The Dog Who Knew Too Much (27 page)

W
e rode through the night, Suzie behind the wheel, me in the shotgun seat. Suzie drove differently than Bernie— not as fast, both hands on the wheel—and the Beetle didn’t have that—how would you describe it? growl?—yes, that deep growl of the Porsche, that said
Clear the track, amigo, here we come.

“Chet? What are you growling about?”

Uh-oh. That was me? I got a grip. Were we on the job? It kind of had that feel, except for one big thing. No Bernie. No Bernie, no Bernie went round and round in my mind.

“I don’t trust her at all,” Suzie said after a while.

Who was she talking about? I waited to find out.

“But it’s a side issue. Got to keep our eye on the ball.”

That made total sense to me. Suzie was a fine thinker, although probably not in Bernie’s class. The only ball around was a tennis ball under my seat. I could smell it, also smell that I’d played with it before, the only problem being that the Beetle was on the small side, with not much room for me to twist around and get my paws—

“Chet? What are you doing?”

Jammed way in there, so frustrating. I got back up on the seat, alert and professional. Outside we were leaving the freeway, turning onto two-lane blacktop, rising up into some hills; the air got fresher and cooler. A sign flashed by.

“State line,” Suzie said.

I remembered that from before, also remembered this air, kind of nice except there not being quite enough in every breath. We were going to Bernie. I barked, found I was angry, and barked again.

Suzie glanced over at me. “Exactly,” she said. She got on the phone. “Carla? I need a favor. Home address for a Judge Stringer, probably in the same county as a summer camp, Big Bear Wilderness, I think it’s called.” She waited, and while she waited started up with that finger-drumming again, this time on the steering wheel. I was liking Suzie more and more. She listened, said, “Got it, thanks. I owe you.” She clicked off.

I sat straight up, watching the traffic coming and going, not much in either direction. I couldn’t wait to get there, wherever we were headed, and not being able to wait is always hard for me, which was probably why I gnawed at my shoulder a bit. I tried sticking my tongue way, way out and that helped a little, but not for long.

After a while we entered a canyon with steep rocky slopes rising high above, the moonlight glittering on flat surfaces here and there, turning them the color of bone. This was the road to the camp. We were close. Knowing that made the can’t-wait feeling even stronger. I started panting.

Suzie glanced over. “Need a pit stop?”

No, no, Suzie, just floor it! I stopped panting, tried licking my face.

Suzie peered into the night. No traffic at all now, and we’d
lost the moon behind the mountaintops. “We’re looking for …” she began, and then: “There it is.” We came to a fork. “Why does Bernie always get such a kick out of that Yogi Berra thing?” Suzie said, and I remembered this fork from the last time, with Ranger Rob at the wheel. Much better to be with Suzie. She took the turn and we zigzagged down to the town, almost completely dark, at the bottom of a valley.

“Big Bear, county seat,” Suzie said. “All the good burghers asleep in their beds.”

Burgers: yes to that—who would ever say no?—but Bernie came first.

We drove down the main drag, the diner, bars, stores, all shut up for the night.

“Goddamn one-horse town,” Suzie said, looking around.

That was news, and not good. I saw no horse, but I trusted Suzie. Horses had been nothing but trouble in my career, prima donnas, each and every one.

We went past the brick office building with the blue light hanging in front. I got angry again—I seemed to have so much anger in me these days, not like me at all, and I didn’t feel good about it—and did some more barking.

“Easy, Chet,” Suzie said. “Everything’s okay.”

Nice to hear, but how was that possible?

We came to the end of the main drag and Suzie squinted at the sign by the crossing street. “Oro Road,” she said. “Here we go.”

Oro Road took us out of town and along a mountain ridge with views of the town and more mountains in the distance. We could see the moon again, very bright. It illuminated two gate posts up ahead with a wagon wheel over the top. Suzie slowed down, eyes on a pattern of red reflectors on one of the posts.

“Nine,” she said. “My lucky number.”

Bernie had a lucky number, too, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I stopped at two when it came to numbers, and that was plenty.

Suzie drove between the gate posts. “Lights on or off?” she said. Made no difference to me. Suzie left them on.

We followed a pebbly lane that curved around a huge rock and ended in front of a house made of logs, but very fancy, with tall windows, balconies, and two stone chimneys.

“My, my,” Suzie said, parking behind a big and shiny SUV. “Judging turns out to be lucrative.”

We got out of the Beetle and walked to the front door, a thick-looking wooden door with a horseshoe knocker. I already knew horses were somehow in the case, so the horseshoe knocker made sense, but why horses wore shoes was something I’d never understood.

The house was quiet. Suzie took a deep breath, raised the knocker, and brought it down hard. Outdoor lights flashed on all over the place. Never get lit up in the darkness, but what could we do? I looked at Suzie. She raised the knocker again and banged it against the door even harder. We could work together, me and Suzie.

I heard footsteps somewhere back in the house. They got louder: a woman—I could smell her—and not young. From behind the door, she said, “Who is it?” in a high, shaky voice.

“Sorry to bother you at this hour,” Suzie said. “We’re looking for Judge Stringer. It’s urgent.”

“But who is this?” the woman said, her voice getting even higher and shakier.

We knock on many doors at the Little Detective Agency and it’s always a tricky moment when they want to know who’s there.
One favorite of Bernie’s is that they’ve won a prize; and then it turns out to be breaking rocks in the hot sun!

Suzie’s eyes shifted. “We’re friends of Guy Wenders’s.”

“Guy Wenders? But he moved away years ago.”

“Nevertheless,” Suzie said.

There was a long silence.

“My husband is asleep,” the woman said.

“He’d want you to wake him,” said Suzie.

Another silence, but not as long. Then the woman went padding away—
pad pad pad
—bare feet on a tile floor.

Suzie looked at me. I looked at her. “Don’t let me screw this up,” she said at the very moment that voices started murmuring somewhere in the house, costing me the chance to hear what it was about, so maybe a screwing-up just from talking about screwing up—wow! What a lot of thinking. And what it did it matter? Suzie was a gem.

Pad pad pad.
Approaching footsteps, but a man’s this time, and he was wearing slippers.

“Who are you?” he called.

“Open up, Judge,” said Suzie.

“I asked you a question.”

Suzie was silent. So was the judge. All this silence weighed on me in a way that’s hard to explain. I just knew I had to get rid of it. I barked. Once was enough; I felt better right away.

A bit more silence, but it wasn’t the same. There’s a silence when nothing’s going on, and then there’s a silence when someone’s having thoughts, very different, almost not a silence at all. This was that kind. The door opened.

Judge Stringer peered out. He wore a purple robe over pajamas, and slippers with rawhide laces, a distraction I knew I had to ignore, and his white hair, of which he had lots, was sticking
up all over the place. His gaze went to me and widened immediately.

“What the hell?” he said. The judge’s breath wafted my way in an invisible little stream: whiskey, tomato sauce, and cigar smoke, very, very stale, all the appeal of cigar smell lost. He turned to Suzie. “Who are you? Where do you get off, waking my house at this ungodly hour?”

From somewhere out of sight came the woman’s voice.

“What’s going on, Clarence? Is something wrong?”

“Everything’s fine, Shirley,” the judge said, not turning, his eyes glued on us. “Go to bed.”

“Everything’s not fine, Clarence,” Suzie said.

He lowered his voice, down close to a hissing sound; I don’t like that in a human—or in a snake, for that matter, but a snake can’t help it. “What do you want?”

“To make things a little less ungodly,” Suzie said. “Where’s a good place to talk?”

Before the judge could answer, Shirley spoke again, “Did I hear a dog, Clarence? I don’t want a dog in the house.”

Grabbing an old lady by the pant leg? That wasn’t going to happen, but my mind was now at rest on the question of who the bad guys were.

“Tell her Chet’s an old friend,” Suzie said.

Little pink spots appeared on the judge’s face. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Suzie shook her head. “You know him—that was obvious. And Chet sure as hell knows you.”

Shirley called out once more: “Clarence?” She was getting on my nerves.

“If you like, we can have this conversation right here,” Suzie
said. “On the assumption that you and your wife share all aspects of your lives.”

All those pink spots on Judge Stringer’s face joined together and he turned red. Then he made a quick little motion for us to come in.

“Clarence?”

The judge called over his shoulder. “Go to bed, goddamn it.”

Somewhere back in the house a door slammed. We followed the judge down a long hall lined with big paintings of cowboys and Indians, and into an office with wood-paneled walls, a big dark wooden desk, brass-studded leather chairs, and a rack full of guns. I stood by that. The judge sat behind the desk. Suzie perched on a corner of the desk. The judge didn’t like that—you could tell by the curl of his lips.

“We can talk in here,” the judge said. “So talk.”

Suzie took out her device. “Do you have one of these?” she said. Her voice sounded good, nice and even, but she was scared. I could smell it. The judge was scared, too. So the smell of fear spread through the room. I myself couldn’t think of anything to be scared of at the moment.

“They come in handy,” Suzie said. The judge’s eyes were locked on the device. Suzie pressed the button.

Then came Guy’s voice, very clear.
“I just need a little more time.”

“Loud enough?” said Suzie. “Or do you want me to turn it up?”

The judge didn’t answer. He was gripping the desk top with both hands, as though the whole room was suddenly picking up speed. His own voice was now coming out of the machine; it actually sounded a little better that way.

“Not happy to hear that. I’m more in the mood for good news.”

“I can give you ten grand.”

“I hear that right? T-e-n? I hope you don’t think that’s the number that’ll make me happy.”

“I’ve got it on me.”

“Cash?”

“Cash.”

“Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”

“You want it or not?”

“Really want to be taking that tone with me? Under the circumstances? There’s an age-old lesson here. A nice set of folks works up a nice little business and then one of ’em gets greedy and screws it all up for everybody.”

“I was never going to actually keep all—”

“Don’t want to hear it. Let’s have what you got.”

“Meaning this is over?”

“Over? Over is when we’re made whole.”

“You will be. For Christ sake, why wouldn’t I do that, Judge? But it’s all getting out of control.”

“My worry, not yours. And I’ll accept your partial payment.”

“Aren’t you going to count it?”

“I trust you. Trust you now, if you see what I mean. And as long as you’ve absorbed this lesson, I’ll be trusting you into the long and prosperous future. How about we drink to that, Guy? The future.”

Clink.

The redness had faded from Judge Stringer’s face now, but it was shiny with sweat, even though the AC was keeping the big log house nice and cool. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, like he’d been shouting for a long time. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Who I am isn’t important,” Suzie said, “except for the fact
that I’m the kind of person who would make sure that arrangements had already been made for the wide dissemination of this recording in the event I didn’t return home safely.”

What was all that? You tell me. But the judge seemed to get it: his face got sweatier and a little tic appeared in one of his eyelids. This wasn’t the kind of tick you can take drops for, but no time to get into that now.

“As for what I want,” Suzie said. “You have a bail hearing in a few hours. All you have to do to make this go away forever”—she held up the device—“is your job.”

“My job?” said the judge.

“Making sure that justice happens,” Suzie said. “Didn’t that come up in law school?”

TWENTY-SEVEN

W
e drove back down Oro Road. The moment we lost sight of the judge’s big log house, Suzie reached over with one arm, pulled me close, and said, “Yes!” And then, “Whew,” and “Wowee!” I broke free—getting held real tight can be nice, but in very short bursts—and licked the side of her face, or maybe the back of her head, on account of the way the Beetle was swerving a bit.