Thereby Hangs a Tail Read Online Free

didn’t say anything, just nodded.
    “I suppose you’d like some sort of retainer,” Adelina said.
    “Not yet,” said Bernie. Not yet? Why not? “First, we’ve got some questions.” Did we? That was interesting. I waited to hear.
    “What sort of questions?” Adelina said.
    Bernie started numbering them on his fingers. I loved when he did that! Bernie was always the smartest guy in the room, even if some people missed that. “One,” he said: “Is it customary for show dogs to have bodyguards?”
    “No,” said Adelina.
    “Two: is it just your custom?”
    “No,” she said, “and please don’t number the questions on your fingers. My husband does that and I can’t stand it.”
    Bernie’s hands folded up and sank down on the desk. “So there’s a Mr. Borghese?” he said.
    “Not exactly,” said Adelina. “My husband is a count.”
    Bernie leaned forward. Maybe he thought she’d said something else. “Say again?”
    “A count, Mr. Little. A member of the minor European nobility.”
    “Ah,” said Bernie. “A conte, in Italian.”
    “Correct,” said Adelina.
    “Making you a contessa,” said Bernie.
    “Let’s not get into any of that,” she said. “You can call me Adelina.”
    “And I’ll be Bernie,” said Bernie, with a little laugh, as though he’d cracked a pretty good joke. No laugh from Adelina, and in truth I didn’t get it either. Bernie cleared his throat—I can do that, too, much more noisily—a habit of his that usually meant the failure of whatever had gone before. “It’s not your custom to retain a bodyguard for Princess, but you want one now,” he said. “Why?”
    Adelina bit her lip. Then, big surprise, her eyes filled with tears. The crying thing: always a bit of a mystery to me. Humans cried sometimes, women more than men—Leda, for example, had had a crying episode every day—but I’d seen Bernie cry once, if crying meant just the tears part with no sound: that was the day Leda packed up all of Charlie’s stuff. Adelina’s crying was the same—just tears, no sound. She opened her bag, took out some tissue, dabbed at her eyes; they seemed darker now. “Princess’s life is in danger,” she said.
    “Why do you say that?” said Bernie.
    Adelina dug into her bag again, handed him a folded sheet of glossy paper. “This came in the mail.” I got up, watched Bernie unfold it, moved around the desk so I could see.
    “A page from a magazine?” Bernie said.
    “ Show Dog World, ” said Adelina. She glanced at me and blinked, as though not quite believing her eyes about something, exactly what I had no idea.
    I turned my attention back to the glossy page. There was a bit of writing, useless to me, of course, but mostly just a big color photo of Princess on a satin pillow, maybe the same photo I’d seen last night. The difference was that someone had inked in a bull’s-eye target over her tiny fluffball head. I had only one thought: we were in business.

THREE

    B ernie says he hates guns, but he happens to be a crack shot. We’ve got a rifle and a shotgun locked in the office safe—it’s behind a big framed photo of Niagara Falls, you’d never guess— and a .38 Special in the glove box of the Porsche. Bernie loves waterfall pictures, by the way; we’ve got a bunch. But back to the guns. Sometimes Bernie goes to the range for practice. I love the range, although the fact is I’ve only been once on account of the whole experience turning out to be a little too exciting. But that’s how I know bull’s-eyes—from watching Bernie at the range. He gets a look in his eye at the range—cool and still—and then bam! Bull’s-eye! Bernie had a look like that now, as he gazed at Princess’s picture.
    “How did you get this?” Bernie said.
    “It came in the mail,” said Adelina Borghese.
    “In Italy?”
    “Italy?”
    “Isn’t that where you live?”
    “We have a villa in Umbria, yes. But the letter came to our place in