Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery (6 page)

Maybe someone else down the block might know more.

*    *    *

What she discovered, though, was that the cops weren’t quite done with the scene yet. As they strolled closer to the house, a cop was visible, not so much standing guard as lounging against what looked like an unmarked squad car: a too-boring dark blue sedan with slightly tinted windows. As they came closer, the woman straightened and turned toward them, clearly asking Ginny to stop, and raising an eyebrow as though to ask what Ginny was doing walking her dog near a crime scene.

All right, she might be getting paranoid again, but the probably-a-cop definitely took notice of them.

“May I help you?” Definitely a cop: her voice was regulation dealing-with-the-public pleasant, but there was an undertone that suggested that the right answer would be “no thank you, just moving along.”

“I’m sorry, was the street closed? I didn’t see any signs. . . .” Ginny had an excellent Innocent Civilian voice, but about three seconds in, the cop’s expression changed, and Ginny knew she’d been busted.

“Ma’am? May I see some identification, please?”

Ginny sighed, and pulled her wallet out of the bag slung over her shoulder, opening it and handing it to the nice officer in proper fashion, photo identification clearly visible.

“You have a reason for being here, Ms. Mallard?” Had they seriously passed her name along as a person of interest, or whatever term the real cops actually used? She felt a tremor of panic. But even if they had, that wasn’t enough for the cop to be eyeing her like that, was it? She hadn’t done anything wrong, just being here. . . . Or had they run her name through their computers, found out she’d been involved in murders before? But if so, they’d know she’d never been a suspect in any of them, right? Or was just being around dead bodies too many times cause for suspicion?

No, it couldn’t be, otherwise Miss Marple would have been cooling her sensible heels in prison for years, right?

“I’m banned from the entire street?” She kept her tone surprised, not amused, or anything else that might possibly read as snark to someone with a gun. “I promised not to leave town, so that limits where I can walk Georgie,” and never mind that she was staying at a hotel in another neighborhood entirely; if the cop didn’t ask, she didn’t have to volunteer that information.

The cop glanced down—she’d given Georgie a once-over as she approached, and apparently dismissed her as not-a-threat, but was now able to give her proper notice. “And you’re Georgie, I take it, huh? Hi there.”

Ginny blessed the money she’d spent on getting Georgie properly trained, because the shar-pei glanced at her for approval, then dropped onto her haunches and leaned her squared-off head into the cop’s hand, accepting the ear-scritch as her just due.

“Looks tough, but melts like butter, huh?”

“Pretty much,” Ginny admitted. “But she has to be walked on a regular basis, no matter what—or if momma’s on the most-wanted list.”

“Yeah, I get that. A dog’s gotta pee when a dog’s gotta pee.” The cop had a sense of humor, thank God. “I was just coming to take the tape down, actually. You’re fine, so long as you don’t actually go near the house itself.”

Ginny shuddered, and it wasn’t entirely an act. “Believe me, I have no desire whatsoever to go near that house ever again.” She might be an investigator, but she wasn’t a ghoul. And it wasn’t even a lie: desire and need had nothing to do with each other in this case.

“So just cross the street and I’ll pretend I never saw you.”

Ginny knew that was a lie: she wasn’t as good at reading people as Tonica, not even close, but this cop wasn’t going to “forget” that the only witness and a possible suspect happened to wander down the street the day after, not when they hammer into everyone’s skull that killers sometimes return to the scene of their crime. But hopefully she wouldn’t bother to tell anyone until the end of her shift, and by the time anyone followed up on it, they’d have a real suspect to go after. . . .

Ginny crossed the street anyway, and only looked back once.

*    *    *

Georgie was confused.

She had been uncertain about getting in the unfamiliar car the first time, but trusted Ginny, because she always trusted Ginny. She had been willing to stay in the strange room, because Ginny said to stay, and there were enough things there that smelled like Ginny to reassure her. And walks were always good, and meeting new dogs and smelling new smells was always good, but it was all too much of a newness
. She had trusted Penny, who told her to make sure she went with Ginny, and she had asked the little dog, who hadn’t known anything, but Ginny had spoken with the other humans, who maybe knew something, so that was good.

But even though Ginny said the human who was petting her was safe, Georgie wasn’t convinced. The scritches were good, the hand was firm and warm, and the human smelled of coffee and soap, and those were all good things, safe things, pleasant things, but there was something else there, too, that Georgie
didn’t like. Something cold and hard and bitter.

But the scritches were good, and Ginny said it was all right, so Georgie allowed it.

But as they crossed the street, Georgie suddenly, violently, wanted her own den, her own streets with the familiar smells. She wanted to go to the Noisy Place and have the girl give her treats, and have Penny there to groom her ears and explain the things she didn’
t understand.

She wanted to go home, away from whatever it was that was making Ginny smell uneasy under her soft words. Away from this place that wasn’t Home.

But Penny had told her to look, and listen, and report back. To find out what was making Ginny unhappy, so Penny could solve it. So Georgie would.

Stopping to smell a particularly interesting tree root
—there were three alpha dogs on this street, which made her uneasy, too, but that wouldn’t be what was bothering Ginny—she turned her head so that she could see the second human standing across the street. She was watching them, too.

The human was carrying something that smelled like metal and burning, like humans did sometimes. Ginny was always upset around people who did that, although her voice never showed it. And they almost always gave good scritches, so they couldn
’t be bad people, could they? Did bad people scritch right?

Penny would say yes. So maybe that had been a bad person, even though the scritches were good.

The person was still watching them. Instinct rose in her to growl, to show her teeth, even though the human was too far away now, but Ginny would be upset if she did that without a command. So
Georgie dropped her head back to the root, and then peed a little, leaving her own mark behind, and kept looking.

She hoped they went home soon. Being on her own was
hard.

6

T
heodore was in his element
,
pouring drinks and talking to people. Stacy was behind the bar, too, ducking around him gracefully, handling the people he couldn’t. The old man was in the back: Penny could faintly hear him clattering and muttering, a familiar, comfortable sound under the muted roar of people talking. The only off
note was the new girl. She was doing that thing again, Penny noted. Where she put her hands down on the table and then into her pockets, a gesture smooth enough to almost be invisible, unless you were a cat and accustomed to looking for things that were furtive and smooth.

Penny watched her, darting in and out of the thinning crowd, picking up glassware and smiling at people, the same way Stacy did. She did everything the same way Stacy did, except that, that smooth glide of her hands.

And then she paused at the bar, and did it again, smooth hands over the openmouthed jar, smooth hands over the drawer of the cash register. Did Stacy do that? Penny couldn’t remember, and Theodore didn
’t say anything, but Penny felt her tail tip twitch, anyway.

It happened tonight. It happened the last time the new girl had worked, too. She considered the girl more carefully, the long pale tail of hair swirling around her shoulders, the way she smiled at everyone, and everyone smiled at her. Penny didn’t like her. But Penny admitted she didn’t like many people.
If Georgie were here, Georgie could tell her . . .

But Georgie wasn’t here.

Penny sighed, wrapped her tail over her nose, and let her eyes close to half slits until, if anyone glanced at her, they might think she was asleep. But she was watching.

*    *    *

Wednesday was Teddy’s all-day shift: he opened the bar at noon and worked through to close; even with help, it was exhausting, and brain-consuming. Worrying about Ginny and what was going on down in Portland had to take a backseat. Teddy didn’t like it, but the truth was that there wasn’t anything he could do for her just then, and he had other obligations that wouldn’t wait.

The thought made his lip curl as he watched the last reveler stagger out the door, lifting a hand in farewell, and it was just them, Stacy and Seth and himself, their new girl having clocked out already. He’d come to Seattle to get
away
from obligations, not take on more. Some days he thought his life would have been easier if he’d stayed on the family fast track for a law partnership, or gone into DipCorps. And then he remembered that he didn’t have the patience for diplomacy
or
negotiation.

A point that the conversation he was about to have was driving home, painfully.

“Seth, look.” And Teddy stopped, not sure exactly what he was going to say next. Or, he knew what he was going to say, but just didn’t know how to get the older man to
listen
to him. It had been a very long day, and he was pretty much done with everything, including his coworkers. “I saw what happened earlier tonight, so don’t give me any bullshit. You’re going to try and shove this off and puff your chest and tell me you’re as strong as a guy half your age, and you probably are.” Seth had been a boxer in his youth, before he decided that concussions weren’t a great retirement plan and got out, and his physique was damn good for a guy in his late sixties. Teddy wasn’t blowing smoke on that. “But trying to haul forty-pound boxes around is going to throw your back out or blow your knees, and then you’re screwed for, what, a month? Maybe longer?”

Seth crossed his arms across his chest and glowered. “I don’t need no punk kid doing my job for me.”

They’d gone through this before: every time Teddy had hired someone to help Seth out, the older man had run him off within a month, sometimes less. Last week had been pretty epic, though: the kid only lasted one shift. No, not even a full shift. Not that Teddy blamed him.

“No, you need for that shit to not be part of your job. This isn’t open for discussion any longer,” he went on, when the older man opened his mouth to object. “I talked with Patrick and he agreed. Your job description has officially changed. You can accept it, or you can quit. But I’m not going to be dealing with your job injury paperwork
or
having to retrain someone because you’re out on disability.”

Teddy hated being “the boss.” Usually he could mediate and cajole well enough that it never came down to that. Not today, though.

“Don’t push me on this, Seth.”

Seth muttered imprecations under his breath, then stomped back into the tiny kitchen where he (still) reigned supreme, but he didn’t take off the apron and storm out the back door, so Teddy was going to call it a win.

“I was pretty sure I was going to have to call the paramedics when he stroked out,” Stacy said from where she’d been watching behind the bar.

“Shut up,” Teddy said reflexively, as though to ward off the possibility of that happening even now. He could admit to himself now that he’d been afraid the old man
would
quit. There were a lot of things that made working at Mary’s the best job he’d ever had, and Seth’s acerbic presence was part of that. The old man was a pain in the ass, but he always got the job done, without supervision.

And having to explain to Ginny when she got back why her favorite verbal sparring partner was gone was not something he’d been looking forward to.

That thought made him check his phone again, but there were no new texts, and no missed calls. Hardly surprising, since it was after midnight. Ginny did mornings; he didn’t. And she turned into a pumpkin around eleven. But at least that meant he wasn’t needed to post bail. On the other hand—he’d promised to help, and so far he hadn’t done anything.

He stared at the phone, chewing his lower lip, thinking. He knew people in Portland. Not many, not all of them particularly useful, but . . . “Oh, what the hell.” He dialed a number and waited for someone to pick up.

“Corky, hey.”

Corky said something unprintable about the state of his genitalia, and then added something in Portuguese.

“Always delightful to speak with you, too. Got a minute?”

“Sure, it’s not like we’re doing anything here ’cept last call; never gets crazy around here then.”

“Yeah, I hear you’ve got a rowdy bunch down there.” The Allegheny had started out life as a cop bar, but when Corky and his brother Dean took over, they’d swerved upscale with the foodie revolution in Portland. It was still popular with cops, only now they took their spouses there instead of their partners. “Seriously, you got a minute?”

“It’s gotta be now?” A heavy sigh. “Yeah, arright, hang on a sec. Judy!” The last was a bellow, thankfully directed away from the mouthpiece. “Get these bums loaded up and outa here. I gotta take this.”

There was the sound of a door being closed, and the background noise dropped considerably. “Arright. What’s the favor?”

Teddy didn’t bother denying it. “A friend of mine’s down in your neck of the woods, and she’s run into a bit of a situation.”

“This your PI hug-buddy?”

“She’s not my . . . Yeah, okay, fine.” One little news article—all right, three, but one of them’d been in the local fish-wrapper and shouldn’t count—and every bartender in the area knew about him and Ginny working together, because they were worse gossips than a cul-de-sac of 1950s housewives. The half that didn’t assume he was sleeping with her had tried to get her phone number from him—and there was probably some overlap in that. Corky knew better and was happily married to the incredibly patient Judy, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to give Teddy grief if the opportunity came up. “Look, this is serious, okay?”

“Arright, my man. What do you need?”

“You got a friend on the force you could get information from, and not have the fact that you’d asked slip into anyone else’s ear?”

There was a moment’s thoughtful silence, and the sound of Corky sucking his teeth. “Maybe. Depends. You know that shit, Teddy. Tell me what your lady friend needs.”

“There was a body found yesterday, dead of suspicious circumstances—those being that his head was bashed in and he was shoved under his kitchen table. Out in the burbs, I don’t know what neighborhood.”

“Probably not more than two or three of those yesterday. And you want to know, what? Who did it, or who the dead guy was?”

“I want to know anything that we can find out. At this point, mainly I want to know who they like for it.” He figured Ginny would have found out anything else, but she wouldn’t be able to get that particular tidbit.

There was a snort of laughter from the other end of the line. “You know cops don’t really talk like that, right?”

“If I talked the way cops really talk, my mother would get on a plane and fly out here to wash my mouth out with soap. Thanks, Corkster, I owe you.”

“Yeah, you do. So when’re you coming to work for me?”

Teddy looked up, glancing around the familiar space of Mary’s, and smiled. “Never,” he said. “Talk to ya soon.”

He hung up on Corky’s foul-mouthed farewell and slipped the phone back into his pocket. “You done there?” he asked Stacy, who had been doing the bottle recount a second time, trying to pretend that she wasn’t eavesdropping.

“Yep. Everything accounted for and set up for tomorrow. Can this be Trisha’s job soon, please?”

“Maybe.” Probably not. His new hire might be legal to work here, but that didn’t mean he was going to trust the twenty-one-year-old with inventory. Not until she’d proven herself.

He sighed, and stretched until he heard something in his back crack. “God, this grown-up shit is . . . shit.”

Stacy laughed, and let down her ponytail, running her fingers through the strands with a sigh of her own. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Brat. Go home, Stace. I don’t want to see you until your next shift starts. Seth!” he yelled into the back. “We’re done here. You get to lock up!”

Patrick, the owner, would have kittens if he knew Teddy was letting Seth set the alarms, but Patrick could take a long leap off a short pier: he’d made Teddy manager while he ran off to indulge in the new, snazzier bar he was investing in across town, so Teddy would run the place the way he wanted. And hopefully the responsibility would remind Seth that not being able to haul heavy boxes around didn’t mean he was useless.

He waited for a grumpy shot of acknowledgment from the back, then walked Stacy to her car—this part of Ballard was reasonably safe, even at nearly two in the morning, but there was no point in taking chances. He waited until she pulled out of the parking lot and flashed her headlights in farewell before turning to his own car, parked next to Seth’s banged-up old motorcycle. He wasn’t sure what it said about them that the old man drove that while he drove a Saab sedan, even if she
was
a classic. Ginny joked that he was becoming a Seattle cliché . . . maybe so.

A shadow moved by the front tire, tail held erect, and he crouched, extending his hand so that the small tabby could sniff at him. “Didn’t see you ’round much tonight,” he said to the cat. “Important matters requiring your oversight?”

Penny didn’t bother answering him, but when he opened the driver’s-side door, she twined around his ankle and leapt into the front seat, picking her way over to the passenger side and sitting down, as prim as a Yankee matron.

He tilted his head and stared at her. “Excuse me?”

She looked at him, and he was pretty sure she was saying “get in and close the door, idiot human, it’s cold out there.”

“Huh. That’s new.” He studied her, one hand on the door, the other holding his keys. From the very first moment he’d found her, a half-grown, half-starved kitten, Penny had been a bar cat, not a house cat. She’d never shown any interest in going home with him, or anyone else, for that matter: Mary’s was her home, her domain. And he liked it that way. He wasn’t a pet person.

More to the point, he had no supplies at home, no litter box or cat food, or any of the things he’d been assured cats needed. Then again, she rarely used the litter box in the back room, either. . . .

Was she lonely? Without Georgie stopping by, he didn’t think she had many other animal buddies . . . in fact, he was pretty sure she put her nose up at every other visiting dog.

She meowed once, a long, thin noise, and he threw up his hands in surrender. Teddy had been around Mistress Penny-Drops long enough to accept the inevitable, if that was what she wanted. He supposed even a cat could get lonely, now and again. He could stop at a twenty-four-hour grocery on the way home, pick up the basics. God, Ginny would laugh her ass off if she could see him now. He’d email her when he got home: she could probably use a laugh right about now.

He looked at the cat again, the door still open in case she suddenly changed her mind. “You sure?”

If cats could sigh, that one did. He got in and put on his seat belt, looked over at her again, now curled up on the passenger seat, and drove them home.

*    *    *

The woman was slightly older than those around her, her hair just beginning to silver, and dressed more formally in dress slacks and a dark blue blouse. One heel rocked back and forth slightly as she spoke into the phone, the only sign she gave of impatience.

“Someone’s been asking questions.”

“The cops?”

“No.” She tapped a fingernail against the rim of the window and shook her head, even though their connection was voice-only. “I don’t know who. But I’m going to find out.”

“Should we put things on hold?”

“No. Stopping now might raise more unpleasant questions. We continue.” She paused. “We need to stay entirely out of this, whatever it takes.”

“You’ll handle it?”

“Of course.” Anything that was a threat to her, she handled. That was why she was successful.

She hung up the phone and checked her watch, then crossed the space to her destination, her heels a muted tap on the dented, dull hardwood flooring.

The Portland Cowork Enclave was a grand name for what was basically an open loft in an old warehouse with a dozen long tables covered with laptops, coffee mugs, and random bits of paper, each laptop connected to a human who was either working furiously, intent on their own screen and whatever was pumping through their headphones, or talking quietly, emphatically, with the person next to them, either indicating something on a screen or a sheet of paper. Despite the very late hour—or the early hour, depending on if you’d gone to sleep that night or not—the room was full: start-ups and freelancers worked a twenty-four-hour clock, and 3 a.m. made as much sense as 3 p.m., for some of them.