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

by L. A. Kornetsky

  He waited while she considered the options. He could tell when she’d decided to give in.

  “Yeah, all right. You’re right.” She didn’t sound too grudging about it, either. She must be as tired as she looked, her curls falling out of her clip, the somber clothes making her look oddly washed-out.

  Leaving a message for Nora to get in touch with them when she got off shift, the three of them—Teddy, Ginny, and Georgie—piled into Teddy’s coupe. By now the shar-pei seemed to accept the small backseat as her due, settling on the upholstery like it was her dog bed back home. She stayed there while Ginny ran inside at her apartment to collect her laptop, and Teddy found himself reaching backward between the front seats to rub at the wrinkled skin of her head.

  “What do you think, pup?” he asked. “Did the dead guy take the money? Did our client? Or do you think it just slipped behind a credenza, and the cleaning lady found it?”

  A blue-black tongue swiped at his hand, and he pulled it back, grimacing. “Thanks, dog,” he said, rubbing it dry against his jeans. “Score one for cats.” Penny occasionally groomed him, but her tongue was raspy and dry, not sloppy-wet.

  The passenger-side door opened and Ginny slid back in, her computer bag on her lap and a dark purple bag in her hand that Teddy recognized as holding Georgie’s assorted bowls and toys. “Right. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Mary’s wasn’t officially open yet, but there were lights on behind the blinds covering the plate glass front, and the red-painted door was unlocked.

  “You realize, of course,” Ginny was saying as they walked in, “that people are going to start thinking I work here, I’m in place so often when you guys open. Hi, Stacy.”

  “Hey, Georgie!” Stacy cried out a welcome from behind the bar, only adding, almost as an afterthought, “Hi, Ginny!”

  “And I don’t even get a hello?” Teddy groused, bring up the rear.

  “Hey, boss. Sorry, boss.” Stacy didn’t sound sorry.

  She was here way too early, and from the way she was looking over the clipboard in front of her, she’d come in to get a jump on the afternoon’s shift. If Teddy actually was the boss, he’d be thinking about promoting her to nights, and icing their current off-nights bartender to afternoons.

  But that wasn’t his decision. Anyway, Jon wasn’t going to last long—his behavior last Friday night had been a serious warning sign of someone who thought too highly of himself for teamwork—and then maybe they’d be able to promote her. Or maybe she’d quit, too. If Patrick kept giving them shit…

  “You do work here,” he said to Ginny. “In fact, we’re thinking of putting your name on one of the stools. ‘Here rests the second-most-winning cheeks of trivia night.’ ”

  “Excuse me?” Her eyes widened, even as she slid onto one of those stools. “Whose team beat the pants off yours last time?”

  “Only because I missed that night. We’ll see who’s smirking tomorrow night.”

  She let that drop, and pulled her tech out of her bag—phone, netbook, charger—and started setting up on the bartop.

  Georgie, allowed into the bar rather than left in her usual spot outside, had immediately headed for the wooden banquette against the far wall, settling underneath it with a tired sigh. Teddy guessed getting up at 5 a.m. wasn’t her idea of fun, either.

  “I need to set up,” Ginny was saying. “Password still the same?”

  “If we ever changed it, we’d all be screwed because nobody would remember the new one,” Stacy said cheerfully. “You want your usual?”

  “Please.”

  Ginny’s usual, before sundown, was a ginger ale with lime, in a highball glass. She’d told Teddy once that if she drank soda in a soda glass in a bar, people gave her shit. If they thought it was booze, they left her alone.

  “Where’s Seth?” he asked Stacy, looking around the bar. The deliveries were due soon; he’d have thought the old man would be fussing in back by now.

  “Called in sick,” she said, her voice muffled as she bent below the bar, checking on supplies.

  “What?” Seth hadn’t been sick a day since Teddy had started working at Mary’s. Seth didn’t get sick. He would take it as a personal affront if a cold germ dared land on him, much less take up residence.

  “That’s what he said.” She popped up again, placing a box of swivel sticks on the counter and opening it up. “Sick.”

  Teddy scratched at his shoulder, frowning. “He sound sick?”

  “Not really, no. If it were anyone else I’d say he was slacking off. But, y’know, Seth. So I’m covering for him, since you said Useless wasn’t supposed to sign for anything. But hey, now that you’re here… .”

  “Right. You need anything hauled up from the back?” Normally he wouldn’t dare imply a woman couldn’t handle a job—he had too many sisters and female cousins to be that dumb—but he had at least forty pounds and five inches on the younger woman, and a case of booze was heavy.

  “Nope, I’m good. I don’t know what we’re going to do about the kitchen, though.”

  “Mondays tend to be slow,” he said. “We just tell ’em the kitchen’s closed, or even more limited than usual. I can whip up something later.” So much for his day off. He really should know better than to show up when he wasn’t on the schedule. “Meanwhile, I’m starving. Think Jilly’s is open yet?”

  “It’s not even noon,” Stacy said. “Maybe, I don’t know. Don’t you ever eat breakfast?”

  He decided against telling her that he had been hauled out of bed at 5 a.m. on his day off. “Nope, just coffee this morning.” Callie’s Shack was known for three things: her coffee, her history, and breakfast platters meant to feed the fishermen and lumberjacks who used to work this section of Seattle. They were filling, but greasy as hell, and he wanted his arteries to see forty unimpaired.

  “Jilly’s opens at one,” Ginny said. “But there’s usually someone in there early. If you go and make piteous faces at them, maybe they’ll have sympathy and throw you a burger.” She looked up from her tablet and saw their expressions. “What? I’ve lived here longer than either of you. There are some things I know that you don’t.”

  Tonica chose not to debate that fact, just took their orders and slipped back out the front door, making sure to close it carefully behind him.

  * * *

  Ginny heard the click and looked up, then exchanged a glance with Stacy, who shrugged a shoulder as though to say that she wasn’t responsible for anything the boss did, and went back to counting glassware.

  Not too long ago, Mary’s front door would have been wedged open with a chair when someone was setting up but the bar wasn’t open yet, letting fresh air in—and, Ginny suspected, giving Penny the resident feline an easier entrance than whatever cat-sized route she normally took. But then, a few months ago, during their first case, two well-dressed thugs had taken advantage of that open-door policy to attack her, Tonica, and Stacy. Georgie had saved them—Georgie, and Stacy’s surprising skills at wrestling takedowns—but Ginny hadn’t seen the chair since then, no matter how nice the day. The door was still unlocked, though, when they had come in. Anyone could have come in.

  Tonica had locked it when he went out, just then.

  Ginny thought about getting annoyed at him for being overprotective, then remembered how terrified they’d all been when the two goons showed up with guns. She decided she didn’t mind the extra caution, at all.

  “That door, you really shouldn’t,” she said, and stopped, not sure if she had the right to lecture Stacy at all.

  Stacy sighed. “Yeah, I know. Especially without Seth here. I just… yeah. Okay. Promise, next shift, even if Seth is here. The door stays locked until we open.”

  “Maybe you can get Patrick to get windows that open,” Ginny suggested, logging into the bar’s network. “Instead of a patio, or whatever, just give us some air flow inside, if the door’s going to be closed?”

  “Patrick? Spend money?”

  “To
nica said he had architects in…” Ginny said, but Stacy shook her head.

  “Boss was yanking someone’s chain,” the other woman said. “He’s about making money, not spending it.”

  Ginny couldn’t argue with that, so she let the topic drop and went back to what she had been doing. Pulling up a browser, she entered “Let not the innocent” into her search engines, and waited, sipping at her drink while the machine worked.

  Most of being a good researcher was getting a sense for what “information clutter” you could ignore. A broad search returned too much: you had to winnow it down. She looked at the first batch of returns. Religious quotes, maybe. Historical quotes… . Roman? Probably not, but couldn’t be ignored. Fan fiction? Ginny checked the source, and then shook her head. Highly unlikely. But that still left too many options to check easily, and none of them seemed to scream out as relevant to an animal shelter.

  Maybe it wasn’t relevant. Maybe they had someone channeling Cicero, or the Old Testament. Seattle was definitely not immune to either classicists or religious nuts. Or, for that matter, fan fiction. She needed to check anything that looked viable, to remove the possibility.

  “Let not the innocent be re,” she typed in this time, giving the search the option to fill in the last word, which had been cleaned up on the wall beyond legibility.

  She barely had time to take a sip of her drink before a new batch of returns appeared on her screen. She scanned them, and her eye stopped, four lines down.

  “Let not the innocent be reduced,” she read out loud.

  “What?” Stacy looked up, but Ginny flapped a hand at her, indicating it was nothing. With her other hand, she tapped on that link.

  “Let not the innocent be reduced!” the banner screamed, over a picture of the sweetest, most appealing puppies and kittens Hallmark could ever have concocted, all fluff, tails, and oversized, pleading eyes. She forced her gaze off the banner, and started to read the text.

  “Oh, lovely,” she muttered, wishing she’d gone for something alcoholic. “I just got crazy-bingo.”

  * * *

  Nora got off work at 4 p.m., officially. She showed up at Mary’s at 4:40. She was wearing different clothes than that morning, so Teddy suspected she’d gone home and taken a shower first. He didn’t blame her.

  Ginny had taken Georgie for a walk around the block, so Teddy saw their client come in and look around, clearly searching for Ginny’s blond curls and not finding them. It was before the postwork rush, such as it was on Monday, so there weren’t many people—he had been prepping the kitchen to cover for Seth while Stacy handled the bar. He’d called Clive’s cell phone and left him a message to come in to cover the back after 7 p.m., when things got busier. The kid would welcome the extra money, probably, and he could plate up prepared food without too much trauma. Hopefully.

  For now, everything was under control, so he wiped his hands down on the bar rag and flipped it back over his shoulder, then waved Nora over. She seemed relieved to see him; he figured at this point, any familiar face was a friendly one.

  “It was insane today,” she said, sitting down on the stool and planting her elbows on the bartop. Her usual perk had faded considerably, and her gaze skipped over the taps and went straight to the bottles behind him.

  “Rough day,” he said sympathetically.

  “Yeah. And whatever you said to Roger and Este didn’t help. They were yelling at each other all morning, and then not talking to each other at all, all afternoon. I would not want to be living in that house right now. Give me a vodka sour.”

  Teddy could tell a great deal about someone by what they drank, but he tried not to judge.

  “What were they yelling about?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging, watching him mix her drink. “When they get that mad, they start yelling in Swedish.”

  “Swedish?”

  “I think so. Maybe Danish?” She shrugged. “Lots of folk around here come from there, and Este’s family’s been here since forever. It’s not German.”

  “They both speak it?

  “Roger not so fluently, but yeah. I think they use it like my folks used to use pig Latin, when I was a kid: so people can’t understand private conversations.”

  His parents had done that, too, until his middle sister accidentally let them know that all the kids had learned it in self-defense, years ago. Interesting, though. There had definitely been trouble on that front, but the shouting was an escalation.

  “How is everyone else holding up?” He put her drink down in front of her and waited.

  “Once the shock wore off, everyone was okay. I mean, it’s not like anyone really knew Jimmy, except in passing, maybe.”

  “Because he worked at night.”

  Ginny came in, sans Georgie, and saw them immediately. She came up behind Nora and slipped onto the empty stool next to her, without saying anything.

  “Yeah.” Nora didn’t seem to notice Ginny’s arrival. “I guess Paul, that’s our janitor, might’ve actually said more than ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ to him. But Paul’s working in the kennels, the outside area, and the dog run. He wouldn’t go into the office, except when he had to report—”

  She stopped, and he heard the same automatic jaw-clamp that Margaret had done a few days before. This time he didn’t let it go.

  “When what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nora.” He pitched his voice low, commiserating but stern, and she made an unhappy face, but shook her head, not saying anything.

  “Nora. Does it have anything to do with the graffiti on the clinic wall?” Ginny asked. “Has the shelter been targeted?”

  “I…”

  There were times you waited for someone to spill their guts, and times you had to hook it out of them. “Este told everyone not to talk about it, didn’t she?” Teddy said. “That’s why everyone got so skittish. It wasn’t the money that had her stressed, it was the graffiti? The clinic’s being targeted by protesters?”

  Nora nodded, still looking miserable.

  “Antineutering.” Teddy was still having trouble getting around that idea, despite Ginny’s having shown him the website. “Like it’s some kind of noble thing, to let your pets breed endlessly?”

  “They’re a little crazy,” Nora said, her misery sliding into indignation. “They think it’s cruel or inhumane or something to interfere with the natural breeding cycle. Like animals are still in the wild and need to have a litter of ten just to make sure two or three survive, or…”

  “Yeah, their website was pretty clear on their philosophy,” Ginny said dryly. “ ‘Free the Womb’ was a catchy slogan; I’m surprised the anti-choice protesters haven’t picked it up.”

  Nora continued the litany of offenses, clearly glad of the chance to vent. “They’ve hit us a few times before, but usually it’s pamphlets, sometimes a ‘no spay’ sign sprayed on the wall, once a window got broken and they left their brochures in the waiting room, but this one, last week, was worse. Doc Williams found the graffiti there, it was all over the wall, and some kind of sticky paint, gross. He saw it and called Este… the same morning you met her.”

  “So they tried to wash it off, and pretend it didn’t happen… why?” Ginny tapped her fingers on the counter, a restless move that meant she was thinking hard. She pulled her tablet out of her bag and pulled up a screen—Teddy couldn’t see if it was the Spreadsheet of Doom, or something else.

  “Roger said, first time they came around, that we should ignore them. The cops said they couldn’t do anything, they had the right to be there, so long as they didn’t bother anyone. I guess Este figured that went for the graffiti, too.”

  “Not a bad theory, normally,” Teddy said. “But you guys have been having a run of serious bad luck, and if this all started with the protesters… maybe it’s time to do more than ignore them. It did start with protesters?”

  “Three or four of them, yeah. Handing out pamphlets in front of the shelter, first, trying to convinc
e people coming in to refuse the low-cost neutering. It didn’t work, mostly, but it was… annoying. And then they started papering the clinic with their flyers, and then with the graffiti.”

  “And the cops knew?” Ginny was making notes on her tablet—at least he assumed that was what she was doing; her fingers were moving faster than he could ever have managed.

  “Yes. That’s why they came out so fast, when Jimmy died. Because it might have been something, but it wasn’t. There wasn’t any sign of break-in or struggle, so they’re ruling it an accident, or maybe natural—you were right, they have to wait for the autopsy report before they’ll tell us anything officially, but they pretty much said it was just bad luck he died there, and not at home.” She made a face, as though aware of how callous that sounded.

  “There were never any actual problems with these loons, I mean, other than the annoyance factor?” Teddy asked, while Ginny kept tapping at her tablet.

  Nora shook her head. “No. They’re crazy, I mean stupid-crazy, and annoying, but harmless. Even though Este wants to kick them all into tomorrow for the cost of cleaning up after.”

  “Harmless—you mean they’re not physically threatening anyone, or making them feel threatened?” Ginny asked, not looking up from her tablet. “But crazy-dedicated to their cause?”

  By now Nora had finished her drink and was seriously looking like she was considering another. Teddy pulled a glass of water and set it next to her instead.

  She looked at it and made a face, but took a sip anyway. “Yeah… pretty much.”

  “Dedicated enough to break into the shelter and steal the money expressly earmarked to pay for neutering, and leave everything else alone?” Ginny pressed.

  “Oh. Oh… dear.” Nora clearly hadn’t thought of that. She took another sip of water. “How would they know, though? And how would they get into the inner office? We lock that.”

  An insider told them. Teddy figured Ginny was thinking the same thing.

  “We did have a set of keys go missing, about six–seven months ago. But in the chaos after Roger got sick, we just thought that they’d gotten misplaced.”