Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

Bernie says about me and red—painted personally by our car guy, Nixon Panero, best mechanic in the Valley and a real good buddy even though we’d put him away for a while. This Porsche also sported martini glass images on the front fenders, a last-minute addition by Nixon that had led to us getting pulled over more often than you might want. But we know most of the highway patrol dudes, and a lot of them have a treat or two somewhere in the cruiser, even a stale old biscuit under the seat, maybe news to you. I’m not fussy.
    We zoomed up a ramp, got on the freeway, zipped over to the fast lane. Faster, Bernie, faster! He glanced over at me. “You’re in a good mood,” he said.
    No doubt about it! And why not? I stuck my head out into the wind, picked up so many smells I didn’t know what to do with them!
    â€œHome is the hunter, huh, big guy?”
    Wow! We were going hunting? At last, at last, at last! I’d seen hunting on TV many times, been a little envious of those members of the nation within who got to chase after all those ducks and elk and animals I didn’t even know the names of, so envious that more than once I might have tried to get in the TV and . . . and do things I’d have regretted later. But the point is we’d never been hunting. Why not? Bernie could shoot dimes out of the air. I’d seen him do it out in the desert, just the two of us. We’d done a lot of that in those strange days after the divorce when Charlie went away to live with Leda. So much fun to watch those dimes spinning in the sunshine and then ping! ping! ping! and they’d spark out into the blue. There’s all kinds of beauty in life. Was that why we shot dimes out of the air, for beauty? I didn’t know. One day it just stopped, stopped with a last dime still spinning in the air, untouched and unfired on, and Bernie tucking the .38 Special in his belt and turning away. Maybe not the happiest of days, totally unlike today because today we were finally going hunting! At last, at last, at last!
    â€œChet! What’s getting into you? Knock it off!”
    Getting into me? Hunting, of course.
    â€œI mean it—back on your own seat or you’re not coming. I can’t see a damn thing.”
    So what? We could find our way by my nose alone! Whoa, Chet. Not a good thought. We were a team, me and Bernie, meaning Bernie needed to see, if that’s what he thought best. I got back on my own seat pronto, sat up tall and absolutely silent, silent to you, anyway. It takes real good hearing to pick up the sound of my heart, thump thump thumping in my chest.
    Quiet and silent, but so much was going on in my mind, all of it about hunting, of course. Were mountain lions a possibility? I’d had an encounter with a mountain lion once, not good. Bears? I’d dealt with one of them, too. That was the fastest I’d ever run. Had Bernie laughed and laughed at the sight? Oh, yeah, but only when we were making our getaway, burning rubber for miles. Mother bears have a thing about their cubs, something I wouldn’t be forgetting anytime soon.
    We got off the freeway, drove through a neighborhood with lots of construction going on, slowed down. What sort of hunting ground was this? I started to ramp down my expectations—pretty much the hardest thing to do in life—from mountain lions and bears to squirrels and chipmunks. Would I be able to get excited at hunting chipmunks? Squirrels, maybe. Then it hit me we weren’t even carrying! Bernie must have left our stopper behind. I can smell a gun even if it hasn’t been fired or cleaned in a long time, and we were gunless, end of story. I know my job, amigo. But how could we hunt without a weapon?
    Worries had pretty much taken over my mind by the time we came to a construction site at the end of a street, one of those big holes in the ground surrounded by a chain-link fence. Bernie parked and we hopped out, me