Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery (9 page)

“So you came here to warn me?” she asked the other woman. “That was nice. A phone call or an email would have done the trick, though, too.”

“A warning in person is often better heeded. And I thought, in light of our past history, you might remember something that slipped your mind when you were talking to Portland’s Finest.”

“Are you accusing me of withholding evidence, Agent Asuri?” If she was, then Ginny was in a serious pile of poo. But if she were, this wouldn’t be a friendly, coffee-bearing visit. Would it?

“If I were, there wouldn’t be any doubt in the matter,” the other woman said calmly, confirming her suspicions. “Stop being so paranoid, Virginia. It doesn’t suit you.”

Ginny raised an eyebrow at the use of her full name, trying to project an aura of cool unconcern but pretty sure she was failing miserably.

“I know that you would not interfere with a police investigation. And I know that you have at least enough sense to be aware that you’re a person of interest by virtue of having discovered the body, in a city you don’t live in, visiting a house you have no reason to be in.” Asuri held up a hand. Her nails were cut short, polished with a dark red that, on her, looked professional as hell. Ginny was envious. “Yes, I am aware of your claim that you were hired by a person reportedly residing at that address. And I have no reason to think that you’d lie about something that obviously false, and I’m also aware that you have no reason to trust the local police to believe you and so might be contemplating investigating this on your own, to cover your own ass.”

Ginny tried to come up with a suitable “never would I ever” response, but came up blank. Because the agent was right, of course. On all counts.

“I am, of course, concerned as to the state of my reputation with Portland’s finest,” Ginny settled on saying, falling back on her blandest office-speak. “And, yes, the reputation of my company, if it is true that I was hired by a person who does not exist. That . . . tends to reflect badly on someone selling their problem-solving and research skills.”

Right now, everything Asuri had said fell under the category of “friendly advice” and “unvoiced warnings.” Ginny wasn’t going to admit to a damned thing, and she wasn’t going to ask Asuri for clarification on her earlier words, either. So long as neither of them said anything definitive, they both had plausible deniability.

“Yes, I can see where that might be an issue, in your professional capacity.” There was just the slightest emphasis on “professional.” Ouch.

There was something Asuri wasn’t telling her—there was probably a lot Asuri wasn’t telling her—but Ginny didn’t know how to ask about it without digging the hole she was already in even deeper, so she didn’t. The two women looked at each other, those unspoken things wandering loudly around the room, bumping into furniture, until Georgie let out a heavy, dramatic sigh, lay down between them, and farted.

“Oh God, Georgie!” Ginny was mortified, but at the same time, she could feel laughter pressing against her chest, as much a reaction to the stress as any actual humor.

“Dogs are . . . refreshingly blunt,” Asuri said, but the edges of her lips were curved up, not down. “Although I’m not sure ‘refreshingly’ was the correct word. But, if you have no further questions—or arguments—then that may be my cue to leave.” She stood up, her slacks, of course, falling perfectly back into place without a crease. Ginny wondered if there was some kind of federal anti-muss field in effect. “Ms. Mallard, if you do think of anything . . . please call me.”

Back to formality, Ginny noted. Probably everything from here on in was on the record. So she should just keep her mouth shut, but . . . when you had a source, you used it.

“This is a federal case? The fake IDs, I mean.” She’d thought fake driver’s licenses would be a state thing, but Tonica’s contact had said it was national, a nationwide ring . . . and yeah, she could see where they’d call the feds in for that, since post-9/11 any fake identification had to be serious business. It was just that when they’d met, Asuri had seemed more interested in real estate fraud than identity theft—although when Ginny thought about it, that had been kind of identity theft, too, with the building contracts being signed by the wrong person. . . .

“Possessing a false identification is a felony, and a federal crime. As is the making of and the selling of them. Homeland Security takes a keen interest in those things.” And didn’t that sound like a canned line of bullshit? “My involvement is slightly more tangential, but it may have relevance to a larger case we’re working on.” Asuri looked as though she’d just thought of something. Ginny didn’t believe that for a minute. “I’ll tell you what. Since I’m well aware of your disinclination to walk away from any rocks you may have turned over, however innocently . . . “

She paused, as though expecting Ginny to protest. She didn’t.

“If you share what you know with me, I’ll return the favor.
Not,
” the agent was quick to add, “to include you in the investigation, but simply to satisfy your inevitable curiosity. And, hopefully, keep you out of any further trouble.”

In other words, Asuri was offering to bribe her. Or, in more charitable terms, to give her fifty-yard-line seats in exchange for staying off the field. The fact that Asuri seemed to think that Ginny would abide by that was, honestly, kind of adorable.

Then again, the fed had the power to get Ginny arrested if she interfered. So maybe not so adorable. Maybe she should just take the deal and behave herself.

Ginny stood up in turn, smiled politely at Asuri, and offered her hand to shake on it, thinking
yeah, probably not.

9

A
fter Asuri left, Ginny stared
at the closed door for a long moment, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do now. Nothing brilliant came to mind. “I suppose I could just sit here until the cops call to tell me everything’s clear, and then go home.”

Georgie sneezed, and wagged her tail.

“Was that a yes or a no, Georgie?”

Apparently, it was a “whatever,” because the dog just curled up in her crate, rested her muzzle on her paws, and looked up at her owner as though waiting for the next command.

“Some help you are.” Ginny headed into the shower, turning the water as hot as she could get it: hot water, she’d long claimed, stimulated problem solving. But by the time she’d gotten out, dried herself off, and gotten dressed, she still didn’t know what she was going to do about what Asuri had told her—and what she’d warned her about.

She sat on the edge of the bed, finger-combing her hair and staring at Georgie, who didn’t seem like she had come up with any brilliant ideas, either.

“I guess we’re back to the original, amazingly vague plan then,” she said. “C’mon, kid—back to work.”

Georgie grumbled at having to get up again—she was fine with walks, but clearly felt that Ginny was overdoing it on this trip. Still, she let herself be loaded back into the rental car with a minimum of fuss, settling into the backseat and resting her head on her front paws with a heavy sigh.

Ginny knew that she was pushing it, returning to the scene of the crime yet again, but the fact that she probably wasn’t on the suspects list any longer—or at least not in the top five—made her bolder than she might have been, otherwise. Foolhardy, Asuri would probably say.

But not so foolhardy that she didn’t call her partner back as soon as she figured he would have gotten his own hot shower and coffee routine finished.

“Look out for cops, will ya, Georgie?” she asked, as she took a hand off the wheel to set up her phone in the holder, then tapped the screen to call Tonica’s cell.

“Guess who was at the door,” she said when he picked up. “I’ll give you a hint: it’s Federal Express.”

It took him a couple of seconds to figure it out. “Asuri?” His voice through the speakers sounded as surprised as she’d felt. “What’s she doing in Portland?”

“Well, excuse me for not asking, and poking my nose further into a federal investigation,” she snapped back, splitting her attention between the conversation and trying to catch the street signs: this wasn’t like back home, where she could figure out where they were purely by familiarity. In the seat behind her, Georgie shifted restlessly but didn’t respond, used to the back-and-forth between them, even if it was broken up by phone speakers now. “I was a little more interested in getting her out of my hotel room before she officially told me to stay out of things.”

“You mean, as opposed to unofficially warning you to stay out of things?”

“Exactly.” She couldn’t help but feel a slight satisfaction from his put-upon sigh. It was almost like having him in the car with her. Although normally he’d be the one driving, and she could have focused on the directions. “Look, nothing she said changed anything we already decided. I’m going to sniff around a little more, see if anything else turns up, and as soon as I get the official free-to-go, we’ll work our angle from a safe distance away from the actual murder investigation, so nobody can say we were interfering in an open case. Right?”

He sighed. “Watch your back, Mallard. Georgie, watch your owner’s back, okay?”

Georgie lifted her head again and whined at the sound of her name.

“We’ll be fine, you worrywart,” she said. “I promise, I won’t stir up any hornets’ nests until I’m back where you can keep an eye on me.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” he said. “All right, I need to get going. Check in this afternoon, before shift, and we can compare notes?”

“Will do.”

She thumbed the
OFF
switch on her phone, and there was silence in the car, broken only by Georgie’s grumbles, as Ginny spotted the street name she wanted, and turned left. She cruised past the house at a sedate pace, giving it a once-over.

The cop from yesterday was gone, the yellow tape was gone. The cars parked on the street in front weren’t police sedans, marked or otherwise. The house was quiet and innocent-looking, as though nothing terrible had ever happened there.

She pulled to the curb at the end of the street, cut the engine, and got out, walking around to open the passenger-side door.

“C’mon, Georgie,” she said, waiting while the dog scrambled out, then bending down to attach the leash to her collar. “We’re going to see if you’ve got any bloodhound in you.”

This was part of her particularly not-brilliant idea. She didn’t want to go back inside the house—and even if she were less freaked out by it, the cops would have gone off with anything that was actually relevant, or even
seemed
relevant. But sometimes five-feet-above-the-ground wasn’t the only angle to investigate. Nose-to-ground might kick up something new. Or not, but it didn’t cost anything to try.

Admittedly, shar-pei were bred for muscle strength, not for their scent-tracking skills. Still, a dog’s sense of smell, even untrained, was sharper than a human’s, so who knew what Georgie might find. And Georgie was smart. Not people-smart, but smart about people. She’d have to be the stand-in for Tonica, and Ginny grinned to herself, imagining his reaction to that.

“Is there an eau de killer, Georgie? Or parfum does-not-belong? God, I hope so. Not that I want you to lead me directly to the killer, because yeah, that’s totally the cops’ job, but if there’s something odd, something out of place or terribly interesting in the house . . .”

Georgie let out a soft woof, as though to tell the human that she understood her job, and could they please just get on with it?

“Yeah, okay. Okay.”

They walked over to the house, not even pretending to be casual about it, figuring that a direct and confident approach would get fewer looks than someone who was trying to sidle in unobtrusively. They paused just in front of the porch steps, almost as though they’d rehearsed it.

“Please don’t pick up a scent that takes us inside, okay?” she said to the dog. Odds were that the front door wasn’t still unlocked, and while she’d become a decent hand at basic lock picks, thanks to YouTube and a kit she’d bought off one of Seth’s friends who was a professional locksmith—or so he claimed—she hadn’t brought her kit with her, and she was pretty sure a nail file and a credit card weren’t going to do it. Not at her skill level, anyway.

Ginny stared at the wooden planks of the porch, thinking. While Georgie sniffed around, she thought about the back of the house, the single door that led into the kitchen, and how rickety the steps had looked. Some folk used the back door more often than the front, either to avoid the formality of the front hall or because they didn’t want to make a public point of who came to visit. She suspected that the former resident of the house had been more the latter type. But the front door had been unlocked two days ago. Even if the killer hadn’t gone in that way, odds were good he’d left that way.

But she didn’t want to find the killer. She wanted to find some explanation for why she’d been called in. Maybe, ideally, a scrap of little-old-lady perfume that led to the actual Mrs. Adaowsky, who had been living with her—grandson? Great-nephew? Boy toy?—And had taken off when things got bad?

That was just as possible as anything else, at this point. Of course, it could also just as likely lead her to little-old-lady bones in the cellar. “Oh, great, thank you, brain. We are not going into the root cellar, Georgie. Just FYI.”

Georgie pulled at the leash, refocusing Ginny’s attention from the front door to the dog.

“You got something?” Ginny admitted to herself that she was surprised; she hadn’t really expected any one smell to stand out, at this point. “So how do we do this, girl?” she asked. Hold, stay, fetch, release—those were things Georgie had learned quickly. Guard had come almost naturally. But find was a different thing entirely, especially without any other guidance. So instead, she just jiggled the leash a little, telling Georgie that it was okay to walk forward, and let the dog do what dogs did best: sniff the ground for anything interesting.

At first, Georgie meandered, sniffing here and there in no clear pattern, occasionally leaving a drop or two of urine as a marker, but not showing any real interest in any one direction. Ginny was about to call it quits, when suddenly Georgie pulled against the leash, just hard enough to say that she had something in mind, and wanted to go there now, please.

“Okay, okay,” Ginny said, trying to pay attention to the dog’s body language, the way their trainer had taught them, as well as keeping an eye on where they were going. Georgie led her around to the back of the house, then back to the front again, and to the sidewalk. Something—or someone—who smelled interesting had circled the house a few times, recently enough that the smell still lingered.

“Where’re we going, baby?” Ginny said, not loud enough to distract the dog’s attention. “What’s got you so focused?”

It was a good thing it hadn’t rained recently, she thought. The grass was green, even along the curb, so there’d been enough water lately, but not for a day or two, maybe three? She was pretty sure they’d gotten the same rain as Seattle, three days ago, but would a smell last that long?

Using her free hand, she pulled her tablet out of her bag and pulled up the weather app, checking the past few days. A light rain had passed through two days ago. Was that enough to wash away a scent? She pulled up a search engine and asked it.

Rain pushed a scent down, but humidity trapped it, made it easier to find. Huh. She supposed that made sense, thinking about how things smelled after a few days of dampness. And the air had been seasonably damp, she supposed. Ginny kept reading, caught up for a moment in the new information, then shook her head, and slipped the tablet back into her bag. The problem was, she had no idea what had gotten the dog’s attention. Georgie could be fascinated by a squirrel or raccoon’s scent, or some other dog that had been by, or . . .

Whatever it was, it was leading Georgie out of the yard. Ginny let her go, the leash taut between them. Georgie’s neck was stretched forward, and her stump of a tail was wagging slightly, which meant her entire backside was in motion. Happy, interested dog. They were probably on the scent of a food truck.

Georgie took her down the sidewalk and around the corner, to the south. This street looked the same as the last one, although the houses were on slightly larger lots, and some of them had attached garages. Georgie kept moving until she came to the house two from the edge of the block, a house with dark green paint and white trim, and two teenage girls sitting on the front stoop.

Whatever scent Georgie had been following, it led here. Ginny checked her watch, pretty sure that the girls should have been in school.

Georgie tugged at the leash again, and Ginny pretended to lose hold of it, curious as to what Georgie might do. The dog trotted happily up the walkway to where the girls were sitting, and shoved her nose into one of the girls’ hands, causing her to shriek—thankfully with excitement, not fear.

“I’m so sorry.” Ginny came up the walk and clapped her hands to get Georgie’s attention. “She’s usually so good on the leash but sometimes she just wants to make friends. Georgie, sit, girl, play nice.”

The girl Georgie had zeroed in on had dark auburn hair in a long ponytail, and dark freckles across pale brown skin. Her companion’s hair was blonder, in the same style of ponytail, with blue eyes, but otherwise they could be siblings, dressed in the same uniform of jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts, barefoot and letting bright blue polish dry on their toes.

“No, it’s okay,” the blond girl said. “She’s sweet.”

The redhead pulled her toes out of reach, and was petting Georgie cautiously, making the familiar “oh, good doggie” noises she seemed to bring out in people.

“She likes it if you scratch—yeah, right there,” Ginny said, as the girl found the spot, and Georgie collapsed onto her back, paws limp with pleasure. “I’m Ginny. That’s Georgie.”

“I’m Kim,” the redhead said.

“Nancy,” the blonde offered.

Ginny hesitated, then offered up what she hoped was a Tonica-worthy grin, hoping it came across as willing conspirator rather than interrogator. “Should I even ask why you guys aren’t in school?”

They looked at each other, and then at her, and then seemed to decide that she wasn’t about to rat them out.

“It was too nice to stay indoors,” Nancy said. “And we’re seniors.”

“Fair enough.” She’d cut classes enough times to understand, even if it had been a while ago. She thought about trying for more small talk, then decided she’d better cut to the chase, before they got bored or weirded out talking to a stranger. “So you guys heard there was some excitement in the neighborhood yesterday?”

“Excitement? Here?” Nancy was slightly scornful, but both girls tried to look politely interested, the way you would when someone too old to understand what real excitement might be started talking. Ginny tried not to take it personally.

“Well, for kind of sick levels of excitement, I guess. They found a body a few blocks over.”

“A body? Really?” Nancy lit up with vaguely ghoulish interest at that, and Ginny wondered if she was related to Daisy, from yesterday.

“A human body?” Kim was more cautious.

“A human, yeah. In one of the houses over on the Terrace.” She waved her hand vaguely over her shoulder in the direction she’d come from. “The pale blue one? There were cops all over the place.”

Both girls had gone slightly green when she mentioned the street, and tensed when she described the house. Interesting, although they probably knew enough people in the neighborhood—had they known the victim? He was older, but a slightly older single male could be of interest to teenage girls if he was good-looking. She hadn’t looked at his face long enough to see anything other than blood and bone, and she pushed that memory down hard so she could focus on the moment at hand.