Thereby Hangs a Tail Read Online Free Page A

Manhattan.”
    “When?”
    “Last week.”
    “Do you have the envelope?”
    “No.”
    “Where is it?”
    “An assistant opens the mail. He throws out the envelopes, junk mail, all that.”
    “Did you try to find it?”
    “Too late—everything goes in the shredder.”
    “Did you show this to the police?”
    “The Manhattan DA lives in our building. He told me not to worry about it—most likely just a mean-spirited joke, he said.”
    “But you didn’t take his advice,” said Bernie.
    “He doesn’t have a dog,” said Adelina.
    Bernie nodded as though that made sense to him. Personally, I was losing the thread, maybe because it was getting past breakfast time and there were no signs of breakfast happening. I rose, had a nice stretch—the kind where I get my front legs way out, head down, butt up, can’t tell you how good that feels—wandered into the kitchen and nosed behind the trash bin. You can sometimes find the odd tidbit there, but today wasn’t one of those times. All I spotted was a wine bottle cork. Not food, but I picked it up and started gnawing anyway, hard to explain why. Meanwhile, I tried to remember the last wine-drinking occasion. Had to have been on a night Suzie came over—she liked red. Wine smells are pretty interesting—even humans are on to that. I love when they stick their little noses in the glass and go on about blackberries and chocolate and lemongrass—trust me, they haven’t got a clue.
    Hadn’t seen Suzie in a while, now that I thought about it. Suzie was the greatest! She always had biscuits in her car, for one thing. Suzie was a reporter for the Valley Tribune . She’d done a story on Bernie, back when we were working the Madison Cham-bliss case. Bernie hadn’t liked the story much. What was the word? Shambling. What the hell’s that? Bernie had said. She’d written that Bernie was a big shambling guy like an athlete past his prime, but she hadn’t mentioned that Bernie had actually been an athlete, pitching for Army back in his college days. Pitching was about baseball and Army was about fighting, kind of confusing, and all of this before Bernie and I got together, but I can tell you one thing—he can throw a tennis ball a long way when he wants to; not so far that I can’t get it in a flash, of course. We can play ball for hours—whatever those are, exactly—me and Bernie. Also Frisbees—what a great invention! Once old man Heydrich, our neighbor on the other side, not Iggy’s, a neighbor who doesn’t warm up to me and my kind, didn’t quite see the Frisbee coming, nobody’s fault really, but try telling that to old man Heydrich.
    Back to Bernie and Suzie. The point was that although Bernie hadn’t liked Suzie’s story, he’d ended up liking Suzie. Plus she liked him. Everything was going along swimmingly—I love swimming, by the way, understand that expression perfectly—until an old, or possibly not so old—boyfriend of Suzie’s showed up, name of Dylan McKnight. Don’t get me started, but I can tell you that he and I didn’t hit it off from the get-go, though I’ve liked just about every human I’d ever met, except for perps and gangbangers, and even some of—
    “. . . meet the plane,” Bernie was saying. I looked up, saw him moving toward the front door, Adelina beside him.
    “I’ll let my husband know,” Adelina was saying. “Sure you don’t want a retainer?”
    “Not necessary,” said Bernie. “This’ll be all over soon. We’ll bill you then.”
    Oh, Bernie.

    We had a late breakfast, bacon and eggs for Bernie, kibble for me. And some of Bernie’s bacon, to tell the truth. Bernie had gotten this idea, no telling from where, that too much bacon was bad for him. The idea of too much bacon made no sense to me and I was happy to help him out.
    After breakfast, Bernie went into the office and started tap-tapping at the computer. I sat by the tall, narrow window in the front hall, gazing out. Time passed and then I heard a truck