Scents and Sensibility (7 page)

She was dead-on right about that. But even I knew her tennis schedule: she was carrying her racket! Leda was making me real nervous, hard to explain how, exactly, and unless she was planning to spill more info on Agatha the cat, I wanted her en route to the tennis court, and pronto.

Meanwhile, we'd fallen into one of those strange silences you sometimes get, and no one seemed to be in a good mood all of a sudden, except for me. Yes, Agatha was a bothersome new development, but other than that I was tip-top.

The woman in the car looked over, caught Leda's eye, and pointed to her watch. Leda adjusted her racket on her shoulder, her eyes going to Bernie, then Charlie—and finally me, for some reason. “All right.” She leaned down and gave Charlie a kiss on the forehead. “You'll have to be the mature one.”

•  •  •

This was living! Me, Bernie, and Charlie zooming through open country in the Porsche. Yes, Charlie had the shotgun seat, and I was on the horrible shelf in back, but it was never as horrible when Charlie was the one up front. Also the sun was shining, but not too hot, and the cooler was loaded with picnic supplies. You can't ask for more.

“Where are we going, Dad?” Charlie said.

“We're on a case,” said Bernie.

“Wow! You're taking me on a real case?”

“Well, yeah, sort of.”

“Are we gonna catch a bad guy?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. I just want to take a look at something out in the desert.”

“What kind of something?”

“A hole in the ground.”

“With a body in it?”

Bernie laughed, tousled Charlie's hair, somehow making the Indian feather thing stand up taller and wackier than before. “Just an empty hole,” Bernie said. “But can you guess what was in it?”

“Treasure!”

Bernie laughed some more. It was great to see him so happy.

“Easy, big guy.”

That was me, or at least the front part of me, somehow in the front seat, sort of wedged in between Bernie and Charlie? What a nice surprise! But maybe not now, was that the point? I drew back to the horrible little shelf, tried to make myself comfortable. Sometimes pawing at a seat back makes you more comfortable.

“Chet!”

I got a grip.

“Treasure's not a bad guess,” Bernie was saying when I tuned back in. “In this case, the treasure was in the form of a cactus.”

“A cactus, Dad?”

“Saguaro,” Bernie said. “Like that one over at three o'clock, only not quite as big. Wonder if it has a chip inside.”

“Huh?”

“Some of them do.”

“Chips—like to eat?”

Bernie laughed again, went into a long explanation about chips, and GPS, and the whole history of mapmaking, which I'm sure was fascinating. When he was done, Charlie said, “Are there chips in the cooler?”

“Barbecue flavored.”

“Can I have some?”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not?”

“Mom hates that.”

“Hates what?”

“Me saying ‘why not.' She says I say it too much.”

“Why?”

Silence. Then all of a sudden Charlie was laughing and laughing. Human laughter is just about the best thing they do, and kid laughter is the best of the best. We pulled over—two-lane blacktop, no traffic, picnic spots out the yingyang—popped open the cooler, and found the chips.

“And maybe Chet wants a treat,” Charlie said.

Charlie: had to love him, and I did.

•  •  •

My treat turned out to be a bone from Orlando the butcher. I've met a number of butchers, but Orlando is the best. He's got a place down in South Pedroia, near our self-storage unit, packed to the roof with Hawaiian pants, none having sold so far, one of the reasons our finances are such a mess. People love Hawaiian shirts—today Bernie wore the one with mermaids, actually a bit scary to my way of thinking—so why not Hawaiian pants? That was how the whole business got started, Bernie knocking back a bourbon or two and suddenly asking that very question. I had no answer at the time and still don't. All I know is that Bernie has never worn a pair of the Hawaiian pants himself. But back to Orlando, a little guy with huge arms and an apron that smells like you wouldn't believe. “Hey, Chet, how about I saw off something real special for you?” That's the kind of thing he says whenever we drop by. Why don't we drop by more often? Why?

“How come Chet just barked like that?” Charlie said. Or something close: hard to tell with his mouth so busy with potato chips.

“That muffled kind of bark?” said Bernie, reaching into the potato chip bag. “It's because he's so busy gnawing on that enormous bone.”

“But what was he barking about?”

They gazed at me. I gazed back at them.

“Hard to tell,” Bernie said.

“It sounded kind of impatient, Dad.”

“What's he got to be impatient about?”

Try not dropping by Orlando's often enough. But who wants to sound impatient? Not me. I concentrated on my bone and forgot everything else. Was there some talk about saguaros and their red fruit and the drinks the Indians made from it? And about not calling them Indians, Dad? And all the ones I know actually do call themselves Indians, Charlie? And so how about coming to school and telling that to the class, Dad? And more back-and-forth like that? I couldn't tell you. But if you're interested in the bone: heaven.

Next thing I knew we were back in the car. We drove deeper into the desert, smells of sage and mesquite and greasewood drifting by, the sky its very bluest. No complaints, amigo. Do you ever think: What if time stopped right now? I never do, but Bernie does. He's mentioned it more than once. I kind of hope he doesn't again. It makes me a bit nervous.

“Porsches are expensive, huh, Dad?” Charlie said after a while.

“Who told you that?”

“Daddy Mal.”

“Daddy Mal?”

“That's what they—um.”

“That's what you call Malcolm?”

“Uh-huh. He's Daddy Mal and you're, like, just plain Dad.” I caught Charlie shoot Bernie a quick glance. Bernie was looking straight ahead, eyes on the road.

“Sounds good to me,” he said.

Not long after that, we turned onto a narrow, unpaved track. Bernie slowed down, checked the screen of his phone. “Getting close.” We rounded a hill and rode down to a dry wash lined with trees, where the track ended.

“Are we there?” Charlie said.

“Not yet,” said Bernie. “But it's as far as we can go in the Porsche.”

“ 'Cause it's so expensive?”

Bernie laughed. “This is a real old one, Charlie. Got it dirt cheap. But it's not meant for open country like this.” We got out of the car. Bernie stuffed some water bottles and my portable bowl in a backpack, and we crossed the wash and climbed up the far side.

“But someone's been driving here, Dad,” Charlie said. “See these tracks?”

Bernie smiled. “A natural.”

“What's that mean?” said Charlie.

“Nothing,” said Bernie. He got down on one knee, took a close look at the tracks. Charlie did the exact same thing. “At least five different sets here, some coming in, some going out. See how this one's crumbled the tread marks of the others?”

“Yeah.”

“That's the latest. But it's hard to say exactly when. Never rains out here, so marks can last a long time.”

We followed the tracks across easy ground, not too rough or steep, even for a kid. This particular kid marched on ahead of us, but I had him in sight every moment, no worries about that. There was a little rise not far distant, with some saguaros growing on its slope. It was nice and quiet, not a trace of the whole big world of human noise.

“What if this was olden days and we were the Spanish?” Charlie said.

“Be pretty exciting.”

“Did the Native—did the Indians have dogs?”

“Yup.”

“But not horses.”

“Nope.”

“What if some of them came over that hill with their bows and arrows?”

“And we were the conquistadors?”

“Yeah.”

“I'd say, ‘Hi, Native Americans or Indians or whatever you want us to call you. Now we're getting back on our boats and going home. Nice meeting you.' ”

Charlie laughed.

We crossed the little plain and started up the slope.

“See that hole in the ground, up near the top?” Bernie said. “Means we've come to the right place.”

“Where someone dug up the saguaro?” said Charlie.

“Yeah.”

It got steeper. All at once this was going way too slow for me. I ran on ahead—“Wow—look at him go!”—and came to the hole. A pretty big hole, about the size of the one left in the Parsonses' yard after they'd taken the saguaro away. I scrambled over the dug-up rocks and dirt around the hole and looked down into it. Then I went still.

“Chet?” Bernie called up to me.

Right away I knew what to do. I turned and ran down the slope, barking my head off.

“Chet. Sit.”

I sat.

“Charlie, I want you to stay right here with Chet. Don't move. I'll be right back. Okay, son?”

Charlie nodded. His eyes were open real wide. I could hear his little heart. Nothing to be afraid of. Chet's beside you.

Bernie scrambled up the hill, reached the hole, gazed down. He went still, just like me. Ellie Newburg was down at the bottom of that hole, all twisted up, a round red hole in her forehead. As for holes in the earth, there were more of them on the next slope over. I picked up Shooter's scent, but he wasn't around.

Y
ou took him on a case?” Leda said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

We were back in Leda's front yard, same people as before, except Malcolm was down here with her, and the face in the upstairs window was Charlie's. Maybe just a small switch up, but it made me uneasy, hard to say why. And what was this? My tail starting to droop? I got it right back up there, stiff and straight, the tail of a total pro. As for Leda's question, wasn't the answer pretty clear? Nothing was wrong with Bernie, not a damn thing. Not now, not yesterday, not tomorrow. I got ready for the satisfaction of hearing him say all that to Leda, and in no uncertain terms, whatever those might be.

But that's not what Bernie did. He took a deep breath and said, “It wasn't really taking him on a case. Well, sort of, except it was more or less an excuse for a nice drive in the desert. Um, a little picnic.”

“A little picnic?” Leda said. “Toasting marshmallows around a dead body?”

Bernie stopped shuffling around. Not that he'd been shuffling—that could never happen—but he hadn't looked Leda in the eye. Now he did. A little muscle jumped in the side of his jaw. You didn't see that often. “The case was about a stolen cactus. Do you think I had the slightest inkling of what we'd find out there?”

Leda started to say something, but Malcolm beat her to it. He was a tall dude—taller than Bernie, although a lot thinner, more like an enormous skinny weed. Now he leaned forward in a weedy way and said, “Which simply indicates that your competence matches your judgment.”

What did that even mean? Don't ask me. But it made Bernie boil up inside. I could feel the heat! Next would come that lightning jab to the chin and then the cracking hook right off it:
BAM BAM BAM
, the last
BAM
being the sound of Malcolm hitting the ground.

But no. Instead . . . Bernie backed away? Yes. I saw it with my own eyes. First, he glanced at that upstairs window, where Charlie was still looking out. Then he stuffed his hands in his pockets. And backed away. We walked toward the car, like . . . like we'd lost. Some dudes, when they win, keep their mouths shut. I heard Malcolm say, “. . . grounds for revisiting the whole custody arrangement.” As we got in the car, I looked back, saw Leda and Malcolm heading toward the front door, hand in hand. There was no face in the upstairs window. Not glancing back even for a moment, Bernie missed all that.

•  •  •

Valley PD headquarters are downtown, standing on one side of a little park, the college being on the other. Love college kids, myself, and it was nice to catch a glimpse of them doing college things—like working hard on their suntans and throwing Frisbees and smoking all kinds of smokables, a dense smoky cloud hanging over the park all year except for summer, when the kids were gone and the street people took over, the street people being into smokables in a smaller way but other stuff in a bigger way. We climbed the steps to headquarters, said hi to people we knew, got patted a few times—me, not Bernie—and ended up in the office of our buddy Captain Stine.

Our buddy, yes, although not a human of the friendly-looking type. Captain Stine had a sharp-shaped kind of face and all his looks were dark. But he'd only made captain because of a case we'd cleared for the mayor, me and Bernie, details pretty much forgotten except for a cat name of Brando. Why couldn't I forget Brando and remember all the rest instead? You tell me. Actually, don't. What I want you to hang on to is the fact that Captain Stine—a tough cop who liked to lean on everybody and owed nobody nothing—did owe us.

“Ah, Chet,” Stine said. “And Bernie. Want you to meet Ms. Newburg's boss, Carl Conte, director, Special Investigations, Department of Agriculture.”

The only other person in the room was a dude in a suit, sitting on a chair to one side of Stine's desk, so it had to be him. This dude was smaller than Captain Stine but also had a sharp-shaped face, and although I didn't know about all his looks, the one he'd locked on Bernie at the moment was dark. Then a strange thought came to me: the dude—Conte, was that it?—owed us zip.

“My condolences,” Bernie said.

Conte nodded. No handshaking took place. Bernie sat on the opposite side of the desk from Conte. I sat beside Bernie, kept my eye on Conte across the desk. He eyed me back.