“Gee, thanks.” Her sarcastic voice wasn’t up to par, though, and he let his hand rest on her shoulder. “Just don’t think,” he told her. “You try to figure things out now, before we know anything else, and you’ll just chase your tail until you bite it, and—don’t look at me like that. You know what I mean.”
“But—”
“Wait until we’ve talked to Ron,” he said. “And had coffee.”
It was too early to deal with any of this. He went and took a shower and, thankfully, by the time he got out, she’d managed to calm herself down again, with an obvious assist from the dog curled asleep half on her lap.
The coffee shop Ron had suggested was actually more of a diner, six booths on either side of an aisle, the kitchen running the length of one wall, the splatter and hiss of the griddles running under the low clatter of conversation. There was a small grassy area in front of the diner where two other dogs were already tied up, clearly waiting on patrons inside. Georgie settled in quickly, clearly not the least bit stressed about being left in unfamiliar surroundings.
“Do you ever worry about leaving her, after . . .” After one of their jobs turned up details of how often dogs were stolen off the street, for illegal labs or dog-fighting rings, he meant.
“Always. But we worked on it with her trainer,” Ginny said. “Georgie won’t willingly go with anyone who isn’t familiar, or doesn’t know the right command.” She gave Georgie a treat and turned away. “And besides, anyone who tried to pick her up and run would get a hernia for their effort.”
Since he’d had to haul the dog in and out of his car more than once, he couldn’t argue that point. She wasn’t that large, but what was there was solid muscle under plush, wrinkled skin.
Ron was already there, and had ordered them a carafe of coffee, much appreciated after Ginny had warned Teddy off the free coffee in the hotel lobby. He was pretty sure that, despite a hot shower and a brisk walk to the diner, even a vat of coffee wasn’t going to wake him up all the way. But he was willing to try.
“Any luck?” Ginny asked, sliding in next to Ron, while Teddy took the opposite bench. She was still—if you knew to look for it—twitchier than usual, her air of bright cheer only a façade, but neither of them called her on it.
“Depends on what you mean by luck,” Ron said. “The list of girls’ names turned out to be a bust—no hits on any missing-persons reports or recent crimes. Which is a relief on the one hand, and a worry on the other. I mean, if it’s not a bad thing, why hide the list?”
“No reports just means nothing’s been reported. They still could be in trouble or causing trouble.” Off their look, Ginny shrugged. “Don’t assume just because the names are all female that they’re innocent. Trust me, women can be just as deadly as the male, and you both should know that.”
Ron paused with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth, considered her words, then saluted her with the mug before taking a sip. “You’re not wrong. But since the dead guy’s dead by means most foul, doubt is called for. Since you said the guy did a lot of work with teenagers, yearbook pictures and whatnot, it might just be a client list, totally innocent, if weirdly stashed. Or maybe it’s women he’s slept with, and he’s keeping it secret from his main partner. Or hell, maybe your vic was just trying to come up with names for his next Pretty Pony.”
“His what?” Teddy frowned.
“Don’t ask,” Ginny advised him. “Trust me. What about the other two names, the guys?”
“There, I had luck. Back-traced the phone numbers, did a little deeper digging past the unlisted part, matched the first names to two gentlemen. David Collins, and Benjamin Lee. Went to high school together, local boys, roomed together three of their four years at Lewis and Clark. Lee moved here right after college, started working for a small architecture and restoration firm, Collins showed up a year ago, got a job at Candle Creek Brewery. They’re both considered promising newcomers, thirty-two and ambitious without being obnoxious. Have a sideline doing design work for start-ups—no real money to it, but their work looks competent enough.”
“So, was our guy a friend of theirs?”
“Not on paper, anyway.”
The waitress came by, and they paused to order off the blackboard menu, then Ron continued. “Nothing in common—no school, no friends, no career crossover.”
“So . . . you think our two golden boys are involved in the fake ID gig the victim was running?”
“Based solely on the fact that their names were in his secret place, I’d say that’s a good guess, yeah. But they were clean—no connections I could find. You have better sources; you might want to check with them.”
“Yeah, no,” Teddy said, shaking his head. “I’d like to stay out of her way as much as possible.”
Ginny wadded her napkin and threw it at him. “She’s been helpful!”
“She’s been setting us up to dig for her, Gin. And I wouldn’t put it past her to use you as bait for whatever she wanted dug up.”
She frowned at him, as though suspecting that was why he’d rushed down here, that he thought she was going to do something stupid, or needed rescuing. “We were going to dig anyway, Theodore. And if she wants us to dig successfully . . .”
“You said yourself she admitted our competence, and then told you to stay low, that the stakes were too high for us. Is there a better way to get you to do something on the QT, than raise a challenge like that?”
They had a stare-down that Teddy won, but only barely.
“Fine. We won’t call her. Unless we have to,” she said, glaring at Teddy. He raised his hands in surrender, willing to concede that point. He didn’t know for certain Asuri was using them as bait; it was just a strong and supported suspicion.
“So how do we actually get to talk to these boys?” Teddy asked, moving the conversation away from the question of Asuri. “I mean, a reporter showing up might flip them out a little, and we’ve got even less reason.”
“When in doubt, do the time-honored reporter thing,” the other man said, pouring himself more coffee.
“Which is?”
“Lie,” Ron said.
* * *
Joke aside, dancing around the truth—what Ron referred to as “prevarication in the pursuit of truth” and Tonica called “bullshitting the mark,” meant that getting in to see one of their suspects turned out to be almost embarrassingly easy.
“We’re terribly sorry to bother you, and thank you so much for taking time out of your day.”
“No, that’s quite all right. Please, sit down.”
David Collins had a broad, open face, his sandy brown hair falling into his face, frequently swiped back with an exasperated hand, and a quick smile that not only reached his eyes but seemed to fill his entire body. Ginny smiled back at him, and resisted the urge to check for an alligator tail.
The brewery was hopping out front, but they’d been escorted to a small room to the side, with a long wooden table and chairs and not much else. “We have group tastings here,” he said, noting their curiosity. “Décor’s less important when we want them focusing on what’s in their mouths.”
“You’re a brewer, too?” Tonica asked, gesturing to the stained apron he was wearing over his khakis.
“No, not yet. Someday. Right now I’m sort of jack of all trades, mainly, as we discussed, working the sales angle. I’m rather disgustingly good at schmoozing.”
Fortunately, so was Tonica. Ginny leaned back in the chair, aware that Collins had already checked her out, read her “not here to flirt” body language, and—wonders of wonders—respected it. She supposed that was part of what made him good at schmoozing: reading and paying attention to body language.
“It’s all part of the trade, isn’t it?” Tonica said. “Making, selling . . . and straddling the bar, so to speak, gives an excellent view of the larger picture. There’s certainly far
more to running a bar than I ever thought when I was just tending one!”
That was their story, their excuse for being here—that Tonica had heard about the work the brewery was doing, and wanted to see if they could work a deal with Mary’s. It was enough to get them in the door. . . .
What happened now, she didn’t know. They were pretty much winging it. Her job was to take notes, smile occasionally, frown every now and again, and if she saw an opening, take it. So while the two men went on to discuss various beers and ales they were making, and a young woman came in with a tray of one-ounce sample glasses, Ginny waited, watched, and after a few different ales had been tasted—Ginny abstaining, as the designated driver—she said, “This seems more like a labor of love to you, than something you do for money. Or did you manage to luck out and land both in one job?”
“It doesn’t pay all that well, no,” Collins admitted. “But I do all right.”
“You must,” she said, with as much admiration as she could. “That’s a Diva Noir shirt, isn’t it?”
“Um. Yes.” He clearly wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or wary. Tonica wouldn’t know Diva Noir from Nike, but she did—and so did Collins. And he knew she knew how much one of those button-down shirts cost, and you didn’t wear it under an apron unless you had more than one.
Hah. Take that, Mister I-can-read-people-better-than-you, you-need-to-be-rescued-from-your-own-impulses Theodore Tonica. Their target was slightly suspicious now, but she saw no indication that he had recognized their names, no flash of hesitation that you got used to seeing when someone knew they were being questioned. This guy had no idea who they were, other than their cover story. She hid a vicious-feeling grin. Time to up the pressure a little.
“Nice.” She leaned back a little and looked down, as though checking him out without wanting to be obvious about it. She might not have had much opportunity to flirt recently, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten how to do it. “The brewery must be doing well, or do you manage to juggle even more than all this?” A little surprise, a little awe, and she saw his eyelids flicker, shifting to glance back at Tonica before focusing on her again. Not that Ginny believed she was any kind of femme fatale, but very few people could resist the urge to humble-brag. And Collins seemed like the type who wouldn’t enjoy working for other people, from what she’d heard already—and she knew the type from looking in the mirror every morning.
“I’ve got my fingers in a few pies, here and there,” he said casually. “You know how it is: you can’t assume any one particular thing’s going to work out, so you spread your chances.”
“Oh, I know how that goes, yes,” she said, smiling. “A little here, a little more there, and if one pays out, you put more there.”
“Exactly. And if one of those things pushes the envelope a little, well hey . . .”
His face froze mid-smile, making him look a little like a chipmunk caught stuffing his pouches. She, on the other hand, kept smiling, even as she could practically hear in her head Tonica asking her what the hell she was doing.
Ginny shook her head. “Hey, business is business, right? I don’t judge.”
His face relaxed, but his eyes were steady on hers, cold and thoughtful. Yeah, she’d gotten him right. Come on, she thought, take the bait just a little more. . . . “This isn’t about setting up any kind of deal, is it?”
“It is, actually,” Tonica said, picking up the conversation again. “Everything I said is completely true.” It wasn’t the entire story, no, but Tonica hadn’t had to lie at all, despite Ron’s advice. “You’d got good product here, but no national distribution yet, so showcasing it in another city can’t hurt you, and it would be a nice shout for my place, promotion-wise. Everyone likes to think they’re getting some special deal, right?”
“And any other product I might be involved in?” The way he said it made Ginny wonder what else he was involved in, and where he thought this was going. They had to be really careful now. Or they could go all in.
Ginny was tired of creeping around the edges, playing it safe. She wanted this done, so she could go home.
“Truthfully? We’re really not interested in whatever else you’re doing,” she said. “We’re not in the market. We’re only interested in what—if any—connection you might have had with Jamie Penalta.”
* * *
Someday, no lie, he was going to die of a heart attack, and the cause was going to be one Virginia Mallard. But the past few years had taught him a little about how her brain worked, so he was able to recover without too much gaping like an idiot. Thankfully, Collins’s attention had been on her, not him, while he recovered.
They had learned how to be a damned effective team, actually, he thought: one of them reassured and the other set things to spin. Although it would be easier if they actually planned this out, rather than a vague “let’s see where it goes” and then winging it. And Ginny claimed to be the logical one?
“Jamie.” Collins—on the verge of a conniption fit—seemed to deflate. “Is that what this is about? Poor Jamie.”
Time for him to step in again. He put on his very best Sympathetic Listening face and leaned in again. “You two were friends?”
“No.” Collins laughed at that. “No, we weren’t friends. Bluntly, Jamie wasn’t someone I’d associate with, outside of business purposes.” He leaned back in his own chair, the previous façade of friendly sales manager evaporating into something more wary-eyed and cynical. “You’re not cops. I recognize cops. And his murder, while tragic, wasn’t enough to warrant a follow-up article. So . . . what’s the story?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Teddy said, pulling the man’s attention back to him. “Someone pulled us into this mess without our consent, and we want to know why. Which means knowing why Jamie’s dead.”
“Yeah, seems there are a lot of people who’d like to know that. But I’m not one of them. I mean, I don’t care, and I don’t know.” He looked around the room, then held up a finger to indicate they should wait a moment, then got up and left the room.
“Nice way to spring that on me,” Teddy said.
“Yeah, sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry.
Collins came back before they could get into it further and took his seat again. “Wanted to make sure this conversation wasn’t going on the tape,” he said, indicating a small camera in the corner of the room neither of them had noticed before. “It’s just there for legal reasons, when we’ve got tastings going on, so nobody will stress about it being off for a few minutes.”
Teddy nodded. He’d asked Patrick to install closed-circuit cameras, for the parking lot if nothing else, but the bastard was putting him off until Teddy was about ready to call in some favors and get it done himself.
“So. Jamie,” he prompted. “Not a friend, but you did know him.”
“Jamie’s a photographer. Was, I guess. And he was dependable—you always knew exactly what you were going to get from him, and you’d get it in a timely manner. And—hell, I’ll give him credit, he was an artist. Didn’t have to use Photoshop to get the results we needed; it always looked perfect.”
“He used a physical backdrop instead of adding digital effects in later?” Ginny asked, remembering the fake ID artists from her college days. “That’s old-school.”
“I know, really? But he made it work. And the things he could do with film? God, I wish we could have . . .” Collins stopped. “But you don’t care about that.”
“We really don’t,” Ginny agreed. “Like you said, we’re not cops. Or lawyers.”
“So what are you?”
“Interested parties,” Teddy said, with a new flatness in his voice that would hopefully convince the other man that it wasn’t a thread he wanted to yank. Let the guy look them up after the fact, if he wanted, not get distracted now.
“In why Jamie died. Yeah. You know, I couldn’t tell
you, because like I said, I didn’t pal around with the guy.”
“For a reason. What was the reason?”
That, for the first time, seemed to put a stutter in Collins’s smooth routine. “Okay. I don’t have any proof, okay? I don’t know anything for certain, and anything I do know is hearsay and gut, really.” Collins looked up, away from them, staring at the wall behind them although Teddy would bet that’s not what he was seeing. “But if I’d had a younger sister? I wouldn’t have let him get within ten feet of her.”
Ginny’s jaw twitched, but Teddy beat her to the punch. “But you were okay with him taking photographs of teenage girls?”
Collins shrugged, not denying the implied accusation. “Business was business. Besides, like I said, I didn’t have any proof. Jamie would joke about things but he never . . . Just being a sleaze isn’t a crime, right?”
* * *
They sat in Ginny’s rental car, after their meeting ended rather abruptly, with Collins showing them the door with a charming, if forced smile for anyone who might have been watching them, and very carefully didn’t look at each other.
“Those lists of girls’ names?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Probably, though.”
“Yeah. Probably. But it could just be his version of a little black book. Sleazy, but . . .”
“He was decent-looking,” Ginny said. “And he had access to something they wanted—fake ID.”
“That could be the good reason we were looking for, for someone to sic you on him, indirectly,” Teddy said. “A teenage girl, knowing that she’d get in trouble if she tried to report him directly, or maybe couldn’t risk . . . his word against hers, and her only point of contact is buying something illegal from him, that gets complicated. But if someone else pokes their nose in . . . ?”
“And a teenager wouldn’t, probably, have thought through how the hell I would go from ‘huh, you’re not my client’ to discovering he’s scummy. . . . ” She checked that thought. “No, a teenage girl would know exactly how I’d start poking around, because guys like that give off vibes. And if this guy gave off vibes even another guy could pick up after a while . . . But that doesn’t explain why he had my info on him, though, if someone else—especially a teenage girl who wanted nothing to do with him—called me in.”
Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery Page 17