Spencer Quinn - A Fistful of Collars

And the driver? One of those redheaded types you didn’t see often, but that I was seeing again, and pretty soon: Oona’s partner, the uniform cop named Floyd, now in street clothes.

Bernie’s heart speeded up in his chest. I could hear it. And when I did, my own heart speeded up, too, funny thing. Floyd whipped the car around in a quick U-turn and went back the way they’d come. What about us? Weren’t we going to tail them? Tailing perps was one of our best things. Bernie!

We did nothing. Bernie sat motionless, the zigzag groove deep in his forehead. I started to get the picture. Tailing perps: what a crazy thought that had been. Cal Luxton was handing out the checks, making him one of the good guys. So therefore? I didn’t take it past that. Bernie took care of the so-therefores, me bringing other things to the table, in case I haven’t mentioned that already.

He fired up the engine. We made a U-turn of our own, slower than Floyd’s, and drove home. Bernie didn’t open his mouth the whole way.

Sometimes the night feels early and sometimes it feels late: your eyelids always tell you; at least, that’s how it works in the nation within. This particular night felt late as we pulled into the driveway at our place on Mesquite Road, so it was a bit of a surprise that lights were on in the house next door. Not old man Heydrich’s place, where lights sometimes shone all night: mean dudes sleep less, according to Bernie, and I often heard Heydrich in the middle of the night, busy down in his workshop. “Wonder what he’s making,” Bernie would say. But forget about old man Heydrich. I meant the house on the other side, Iggy’s crib, which he shares with Mr. and Mrs. Parsons, a nice old couple who bought an electric fence but maybe made some sort of mistake, because now Iggy-my best pal, we’d played together since I couldn’t remember when-was never outside. Mr. and Mrs. Parsons went to bed early, sometimes even before full darkness-you always knew because there was no more toilet flushing until morning-but not tonight. Bernie was still getting out of the car-a little slow, maybe on account of his wound, which could act up when he was tired-when the Parsons’ door opened and Mr. Parsons stepped out.

And what was this? From somewhere in their house, yip yip yip? Yes! Iggy! He came barreling down the hall, stubby tail-the stubbiest in creation, Bernie said-up and stiff, and crazily long tongue flapping high and low. At the last instant, Mr. Parsons felt him coming and yanked the door closed. After that there was just a muffled yip yip yip, followed by a single yip, amazingly high pitched; and then nothing.

Mr. Parsons came stumping toward us behind his walker. We met him at the border of our properties, a row of low cactuses that Mr. Parsons and Bernie had decided were better than the flowers that had grown there before, although I didn’t see how. Marking borders was one of my jobs, of course, but maybe not at exactly this moment.

“Hi, Bernie.”

“Hi, Dan. Everything all right?”

“Mrs. Parsons could be doing a little better.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“But she’s cheerful,” said Mr. Parsons. “No complaints. And she was real pleased, the way you replaced her soap collection. Much obliged.”

“Don’t mention it,” Bernie said.

Soap collection? Itty-bitty brightly colored things in a toilet, the water rising and rising and rising? My one visit to Iggy’s house, sometime back? The plumber racing up in his truck? I came close to remembering some of that. But, as humans said, no cigar, and no cigar was just peachy with me-I’d toyed with a stub or two and cigars didn’t do it, although I have no problem with the smell. And funnily enough, peaches weren’t really peachy with me, either, so why did…? Somewhere in there I lost the thread.

“… puppy I was telling you about?” Mr. Parsons was saying.

“The one you saw in the canyon?” Bernie said.

“Exactly,” said Mr. Parsons. “Spotted the little fella again this afternoon. Even managed to snap a picture of him on my cell phone-first time I got the damn thing to work.”

“Soon you’ll be uploading to the cloud,” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons gave Bernie a quick look, then nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “And except for how I’ll miss Mrs. Parsons, I’m ready. I’ve had a good life.”

“No, no, no,” Bernie said. “I meant-” And then came a long explanation of what he’d meant, which lost me right out of the gate, and maybe Mr. Parsons, too, to judge from the look on his face.

“It’s all right, Bernie,” he said, “I’m not offended. But do you want to see the picture?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Parsons took out his cell phone and started pressing buttons. “Cursed stupid hellish-”

“Mind if I try?” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons handed Bernie the phone. “This one?” Bernie said.

They gazed at the glowing thing, then both turned and transferred that gaze onto me. I wagged my tail, my fall-back response in all kinds of situations.

“Guilty as charged?” said Mr. Parsons.

“But I just don’t see how…” Bernie began.

“Doesn’t he get into the canyon?”

“Only with me.”

“What about when you’re not home and he’s out on the patio?” said Mr. Parsons.

“The gate’s always locked.”

“Isn’t he a great leaper?”

“Not that great,” Bernie said. “That gate’s seven feet high-I had it built special.”

Seven feet high? Lost me on that one. When it comes to numbers, I stop at two, which is plenty, in my opinion. Feet were another story: all kinds of feet in the world-I’d seen elephant feet in action! What a career I was having! — but in the end I wouldn’t change mine for any others. As for the gate, my impression was that I always cleared it by plenty. I reminded myself to take a look next time.

“So what do you think happened?” said Mr. Parsons.

“Maybe a litter mate of Chet’s is out there somewhere,” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons had thick, snowy-white eyebrows. I’d seen snow, by the way, once on a case, the details vague at the moment. But sometimes details can sharpen later, when you least expect it. Does that ever happen to you? Back to snow: Bernie made a snowball! We played fetch, sort of, which is when I started finding out what snow was all about. Back to… to Mr. Parsons’s eyebrows. He raised one of them in this way humans have when they want to send a message to other humans, not friendly or unfriendly, hard to pin down, exactly.

“Is that how you operate in your work?” Mr. Parsons said. “Chasing after the low-percentage possibility first?”

Bernie laughed. “Sure as hell hope not,” he said. “Maybe the next step is to give this big guy a test.”

“Now you’re thinking,” said Mr. Parsons.

About what? They had me on that one. Next thing I knew we were all of us inside our place and walking through the kitchen-Bernie grabbing a box of chew strips on the way-and out onto the patio.

“Nice house, Bernie,” Mr. Parsons said. “Just imagine when your family owned the whole parcel.”

“I try not to,” Bernie said.

“And a swan fountain,” said Mr. Parsons as he stumped out onto the patio, bump bump bump. “Pretty funny.”

Then Bernie said something about who the joke ended up being on that I missed, mostly on account of those chew strips, beef flavored, from Rover and Company, the very best. Our buddy Simon Berg runs the company, and I once spent a lovely time in their test kitchen. Whoa! And Bernie had just mentioned a test. We were headed back to Rover and Company? Seemed strange at this hour, but something was up, something that included chew strips.

Bernie moved toward the gate at the back of the patio. Hey! They’d just been discussing this gate and now here we were. On the other side lay the canyon. I could hear something moving around out there, not too far away, possibly a javelina, although I couldn’t be sure because of the breeze flowing in the wrong direction.