Thereby Hangs a Tail (21 page)

“Why would I do that?”

“Give me a tough one,” Lieutenant Stine said. “You don’t trust me. You don’t trust the department. You don’t trust anyone.”

“That’s not true.”

“Which part?” said the lieutenant, glancing past Bernie, at me.

“I’m not holding back,” Bernie said. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.” They looked at each other, both squinting a little through the smoke.

“For now,” said Lieutenant Stine.

“Fair enough,” said Bernie. “Anything on the green pickup sighting?”

“The witness turned out to be legally blind.”

“Check on the Rio Loco sheriff ?”

“Earl Ford,” said the lieutenant. “He’s clean, too. Backwater loser, but clean. The deputy, on the other hand, maybe less so.” He took a notebook from his shirt pocket, leafed through. “Lester Ford.”

“They’re brothers?”

“Cousins,” said Lieutenant Stine. He flipped a page. “Lester’s got a dishonorable discharge from the army, even though he was in the marksmanship unit at Fort Benning. Been deputy sheriff of Rio Loco County for eight years, during which time he beat two charges of accepting bribes, was also involved in a resisting-arrest death of some dealer, or possibly an immigrant smuggler, records aren’t clear about that. But the deceased was seventy-two years old.” The lieutenant put his notebook away. “Not prosecuted,” he said.

“Does Lester ride motorcycles?” Bernie said.

“No information on that,” said the lieutenant.

“How does he get a badge with a dishonorable discharge on his record?”

“Out in the sticks like that?” said the lieutenant. “Jack the Ripper could get a badge.” He took one last drag and dropped his cigarette out the window. Bernie did the same. I sniffed up the last of the smoke, felt my mind sharpening. I stood up tall and straight on my seat. Jack the Ripper: a new one on me, but I was ready. We’d taken down a lot of perps, me and Bernie, were afraid of nobody. Okay, bears maybe, and snakes, but except for them, nobody. Bernie reached for the key.

“Almost forgot,” said the lieutenant. He tossed over a small gadget, maybe a cell phone.

Bernie caught it. “What’s this?”

“Suzie Sanchez’s digital recorder. Her boss found it in her desk. No sign of her laptop or any notebooks—must’ve had them on her.”

“Why are you giving it to me?”

“I checked—nothing on it,” said the lieutenant. He gave Bernie a funny look. “Nothing useful.”

Lieutenant Stine drove off. I thought we’d be driving off, too, but I was wrong. Instead Bernie examined Suzie’s recorder, turning it over in his hand, then pressed a button on its side.

“Milk.” Hey! Suzie’s voice, very clear. Some humans have much nicer voices than others, full of all sorts of different sounds, like music. Suzie was one of those; not as nice a voice as Bernie’s, of course, but close. “Eggs, fruit, cheese, um, uh . . . bourbon? In case a certain someone comes shambling over?” She laughed. “Shambling—he’ll never forgive me. Um. And dog treats—don’t forget them.”

Never. That made total sense to me. I could listen to Suzie all day.

Bernie did some clicking on the buttons. After that came a little silence, and then: “cheese, um, uh . . . bourbon? In case a certain someone comes shambling—” Click click. “Uh . . . bourbon? In case a—” Click click. Bernie listened to that bit a few more times. Did he have a hankering for bourbon? That was worrisome— still pretty early in the day, no? And us on the job.

Click click and more Suzie. “Count—what is that, exactly? Conte. Contessa. Christ, what a world. Contessa Suzie Sanchez to see you.” She laughed again. “Villa in Umbria—villas have names, maybe? Get name. Manhattan co-op—purchase price? Passaic Realty?” In the background a phone started to ring. “Hello?” Suzie said. “Yes, this is she. Who are—” And after that, nothing.

We sat in the car, Bernie gazing at the little gadget, me gazing first at nothing and then at a cat that appeared in the window of a building across the street. The cat saw me, too—I could just tell—and opened its mouth in a big yawn. Yawning in my face, just to infuriate me, no doubt about it. Care to come outside and try that again?

“Chet? You all right?”

Uh-oh. I was halfway out of the car; I eased myself back inside. Every single thing cats do infuriates me, if you want the truth.

“What’s on your mind, boy?” Nothing at all. But cats were just so . . . so . . . Bernie gave me a pat.

“How about we swing by the professor’s?”

The professor? I got a grip. Loved the professor. I would have wagged my tail, but somehow it was stuck down in the space between my seat and the door.

We drove to the college. We had experts for this and that, me and Bernie, Otis DeWayne, for example, for weapons. The professor—he had a long, complicated name that I’d never gotten clear, but it didn’t matter since Bernie just called him Prof— was our expert for money. Not making money—humans with lots of money have a certain way about them, hard to describe, and Prof didn’t have it—but everything else about money, which was what, exactly? What was important about money except making it? Couldn’t tell you.

The college was close to downtown but didn’t look like downtown, which was all towers and nobody on the streets. It had old buildings with tile roofs and lots of trees and grass, and humans, most of them young, all over the place, walking, sitting, just lying around or even—hey!—playing Frisbee!

“Wow. See what that dog just did?”

“Chet? Can you give the Frisbee back, please?”

“Is that your dog?”

“We’re more of a team.”

“I can’t believe he jumped that high. He should be on TV.”

“Don’t give him ideas. Chet? The Frisbee, please?”

I gave back the Frisbee, except for the tiniest little piece that seemed to have been chewed off. Couldn’t beat our place on Mesquite Road, but if we ever had to live someplace else, me and Bernie, here at the college would be nice. College kids were the greatest.

Prof had a couch in his office. He was lying on it when we came in, his hands folded over his big round stomach. “Hi, guys,” he said. “Just contemplating a little aperçu of Marx’s.”

Prof was brilliant—did I mention that? I caught the “hi, guys” part and that was it.

“Which is?” said Bernie.

“‘The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.’”

Prof: impossible to understand, but, big surprise, I came so close to getting that.

“Like it?” Prof said.

“Yes,” said Bernie.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if Marx turned out to be right after all?” Prof went on. “About everything, that is? I’m not saying tomorrow or the next day, but later, two or three hundred years from now.”

“My sense of humor doesn’t stretch that far,” Bernie said.

Prof laughed. “Working on anything interesting?”

“Kidnapping,” Bernie said.

“Ah,” said Prof, “the life of action.” That I got completely. The life of action: what could be better? “How can I help?” Prof said.

Bernie went over, handed him a sheet of paper. Prof had his glasses up on his forehead. He lowered them, squinted at the sheet. “Passaic Realty Group? You want their financials?”

“Anything about them,” Bernie said. “Also whatever you can find about Count Lorenzo di Borghese and his wife Adelina.”

“Entering rarefied circles now, Bernie?”

“Sir Bernie,” Bernie said.

Prof laughed again, his stomach jiggling, a sight I liked a lot. He rose from the couch, not easily, and went to his computer. Bernie looked over his shoulder. Tap-tap-tap. “She’s the one missing, I see,” Prof murmured. Tap-tap-tap. I moved to the window and gazed out at the kids playing Frisbee. After a while Bernie came over and watched with me.

And sometime after that, Prof turned from the computer. “Well, Sir Bernie, here’s the story,” he said. “Adelina Borghese, née Simkins, is the sole owner of the Passaic Realty Group, a company started by her father, now deceased, and inherited one hundred percent by her. Passaic owns a villa in Umbria, purchased three years ago for four point five million euros, a co-op on the Upper East Side of Manhattan assessed last year for six million and change, a ski house in Sun Valley that I can’t find much about— probably a software glitch; have to get one of my students to fix it—but which judging from comps has a value in the one point five neighborhood, plus a ranch in Rio Loco County paid for with three million in cash last March. Other than that, Passaic’s assets appear to be in tax-free Treasuries amounting to thirty million dollars, give or take.”

“They’re loaded,” Bernie said.

“She is, anyway,” said Prof.

“What do you mean?”

“Passaic is in her sole name, as I mentioned. And Italian counts—counts of any kind—aren’t necessarily rich. How much is the ransom demand?”

“There is no ransom demand.”

“No? Why else kidnap a wealthy person?”

“It’s possible she wasn’t the real target.”

“Who was?”

“A show dog champion named Princess.”

“Hmmm,” said Prof. He put his hand to his chin. I got the feeling he was going to figure it all out, right there and then. “A statistical study of the role of the accidental in crime—wonder if anyone’s done that?” he said.

“No idea,” said Bernie.

Meaning Prof had figured it out or not?

Prof thought some more. We waited. “Marx had a dog named Toddy,” he said at last.

“Didn’t know that,” said Bernie.

“He liked dogs,” Prof said. “Speaking of which, I happen to have a rawhide bone somewhere around here. Think Chet would be interested?”

TWENTY

T
his guy Marx was all right in my book—I’d actually had a book once, a leather-bound book that smelled very interesting, not really mine, but the property of an antiques dealer who’d hired us for something, not sure what. A long story, kind of crazy, since while Bernie and the antiques dealer were busy in the front of the store, I’d taken the leather-bound book out back and buried it in the yard. Why, I can’t say at this late date, just hope we return there someday so I can dig the thing up and put it back where I found it. Where was I? Right, Marx. A good guy I looked forward to meeting someday, and Toddy, too, of course.

I thought about all that while I finished off Prof ’s rawhide bone, a big thick one with a lovely smoky smell. Meanwhile, we were stuck in traffic, sun glaring off rear windows as far as I could see. Getting stuck in traffic was one of those things that made Bernie’s hands go tense on the wheel, but not today. In fact, he had only one hand on the wheel; the other held Suzie’s recorder. Click. “. . . a certain someone comes shambling—” Click click. “Conte. Contessa. Christ, what a—” Click click. “Hello? Yes, this is she? Who are—” Click click. “Who are—” Bernie kept doing that, kind of driving me crazy a bit, although I knew he had his reasons—hey, we’re talking about Bernie here—so I stayed quiet, except for just the slightest picking at the armrest with one of my paws, my other paws remaining absolutely still. But I was relieved when the phone rang and Bernie put the recorder aside. “Hello?” he said.

Aside, and actually in reach of my—but, no: at the last instant—I was already on the move!—he picked up the recorder and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

“Hello?” A voice I knew came over the speakers. “Count di Borghese speaking.”

“Hi, Lorenzo,” Bernie said. Silence on the other end. “You said to call you Lorenzo, right?”

“Certainly—this is America, after all,” said Borghese. “I await your report.”

“Nothing to report yet,” Bernie said.

“What does that mean?”

“We haven’t established any leads, not the kind worth reporting.”

“Should not the client be the judge of what is worth reporting?” Borghese said.

“That’s not the way we work,” said Bernie.

Another silence, longer than the one before. What was this conversation about? Was it going well? No idea on both counts, but I spent no time on the problem because at that moment in a car stuck beside us I spotted a very annoying sight: a fat white cat perched on the driver’s shoulder. On the driver’s shoulder, and a cat—that really bothered me. I shifted closer to Bernie, but somehow climbing or hopping up on his shoulder? Big shoulders on Bernie? Yes. Big enough for me, a hundred-pounder? No way. The cat swiveled its head, looked right at me. And, yes, again, for the second time in one day, a cat yawned right in my face.

“Lorenzo? Going to put you on hold for a second.”

Uh-oh. Bernie was looking at me in a way I hardly ever saw from him, maybe never. I stopped what I was doing, whatever that happened to be, and gave myself a shake, not a complete one on account of being in the car: for a real good shake I need the wide open spaces.

“Lorenzo? I’m back. You were saying?”

I glanced out the window. Traffic was moving now, the cat no longer in sight. But can you believe it? A cat on the driver’s shoulder. What was next? Cats at the wheel? I stuck my head out the window and panted until my mind cleared. It happened real quick.

“I was saying—trying to say—before all that uproar,” said the count, “that your way of doing business is not satisfactory.”

“In what way?”

“I need more information.”