She ended the call, aware that her mother’s preoccupation with this invasion had saved her from the usual interrogation about her own life. A small gift, but she’d take it.
She loved her parents, but there were days she wished she hadn’t been an only child. Maybe a sibling would have been able to give them the married-with-a-real-job happiness they kept trying to urge her into.
She’d done the real job thing, and the job had disappeared under her when the company was bought out. Being her own boss suited her fine now. As for marriage… first she’d have to find someone she wanted to date more than a few times. The current guy seemed like he had potential, but she wasn’t going to assume anything yet.
Cutting those thoughts off at the knee, Ginny poured herself another cup of coffee and went into her office. If she hustled, she’d be able to clear out her in-box, file the paperwork from yesterday’s meeting with her lawyer, and maybe sort out last month’s expenses before Tonica arrived.
* * *
“Mallard. No.”
She hadn’t actually intended to bring the dog, but the moment she’d put her shoes and coat on to meet Tonica downstairs, Georgie had fetched her battered leash and sat by the door so patiently and expectantly that Ginny didn’t have the heart to leave her home.
“It gives us a reason to be there?” she said in response, not meaning for it to sound like such a question. Tonica, thankfully, only sighed and waited while she convinced Georgie, once again, that the back of the coupe would not eat her.
Once they were all settled, and he started the car and pulled away from the curb, she asked, “So, you want a background, or do you want to play it blind? Not that I have much yet.”
“Blind, I think. We can compare notes after.”
Ginny got twitchy when she met someone cold, but that was how he worked and she wasn’t going to screw with it, not so long as it worked. She tapped the screen of her tablet and studied her notes, but didn’t share what was there. She hadn’t lied, there really wasn’t much. Animal shelters weren’t big news, and nobody who worked there seemed to have much public profile. All right, she’d try to play this Tonica’s way.
Most of the early morning commuters were already in downtown, and there wasn’t any local traffic, so they pulled into the six-space parking lot in front of the old warehouse at exactly 9:58. Their appointment with Nora was for ten o’clock. The three of them—Tonica, Ginny, and Georgie—extracted themselves from Tonica’s beloved vintage Volvo coupe and looked around. The old warehouse looked like it dated back to Ballard’s heyday as a lumber town, and was a set on a corner lot, with a newer brick building pressing up against it on one side. It might have been renovated from its earlier use but didn’t look very impressive even now.
The lot was empty, but Ginny had spotted a beat-up sedan and an SUV in the equally small parking lot around the corner of the building, probably the employee lot.
In the distance they could hear dogs barking, not very well muffled by the walls. Georgie lifted her head slightly but otherwise showed no interest.
“Think she remembers being here before?”
“Dogs don’t have much long-term memory,” Ginny said. “Being hurt creates a basic fear of the source—a man, a car, the smell of the vet’s—but they don’t have specific long-term memories the way we do.” She paused. “That’s what our trainer says, anyway. So, no, I don’t think she associates this building with where she lived before she came here. Might be different once we go inside, though.”
“Only one way to find out.” Tonica gestured for her to precede him, his muscular torso looking oddly different in a dress shirt and dark blue sport coat, rather than his regular sweatshirt or sweater. He was wearing the usual jeans and lace-up black boots, though, so she had decided not to rag him about it, especially since she had dressed-to-impress-with-competence, too. “Puppies first.”
Despite her words, Ginny hadn’t been sure exactly how Georgie would react to coming back here. Ginny had only been to the shelter once before, herself, to sign the paperwork that made Georgie hers. She had first encountered the half-grown shar-pei pup during one of Ballard’s summer weekend street fairs, when the shelter held a “sidewalk parade,” accosting innocent passersby with pitiful-faced puppies and adorable kittens. Ginny hadn’t intended to acquire a dog that day—or, in fact, any day—but twenty-four hours later she had been standing in front of this same building, more or less ready to change her life for the sake of big brown eyes and a ridiculous tail.
“C’mon, sweetie,” she said now, tugging on the leash.
“You had better be talking to the dog, Mallard,” Tonica grumbled. “I’m not your sweetie.”
“I only leash the things I love,” she shot back. Their back-and-forth used to be sharper; she put it down to the early hour. Tonica really wasn’t a morning person.
The front door of the shelter was thick glass, with the name painted on it in white. No cute animal cartoons or slogan, just the name. Inside there was a small foyer, just enough room to let someone close an umbrella—or a dog to shake off the rain—and then another door, this one made of heavy, polished wood.
The receptionist, a chunky young woman with hair done up in a multitude of blond dreadlocks, looked up when they came in, and smiled. “Hi there! We’re not open for animal visit yet, but if you’d like to make an appointment, I can arrange that!” She exuded a sense of professionally perky that bordered on the annoying, but when her gaze went from Ginny to Tonica and then down to the dog standing alertly between them, her poise slipped a little. “Oh. Hi. She’s beautiful.” The tone of the girl’s voice went from welcoming to slightly accusatory in those short sentences. Ginny blinked, wondering what they’d done wrong, and then realized what had happened.
“Isn’t she though?” she said brightly, stepping forward and using the half excuse she’d suggested to Tonica. “I adopted her from the shelter last year, and I thought I’d come down and show off how well she’s doing.”
Perky, and a little extra, swam back into the other woman’s voice now that she knew they weren’t here to abandon the dog. “Oh, that’s so nice. We have a board for photos of our graduates; it would be great to add her. What’s her name?”
“Georgie. Oh, she was originally named Lena.”
“I didn’t know that,” Tonica said, slightly startled.
“Yeah. She just didn’t seem like a Lena, to me, though. A Lena is… delicate.”
Georgie, almost on cue, let out a solid burp.
“Yeah, Georgie’s a lot of things, but delicate ain’t it,” Tonica agreed, grinning.
“I named her for George, in the Nancy Drew books.” Ginny said. “She was always my favorite.”
Tonica’s eyes narrowed. “Those are detective stories, aren’t they?”
“Shut up, Teddy,” she said, embarrassed, and then, “Oh,” directed to the receptionist, almost like an afterthought, “and Nora said to let her know when we came by?”
During their phone call, the client had suggested that they play it casual, rather than setting up an actual meeting, to keep anyone from suspecting anything. Ginny thought that Nora was being more than a little paranoid, but the first rule of being a concierge/problem solver was that the client was always right—to their face. You could do things properly once they were appeased.
“Oh.” Perky thought for a moment. “I saw her going into the back office this morning. Let me buzz her, and then I’ll go get our camera. Hang on.”
Ginny, suspecting that this might take a while, went over to sit on one of the two battered sofas, Georgie obediently lying down at her feet, muzzle resting on her paws, eyes alert. If the dog had any hesitation going into the building she’d left a year ago, she didn’t show it. In fact, reaching down to pet Georgie’s head, Ginny thought she looked almost… pleased.
* * *
Teddy, feeling restless and not sure about the cleanliness of the sofas Ginny was sitting on so calmly, walked over to a corkboard up on the far wall, curious. It
was filled with photos and rap sheets of the animals currently available for adoption. He scanned the papers, paying more attention to how they were posted rather than what was posted. It was well organized and professionally presented: someone was clearly doing there job here, at least. All the photos were well lit, with the animals looking directly into the camera, the sheets all generated on a computer form, but with handwritten notes in purple ink calling out specific comments—all positive—about each animal. There was a red dot at the top right corner of some of them, a yellow dot on others, and a green dot on yet others, and some of them had a mix of colored dots, while a handful had no dots at all. He puzzled over them for a while, before the receptionist returned, armed with a camera.
“Nora will come out in a minute. Why don’t we bring gorgeous Georgie over here, and I can get a good shot of her? No, that’s all right, I can manage her, can’t I, girl?” she said to Georgie. Then, to Ginny, “You can stay on the sofa.”
Teddy closed his eyes and waited for the explosion. You didn’t just tell Ginny Mallard to stay on the sofa, especially where Georgie was concerned.
Ginny, surprisingly, didn’t say anything. But Georgie did. A short, soft bark that had Teddy turning around, surprised. Georgie was the quietest dog he’d ever met—she didn’t bark much, and never without provocation. But this was clearly a warning noise.
The shar-pei, still at Ginny’s feet, had lifted her blunt-muzzled head and uttered her warning, her entire body language shouting “back off.” The receptionist, clearly not a fool, had frozen with her hand outstretched, obviously having intended to take Georgie’s leash. He suspected that not every dog that came through here was as easygoing as Georgie.
Then again, easygoing Georgie had bitten someone who threatened her mistress. Even sweet-tempered dogs had teeth. He needed to remember that.
“Georgie!” Ginny sounded surprised, but not entirely disapproving. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Oh.” The young woman recovered some of her confidence, once assured that this was an unusual occurrence. “I was working with kittens this morning, maybe she smells them?”
Teddy almost laughed at the hopeful suggestion.
“No, I don’t think that’s the problem,” Ginny said, still busy soothing her dog, the leash safely wrapped around her wrist.
No, not likely. Georgie’s best friend was a cat, and Teddy didn’t care if that was anthropomorphizing: anyone who had seen Georgie and Mistress Penny together would agree. It was weird, but it was. Something had clearly spooked the normally mellow dog, though.
“Oh.” The girl scrunched her face up in thought, sitting back on her heels. “My perfume?”
“I think she’s afraid of your hair.” He couldn’t help it: the way the dreads moved around her head, they looked like snakes, and if he were a dog, he’d be freaked out by them coming at him, too.
“My… oh.” The girl touched her head protectively, and Teddy held his breath for half a second, worried he’d put his foot in it badly enough to get them kicked out. Women could be touchy about their hair: he’d gotten smacked enough times by his sisters to know that.
Then the receptionist laughed and said to Georgie, “Is that it, sweetie? You want me to tie them back?”
Apparently, that was all it took: once the woman’s hair was gathered in a scrunchy, and no longer swinging over her shoulders, Georgie was happy enough to have her photo taken by this strange woman.
And taken, and taken. First, lying down, then standing up, then a side profile, made more difficult by Georgie’s need to turn her head and see what this strange person was doing. Finally, the woman seemed satisfied, and Georgie was returned to Ginny’s care, just as Nora came down the hallway, looking slightly more professional in khakis and a pale green shirt than she had in the bar the day before. Compared to the receptionist, Nora’s color-dipped hair looked practically sedate, but Teddy wondered if some variation of braids was a requirement for working here.
“Hi. Sorry for the delay, I was just finishing something up. C’mon back. Este wants to meet you.”
They left the receptionist slotting the memory card into her computer, promising to have the picture up by the time they came out, and the four of them, Teddy, Ginny, Nora, and Georgie, walked down the hallway to a sliding panel door. Once inside, the panel closing behind them, they were in what was clearly the heart of the operation: a large room with three oversized secondhand metal desks and chairs, none of them anywhere as nice as what was in the lobby, and a laptop on each desk, chained with a security lock.
“We all work here,” Nora said. “Open floor plan, mainly because we didn’t have the money to put up internal walls. It can get pretty chaotic at times, but it’s nice, too.”
She led them through the bullpen, to where two doors were set into the wall, both of them closed. Teddy looked up to where the wall met ceiling and decided that these had been original to the building, not part of the renovation.
Nora knocked once on the far left door, and then opened it without waiting for an answer.
Inside, the office was more comfortable, if no less shabby. The woman behind the desk stood up and offered her hand to the newcomers. “My name is Este Snyder. And this must be Lena!”
Their surprise must have been obvious, because the older woman laughed. She had a good laugh, full and soft, and smiling softened the severe lines of her face, making the pale gray strands in her dark hair seem brighter, somehow, less like signs of age and more… Teddy wasn’t sure, but he felt himself warming to her, immediately.
“She’s Georgie now,” Ginny said. Her voice was slightly stiff, but not unfriendly, as she shook the woman’s hand.
“Of course. A new life needs a new name. Hello, Georgie. You’re looking quite well.” She looked up at the humans then, and her face lost some of its animation.
“Nora told me what she had done, this morning.”
And she didn’t approve, clearly. Teddy was glad he’d listened to his gut and dressed well today. Ginny had worn a slacks-and-sweater combo that managed to look both casual and stylish, flat shoes showing under the hem of the slacks. Together they should be able to calm any fears of scammers or con artists. Or maybe they looked like scammers and con artists trying to look reputable, and were about to get tossed out on their ear.
Thankfully, convincing the woman to trust them was Ginny’s job, not his.
* * *
Tonica had that look on his face, the one that meant he was assessing the person in front of him, trying to suss her out purely from body language. Ginny took the lead, distracting the older woman so he could do his thing. “So now you have official awareness that the money is missing.”
“I knew it was missing.” Her tone was matter-of-fact: Ginny couldn’t tell if the woman was irritated at having to admit to that knowledge or not. “I had hoped that whoever it was who had taken it would reconsider, and return it before I had to take official notice. But that has not happened.”
Resigned, but not annoyed, Ginny decided. Maybe.
The woman sat down again and indicated that they should sit, also. There were two chairs in front of her desk: Nora perched herself on the sill of a window that had been blocked up with bricks on the outside, creating an alcove that had been filled with several anemic-looking plants.
Using the moments of distraction while they settled in to do her own assessment, Ginny knew that the woman was in her early sixties: the narrow face and silvered hair were offset by a lean, muscled body that reflected care and exercise rather than age. That matched with what little had been available in public records about the shelter’s founders: Hester “Este” Snyder had retired at fifty-eight from a boutique PR firm that specialized in corporate image repair—although they called it “Facilitating Corporate Relations”—and started the shelter that same year with her long-term partner, Roger Arvantis. After that, they had become quite private, leaving no Internet footprint that Ginny could trace, not even the usual animal-related local char
ity events you might expect someone in their position to take part in.
That, to Ginny’s mind, was the sign of someone either pathologically shy or with something to hide. A former PR person was probably not shy—Este certainly didn’t hold herself that way. Something didn’t fit, here, and when things didn’t fit, it usually meant there was something very important missing from the picture. But was that something criminal, or even slightly questionable, or had Este just burned out? Ginny admitted that she had an active imagination, but she didn’t see this woman as being a criminal, and there was too much public history for her to be in the witness protection program.
Ginny would have loved to have gotten Tonica’s take, but there was no graceful way to speak to him privately, now. She pulled her tablet out of her bag and, as discreetly as she could, started jotting down notes.
“First off,” Este continued with a nod of acknowledgment at Ginny’s tablet, “I want to reiterate that I did not authorize your hire, and you are not being paid by the shelter itself.”
Probable translation: we are not your employer, you will not be answerable to us, and we will probably ignore and disavow anything you discover if we don’t like it.
“However—”
Ginny amended her translation to include “but the money used to pay you came from my pocket, one way or the other, and therefore I will feel free to interfere.”
“I would appreciate your sharing anything you discover with me, in exchange for the access we allow you. And”—Este paused, then went on—“your discretion in discussing these matters. With anyone.”
Disavow, or derail if needed. “Part of our services includes absolute discretion within the bounds of legal obligation,” Ginny said. Without a written contract, those words were meaningless, but it was the same rule she kept for her concierge business, too, and her reputation was everything. Short of the cops demanding info, warrant in hand, the details of her work were shared only with the client.
Some day, one of their off-the-books clients was going to ask for a written contract. She made a quick note to draw one up, just in case.
L.A. Kornetsky - Gin & Tonic 02 - Fixed Page 5