Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘Astrid’

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.

Bull

We were going to get back to the Astrid case today – Spence said something about a flow chart that’s going to save our bacon, although no bacon has appeared yet and I’ve been watching for it non-stop – but Bernie’s too upset about some bull fight in Spain. I’m not sure what bullfighting is but Bernie hates it.

“I feel bad this bull jumped into the stands and hurt people,” he says, “but why expect that tormenting animals is going to lead to anything good? And that’s what bullfighting is, pure and simple. All that Hemingway stuff is bunk.”

Hey! I remember Waldo Hemingway, a perp we collared not too long ago. Not actually by the collar – more by the pant leg, in fact. Waldo was one of those humans who’s afraid of my kind. He went quietly, except for a few screams. He’d been eating a chicken salad sandwich at the time. I finished it. Why not? But what he had to do with bullfighting is a mystery.

Cologne And Me

Was Tulip’s motel one of those no-tell motels? I didn’t know, wasn’t sure what it even meant, exactly, but no-tell motels come up from time to time, especially when we’re doing divorce work. We hate divorce work at the Little Detective Agency. What we like are missing persons cases, which we had now, on account of Astrid Jason was missing. Also, Albie Rose was in a freezer, so maybe it was more than a missing persons case.

But right now, Tulip was saying, “I had Astrid’s two suitcases right there, at the end of the bed.” We searched the little room. No suitcases.

Lots of women wear perfume. Not sure why. Is it meant to go side by side with their normal smell? Because that’s what it does, at least to me. Some men these days – certainly not Bernie, who has the best human smell there is – are wearing cologne. Cologne’s kind of like perfume but you don’t get this male deer – yes, I’ve had an encounter or two, a story for another time – musky thing in perfume. What I was smelling now was cologne, then, a musky kind, but mixed with mint. I know mint from the mint juleps that Otis DeWayne, our weapons guy, makes from time to time. Do humans really like that musk and mint mixture? But I guess that wasn’t the point.

“Chet? What’s that barking about?”

I recognized the cologne; in fact, had smelled it kind of recently. Who had been wearing it? Oh, yeah: Foster.

“Chet?”