Doghouse (8 page)

Tonica opened his mouth like he was about to say something, and Ginny shot him a glare—she would have kicked him if she'd been able to reach, and if it wouldn't have been so obvious.

“The dogs? These dogs? Deke, you know what your lease says.” Zimmerman frowned at him. “I didn't know you even liked animals.”

Georgie took that moment to shove up against Deke's leg, and Penny advanced across the counter, knocking her head against his shoulder, as though they were flanking him, showing that yes he was, in fact, an animal person. Deke absently reached out to knuckle the top of Penny's head, between her ears. Normally, the tabby didn't allow liberties like that from anyone except Tonica, but she almost seemed to welcome it this time, and Parsifal let out a sharp yip and raced to sit on Deke's feet, chewing on the laces of his shoes as though upset at being left out.

“He's . . . Seth's,” Ginny said. “The puppy, I mean. Georgie's mine.”

Seth blinked, then nodded. “Yeah. Don't blame me for the name, he had it when I got him.” The older man scowled at Ginny, as though asking why the hell she'd saddled him with supposed ownership of a dog he'd never seen before. She gave a helpless shrug, not sure why she'd done it, either. They'd planned on shoving the puppy in Deke's face, yes, but this wasn't the time. They needed Deke focused right now, not flustered. Seth was Deke's friend, and that would cover them in case anyone had seen the puppy in Deke's house, since she didn't think that admitting that the dog was an illegal tenant and possibly an escapee from a dogfighting outfit would be in anyone's interests. . . .

They hadn't even been on this case for forty-eight
hours, and already it was all muddled and confused. Usually it took them at least four days to hit this point.

“Well, it's good you have somewhere to stay, until this is worked out.” Zimmerman cocked an eye at Deke, who was surrounded by the three animals like some sort of furry honor guard. “The puppy's yours, isn't it, Deke, not your friend's? It's okay. I think you should have gotten a pet years ago, personally. And this pretty tabby girl here, is she yours, too?”

Ginny couldn't stop herself from smiling in relief. “Penny . . . belongs to herself.”

There was something in Zimmerman's voice that told Ginny that this guy was on their side. Or Deke's, anyway, which was even better. He wasn't going to intentionally cause problems. But she still didn't like the fact that he'd come to check on Deke just then. From the look on Tonica's face, neither did he.

“So why the urgent visit?” her partner asked, then raised his hands in the universal sign for “not that it's any of my business.”

Zimmerman flipped back to professional mode, although he didn't shut Tonica down the way he had Ginny: they'd passed some sort of test, she guessed. “His employer let us know that he'd been let go, since we'd gotten him the job in the first place. I wanted to do a check-in, make sure that everything was okay. Especially since he missed his last check-in . . .” The glare that accompanied that was worthy of Ginny's mother at her worst.

“Ain't obligated,” Deke said again, still petting Penny, not looking up.

“No, you're not,” Zimmerman agreed. “But I can't help you if I don't know there're problems. We've talked about this before, Deke. You need to keep your nose clean.”

Right, Seth had said something about Deke being a guest of the county for a while. Ginny hadn't been aware that they did follow-up on things like that—with the budget cuts, she'd think everyone would be too overworked to give a damn about one harmless ex-boxer. Just Deke's luck he got assigned to someone who still gave a damn, exactly when he needed people to
not
notice him.

“So, he's not in trouble or anything.” Tonica made it sound like a statement, not a question.

“He's going to need to get another job,” Zimmerman said. “We'll work on that. But so long as he has a place to stay, everything should be all right. I'm sorry about the job, Deke, but you handled it well. That's good.”

Ginny assumed that meant he hadn't hit anyone.

“I still haveta go downtown?”

“We can consider this to be this month's meeting,” Zimmerman said. “But I want to see you next month, yeah. No excuses this time!”

There was
a tense stretch after Zimmerman left, having gotten Seth's promise to get Deke to his appointment next month and refused Teddy's offer of a beer. Then Seth let out a deep sigh, looked at the puppy still gnawing on
Deke's bootlace, and turned and looked at Ginny as though this was all her fault.

“More damned animals? And you shove it onto me?”

“Well, it didn't seem like the right time to mention that oh, we found it in Deke's house, abandoned and half starved, did it?” Ginny pitched her voice low so that it wouldn't, hopefully, carry over to the customers who had so far pointedly ignored what was happening at the bar, but she was still obviously pissed.

Teddy winced. Ginny had a long fuse but a sharp temper, and Seth managed to ignite it more than anyone else. This was just one of the few times he hadn't done it intentionally.

“What?” Seth's voice was satisfyingly shocked at her bombshell, and he glanced at Teddy as though looking for verification. He nodded once. That was enough to turn Seth's attention back to Deke. Teddy felt sympathy for the older man, facing that glare, which could have melted steel.

“Damn it, Deke. You lied to me!”

“Did not!”

“Then you gonna tell me that you don't know how a dog got into your house? Didn't know it was there, all this time you were swearing you were innocent?”

“I never went down there!” And Deke clamped his mouth shut like he'd just gotten an electric shock or something, his eyes wide and a little more scared than Teddy liked seeing in an adult. Or a kid, for that matter. In anything. He'd had a cousin who had that look once, after a
stint in rehab. Like he knew he was half a step away from screwing up his last chance.

“Deke.” He shot a sideways look at Seth, a “shut up and back down” look he used just before a fight broke out, when he thought he could still talk things down. Seth knew the look and sat down on one of the bar stools, muttering under his breath. Ginny had taken Parsifal onto her lap, Georgie at her feet. Penny sat on an empty stool, washing her paw without any interest in what was going on around her.

“Deke,” Seth said again. “Come on, man. We're trying to help you. But you need to be straight with us.”

“I am,” Deke said, his voice sulky.

“C'mon, Deke.” He waited.

“I never went down there,” Deke said again. “There was a separate entrance, the root cellar door. They used that. I didn't look, didn't ask. Lease said no dogs in the house. They weren't in the house.”

“Logical to a fault, if not exactly legally accurate,” Ginny said. “Who used the door, Deke?”

Deke shrugged, still sulky and sullen. “They left money in the mailbox, every month. Five hundred, cash. I didn't ask.”

That would explain how he could afford the rent. Teddy kept his gaze on Deke, not letting him look away. “And you never heard anything? Really?”

Deke looked even more guilty.

“Deke, tell us.”

“Sometimes. There were . . . noises. Things moving
downstairs, sometimes a whimper or . . . howling, sometimes.” Deke shuddered, a whole-body shake. “Like huge rats, or . . . demons.”

“Demons?” Ginny's eyebrow almost broke her hairline, Seth rolled his eyes with an expression of long-suffering patience, and Teddy tried to keep things on track. “Focus, Deke.”

“I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't look, I didn't listen. He had no right to kick me out of my house.”

Seth slapped his hand down on the bar, causing Parsifal to jump and Penny to stop washing her ears and look at him. “Your lease said no pets, man. You told me—”

“They weren't pets!”

“Deke!” Teddy let his voice rise, just enough to cut through both of them. “Stop splitting hairs, and help us. Who were the guys who were keeping the dogs down there? Anything you can remember, at all. What did they look like, what cars did they drive, how many of them were there?”

Hopefully, the specific questions would focus the old man enough that he could answer, and not melt down. There was a pause, and everyone could practically hear the gears spinning in Deke's head. Teddy kept still, watching, trying to convey with his gaze that he wasn't going to let Deke skate on this, not until he came clean.

“I only ever saw two,” he said finally. “One of them came every day. A kid, maybe fifteen, sixteen. Scrawny but tall, like a tap would take him out. Every morning, around seven.”

“Before school,” Ginny said quietly. “Probably to feed the animals.”

“How long was he there, Deke?”

“Dunno. Half an hour, maybe.”

Enough time to feed animals, but not much else. Depending on how many dogs were down there. Teddy tried to remember the layout of the room: even if they'd all been little things, you couldn't fit more than five or six cages down there.

“And the other?”

“Older than the kid, but not old. Asian, maybe Korean. I never saw his face well enough to tell.” Teddy was impressed Deke could tell the difference at all; most people didn't pay that much attention. “He'd come by once a month, mostly when I was at work, but I saw him a few times. He'd go downstairs, then leave me the money.”

“And that was it?”

“There was one other guy,” Deke said slowly. “I only ever saw him once; he came with the second guy. White. Light hair. Maybe in his fifties? Not anyone you wanted to cross. He had that look, you know? Not a fighter, he wouldn't hit you clean, he'd take you out from behind. Like Jasper, you remember him?”

Seth nodded, then shook his head. “Fixer, used to hang around the fights back when I first started. Not someone you wanted to cross, ever. Never got his hands dirty but had guys who'd do the deed for him. Deke, you
idiot
.”

“I didn't . . .” Deke shrank in on himself even more, and his hands twisted in his lap. “Okay, okay. But how else am
I gonna get rent, Seth? Money don't go so far anymore. I don't, I can't . . .” He reached down to pet Penny, who had leaped down from the stool and was now twining around his ankles. The motion seemed to calm him a little. “I don't have a job, I don't have a place to stay. I know Seth said I could stay there but he don't got room. Am I gonna get locked up again?”

The meltdown they'd been afraid of was starting to bubble to the surface.

“No,” Ginny said, even as Teddy hesitated. “You're not. Calm down, all right? Here,” she said, and handed him the puppy. “I think you both need some quiet time. You come over here, and let him get to know you, okay? And I'll have Seth make up a sandwich for you while Parsifal has his dinner. That good?”

For someone who claimed to have no maternal instincts whatsoever, Mallard wasn't doing half-bad. Teddy watched as Deke let her guide him to the nearest empty booth, waiting while he slid onto the bench, the puppy held carefully in his arms. Parsifal, as though knowing what was expected of him—and still worn-out from his walk—gave Deke's hand a long, slurpy lick, then curled up in his lap and fell asleep.

Showing a rare sensitivity—or knowing that she was in no mood for his shit today—Seth waited until Ginny came back to pick up the conversation again.

“That's all he knows. Deke ain't smart enough to lie. Not that much, that long.” Seth shook his head. “You still think you can clear this mess up? He's an idiot, but . . .”

“But you're right, he'd never do anything to hurt an animal,” Ginny said. “That much is obvious. We'll do the best we can.”

“But not tonight,” Teddy said, with a look around the bar. More of the tables were filled now, and the sound level had risen to the point where conversation was getting difficult. Nothing they couldn't handle, but he was on shift soon, and he needed to focus. And no matter that he seemed calm for the moment, they needed to get Deke out of there before the poor bastard had his—admittedly deserved—meltdown and said something else he shouldn't, in front of someone who might not be sympathetic.

“Seth, take the rest of the night off. I think we're gonna shut the kitchen down tonight. Start training people for when we're doing renovations.”

“Renovations?” That was enough to break through Seth's concern. “What? Damn it, what the hell is Patrick on about this time?”

Teddy shook his head. “Trust me, don't ask. That's my headache for now. Just take Deke home, keep him out of trouble, okay?”

“Yeah, all right.” Seth scowled again for good measure, as though to reassure everyone that he wasn't getting soft, and went over to the booth where Deke and Parsifal were sitting.

“So what next?” Ginny asked. “Because I'm going to admit I'm out of ideas.”

“For now? I've got a shift to work. You can chase leads, and we'll start again tomorrow, hopefully with more sleep.”

“I um, kind of have plans tonight . . .” She raised an eyebrow and dared Teddy to make a crack.

The temptation to say something was trumped by the urge not to get smacked. “At least someone around here's got a social life. Go, have fun. Only,” he paused, as though he'd just thought of an objection. “I'm not sure I can in good conscience send Seth home with both Deke and a puppy. You okay taking junior home for the night?”

“You mean I had a choice? I'm not sure Georgie would let us go home without him.” She sighed, and gave him a look that let him know he wasn't fooling anyone. “How is it that you're allegedly fostering him, but I'm doing the actual work?”

He held up his hands, palms out, in a protestation of innocence. “Hey, cat person here. And I paid for his shots, but you're already set up for four-footed roommates.”