Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery (15 page)

“What?”

“Hang on.” He repeated the exercise on the other side, then pushed the drawer back in and shut off the light. “That’s it, here.” He looked around the room, then at her. “You want to risk tossing the rest of the house, or are we ready to go?”

“There were computers out front. Think they’re still there?”

“Unlikely. But let’s check.”

The computers were gone, the table barren of the paperwork that had been there, and Ginny felt a twinge of regret that she hadn’t snooped harder, her first visit. But if he’d been hiding a guilty secret, something dirty enough to warrant calling in a PI, it wouldn’t be down here. The dirtier a secret, the closer people held it, she’d learned.

“I’m going to check upstairs,” she said. “Keep watch.”

“Yeah, ’cause if someone walks in the front door, me warning you is going to do a lot of good.”

“Well, I can go out the window while you’re distracting them by getting arrested,” she said, already halfway up the stairs. Humor was a good way to keep her nerves from biting her on the ass, even if their banter might not be up to their usual standards.

Upstairs wasn’t much: two small bedrooms and a bathroom between them. One bedroom had clearly been used for just that: a queen-sized bed filling most of the space, no nightstands, and a single dresser. It looked like he’d slept in there, but not much more.

The second room held a love seat and a large-screen television mounted on the wall. “He lived up here, worked downstairs. Nice separation of personal and private space.”

But that meant they probably wouldn’t find anything useful up here: no computers, desks, or filing cabinets to be seen. And absolutely no sign of the alleged but very much unreal Mrs. Adaowsky.

“A cop car just drove by,” Tonica’s voice said, low on the stair. “Let’s get gone, okay?”

“Yeah.” She looked around one last time, thinking that it was a sad residue left behind, and wondering if hers would be any better. “Yeah, okay.”

*    *    *

The cop car—or another one—drove by again as they were walking away from the house. Tonica grabbed her hand so they looked like any couple out for a late-night stroll home from the bar. She let her eyes rest on the car, an ordinarily curious citizen, and something about it bothered her, but she couldn’t quite figure out what. Paranoia, probably.

The sedan was where they’d left it, the overhead light dark, so they walked up to the car and slid inside, even as Ron was starting the car. “You weren’t in there long,” he said.

“Not much left to see,” Ginny said. “Cops didn’t give you a blink?”

“I slid down enough so they probably didn’t notice—any extra patrols they put on were just a community song and dance to make taxpayers feel better. Like you said, if your boy was into some dirty things, they’re going to assume it was related to that, and not a neighborhood-general attack. And contrary to rumor, murderers don’t often come back to the scene of the crime, especially if they’re pros. They’re already on to the next job. You find anything?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She turned around in her seat to look at Tonica, who still had the papers. “Did we?”

“Two sheets of paper tucked away where paranoid people normally keep passwords.” He was squinting at the writing, and Ginny pulled out her microlight again and trained it on the paper. “Thanks. First one’s just two names, first names only, and phone numbers. Second one’s a list of names. First only, again, no phone numbers.” He frowned, then looked up at her. “The second list’s all female.”

“You think that’s important?”

“Call me a protective paranoid bastard, but when a guy has a list of women’s names hidden away somewhere? It’s usually not a good thing.”

“Oh. Yeah.” And now she felt like an idiot for not thinking of that first.

“He’s not wrong,” Ron said. “Give me the names, I’ll run a search, see if anything in recent news comes up. And yes, missy, I know you can do a search almost as well as I can, but it’s nearly two a.m. and right now all you’re doing is going back to your hotel and getting some shut-eye. Let the professional insomniac handle this.”

She wanted to argue, but with the adrenaline from the break-in fading, her body felt like it was made out of lead, and the idea of going to sleep for about six hours—or until Georgie woke her up—sounded too good to pass up.

“I got a queen,” she said to Tonica. “So long as you don’t kick while you sleep, we can share.”

“At this point, I’d be okay with the floor, so long as Georgie didn’t object.” He folded the papers in half, the way they’d been taped up, and passed them over to Ron. “I don’t know about you, but my nerves are shot. I’m not cut out to be a cat burglar.”

“Should have brought Penny,” she told him, and it was a measure of how tired they both were that they found that funny.

“There’s a coffee place nearby, the Toot,” Ron said. “I’ll meet you guys there in the morning, seven thirty?”

Tonica groaned, but nodded, and Ginny added her agreement. “All right, then. Here’s your stop,” he said as he pulled into the hotel’s driveway.

Ginny noticed that Ron waited until they were past the doors, and nearly to the elevator, before he pulled away. “He’s worried,” she said quietly, not wanting to catch the attention of the sleepy clerk behind the counter, although the man hadn’t done more than lift his head and nod when they walked in.

“You’re not?” he replied.

“About being accosted in my own hotel? Not until this moment, no, honestly. No more than usual, anyway.” The elevator came, and they stepped on, Ginny punching the button for their floor. “Right now, I’m tired, and I’m annoyed, and I’m more than a little skeeved out by what that list might mean. That’s about it.”

And tired was winning over annoyed and skeeved. There would be time enough for all that in the morning. Later in the morning, she corrected herself, and prayed that Georgie wouldn’t need to go out before then.

13

T
he queen-sized bed was
large enough for both of them, although Teddy woke up Friday morning without a pillow, and with a dog licking his face anxiously. He may or may not have yelped loudly enough to send Georgie scurrying across the room, forcing Ginny to spend five minutes reassuring the dog that big mean uncle Teddy hadn’t meant to scare her.

“Now I need someone to reassure me,” she said, finally. “Or prescribe a tranquilizer.”

“You’re too tightly wound for pharmaceuticals,” he said. “If you got that loose, you’d fall apart entirely.”

“Gee, thanks.” Her sarcastic voice wasn’t up to par, though, and he let his hand rest on her shoulder. “Just don’t think,” he told her. “You try to figure things out now, before we know anything else, and you’ll just chase your tail until you bite it, and—don’t look at me like that. You know what I mean.”

“But—”

“Wait until we’ve talked to Ron,” he said. “And had coffee.”

It was too early to deal with any of this. He went and took a shower and, thankfully, by the time he got out, she’d managed to calm herself down again, with an obvious assist from the dog curled asleep half on her lap.

The coffee shop Ron had suggested was actually more of a diner, six booths on either side of an aisle, the kitchen running the length of one wall, the splatter and hiss of the griddles running under the low clatter of conversation. There was a small grassy area in front of the diner where two other dogs were already tied up, clearly waiting on patrons inside. Georgie settled in quickly, clearly not the least bit stressed about being left in unfamiliar surroundings.

“Do you ever worry about leaving her, after . . .” After one of their jobs turned up details of how often dogs were stolen off the street, for illegal labs or dog-fighting rings, he meant.

“Always. But we worked on it with her trainer,” Ginny said. “Georgie won’t willingly go with anyone who isn’t familiar, or doesn’t know the right command.” She gave Georgie a treat and turned away. “And besides, anyone who tried to pick her up and run would get a hernia for their effort.”

Since he’d had to haul the dog in and out of his car more than once, he couldn’t argue that point. She wasn’t that large, but what was there was solid muscle under plush, wrinkled skin.

Ron was already there, and had ordered them a carafe of coffee, much appreciated after Ginny had warned Teddy off the free coffee in the hotel lobby. He was pretty sure that, despite a hot shower and a brisk walk to the diner, even a vat of coffee wasn’t going to wake him up all the way. But he was willing to try.

“Any luck?” Ginny asked, sliding in next to Ron, while Teddy took the opposite bench. She was still—if you knew to look for it—twitchier than usual, her air of bright cheer only a façade, but neither of them called her on it.

“Depends on what you mean by luck,” Ron said. “The list of girls’ names turned out to be a bust—no hits on any missing-persons reports or recent crimes. Which is a relief on the one hand, and a worry on the other. I mean, if it’s not a bad thing, why hide the list?”

“No reports just means nothing’s been reported. They still could be in trouble or causing trouble.” Off their look, Ginny shrugged. “Don’t assume just because the names are all female that they’re innocent. Trust me, women can be just as deadly as the male, and you both should know that.”

Ron paused with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth, considered her words, then saluted her with the mug before taking a sip. “You’re not wrong. But since the dead guy’s dead by means most foul, doubt is called for. Since you said the guy did a lot of work with teenagers, yearbook pictures and whatnot, it might just be a client list, totally innocent, if weirdly stashed. Or maybe it’s women he’s slept with, and he’s keeping it secret from his main partner. Or hell, maybe your vic was just trying to come up with names for his next Pretty Pony.”

“His what?” Teddy frowned.

“Don’t ask,” Ginny advised him. “Trust me. What about the other two names, the guys?”

“There, I had luck. Back-traced the phone numbers, did a little deeper digging past the unlisted part, matched the first names to two gentlemen. David Collins, and Benjamin Lee. Went to high school together, local boys, roomed together three of their four years at Lewis and Clark. Lee moved here right after college, started working for a small architecture and restoration firm, Collins showed up a year ago, got a job at Candle Creek Brewery. They’re both considered promising newcomers, thirty-two and ambitious without being obnoxious. Have a sideline doing design work for start-ups—no real money to it, but their work looks competent enough.”

“So, was our guy a friend of theirs?”

“Not on paper, anyway.”

The waitress came by, and they paused to order off the blackboard menu, then Ron continued. “Nothing in common—no school, no friends, no career crossover.”

“So . . . you think our two golden boys are involved in the fake ID gig the victim was running?”

“Based solely on the fact that their names were in his secret place, I’d say that’s a good guess, yeah. But they were clean—no connections I could find. You have better sources; you might want to check with them.”

“Yeah, no,” Teddy said, shaking his head. “I’d like to stay out of her way as much as possible.”

Ginny wadded her napkin and threw it at him. “She’s been helpful!”

“She’s been setting us up to dig for her, Gin. And I wouldn’t put it past her to use you as bait for whatever she wanted dug up.”

She frowned at him, as though suspecting that was why he’d rushed down here, that he thought she was going to do something stupid, or needed rescuing. “We were going to dig anyway, Theodore. And if she wants us to dig successfully . . .”

“You said yourself she admitted our competence, and
then
told you to stay low, that the stakes were too high for us. Is there a better way to get you to do something on the QT, than raise a challenge like that?”

They had a stare-down that Teddy won, but only barely.

“Fine. We won’t call her. Unless we have to,” she said, glaring at Teddy. He raised his hands in surrender, willing to concede that point. He didn’t know for
certain
Asuri was using them as bait; it was just a strong and supported suspicion.

“So how do we actually get to talk to these boys?” Teddy asked, moving the conversation away from the question of Asuri. “I mean, a reporter showing up might flip them out a little, and we’ve got even less reason.”

“When in doubt, do the time-honored reporter thing,” the other man said, pouring himself more coffee.

“Which is?”

“Lie,” Ron said.

*    *    *

Joke aside, dancing around the truth—what Ron referred to as “prevarication in the pursuit of truth” and Tonica called “bullshitting the mark,” meant that getting in to see one of their suspects turned out to be almost embarrassingly easy.

“We’re terribly sorry to bother you, and thank you so much for taking time out of your day.”

“No, that’s quite all right. Please, sit down.”

David Collins had a broad, open face, his sandy brown hair falling into his face, frequently swiped back with an exasperated hand, and a quick smile that not only reached his eyes but seemed to fill his entire body. Ginny smiled back at him, and resisted the urge to check for an alligator tail.

The brewery was hopping out front, but they’d been escorted to a small room to the side, with a long wooden table and chairs and not much else. “We have group tastings here,” he said, noting their curiosity. “Décor’s less important when we want them focusing on what’s in their mouths.”

“You’re a brewer, too?” Tonica asked, gesturing to the stained apron he was wearing over his khakis.

“No, not yet. Someday. Right now I’m sort of jack of all trades, mainly, as we discussed, working the sales angle. I’m rather disgustingly good at schmoozing.”

Fortunately, so was Tonica. Ginny leaned back in the chair, aware that Collins had already checked her out, read her “not here to flirt” body language, and—wonders of wonders—respected it. She supposed that was part of what made him good at schmoozing: reading and paying attention to body language.

“It’s all part of the trade, isn’t it?” Tonica said. “Making, selling . . . and straddling the bar, so to speak, gives an excellent view of the larger picture. There’s certainly far more to running a bar than I ever thought when I was just tending one!”

That was their story, their excuse for being here—that Tonica had heard about the work the brewery was doing, and wanted to see if they could work a deal with Mary’s. It was enough to get them in the door. . . .

What happened now, she didn’t know. They were pretty much winging it. Her job was to take notes, smile occasionally, frown every now and again, and if she saw an opening, take it. So while the two men went on to discuss various beers and ales they were making, and a young woman came in with a tray of one-ounce sample glasses, Ginny waited, watched, and after a few different ales had been tasted—Ginny abstaining, as the designated driver—she said, “This seems more like a labor of love to you, than something you do for money. Or did you manage to luck out and land both in one job?”

“It doesn’t pay all that well, no,” Collins admitted. “But I do all right.”

“You must,” she said, with as much admiration as she could. “That’s a Diva Noir shirt, isn’t it?”

“Um. Yes.” He clearly wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or wary. Tonica wouldn’t know Diva Noir from Nike, but she did—and so did Collins. And he knew she knew how much one of those button-down shirts cost, and you didn’t wear it under an apron unless you had more than one.

Hah. Take that, Mister I-can-read-people-better-than-you, you-need-to-be-rescued-from-your-own-impulses Theodore Tonica. Their target was slightly suspicious now, but she saw no indication that he had recognized their names, no flash of hesitation that you got used to seeing when someone knew they were being questioned. This guy had no idea who they were, other than their cover story. She hid a vicious-feeling grin. Time to up the pressure a little.

“Nice.” She leaned back a little and looked down, as though checking him out without wanting to be obvious about it. She might not have had much opportunity to flirt recently, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten how to do it. “The brewery must be doing well, or do you manage to juggle even more than all this?” A little surprise, a little awe, and she saw his eyelids flicker, shifting to glance back at Tonica before focusing on her again. Not that Ginny believed she was any kind of femme fatale, but very few people could resist the urge to humble-brag. And Collins seemed like the type who wouldn’t enjoy working for other people, from what she’d heard already—and she knew the type from looking in the mirror every morning.

“I’ve got my fingers in a few pies, here and there,” he said casually. “You know how it is: you can’t assume any one particular thing’s going to work out, so you spread your chances.”

“Oh, I know how that goes, yes,” she said, smiling. “A little here, a little more there, and if one pays out, you put more there.”

“Exactly. And if one of those things pushes the envelope a little, well hey . . .”

His face froze mid-smile, making him look a little like a chipmunk caught stuffing his pouches. She, on the other hand, kept smiling, even as she could practically hear in her head Tonica asking her what the hell she was doing.

Ginny shook her head. “Hey, business is business, right? I don’t judge.”

His face relaxed, but his eyes were steady on hers, cold and thoughtful. Yeah, she’d gotten him right. Come on, she thought, take the bait just a little more. . . . “This isn’t about setting up any kind of deal, is it?”

“It is, actually,” Tonica said, picking up the conversation again. “Everything I said is completely true.” It wasn’t the entire story, no, but Tonica hadn’t had to lie at all, despite Ron’s advice. “You’d got good product here, but no national distribution yet, so showcasing it in another city can’t hurt you, and it would be a nice shout for my place, promotion-wise. Everyone likes to think they’re getting some special deal, right?”

“And any other product I might be involved in?” The way he said it made Ginny wonder what else he was involved in, and where he thought this was going. They had to be really careful now. Or they could go all in.

Ginny was tired of creeping around the edges, playing it safe. She wanted this done, so she could go
home
.

“Truthfully? We’re really not interested in whatever else you’re doing,” she said. “We’re not in the market. We’re only interested in what—if any—connection you might have had with Jamie Penalta.”

*    *    *

Someday, no lie, he was going to die of a heart attack, and the cause was going to be one Virginia Mallard. But the past few years had taught him a little about how her brain worked, so he was able to recover without too much gaping like an idiot. Thankfully, Collins’s attention had been on her, not him, while he recovered.

They had learned how to be a damned effective team, actually, he thought: one of them reassured and the other set things to spin. Although it would be easier if they actually planned this out, rather than a vague “let’s see where it goes” and then winging it. And Ginny claimed to be the logical one?

“Jamie.” Collins—on the verge of a conniption fit—seemed to deflate. “Is that what this is about? Poor Jamie.”

Time for him to step in again. He put on his very best Sympathetic Listening face and leaned in again. “You two were friends?”

“No.” Collins laughed at that. “No, we weren’t friends. Bluntly, Jamie wasn’t someone I’d associate with, outside of business purposes.” He leaned back in his own chair, the previous façade of friendly sales manager evaporating into something more wary-eyed and cynical. “You’re not cops. I recognize cops. And his murder, while tragic, wasn’t enough to warrant a follow-up article. So . . . what’s the story?”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” Teddy said, pulling the man’s attention back to him. “Someone pulled us into this mess without our consent, and we want to know why. Which means knowing why Jamie’s dead.”