I bent to ruffle the dog’s floppy ears. “You’re too fat,” I told him affectionately.

He tried to lick my face.

Bert’s keys jingled as he shoved one into the lock on the service door. The bar wouldn’t open until ten, but he liked to come in early, put the coffee on to brew, fire up the hot dog roaster, rake the peanut shells, cigarette butts and spit-lumps out of the sawdust on the floor and balance the till. As landlords went, Bert was unconventional, but the rent was right and he had a great dog, so we got along okay.

“You look like hell this morning,” he told me brightly, washing his hands at the sink behind the bar. Bert was proud of his saloon, especially the bar. It was nothing but splintery boards, nailed across the top of six huge wooden barrels, bought at a junk sale in Tombstone, but according to Bert, the thing was a true historical artifact. Allegedly, in its heyday, the likes of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had bellied up to it.

“Thanks,” I said bleakly. Russell climbed onto the old mounting block next to his bar stool, then made the leap to the vinyl seat. I perched on the next one over.

Bert started the coffee. Despite his size and the fact that Route 66 coursed in a green line up his left arm, presumably across his chest, and down his right, complete with side roads, highway numbers and place names beside little red circles, he was a sensitive guy.

“Something happen to Lillian?” he asked.

My eyes burned, and my throat tightened. I ran a hand down Russell’s broad back for a distraction. Lillian Travers was the closest thing I had to a mother, and she would have been my first choice to confide in, but she’d suffered a devastating stroke six months before. Now, she sat staring into space in a Phoenix nursing home, and I made the forty-five-minute trip to visit her three times a week.

Sometimes Lillian seemed to know me, sometimes she didn’t. Except for isolated, garbled words, she never spoke.

Bert paused in his coffee-making, waiting.

I finally shook my head. “She’s the same,” I got out.

“Then what?” Bert persisted, but gently. With the coffeemaker chortling and belching out fragrant steam, he flipped on the hot dog machine, opened the fridge tucked behind the bar and took out a package of frankfurters. I watched as he laid them carefully, one by one, on the gleaming steel bars rolling behind the glass.

“Something really weird happened last night,” I said, with understandable difficulty and no little reluctance. Russell laid his muzzle on my left forearm, mesmerized by the spinning wieners.