Doghouse (11 page)

That made all three of the resident adults shift uncomfortably, looking at each other, and
not
looking at the house in question. Interesting.

“No,” the first man said, and his face—weathered, his eyes watery around the edges—was open enough to be honest. Probably. “Nothing like that. We'd have called the cops if they were that kind.” A glance at the girl, then away.
“Just every now and then there were people showing up, carrying boxes away, or bringing some in.”

“Not boxes,” Kevin said. “Crates. About yay big.” He showed with his hands, about three feet apart. “Most of 'em light enough for one guy to carry. They left some, took some. Every couple–three months.

“They loaded 'em into a van,” Kevin added. “Sweetie, don't let Georgie lick your face. I know it feels funny, but remember what we told you about germs?” He returned to the conversation at hand. “And Deke was never around when they showed up, far as I could tell. That was the weird thing. You got people taking stuff in and out of your house, you'd think you'd, I dunno, watch once or twice?”

Not if you were convincing yourself it didn't happen, that if you didn't see it you weren't involved. But Teddy just nodded thoughtfully. “People are weird,” he said. “Okay, you ready to go now, Georgie?” He had wanted to take her into the house proper, see if she reacted to the smell in the basement, but he couldn't do that now, not while he was being watched.

The locals made their farewells to Georgie, and he loaded her back into the car, only having to resort to the bribe of one treat to get her settled into the back this time. Maybe they'd come back after dark, use the “looking at the neighborhood” excuse if anyone caught them. Or even visit with a Realtor, if the house was up for rent already. That might be the better move, yeah. Come in officially, and nobody would raise an eyebrow.

He got behind the wheel and pulled out his cell phone.
“Ginny, hey,” he said to her voice mail. “I don't know if this will be useful or not, but the locals saw crates being brought in and hauled out every couple of months. You're the one doing research, but that doesn't sound like any dogfighting scenario I ever heard of, does it?” Unless they were getting rid of bodies. Jesus. He felt a full-body shudder hit him. “Call me.”

He dropped the phone onto the passenger-side seat and stared out at the street. His body was humming, like he'd touched a live wire, and there was an itch between his shoulder blades. That meant there was something he'd seen or heard that was important, that was triggering something in the back of his brain. But he knew from experience that if he tried to chase it down now, he'd lose it. The best thing he could do was ignore it, until it was ready to be an actual thought.

Normally he'd go for a run, let his brain chew on the problem while he focused on the physical, but traipsing back across the city to return Georgie, then go home to get his running shoes would take too much time.

“You up for the beach, Georgie?” he asked the lump in the backseat. “I could really use some salt air and sand right now.” It wasn't the grand old lady Atlantic he'd grown up with, but the bay was pretty good for thinking, too.

7

G
eorgie didn't like getting sand
in her toes, but chasing the waves was good, even though the water was cold. And it made Teddy laugh when he threw a stick for her and she caught it, and she liked it when humans laughed, they smelled better and petted more.

But she wished Penny were here. She was sure he had taken her to that street to sniff out something, to find something for him, but she hadn't been able to. The strange men had smelled like sweat and meat and a little like the Busy Place, late at night, and the little girl had smelled like water and soap, but none of those smells meant anything to Georgie, nothing out of the usual, and without Penny she didn't know if she'd missed something.

They were supposed to be sniffing out something to help the sad man. Georgie hated not being able to help.

An hour
walking on the beach hadn't given Teddy any clarity on the case, but his mood was definitely lighter, watching Georgie run in and out of the waves, a short bit of driftwood in her mouth, the loose folds of her skin more obvious when she shook water out of her coat.
Fortunately, other people were having more luck than he was.

“What?” Teddy had to shift his phone to his other ear, because Georgie was up against his right side, trying to lick his fingers. She was too well trained to actually go after his burger, but cleaning grease and meat smell off fingers was apparently acceptable. He probably should have gotten something less messy from the food truck, but he had a weakness for greasy hamburgers. “He did what? No, Seth, shut up, I'm already out, I'll go get him. Yeah. Gimme the address.”

He'd always carried a notebook and pencil in the glove compartment; since he'd started hanging out with Mallard, he'd had to replace the notebook once and the pencil twice. He scribbled the address, and read it back to confirm, then ended the call and dropped the phone onto the passenger seat, next to the food wrapper.

“Damn it. All right, Georgie, get back. Sit down. Sit, Georgie.” She had sand all over her paws from walking up and down the narrow strip of beach, and he wasn't going to let her get back into the car until they'd been brushed off.

The dog whined a little, but finally settled back down and obediently lifted her paws for brushing, one at a time. He knew they probably should have a carrier or something for her, the amount of time she spent in his car, but Georgie was mostly good about lying down. He'd seen dogs with their heads hanging out of car windows and always thought that looked like a disaster waiting to happen, no matter how much fun the dogs seemed to be having.

“Change of plans,” he told the dog, pulling the car out into traffic and pointing her south on Alaskan, heading downtown. “Because apparently, Deke is exactly as much of an idiot as I thought.”

Georgie just settled her head on her paws, and wagged her tail once, as though she thought there might still be burger taste at the end of the ride.

He thought about leaving her in the car when they got to their destination, then thought about what Ginny would say about that, and brought her along. He suspected nobody was going to give him much grief about a serious-looking dog in tow, not down here. Not even with a pink leash.

From the street, the place didn't look impressive: a blank gray wall with a small window covered in old newspaper cuttings, and a single solid metal door. If it weren't for the sign on the wall, he'd think it was the back of a warehouse or something.

Inside, the air was thick with sweat, and filled with noise. It was a warehouse, if one that had been converted to another use years ago. Where there might have been pallets and machinery and workers, there now were punching bags and roped-off rings, and men—and a few women—jumping rope or doing impressive-looking pull-ups, and generally making Teddy feel like a ninety-six-pound weakling, even though he was taller and broader than many of them. You didn't work with an ex-boxer without learning very quickly that judging by size could get you into trouble.

Speaking of which . . . He tugged at Georgie's leash to get her to quit sniffing one of the mats on the floor, and they
walked across the gym to where an older man was sitting behind a battered metal desk, scowling at an open ledger book.

“Excuse me.”

“What?” the man asked without looking up. As though drawn by his voice, Georgie put her front paws up on the edge of the desk and peered at him. He looked up then, when her claws clicked against metal, and his expression went from sour to surprised to almost-not-sour in fast succession. “You're an ugly mug, even around here,” he said. “What do you want?”

Teddy was taken aback, then realized that the first comment had been addressed to Georgie, not him. “I'm here to pick up . . . a friend.” Teddy made a face, hoping to convey his distaste for the chore without actually saying anything. “I'm told he was making a nuisance of himself earlier.”

“Oh, you're Deke's babysitter. Yeah, he's in the office,” and the man jerked his thumb toward the back, where a long glass window showed a series of desks behind the wall. “Just go on.”

The air in the office was cleaner, although it still reminded Teddy of his old high school gym. Deke was slumped in a wooden chair in the hallway, and the high school resemblance carried over to detention.

Georgie let out a single low woof, and Deke looked up, his face crumpled in exhaustion. “Oh. Hi.”

“What the hell,” Teddy started to say, when the other man in the hallway with Deke interrupted. “It's okay, no harm, no foul. Well, a little harm, but no foul.” He was at least thirty years Deke's junior, black, with a shiner starting
on one eye, and a split lip. “Deke got a little carried away, but nobody's pressing charges; we just figured someone should take him home, y'know?”

“Iffin you'd just told me what I wanted to know,” Deke muttered, “none a' this woulda happened.”

“Man, I told you I don't know, okay? You need to stay cool.”

Their back-and-forth felt more like a comedy routine than an actual fight. Teddy could feel another headache coming on, but the feeling of relief—from Seth's phone call he'd thought he'd be dealing with cops and bail money, not two boxers sulking at each other—overwhelmed everything else.

“Thanks,” he said now. “Deke. Take Georgie outside and wait for me, okay? And don't hit anyone else.”

Deke and Georgie made their way back through the gym—watching them through the window, it was obvious to Teddy that the dog was shepherding the man, intent on her destination. Nobody stopped them, although a few people turned to watch.

“All right. Tell me, what happened?”

The other man sighed, and reached up to touch the side of his face, wincing a little. “For an old guy, he's still got a hell of an uppercut. But seriously, it was nothing, just him letting his temper slip. Around here, that's got more repercussions than, y'know, in your average office.”

“Yeah, I get that. But what did he lose his temper about? He said you wouldn't tell him something?” If Deke had gone off on his own, and come here, and been asking
questions, there was probably a reason for it. Maybe not a good reason, but it was all they had right now. He looked at the other man more carefully: too old to be the high school kid Deke had mentioned, and not old enough to be the other guys, even if he'd been the right race.

Bruised guy looked shifty. “He um, he wanted to know if I knew how to get in touch with someone. I didn't.”

Teddy shifted his weight, not wanting to leave Deke and Georgie on their own for too long, but not wanting to leave without an answer, either. “Uh-huh. Who?”

The guy actually fidgeted, looking down the hallway as though hoping for reinforcements to save him. “Look, it doesn't matter, okay?”

“Yeah, actually, I think it does. Who was Deke trying to get in touch with?” Teddy wasn't about to try what Ginny called his Intimidating Bouncer routine here, and he didn't think Understanding Bartender mode would work, either. But he shoved just enough of both into his voice, hoping that something would click. “Look, man, I get that you don't want to get involved. Just give me a name.” Deke wasn't going to, or
couldn't,
that much was clear. “I don't care about contact info, or how you're involved in all this. I just need a name.”

The other man sighed. “Hollins. Lew Hollins. And you never heard it from me.”

When Teddy
got outside, Deke and Georgie were waiting for him. Georgie had curled up on the sidewalk, in her
usual “I'm waiting on humans” pose, while Deke was leaning against the wall, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, staring squint-eyed up at the overcast sky.

Teddy stared at him, and then shook his head. “Come on. Let's go.”

“Go where?” Deke was already walking when he asked, so it was obvious that he didn't really care. Or maybe Georgie was that good a herder, heading instinctively for the car parked along the curb and dragging him along. Either way, Teddy didn't care.

“I'm taking you back to Mary's. The bar,” he clarified, when Deke looked confused. It was early yet, but at least there they'd be able to keep an eye on him, keep him from haring off on another idiotic adventure that might get him . . . well, maybe not killed but sure as hell deeper in shit. He supposed he should call Seth and tell him the prodigal child is en route. . . .

As though on cue, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He looked at the caller ID and accepted the call. “Hey. I've got Deke. No, Seth found him, I just did the pickup. What's up?” He hesitated before opening the car, listening, then nodded. “All right, yeah, we'll meet you there.” He put the phone away and glared across the roof at Deke. “Come on, get in. Ginny says she's got something.”

Ginny had
to wonder when her life had come down to this, ranting about the man—men—in her life, not to sympathetic friends, but sharply pointed ears and a long, twitching
tail. But any ears were better than none, at least until human ears arrived. And she could have gone somewhere else, she supposed, but that felt disloyal, like cheating.

Besides, she'd have ended up at Mary's anyway, eventually.

Her companion made an inquisitive noise, which she took as a cue to continue. “Anyway, I swear, sometimes Rob reminds me way too much of my dad. Because you know they always have to be right, always have to be . . . right. And when you try to tell them that they're wrong, they just give you this
look,
like you don't understand what's really going on. Am I right?”

Penny raised a paw and batted at Ginny's hand, gentle claws pulling her fingers closer, until she could take the bit of cheese away from the human.

“I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to have that,” Ginny said, picking up another piece of cheese from the sandwich wrapper. “But I'll tell you what, you've got better table manners than most.”

In her lap, Parsifal whined, and looked at her with oversized, overly soulful puppy eyes.

“All right, one for you, too, then. But only one. Your puppy tummy is too delicate. There are already too many doggy effusions in my life, without you adding more.”

“Girl, you need to get out more,” a voice said next to her, and then added, “Oh my God, you have another one?”

“Not mine,” Ginny said, lifting Parsifal up with one hand. “You want?”

“Oh hell no, get that rat away from me,” her friend said,
tossing her long coat into the booth and sliding onto the bench opposite her. “Is that why you called me down here? Because oh hell no.”

“No, but I do have a favor to ask, kinda related.”

“Of course you do.” Shana signaled to the bartender. “And I'm getting at least one drink out of it; otherwise you would have asked me over the phone, which means it's something I'm not going to want to do.”

“‘Not want' is a bit of an overstatement . . . ,” Ginny hedged. After Tonica had left her apartment earlier, after she'd hit a wall on her research, she'd done some thinking. About the situation, about the possible solutions. But all she could think about was Deke, the look in his eyes when Seth had yelled at him, the way he'd held his body tight when Zimmerman questioned him, the resignation in Seth's voice when he talked about trying to keep the older man out of trouble.

The way she hadn't been able to stop thinking about how many ways there were for one fragile old man, without hope, to decide to end it all. Never mind that they'd found him, there were too many ways this could go wrong.

She remembered their first client who hadn't kept a low enough profile, despite their warning him, and paid the cost. Not again. Not if she could stop it.

They needed to buy some time, keep Deke from falling into
more
trouble. So the first thing, clearly, was finding Deke a place to stay, somewhere he couldn't
find
trouble—since Seth wasn't able to stop him.

Shana lived out on Bainbridge, with room for an extra
houseguest, and the island was difficult enough to get to that Deke would have no choice but to stay put. She just had to find the right way to ask. . . .

“Scotch-and-soda for her, make it a double,” she called to Jon, who nodded. He might be a diva, according to both Tonica and Stacy, but he didn't give any of that 'tude to the customers.

“All right,” Shana said, putting her bag on the seat next to her, and turning her attention to Ginny. “Spill.”

“Okay, so. This puppy. He's got a story. . . .”

By the time Tonica came in, Deke and Georgie trailing behind him, Ginny had finished selling her plan to Shana, who looked about as unhappy as expected, but had agreed, anyway. The fact that Parsifal was being well-behaved and adorable helped, as did the scotch-and-soda.