To Fetch a Thief Read online

  “Chet?”

  I looked up.

  “Is Chet trying to get into the tent, Dad?”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything like that,” Bernie said.

  I trotted over to them, tail stiff and up high. We were partners, me and Bernie, had confidence in each other. My behavior was beyond reproach, whatever that was.

  “Let’s take a recon behind the tent before we go,” Bernie said.

  “How come?” said Charlie.

  “Just curious,” Bernie said.

  Fine with me. Recon was one of my specialties. We circled the tent. On the back side sat a whole bunch of trailers, parked right up to a low chain-link fence at the base of the hills. Some of these trailers were huge, the biggest I’d seen, and what was this? Metro PD black-and-whites, and some uniformed cops laying down crime-scene tape? I knew not to go anywhere near crime-scene tape, one thing I’d learned for sure in K-9 school.

  One of the cops looked up. I recognized him: Sergeant Rick Torres, our buddy at Missing Persons. “Hey, Bernie,” he said. “You working this already?”

  “Working what?” said Bernie.

  Rick Torres crouched under a strip of tape, came toward us, shook hands with Bernie. “Hey, Chet,” he said, and gave me a pat. “Lookin’ good. Is he still growing, Bernie?”

  “Hardly seems possible,” Bernie said. “This is my son, Charlie. Shake hands with Sergeant Torres, Charlie.”

  Rick held out his hand. Charlie gazed down at the ground.

  “I won’t bite,” Rick said. Of course he wouldn’t! Hardly any humans did, their little teeth not being much of a weapon. I did remember a perp named Clancy Green chomping on some other perp’s arm, but that was on a Halloween night, the only holiday I don’t like—Halloween brings out the worst in people, Bernie says. Thanksgiving is my favorite, except for that one time with the drumstick incident, maybe a story for another day.

  Charlie raised his hand, a little hand that disappeared in Rick’s big one. Rick shook it gently.

  “There’s a gun on your belt,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, but I’ve never fired it,” Rick said, although I didn’t know why, since I could smell it had been fired, and not too long ago.

  A trailer door opened and a cop looked out. “Ready for that witness, Sarge?”

  “You’re really not working this, Bernie?” Rick said.

  “Don’t even know what this is,” Bernie said. “We came to see the circus.”

  “Bad timing,” Rick said. “The elephant tamer’s missing. And the elephant’s gone, too.”

  “Peanut?”

  Rick took a notebook from his chest pocket, leafed through. “Yeah, Peanut.”

  “How can an elephant be missing?” Bernie said.

  Rick shrugged. “Care to sit in?”

  Bernie shook his head. “Seeing as how there’s no circus, maybe we’ll—”

  “Dad?” Charlie’s eyes were big. “Did something happen to Peanut?”

  Bernie glanced down. “No reason to think that, Charlie.”

  “But then where is she?”

  “That’s what Rick’s going to find out,” Bernie said.

  “I’ll bet Corporal Valdez would be happy to entertain Charlie for a few minutes,” Rick said.

  Bernie thought for a moment. I can always feel when he’s thinking, although what he’s thinking about is anybody’s guess. “Just a few,” he said.

  Rick waved one of the cops over. Corporal Valdez told Charlie to call her Mindy and that she had a kid named Charlie, too, now in Iraq. That was where Bernie got his wound—he limped sometimes when he was tired—but he never talked about it, so that was all I knew about Iraq. “Want to work the blue lights?” Corporal Valdez said. She led Charlie toward one of the cruisers. Bernie and I followed Rick up the stairs and into the trailer.

  That was when I got a bad shock. We were in a kind of office—desk, chairs, computer, none of that shocking—and standing by the desk was the cop who’d spoken to Rick, also not shocking. The shocking part was the clown sitting in one of the chairs. I’d seen clowns on TV. They scare me every time, and this was much worse. The clown had a horrible white face with a red mouth and green eyes and nasty orange hair sprouting out of his head here and there. And it wasn’t just the sight of him: how about the smell? Partly he smelled like Livia Moon, who operated a house of ill repute, whatever that may be, in Pottsdale, and partly he smelled like a human male. I hardly ever go backward, but I was going backward now, and barking my head off.

  “Easy, Chet,” said Bernie.

  “Dogs hate me,” said the clown.

  He had a soft voice, actually sort of nice, although not as nice of Bernie’s, of course. I stopped barking, not all at once, more this gradual dial-down thing I do.

  “Popo,” said the cop, “this here’s Sergeant Torres from Missing Persons.”

  “And my associate Bernie Little,” Rick said.

  I barked the last of the dial-downed barks, low and rumbly.

  “And Chet,” Rick added.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Popo.

  “And your real name?” Rick said.

  “Real?” said the clown. “John Poppechevski.” Or something complicated like that. “But everyone calls me Popo.”

  “Even in normal life?” said Rick.

  “The distinction between normal life and circus life eludes me,” Popo said. He had this big red smile on his face, but he didn’t sound happy. His eyes were small and dark; everything else about him was big and brightly colored. My barking almost started up again.

  “Okay, Popo,” Rick said, “let’s hear your story.” The uniformed cop went to the doorway and stood there, looking out. Rick sat down, reaching for his notebook. Bernie leaned against the desk, arms folded across his chest. I sat on the floor beside him, picking a spot that turned out to be sticky. I shifted over a bit; that was better.

  “Well,” said Popo, “my great-great-grandparents, in search of a better life, came to Ellis Island early in the twentieth—”

  “How about we fast-forward to the events of last night?” Rick said.

  A quick smile crossed Bernie’s face, not sure why. But I got the feeling he was having fun, which put me in a very good mood, and I’d been in a good mood already.

  Popo nodded, the big red ball at the tip of his nose bobbing up and down. Balls are a big interest of mine; I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

  “You want me to skip Trumpy?” Popo said.

  “Who’s Trumpy?” said Rick.

  “My mentor. He taught me everything I know about the profession.”

  “Was he here last night?”

  “Oh, no,” said Popo. “Trumpy passed away years ago.”

  “So he couldn’t have had anything to do with these disappearances,” Rick said.

  “Not even if he’d still been alive,” Popo said.

  “I’m sorry?” said Rick.

  “Trumpy was a man of the highest moral character,” Popo replied.

  Bernie spoke for the first time. “And did he pass that on to you as well?”

  Popo turned to Bernie. “I try,” he said. Yes, Popo had a nice voice, and there was also something nice about those dark eyes.

  “Good to hear,” Rick said. “So getting back to last night.”

  Popo licked his lips. The sight of his tongue—a normal tongue, at least for a human—touching those red smiley lips was very strange. I stuck my own tongue out, gave the end of my nose a lick, not sure why. “After the show,” Popo said, “the late show, I’m talking about, which went pretty well—pretty well considering the times, the house maybe not quite half full—I relaxed for a while with the Filipoffs and—”

  Rick held up his hand. “The Filipoffs?”

  “You don’t know the Filipoffs?” Popo said. “The Fearless Filipoffs, First Family of the Flying Trapeze?”

  Rick shook his head.

  “That says more about the state of the circus than about you,” Popo said. “A hundre
d years ago their names were on everyone’s lips.”

  What was this? More lips? I was confused. Were we even on the job? I started panting a little bit.

  “The Filipoffs’ trailer is next to mine, near the cages. The setup is the same in every town. After a drink or two, I went to bed. Sometime in the night I woke up, thinking I’d heard trumpeting. I listened but heard nothing more and thought it must have been a dream, and so—”

  “Trumpeting?” said Rick. I knew trumpets. We listen to a lot of music when we’re on the road, and the trumpet is my favorite instrument, although the slide guitar is pretty good, too. The trumpet does things to my ears that are hard to describe, especially when Roy Eldridge is playing on “If You Were Mine,” which Bernie went through a stage of playing over and over.

  “I’m talking about elephant trumpeting,” Popo said.

  Whoa. Elephants could play the trumpet? I knew right then that this case was headed off the cliff.

  “You’re telling us it wasn’t a dream?” Rick said.

  “In retrospect,” said Popo, losing me completely. “But at the time I just went back to sleep. In the morning I got suited up first thing and started working the fairgrounds.”

  “Working them how?” said Rick.

  “Drumming up business,” Popo said. “Part of my job.”

  Trumpeting and now drumming? I didn’t like this case, not one little bit. Were we even on it? If we were, who was paying? I felt a sudden urge to yawn, too strong to fight, so I gave in and yawned, a nice big mouth-stretching one, and felt better for it.

  “About half an hour later Filomena came running over and broke the news,” Popo said.

  “Filomena?” said Rick.

  “Filomena Filipoff, granddaughter and current star of the act.”

  “And the news was?”

  “That Uri was nowhere to be found.”

  “The elephant tamer?”

  “He doesn’t think of himself as a tamer.”

  Bernie spoke again. “How does he think of himself?”

  Tears rose in Popo’s dark eyes. “As a friend. But he has no objection to the word trainer. Uri DeLeath is the best and most humane animal trainer in the business.”

  “And the elephant was missing, too?” Rick said.

  Popo nodded. “Vanished without a trace.”

  “A little premature,” Bernie said.

  “I don’t understand,” Popo said.

  “Bernie means it’s too soon to give up on finding traces,” Rick said. “This elephant, uh—” He checked his notebook. “Peanut, how does he normally travel?”

  “She,” said Popo. “She has her own trailer—like a horse trailer but much bigger.”

  “It’s gone, too, I assume?” Rick said.

  Popo shook his head. I always watch for that: it means no.

  “What about other trailers, trucks, any kind of vehicle?” Rick said.

  “All present and accounted for as far as I know,” said Popo.

  “So what are you saying?” Rick said. “They just up and walked away? We’ve got an elephant roaming around the Valley and not one single citizen’s bothered to call it in?”

  “I have no answers,” Popo said.

  One of Bernie’s eyebrows rose a tiny bit. His eyebrows sometimes do the talking—have I pointed that out already? “Where did the trainer sleep?” Bernie said.

  “When we’re on the road, you mean?”

  There was a slight pause. Then Bernie said, “That’s right.”

  “His trailer’s on the other side of the cages.”

  Bernie turned to Rick, maybe waiting for Rick to say something.

  “How about we check it out?” Rick said.

  “Sounds good to me,” said Bernie.

  We went outside. Charlie was sitting behind the wheel of Corporal Valdez’s cruiser—his head barely visible through the windshield because he was so small—with Corporal Valdez beside him and the blue lights flashing. Charlie’s voice came over the cruiser’s PA: “Hands where I can see them. You’re under arrest for murder in the first degree.”

  FOUR

  We left the trailer—Bernie, Rick Torres, Popo, and me. There was a moment of crowding around the door, a bit of getting tangled up, and I burst out first. That happens a lot when we’re leaving places, not sure why. Popo lost his balance and almost fell; glancing back—something I can do with hardly turning my head at all—I could see the reason: his feet were huge, those floppy polka-dot shoes going on forever.

  We crossed a strip of ground—rich with powerful animal scents, all unknown to me—and walked up the stairs at the back of the next trailer. The door was open and I caught a familiar powdery smell—they’d been dusting for prints, and not long ago.

  “Hold it,” Bernie said, raising his hand in the stop sign as we were about to step inside, “have you dusted for prints yet?” We’d worked together a lot, me and Bernie, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. He had a nose, even kind of big for a human, but what did it do?

  “Yup,” said Rick. “Bupkis.”

  Bupkis? I remembered no perps of that name.

  “Where’d you learn a word like that?” Bernie said.

  “Counterman at the Brooklyn Deli,” said Rick.

  Bernie laughed. Whatever the joke was, I’d missed it, but I knew the Brooklyn Deli, a downtown joint I didn’t get to nearly enough.

  We entered the trailer. I was trying hard not to think about pastrami. We were in a small space with a bed and a rocking chair on one side—I stayed away from rockers, on account of this one incident involving my tail—and a desk and a hot plate on the other; I stayed away from hot plates, too.

  “No signs of forced entry or violence,” Rick said. “For a crime scene it’s about as tidy as they come.”

  Bernie went to the bed. “Looks like he didn’t actually get under the covers.”

  “Uri has trouble sleeping,” Popo said. “He often reads long into the night.”

  Bernie picked up a book that lay on the rocker. “Twilight of the Mammoths,” he said. He opened it, turned a few pages. Bernie gets this still and quiet look on his face when he’s interested in something: he had it now.

  “What’s up?” Rick said.

  “Nothing,” said Bernie, closing the book. But he didn’t put it down.

  Two pictures hung on the wall. In one, Peanut stood in a field, the man with the pencil mustache, now wearing jeans and a T-shirt, standing beside her—actually sort of leaning against her—and smoking a cigarette.

  “Uri with Peanut,” Popo said.

  Rick bent his head toward the picture. “He seems pretty relaxed around such a . . .” He went silent the way humans sometimes do when they’re waiting for a word. Never happened to me.

  “Trust,” said Popo. “Uri’s method is all about establishing trust.”

  In the second picture, Uri, again smiling and looking relaxed, stood next to another man, arms over each other’s shoulders.

  “Who’s the other guy?” Rick said.

  “Me,” said Popo.

  The other guy was Popo? He didn’t look at all like Popo. He looked like a normal guy, with dark hair and glasses, wearing normal guy clothes. And—way different from Popo—he had happy eyes: happy eyes are one of those things we pick up right away in this business. I didn’t like this case, not one bit. Was it our case? I didn’t know. I had no memory of anyone cutting us a check—something I don’t forget—so maybe not.

  Bernie went over to the bed, turned back the covers, gazed at the sheets.

  “Already did all that,” Rick said.

  “Just getting the feel,” Bernie said. He bent down, checked under the bed. I went over and sniffed around. Checking under beds was basic: we’d found stuff under beds before, me and Bernie, but not this time. Did Bernie get the feel? His face was blank.

  We went outside.

  “This way to the cages,” Rick said.

  We followed him back behind the trailers. The cages stood in a row. They were li
ke big boxes, with roofs and walls, the only barred part being the fronts. The smells hit me first, so strong, some a bit catlike, but to the nth degree, whatever that means. And then the sights: oh, boy. Creatures I’d seen on Animal Planet: tigers and lions and—

  Actually, in the first cage, just two tigers, and in the next cage, only one lion, and in the last cage, nothing. The tigers and the lion had big rubber balls to play with, but they weren’t playing. They just lay on the floor and watched us with huge yellow eyes. The fur on my neck stood right up; their fur, now that I noticed it, looked kind of dull and ratty. Bernie opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but he didn’t speak; he got a hard look on his face. I wasn’t sure why, but I hated cages myself: bad guys had gotten me into them a couple times in the past. Maybe Bernie’s mind was on that.

  “Thought there’d be more animals in a three-ring circus,” Rick was saying.

  “We’re a one-ring circus now,” Popo said. “Haven’t had three rings in years.”

  “How come?” said Rick.

  Popo shrugged.

  We stopped outside the third cage. What a smell! It drove all the cat scent clean out of my nose.

  “Peanut’s cage,” said Popo.

  The smell of Peanut filled my head, unforgettable.

  “The way it works,” said Rick, walking around to the other side, “you unlock that padlock and this whole wall slides back. But apparently it was closed when the first witness arrived.”

  “And who was that?” Bernie said.

  Rick gave some kind of answer, but I missed it, on account of how I’d picked up Peanut’s trail—what could be easier?—and was starting to follow it. The trail began by the side wall of the cage, right where Rick was standing, and led toward—

  “Chet? C’mon back, big guy.”

  But—I went back, stood beside Bernie.

  “Here she comes now,” Rick said. A small woman in sweats appeared, walking fast. Human movement is a big subject—amazing they don’t fall down more often—but for now let’s just mention that some humans move better than others, and she was one of those. “Bernie,” said Rick, “this is Filomena Filipoff. Ms. Filipoff—Bernie Little, private investigator.”