A ruckus broke out downstairs, in Bad-Ass Bert’s. Sounded as if somebody had upended a pool table, but I wasn’t alarmed. It was Friday night, and a good brawl was always on the weekend schedule.

“How do you stand this place?” Nick asked.

I remembered that I’d promised to take care of Russell so Bert and Sheila could go camping at Oak Creek Canyon. I hoped the dog wasn’t caught in the cross fire of flying fists, steel-toed boots and swinging pool cues.

“I don’t have a choice, thanks to you and your mother,” I answered sweetly. “Besides, it’s not so bad. I guess you could say home is where the heart is.”

“How would you know?” Nick fired back. “You don’t have a heart, as far as I can tell.”

I remembered the nights I’d called all over town looking for my missing husband. The nights I’d cried myself to sleep. The day I finally figured out that Nick was never going to change, no matter how hard I tried to be the wife he wanted.

And I didn’t give a damn if he could see those memories. Let him take a good look.

“What about Chester?” I asked, when a little of the silent angst had receded. “You never told me how you found him.”

“He found me,” Nick said.

“How did you know he was my cat?”

“I looked into his head, and he took a peek into mine. We discovered we had you in common.” Another smile, this one wan. I squinted, looking for the telltale glow. Were his batteries petering out?

“I forgive you,” I said.

“You have to mean it,” Nick answered.

“I do mean it.”

“I can read your mind, remember?” The noise downstairs reached a wicked crescendo. Nick frowned.

I got a little quiver in the pit of my stomach. “What is it?”

“You’d better call the cops,” Nick said. “Your friend Bert-the-bartender is in big trouble.”

Chester disappeared.

Nick evaporated.

I bolted for the outside door.

Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

CARS AND BIKES peeled out, in noisy contrast to the ominous silence from within the building, as I sprinted for the open doorway at the side.

I rushed in. “Bertrand! Russell!”

I heard a groan, from the direction of the pool tables, and ran toward it. Bert lay sprawled on his back underneath the one on the left, bleeding copiously into the sawdust on the floor.

I dropped to my knees and crab-scrambled to his side.

“Bert!”

He looked at me for a long, terrible moment, and then his eyes rolled back into his head. I shoved up his muscle shirt, swabbed the hairy skin with one palm, and saw the knife wound.

Nick’s words of advice came back to me. You’d better call the cops.