L.A. Kornetsky - Gin & Tonic 03 - Doghouse

by L. A. Kornetsky

  Teddy sighed, letting his head fall back on the pillow with a hard thump. “Goddamn it.”

  “Teddy, we need to find him. He’s going to do something stupid.”

  “Yeah, I got that. All right, look, I’ll call Jon in early, and between the three of you, you can cover today’s shifts. You’re dog in charge, all right? If Patrick calls, tell him nothing.”

  “But I—”

  “I need you to be at the bar. Don’t worry, Seth. We’re on it.”

  He ended the call and stared at the ceiling, then texted Ginny, giving her the bare essentials and telling her he’d be there in an hour. Hopefully, she’d be awake, and not too badly hungover.

  Or maybe he hoped she was. If he had to suffer, everyone should.

  He gave himself time for a shorter-than-normal run, just enough to get his blood moving and his skin sweaty, and then threw himself into the shower while the coffee brewed. The drive to her place was quick—for once there were no construction delays—and he slid the Saab into a barely legal parking space, double-timing it to her apartment.

  It was only as he was coming out of the elevator on her floor that he remembered that she’d had plans last night. He wanted to meet the guy she was dating, but he kind of hoped he’d gone home already, assuming he’d stayed the night, because this was an awkward as hell way to introduce yourself.

  Ginny met him at the door, fully dressed, awake, alert, and not too obviously hungover. “Seriously? Seriously? This was not supposed to be a missing persons case, Tonica.”

  “It still isn’t,” he said, following her inside. There was no sign of another person in the apartment.

  She was staring at him, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression one of cool disbelief. That had been one of the things he’d liked about her, back when they first met: that cool, like she could play with the boys even wearing high heels and lipstick. It was the attitude, the “I can deal with this, don’t try to bullshit me” vibe.

  And never mind that he knew her tells now, too; knew that she wasn’t anywhere near as cool as she wanted to be. “He’s not missing,” he went on. “He’s running away from home. Or not-home.”

  “Oh, because that’s so much better.” Her hazel eyes were filled with scorn, but he could see the worry underneath—the same worry he was feeling. “What the hell was Seth thinking, to let him walk out like that?”

  She’d dropped down onto the sofa while she was talking, legs pulled up under her, and was tapping her fingers against her leg. He looked down and saw Georgie and Parsifal sprawled together under the table, the remains of toasted bagels and cream cheese scattered on the table’s surface. Only one mug, so no mystery boyfriend today.

  “He was thinking Deke was a grown man who can’t be kept under house arrest?” He was trying to keep his tone mild, for his own sake as well as hers.

  That got a snort, and a look. “Seth should have known him better. Hell, I barely know the guy and I know better.”

  “All right, yeah.” He admitted defeat on that one. “I don’t know what he was thinking except he can’t stay awake twenty-four-seven and guard the guy, Gin.”

  And now, even though Seth had sworn he’d cover for him at Mary’s, Teddy was pretty damned sure that Seth was out there looking, taking his old Honda CB750 around town to all the haunts he thought Deke might run to, the places he might hide.

  “We’re not going to find him,” he said to Ginny, taking a seat in the armchair opposite the sofa. He was pissed, almost as pissed as Ginny, but he’d had time to cool down and think it through on the drive over. “And there’s no point in us worrying about what he might or might not be doing, because we can’t know. We need to stay on the case. Find out what’s going on, ideally before that idiot makes it worse.”

  Parsifal came out from under the table and tried to chew on the end of his bootlace. Teddy lifted him away with one hand, but when the puppy came right back, he let him. “We don’t know his hideouts, his bolt-holes. We’ll let Seth look; he’ll call us if he hears anything.” He hoped. “Does he have your number?”

  She gave him another look; he was collecting the entire set today. “Why would Seth have my number?”

  “Right.” And Seth didn’t have a cell phone, so there was no point in texting it to him. “So I’m contact person. Once the bar’s open, I’ll call Stacy and bring her up to speed.” And warn her about not talking to Patrick, too.

  “I feel bad, dragging her into this,” Ginny said.

  “Don’t. She’s enjoying it, trust me.”

  Ginny seemed to accept the truth of that. “Do you think we should call that guy, Zimmerman, see if he knows where Deke might go?”

  “No.” Teddy’s reaction to that was immediate. “And you got his number? I thought you were in a relationship?”

  “I always get people’s business cards,” she said primly. “It’s just basic networking. You never know who might need my services… or vice versa. But yeah, you’re right. He seemed like a good guy, but not high on Deke’s confessional list. Odds are he wouldn’t have any more idea where to look than we do—and he obviously didn’t know what was going on in the house.” She sighed. “So we stick with what we were doing, chasing down who was actually behind the dogs being there—and who took them?”

  “And why, yeah. I think so. But carefully,” Teddy said. “Everything Deke said, it sounds like the people involved are unpleasant, to say the least. And now that we’ve started poking the nest…”

  They investigated crimes, yeah, but mostly the jobs had been reasonably benign: looking for a missing person, or missing money. They’d gotten surprised by the violence before, and somehow, weirdly, that made it okay. Going in knowing that there was violence lurking underneath, that was different. It was stupidity aforethought.

  “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-e
yes 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.”