Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery (16 page)

“Yeah, seems there are a lot of people who’d like to know that. But I’m not one of them. I mean, I don’t care, and I don’t know.” He looked around the room, then held up a finger to indicate they should wait a moment, then got up and left the room.

“Nice way to spring that on me,” Teddy said.

“Yeah, sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry.

Collins came back before they could get into it further and took his seat again. “Wanted to make sure this conversation wasn’t going on the tape,” he said, indicating a small camera in the corner of the room neither of them had noticed before. “It’s just there for legal reasons, when we’ve got tastings going on, so nobody will stress about it being off for a few minutes.”

Teddy nodded. He’d asked Patrick to install closed-circuit cameras, for the parking lot if nothing else, but the bastard was putting him off until Teddy was about ready to call in some favors and get it done himself.

“So. Jamie,” he prompted. “Not a friend, but you did know him.”

“Jamie’s a photographer. Was, I guess. And he was dependable—you always knew exactly what you were going to get from him, and you’d get it in a timely manner. And—hell, I’ll give him credit, he was an artist. Didn’t have to use Photoshop to get the results we needed; it always looked perfect.”

“He used a physical backdrop instead of adding digital effects in later?” Ginny asked, remembering the fake ID artists from her college days. “That’s old-school.”

“I know, really? But he made it work. And the things he could do with film? God, I wish we could have . . .” Collins stopped. “But you don’t care about that.”

“We really don’t,” Ginny agreed. “Like you said, we’re not cops. Or lawyers.”

“So what are you?”

“Interested parties,” Teddy said, with a new flatness in his voice that would hopefully convince the other man that it wasn’t a thread he wanted to yank. Let the guy look them up after the fact, if he wanted, not get distracted now.

“In why Jamie died. Yeah. You know, I couldn’t tell you, because like I said, I didn’t pal around with the guy.”

“For a reason. What was the reason?”

That, for the first time, seemed to put a stutter in Collins’s smooth routine. “Okay. I don’t have any proof, okay? I don’t know anything for certain, and anything I do know is hearsay and gut, really.” Collins looked up, away from them, staring at the wall behind them although Teddy would bet that’s not what he was seeing. “But if I’d had a younger sister? I wouldn’t have let him get within ten feet of her.”

Ginny’s jaw twitched, but Teddy beat her to the punch. “But you were okay with him taking photographs of teenage girls?”

Collins shrugged, not denying the implied accusation. “Business was business. Besides, like I said, I didn’t have any proof. Jamie would joke about things but he never . . . Just being a sleaze isn’t a crime, right?”

*    *    *

They sat in Ginny’s rental car, after their meeting ended rather abruptly, with Collins showing them the door with a charming, if forced smile for anyone who might have been watching them, and very carefully didn’t look at each other.

“Those lists of girls’ names?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Probably, though.”

“Yeah. Probably. But it could just be his version of a little black book. Sleazy, but . . .”

“He was decent-looking,” Ginny said. “And he had access to something they wanted—fake ID.”

“That could be the good reason we were looking for, for someone to sic you on him, indirectly,” Teddy said. “A teenage girl, knowing that she’d get in trouble if she tried to report him directly, or maybe couldn’t risk . . . his word against hers, and her only point of contact is buying something illegal from him, that gets complicated. But if someone else pokes their nose in . . . ?”

“And a teenager wouldn’t, probably, have thought through how the hell I would go from ‘huh, you’re not my client’ to discovering he’s scummy. . . . ” She checked that thought. “No, a teenage girl would know exactly how I’d start poking around, because guys like that give off vibes. And if this guy gave off vibes even another
guy
could pick up after a while . . . But that doesn’t explain why he had my info on him, though, if someone else—especially a teenage girl who wanted nothing to do with him—called me in.”

“Yeah. I got nothing there. But at least that gives us an age range of possible impersonators. If they needed fake ID, they were under twenty-one, and probably over seventeen—below that and most kids can’t afford the level he was probably charging.”

Ginny was already on her phone. “Ron, hey. Any luck on your side? Uh-huh. Yeah, all right, sorry. Sheesh. Look, can you run a check on something for me? Uh-huh. Okay, then just scan the list of girls’ names and send it to me? No, we—we might have something but I don’t know for certain yet. Yes. Yes, you get the scoop, Jesus, seriously?” She looked at Teddy and rolled her eyes, and he bit his lip to keep from laughing. “Yeah, all right, thanks.”

“He’s sending the list?” Teddy asked.

“With the proviso that he gets all the dirty details as soon as we, and I quote, ‘break the case open,’ yeah. But he can’t get to it right away—something about him having an actual job he has to do, too. This isn’t enough of a story—yet—for him to dump everything else.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve come up with some brilliant plan on how to approach the other guy on the list, while you were improvising? Because he might be able to give us specifics—or something that contradicts Mr. Collins’s soul-bearing, but I don’t think the Seattle bar card is going to get us in the door there.”

“Sorry, no. Unless his architecture firm has a sudden strange need for a party planner, I’m out of ideas on that one. And if they are partners, I bet Collins was calling or texting him the minute we walked out of the brewery,” Ginny said.

He sighed in agreement. “And they’ve both shut the barn doors and nailed them closed for good measure. You think we should have pushed more? If they’re part of the fake ID gig . . .”

“If we’d pushed more, we’d be pushing right into the local cops’—and Asuri’s—turf,” she reminded him. “National-level stuff, meaning higher chance of visibility. You were the one who was all against that, remember?”

“Right.” He hated when he was right, almost as much as he hated when she was right. “So far under the radar we’re burrowing.”

“Gophers are us,” she said. “C’mon. It’s lunchtime, and you know I don’t think well on an empty stomach. And we can’t do anything more until Ron sends me that list anyway.”

She pulled out her tablet and opened the LocalEats app. “What’re you in the mood for?”

*    *    *

Inside the brewery, in his tiny closet of an office with a door that actually shut, Collins sat on the old wooden table that passed for his desk—having to move a pile of sales binders out of the way to do so—and pulled out his cell phone. He didn’t want to make this call—he
really
didn’t want to make a call—but not calling would be worse.

He was good with names; it was part of the job, to remember someone he’d only met once in passing, to remember the name of a dozen beers, to keep a hundred different facts straight in his head, and they’d talked about it—laughed about it—long enough that the name stuck in his head. Tonica was an odd enough name, and connected with a female partner, it had only taken a little while for him to remember the article Jamie had showed them.

Private investigators.

“It’s Dave. Yeah, I know, but look, we may have a problem. I don’t think it’s serious, but . . .” He waited for the go-ahead, then picked his words carefully. There was a difference between admitting a problem and hanging yourself with it. “Someone—not cops—came by, asking questions about Jamie. No, they—no, they knew about the fakes. Didn’t seem to care, either. I don’t know. No. Ben wouldn’t—look, he wouldn’t, okay?”

He’d go to the grave convinced Ben wouldn’t sell him out, no matter how freaked out he got. Jamie might have, but Jamie was dead, and if he’d called them they wouldn’t be asking about him. Right?

“Yeah, um . . . Theodore Tonica was the guy. I didn’t get the girl’s name, Virginia something. They’re from Seattle, guy claims he manages a bar up there, called Mary’s . . . yeah. Yeah, it’s legit, do I look like an idiot? No, they came in asking about our beer, but then everything took a weird left turn. No, no, I don’t think so but—all right. Okay.”

He ended the call and ran a hand over his face hard enough to push the stress out. Michal hadn’t sounded pissed, but you couldn’t tell with her. Still, he hadn’t let anything slip they didn’t already know, and he’d done damage control the moment he could. That was all anyone could ask for, right?

“Yeah. Yeah, everything’s going to be fine.” He slipped his phone back into his pocket and strode back into the main room. That was the bennie of being part of a larger organization—not just more money. Support. He’d put the camera back on, finish the orders he’d been writing up, yell at Marco for screwing around with the menu. Life as normal, like nothing was wrong, let other people clean up the mess outside. He could do that.

14

G
eorgie was used to
being left alone for long periods of time. She didn’t mind. Mostly. She slept, and chewed on her bone, and listened to the birds outside, and waited. Dogs were good at waiting, although Penny said that cats were better. Ginny didn’t believe that; Penny was always twitching, either her tail or her ears, wanting something to happen.

It had been forever since Ginny and Teddy left her in the room. It was a nice room, with a window low enough she could look out of it, and fresh water, and her toys, and a comfortable den, but Things Were Happening outside the room, Georgie
knew it.

She sniffed once, taking in the lingering, comforting smell of Ginny’s Things in the room, of Ginny herself. Smells were important. Smells told you who was there, who had been there; reassured you that those smells would come back, if you were only patient.

Georgie was a good dog; she could be patient.

But she
also wanted something to happen. No, she didn’t. She didn’t want something to happen without her, that was it. She was supposed to be with Ginny, to find out what was happening; Penny had said so.

Georgie sniffed again, and something tugged at her, like a leash that wasn’t there. Something about a smell she was supposed to remember
. Supposed to do something about? No. But there were no bad smells here, only Ginny and Teddy, and the human who had come to visit who had visited before, and smelled of something smoky and nice, and underneath all that smelled of something sharp but not unpleasant, deep in the carpet.

But there was a smell, yes. She had smelled it on the girls, the unhappy-scolded girls, and she had smelled it before. But where? And why did it feel important?

She wanted to talk to Penny, to know what was going on, what smell she was supposed to remember. Penny would know. Penny always knew.

Penny was in the box. No, not in the box, Georgie wasn’t a puppy anymore; Penny was back home, but she could talk through the box. But Ginny had left the box on the desk, and Georgie
wasn’t supposed to ever touch the box. Ginny had made that clear.

Georgie knew this was a bad idea, probably the worst idea she’d ever had. But she still found herself with her paws on the chair, sniffing at the box, trying to figure out how to make it show Penny again. . . .

*    *    *

“Huh.”

That was either a good “huh” or a bad “huh”; he couldn’t quite tell from context. Once Ron had sent over the list, they’d settled in at a little coffee shop that was empty enough not to care if they sat there all afternoon, so long as they occasionally refreshed their coffee. Ginny had been scrolling through her tablet while he worked on a scratch pad they’d picked up after lunch and his cell phone. But they hadn’t been getting anywhere, even with the annotations the reporter had added.

And then that quite contemplative “huh.”

“What?” he asked, when Ginny didn’t say anything more.

“Kimberly.”

“What?”

“On the list. The second-to-last name is Kimberly.”

“Yeah, so?”

They’d been at this for two hours, and from the way Tonica was rubbing at his eyes, he had a headache but was too stubborn to admit it and take a break. She reached for her bag and pulled out a pill case, tossing it to him.

“Kimberly—Kim. We’re idiots. Kim’s a nickname.”

He shook some aspirin into his palm, then looked at her blank-eyed. He could see from her expression when she realized that he needed more context than that. “One of the girls I spoke to, the one Georgie tracked down. Her name was Kim.”

The penny dropped, and his eyes widened. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. I mean, it might not mean anything, it might not be her, it might be coincidence, the list might not even be related.”

“Or it could all be connected, and tugging on it will get us some answers.”

She nodded, her need to keep those two girls out of trouble at odds with the probability that one of them, at least, already
was
in trouble. “The young girl I spoke with, with Asuri, she said she saw two people on the porch the morning that Jamie was killed.” Ginny drank the last sip of coffee in her mug, even though it was cold, because her throat had suddenly gone dry. “She couldn’t tell if they were male or female.”

“You think it was Kim and her friend?”

“I think it might have been, yeah. Maybe?”

“They’re what, seventeen?”

“Thereabouts. They were seniors, they said.” Ginny kicked herself, mentally, for being off her game. She had first names, ages, and geographic location. That was enough, unless the girls went to a private school out of the area, and she was betting that they didn’t, if they’d been cutting on their own front porch. “High schools, seniors, class lists . . .”

Ten minutes to track down the local high school, another few to find and skim the senior class list and find Kim on it, and another few minutes to cross-check the name with photos to confirm it was her.

It shouldn’t be that easy, but if Ginny was more comfortable online than her parents, teenagers were even more so, and with less clue about privacy concerns. Photos, check-ins, the ability to scream “here I am, look at me!” across the Internet sky was too much temptation to resist, even if you knew better, at seventeen. And even if you could resist, your friends would tag you in their photos. . . .

“Kimberly Joan Siddig, age seventeen. About to head off to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where her father also went. Plays soccer, and likes to hang out at IHOP with some friends who like to Instagram.”

He got up to look over her shoulder. “Have I ever said how thankful I was to have gone to school before Facebook and YouTube were things?”

“A few times, yeah,” she said. “Me, too. Negatives might be hard to burn, but at least you had a chance then.”

“You know we’re way the hell off the map, figuring out who hired you and why, right?”

She tapped the list of names with her finger and nodded. “Yeah, I know.” Nobody else was looking, though. And they couldn’t take the list to anyone, not without admitting where they got it, which meant admitting to breaking and entering . . . and without proof, without the list, they had nothing.

“Maybe we should just let it go?” Tonica suggested gently. “I mean, he’s dead. That’s all the justice they’re going to get.”

“The articles are calling him a victim. Whoever called me wanted to have him exposed. I took the money, Tonica. I have to do the job.”

“All right. But if we go have a chat with Ms. Kimberly, is this going to open a larger can of worms than you’re ready to deal with?”

She tilted her head and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Do you think they killed him?”

“No.” Her response was instant. “They were shocked when they heard he was dead, I’d bet Georgie on it.”

“Okay, if not killers, then possibly witnesses. If she—with or without her friend—was there that morning, which would explain Georgie following them home.”

Ginny blinked a few times, letting his words sink in. “If she was there, the killer might have seen her, too. He might think she saw him! Teddy, we’ve got to—”

“Let’s not borrow trouble, Mallard,” Tonica said, but she could tell from the way his forehead creased that he’d been thinking the same thing. “Let’s just talk to the girl, see what we can get from that. And if she or her friend did see someone, that’s when we call Asuri, and get her some kind of protection, and let
them
spill the beans.”

It was a good plan, a practical, sensible plan. Ginny could get behind that. And maybe the girl knew who had hired her, maybe
she
had hired her, her or her friend. Maybe she should have been straight with them up front, and they would have told her that?

“I don’t suppose her phone number’s listed online, too?”

He sounded so dourly disapproving, she sniffed back at him. “No, but her chatcatch is.”

“Her what?”

“Her chatcatch. It’s like texting, only it’s not hooked up to your phone number, so it gives you a little more privacy. Apparently all the high school kids are using it.”

“And you have an account . . . why?”

She gave him a sideways look. “Because I had a job setting up a surprise birthday party thrown by three teenagers last December. Chatcatch was the one sure way of talking to them that their dad couldn’t overhear.”

Thankfully, she remembered her password.

*    *    *

Georgie met them at the hotel room door as though she’d been alone for weeks, not several hours. Ginny let Tonica handle the ear-pulling and chin-scratching, and went to grab her laptop where she’d left it on the desk.

It wasn’t on the desk.

There was a moment of panic before she realized it had fallen onto the floor, then another moment of panic until the screen woke up and she determined that it hadn’t been damaged. She righted it, then frowned, eyes narrowed as she looked at the desk, the laptop, and the chair that she was pretty damn sure she’d left pushed in, not shoved away from the desk. She’d left the do-not-disturb sign on the door, and the bed hadn’t been remade. . . .

“Georgie?” Her tone was half question, half accusation, but the dog responded to the last part, dropping away from Tonica’s greeting to go belly-down on the floor, ears drooping even more than usual.

“Damn it, Georgie.” The laptop wasn’t broken, but it could have been. “What got into you? If you were that bored, why couldn’t you eat a towel or something, like a normal dog?”

Tonica raised an eyebrow at the dog. “Georgie, were you trying to get to puppy porn?”

“It’s not funny, Tonica. She could have seriously broken it!” Ginny looked at the screen and frowned. “I thought I’d closed that application yesterday.” She closed Skype again and checked for email instinctively. Her mother, some sale alerts. Nothing urgent.

“You left her alone in a hotel room, Ginny. Kids get bored.”

“Shut up. For that you can take her for a walk. I’m going to see if I can track down the rest of the names on the list, while we wait for Kim to get back to me.”

“And what if she doesn’t?” he asked, bending down to attach Georgie’s leash, despite the dog’s happy wiggling the moment she’d realized a walk was in the offing.

That stumped Ginny for a minute. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess we go to her house? Even if she’s not a witness, if that is her name on the list, and it is more than just girls who wanted fake IDs . . . there are too many really ugly things a guy with a camera could do.” Tonica nodded; they’d both danced around that idea when they talked about the list, neither one of them wanting to actually voice it. “So maybe we could convince her to go to the cops about that, and I can finish the job that way? But . . . she’s got a right to not get involved, too. I’m not . . . My need to finish shit can’t trump her right to stay out of it.”

“You’re a good kid, Mallard.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Shut up and take my dog for a walk.”

The room was quiet for a few seconds after Tonica and Georgie left, and Ginny sat at the desk, staring at her laptop but not actually doing anything, until her phone vibrated, indicating a new text message.

It was from Ron. “Just got shot down and shut down, kid. You’re on your own. Sorry.”

“Well, shit.” She wondered if he’d gotten in real trouble, or if he was being slammed with a new project. Her first instinct was to call him, to apologize, to see if she could make amends if she’d gotten him in trouble, but the fact that he’d texted her rather than calling suggested the former and if it was the latter he’d be out chasing leads or calling other people now, and her interrupting wouldn’t be helpful.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t already gone above and beyond, anyway. She sat down in the chair and entered the first name on the list, plus the high school, into her normal search engines, and waited to see what kicked back.

Whatever else she might be uneasy about, here she was back in familiar territory. Researching and investigating was where Ginny was comfortable, no matter what the topic.

And maybe Kim would call her back after all.

*    *    *

“Your dog is a flirt,” Teddy said when he came in the door half an hour later, Georgie already off leash. “Totally tried to chat up both of the dogs in the run, at the same time.”

“Mmmhmmmm.”

That was Mallardese for “I’m working; don’t actually expect an answer to anything you say.”

“And a Hollywood talent scout thinks she’s got real potential, gave me his card. You may have to give it all up to become a stage mom.”

“Mmmmmhmmmmm.”

He gave up, sitting on the edge of the bed while Georgie sniffed her owner’s leg and then went to the corner and curled up on her blanket, turning her muzzle under her paws. He was so used to seeing Penny curled between those paws, it gave him an odd twinge that the cat
wasn’t
there. He shook his head, refusing to admit that he might be missing the tabby’s company, and lay back on the bed, arms crossed behind his head, waiting patiently for Ginny to resurface.

“I managed to track down nine of the eleven names,” she said, about ten minutes later. Teddy had almost managed to zonk himself into a meditative state—or maybe it was closer to a catnap—and so her words didn’t register at first.

“Only nine?”

“Only? Excuse me?” She turned in the chair, giving him a Look from under arched blond eyebrows. “That’s damn good work, than you very much. What do you have?”

“Not a thing,” he admitted, sitting up. “Now that you’re herding the information superhighway, I’m just here for charm and intimidation factors. But I can tell you that our boy isn’t on any of the sexual predator lists, nor is he pending or under investigation for anything of the sort.”

She raised her eyebrows even higher, and he held up his cell phone. “You’re not the only one who can make a few phone calls, even if I can’t make the Internet sit up and beg. Friend of a friend has access to the stuff the general public, even ones as talented as yourself, can’t get into. Called him while I was walking your dog.” He owed Corky for that—the other man had emailed him the contact info. The conversation had taken ten minutes, and while he couldn’t say if Penalta had been under investigation for anything, he could say what the guy
hadn’t
been. And sexual deviancy of any sort was on that list.