Paw and Order (19 page)

“See you at the boathouse,” the general called after her. He waited for an answer, and when none came, rubbed his hands like he was warming them up and turned to Bernie.

“We don't have much time,” he said, leaning forward and closing the distance between them. “What I'm looking for is someone to help me preserve my tiny island of privacy. I'm aware that if I'm elected, privacy is not an option, but until that happens, I want to enjoy a taste of normal life.”

“So you're running?” Bernie said.

A few pink spots appeared on the general's smooth cheeks. “I didn't say that. Everything is fluid at this point—thought I'd made that clear.” He sat back a little in his leather chair, smallish hands kind of tight on the armrests. “Suppleness of mind is what I need from you.”

“You can't get that from Donnegan's?” Bernie said.

“You can't get that from any big organization, right on up to the government of our wonderful homeland,” the general said. “I assumed that was common knowledge.”

Bernie gave him a long look. “I'll need specifics.”

General Galloway sat back somewhat farther. “Fair enough,” he said. “Should I start with the money?”

“The money comes last,” Bernie said.

Oh, Bernie: that was my thought. The general seemed to be thinking, too. He opened his mouth and was about to speak when a man in a white uniform of some kind appeared in the doorway.

“Sorry, sir,” he said. “Mrs. Galloway says it's time. She sent a change of clothes.” He came in, handed the general jeans and a T-shirt, and left.

The general rose, started unbuttoning his shirt. “To be continued?” he said.

“You've got my number,” said Bernie.

TWENTY-THREE

T
he dude in the white uniform showed us out through a side door. For some reason, Bernie didn't seem to want to circle around the house to the driveway. Instead, he kind of wandered the other way, past the tennis court and through a small apple orchard, red apples hanging from the trees, reminding me of Christmas, although I couldn't think why. Oh, but the smells, so lovely! I could have stayed there all day, except Bernie kept wandering, so I wandered with him, snapping up a fallen apple and making quick work of it. Apples aren't bad at all, especially the crunchy kind, which this one was, maybe the crunchiest I'd ever scarfed down. Were we on a roll? I had no doubt.

From the far end of the orchard, we could see down to the stream. A narrow gravel road that came from the direction of the house wound down to another white building on the near bank, which had to be the boathouse, on account of having a dock in front of it. A nice-looking wooden boat with a big cabin was tied to the dock, and some guys were down there, unloading light stands from a van and setting them up near the boat. A golf cart rolled into view on the gravel road, General Galloway at the wheel, now wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He parked by the boathouse, jumped out of the golf cart in an energetic sort of way, and strode onto the dock.

Footsteps sounded in the orchard behind us. I turned and there was Isobel, emerging through the trees, still in her riding outfit. Her boots smelled pretty wonderful. Suppose I was left alone with them for a reasonable amount of time? Couldn't hurt to dream.

She came up to us, and for a moment or two we all watched the activity at the boathouse.

“What do you think?” Isobel said.

“About what?” said Bernie.

“His outfit.”

“Looks good to me.”

“But you're not qualified, quote end quote.”

Bernie turned to her. Her face looked older out here in the light. It was a face I liked, hard to say why, although you couldn't call it gentle. But what does that say? You couldn't call Bernie's face gentle, either, and they don't come any gentler than him. “You got that right,” he said.

“The fact is, he never wears jeans and a T-shirt in real life,” Isobel said.

“Real life?” Bernie said.

“When he's not running for president.”

“Some people might say it doesn't get any realer.”

“Would you?” Isobel said.

“Nope,” said Bernie.

“Me neither.” She reached up, plucked an apple from the nearest branch. Down on the dock, the general now had his face turned up to the sky. A woman was patting it with a powder puff. “It twists you out of shape,” Isobel said.

“Just the protagonist?” Bernie said. “Or those around him, too?”

“I won't let it happen to me,” Isobel said.

“You don't want to be First Lady?”

Isobel laughed. “I'm already miserable enough, thank you.”

“Why is that, if I'm not out of line?”

“You are.” Isobel took a big bite of her apple. A jet of spray came flying out, landed on Bernie's face. “Oh, I'm so sorry,” she said, taking out a tissue.

But Bernie had already wiped it off on his sleeve. “Not a problem,” he said. They exchanged a quick look, way beyond me to understand, but there was nothing comfortable about it.

Down at the boathouse the general stepped onto the cabin cruiser. “Can't make out the name on the stern,” Bernie said.

“Horsin' Around,”
Isobel said. “It's actually mine, a birthday present from my father.”

“Sounds like a generous person.”

“He was that.”

A man spoke to the general. The general put his hands on the wheel—just like Charlie does when he's pretending to drive the Porsche—and faced the camera.

“So,” said Isobel, “will you be joining us, meaning the team?”

“Not sure yet.”

She took another bite of the apple, turning away this time. “Because of this other case you're working on?”

“Partly.”

Isobel tossed away what was left of the apple. I had it on landing and was back in a flash. “Wow,” she said. “He's an athlete, if some dogs can be called athletes. I know horses can.”

“Dogs, too,” Bernie said.

I lowered myself to the ground, the half-eaten apple between my front paws, in a convenient position for leisurely snacking.

“Tell me about the other case,” Isobel said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Nothing specific. It sounds interesting, that's all. A consultant, you said?”

Bernie nodded. “In global economics, as far as I can make out. He ran an outfit called World Wide Solutions. Ever heard of it?”

Isobel put her hand to her chest. “Me? No. But the town is positively infested with consultants, all scheming away.”

“Eben's scheming days are over. Someone put a bullet in his head.”

“What was his last name again?”

“St. John. He was a Brit.”

“I wonder if the ambassador knew him,” Isobel said. “We're going there for drinks tonight.”

“Ask him,” Bernie said. “And while you're at it, ask him if he knows a man called Aubrey Ross.”

“Who's he?”

“Just someone who turned up in the case.”

Isobel nodded. “All right,” she said. “I will. This is kind of exciting. How do I reach you?”

Bernie handed her our card.

“I like the flower,” Isobel said. “Do all private eyes have flowers on their business cards?”

“It's the law,” Bernie said.

Down at the photo shoot General Galloway was still at the wheel, now gazing into the distance while the crew made their adjustments, moving the light stands around and placing a big foil reflector. It caught the sun and flashed a glare all the way up to us.

“Doesn't it look unbearable?” Isobel said.

“Ambitious people make sacrifices.”

“He would've been smart to make a few more.”

“Like what?” Bernie said.

“Nothing,” Isobel said. “Have you got any suspects?”

“No.”

“What about motive? Any clues?”

“If so, I haven't connected dots.”

“What's your gut?” Isobel said, her voice getting brighter in a strange way, like we were getting ready to play some sort of game. “Robbery gone bad? Crime of passion?”

Bernie was quiet for a moment or two. “I think he was killed because of something he knew.”

Isobel gazed down at the ground, which was right where I happened to be. I gazed up at her, but she wasn't seeing me, might not have been seeing anything: her eyes had that look humans get when they think they might have heard something far away. “Like what?” she said, her voice quiet, even soft, her game-playing mood now gone.

“That's what we're going to find out,” said Bernie.

Meanwhile, I was listening for faraway sounds. So many to choose from: a quacking duck, a splash in the stream, chimes in the breeze, someone slamming on the brakes, a siren, the general saying, “Is this a better angle?” Had Isobel heard all of that? Any of it? Some? I had no idea.

• • •

“You know what I keep thinking about?” Bernie said as we drove away from General Galloway's place.

Lunch? That was my best guess, and really, what could be better?

“ ‘Intelligence for the masses,' ” he said, losing me completely. “That was Eben's goal, according to Aubrey Ross. What do the masses want to know the most?”

When lunch was happening? I couldn't take it farther than that. This was very hard to follow. Besides, wasn't it time for him to shift gears? The engine sound was getting awful whiny.

“I'll tell you what the masses want,” Bernie said, speeding up a bit, which drove the whininess to almost unbearable levels.

Shift the gear!
And all at once, Bernie did just that as though . . . as though he'd read my mind? I was struck by a new idea, maybe the best idea of my life: maybe I could make it happen again, make Bernie obey my thoughts! Right away, I started thinking about lunch and only lunch, with all the power in my mind.

“They want to know,” Bernie said, “that everything's going to be all right. And the person who most makes them feel that is the one who, for example, gets elected president.” We rounded a long, down-sloping curve and sped through a golden patch of sunlight. There's all kinds of beauty in life. What we had now was the golden patch, Bernie's hand on the gear shift, the scent of honey in the air, and that was just for starters. I stopped thinking with all the power in my mind, which had turned out to be surprisingly tiring.

Bernie glanced over at me and a smile began to form on his face. “How about we stop for a quick—”

And then the phone buzzed. A quick what? Snack, by any chance? Had it actually worked? Could I get Bernie to do things just by thinking them? Newness can happen in life, baby!

A voice came through the speakers.

“Bernie Little?”

“Yup,” Bernie said.

“Maurice St. John here. I haven't heard from you.”

“No.”

“I would have supposed, being the client, that there'd be more communication.”

“We're working the case,” Bernie said.

“Have you anything to report?”

“I prefer to do that at the end.”

There was a silence. Then Maurice said, “Very well.” More silence.

“Okay, then,” Bernie said.

“One other thing, if you have a moment,” said Maurice.

“I'm listening.”

“Although unrelated to the case, there's something I'd like you to do. You can bill me for the extra time.”

“We'll see,” Bernie said. “What is it?”

“Eben's tack,” said Maurice.

“Didn't get that.”

“His tack,” Maurice said. “His riding equipment—boots, saddle, helmet. I'd like to have them.”

“Eben rode horses?”

“Splendidly. The stable sent me an email asking what to do about Queenie.”

“The queen?” Bernie said. He smacked the nearest speaker a couple of times. “The Queen of England? I'm not hearing you too well.”

Maurice raised his voice. “Queenie was Eben's horse. She's to be sold, but I'd like the tack, as I mentioned, which perhaps you could forward to me.”

“Where's the stable?” Bernie said.

“In Virginia,” Maurice said. I heard a tiny rustle of paper, and then: “Great Falls.”

Bernie fished under the seat, found a balled-up map, did some swerving back and forth, but not too far across the center line. He sort of spread the map on the steering wheel and said, “Tell them we'll be there in twenty minutes.”

• • •

“This here's Queenie,” said the stable kid, a tall kid, almost Bernie's height but real skinny, with a backward baseball cap and lots of pimples. I liked him from the get-go.

“Nice-looking horse,” Bernie said.

“She's a sweetheart,” said the kid.

We stood on one side of a fence in a green meadow, watching Queenie. Queenie stood on the other side, watching us and flicking at a fat, slow-flying fly with her tail. Whenever her gaze wandered my way, her nostrils got real wide. I tried to find something nice or sweet or merely acceptable about her and failed. Horses—and I've had a lot of experience—are prima donnas, each and every one. True, it makes them easy to spook, and Queenie would be at the easy end of easy, but I got the feeling we were on the job, meaning I was in total pro mode, no worries in that regard and no possible need for Bernie to say, “Chet! Knock it off.”

But he was! Why the—

“The growling, big guy. Zip it.”

Growling? What growl—

The growling—if that low and rather pleasant sort of burr could be called growling—wound down in a way that I found almost musical.

“Chet, huh?” the kid said. “I bet everyone calls him Chet the Jet.”

“Just my son does, actually,” Bernie said.

What about me? I call myself Chet the Jet. Don't I count?

“How old's your son?” said the kid.

“Almost seven. And you?”

“Fifteen.”

“In high school?”

“Yeah.”

“Surviving?”

“Kinda.”

“It gets better,” Bernie said.

“Yeah?”

“No guarantees, of course.”

The kid smiled. “That's what my mom says.”

“She own this place?”

“Runs it. The owners live in Europe most of the time.”

Bernie nodded toward Queenie. “What's the price?”

“For Queenie? She already got sold.”

“Yeah?” Bernie said. “When was this?”

“Couple days ago or so,” said the kid. “Lady who trains here sometimes bought her.”

“How much?”

The kid's face went sort of blank. “My mom didn't say.”

“None of my business,” Bernie said. “It's just that I'm acting for the family of the previous owner.”

“Eben?”

“That's right. You knew him?”

“Yeah. Is it true he got murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know who did it?”

“No.”

The kid reached in his pocket and took out . . . a big fat sugar cube? I'm not really a fan of sugar cubes, but I wanted this one quite badly. In fact, I couldn't think of anything else. The kid reached through the fence and held the sugar cube out for Queenie. At that moment, I felt Bernie's hand on the back of my neck, not heavy, just there, most likely Bernie just being friendly. Queenie lowered her head, got the sugar cube between her lips, worked it back into her mouth and out of sight.

“He was a nice guy,” the kid said. Then he fell silent, watched Queenie making chewing motions. Bernie has this patient way of standing, like nobody will ever be in a hurry again. He was standing that way now. After a while, the kid went on, “Some of the riding folks are kind of snotty. And Eben had that British accent.”