Dog On It (28 page)

Everything looked normal: kitchen, food bowl empty; dining room that never got used; living room with the big TV where we watched movies, me and Bernie; the big bedroom, very messy, as usual; Charlie’s room, neat as a pin, whatever that meant—I’d stuck myself with a pin once, seen nothing neat about it at all. But normal, that was the point, everything normal. Then I went into the office.

Something was wrong; and not just the odor of the beet strangers, by far the strongest of anywhere in the house. What was it, what was wrong? I ran around in circles, sniffing and barking. It took me a long time, but then I saw: Where the whiteboard always hung on the wall was now empty space, the paint brighter than in the rest of the room. I sniffed some more, sniffed Bernie’s smell, of course, but almost overwhelmed by the smell of the beet strangers.

Oh no. Bernie was gone.

I raced through the house, barking and barking. All the doors were closed, and all the windows, too, with the AC finally on, now that the real heat was coming. I couldn’t get out! Bernie! I threw myself against the front door. I’d seen Bernie bash a door down once, but ours didn’t budge, didn’t even make a cracking sound. I tried again with all my strength. All that did was knock Janie’s Post-it note off the door. It fluttered sideways and disappeared behind the recycling bin.

Bernie!

Night. I was beside myself. I hurried through the house, checking and rechecking all the rooms over and over, stopping only when I heard something, or thought I heard something, and if I really did hear something it always turned out to be a car driving by, or a plane high overhead, or Iggy barking again. Worse, I hadn’t been able to hang on any longer, although I’d tried and tried, and ended up shaming myself by the toilet in the hall bathroom.

Bernie. Where are you? Something bad had happened—I felt it through and through. The beet strangers had come, and now Bernie was gone, and the whiteboard, too. Bernie gone—gone and maybe in trouble—and I couldn’t get out, couldn’t go find him. Me, in charge of security. I found myself back at the front door, throwing myself at it again and again, with no results. Bernie had been talking about results not long ago, while we worked in the office. What had he said? I had no idea. I barked and barked, savage barking that filled the house, but did no good at all. Then—What was that? I went still, ears perking right up.

But it was only Iggy: yip yip yip. I didn’t even bark back.
What could poor old Iggy do? My only hope was—what? What was it? Then I knew: My hope was Bernie coming back, coming through the door. Maybe now? I watched the door, didn’t take my eyes off it, got ready to jump all over him. The door didn’t open. After a while a car came up the street, a loud car that sounded a bit like the Porsche. But we didn’t have the Porsche anymore, did we? I could still see it sailing off that mountain road and burning in the gully far below. This was confusing. Could that be Bernie outside, somehow driving up in the Porsche anyway? The loud car kept going, the engine noise fading, fading, gone. I rose up, started clawing at the door. I was clawing so hard I almost didn’t hear the phone ringing.

I ran down the hall and into the office, stood in front of the desk, watched the phone ring. Ring, ring, and then a voice, a voice I knew and liked. “Bernie? It’s Suzie. If you’re there, please pick up. I’d really like to talk to you. Um. Uh. I’ve made a mistake, Bernie, and I just hope that, um . . . Well, please give me a call if you can. Bye.”

I leaped up, knocked the phone off the desk. The whole thing—cradle part, speaking part, wires—went tumbling onto the floor, landing behind the desk. And from down there, I heard Suzie.

“Bernie? Are you there? Is that you?”

I let out a bark.

“Chet?”

I barked and barked. Suzie! Suzie!

“Chet? You all right?”

I kept barking. After a moment or so, there was a click, and no more Suzie. I squeezed down under the desk, wriggled on my belly toward the glowing phone lights. Another woman spoke, not Suzie, her voice unfriendly, not a fan of my kind, I could tell right
away. “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.” I barked at her. “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.” I barked louder. She said it a few more times, all about dialing again, and I got angrier and angrier. Then the phone started beeping, quick and harsh, hurting my ears. I poked at the phone with my paw, but it kept beeping, on and on, unbearable.

I left the office, started hurrying through the house again, a dark house with no lights on. I couldn’t get calm, not with that beet smell in the air, and the constant beeping. In the laundry room, I found an old leather sandal of Bernie’s and chewed it to bits. I barked some more, thought I heard something beside the beeping, went still. Was that a siren? Yes, a siren, far off. I waited for it to get louder, but it did not, got quieter instead, and then came silence, except the beeping, and Iggy once or twice. Soon he went silent, too. Iggy was my buddy. He wanted to help me, just couldn’t. Poor old Iggy. I rose up and clawed again at the front door. What else could I do? I clawed and clawed, getting nowhere. Then a vague memory came to me, a memory of a movie we’d watched, me and Bernie, maybe of Rin Tin Tin, where Rinty opens a doorknob all by himself. Had Bernie even said, “We should learn that sometime”?

But we hadn’t. How did Rinty do it? I slid my front paws down from where they’d been clawing at the door until they bumped against the knob; it gleamed faintly from the streetlight down the block. I pawed at the knob, first with one paw, then the other. Nothing happened. Knobs were supposed to turn; I’d seen them turn so many times, but this one would not. I pawed and pawed, faster and faster, heard a growling sound that startled me for an instant before I realized it was me. After a while I dropped down on all fours, took a little rest, and was just about to rise up and try again when I heard a car on the street.

It came closer and closer. I heard the squeak cars sometimes make when they stop. Then came a moment or two of engine noise—did I recognize that particular engine sound?—and after that, silence. But only for a moment; a car door opened and closed, and footsteps came up the walk. Did I recognize those footsteps? I thought so.

Someone knocked on the door. “Bernie? Are you there?” It was Suzie.

I barked.

“Chet?”

The knob turned. The door opened. There was Suzie, her face all worried. I bolted outside, right by her, round and round the front yard. A hot dry breeze was blowing up the canyon, carrying all kinds of city smells—grease, tar, car exhaust, especially car exhaust, lots and lots of that—masking what I needed, which was beets and Bernie. At last I picked up a trace of beet scent, followed it across the yard and past our trees to the road, where it died out.

“Chet?” Suzie called. “Maybe you’d better come here.” I paused, glanced over at her. She’d turned on the front-door light. Her face looked pale, her eyes huge and dark. Come there? I forgot about that immediately, trotted in bigger and bigger circles around the place where the beet scent had petered out, finally finding it again. Now it led me back across the yard, not through the trees this time but around them and along the narrow paved alley by the house, old man Heydrich’s fence on the other side. A faint current of Bernie came mixing in. Have I mentioned Bernie’s smell? A very nice one, my second favorite, in fact—apples, bourbon, salt and pepper. Beets and Bernie: The mixed-together scent trail took me to the office window and ended right there.

“Chet?” Suzie came up beside me. “What’s wrong?”

I sniffed around, found a trace of the head-clearing smell from the markers Bernie used on the whiteboard, but then Suzie stepped in front of me and her scent—soap and lemons—obliterated it.

“Come on, Chet,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”

I didn’t want to go inside; I wanted to find Bernie, that was all. The next thing I knew, I was hurrying back to the road—where the scent died out as before—then doubling back to the office window.

“Chet? What is it? What’s going on?” Suzie put her hands on the window frame, pushed. The window slid up. “Not locked,” she said. “Is that normal?”

Of course not. Nothing was normal, not with Bernie gone. I gazed up at her.

“How long were you alone in there?” she said.

I started to pant, just a little.

“Let’s get some water,” Suzie said. She stroked between my ears. We walked around to the front door and entered the house. Suzie snapped on more lights. I drank from the bowl in the front hall, all at once very thirsty, then caught up with Suzie as she went from room to room, looking around, checking the closets, even peering under the two beds, Charlie’s and Bernie’s. In the office, she found the phone and cradle on the floor, set it all back on the desk, and the horrible beeping stopped at last. After a pause, Suzie took out her cell phone and dialed some numbers. Almost right away a phone started ringing, not the big one on the desk, but close by. Suzie opened the top drawer and took out Bernie’s cell phone, easy to identify from the duct tape wrapped around it. Bernie’s cell phone rang and rang. Suzie pressed a button and listened for a few moments; I listened, too, heard Bernie’s voice, something about leaving a message. Was Bernie there? I didn’t
understand. The duct-taped cell phone was here, meaning
there
was
here.
Machines were bad for humans, no doubt at all about that in my mind. I crawled under the desk. Suzie said, “If somehow you get this message, Bernie, please call. It’s Suzie. I’m at your place right now—the door was unlocked, and I think Chet’s been on his own here for some time. So if . . . Just call.”

From under the desk, I could see Suzie raising the window and peering out—even sniffing the air, which humans sometimes did, although to no effect, in my experience. “Did something happen here, Chet? What did you see?”

Not a thing, but something happened, all right, something bad, had to be bad if those beet-smelling people, Mr. Gulagov and his—

The desk phone rang, right above my head. It rang and rang, vibrating the desktop, and then came a voice I knew: “Yo, Bernie, Nixon Panero here. Maybe got a replacement for your Porsche what got trashed. Gimme a call.” Click.

Suzie said, “The Porsche got trashed?” I came out from under the desk. “Meaning what?” Suzie’s eyes were even bigger and darker now. “It’s no longer on the road? Bernie’s not out driving somewhere?” I circled for a bit, then stopped and barked in front of the empty space where the whiteboard had hung. Suzie gazed at me. I could feel her thinking, thinking hard. “I’m calling the cops,” she said.

We waited in the kitchen. Suzie poured some kibble in my bowl, but I didn’t eat. Not long after, Rick Torres arrived, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and bowling shoes—I’d gone bowling once with Bernie but it hadn’t ended well—followed by a cop in uniform. “Hey, Chet,” Rick said, and gave me a pat. He was smiling, didn’t look worried at all. Suzie started talking to him, real fast and complicated,
hard for me to catch on. She led the men through the house, going from room to room. I followed. We entered the office last.

“How do you explain the window being unlocked?” Suzie said. “And the front door, too?”

“The thing is,” Rick said, “Bernie can be unpredictable at times.” A quick smile crossed the uniformed man’s face.

“I haven’t found that,” Suzie said. “Not at all. I think he’s extremely reliable.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Rick said. “In all the big things. But every now and then, since the divorce, that is, he kicks his heels up a bit.”

“What do you mean?” Suzie said.

“Like that night at the Red Onion, right, Rick?” said the uniformed cop. “Wasn’t he the one with that gal who played the ukulele? The gal with the ginormous—” Rick made a slight chopping motion with his hand, and the uniformed man went silent.

“No matter what,” Suzie said, “he’d never leave Chet alone in the house for such a long time.”

“I believe that’s happened once or twice, in fact,” Rick said. “Hasn’t it, big guy?” The answer was yes; but I forgave Bernie—things like that could happen. I stood motionless, giving nothing away.

“Even if that’s true,” Suzie said, “which I highly doubt, why wouldn’t he take his cell phone?” She held it up.

“That’s easy,” Rick said. “He hates his cell phone, hates technology in general.”

“But isn’t he working on a case?” Suzie said. “Suppose an important call came through.”

“What case?” said Rick.

“That missing girl, Madison Chambliss.”

Rick shook his head. “There is no case. The girl’s been seen
having fun times in Vegas, also called her mom to say she’d be home soon.”

“Does Bernie know that?”

“He does. Whether he’s totally absorbed it yet is another question.”

“Meaning?”

“Bernie can be stubborn—one of the things that makes him so good at his job, and also such a pain at times.”

Suzie gave Rick a quick glance, not friendly. “Maybe he’s working on other cases,” she said. “I think we should check his computer.”

“For what?”

“Any notes he might have made, something to lead us to him.”

“Uh-uh,” said Rick.

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because he could be coming through the door any second, and I wouldn’t want to have to explain why I was snooping around in his files.”

“It’s not snooping. We’re only trying to help. And where’s his laptop? Doesn’t he have a laptop, too?”

“Probably took it,” Rick said. “And Bernie doesn’t need help. Not when it comes to taking care of himself. Don’t know how well you know him, but Bernie’s as tough as they come.”

“Bernie?”

“Guess you haven’t seen him in action,” Rick said. Suzie gazed at him, said nothing. “And he’s only been gone—What? A matter of hours? He’s probably strumming some ukulele as we speak.”

“He doesn’t play the ukulele,” said Suzie.

“Actually, he does,” said Rick. “He’s pretty good.”

Better than that—he was great, although I hadn’t heard him play in a long time. Suzie and Rick were eyeing each other; the
uniformed cop yawned, and I yawned, too, even though I wasn’t the least bit tired.