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

by L. A. Kornetsky

  “So you’ll teach ’em how it’s done, and feel better,” he said, ignoring her grumbling. If Ginny had her way, everyone would keep perfect records, annotated and properly filed. “Would you rather have me do it? Really?”

  He could see her consider that, and shudder.

  “Fine,” she said, grumbling, but they both knew it was for show. “I’ll ask for the ledgers, and I think I know someone who could help out, faster than I could do the job. You know, if I’d wanted to be an accountant, I would have become an accountant… .”

  “Bitch, bitch,” Teddy said without sympathy. “Eat your sandwich.”

  * * *

  Normally Roger Arvantis wouldn’t set foot in a bar in midday, or even often at all—he was more the glass of wine at home with dinner sort, when he did drink. Normal had gone out of the window months ago. This was the new normal, he supposed. The more you tried to keep things together, the faster they tried to fly apart. He couldn’t do anything about the state of his heart, but he could at least keep the shelter safe. His mouth firmed, and he felt every one of his years in a way he never had before he fell ill. Keeping the shelter safe meant he needed to know what was going on, no matter how much the others tried to protect him.

  “Hey.” The bartender, a young man with orange-dyed hair styled in an oddly old-fashioned-looking cut, paused in front of him and raised a not-orange eyebrow. “What can I get ya?”

  Roger looked around, then looked up at the bottle display behind the bartender, and then back to the beer taps. “Hot Tiger.” It was more of a question than he’d wanted, showing his unfamiliarity with beer, and bars, and this entire scenario.

  “Nice choice.” The bartender pulled the pint and passed him the glass. “Five dollars.”

  “You the usual bartender?” Roger asked, trying to be casual. “I thought there was another guy… ?”

  Orange-hair nodded. “That’d be Teddy. He’s working tonight’s shift.”

  “Ah. Interesting guy, Teddy.”

  “I guess so, yeah. He’s a good guy.” The bartender shrugged then, like Teddy’s being good or bad didn’t make much difference, and moved down the bar to serve someone else.

  Roger let him go, preferring to study things without someone watching him.

  Interesting guy, indeed. Good guy… maybe. And maybe not.

  When Roger had asked Margaret about their visitor earlier this morning, she’d said that he was a bartender at one of the local places, that the place he worked, Mary’s, was considered the “quiet” bar in town. She had said it with a hint of distaste—clearly she’d been here and not been impressed—but Roger liked quiet. He liked discretion, and style, too, and Mary’s seemed to move that way: no music blasting, the tables placed far enough away that people could have conversations, but not bolted to the ground, so they could be moved around to accommodate larger groups.

  He had also noted the watering station set up outside for dogs: too close to the bike rack for his preference, but there was a bowl of water, clean and fresh, and a rubber mat, similar to the ones he saw women carrying to and from the gym, set down on the concrete to provide a small comfort zone. It spoke of people who thought of their four-legged companions, and welcomed them here.

  All well and good, but why was their bartender poking around the shelter? What was he hoping to find? Margaret and Nora might buy the “possible donor” bullshit they were passing around, but he didn’t. That wasn’t how donors worked. They came in themselves, looking to get their egos patted in exchange for emptying their wallets. They certainly didn’t send bartenders in to do the job for them. Este knew that better than anyone. So what was really going on?

  Roger might not have his finger in the day-to-day running of the office anymore, but being out of the office didn’t mean he was out of the picture, damn it. This was his baby, too, and he had things to protect as well.

  He sipped his beer, thoughtful, and then, leaving a fiver and a single on the counter, headed back to the office. He’d been away too long already, and there was clearly a lot to do.

  9

  The insistent buzz that woke Ginny up the next morning wasn’t her alarm, nor was it the equally insistent, if much quieter, sensation of being stared at by a dog who rather desperately wanted to go for her morning walk.

  “ ’Lo?” Her voice was scratchy, and her brain not quite functional, but when the phone rang at five in the morning, you answered it, and assumed the worst.

  But it wasn’t her mother or stepfather, or anyone identifying themselves as the police, so Ginny exhaled in relief. That relief was short-lived, though.

  “Nora, slow down. Wait a minute.” She sat up, trying to untangle what the girl was saying. “What happened? Who died?”

  The name meant nothing to her—it hadn’t been on the list of volunteers Este had given them—but clearly it was someone connected to the shelter, since they had apparently been killed there and Nora was clearly upset. Although having someone not to do with the shelter killed there could be upsetting, too.

  “All right, just hang on.” She sat up in bed and tried to get her brain working. “Are you at the shelter?”

  Nora was; as de facto office manager she was the official contact person in case of emergencies or disasters, and so the police had called her first. She’d gone down immediately, taken one look, and, apparently, called Ginny.

  Ginny was quite sure that this hadn’t been in the job description. But what was she going to do, hang up on the poor girl and go back to sleep? Not possible.

  “The police are there? All right, just stay calm, and we’ll meet you in an hour. It’s okay, Nora. Let the cops handle it. All you have to do is be there if they have any questions. Yes, yes, you should answer the questions.”

  If she’d told Nora to do anything else, Tonica would’ve had her head, and justifiably so. Avoiding official notice did not include lying to the cops, even by the sin of omission. “If anything else happens, call me.”

  She hung up the phone and, after hauling herself out of bed, texted Tonica on her way to the kitchen. There was urgency, but no rush: whoever it was was already dead, the cops were going to do their thing, which would probably take a while—and she thought better after caffeine got in her system.

  What Ginny really wanted was another hour of sleep, and then a hot shower, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. A cup of strong black Kona was going to have to suffice.

  In the living room, Georgie raised her head as though to ask why her human was up so early, and did that mean it was time for a walk?

  “Go back to sleep, baby,” she told the dog. “Back to sleep.”

  With a low whine, Georgie lowered her head back to her paws, but rather than going back to sleep, she watched her human with unblinking eyes.

  After starting the coffee and throwing an English muffin into the toaster, Ginny went back into the bedroom to get dressed. She stared into her closet and ran her hand through her hair. “And here’s a question for the ages. What the hell do you wear to a dead body?”

  The answer ended up being a pair of black jeans, a gray cotton sweater, and a pinstripe gray jacket from her office-wear days, over a pair of black walking shoes. Professional, somber, but not trying too hard to look either. She hoped.

  By the time she’d buttered the English muffin and poured her coffee, her phone had beeped with a response from Tonica. Unlike previous visits, he would meet her there. Fair enough. She’d be there, even walking, by the time he got himself into his car.

  Ginny cleaned up the breakfast debris, deciding against another cup of coffee. She needed to be awake, not jittery with caffeine and lack of sleep. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and put on enough makeup that the black and gray of her outfit didn’t make her look like a blond corpse, and went back out into the main room to find Georgie sitting there, tattered pink leash in her mouth, eyes expectant, as though to say “don’t you even think about going anywhere without me.”

  “Oh, baby, I don’t
think that’s a good idea… .”

  But neither was leaving Georgie here without her morning walk. That was bad dog ownership, and Ginny had spent the past year learning how to be a good dog owner. Big brown eyes stared at her, and Ginny relented.

  “Oh hell, it’s not like the shelter blinked when we brought you with us last time, right? And God knows when I’ll get back, and you do need to be walked.” The shar-pei thumped her tail once as though in agreement.

  “Okay, girl, let’s go.” She shoved a few treats and a poo-bag in her pocket, slipped her tablet and wallet into a bag, and snapped the leash to Georgie’s collar.

  It was cool outside, predawn, but not actively cold. By the time they made it all the way downtown, Ginny had warmed up and woken up, while Georgie was practically prancing in excitement at walking somewhere other than their usual route.

  Now that her brain was less sleep-fuzzed, Ginny was wondering why the hell she had agreed to come down. Yes, Nora was in a panic, and Ginny knew that panic brought out her not-so-deep-seated need to fix all things. But they had been hired to investigate missing money, not dead bodies. Unless the guy had died with his hand in the till…

  The neighborhood the shelter was in was usually quiet, especially at this hour. But today there was a crowd outside the shelter, mostly people who had been out jogging or walking their dogs, or coming off shift and having breakfast-for-dinner at the local diner, and who couldn’t resist the siren call of a cop car and ambulance. Ginny assumed the ambulance, anyway: by the time she got there, it was long gone. But the uniformed cops remained, as did yellow tape strung up in the parking lot. She’d always thought was just a TV cop show conceit, but apparently not.

  “Ginny!” Nora, on the other side of the official line, wrapped in a long coat, her unbraided hair a tousled mess, waved her hand. The man who had been talking to her, not a uniform, but clearly Official in some capacity, didn’t look thrilled at the interruption. Ginny waved back but stayed where she was, indicating via hand gestures that she’d be there when the cops were done with their questions.

  As Tonica often reminded her, they had no official status, and they’d learned the hard way that once a dead body showed up, you were either a cop, a suspect, or a problem.

  Problems had a way of becoming suspects. Better to wait.

  In the meantime, Georgie was straining at the leash, as though she had scented old friends inside the building. Or maybe she just wanted to be where all the excitement was happening. Ginny pulled her away, distracting her with the presence of a friendly poodle-mix who wanted to exchange sniffs.

  “What happened? Who died?” Tonica came up along the sidewalk, with a takeout coffee in his hand. He scanned the front of the clinic, and she could see his brain ticking away the number of cop cars—two—and cops—three uniforms visible plus the guy who was probably a detective, still talking with Nora. There was also a single news crew; a woman holding the camera and an Asian man in front of it, talking earnestly.

  “Nothing high-profile,” he said, making a quick assessment. “So we’ve got a dead body, but not anyone important, or otherwise bludgeoned to death with a stray cat.”

  “Teddy. That’s sick.”

  “What, the dead body, or death by cat? Okay, both, I get it. Hey, Georgie.” He bent down to scratch behind her ears. “So who died?” he asked Ginny. “Your text was short on detail.”

  He was wound up this morning, bouncing on his feet, and taking almost furtive sips of his coffee, exactly the state she’d tried to avoid. He looked like an oddly healthy junkie, sneaking his fix.

  “How much sleep did you get last night?” she asked him.

  “Considering I got woken up at five-fucking-ayem by a text telling me we had a dead body?” he asked, still petting Georgie, and not looking at her. “Nowhere near enough. Who died?”

  Ginny shook her head, deciding to let him deal with his own caffeine jitters. “The bookkeeper.”

  “The who?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering. I didn’t even know they had a bookkeeper. He wasn’t on any of the employee or volunteer lists we got, and Nora sure as hell didn’t mention another person. I guess I would have found out when I asked for the ledgers, huh? Oh, sorry about that, there’s someone else who has access to the inner office, and oh yeah, all of our money, whoops!”

  * * *

  Teddy heard that tone come into Ginny’s voice, and despite the hour and the news, his mood brightened. There was the acerbic diva he’d first gotten to know, not the thoughtful, softer version he’d been seeing recently. He was way more comfortable with Mallard in this mood. “I think Este mentioned a bookkeeper, when we first met her, but no mention of him on the employee lists, so I just…” He shrugged. “So, what are we doing here, anyway? If this has anything to do with the event we were looking into, the cops are going to be all over it—and they’re going to want us out of it.”

  She was too smart not to have thought of it herself, but she bristled anyway, her cool exterior cracking a little with indignation. “You want us to just hand over our information to them and walk away?”

  “Yep.” He didn’t think they were going to, though. Just a hunch.

  “You know people, Tonica,” she said. “What do you think the odds are that anyone in there has mentioned the missing money to the cops?”

  He thought about what he’d seen, what he’d heard, and what he’d managed to suss out. “Slim to none,” he told her.

  “That’s what I thought, too. They’re going to try to keep it some little thing, ignore it as much as they can, even now, thinking that somehow they’re protecting the shelter. And hey, I can see the logic. Far more likely this was an actual break-in gone wrong, and whoops, there’s this guy there in the middle of the night, and a robber becomes a murderer-by-accident… and not our problem.”

  “You know, though, a bookkeeper?” Teddy said thoughtfully. “When we’re looking into missing funds? The odds of it not being related are—”

  “Slim to none,” she repeated. “Yeah. And that makes it our problem. Damn it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Ginny stared at the small circus in front of them, watching as the news crew finished up and rolled out, and the rubberneckers slowly drifted away. “Damned if I know. Play it by ear? Maybe we’re wrong, and they’re spilling their guts to the cops right now, telling them everything.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” He was about as convinced of that as she was, which was to say, not at all.

  Eventually, bored with watching the front door, they wandered over to the local café and grabbed some coffee, coming back in time to see the last squad car pull away. There were still people wandering round looking official, but the bulk of the investigation seemed to have followed the body off-site.

  The moment she saw them, Nora rushed over to where Ginny and Teddy were standing. Georgie had settled comfortably at Ginny’s feet, apparently no longer interested in the shelter or the crowds.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Nora said, “I didn’t think, they kept asking us questions, and I didn’t know what to tell them. Come on, Este’s inside; they insisted we all be kept separate while we were talking, although I don’t know why, none of us were even here!”

  She kept talking, gesturing madly, as the three of them followed her through the double doors and into the shelter’s lobby. Este was there, still talking to an older man in uniform, although he didn’t seem to be interrogating her. Este looked her age, having obviously thrown on her sweatshirt and jeans in even more of a rush than Ginny, and not bothering with makeup. Her silvered hair showed definite signs of bedhead, and her face was lined, but she managed to smile when she saw them come in.

  The cop turned, just enough to see who she was looking at, and his face deepened its scowl. “And who the hell is this?”

  Este stood, graceful even then, and patted the cop on the shoulder as though he were an old friend. “Concerned members of the shelter family,” she said. “Thank you both for
coming down. I assume Nora called you?”

  Teddy heard the faint note of disapproval in that question, even if Nora—and, thankfully, the cop—didn’t. Or maybe he was projecting.

  “Yes. Terrible…” Ginny’s voice was professionally smooth, like she’d been a funeral home worker in another life. For all he knew, she had. “For all the good the shelter does, for something like this to happen… We just wanted to come and offer our aid, if there was anything you needed.”

  “If we’re done, here?” Este said to the cop, who made a noise like Georgie muttering and got up.

  “Yeah, we’re done. You all stay in town, until we tell you that you can go anywhere. And don’t touch anything in the office.”

  He left, and Este turned to them, her eyes wide. “I didn’t know they really said that.”

  Her voice was a little too close to hysteria for Teddy’s comfort. “They do. And they mean it. But you’d be here anyway, right?”

  She focused on that, nodded. “They said it was all right to keep the shelter running; they’ve moved the… the body, and taken photographs and so much else, but… oh, poor Jimmy, what a terrible way to die.”

  “What happened?” Ginny demanded. “And—” Teddy gave her a quick glare; he wasn’t sure if she caught it, but she did stop herself from demanding to know why Jimmy hadn’t been on the list she’d been given, to check out backgrounds and alibis. “What happened?”

  “The police say that he must have had a heart attack, or maybe a stoke. He just fell over. He was working in the office, and he was leaning back and the chair collapsed under him… .”

  “So not murder?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that!” Este looked somewhere between horrified, as though she’d never thought of murder, and relieved that she could quash that idea immediately. Teddy couldn’t blame her for either reaction.

  Nora shook her head, looking slightly embarrassed now. “No, oh God no. I overreacted when the police called me. I was just so flustered, and I thought, well, you two are investigators, so… But no, of course it’s not murder. But how horrible, to think that he might have been there for God knows how long, maybe needing help, and—”