Chet The Dog

Archive for March, 2009

Death Valley

Working on a real strange case right now. Had to take a long long drive to Death Valley. What a place! Made my hair stand up on end at first. The case is all about a can of film, maybe missing from a long time ago. The client is a movie producer named Kelo Printz.

“Ever heard of a movie called Greed?” Printz said.

“Nope,” said Bernie. Me neither, by the way, although Bernie and I watch lots of movies on DVD. We’ve got a huge collection of Westerns, like Unforgiven. I have trouble watching that one. 

“Here’s a copy,” Printz said. He’s got the biggest whitest teeth I’ve ever seen on a human. Does that help with movie producing? We watched the video last night, but something went wrong with the sound. There wasn’t any. 

“Hey,” Bernie said. “This is kind of interesting.” It was? I didn’t understand it at all. 

Right now we’re just coming into this place called Badwater, and yes – I can see it sparkling. Doesn’t look bad to me, and all of a sudden I’m pretty thirsty. 

More on the Greed case tomorrow. I won’t forget.

War Dogs

Suzie Sanchez came over  last night. Has she come up yet? Suzie’s great, has these shiny black eyes. She likes Bernie and he likes her – I sniffed that out right from the get-go. But things have been bumpy lately, on account of Dylan McKnight, who was Suzie’s boyfriend – what a loser – and maybe sort of still is. Anyway, forget all that. Suzie’s a reporter for the Valley Tribune and she’s working on a story about military dogs.

“Did you know there are 2025 dogs in the military?” she said. “They track down explosives and bad guys with their sense of smell.” Well, of course. I’d learned the smell of explosives in K-9 school. And tracking bad guys – that’s my everyday gig. I could do this military job! I watched Bernie. “How many casualties?” he said.

“Eleven in combat since 9/11,” Suzie said. “There’s a movement going to get medals for the dogs who serve.”

“I’m for that,” Bernie said.

Me, too.

Poem

Sunday morning- how I know is because Elvis gospel is on the radio. Bernie’s a big fan of Elvis gospel. The truth is that the only Elvis gospel song I like is Milky White Way. We’re listening in the car, not at home, because we’re on a case. Some hikers found something bad out in the desert – not sure what – and Lt. Stine wants us to have a look. Meanwhile here’s a poem Charlie wrote for school. Have I mentioned Charlie, Bernie’s kid? He’s the greatest! But since the divorce, we don’t see him nearly enough.

                           Chet

       Chet’s a big strong guy

       He always looks you in the eye

       And he can leap so high!

       Here’s one thing you can safely bet

       I will always love Chet the Jet.

Bernie really likes the poem. He’s going to get a special frame for it, one that hides the teacher’s grade, which was a B minus, whatever that means.

Marcia Ball

Bernie’s a big fan of Marcia Ball. Once we actually saw her play. We were working on a case, the details kind of fuzzy, but at one point we were at this outdoor party at a rich guy’s place, and Marcia Ball was the entertainment. Bernie and I were real close to the piano. Can her fingers fly, or what? 

Bernie’s favorite Marcia Ball song is Let Me Play With Your Poodle. He gets a big kick out of it, thinks it’s funny for some reason. Don’t get it, myself. I’ve played with poodles, more than once. Take this poodle named Hortense, for example. She tried to snap up a chew strip that I knew for sure, or almost, was meant for me. What was funny about that?