Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘Lt. Stine’

The Life

We drove away from Cactus Heights, Lt. Stine, ambulance, crime scene tape, all that.

“The hard part is going to be keeping Ray out of this,” Bernie said.

And if he said it, I believed it, a good thing, because I’d been thinking that the hard part for me was trying to remember what was going on with the case, and now I didn’t have to worry about that.

Bernie sighed. “Guess it’s time for us to head for L.A.,” he said. “Not my favorite place, and it’s going to raise Bob’s bill, but what choice do we have?”

I didn’t know. Soon we were on a freeway, driving toward the sun, which was sinking in the sky and getting bigger and redder as it did. Loved seeing that! Bernie switched on the music. Billie Holiday and If You Were Mine, Roy Eldridge on trumpet. That trumpet did things to me, hard to describe. This was the life.

Cages

Lt. Stine got off the phone. “That was Vegas PD,” he said to Bernie. “They confirm you reported the Albie Rose homicide.”

Bernie nodded. He’s a great nodder, had all sorts of nods. This one meant … not sure what, but he wasn’t happy.

“But over the phone and kind of lacking in detail,” said Lt. Stine. “They want to talk to you.”

“Happy to talk to them,” Bernie said.

“Like now,” said Lt. Stine. “They suggested I detain you.”

Detain? Didn’t know that one, but for some reason I started thinking about this cage down in Mexico – is that in To Fetch A Thief? The next thing I knew I was pretty close to Lt. Stine.

“Hey!” he said. “Is Chet growling at me? What the hell? I thought we were friends, big guy.”

Me, too.

Moods

“Who’s your client?” said Lt. Stine. He was in a bad  mood.

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Bernie said. He was in a bad mood, too.

But not me. I was in a great mood, pretty close to tip-top. A big fat sun was shining down from a blue sky, but it wasn’t as hot as it had been and I got the feeling the real hot heat was over for another year. That made me hungry for some reason. No food in sight, but I was happy to wait. And if not happy, at least willing. For a while. Not a long one.

“We got a dead body here, and another one up in Vegas,” Lt. Stine said. “Did you report that one or did it somehow slip through the cracks?”

“I called it in,” Bernie said. “There was no time to stick around.”

Lt. Stine gave him a long look. “This is a two way street.”

I glanced at the street. No traffic at all. This was Cactus Heights, abandoned. My mood changed on me, dropping down from almost tip-top. I wanted to be somewhere else.

A Friendly Encounter

Some humans don’t have happy faces. Lt. Stine was one of them. Others do have happy faces. Take Bernie, for example, most of the time. Or at least some of the time. Charlie has a real happy face. So does Suzie. If humans had tails, hers would be … But forget all that. What was happening now, inside the stripped-down house in Cactus Heights, was Lt. Stine turning his unhappy face on Bernie and saying, “I hate when this happens.”

“Murder?” said Bernie.

“Not so much that. What I hate is being kept in the dark.”

“I hate that, too,” Bernie said.

“The difference,” said Lt. Stine, “is that I’m the law and you aren’t.”

That was the only difference between Bernie and Lt. Stine, whatever it was they were talking about? Whoa! There were big differences between them, starting with their smells, Bernie’s being the best human smell ever, and Lt. Stine’s being just so-so, a little too much like potatoes, if you want my opinion. And then there was the happy face thing, and how about their voices? The next thing I knew I’d sidled over to Lt. Stine and was giving his leg a kind of nudge.

“Chet?” Bernie said.

“It’s all right,” said Lt. Stine, giving me a pat. “I’ve got no issue with Chet.”

My tail started wagging. Had to like Lt. Stine, unhappy face, potato smell and all.