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CHAPTER 19

Bertie Muddies The Water

      WHEN LUCY got to Clive's garage, she found him and Bertie and hanging over the heater in their dingy little office, trying to keep warm.

      Clive was drinking yesterday's sludgy coffee and Bertie had just popped the top off a can of Orange Crush. Bertie said they'd just opened up, since the only business they expected today was calls for the tow-truck. What with the snow and all.

      He answered Lucy's question with a wicked, toothless grin. "Young Bob? We haven't seen hide nor hair of him since he and that kid from the feed store took off for Duke City with a pretty girl."

      "Took off for . . . ?" Lucy frowned, then her face cleared. "Oh, you mean when they went to get Swan's things. But that was days ago, Bert. Tagg said he came over here this morning."

      "He said that?"

      "Yes, I needed to talk to Bobby, and he was at Tagg's — or at least I thought he was. But he'd left there and come here, Tagg said."

      "Oh well, I guess he would, Toots." Bertie now had a look on his face like a kid who knows a smutty joke and is dying to tell it. Lucy had no idea what amused him so, but with Bertie it could be anything. "Guess he had to say something, and that's what he said!"

      Clive gave his grandpa a stern look. "Don't you do that."

      And once again, Lucy thought, "Something's going on." Because Bertie was always popping off about nothing, but when Clive gave him that look, it meant something.

      Lucy turned on the younger man and prepared to stare him down. "All right, you two better tell me where Bobby is right now."

      Bertie's eyes lit up and he put down his can of Orange Crush. "Hop back in your truck and I'll take you there."

      "Leave it alone, Grandpa," Clive growled.

      The old man ignored him. "Come on, Toots. let's go. I'll take you right to him!"

      Clive pushed himself between Lucy and his grandfather. "If you want to see him so bad, I'll go get him for you!"

      That was really too much. All the unspent emotions of the morning welled up in Lucy's eyes. "Wh-why are you guys giving me such a hard time? Do I ever give you a hard time? All I want is to talk to my brother about something im-p-portant," she faltered, caught halfway between hurt feelings and rage, "and you two keep giving me this big r-run-around? Just tell me were Bobby is and let me g-go."

      Her tears sent the two men into a panic. Clive was paralyzed, and Bertie burst forth with a feverish eruption of irrelevant words and grimaces. "Haaaay Shweet-hart, what's with the waterworks," he growled in a fair imitation of Humphrey Bogart, and then slid quickly into his Groucho Marx impersonation, rapidly raising and lowering his eyebrows and tapping an imaginary cigar, "Yesterday I shot an elephant in my pajamas! What the elephant was doing in my pajamas, I'll never know!" Then he gave Lucy several quick pats on the arm as his old memory fumbled desperately for the jokes of some other long-dead film star, settling for a feeble, "Didja know you got updoc in your hair? Now you say, 'What's —"

      Lucy shut her eyes. "Bertie, stop it. Don't tell me jokes, don't draw me a map, just tell me where to find my brother."

      The old man stopped abruptly, and for a moment he looked genuinely pained. "Okay," he said. "Guess you might as well know. Try the old Tagg place. That's where he was, the last I heard."

      Lucy nodded and headed back to the truck. As the door swung shut on the steamy little room, she heard Clive growl, "Now you've ripped it."

      And Bertie shot back, "Time she learned the facts of life. With any luck, he'll still be in bed!"

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