Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘Otis DeWayne’

Life Back Then

We’re running around crazily today, me and Bernie. He has this list, all crumpled and wrinkled now. “What the hell’s celeriac?” he says.

I can’t help him.

At Vin’s Discount Liquors – Vin’s our go-to guy when it comes to booze, is also an old Army buddy of Bernie’s; and isn’t he in book 5? – we run into Otis DeWayne, pushing a full cart. Otis is our weapons expert but he’s also a Civil War reenactor, knows a lot about the past.

“If we could go back to Pilgrim times,” Bernie says, “what would be the first difference we’d notice?”

“That’s easy,” Otis says. “The smell. Everybody stank to high heaven.”

Hey! Sounds interesting!

Welcome Ben, George, Pita (with backpack, great idea).

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?”

Old Dogs

“Is this possible,” Spence says, “that this Uncle Chi Chi character – see below, if we can get this link to work – is the oldest dog in the world?”

I perked up. How old was I again? I’d heard Bernie talking about it recently, but the number slipped my mind. Was it more than two? Two’s plenty for me.

“And that whole dog years thing,” says Admin. “I never bought that.”

“You’re in a slightly better mood today.”

“Yeah – that suggestion from Kirby T. Penworthy, amended by Rio, about getting volume 6 of The World at War from the library perked me up. And way more than that – the good news about Staff. But I’m wondering if anyone knows of some real old dogs.”

There was General Beauregard, of course. I love hanging out with him when we visit our weapons guy, Otis DeWayne. Is there one of those visits in To Fetch A Thief?

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/07/worlds_oldest_d.php

(Nice job, Rosie!)

(Note from Admin: If link doesn’t work, please try villagevoice.com, click on Runnin’ Scared under blogs, and scroll down to previous posts.)

The Morning After

What a great Super Bowl party! General Beauregard even showed up, with our weapons guy Otis DeWayne. Did we have fun or what? And the owners of the Dry Gulch said not to worry about any of the damage. They’re from New Orleans originally and they were jumping up and down practically the whole night! Jumping up and down turns out to be catchy.

Right now Bernie’s still sleeping. Sometimes he moans a bit. Eventually he’ll get up, swallow some aspirin, down some coffee and start to feel better. Colonel Bob called and the answering machine took it. I’m getting restless.