Free The Iggy Chronicles, Volume 2 by Spencer Quinn Page B

face?”
    â€œLook?” said Bernie.
    I didn’t get it either. It was just Bernie’s normal face, the best face in the world.
    â€œLike maybe you think I’m delusional,” Sherry said. “If I’m delusional, how do you explain this?” She held out her hand. A huge ring glittered and sparkled on one of her fingers. “Ric gave it to me Saturday night.”
    â€œSo you’re engaged?” Bernie said.
    â€œEngaged? What would an engagement ring be doing on this finger?” She stuck up her middle finger, possibly to give Bernie a better view. “We’re talking four flawless carats here, Bernie.”
    â€œVery pretty.”
    â€œThat’s an understatement.” She took a sip of coffee, the ring clinking in a pleasant way on the cup, then glanced across the street. “That your car? The old, beat-up Porsche?”
    â€œI wouldn’t really say beat up,” Bernie replied.
    â€œRic’s got the biggest collection of Porsches in the state,” said Sherry.
    â€œHow many can he drive at once?” Bernie said.
    â€œI don’t get it.”
    I was with her on that. “Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “What makes you think he’s cheating?”
    â€œThis,” said Sherry, fishing through her purse and handing Bernie a little slip of paper.
    â€œA credit card receipt?”
    â€œFrom the Wagon Wheel Motel in Ocotillo Springs. It fell out of his pocket when he was taking care of the check.”
    â€œAt the restaurant?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSaturday night?”
    â€œI thought that was clear.”
    â€œA . . . complicated evening,” Bernie said.
    â€œI’m not paying you to tell me that,” Sherry said. “I’m paying you to find out what he was doing at that goddamn motel.”
    â€œWe’ll need a picture of him,” Bernie said.
    She turned her phone so we could see. A smiling, fleshy-faced dude appeared on the screen. He had one of those mustache-and-chin-beard combos, not a look I find appealing, hard to say why.
    â€œWant me to email it so you can print it out?” Sherry said.
    â€œI’ll remember,” said Bernie.
    Money changed hands, and in the right direction.
    â€¢ • •
    â€œWorldwide Recycling Solutions,” Bernie said. “Looks more like a junkyard.”
    We were out in Mesa Negra, not the nicest part of the Valley, with junkyards out the yingyang. This one looked like the best of them to me, bigger than the others, rows and stacks of crushed and twisted metal going on and on, all enclosed by a high fence topped with razor wire. Could I leap it if I had to? Even though leaping is my very best thing, I wondered about that.
    We sat in the Porsche, yes, a real old one, which is how we roll when it comes to Porsches, but in no way beat up, except for the dents you could hardly see. This was called sitting on a place, one of our best techniques at the Little Detective Agency. Another is grabbing perps by the pant leg, usually my job, except for that one time when Bernie . . . I’d rather not think about it. But I was still thinking about it and nothing but when a dude in oil-stained denims appeared in the junkyard. He opened the gate, and a big, bright yellow SUV came rolling through, the fleshy-faced, mustache-and-beard-combo guy at the wheel.
    â€œNot a wallflower,” Bernie said. A bit of a puzzler, until I noticed a flower or two, dusty and droopy, growing out of pavement cracks by the Worldwide Recycling Solutions gate. They weren’t growing on a wall. Bernie, right as usual. And I was in the picture! We were off to a good start, whatever this was about. Cheating boyfriends? I don’t think we have that in the nation within the nation, which is what Bernie calls me and my kind. For some reason, my mind wandered back to a night when I’d caught the faint sound of she-barking from across the canyon behind