Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘Astrid’

Pop Pop Pop (Revised)

“I don’t like this,” Bernie said. “Not one bit.” He opened the closet door.

It was a deep closet, with space for this long bubble-wrapped package lying on the floor. Once I walked across some bubble wrap and pop-pop-popping sounds happened. I don’t like bubble wrap. Inside this particular bubble wrap there was a human body, not alive – the smell proved that. The face was all pressed out of shape by the bubble wrap.

“Damn it,” Bernie said. “It’s Astrid for sure.”

He bent down, started unwrapping around the face part. I’d never seen Astrid, but this wasn’t her, because it wasn’t even a woman. It was a pointy-nosed man I’d seen before. My memory of perps’ faces, especially the faces of perps who’d tried a little knife play on us, was pretty good.

“Ratko,” Bernie said.

Decatur Book Festival this weekend. PA at the Old Courthouse, Saturday 12-12:45; Spence at Ballroom B in the Conference Center, Saturday 5:30-6:15.

Plundering On

“I’ve got a few questions for Ratko Savic,” Bernie said. We were back in that abandoned housing development, Cactus Heights. Bernie went over the questions, kind of hard to follow, something about Astrid knowing Ratko, maybe, or possibly Foster knowing Ratko. And did Albie come up? Tulip? No sense worrying about all that.

Bernie glanced around. “There are so many of these godforsaken places these days. How’s the economy ever going to turn around with all this emptiness?” The economy – was that like our finances? They were a mess. If I haven’t mentioned the Hawaiian pants episode, I’ll do it now. And who could forget the tin futures?

We got out of the car, started walking from house to house. Lots of scraps blew around and weeds grew through the cracked pavements of the driveways. “Ratko’s not doing much of a job when it comes to caretaking,” Bernie said. Then he added something else. I missed whatever it was, on account of a smell I picked up, coming from the next house. Hadn’t I smelled this before, in pretty much this same spot?

“Chet? Where’re you going, big guy?”

Great ID badge yesterday.

And today our thoughts are with Dan and family.

No Post Today

“Apparently,” says Admin, “Spence got a haircut on the way to the airport. Wonder how he did that?”

No idea. I want to get back to the Astrid case. The details are not too clear in my mind.

“Guess I’ll study this flow chart for a while,” Admin says. 

Hey! I get the crazy idea that maybe Admin and I have something in common. It fades quickly. I go back to feeling tip-top.