Spencer Quinn - A Fistful of Collars

There was no one inside except the bartender, a woman with not too many tattoos for a bartender, her blond hair, the faded kind, in a ponytail. She looked up from a magazine as we approached.

“Is that a working or therapy dog?” she said.

“Yes,” Bernie told her.

“That’s the only kind management allows in here.”

“I understand.”

“How come he’s not wearing his ID vest, you know, that says therapy or working right on it?”

“Chet’s undercover,” Bernie said.

No problem. We’d worked undercover before, including once when Bernie pretended to be blind. I’d had some seeing-eye training-this was before my days in K-9 school-seeing-eye training that ended a bit the way K-9 school ended, now that I thought about it, but I didn’t want to think about it, the point being I could work undercover, although Bernie didn’t show any signs of blindness at the moment-no stick, no shades-probably a good thing since that other time he’d pretended so well he fell off the balcony at the Ritz. Bernie: to the max. You just had to love him.

“That’s some kind of joke, right?” the bartender said.

“Not if you didn’t laugh,” Bernie said.

The bartender gave him a long look, then said, “What can I get you?”

Bernie laid the coupon on the bar.

She squinted down at it. Humans never looked their best when squinting, and she was no different. “That’s no good anymore,” she said. “It’s from, like, years ago.”

“Me, too,” Bernie said.

Now the bartender did laugh, kind of a surprise. “Nice try,” she said, and ripped up the coupon, tossing the scraps behind her.

Bernie laughed, too. He took out some money. “What’s on tap?”

“I’m partial to the Andersonville,” said the bartender.

“Sold,” said Bernie. “And one for you.”

“Strictly against the rules,” she said. But she filled two glasses from the tap.

“Cheers,” said Bernie. I always liked when he said that: just saying it made him seem more cheerful every time-you could tell from his eyes. “I’m Bernie Little.”

“Dina,” said the bartender.

“Nice meeting you, Dina,” Bernie said. “And this is Chet.”

“Short for Chester?” said the bartender.

Whoa! Not the first time I’d heard that one. Why couldn’t I be Chet, pure and simple?

“Just Chet,” Bernie said.

“Nice name,” said Dina.

“Agreed,” Bernie said. “Can’t take any credit-he had it when I got him.”

News to me, and of an interesting kind. Did it mean that someone else… A thought rose quickly in my mind, zipping through the clear part into the fuzzy part and then up, up, and out of reach, just like every bird I’d ever chased.

Bernie took a sip of beer. Dina tilted back her glass, drained quite a lot of it. He watched her over the rim of his own glass.

“You a baseball fan?” Bernie said.

“That’s a funny question,” Dina told him. “Not really.”

“How come?”

“You some kind of sports nut?”

Bernie thought about that. “Maybe a bit,” he said. “Ever go to a game?”

“In my life? Sure. Why-you got tickets?”

“That’s a bit of a problem at the moment,” Bernie said. “Something happened to my source.”

“Oh?” said Dina. “Like what?”

“She was a reporter,” Bernie said. “They’re always getting tickets.”

Dina, raising her glass to drink, paused in mid-motion; a tiny wave of beer rose up and almost slopped over. Bernie saw it, too: I felt a little change in him, a change I’d felt before, hard to describe. But I knew what it meant. We were starting to cook. Not actual cooking, of course, and I wasn’t even hungry, what with our picnic at Burger Heaven being so recent; although Cheetos were nearby-out of sight just on the other side of the bar, very close to my nose-and who didn’t always have room for a Cheeto?

“A reporter for the Trib,” Bernie went on. “Her name was Carla Wilhite.”

Dina lowered her glass and set it on the bar, slow and careful. Then she raised her eyes up to Bernie’s, eyes that hadn’t really been friendly from the get-go and now were cold.

“A lot of her friends showed up at the funeral,” Bernie said. “Not you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dina said.

Bernie took out our business card, laid it on the counter. This was our new business card, the one with the flower, designed by Suzie. We were living with it for now.

Dina glanced down at the card, said nothing. For a moment, I thought she was going to rip it up, just like the coupon, but she didn’t.

“Carla was a friend,” Bernie said. “So we’ll never stop working on this, not until we nail the killer and anyone else involved, no matter how peripheral.”

Dina met Bernie’s gaze, her face real stony. Then she crossed her arms. Humans sometimes did that when they weren’t going to say one more word.

I barked, one of those barks that just sort of come out on their own, a loud, harsh bark. Did it take everyone by surprise? Certainly Dina, who jumped back a bit; and also me.

Dina didn’t look so stony anymore. She put her hand over her chest. “Oh, God, this is so awful. I couldn’t believe it when I found out.”

“How did you find out?” Bernie said.

“On the news,” Dina said. “We were friends when we were little, in the same class.”

“So how come you weren’t at the funeral?”

Dina opened her mouth, closed it, tried again. “I wimped out,” she said. “I just can’t stand funerals.”

Bernie didn’t say anything. Silence: one of those silences that seemed to grow, if that makes any sense, probably not, but the point is most humans can’t let them go on for long.

“And also our friendship was only for a year or so,” Dina said. “Carla was real smart. She got into one of those magnet schools on the west side and we lost touch. I haven’t seen her in years and years.”

“Except for the ball game,” Bernie said. “Where you handed out the coupons.”

Dina glanced down at the floor, where she’d tossed the scraps. “Right, the ball game. A total coincidence-she was doing a story on the microbrewery on Airport Road and I was pouring. She had these box seats-from one of the radio stations, I think. I went. We had fun. And that was the last time I saw her.”

“So that must have been when you told her about Thad Perry,” Bernie said.

“Thad Perry?” Dina said. Although she didn’t say it right away, more after a moment or two, the time it took her to lick her lips. “The movie star?”

Bernie nodded. He was a great nodder, if that hasn’t come up yet, had all kinds of different nods. I’d seen this nod before-not a friendly kind-mostly when we were dealing with perps.

“I don’t understand,” Dina said.

“Dina,” Bernie said. “Maybe you weren’t listening. We’re going to roll up every single person involved in Carla’s death, no exceptions.”

“Bullying won’t make me understand,” Dina said.

Bernie’s voice rose. “You think this is bullying?”

Dina blinked as though tears might be on the way, but her eyes stayed dry. “You’re making a mistake,” she said.

Bernie spoke more quietly. “Are you saying you didn’t tell Carla at the ball game-or at any other time-that Thad Perry was from the Valley?”

Dina spread her hands. “My God, no.”

“Or had spent time here?”

“No,” Dina said. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

Bernie tilted up his chin, gave her a long look from that angle. I loved when he did that, although what it was all about remained a bit of a mystery.

“How about the old Flower Mart in Vista City?” Bernie said.