Next time,” said Bernie, “what if I lead with the joke?”
Sounded good to me, although if there’d been a joke I’d forgotten it. We went down a long line of cars, the Porsche near the end. It’s hard not to get excited when the Porsche comes into view. What beats riding shotgun? Nothing in this dude’s life, amigo. But I’m pretty good at controlling myself at times like this, a professional through and through, and—
“Chet? Easy, big guy.”
Oops. Racing around the parking lot in tight little circles, ears flat back from the breeze? That might have been me. I got a grip, walked in a dead-straight line at Bernie’s side, head up, tail up, beyond reproach, whatever that meant exactly. We were close enough to see our bumper sticker from Max’s Memphis Ribs, our favorite restaurant in the whole Valley—hadn’t been there in way too long—and the bullet hole in our license plate, can’t go into that now, when the door of the red car opened and the woman stepped out.
“Bernie Little?” she said.
Women of a certain type have an effect on Bernie. This was that type of woman, easy to see just from the way Bernie’s mouth fell slightly open. Curvy shape: check. Big blue eyes: check. Face tilted up in his direction: check. Poor Bernie: that was all it took.
“That’s me,” Bernie said. “And this is Chet.”
She backed away. “He’s so big. I’m not comfortable around dogs.”
Not comfortable around me? True, I’m a hundred-plus-pounder, but she had nothing to be uncomfortable about, unless she pulled a gun or something like that. I watched her hands, square-shaped, a little plump, with bright red nails.
“You can be comfortable around Chet,” Bernie said.
“Why is he looking at me like that?”
Bernie glanced over at me. “Uh, not sure, actually. But he means well.”
Of course I did! But I kept my eyes on her hands, just in case. Funny how the mind works: mine was making some kind of connection between red nails and guns. Then I started thinking about the way women paint their nails—I’d seen Leda, Bernie’s ex-wife, do it many times—and men never did. Next I thought about what human nails were for, so small and dull-edged. And after that I lost the thread.
“My name’s Anya Vereen,” the woman was saying. “I heard of you from a friend.”
“Who?” said Bernie.
“You might not know her by her real name,” Anya said.
“No?” said Bernie. “What name would I know her by?”
“Autumn.”
Autumn! I knew Autumn. She worked for Livia Moon at Livia’s Friendly Coffee and More, over in Pottsdale—not in the coffee part out front but in the house of ill-repute part out back. Autumn was one of those humans who really liked me and my kind—the nation within the nation, Bernie calls us—and she’s also a world-class patter. We’d interviewed her not too long ago, but the details of the case weren’t coming to me at the moment.
“Ah,” said Bernie. Then came a silence. Silences like that often happened when Bernie was getting to know women of a certain type.
“Ah?” said Anya. “Meaning what?”
“Nothing,” Bernie said. “Nothing at all—just that, yes, I’ve met Autumn.”
“And you’ve jumped to the conclusion that I’m in the same line of work.”
“No,” said Bernie.
He was right about that. I love Bernie, and he can do just about anything—you should see him in a fight!—but jumping is not one of them. That’s on account of his war wound. Bernie went to war in the desert—not our desert, but some other desert far away, and this was before we got together—and came back with his leg wound. He never talks about it, but he limps sometimes when he’s tired. When that happens I slow down a bit so he can keep up.
“Because I’m not in her line of work,” Anya said. “Although sometimes I wish I was.”
“Oh?”
“She’s making real good money. I should know—I do her taxes.”
“You’re an accountant, Anya?”
“Correct. And you’re not pronouncing my name right.”
“No?”
“It’s like On Ya.”
“Um,” said Bernie.
“Autumn says you’re the best private detective in the Valley.”
Bernie nodded. He’s a great nodder, has all sorts of nods that mean this and that. This particular nod meant he disagreed about being the best in the Valley but didn’t mind hearing it. But that was just Bernie being Bernie: he is the best in the Valley, ask any perp.
“I’d like to hire you for two days,” Anya said.
“To do what?” Bernie said.
“Security.”
“What kind of security?”
“Bodyguard work, I guess you could say.”
“Bodyguarding who?”
“Me,” said Anya. “More or less.”
“Are you in danger?” Bernie said.
I glanced around. The sun beat down on us—we were still in the hot time of year—and glared off windshields in the parking lot, making little suns all over the place, but I saw no signs of any danger. There was only one human in sight, a man looking in our direction from a balcony about halfway up the side of the hotel: Georgie Malhouf, in fact, easy to recognize with that black mustache of his. He raised a pair of binoculars.
“Not real physical danger, I don’t think,” Anya said. “But just your very presence should prevent any unpleasantness.”
“Unpleasantness from whom?” Bernie said.
“That would be Guy Wenders,” said Anya. “My ex.”
“How long have you been divorced?”
“Six months. We were separated for two years before that. Pretty much.” She looked Bernie up and down. “Maybe I should give you some background.”
“That would be nice,” Bernie said.
“Autumn didn’t mention your sense of humor.” Anya gave him a not-very-friendly look when she said that, but at the same time I picked up a scent coming off her—faint but unmistakable—that meant she was starting to like Bernie. Nothing about humans is simple: I’ve learned that lots of times in my career.
“Could we get out of the heat?” she said. A tiny drop of sweat had appeared on her upper lip; I noticed that Bernie was watching it, too.
“The divorce was my idea,” Anya said. We were out of the heat sitting under a tree in a little park across the street from the hotel, Bernie and Anya on the bench and me beside it, sitting up nice and straight, a pro from nose to tail. “Guy has had trouble dealing with it,” Anya said.
“What kind of trouble?” Bernie said.
Anya’s big blue eyes got an inward look. “Conceptual, I guess you’d say. We were so young when we met. He doesn’t realize how much we’ve gone off in different directions.”
“What directions?” Bernie said.
“I wanted to make something of myself,” Anya said, “which was why I started taking accounting at Valley CC’s night school, working temp jobs during the day. Guy wanted to make something of himself, too. But he had his own ideas about how.”
“Like?” said Bernie.
“He runs a sort of investment firm,” said Anya. “Some of his associates aren’t the kind of people I want around Devin.”
“Who’s Devin?”
“Our kid, mine and Guy’s. That’s sort of what this is all about, me hiring you.”
“Are you in a custody fight?” Bernie said.
“No,” said Anya. “I have custody. But it’s parents’ weekend at Big Bear Wilderness Camp—that’s where Devin is for the month—and Guy’s going to be there. He made some remark about rekindling things under big western skies. I don’t want that to happen.”
“What do you expect us to do?” Bernie said.
“Us?” said Anya.
“Chet and I,” Bernie said.
Anya glanced in my direction. Interesting: I was no longer sitting by the bench but seemed to have shifted over toward the base of the tree, where I was now sniffing out lots of smells, mostly from a bunch of my guys who’d left their marks on the trunk. I raised my leg—you always want to be on top, mark-wise—eyes on Anya at the same time, which involved sort of twisting my head around to look backward, no problem at all for me. Strong no-nonsense splashing sounds came from behind me, or in front—things can get confusing sometimes.
Anya turned to Bernie. “What I’d like you to do,” she said, “is just be my friend.”
It’s hard to surprise Bernie, so the look on his face at that moment was not one I saw often. “I’m sorry?” he said.
“Pretend-friend, I meant to say,” Anya said. “If I show up with a male friend, Guy will get the message.”
“You want to hire me to masquerade as your boyfriend?” Bernie said.
“We don’t have to define anything—just your being around should do the trick.”
“You said that before,” Bernie said. “But I didn’t understand the context. The answer’s no.”
“No?” Anya sat back. “Why not?”
I picked up a twig—more like a small branch, really—and wandered back to the bench.
“We don’t do that kind of work,” Bernie said, “and even if you find someone who does, you’d be wasting your money.”
“Because this doesn’t sound like something you couldn’t take care of on your own.”
“Shouldn’t I be the judge of that?” Anya said.
Bernie gazed at her for a moment or two and then said, “Maybe.”
“All right, then. What’s your fee structure?”
“Eight hundred a day plus expenses, if that’s what fee structure means,” said Bernie. “But the answer’s still no.”
“I’ll double that,” Anya said. “Thirty-two hundred for the weekend.” Bernie sat motionless. A look came into his eyes, a look I’d seen before, and meant no was coming. All I knew was that our finances were a mess. That worried me, and when I get worried, I like to be closer to Bernie. I went closer to Bernie, maybe a little too abruptly, and possibly forgetting the branch in my mouth. Did the end of the branch—perhaps not so small after all, and also somewhat pointy—catch Bernie on the side of the elbow?
“Ow,” he said. The elbow: one of those sensitive human body parts; still there tends to be an overreaction at times like this, if you want my opinion. “Chet, what the hell?”
But even if he was overreacting, I’d never want to hurt Bernie. I dropped the branch—which turned out to be on the largish side—immediately. Did it land on his foot? Oops. But if so, he didn’t say “ow” again, or at least not very loudly. I did notice he was wearing his flip-flops. Was that what humans wore for giving talks? I wasn’t sure.
Meanwhile, Anya’s eyes were on me. “He’s actually kind of good-looking,” she said. “What’s his name again?”
“Chet.”
“That’s a nice name. Short for Chester?”
Short for Chester? What was that supposed to mean?
“How did you pick the name?”
“I didn’t. He was already Chet when I met him.”
I remembered that day, a bad day—flunking out of K-9 school just before the leaping test, my very best thing! Was a cat involved? Blood? Those parts were pretty hazy. But a real good day, too, on account of that was when I got together with Bernie.
“Who picked his name?” Anya said.
“Funny you should ask,” Bernie said. “I’ve been looking into that. Chet was rescued from some rough circumstances as a puppy, but evidently he already had the name.”
“Good coming from bad,” Anya said.
Bernie glanced at her, said nothing.
“I was never a dog person,” Anya said. She reached out, gave me a quick pat on the side, very light. More, was my thought.
Bernie seemed to be thinking, too. He took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “We’ll do it.”
That breeze starting up behind me? Had to be my tail. We were back in business.
On the way home we stopped by Suzie Sanchez’s office. Suzie’s a reporter for the Valley Tribune. She has bright dark eyes that gleam like the countertops in our kitchen, that one time Bernie polished them, and she smells like soap and lemons. I liked Suzie and so did Bernie; in fact, they were kind of boyfriend and girlfriend, especially now that Dylan McKnight—Suzie’s old boyfriend, possibly a burglar or drug dealer, I couldn’t remember, although that time I chased him up a tree was very clear in my mind—seemed to be out of the picture.
Suzie’s office was in a strip mall, a nice strip mall with nothing boarded up. We went in. There were a bunch of workstations, all empty except for Suzie’s at the back. She looked up from her computer and smiled.
“How did the speech go?” she said. She has one of those nice voices, easy on the ears. Leda’s voice isn’t like that.
“Pretty good,” Bernie said. “Or okay. Not a complete failure. Almost certainly.”
Suzie glanced down at Bernie’s feet, kind of pale in the flip-flops. “These things always go better than you think,” she said. “The audience wants you to do well.”
“Wish I’d known that before,” Bernie said.
Suzie laughed and rose. She gave Bernie a kiss. He gave her a kiss back. I squeezed between them, just being friendly.
“Dinner at my place?” Bernie said. “I’ll pick up steaks on the way home.”
Suzie shook her head. “I’m covering the debate tonight.”
“A debate? Friday night?”
“There’s an election coming, Bernie, like it or not.”
“Which one’s for protecting the aquifer?” Poor Bernie. The aquifer, whatever it was, preyed on Bernie’s mind. Something about water, but we had water out the yingyang: drive by any golf course—and we’ve got them out the yingyang, too—and you’ll see sprinklers working early and late every day.
“Both in theory,” Suzie said. “Neither in fact. Rain check for tomorrow?”
Rain? Was this still about the aquifer? It hardly ever rains in the Valley, not a drop in ages. Hey! Yet still we had water out the yingyang! How cool was that? What a country, as Bernie likes to say.
“… bodyguarding,” Bernie was telling Suzie. “So we’ll have to shoot for Monday.”
“Bodyguarding who?” said Suzie.
“Um, kind of complicated,” Bernie said. “It’s sort of like—”
Suzie’s phone rang. She went to her desk, answered it, listened, said, “But I’m already—” and listened some more. After a while, she glanced over and gave us a little wave good-bye.
We left Suzie’s office, me and Bernie. Sometimes big questions pop up in life. For example: was steak still on the menu or not?