Free Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn Page B

is that surprising?” Stine said. “Normal procedure, straight out of—”
    Bernie smacked Stine’s desk, real hard, like a thunderclap. Stine had a nice gold pen set. It jumped right off the desk and was still airborne as we zipped on out of there, me and Bernie.
    â€œHey,” Stine called after us. “Where the hell—”
    â€œArrest them!” Conte yelled.
    Meaning me and Bernie? What a strange interview! Maybe the kind of thing to go over in my mind at some future time. Yeah, that was it.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    We roared up Mesquite Road, hit the brakes in front of the Parsonses’ house. Lots going on: We had a Valley PD cruiser, an ambulance, and—what was this?—an Animal Control truck? Yes, all parked on the street. The front door opened as we hurried up to the house and EMTs came hurrying the other way, rolling a stretcher. Humans rushing around in all directions: never a good sign. The stretcher flew right past us, Mr. Parsons on top, eyes closed, a breathing mask on his face. We followed the stretcher down to the ambulance where they threw open the back doors and slid Mr. Parsons inside. An EMT looked out as the doors were closing.
    â€œWhat happened?” Bernie said.
    The EMT shrugged. The doors closed and the ambulance took off. The driver hit the siren.
    We turned toward the house. More action at the door? It was getting hard to keep up. Now we had a uniformed cop we didn’t know followed by a Valley PD detective we did know, namely Brick Mickles. Was Bernie in the mood for Brick Mickles at the moment? I could see just from the way he stopped dead that he was not. Bernie and Brick Mickles went way back, back to the period between the end of Bernie’s army days and the start of the Little Detective Agency. That was a time when Bernie himself had been with Valley PD. He never talked about it, so that was all I know, except that whenever we ran into Brick Mickles, things didn’t go well.
    Mickles saw us and also stopped dead. Then a smile spread across his face. He had a big face. Did I leave out that he was a huge guy, everything about him huge except for his tiny, round ears, actually quite beautifully shaped? Hardly anybody ever makes Bernie look small, but Brick Mickles was one.
    â€œWell, well, well,” he said. “I’ll be doggone.”
    I’d never understood that one, just knew I myself wasn’t going anywhere at the moment.
    â€œWhat the hell are you doing here?” Bernie said.
    Mickles shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Serving. Protecting. Et cetera.”
    â€œThey sent you?”
    â€œJust my luck. Missing saguaro, but I heard cigar, so I volunteered, thinking I could score a box or two.” He glanced over at our place, then smacked his forehead. “That’s your crib! Totally forgot. Now it’s making sense.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œThe old duffer,” Mickles said, motioning down Mesquite Road in the direction the ambulance had taken. “Kept droning on about some goddamn neighbor. Neighbor was gonna sort everything out, if I’d just—how’d he put it?—be patient? But even a patient type such as myself gets a bit antsy in a murder case.”
    â€œWhat did you do to him?” Bernie said. He began moving toward the house, not quickly, but powerfully—a slow glide that reminded me of a mountain lion I’d once encountered, and maybe mentioned already. Wasn’t a mountain lion just a very big cat? If so, was Bernie moving like a cat? That was disturbing. I moved along beside him, but not like a cat. We stopped within easy leaping range of Mickles. Easy leaping range for me, anyway, can’t speak for any possible cat person on the scene.
    â€œTook the thumbscrews to him, of course,” Mickles said. “Only way to crack those tough old nuts.”
    When two dudes are right on the point of throwing