The Dog Who Knew Too Much (5 page)

“Not that he sees much of Devin,” Anya went on, “but he’s never missed a child support payment and he’s paying the whole shot for the camp—it was even his idea.”

We weren’t moving. I poked my head up over the door. We were parked at the side of a narrow road, flowers everywhere and a creek bubbling by. Hey! It was still a dream!

Then I saw Bernie and Anya. She was on the near side of the creek, dipping her bare foot in the water. Bernie was on the other side, sort of wandering around at the edge of a forest—the first forest I’d seen in real life, although I knew them from the Discovery Channel—like he was looking for something.

“It’s not a fat camp, exactly,” Anya was saying. “More of a build-you-into-a-man wilderness thing.”

“Uh-huh,” said Bernie, a sort of uh-huh he had for when he wasn’t really listening.

“Not that Devin doesn’t have a weight problem,” Anya said. “It breaks my heart sometimes. Kids can be so cruel.” She took a pack of cigarettes—uh-oh, Anya smoked cigarettes?—from the pocket of her jeans—how they fit in there was hard to say, her jeans being so tight—and lit up, flinging the match in the stream. “Tell me why that is?”

“Ah,” said Bernie, suddenly stooping by a tree trunk and pulling something out of the ground. “I thought this might …”

“What’s that?” said Anya.

Bernie held it up.
“Boletus edulis,”
he said.

“A mushroom?”

“Yup.”

“Edible?”

“Delicious.”

I hopped out of the car, no particular reason.

“Are you sure?” Anya said. “When I was a kid my dad told me never to eat wild mushrooms.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie. “My dad showed me how to find the good ones.”

Bernie’s dad was suddenly in the picture? He never talks about his dad, who died a long time ago. His mom, a real piece of work, lives in Florida with the husband who came after the husband after Bernie’s dad, with possibly one more husband in there somewhere. I met her once: she called Bernie Kiddo! But I know now that wasn’t enough reason to do what I did, and it will never happen again, supposing she pays us another visit.

“He sounds like a cool guy,” Anya said.

Bernie didn’t say anything.

“Your dad, I’m talking about,” Anya said. “Are you still close?”

Bernie shook his head.

“That’s too bad,” Anya said.

“Yeah,” said Bernie. He looked over at me. “C’mon, Chet, grab a drink of this nice mountain water.”

Exactly what I was thinking, or just about to think. The next thing I knew I was standing midstream up to my shoulders, lapping up just about the best water I’d ever tasted—fresh and cold, with just a little hint of something stony from the water flowing over smooth clean rocks.

“Amazing,” said Anya.

“What is?” said Bernie.

“The way he really seems to understand you.”

Bernie gave her a funny look, like he didn’t quite get what she was talking about. Neither did I. He took a long step onto one of those smooth rocks in the stream—careful, Bernie!—and another, maybe slipping a bit on the second one, but he lowered
his hand to my back and kept his balance, and then he was on the near-side bank.

“Who wants to try this mushroom?” Bernie said. He and I were the only takers. What can I tell you? Delish. About that time, kind of late in the game, Bernie noticed the cigarette in Anya’s hand. “You smoke?”

“I’m trying to quit,” Anya said.

“Me, too,” said Bernie.

“Sorry,” Anya said and spun the cigarette into the stream. It fell in with a tiny hiss—I love sounds like that!—and bobbed away in the current.

“Hey,” said Bernie, giving her another one of those second looks of his. “Thanks.”

Not long after, back in the car, we entered a long rising canyon with mountains on both sides, tall green trees growing on their lower slopes but all rocky and steep above that. The air smelled different from any other air I’d ever smelled in my life, all the scents—of trees and grass and flowers, and the toothpaste Bernie had used that morning, and the smoke on Anya’s every breath even though she hadn’t lit up again—so much stronger and also each one more spread out, with more room for itself, sort of more smells and less air. Made no sense, I know, and I drove the whole complicated business out of my mind just as we turned onto a dirt road and passed under a sign that hung beneath a huge set of horns nailed to a thick wooden beam. Who needs complications?

“Big Bear Wilderness Camp,” Bernie read. “Eight thousand and ninety-nine feet.”

Did he say
bear
? We didn’t have bears in the Valley, or anywhere in our desert, but I knew all I needed to know about them from Animal Planet, which was that I had no desire to meet one.

“This is exactly where my altitude headache kicked in when I drove Devin up here,” Anya said.

“And now?” Bernie said.

“Nope. I feel fine.”

So did I. I’d had a headache once, after this time when a perp name of Jocko hit me with a baseball bat, a Willie McCovey model, Bernie said, which we later sold to a collector for a “tidy sum”—“for once, how about a sum so big it’s untidy?” Bernie had said to our buddy Sergeant Rick Torres from Missing Persons in the Valley PD, a joke Rick didn’t get, me neither, and anyway, Bernie invested the money in something or other that soon went belly up, and Jocko’s now breaking rocks in the hot sun, so nothing to worry about there, but the point was that unless I’m dinged on the head I don’t get headaches, which is different for humans. Bernie, for example, wakes up with a headache if he drinks too much bourbon the night before—half a bottle always does the trick—and as for Leda, headaches could strike at any time for any reason, although most often when they were about to go to bed, she and Bernie.

But enough of that. We crossed a narrow wooden bridge. A stream flowed underneath, wider and faster than the creek I’d drunk from. Not thirsty at all, but I wouldn’t have minded a quick sample. What was going on with all this water? Nothing like travel: you got to see new things.

We went through a grove of trees—did I spot something dark and shadowy moving deep in there?—and followed the road on a long curve toward the sunny side of the canyon. Up ahead a large, flat clearing backed into the mountainside, and in the clearing stood a few big log cabins—smoke rising from the chimney of the biggest one, eggs and sausages in the air—and across from them at the top of a little rise, two rows of blue tents. Camp!
Of course! Everything clicked together in my mind, a lovely feeling that hadn’t happened since the Furillo divorce when I caught the scent of Mr. Furillo’s aftershave on the flight attendant who turned out to be his girlfriend. Case closed, although I didn’t grab her by the pant leg: that’s a no-no in divorce work, a lesson I’d learned early on, and then relearned a few times. But the point was we had a tent, me and Bernie, and had been on lots of camping trips, bringing Charlie along, plus Suzie, once or twice. Sometimes our camping trips took us out into the desert, but mostly we camped in the backyard. My job was to carry the mallet for banging in the tent pegs, and soon after that we’d be roasting all sorts of things over a fire, and Bernie would haul out the ukulele and singing would start up, all our favorite camp songs like “Parachute Woman,” “The Sky Is Crying,” “Arrivederci, Roma.” Had we brought the ukulele now? I didn’t remember seeing it, but nobody’s memory is perfect, as Bernie had said to Leda during one of their last fights.

We parked between two dusty pickups in a dirt lot. “I don’t see Guy’s car,” Anya said.

“What’s his ride?” said Bernie.

“A black Mercedes,” said Anya. “License plate PAYME.”

“So he has a sense of humor.”

“He always thought so.”

We walked toward the nearest cabin. Some people stood outside, grouped around a tall dude in a cowboy hat. He pointed toward a trail leading up the mountain. The people started trudging off in that direction just as we came up.

“Ranger Rob?” Anya said. “Anya Vereen, Devin’s mom.”

“Welcome to parents’ weekend,” Ranger Rob said. He had a leathery face with little eyes lost in all the wrinkles.

“My friend, Bernie Little.”

“Rob Townshend, camp director,” said Ranger Rob.

“Hey,” Bernie said.

He and Ranger Rob shook hands. Ranger Rob didn’t look at me, even though I was right there. Some humans are like that.

“Where’s Devin?” Anya said.

Ranger Rob glanced at the people on their way to the trail. “As I was explaining to those folks, the campers from tent seven aren’t back quite yet from their three-day.”

“When are they expected?” Anya said.

Ranger Rob shifted from one leg to another. “In actual fact, last night,” he said.

“Last night?” said Anya.

“Had some rain,” Ranger Rob said. “Makes that last long climb up the Big Bear gorge a mite slippery. Most likely Turk Rendell—he’s the trip leader—had ’em bed down near Whiskey Lake. Six or seven miles from this spot, as the crow flies.” He checked his watch. “So I’m expecting them any time. You can join those others at the trailhead, if you like. There’s some nice benches, ten-minute walk from here.”

Anya turned to go.

“One moment,” Bernie said. “Has this trip leader of yours called in?”

Ranger Rob shook his head. “Cell coverage is real spotty up here, have to go down to the town of Big Bear before it’s reliable. But as a matter of philosophy, we prohibit cell phones on our wilderness hikes.”

“Philosophy?” said Bernie.

“Preserving authentic Western self-reliance,” Ranger Rob said. “That’s what we’re about.”

Bernie opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, remaining silent. Ranger Rob walked toward the cabin. Bernie
and I started for the trailhead, a little behind Anya. He spoke in this low voice he has sometimes for just talking to him and me. “The Donner party was as self-reliant as it gets,” he said.

Bernie and I have been to lots of parties, which is maybe why I didn’t remember that specific one. I checked the sky for crows and saw none; saw no birds of any kind, just some low dark clouds moving fast over the blue.

FIVE

T
here were a few benches at the trailhead, all taken by the time we arrived. I didn’t feel like sitting anyway, especially when a woman asked the man beside her to pass the bug spray. I hate bug spray—both the smell and how it feels on my coat—and always keep my distance. Lots of humans have a strange thing about bugs, are always spraying themselves or swatting at the air. What’s so bad about bugs? Some are even quite tasty.

Anya took a few steps onto the trail—nice smooth packed-down trail, the way trails usually were at the start—and gazed up a gentle rise. Not too far along, the path took a curve and vanished in the trees. I went over to Bernie. He was leaning against a split-rail fence, cell phone in hand.

“Suzie?” he said. “Hear me all right?” He listened for a moment, then spoke again. “Any chance you can get away on Monday? This job’s in primo hiking territory, but it’ll be all wrapped up by Sunday, and—”

And then came some more chitchat, but a light breeze had risen and it carried a very interesting scent, completely new to me, but the scent of a creature, for sure, and I lost track of the
conversation. Who wouldn’t have, picking up a smell like that: strong, sharp, penetrating, musky. Once on a case—something do with the football coach at Valley College getting blackmailed, or maybe he was doing the blackmailing, hard to keep all the cases straight—Bernie and I were in the locker room after a game when the equipment dude was picking up the dirty uniforms and T-shirts and jockstraps and tossing them in a hamper. This new smell at the trailhead kind of reminded me of that hamper, but wilder, if that made any sense.

The breeze died down, taking the scent with it. Bernie was saying, “Great, see you then.” He clicked off, gave me a smile. “How’re you doin’?”

Me? Tip-top. I pressed against Bernie, not too hard.

“Easy, big guy.” He gave me a pat. Then we walked up the path and joined Anya. She was gazing at that curve where the trail disappeared.

“It’s so quiet here,” she said, turning to Bernie.

“Sure is,” said Bernie.

“Doesn’t it creep you out?” Anya said.

“Far from it,” Bernie said.

“I guess I’m a city girl,” Anya said. She checked the trail again. “Devin’s kind of like me in that respect. He didn’t want to come here at all. I had to bribe him.”

“With what?” Bernie said.

“Guy’s putting up the actual prize—some new video game player, I don’t even know the name.”

“Devin likes video games?”

“That’s pretty much his whole life these days. I’ve tried to get him to cut down, but he’s alone at home a lot and … well, you know the story.”

“Does he play any sports?” Bernie said.

Anya gave him a look. “You sound just like Guy.”

They were talking about sports? Sports: maybe the best idea humans ever came up with, in my opinion. Back when we were on the football case, I actually got into a real game! Bernie and I were right on the sideline, on account of we had to stay close to the blackmailer—it’s all coming back to me now, love when that happens—who turned out to be the assistant coach, yes, right on the sideline, close up to the action, when a punt happened, one of those punts down deep, whatever that means, but it’s the expression Bernie uses and he really knows football—played in high school, but dropped it when he went to West Point so he could concentrate on baseball—but forget that part, the point being that on the down deep punt the receiver stays away from the ball in the hope that it goes into the end zone, wherever that is, and meanwhile the other team tries to corral the ball, and footballs bounce in a crazy way, and when I see something crazy like that—