Heart of Barkness Read online

  “Let’s start now,” Bernie said, “with one finite problem, a small one, but maybe a building block. What went on with the tip jar?”

  Lotty shook her head. “You’ll only come to the wrong conclusion,” she said.

  “Try me,” Bernie said.

  “Every time a man says that, trouble comes next.”

  “For example.”

  “Good lord, you just keep pushing,” Lotty said. “The ruthless type.”

  “So I keep hearing,” said Bernie. “But somehow you got past that yesterday. You called me. You must have wanted something.”

  “It was a moment of weakness.”

  “Or clarity,” Bernie said. “How about I handle the tip jar story myself and you jump in with corrections?”

  Lotty blew air through her lips in a way that makes a flap-flap sound, a neat human trick, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I put a hundred-dollar bill in the tip jar,” Bernie said. “Your grandson Jordan stole it. We got it back but when we tried to give it to you Clint grabbed it. Was it just that he was in charge of safekeeping your money? Or has he been scarfing up every penny you earned?”

  “What are you saying?” said Lotty. “That he didn’t really love me? That I’m a hag, therefore beyond love?” Her eyes, which had been close to tears, cleared up. Teary eyes have a smell, by the way, a smell that had been in the air around the tiny table, but now was not.

  “I’m just trying to get a handle on the money part,” Bernie said.

  “I couldn’t care less about the money,” said Lotty. “My money got stolen long ago.”

  “By whom?”

  “Ruthless types. Like yourself, not like Clint.”

  “Did these ruthless types have names?” Bernie said.

  “No,” said Lotty. “No name.”

  “No name singular?” said Bernie. “Meaning there was just one?”

  “You’re way off course.”

  “Then help me.”

  “How?”

  “By giving me facts. Even just one. For example, Jordan was at the Crowbar but I didn’t see any sign that Clint knew him. Am I wrong?”

  There was a long silence. Actually not a complete silence: I heard an engine again—in fact, now more than one—but still far away. Then, quite suddenly, the distant engine sounds cut off.

  “No,” Lotty said at last. “You’re not wrong.”

  I moved out from under her hand and went to the window. Outside I saw the cottonwoods, the dry wash, the dirt track curving around the bottom of the big hill, and high above the big black bird hovering in the empty sky.

  “Meaning,” Bernie was saying, “that when you came back to Arizona you didn’t tell Clint about Jordan.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Or Leticia.”

  “Correct.”

  “So I’ll ask you again,” Bernie said. “Why the big secret?”

  Lotty gazed into her mug. “Better to keep these things separate.”

  “What things?”

  Lotty looked up. “The good from the bad.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bernie said. “Was Clint bad after all?”

  “He loved me,” Lotty said. “No matter what anyone thinks.”

  “Then there’s something bad about Jordan and Leticia?”

  Lotty shook her head. “It’s me. I’m the bad one.”

  “How?” Bernie said.

  At that moment the big black bird suddenly flapped its wings and took off, disappearing behind the hill. I barked.

  Bernie came to the window, peered out. “Chet? Something wrong?”

  I couldn’t tell. It was only a feeling.

  Bernie turned to Lotty. “Who knows you’re here?”

  “Leticia.”

  “What about Jordan?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Rita?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bernie moved toward her. “Pack your things.”

  “Why?”

  “This isn’t safe.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Chet,” Bernie said. “He senses something.”

  Lotty looked my way. I looked her way. She rose. “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” Bernie said. Lotty moved toward the little bedroom at the back of the RV. I turned from the window and saw her pick up a framed photo of her and Clint, and stick it in a pink suitcase. Bernie saw that, too.

  “Is it possible Clint found out on his own?” he said. “About your family?”

  Lotty went still. “There’s my motive,” she said. “My family.”

  “Motive for what?” said Bernie.

  Lotty closed the suitcase and came forward. “Doing what I did.”

  “I don’t believe you killed him,” Bernie said.

  Lotty met his gaze. “Bad things happen in the blackness. In the blackness I’m a stone killer.”

  “What blackness?” said Bernie.

  “If you don’t know, I can’t explain,” Lotty said.

  Bernie opened the door. Light gleamed on her earring, a pink one that seemed familiar. “Where’s your other earring?” Bernie said. Hey! He was right! No surprise there. The surprise was Lotty’s other ear being earringless. Not a huge surprise, since lots of folks rocked the one-earring look. But if Bernie thought it was important, that was that.

  We stepped outside, me first, waiting on Lotty’s answer to the earring question. There was no time for an answer, even if one was in the works. Out in the yard stood Sheriff Grimble and a whole string of deputies, all of them drawing down on us.

  Oh, no! How had this happened? There wasn’t a cruiser in sight. Whoa! They’d moved in on foot? Footsteps too soft for me to hear? My tail dropped right down into the dirt.

  “Hands up,” Grimble said, mouth mostly hidden by his mustache. “Just you, Lotty. Bernie, you’re free to go. Thanks much.”

  Lotty gave Bernie a look I’m going to have trouble forgetting. I forced my tail to smarten up, all I could think of to do.

  Fifteen

  A bunch of cruisers came up the dirt track and stopped in front of the RV. Sheriff Grimble and a deputy helped Lotty into the backseat of the lead cruiser. Then they all drove away, leaving a big cloud of dust, plus me and Bernie. Nobody had even glanced at us.

  Bernie gets mad sometimes, but hardly ever during a fight. It’s more when he gets pushed around. Getting pushed around in the nation within means you’re actually getting pushed around. When that happens I push back, and way harder—even way way harder if necessary, or even if I’m simply in the mood!—just to show the pusher what’s what. In the human world, you can get pushed with no pushing to be seen. That makes Bernie mad. When he gets mad, I can feel it, a sort of pressure inside him, like … like some bigger Bernie is trying to get out. Whoa! A scary thought, because if that ever happened what would become of my Bernie? My Bernie was big enough. I moved over and pressed against his leg. He scratched between my ears, not his best effort but better than none at all. His mind was somewhere else. I could feel the anger going on inside, which was how I knew we’d been pushed around. Had I let that happen? I was pretty sure I had, although I couldn’t think how, even though I suspected that I had in fact known how at one time, perhaps not so long ago. But one thing was very clear: I no longer had a clue. And if you couldn’t think how you’d messed up, what was the point of getting upset about it? None that I could see. And just like that, I was back to feeling tip-top! I shifted slightly so I could paw at Bernie a bit, maybe rev him up.

  He glanced down at me—not really down, since at that moment we were pretty much eye to eye—took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  What a great idea! Who’s smarter than Bernie? No-body, amigo, and you can take that to the bank, although maybe not our bank where there’d been some recent problem with Ms. Mendez, the manager.

  This time we didn’t climb the hill, but followed the dirt track around
it, all the way to the Porsche, parked in the shade by the dry wash. I hopped right into the shotgun seat, but Bernie lingered outside, gazing at the car in a strange way. Was he having second thoughts about those painted martini glasses on the fender, and how often we got pulled over? I was going back and forth on that, when all at once Bernie got down and crawled under the car.

  That was a first! Normally we at least try turning the key before starting in on repairs. I hopped right out, wriggled under the car myself, squeezing in as close as possible to Bernie. When new things are in the works, you want to be close, as I’m sure you know already.

  “Hey, big guy, a little space.”

  I heard him and totally sympathized, but there was nothing I could do, not in these close quarters. He grunted a few times, squinted up at the underside of the car, then suddenly reached up and grabbed a little plastic gizmo. “Can’t even think when they planted it,” he said. Bernie rolled out from under the car. I scrambled after him. “Got to raise our game,” he said. And then he reared back and flung that gizmo into the blue sky, high and far, over the dry wash and out of sight.

  Raising our game—anything at all about games—sounded good to me, and was there a better game on earth than fetch? I took off after that gizmo at top speed, shredding some spiky little plant under my paws, and another and another.

  “Chet, no, come back here! This isn’t fetch!”

  Then what did you call it? I must have heard wrong.

  “Chet! We’re not playing!”

  And when you’re hearing wrong the only thing to do is not listen. Otherwise you get confused, and what sort of life is that? I tore across the dry wash, up the bank, past the charred remains of a campfire, snapped up the gizmo—easy to find, what with Bernie’s lovely scent all over it … and also a hint of Sheriff Grimble’s not-so-lovely scent. How was that possible? I considered that question as I sped back to Bernie.

  I dropped the gizmo at his feet. He picked it up. “You’re right, Chet. Might need it someday, in a courtroom, for example.”

  No problem. I was familiar with courtrooms, had even been Exhibit A. The judge had slipped me a chewy from under her robe. I hopped back in the car, my mind on chewies, and soon.

  * * *

  Bernie has only one suit, but it’s a beauty, soft and black with a powerful mothball smell that clears your head big-time. He took the suit out of the closet, gave the jacket a good shake, held it up to the light.

  “Think these lapels are back in style?”

  Of course I did, depending on what lapels were, exactly, and also style. Bernie got dressed—white shirt, black socks and shoes, black suit.

  “Which tie?” he said, eyeing the ties in the tie rack, of which there were two: plain blue, and the gold number with the dice. That was the one he reached for, changing his mind at the last second. “Might strike the wrong note,” he said, which zipped right by me, Bernie not capable of doing wrong.

  Not long after that, we were in the part of Pottsdale where the fancy stores peter out and the golf courses begin, parked outside a white church—churches always easy to spot on account of the steeple with the cross on top. As for what went on inside, that was a bit of a mystery, since I’d never been in one. Was today the day?

  Bernie switched off the engine and turned to me. How beautiful he looked in his suit and tie! Was the collar on the tight side? Kind of making his face a bit purplish? No problem. Purple looked good on Bernie.

  “Need you to be on your best behavior,” he said.

  Went without mentioning! I hopped out, spotted a fire hydrant close by—couldn’t have been more convenient—raised my leg, marked that hydrant so that it would stay that way till the end of time, washed clean of all those other annoying marks; and then we were good to go.

  There wasn’t a big crowd inside, maybe similar to the crowd at the Crowbar, although no one here smelled boozy. We sat all by ourselves at the end of the last row, Bernie in a seat, me in the aisle. I didn’t move a muscle. You wouldn’t have noticed me.

  Up front, some sort of speech was going on, hard to understand. The speaker stood on a platform, and below the platform was a long wooden box, painted white with lots of black curlicues. A complicated smell rose out of that box. The strongest part of that smell reminded me of a chemistry lab I’d visited—very briefly—on a divorce case involving husband, wife, and boyfriend chemists, one of our very worst cases, and that was before the explosions. The next strongest part of the smell was also familiar from my job, namely the smell that humans give off after they’re no longer among the living. But way more interesting was a scent so weak I almost missed it: the scent of snake. Whoa! A snake was in that box, alongside or … curled up with!—a dead human? I was starting to scare myself. But just then I remembered: snakeskin boots. And presto! Clint Swann was in that box, and probably looking pretty cool, at least footwear-wise, for wherever he was headed next. Wow! First time in a church and I already had it down pat. Would we be doing this again? You can always hope, and I always did.

  As for Bernie, he didn’t seem to be interested in the box, the speech, or anything else happening among the little group of unhappy-looking people in front. Instead he was glancing around, mostly in the direction of a youngish woman sitting a few rows ahead of us, over in the section across the center aisle. Did that mean he’d left it up to me to figure out who was in the box? The Little Detective Agency, folks. Remember that name.

  I checked out the youngish woman, blond, and with that certain something that always had an effect on Bernie, although maybe not this time. Was it because she was crying softly to herself? That was my only guess.

  Meanwhile up front, whatever was going on kept going on, and on. The human voice can sometimes be droning, no offense. Droning makes me sleepy. I would never sleep on the job, of course, an absolute no-no. But were we on the job? I decided to have a good think about that. For good thinks I do better lying down.

  * * *

  I felt a hand on my back. Ah, Bernie’s hand. The world was my oyster, although in truth I’d had more than my share of trouble with—

  My eyes snapped open and I was up and at ’em at once. Where were we? Still the church? A bit disappointing but the droning had stopped and everybody was filing out. We followed the last person out the door.

  The youngish woman was walking toward a small convertible parked all by itself at the far end. We went that way, too, and just as she was opening the door, Bernie said, “Sorry for your loss.”

  The woman’s head snapped around, and I got my first good look at her: a pretty woman, maybe not much older than Rita Krebs, with a red nose and teary eyes. Those teary eyes went to Bernie, then me, and back to Bernie.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Bernie, and this is Chet.”

  “I … I don’t know you,” she said.

  “Mutual,” said Bernie.

  “So … but…” The young woman glanced across the parking lot, where people were getting into cars and driving off. One or two of them shot a hard look at her on the way out.

  “Clint’s family?” Bernie said.

  “They hate me,” she said, still watching them go.

  “Why?” said Bernie.

  She turned to us again, redid the whole looking thing—Bernie, me, back to Bernie. “You’re friends with Clint?”

  “We’ve spent time together,” Bernie said.

  “What was your name again?”

  “Bernie. Bernie Little. And this is Chet.”

  She frowned. “Why do you keep introducing him? He’s a dog.”

  “With a name,” Bernie said.

  Of course I had a name! Poor woman. She must have been having a rough day. I decided to cut her some slack. Most humans need at least a little slack, a surprising number needing a whole lot.

  Meanwhile the woman was biting her lip, a sign that serious thinking was going down. “Were you … implying you know about me and Clint?” she said.

  Bernie nodded. A simple
little down and up, but one of his best nods, in my opinion.

  “He told you about us?”

  “Not in so many words,” Bernie said. “But obviously I know—why else would I be offering condolences?”

  “You’re the only one,” she said, and burst into tears. She covered her face and sobbed. Bernie reached out in a hesitant sort of way and touched her shoulder. The next thing I knew she had her arms around him and was doing her crying against Bernie’s chest.

  “There, there,” he said, looking at me over her head, his eyes … terrified? That was a first. No way I could stand Bernie being terrified. He needed help, and stat. I squeezed in between them, perhaps more a barging than a squeezing. Bernie’s very quick for a human, as I may have mentioned, and caught the young lady before she fell.

  “Oh my god,” she said, as Bernie brushed her off, “he’s so powerful.” She wiped away her tears. “Was he jealous?”

  “I wouldn’t really put it that way,” Bernie said.

  “Maybe I should get a dog myself,” the woman said.

  “It’s a thought,” Bernie said.

  The woman gazed at me. I happened to be scratching myself at that moment, in a particularly itchy place. Itchiness is very demanding, as you must know.

  The woman turned to Bernie. “Did he ever mention me?” she said.

  “Not by name,” said Bernie. He smiled. “Although I don’t actually know your name yet.”

  “Adele Marr,” said the woman.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Bernie said. He held out his hand. After a moment or two Adele reached out and shook it.

  “Am I being selfish?” she said.

  “How?” said Bernie.

  “Thinking about myself at his goddamn funeral.” Adele’s eyes were drying up. “But I can’t stand not knowing if he even loved me at all.”

  “What did he tell you?” said Bernie.

  * * *

  Behind the church was a nice little garden, with stone benches and a fountain. Bernie and Adele sat on one of the benches. I lapped up fountain water, fresh and cool. Humans like to say they’re getting their money’s worth. We were getting our money’s worth from this garden, no question! Would someone be around to hand over the cash on our way out? I glanced around, saw no one but us.