Chet The Dog

Archive for June, 2009

Shootout!

Crack! Zing! Splintering wood. “Nope,” Bernie said, “I don’t find this exhilarating at all.” He lost me there, but I don’t expect to understand Bernie all the time. His job is to be the smartest human in the room. My job is to do the rest. 

Bernie, real quick, rolled out from under the biplane wreckage protecting us and, lying on his back, fired the .38 Special practically straight up in the air. The .38 Special was always exciting, and all of a sudden there I was, out in the open. From high above on the rocky cliff came a cry of pain, and something came spinning down through the air, landing close to me and raising a small cloud of dust. Hey! A rifle! I went to pick it up, and at that moment heard another crack from above.

Friends of Chet still at the repair shop. Will be up and working soon. 

Churchill the Perp

Crack! Zing! We huddled under the wreckage of the old wooden biplane, me and Bernie, close together. Crack. Kapow. Wood splintered right in front of my eyes. We were trapped down at the bottom of the tiny box canyon, the shooter somewhere high above.

“That quote of Churchill’s,” Bernie said, “the one about there’s nothing more exhilarating than to be fired on without result? Don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling it.”

Churchill? The name was new. Some perp, no doubt. He’ll be wearing an orange jumpsuit and breaking rocks in the hot sun soon enough. Bernie crawled toward a little opening in the wreckage over our heads, the .38 Special in his hand. I crawled right beside him. We were quiet as mice, whatever that means. In my experience … but maybe a story for another time.

And by the way – Sunday: Elvis Gospel

Hands up high? Had nothing to do with me. And maybe not Bernie either, even though he has hands, for sure. But he didn’t raise them.

“Chet!” he said, and at the same time dove under the wreckage of the old biplane. I crawled in with him, just in time. Crack! Zing! I knew those sounds. We were getting shot at. It happens sometimes in our job. Is it time to mention what we do, me and Bernie? We run the Little Detective Agency. Bernie’s name is Bernie Little. I’m Chet, pure and simple. We specialize in missing persons cases, missing kids most of all, but what with our finances being a mess we take just about anything, including divorce work, which we hate. In this particular case, we had a missing client, Kelo Printz, Hollywood guy. 

Crack! Zing!

“Don’t like getting shot at,” Bernie said. Then neither did I. Bernie reached into his belt. Hey! The .38 Special. I’d forgotten all about it. Good things usually happened when the .38 Special came out.

Murder, Continued

Bernie read the card again. “The Greed Murder,” he said. We were down on the floor of the box canyon. Sunlight glittered on the high rocky walls and the sky overhead was clear blue. Very pretty, all that blue and gold, but Bernie says I can’t be trusted when it comes to colors. Plus we had an actual gold bar, although how that fit in I wasn’t sure. The Greed Case is kind of complicated, as you may have realized. 

“What do you think?” Bernie said. “That the film is about a murder that’s in the Greed movie? Or is it some other murder, possibly real?”

He lost me there. I yawned, a nice big yawn, felt peaceful and relaxed. 

“Then there’s another … ” Bernie began, but a voice from above interrupted. A man’s voice, harsh and nasty.

“We got you covered,” he said. “Hands up high.”