The Dog Who Knew Too Much (24 page)

Suzie rose and started walking through the house. I followed her. We went from room to room, entering the office last. The office is next door to Charlie’s bedroom, where Charlie sleeps on some weekends, not enough. A basket of kid’s blocks lies in one corner of the office—the room was meant for a little sister or brother that never came along; sometimes I played with the blocks myself. The rest of the office is mostly Bernie’s books—on shelves, in stacks here and there, sometimes scattered on the floor; plus the desk; the two client chairs; the wall safe, hidden behind the picture of Niagara Falls; and the whiteboard on the wall, where Bernie figures things out. Suzie went to the desk, picked up a framed photo and gave it a close look. I knew this photo because
Bernie often gazes at it, too: Bernie and Suzie laughing, their eyes on each other.

Suzie put the picture back on the desk. “Bodyguarding duty,” she said. There was a little pause, and I had the strange idea that she would lay it facedown, but she didn’t.

She turned to the whiteboard. Normally when we were working a case, there’d be lots of writing on the whiteboard, plus arrows, boxes, and even some drawings, often big ocean waves; Bernie would spend time on those waves, getting them just right. But there was none of that now, the whiteboard almost totally white.

“Anya,” Suzie said, pointing to a bit of writing. “No last name. She would be the babe, no doubt. Then there’s this arrow to someone named Devin. And a second arrow to a nameless guy. ‘Check out guy,’ is all it says. What guy would that be?” She made a tut-tut sound. Love the tut-tut sound—loved, in fact, a lot of those human nontalking sounds. I hoped Suzie would do some more, but she didn’t.

Instead she sat down at the desk, picked up the phone and started calling our pals: Rick Torres, Lieutenant Stine, Cedric Booker, Otis DeWayne, Simon Berg, Mr. Singh, Nixon Panero our mechanic, Prof down at the college, and lots more, and calling places, like Max’s Memphis Ribs, Dry Gulch, Donut Heaven, asking everybody if Bernie was there or if they’d seen him. I could see the answers on her face.

Suzie hung up the phone. “Can I picture him shacked up somewhere with this Anya person?” she said. She got a faraway look in her eye. “My mom would say he’s a man and men do what men do.” Suzie’s mom? This was new. I liked new things, but was Suzie’s mom part of the case? It was getting complicated. “On the other hand, Mom’s a four-time loser when it comes to marriage,
so maybe she’s not …” Suzie turned to me. “But one thing I can’t imagine is him letting you run off and doing nothing about it.”

What was all this? I didn’t know. All I knew for sure was how much I liked Suzie. I shifted closer to the desk. She patted me, and right between the ears, an excellent choice. “You know what attracted me to him in the first place? How he was with you.” Or something along those lines: I was pretty much concentrating on the feeling between my ears.

Suzie rose and paced around a bit. That was a sign of her brain shifting into high gear; Bernie did the same. “What’s the logical next step?” she said.

She had me there.

“Begin with the last place I saw him, maybe? What was the name of that stupid camp?” She took some device from her purse—humans had so many!—smaller than a laptop but bigger than a phone, and started working away. Soon she was back on the phone. “Voicemail? I don’t want goddamn …” She hung up. “We could drive up there, I suppose.”

I headed toward the door.

“Or,” she went on, “I wonder if …” Suzie went back to her screen. I lay down, stretched out. Time passed.

“Here we go,” Suzie said. “Under the registration tab, a list of campers. No parents, but … but here’s a Devin. One and only. Last name Vereen. All they’ve got for an address is North Valley. How about we try a search for Anya Vereen, see what we can …”

And more like that. I closed my eyes. So good to be home, back to lying on the rug while work went on close by. The only problem: Bernie wasn’t the one doing it. My eyes opened and stayed that way, refusing to close, not letting me sleep, not letting me not think about Bernie.

“Okay, Chet.” I raised my head. Suzie was getting up, packing
her bag. “Let’s roll.” Suzie could move very fast when she wanted. She almost beat me to the car.

We drove to the North Valley, Suzie behind the wheel of the Beetle, me riding shotgun. Riding shotgun in the Beetle wasn’t like riding shotgun in the Porsche—the Porsche having no top made it just about perfect—but I had no complaints, especially after Suzie slid my window right down.

“Was that what you were barking about?” she said. “It’s hot as hell out there.” She cranked up the AC, so we had a cold breeze coming from one direction and a warmish one—this was the time of year when the Valley stays hot long after the sun goes down, the heat beating up instead of beating down—from another. Just a little thing, maybe, cold and heat at the same time, but there was lots of fun in little things.

We got off the freeway, entered Anya’s development. Yes, one of those developments Bernie hated with mostly cul-de-sacs and houses that looked the same, but they don’t all smell the same, which was how I knew we were in the right place. Somewhere in this particular development lived a believer in compost heaps, and there’s no way to hide that from the likes of me.

Suzie pulled into Anya’s driveway. A light shone somewhere at the back of the house. We hopped out, or rather Suzie walked around and opened the door for me, the window space being a little on the tight side for hopping through, although you couldn’t say I actually got stuck, not to the extent where I couldn’t have managed without Suzie’s help. We went to the front door—I gave myself a quick shake on the go—and Suzie pressed the buzzer.

Bzzz.
Then the house, already quiet, seemed to grow quieter, hard to explain. Suzie made a fist—how small hers was, compared to Bernie’s—and knocked on the door: a surprisingly loud knock
for a fist like that. Suzie cocked her head and listened. Maybe for footsteps from the back of the house? Was that a human-type thought? I myself was listening to breathing, very soft, from just behind the door. Also I was catching a faint scent of dynamite, kind of strange.

“Hello?” Suzie called. “Anyone home? Anya Ver—”

The door whipped open, so quick and hard it made a breeze. On other side stood a man, real big, his face shadowy, the gun in his hand less so.

“Who the hell are you?” he said.

“Suzie Sanchez,” Suzie said. “Reporter for the
Valley Tribune
. Put that gun away.”

He lowered the gun. I noticed that his non-gun hand was bandaged, a nice sight. I already knew who he was, of course: one taste of your blood and I’d never forget you either.

“Reporter?” he said, leaning forward a bit; the streetlight shone on that light blond hair of his, almost white. “What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Anya Vereen,” Suzie said. “Isn’t this her house?”

“I paid for the goddamn—” He cut himself off, clamping his mouth shut. That was when he noticed me. “What the fuck?” He took a quick step back: the guy named Guy, beginning to get the picture. The gun rose again, this time pointed in my direction.

“Put down that gun or I’m calling the police,” Suzie said.

“It’s licensed,” Guy said, his eyes still on me. The hair on my back was up from nose to tail.

“We’ll let the cops sort that out,” Suzie said. The smell of fear? I picked up none from Suzie, not a whiff.

Guy tucked the gun in his belt.

“What’s your name?” Suzie said.

“None of your business.”

“The reason I ask is that Chet here seems to know you.”

Damn right I did. And I was looking forward to getting to know him even better.

“Huh? You talking about the dog? Never seen him in my life.”

“Then how come he’s growling?” Suzie said.

News to me, but she was right, no question. I toned it down.

“How about because he’s a bad dog?” Guy said.

Suzie shook her head. “This isn’t normal,” she said. “Normally he likes people. So why doesn’t he like you?”

“How would I know? It’s an animal, for Christ sake.”

Suzie gave him a hard look. Her gaze moved over to his bandaged hand. He stuck it in his pocket.

“Is Anya here?” Suzie said.

“I got no more to say.”

Suzie raised her voice: “Anya! Anya!”

No response, unless you counted a cat meowing—which is what humans call that horrible sound—from a few houses away. I got the feeling that things weren’t going well.

“Satisfied?” Guy said.

“Nowhere near,” Suzie said. “Where’s Bernie Little?”

“Never heard of him.”

“You’re lying—I can see it on your face.”

Guy’s hand tightened on the gun. “Enough lip,” he said, “unless you want it fattened for you.”

Now I did smell a little fear coming off Suzie. Mostly anger, yes, but a little fear, too; had to be honest. Having the gun pointed at her didn’t do it, but just that palaver about fat lips or whatever it was did? A mystery.

A little afraid, yes, but did Suzie back up? Not a step. “If something’s happened to Bernie, I’ll make you regret it for the rest of your life.”

“I’d be shaking in fear if I knew what you’re talking about,” Guy said. “But since I don’t, it’s adios. Happy trails.”

He started closing the door. This was the moment for the foot-in-the-door trick, but Suzie didn’t seem to know it. The lock clicked. A bolt thunked into place. Footsteps moved away.

Suzie raised her fist to knock again, then paused and lowered it.

“Come on,” she said.

That was it? We weren’t busting down that damn door, charging inside, grabbing Guy by the pant leg?

“Chet?”

Suzie, part way to the car, had stopped and turned toward me. We exchanged looks.

“Ch—et?”

She said that just like Bernie did. I left the doorstep and went over to her. We got in the Beetle and backed out of the driveway.

Suzie drove up the street, turned onto the next one, then the next one, lost the headlights, and—hey! we were doing the round-the-block trick, one of our best moves, mine and Bernie’s! Suzie was catching on.

TWENTY-FOUR

W
e parked in a real good spot, on a curve where we could just see Anya’s house, between a car in front of us and a tree across the street. Lights off, windows open: this was how it was done. Popping noises came from the motor and soon went silent. We sat up straight and watched Anya’s house, looking as it had before, just that one light showing at the back.

“He paid for the house, that’s pretty clear,” Suzie said after a while. “And none too happy about it, meaning ex-hubby.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Finger drumming was something I couldn’t stop watching, for some reason. “Coming to the door with a gun like he did—who’s he afraid of?”

Me, for one.

Suzie glanced at me. “Besides you, I mean.”

Hey! She was right there with me, practically inside my head. Suzie: she got better and better.

“Could it be her?” Suzie said. “Anya? Oh, God, don’t tell me he’s set up to ambush her. Maybe calling the cops is the right …” She went silent. A moment or two later she reached over, rested
her hand on my the back of my neck. “Wow, Chet—where’d you get all those muscles?”

I had no idea, but nice of Suzie to mention it. I pressed against her hand.

“What did Anya hire you two to do?” Suzie said. “That’s the piece I need.” Were we back to the very beginning of the case? I remembered Anya approaching us in the parking lot, a curvy little woman with … with trouble in her blue eyes. Had I seen the trouble then, or was I just seeing it now? Funny how the mind works, sometimes on your side and sometimes maybe not. Hey! Kind of a scary thought, like having an enemy within. I switched over immediately to thinking about nothing.

Suzie sighed. “I jumped to conclusions, Chet,” she said. “I’m a fool.”

Jumping? Weren’t we on a stakeout? Jumping had never come up in any stakeout I’d been on. I kept my eye on Suzie, just in case she was about to make some rookie mistake. But at the same time—my eyes being a little better placed for this kind of thing— I was still aware of what was going on in Anya’s house, namely that the light at the back had suddenly gone out.

Suzie leaned forward a bit: she hadn’t missed it. We watched the house. A few moments later, the garage door opened and a dark car rolled out, turned onto the street, and came toward us. Guy was at the wheel, talking fast on a cell phone, even waving his hand around; he didn’t come close to looking our way. The black car passed under a street lamp.

“Black Mercedes,” Suzie said. “Vanity plate PAYME. This shouldn’t be too hard.”

Good news: soon I’d be back with Bernie. Or did Suzie mean something else? I gave her a close look, learned nothing except
that I liked her face. Which I already knew, right? But no harm in reknowing.

The black Mercedes came to the end of the block, went through the stop sign. Suzie turned the key. “Bet you’ve done this a thousand times,” she said. “If you’ve got any pointers, give me a shout.”

Had to love Suzie, and of course pointing was part of my repertoire. She had nothing to worry about.