A Fistful of Collars (19 page)

“Bicicleta,” Bernie said.

Back home, in the garage. The garage was where we kept the van we used for times when Bernie said the Porsche would be a bad idea, plus all kinds of other stuff, including Bernie’s beer can
collection from the army, and Charlie’s bike, hanging on the wall, nice and shiny, with lovely streamers dangling from one of the grips; the other grip had had streamers, too, until recently. What had happened to them? I had hardly the slightest idea.

Bernie picked up the bent and rusty kid’s bike that we’d found in Manny Chavez’s yard and leaned it against the wall.

“Belongs to Nino, Manny’s kid, but no one claimed the body,” Bernie said, dusting off the seat, a little puff of dust rising like a wave and turning silver in the light from the window. “And the bike being in such bad shape, abandoned even in a neighborhood like that, makes me think Nino and Manny hadn’t been together in some time.” He found a rag and an oil can, started cleaning up the bike. Soon the tools came out and the bike was all in pieces. It got very quiet in the garage. I curled up on a tarp. Bernie worked on Nino’s bike until it was time to go to the airport and pick up Suzie.

The terminal doors slid open, and out came Suzie, towing a little red suitcase. Oh, poor Suzie! Her face had no color at all, and her dark eyes, which usually sparkled like the countertops in our kitchen, looked huge and unseeing at the same time. Bernie jumped out of the car and held her. A state trooper moved toward them, ticket book in hand, saw how Suzie’s shoulders were shaking and backed away.

“It’s my fault,” she cried, tears spilling down her face. “If I hadn’t—”

Bernie’s hands, big and strong, squeezed Suzie’s arms so hard it had to hurt. She went silent.

“That’s crazy talk,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “And even worse, it gives whoever did this some moral wiggle room. That’s sickening.”

Suzie’s tears didn’t stop, but she got the sobbing part under control, nodded, and climbed in the car. After that, she seemed to pull herself together pretty quick, which was our MO at the Little Detective Agency—kind of a strange thought, since Suzie wasn’t part of the Little Detective Agency, which was just me and Bernie and always would be. So I forgot all that, whatever it was, and tried to make myself comfortable on the tiny shelf behind the two front seats, not easy for a hundred-plus-pounder. Did some gnawing at the back of Suzie’s seat go on? Hardly any at all, not worth mentioning.

“I could stay at a hotel,” Suzie was saying.

Bernie turned to her. “Is there something about Washington that makes everybody stupid?” he said. “You’re staying with me.”

That night, we all went into the office and Bernie got busy at the whiteboard. The whiteboard always starts off completely blank, not a mark on it, which is how I like it best. First, Bernie drew two houses. I had no problem with that. “Two houses across from each other on North Coursin Street,” he said.

“Bad neighborhood,” said Suzie.

Exactly. I couldn’t have been following this any better.

“Manny Chavez gets killed in this one,” Bernie said. “And over here is the mother and the girl who ID’d the bike, both of them now supposedly back in Mexico.”
Squeak squeak
: he made more marks with the felt pen. Those squeaks, plus the smell of the pen, both pretty interesting. I felt the thread slip-slipping away.

“After Luxton’s visit?” Suzie was saying, or something like that.

Bernie nodded.

“I don’t understand this at all,” Suzie said.

Bernie drew some arrows. “Floyd, the redhaired cop, is some kind of source for Luxton.”

“I get that. But why does it have anything to do with Carla? What if there’s no connection?”

Bernie added some boxes, a few inside other boxes. The whiteboard got blacker and blacker. Soon Bernie might have a pen mark on his face.

“Jiggs gave that wad of money to Manny Chavez,” Bernie said at last. “That’s the connection.”

I tried to remember that—and sort of did! From there, it was a real short step to getting the feeling that we were on a roll. What a nice feeling, exciting and relaxing at the same time! I gave it all my attention. Sometime later I grew aware of pen marks on Bernie’s face.

We went to the funeral. I’d been to a funeral before, namely the funeral for the one kid we’d found too late. That broom closet: I wanted never to think about it, but how often it came sneaking into my mind, setting up camp in a back corner before I even knew what was happening! Forget all that, even if I can’t. The point is, I’d been to a funeral and knew the drill.

For example, sitting quiet and still was important. I sat still and quiet between Bernie and Suzie in a middle row, the grass soft and thick like a putting green. In front, a woman in a sort of robe was giving a talk. I’d been to a talk before, the time Bernie spoke at the Great Western Private Eye convention, but this seemed different, although one thing they had in common was that no one laughed. In fact, everybody was sad. A whole bunch of humans all being sad at once is something that presses down on you, like the air has gotten real heavy. I stuck close to Bernie. Another thing the two funerals had in common was that Bernie wore a tie to both, the only times I’d ever seen him in a tie. It was his only one, plain black. Bernie was sad, too, but also
angry. I could see it in this little muscle that bulged over his jaw once or twice.

I watched the woman in the robe for a while and then shifted my gaze to the hole in the ground—a hole with very neat, squared-off edges, not the kind I’d dig. Beside the hole a long gold-trimmed white box, pretty much the same size as the hole, rested on a stand. It wasn’t one of our real bright Valley days; the sky kind of hazy, the way it can get when dust storms are on the way, but a ray of sunshine appeared and caught the gold trim. Carla was in that box, something I knew for a fact. All of this so far was like the other funeral, the one for the kid, except the box was bigger. Also, Bernie hadn’t been angry that time. We’d gotten rid of our anger the night before, when we’d caught the perp and done what we’d done. I lay down and curled up—aware of the voice of the woman in the robe, plus also some soft crying now and then—and kept my eyes on Bernie. Was he restless? Maybe; he did a lot of looking around.

After, there was lots of talking in low voices, some hugging, a few handshakes. We met Carla’s mother and father, both big and strong, although they clung to each other like they were about to fall down.

“You’re the gentleman who found our daughter?” said Carla’s father. He had one of those very deep, rumbly voices that did nice things far inside my ears.

“I am,” Bernie said. “May I ask how you knew that?”

“The officer told us.” He turned to his wife. “What was the name of that nice officer?”

“Stine,” said Carla’s mother. “Lieutenant Stine.” She looked at Bernie in the way humans do when they want someone to say something, but Bernie did not.

“You’re a private detective, sir?” said Carla’s father.

“I am,” Bernie said. “And also a friend of Suzie’s.”

“Which was how you knew our . . . our daughter?” Carla’s father said.

“Yes.”

He squeezed his wife’s arm. “I just don’t understand,” he said. “How could anyone harm a hair on the head of a person like . . . like her? It’s impossible.” I could feel his voice through the ground under my paws. One other thing: there were worms in that hole. The smell is hard to miss.

Out in the parking lot, Bernie was watching two women standing by a car, both of them wiping away tears.

“Know them?” he said.

Suzie didn’t answer. Her eyes had an inward look, way down there and not happy.

Bernie touched her shoulder, and said, real gently, “Know those women, Suzie?”

Suzie’s eyes cleared, like she was slowly waking up. She glanced at the women, shook her head. “Maybe friends of Carla’s, but the only ones we had in common were in the business.”

Bernie was giving Suzie a careful look. He reached into the Porsche, handed her a bottle of water. “Wait here,” he said. “You, too, Chet. Sit.”

I sat, no problem. Suzie leaned against the car, opened the water bottle, and tilted it up to her mouth. She took a sip, then all of a sudden was drinking and drinking, sucking the water from the bottle until it started crumpling in on itself.

“How did he know I was so thirsty?” she said.

Or something like that. I appeared to be no longer quite beside her, no longer sitting, to tell the truth, but on my way to Bernie; actually pretty much there, by his side, which is where it just so happens I feel my best.

“. . . and was just wondering,” he was saying to the two women, “if you were friends of hers.”

The women nodded. They glanced at me at the exact same moment I was opening my mouth to the max, then quickly back to Bernie.

“Had she mentioned me to either of you?” Bernie said. “Possibly about setting up a meeting?”

One of the women shook her head. The other said, “Not me. You’re a detective?”

“Private,” said Bernie, “formerly of Metro PD. Did she get in touch for any reason recently?”

The women looked at each other. “Last time I spoke to her was at your baby shower,” one said.

“Same,” said the other. She turned to Bernie. “That was back in May. What’s this all about? Are you trying to find out who killed her?”

“Yes,” Bernie said. “I think some old friend of Carla’s, maybe going back to high school or even before, might have information.”

“That’s not us,” said one of the women. “We both came here from Atlanta after college.”

“But remember that ball game?” said the baby-shower woman.

“Where Carla got those good seats?”

“Right. What was the name of that girl—”

“—who drank too much beer?”

“Yeah, blonde with the ponytail. Wasn’t she an old friend of Carla’s?”

Bernie glanced around the parking lot. “Did you see her today?”

“No,” the women said.

“Do you remember her name?”

“Donna, maybe?”

“Dinah?”

“Dina. It was Dina, I’m sure of it.”

“Last name?” Bernie said.

“Sorry,” said the women. “But,” added the baby-shower woman, “didn’t she work in a bar?”

“That’s right. She handed out those two-for-one coupons.”

“Did she mention the name of the bar?” Bernie said.

“Not that I recall,” said the baby-shower woman.

“But,” said the other, “I bet I still have that coupon.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie. “When was the ball game?”

“Summer before last. But I’m a hoarder.”

The baby-shower woman laughed, a tiny laugh, hardly a sound at all, but nice to hear. Her friend unlocked the nearest car, opened the glove box. Lots of stuff came spilling out. She sorted through it. “Here we go,” she said, and handed Bernie a slip of paper.

L
et’s eat,” Bernie said. We were back in the car, Suzie riding shotgun, me on the shelf, not good, but I wasn’t thinking about that. Or anything, really. All I knew was that the farther we got from that hole in the ground, the better I felt.

Suzie glanced at Bernie, eyebrows rising, like he’d surprised her. “You feel hungry?” she said.

“Not at all,” said Bernie. “But one thing I’ve been learning in this job”—Did his head make a quick little motion in my direction?—“is you’ve got to keep doing the normal routine.”

Suzie thought that over, nodded her head. But what was there to think over? Eating had to be the most normal move out there, maybe even better than normal. As for Bernie not being hungry, that was the only part I didn’t get. I myself was famished. What had I eaten so far today? I couldn’t remember a single morsel, except possibly a bit of kibble, and maybe a biscuit on top of that. A Rover and Company biscuit, yes, best biscuits in the Valley—and wasn’t it about time for a revisit to their test kitchen?—but this biscuit, even if there’d been one,
had been on the smallish side. Biscuits came in different sizes. What was the point of that?

“How does Burger Heaven sound?” Bernie said. “Chet—easy!”

Here’s a valuable piece of information, something I never forget: there’s more than one Burger Heaven in the Valley. In fact, there are lots. What a business plan! Suppose, for example, that the Little Detective Agency . . . something or other, a great thought turning into a dust pile just before I could get there. Sometimes at night when I fall asleep there are several of those dust piles in my mind; then, when I wake up, presto!—as Bernie once said when he thought he had the garage door opener all fixed, and the chain did work perfectly after that, so maybe the door falling off wasn’t important—all dust piles gone, and back to feeling tip-top.

In no time at all, we’d pulled into a Burger Heaven. This was a particularly nice one, with a smooth, recently paved parking lot and fresh-painted white lines—those smells, tar and paint, sharpening my appetite like you wouldn’t believe, plus a pretty yellow plastic picnic table, which was where we sat. Bernie had a cheeseburger, Suzie a chicken salad, and me a plain burger with no bun. Trucks roared by on the freeway, which was raised up above us in this part of town. I loved picnics.

“. . . didn’t quite catch that,” Bernie said, sipping his soda. “Can you speak up?”

Suzie raised her voice. “I said I want to help.”

“When do you have to be back in DC?” Bernie said.

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

That Bernie! Right every time, just about. Not worrying was the best plan there was.

“. . . meaning the next step,” he was saying, “is paying a visit to—” He took out the bar coupon. “—Red Devil’s Bar and Grill.”

Suzie shook her head. “I want to help,” she said. “Not tag along.”

What did that mean? Not too sure. Bernie and I tagged along with each other all the time, no problem. I polished off what was left of my burger, then did a bit of exploring under the table. And what do you know? An onion ring, perfectly round, completely undamaged, even still slightly warm.

Up above, Bernie said, “Tell you what. How about looking into that flower warehouse?”

“For what?”

“Any connection it might have to Carla.”