Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘To Fetch A Thief’

Chetspeak (5): The Canyon

Home is our place on Mesquite Road. Our part of the Valley isn’t fancy like Beaumont Hills, but who would want to live anywhere else? For one thing, we’ve got the canyon out back, open country that goes on and on, plus more lizards, javelinas and coyotes than you could shake a stick at. That’s something humans say, but I’ve gotten lots of sticks in my mouth and could have shaken them at all kinds of creatures if I’d wanted. Once I actually did shake a squirrel. Was that bad? I was so surprised I’d caught the little bugger, first and only time!

- from To Fetch A Thief.

Happy belated birthday (yesterday) to Al Green. And happy birthday, Melanie (today).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzitOsxKJNY

Chetspeak (4): A Yiddish Moment

“Hold it,” Bernie said, raising his hand in the stop sign as we were about to step inside, “have you dusted for prints yet?” We’d worked together a lot, me and Bernie, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. He had a nose, even kind of big for a human, but what did it do?

“Yup,” said Rick. “Bupkis.”

Bupkis? I remembered no perps of that name.

“Where’d you learn a word like that?” Bernie said.

“Counterman at the Brooklyn Deli,” said Rick.

Bernie laughed. Whatever the joke was, I’d missed it, but I knew the Brooklyn Deli, a downtown joint I didn’t get to nearly enough.

- from To Fetch a Thief.

Dark matter and dark energy? Melanie’s all over it:

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/

Chetspeak (3): Horses and Stakeouts

There was one palm tree on the street in front of the motel, a small one with dusty leaves, and we were parked behind it. That was part of our stake-out technique, hiding behind trees. Maybe it was our whole technique: I couldn’t think of any other parts at the moment. Beyond the palm tree stood the motel, horseshoe-shaped – just one of the many strange things about horses, that they wore shoes – with parking in between. Two cars in the lot, parked far from each other. One, a red convertible, belonged to the woman we were tailing. The other, a dark sedan, had been there when we arrived.

We gazed at the motel door closest to the red convertible. The woman – short, blond, curvy – had jumped out of the car and gone straight inside. Since then – nothing. That was one of the problems with divorce work: no action. We hated divorce work, me and Bernie – our specialty was missing persons – but with the state of our finances we couldn’t turn down anything. How our finances got this way is a long story, hard to keep straight in my head. Early on, there’d been the Hawaiian pants.

- from To Fetch A Thief.

Welcome Citrus, Dermott, Mr. Bird; Chaz, Vanna, Trinket; Jackson; Zoey & Artoo; big-boy-dog fan; Mr. Bun; Bear; Bella and Cyrano, please retry. Today is the last day of eligibility for April’s Friend of the Month contest. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rick Torres crouched under a strip of tape, came toward us, shook hands with Bernie. “Hey, Chet,” he said, and gave me a pat. “Lookin’ good. Is he still growing, Bernie?”

“Hardly seems possible,” Bernie said. “This is my son Charlie. Shake hands with Sergeant Torres, Charlie.”

Rick held out his hand. Charlie gazed down at the ground.

“I won’t bite,” Rick said. Of course he wouldn’t! Hardly any humans did, their little teeth not being much of a weapon. I did remember a perp named Clancy Green chomping on some other perp’s arm, but that was on a Halloween night, the only holiday I don’t like – Halloween brings out the worst in people, Bernie says. Thanksgiving is my favorite, except for that one time with the drumstick incident, maybe a story for another day.

- from To Fetch A Thief.