old?”
“Almost twelve.”
“Call her,” Bernie said.
There was a pause. Then Leda said, “Oh my God, you don’t really think . . .?” She dug out her cell phone. “Kennedy? Is everything all right?” She listened for a moment, then nodded to Bernie.
“Where’s Charlie?” Bernie said.
Leda spoke into the phone. “What’s Charlie up to?” She listened again. This time I heard the voice on the other end—a young girl’s voice—saying something about TV. “No, that’s fine,” Leda said. “I’m on the way home.” She clicked off.
“We’ll follow you,” Bernie said.
Soon we were in High Chaparral Estates, parked down the street from Leda and Malcolm’s big house with the columns, in fact parked in front of another one a lot like it, maybe bigger and with taller columns. Leda had already run inside her place, called to say everything was fine. After that, a car left a driveway down the street, stopped in front of Leda’s. A girl came out of the house, a small girl, not much bigger than Charlie, and got in the car. The car turned around, went back to the driveway down the street. The garage door opened. The car drove in. The door closed.
We sat. Sitting’s a big part of this job. We’re good at it, me and Bernie. After a while, he said, “If she’s really getting stalked and it turns out to be Jocko, then . . .” Then what? I waited to hear. Time passed. Bernie said, “He’s probably watching way too much TV.” Jocko was watching too much TV? Was that our problem with him? I thought it was all about how he’d gone over us both pretty good with that baseball bat and we still hadn’t paid him back. Then came thoughts of smashing up Jocko’s TV. After that, no more thoughts. We sat.
I heard an approaching car, looked down the street but didn’t see it at first, on account of the headlights were off. It passed under a street lamp—not a car, but a pickup with a crooked antenna on the roof. I glanced at Bernie. His eyes were closed. I have different kinds of growls. One’s real low and quiet, stays deep in my throat, just right for a time like this.
Bernie’s eyes snapped open. “Chet? What’s—”
The pickup with the crooked antenna slowed down and stopped, right in front of Leda’s house. The driver, too far away for me to tell whether it was Jocko or not, pointed something out the window. All of a sudden the .38 Special was in Bernie’s hand. But then I caught the tiny blue screen glow of the thing in the guy’s hand, and so did Bernie. “Cell phone,” he said. I knew cell phones weren’t just for talking—they could take pictures, too, for example. Humans love gadgets, maybe way too much, but there was no time to think about that. The pickup started moving again, drove past us, headlights still off, meaning we weren’t blinded and got a good look at the driver.
“I’m going to break his goddamn neck,” Bernie said.
It was Marvin Winkleman.