L.A. Kornetsky - Gin & Tonic 02 - Fixed

by L. A. Kornetsky

  Then again, as Ginny would probably remind him, they had no reason to believe she wasn’t a thief, either.

  The receptionist had them each sign the copy of their license, back and front, and then handed the cards back to them. “All set!”

  Nora took Ginny’s arm and led her off to the left, probably assuming that Teddy would follow, without thanking the receptionist or—Teddy noticed after the fact—ever introducing them. “Come on, let me show you the kennels. It’s early yet, well before our normal adoption hours, so you get to see them when they’re all cute and sleepy! It’s okay, Georgie can stay here, she looks too comfortable to disturb, and it’s not a good idea to bring other dogs into the kennel anyway, even if she’s been there before.”

  Teddy was still putting his license back into his wallet and heard a faint sniff from behind him, as though the receptionist had her own ideas about what Nora had said but wasn’t going to say them out loud. Interesting.

  Georgie lifted her head slightly to see where her human was going, but when Ginny made a palm-down gesture with her hand that apparently reassured her, she went back to contemplating the carpet, her nose resting on her paws. The other dog let out a woof, and the receptionist reached into a jar on her desk and tossed them each a small biscuit, landing them a few inches away from their noses. Teddy was impressed with her accuracy.

  “Tonica, come on!” Ginny was standing in the now-open doorway, looking back at him impatiently. He left Georgie to her snack and hurried to join them.

  He wasn’t sure what he had expected, when he passed through the door—a metal-core fire door, from the weight of it—and heard it snick shut behind him. Something like a pet shop, maybe, with cages and shelves. Instead they were in a small foyer, this one much smaller than the main lobby, with two hallways leading off in parallel, he assumed running the remaining length of the building. One had DOGS painted above the doorway in blue, the other CATS in green.

  “No mingling of the species?” he asked, half joking.

  “Oh, no, not every animal is comfortable with the other,” Nora said, taking him seriously. “We try to keep them isolated in their sleeping areas, for maximum comfort and minimum stress. The socialization rooms give them enough time to interact, in a neutral area.” It was clearly a rehearsed speech, and she presented it with the same serious mien she had used with her boss. He wondered briefly which one was real: the flustered hesitant young woman, or the professionally poised one. Both, probably.

  A middle-aged woman came out from the CATS door and stopped, clearly surprised to see anyone else there.

  “Beth, hi. This is Ginny, and Teddy. They’re here to look at the facilities. Can you show them around? I need to get back to the paperwork.” And, Teddy suspected, smooth things over with her boss.

  “Um, sure.” Beth didn’t look all that thrilled to be handed two strangers, suddenly, but when Nora waved a chirpy “bye-bye” and left, she took them in hand with reasonable grace.

  “You’re early. Some of the animals aren’t at their best first thing, but if you give them a little time, you also get to see them at their cutest, falling over themselves to get food and pettings.” She paused. “Um, cats or dog?”

  “Cats,” Ginny said, decisively.

  The volunteer looked at Teddy, who shrugged. “She’s the boss,” he said.

  “Cats it is, then. We currently have eighteen cats with us, eight older, and seven kittens, all weaned and litter trained.” She smiled faintly. “Well, mostly litter trained. Rather than the traditional kennels, we keep them in spaces that run vertically so they have room to climb. It uses slightly more space than a traditional cage, but we find the animals are less stressed as a result.”

  Teddy nodded thoughtfully. He’d thought Penny used the liquor cabinets simply because that’s where her bolthole led to, but it made sense, if cats were natural climbers. Although he’d thought they got stuck in trees…

  They went under the CATS sign, into a long hallway with cubbies on either side, each one with a glass front, running floor to ceiling, a normal-sized glass door set into the front. They were vertical, as advertised, and also larger than he’d expected, for cats.

  “Nice digs,” he said, impressed.

  “As I was saying, cats need room to move around in, and having a clawing post in each kennel, as you can see, gives them a place they can scent-mark for their own,” Beth said. “The kittens are bunked together by litter, with their mother if she’s available, and when we have older cats who get along we sometimes bunk them together, but otherwise each cat has its own space.

  “Here, just walk up and down and see if anyone responds to you. I just fed them, though, so they’re going to be a little distracted.”

  Ginny nodded, and started browsing, looking into each cage, clearly taking her time. She cast a glance over one shoulder, looking at Teddy pointedly and raising her narrow blond eyebrows.

  Right. That was his cue.

  “So, you guys take care of the animals, huh?” Without a bar to lean across, the way he normally would, Teddy shoved his hands into his pockets and tilted his head, looking more at her chin than her face. Indirect but interested, and not even remotely threatening. “Feeding and cleaning and all that. Must be hard work.”

  “Oh, it is. But it’s also the best job in the world. Okay, no, the best job in the world would pay a lot better.” Beth wrinkled her nose and smiled, less at him than the thought of her job. “But this makes me feel good about the time I spend; getting the animals socialized, if they were feral or abandoned, and then finding them new homes.”

  Two smiles so far, neither of them as professional or perky as Nora’s or the receptionist’s: real smiles, not designed to sell. She seemed like an ordinary, friendly woman in her early to mid forties, maybe. But any man—or woman—could smile and smile and still be a thief, he reminded himself.

  “And this is a good place to work?” he asked. “Places staffed with volunteers, sometimes you get more friction than you do at a normal workplace… .”

  “Oh, we have our share of personalities,” Beth said. “But everyone’s here because we care about the animals. So that gives us something to bond over. Even the guy who mops out the kennels, he’s taken home two of our puppies, litter mates, because he liked the way they kept him company at night.”

  “Nice. Still, it must be tough. In this economy, with budget cuts, to keep things going and still be cheerful?”

  That was a little blunter than he’d wanted to be, but the woman seemed to be the say-what-you-mean sort.

  “Money, ugh.” She made a face. “Roger handles that side of it, or did before he got sick. Now Nora’s handling all the grant requests and things like that. I don’t envy her that. Oh, hey, you want to see Peaches?”

  Teddy blinked, and then realized that she was talking to Ginny now. His partner had stopped in front of one cage, her fingers tangled in the mesh gate.

  “I… yeah,” Ginny said, with a single nod of her head.

  “All righty then.” Beth pulled the key fob at her belt and used the single small key at the end of the cord to unlock the gate, then opened it slowly. “Oh, there’s a sanitizer there, just rub it into your hands first, okay?”

  Ginny located the sanitizer mounted on the wall and did so, while the volunteer reached into the cage. “Hey, precious. You want to come out and meet someone?”

  Apparently it did, or didn’t express an opinion either way, because she reached in and pulled out a handful of orange fuzz.

  “Oh my God, so cute!” Ginny said, her hands clasped almost in prayer in front of her mouth. “Can I hold him?”

  “Her, and of course.” Beth deposited the orange fuzz into Ginny’s now-cupped hands, and the fuzz stretched, revealing four legs and a very long tail. The head lifted and swiveled, as though to ask what the hell this new location was all about.

  Despite himself, Teddy grinned. Mistress Penny was such a compact and graceful thing, he had trouble imagining her as a fuzzball
like this one.

  “Is it—she—fixed?” The grant that had gone missing was for neutering, so he watched the volunteer to see if she reacted oddly to the question, or showed any signs of surprise or guilt.

  “Peaches is too young yet,” she said, her pleased smile not shifting. No nervous twitch of surprise or worry, no body language tells at all. “If she’s adopted before time, we give them a certificate to have it done here, or they can go to their own vet, but we follow up on them to make sure it’s done. That’s one of the requirements for adopting here. Nora and Roger take population control seriously—there shouldn’t be any unwanted animals.”

  “Pity that more people don’t follow those guidelines themselves,” he said.

  “Hah, that’s funny. Yeah.”

  He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but just smiled, watching Ginny cuddle and coo at the kitten. She looked up and saw him watching, and held the bundle of fuzz out to him.

  “What? No, I—”

  She wasn’t taking no for an answer, though, stepping forward and practically forcing the thing into his hands. What was he supposed to do, drop it?

  “Aw, she likes you,” Beth said, as Peaches stretched out in his larger hands and then reached one paw up to pat at his face. Her paws were tiny, the claws tinier still, but he felt them against his skin nonetheless. Even a tiny kitten was still armed.

  “Her fur’s so long,” Ginny marveled.

  “Yeah, she’s probably got some Maine coon or Ragdoll in her, the way she’s such a fuzzbutt. She’s also going to be big when she grows up, based on her tail. But larger cats aren’t any more trouble than small ones—in fact, they tend to be really mellow, and sleep a lot.”

  The volunteer had gone into sales pitch mode, although she was keeping it low-key.

  “Oh, no, I’m…” He started to say again that he was just there for moral support, and then the fuzz patted at his nose again, and he looked down into tiny little green eyes. And the damn thing yawned, showing a pink and black gullet and tiny white teeth, and he wondered how much upkeep a kitten could actually be, after all.

  Then reality slapped him and he shook his head. “Oh, no, no can do. Penny would kill me.”

  “Penny?” The volunteer looked puzzled; clearly she had thought the two of them were a couple.

  “His cat,” Ginny said.

  “She’s not my cat,” he said, out of habit.

  She was laughing at him, even though her face was serene. “Maybe not, Tonica, but you’re her person.”

  “Older cats are sometimes tetchy about kittens,” the other woman said, nodding, and for an instant he thought she’d accepted defeat. “But if you brought her home and it didn’t work out, we’d always take her back. We’d rather do that than leave a pet in a bad situation.”

  “Another one of Este’s philosophies?” he asked, handing the cat back before he did something everyone would regret.

  Beth put the kitten back in her cage and closed the door carefully, making sure it locked. “She’s just great that way. Roger’s a good guy and all, I mean, but Este totally understands that it’s about what’s good for the animals. That’s why we’re here.”

  They finally managed to escape—without a kitten, much to Ginny’s disappointment—and checked out the dog kennel without being suckered into taking anyone out for a test pet. From there Beth took them out to a paved-over area where the dogs were let out to run twice a day. There was a water trough along one end and a plastic bin filled with toys clearly made for throwing and retrieving. An older man was rinsing the toys down with a hose when they came out, and he gave them a curious look. Beth gave him a friendly wave but didn’t introduce them.

  And then they were back in the lobby, and Beth pointed across to another door exactly the same as the one they’d come through. “That’s the clinic. It’s off-limits to the volunteers, though, so you’ll have to be shown around either by Este or Alice. She’s our vet technician.”

  “Off-limits?” Ginny asked, curious.

  “Yeah—insurance regs, I guess. Because they’ve got surgical stuff in there. We sometimes help bring animals in, but never alone, and the clinic doesn’t open until later.”

  Ginny took out her tablet and made a note, which made Beth look nervous, as though she’d said something wrong.

  “Thanks,” Teddy said, drawing Beth’s attention back to him. “You were a huge help, and it’s great to see this place through the eyes of someone who really cares about it.”

  “Yeah, you were a lot of help,” Ginny added, giving the volunteer her best deal-closing smile, and then Georgie realized they had returned, and bounded over to welcome them back. The other dog was nowhere to be seen.

  * * *

  “So, what do you think?” Ginny asked as they stood in the parking lot.

  “About the facility? Or the people?”

  “The people.” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. “We’ve got Este, Beth, and Nora, and Stephen-the-other-volunteer who must’ve been the guy in the dog run, and Margaret—she’s the receptionist,” she said, when he gave her an odd look. “Their names were all in the file that you didn’t want to see.” She counted them off on the fingers of one hand. “That covers the five people who work there on a regular basis, and they’ve all got access.”

  “You’re not including the guy who mops out the kennels,” Tonica pointed out. “The one who adopted the dogs. He’d have access to the office, too.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t get a chance to observe him, so we’ve got nothing to go on.”

  Tonica stared at his car like it was going to give him an answer. Ginny waited. If anyone was watching them, they might look like they were discussing the animals they’d just met. Georgie sniffed at the ground and pulled gently at her leash, trying to get at a scent just outside her reach. Ginny pulled her back and looked at her watch: not even noon yet. There was still plenty of time to get home and do some work before she had to head out again. She was already mentally running through the things she had to do, and adding them to the list on her tablet.

  And she really should call her mother again, find out how long her aunt and uncle were going to be in town, and start putting together that list… .

  “I think they all really believe in what they’re doing here,” Tonica said, finally. “But that doesn’t mean one of them couldn’t be a thief.”

  “Other than Nora, who hired us to find the thief,” Ginny pointed out, logically.

  “Unless she did it as a cover, thinking we were incompetent, or that she could misdirect us.”

  “Do you really think that?” Ginny was horrified—not that Nora might do that, but that anyone might think she was incompetent.

  Tonica frowned. “No. Not really. I don’t think she’s smart enough to plan that, honestly.”

  “Ouch!” But she couldn’t disagree. Nora seemed sweet, and good at her job, but easily flustered and probably not plotting-things-out smart, no. “Okay, so I’m going to do a little background work on the employee files,” Ginny said, and held up the too-thin folder Este had given her, “and see if anything shakes loose. If nothing else, I’ll have an idea of how much they’re earning. How ’bout you?”

  “I have to get to work,” he said. “If Patrick brings up one more change he wants to implement, or…” He shook his head, clearly exasperated just thinking about the possibilities. “I’ll see if anyone else who comes to Mary’s has adopted from here. Maybe they’ll have heard something, or know one of the players.”

  “Oh.” She was annoyed that he’d been the one to mention that. “I should have thought of that.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not entirely perfect, Ms. Mallard.” He looked smug, and she couldn’t blame him.

  “If Claire comes in, I think she got a cat here, and oh, whatshisname, the one who owns Jezebel.” She might not have thought of it, but she could do it better.

  “Who?”

  “The tiny dog that looks like a greyhound assaulted a mop.”
<
br />   “Oh, you mean Simeon.”

  “Yeah, him. I think Jezebel came from here, too. He mentioned something about it when I got Georgie.”

  Tonica shook his head again. “You realize that you know the dog’s name before you know the person?”

  “That happens all the time,” she said, laughing a little. “It’s weird, but… yeah. It sort of freaked me out at first, too. People know me as Georgie’s mom before I’m Ginny.”

  “I’d noticed that. Pet owners. You’re all weird.”

  “Yeah, well, I think that’s more specific to dog owners, so you’re safe.”

  “She’s not my cat.”

  He raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to respond, but she just smiled smugly at him. “If you say so. I’m going to walk home—Georgie could use the exercise and honestly, so could I.”

  Tonica was too female-savvy to get caught by that, as expected. “Enjoy the walk. Stop by later and we can exchange notes.”

  “Yeah, it’ll have to be tomorrow; I’ve got dinner plans.” Tonica worked night shifts on the weekend, and there was no reason to haul him out of bed early again just because she was a morning person. “I’ll call you around noon tomorrow. We can reconnoiter. Sound good?”

  He grunted, checking something on his phone. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

  She flicked Georgie’s leash to get the shar-pei’s attention, and got her moving before Tonica could ask what her dinner plans were.

  Not that she thought he would be horribly invasive, or crack jokes at her expense—well, he might do the latter, but she could handle that. It was more the idea of him knowing about her personal life that felt weird. They worked together, but they weren’t friends. Not that kind of friends, anyway. Max, she’d spill her guts to when she saw him next: her old friend was a total gossip, and could be counted on for advice or support as needed. Tonica was a more typical guy; he would probably grunt, or shrug, and change the subject.