Doghouse (10 page)

“And that brings up the next question,” Teddy said. “Is it time to be calling the cops?”

“And tell them what? We don't know anything they don't, except that there was a dog in the house, which isn't actually a crime except for making the landlord's case for him, and oh, wait, that isn't going to
help
Deke, is it?” Her voice was sharp, but it sounded different from her usually being angry. He studied her, the way her fingers weren't drumming on the table in thought, but now clenched into a loose fist, at how she kept reaching her leg out to rest a bare foot on Georgie's back and then pulling away, as though afraid she'd communicate her mood to the dog.

He knew the signs by now. She wasn't angry, or scared. She was
mad.
Mad at Deke, or him, or the entire known world, Teddy didn't know, but it wasn't a good sign. Ginny angry was bad enough, but once she got mad, she tended to speak her mind, which meant she should not be
allowed anywhere near other people, especially people who might be useful. He enjoyed having the sharp edge of her humor whetted against him, but other people didn't.

“We need more info on the other players,” he said. “The mysterious stranger who was paying Deke, to start. The guy with the money is usually the one with the power.”

“Yeah.” She was thinking again, ire overtaken by logic. “Yeah, I'll start with the teenager, though. We have a better description, and he's got to be local if he's coming on foot, so that helps. Also, teenagers are easier to find than adults; they see no point in staying off the grid. I should be able to ID him, and then we can find out who hired him. I can run Deke's description of the other guys, too, for whatever it's worth, but I'm betting that turns up empty. We don't have enough to go on; the fact that he's Asian is, well, not going to cut the list down much here in Seattle. And the older white guy with cold eyes? Yeah, good luck with that. Even if we had a decent description . . .”

Teddy nodded. Her computer-Fu was good, but professionals knew how to not leave tracks. Especially professional criminals. “Just don't do anything too obviously illegal online,” he said. “The cops were already giving us side-eyes in November. I doubt they're the forget-and-forgive sort.”

“We probably should get licensed,” she said absently, already reaching for her laptop, which had been sitting, closed, at the edge of the table. “One of us, anyway.”

“Yeah, right. No.” He'd read enough of the
Moron's Guide to Private Investigations
to know how much paperwork
and brain sweat that involved. Plus, there were rules you had to follow, to
keep
your license. Things you had to say, or couldn't ask. “While you're doing that, can I borrow Georgie for the afternoon?” It was an impulse, but it felt right.

“What?” She looked down at the dogs, slanting her gaze under the table as though to make sure that they were both there, and then looked back up at Teddy. “Why?”

“I want to borrow her for the afternoon,” he repeated. “Look, Parsi's too little to actually be useful. But Georgie's got good instincts. So I want to take her back to the house, maybe sniff around a little. Let her sniff around. If you think she'd be okay with that?”

He'd never taken the dog on his own; it was always the three of them when Georgie came for a ride. But the dog seemed to like him, as far as he could tell, so maybe it would be okay. If Ginny agreed.

She tilted her head at him now. “What do you think she's going to find?”

“I don't know.” He shrugged. “But we're not exactly overflowing with ideas or leads, so maybe using a dog to find dogs isn't so far-fetched?”

“So you want to use her to ‘fetch' a lead for you?” But Ginny was considering it, rolling the idea around in her head, so he let the pun go, and waited.

“Yeah. All right. And walk her around the neighborhood, too. People like her, they come up to her all the time, ask questions, just randomly strike up conversations. See if you can talk to the locals, if they saw anything hinky
happening at the house, or better yet, can tell you it was an absolutely calm, no-hinky household.”

He nodded. “See if I can pick up gossip, check.”

“And watch them. How they react to Georgie.” Ginny was sitting forward now, the simple act of having a plan, even if it wasn't hers, reigniting her brain and giving her focus. “She's a sweetie, yeah, but shar-peis were fighting dogs once. And she's still exotic enough, if anyone's looking for fighting dogs, or used to being around them, they might say something. . . .”

“You do your thing, I'll do mine,” he said with a mock scowl. She rolled her eyes but didn't argue the point. They were getting better about not arguing, when it mattered.

“Hey, Georgie,” she said softly. “You wanna go for a ride with Uncle Teddy?”

A soft thump of a tail responded, and then the larger dog emerged from under the table, looking first at Ginny and then up at Teddy, as though she'd understood what was being asked. Parsifal abandoned Teddy's bootlaces and pounced on Georgie's front paws, thinking this was the start of some great new game. Teddy scooped the puppy up and held him, while Ginny went to get Georgie's leash.

“Sorry, guy,” he told the puppy. “You don't get to come with us.”

Ginny came back with the leash, and handed it to him, taking Parsifal in exchange. He held the leash where Georgie could see it, getting her attention away from Ginny and the puppy. “Gonna help me with an investigation, oh
hound?”

Georgie was a quiet dog, rarely barking and never growling without cause, but she let out a quiet yip that Teddy decided to take for a yes. “All right, then,” he said, snapping the leash to her collar. “But you gotta look butch, kid. I need a rough guy, not a sweetie, today. Can you do that?”

“The command you're looking for is ‘watch,'” Ginny said. “Like this.” And her voice went deeper, her words bitten off more crisply than her usual soft tone. “Georgie,
watch
.”

The dog had been sitting while Teddy hooked on the leash, but now she went up on all fours, her chest squared, her head up, looking around the room not so much alertly as warily. Teddy blinked, realizing that it looked familiar because it was the expression he'd see on the local cops' faces some weekend nights when they stopped by, when the crowd got louder than usual and they were trying to see where trouble might be coming from. Not expecting trouble, but aware of the possibility.

“Perfect,” he said. “Um, how do I get her to stop?”

“Georgie, okay, it's okay.” They watched as Georgie seemed to sigh and shake herself out, then looked up at Ginny as though waiting for a treat. “Pretty much ‘it's okay' after a command sets her back to normal. She's not too picky about who says it, though, so be careful.”

“Why does that not surprise me a bit,” he muttered, shaking his head. Georgie might be able to muddle her way through being a guard dog when needed, but she was still
the sweetest marshmallow on four legs he'd ever seen.

Deke felt
guilty. Not because he'd lied to Seth, because he hadn't, really, just fudged the truth. And maybe danced a little around what he shouldn't have said, the way he used to dance around a punch, so he didn't get laid out cold. He felt guilty because Seth had gotten other people involved. Because Seth was trying to take care of him again.

Nine years ago he'd been dumb and gotten mixed up in things he shouldn't have. Seth had saved his bacon then, talked to the judge, made it all go away so long as Deke kept his nose clean, and Deke
had
. And then they'd offered him the money, and he'd thought that because he didn't know anything, he couldn't get in trouble, and then when he got in trouble he thought that if he just didn't say anything it would all go away, but he hadn't, and it didn't. Now his mess was someone else's mess and it shouldn't be.

He hated being a problem.

The bus jolted to a stop again, and he put a hand on the window, the cool surface of the glass making him aware of the faint tremble in his fingers. He pressed harder against the glass, fighting the urge to curve his fingers into a fist.

Deke knew he took too many punches, and he hadn't been smart to start. He'd thought he was doing the right thing, being like the three monkeys—see nothing, hear nothing, and don't say nothing. Instead he screwed it all up. So he was going to try to fix things now. He was going
to find the guy who paid him, and . . .

And he hadn't thought that far out. Finding the guy was the first step, though. He'd figure the rest out once he did that. And he knew how to find him. Or he thought he did, anyway. Sammy's. It had all started at Sammy's.

Letting his hand drop to his leg, he dragged his palm nervously across the denim as he watched the city go by. About a year ago now. He'd been still working out then. Not much, just a few rounds with the bag, some rope work. Mostly it was to be around people he understood, who understood him. The guy had been scoping him out, watching him, making Deke uneasy before he finally approached him with an offer.

Deke wasn't smart, but he knew he wasn't the only dummy out there. Someone else said yes, too. Someone there would know how to find the dog-man. And Deke would get him to call off the landlord, and then it wouldn't be a problem anymore.

Deke nodded at the landscape, and reached up to pull the cord to get off at the next stop. His mess, he'd take care of this.

He wasn't gonna let Seth down again.

Teddy had
never taken Georgie anywhere on his own, but she padded along obediently when they left the apartment, not at all distressed to be leaving Ginny and the puppy behind. She balked slightly at the car, but Ginny had shoved a handful of treats into his hand before they
left, and two were enough to remind Georgie that the backseat hadn't eaten her before so it was probably safe. He kept an eye on her, checking in the rearview mirror to make sure that she didn't get any stupid ideas in her doggy head, but once they pulled into traffic she lay down with her head on her paws, and beyond the occasional full-bodied sigh, didn't move until they reached their destination.

“Come on, girl, out. C'mon, Georgie, out!”

Once the shar-pei realized that there was grass for her to sniff at and pee on, she was much more energetic. Teddy urged her along the sidewalk, heading for Deke's house but keeping an eye out for anyone who might be a source of gossip. The only person visible, though, was an older guy walking toward them, a plastic bag with a store name blazoned on it in one hand, his cell phone in the other. He saw them and put the phone away, his body language clearly telling Teddy that he was going to approach them. Ginny had been right. Score one for the dog.

“Nice-looking dog you got there. What is it?”

“Shar-pei,” Teddy said, easy as though he'd said it a million times. “Mostly purebred, not entirely.” The older man grunted and studied Georgie. “What, thirty-five, forty pounds? Looks like it's mostly muscle.” Teddy tensed up slightly, really not comfortable with someone eyeing Georgie like that, even though that had been the vague plan. Then the stranger bent down and offered Georgie his hand, palm down, for her to sniff. “You're a sweetie, aren't you? I can tell from the eyes. You're a lover, not a fighter,
aren't you, girl?”

Georgie licked his hands and wagged her stub of a tail.

“Yeah, you got her number all right,” Teddy said, amused. “Her name's Georgie.” He remembered how Ginny knew the names of all the dogs whose owners came to Mary's, but only about half of their owners'. Maybe the best disguise was to be Georgie's Owner rather than giving a fake name, or worrying they'd somehow leave a trail, or . . .

“Hello, Georgie. Hey, Kevin,” and the stranger half turned, looking over his shoulder at another man who had been sitting on his porch, a few houses down. “C'mere and meet Georgie.”

Kevin brought his daughter Lucy, who was, she announced proudly, seven, and another man, who didn't give a name. They were all in their late forties or early fifties, Teddy guessed, with the look of men who'd held blue-collar jobs all their lives, settled and comfortable with it.

“You guys are all dog people, huh?”

“I had a dog,” Lucy said. “But it died.”

“A mutt,” Kevin said. “Good dog. Dumber'n butter, but a good dog. We keep thinking about getting another one, but . . .” He shrugged, and Teddy got the feeling that the idea of adding another mouth to feed wasn't a thing they could do right then. Too bad, since they had a puppy looking for a home.

“Looks like a good neighborhood for a dog,” Teddy said casually. “I was driving around and Georgie decided she needed Out, Now, so I've been looking around . . . Any
houses up for rent?”

“A couple, yeah.” The unnamed man frowned, then jerked his head toward the house Deke had been living in. “I know that one was rented out but the guy living there, I haven't seen him around, and things got all kinds of quiet, so I'm guessing he's gone.”

“Quiet? Was it noisy before?” Deke hadn't struck him as the kind of guy to hold wild parties or blast music, but the one thing he'd learned over the past year was that people did all sorts of shit you'd never expect.

“Not noisy, exactly,” Kevin said, and the first man laughed. “Quiet but busy. I don't know what old Deke was doing in there but he had pretty regular visitors. Not the kind of people you'd invite in for a beer, either, if you know what I mean.”

Not the teenager, then. Cold Eyes? Kevin looked like he wasn't going to say any more—they were the kind of people he didn't want to talk about in front of a small child? Maybe. But trying to get rid of the kid would shut them all up, so that wasn't an option. So instead Teddy raised an eyebrow, and looked a little worried—which wasn't hard to fake. “The kind of thing that might lower property values?”