A sudden shout from the front of the bar distracted her from that thought. Tonica, sounding seriously annoyed. “Jesus, dog!”
“Oops.” Ginny put the book back on the shelf where Tonica had stashed it, and went out to rescue poor Georgie.
“Damned mutt.” Teddy suspected his grumbling was totally ruined by the fact that Georgie was currently licking the remains of a dog treat from his palm, her eyes half closed in canine contentment.
Ginny took offense, exactly the way he knew she would. “She’s not a mutt. She’s a shar-pei.”
He wiped his hand on his jeans, and pushed the dog away gently with his knee when she leaned in as though to ask for more. “Yeah, shar-pei and a dash of Jumped the Fence.” The usual stocky body, plush, fawn-colored coat, and the loose-fitting skin that he found so odd were hallmarks of the breed, offset in Georgie’s case by one ear that, rather than flopping over at the tip, was oversized and erect, and a nose that was longer than breed standard. Not that he would ever admit to anyone that he’d browsed the AKC website the week he’d first encountered Georgie, so Ginny wouldn’t be able to put anything over on him.
Ginny reached down and petted the dog on her backside. “You ignore Uncle Teddy. He’s just being grumpy because you startled him.”
“The damn dog almost got her fool neck broken, sleeping in the middle of the floor like that. At least Penny knows how to get out of the way of a man carrying a box.”
“Bitch bitch bitch.” Ginny was sitting at the bar, swinging back and forth on the stool like an oversized kid. Georgie, realizing that one apology-cookie was all she was going to get, gave his hand one last swipe with her broad tongue and went to settle in at her mistress’s feet. Teddy knew he should tell the dog to get out, but he figured that so long as Seth wasn’t saying anything, she could stay.
Truthfully, he wasn’t as comfortable as Ginny in leaving Georgie tied outside. He didn’t think anyone would dash off with her—she was a solid forty pounds, by the look of her, and not likely to go willingly—but you heard stuff about puppy mills and laboratories that made a decent person twitch.
He filled one of the shallow bowls they used for nuts with water and bent down to slide it across the floor to within Georgie’s reach. She raised her head enough to sniff at it, then put her head back down.
“Stay put,” he told her, although Ginny had already given the command to stay. She blinked at him as though to say “well, of course,” and then closed her eyes and did a solid impression of a sleeping dog.
He watched her for a minute, then shook his head and went back behind the bar, doing a quick check to make sure that the dishwasher had finished washing. It had; he turned to see if the glassware was fully stocked. It wasn’t. He did quick calculations in his head; they must’ve had breakage during the week they hadn’t accounted for.
“Where did Penny disappear to, anyway?” Ginny asked.
Teddy didn’t even bother to look around. “God knows. I keep telling you people, she’s not a pet, she doesn’t come when called, or stay when she’s bored.”
“Uh-huh.” Ginny didn’t sound convinced, but it was the truth. The tabby was her own cat; she hung around Mary’s because she chose to, and showed up when she damn well felt like it.
He took a look at the speed rail in front of him, mentally estimating what was left in each bottle, tucked into its own niche. “Seth!”
“What?” The old man was busy hauling out the contents of the case he’d brought out, putting replacement bottles behind nearly empty ones on the shelf at the other end of the bar.
“When you get a chance, bring up some more vodka.”
The old man muttered something that Teddy took for agreement, and kept unloading the bottles. Teddy picked up his dishrag and started polishing the freshly washed glasses before putting them away. Their dishwasher was a powerful beast that barely left a spot, but it was a bartendery thing to do, and looked good—and it gave him time to think.
“So, what’s in the files?” He could read them for himself, he supposed, but Ginny had always struck him as more the “announce” sort.
“Nothing. Of the ‘I found a lot but not a damn bit of it’s useful’ sort.”
She had given him the printouts, but brought up the digital files on her tablet-thingy rather than take them back. It was smaller than her laptop and didn’t have a keyboard, but was larger than the eBook reader Teddy had gotten for Christmas last year. Teddy admitted he didn’t know much about tech, or have any real use for it, but the thing was pretty.
“I went over the records for the company, and they’re practically spot-polished clean,” she told him. “Ditto our missing man. Assuming that his life prior to this year—education, medical history, his past girlfriends, et cetera—has no relevance, the only things I can confirm are that he founded the company; he has no outstanding loans, liens, warrants, or debts; he is DubJay’s uncle; he is currently and previously single, and to all appearances straight; he is in decent medical condition for his age, and that as of ten a.m. Wednesday he seems to have disappeared.”
She paused for breath.
“Seems to have disappeared?” Teddy finished one glass and put it on the rack, and reached for another.
“I check everything. Always assume the client’s lying, right?”
“Woman, you watch too many late-night 1940s detective movies. Not everyone’s a dirty lying rat.”
Ginny opened her eyes very wide. “You think everyone tells you God’s honest truth?”
“Actually, they usually do.” He didn’t think it was his face or manner that made people so effusive or honest—it was the whole bartender mythos. Like a priest, only you could drink his communion wine and not go to hell.
“Seriously?” Ginny looked way too impressed by that. “Okay, you’re definitely handling any actual questioning of people we have to do. Anyway, there’s no missing persons report on Uncle Joe, but he hasn’t been seen, heard from, or appeared on the financial radar since then, so for various levels of missing we can assume that yeah, he is indeed missing.
“Anyway, my background checks tell me that Uncle Joe was squeaky clean, on paper—not even an unpaid parking ticket. Far as I can tell, he lived his entire life on record—he uses his credit card to buy everything, down to a glass of wine at the bar!” She shook her head, her curls moving as though to emphasize her disbelief.
“And he hasn’t used his credit cards once, since he went missing?”
“Not once. Not his ATM card, either, which would suggest that he had a ready stash of cash on hand. If so, he’s either been planning this for a while, or someone else gave him cash, because his last withdrawal was on Monday, for two hundred dollars. Seattle’s not exactly cheap, and he’s a little too old to be staying in hostels, or hard-flooring it somewhere, so that two hundred’s not going to last him long. It’s sure as hell not enough to get far out of town, not unless he takes the bus, and I don’t know, I just can’t see this guy taking Greyhound, can you?”
She paused long enough to take a breath, and slid a printout photo across the bar. He put down the glass he was holding and pulled the photo closer.
The man looking directly into the camera lens was in his late sixties, probably, so it was a recent photo. A full head of hair gone full silver, the skin around his mouth and eyes heavily wrinkled, despite decent texture around the neck and nose—healthy but not vain, Teddy decided, studying the picture. In good shape, probably used the gym just enough to keep the excess weight off, but not really into the whole fitness thing.
He said as much to Ginny.
“Yeah. There’s a gym in his building. No idea how much he uses it, but he doesn’t have any health club memberships or recent spa retreats or anything like that.”
Teddy didn’t want to say it, but someone had to. “Have you considered the possibility that he’s dead?”
Ginny, being Ginny, had already gone there. “Called the morgue. No record of him, or anyone matching his description. A
nd you know what? They’ll tell you pretty much anything, if you ask them politely.”
“That’s good to know. I guess. Wait, if you’re tracking his credit cards . . . how deep into his records did you go? No, never mind, don’t tell me. If it’s not legal I don’t want to know.”
“It’s all legal.” Ginny sounded offended. “Well, it wasn’t illegal. I had permission to access the information.”
“Not his permission, though.”
Ginny scrunched up her face like a little kid presented with broccoli. “Details. DubJay is next of kin, I assumed he also has power of attorney. Makes it all kosher. Ish.”
“Right.” Teddy shook his head. “Not-illegal is as good as legal, huh? Definitely too many noir detective movies. Wait, you said no unpaid parking tickets?”
“Yeah. He got one about . . . eleven months ago. Not a parking ticket—for speeding. He has a cute little sports car, a BMW 650i coupe, registered to the company. Man, I wish my job came with those kinds of perks.”
“Make yourself CEO of yourself, and see what you can get away with? The fact that he drives too fast is actually reassuring. Someone who doesn’t have any marks at all on his file is probably hiding something.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Ginny admitted, and he was a little annoyed at himself how much her being impressed mattered to him. “Is that good, or bad?”
He shrugged, unable to answer her question. “Could be either, could be neither. He might be a law-abiding citizen, or he might never have gotten caught at anything.”
“Other than a speeding ticket. Which he paid.”
“Right.” He paused in his polishing, and looked her straight in the eye. “Mallard. Have you considered—seriously considered—the thought that he didn’t go willingly?”
From the look on her face, she hadn’t. Or hadn’t wanted to. “DubJay would have said something if he suspected . . .”
“Yeah. Sure he would have. And maybe he doesn’t want to think about it, either. All this—none of it’s making sense, not what DubJay told us, not what you’re finding out. If we find even the slightest hint that he was coerced or kidnapped, we’re going to the cops. Right?”
“Absolutely.”
But he wasn’t sure she looked convinced about that—probably thinking that if she did, she wouldn’t get paid. “I mean it, Ginny.” Helping out was one thing, but he hadn’t signed up for this—and neither had she.
“I know, I know. Jesus, what’re you, my mom? Slightest hint of that kind of trouble, we call the cops. But I don’t think that’s what happened. It feels too . . . clean. He paid all his bills for the month, cleared his schedule for the next week, and picked up his dry cleaning the day before he went missing. That’s someone about to go on vacation, not a guy expecting to be yanked off the street and dumped in an alley somewhere.”
That presumed he’d expected to be yanked . . . but she had a point.
“He paid all his bills, even the ones not due yet?”
“Yeah. But he was like that; Mr. Paid in Full, On-Time Guy. If I had a credit rating like his . . .”
“You’d blow it on new tech and shoes. What about his parking tag? Does he live near the office? I can’t see a guy like that taking public transit, so he must drive in—or does he get driven?”
“With that car?” Ginny gave him a scornful look, ignoring the crack about her shopping habits. “No driver. He’s pretty low maintenance, actually, for someone with a few mil. Lives in town, the offices are by the waterfront, near the piers. Mostly, the car stays in his building’s garage or the office garage during the week. And yeah, he re-upped the monthly parking tag.”
“Huh. So where’s his car?”
She stared at him. “Oh shit.”
He couldn’t believe it. “You didn’t think to check on his car?”
“Just that it wasn’t in the garage, or in his building’s lot, and the cops hadn’t any reports of it being found or involved in any accident. The client had that checked out before he hired me. Us. I didn’t take the next step. Damn it.”
As she spoke, she was tapping the screen of the tablet, muttering under her breath. He had been sort of joking about her blowing money on shoes, but not the tech: between her laptop, her phone, and this newest toy, he’d never seen her actually unplugged for very long.
Even as he thought that, she hauled out the power cord and handed it to him to plug in under the bar, on his side.
He wasn’t supposed to let anyone power their tech at the bar, but it was a rule more often ignored than honored. You just couldn’t run a half-decent bar in this city if you didn’t have an extra power strip or two for your patrons.
“Where the hell was that code . . . look away,” she advised him, and he averted his gaze, carefully studying the hanging plants on the other side of the bar. They needed watering.
“Damn it. The cameras only go back twenty-four hours. Cheap bastards, it’s not like digital storage costs you anything. . . .”
He was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to have access to those cameras, no matter who her client was. Then again, the client was in the real-estate business. Who knew what building secrets DubJay knew? “Oh man, if these guys are connected, and I mean connected, I am so going to regret helping you.”
Ginny either hadn’t heard him or was ignoring him. Probably the latter. “The car was there, and then it wasn’t. I doubt it was jacked out of that parking lot—if he doesn’t have LoJack I’ll eat my laptop. So, odds are he’s on the road. But he hasn’t used his credit cards or gotten more cash, and gas is expensive as hell—like I said, two hundred dollars won’t go far, especially with that gas chewer. He could have parked it somewhere . . . bus station? The train? What about the airport?”
She groaned, planting her elbows on the bar and her face in her hands. The blond curls fell around her face, hiding her from view and muffling her words. “I donwannago-huntingdownparkinglots.”
“What? Oh Christ, no,” Teddy agreed, once he deciphered the whimper. “That would take . . . longer than we’ve got. There’s got to be a better way.”
She raised her head up, and stared at him. “What, hire someone else to go look? Getting a cash advance from DubJay would take more time than we’ve got, and I’m not exactly flush here, how about you?”
“Not everything’s a matter of cash, Ginny Mallard,” he said, doing his best to channel his mother’s voice in reproof. “Let me check in with a few people before you freak out.”
He pulled out his own phone and hit 4 on the speed dial. He’d hoped not to have to call . . . but he had promised to help. “Addy. Teddy. I’m calling in that favor, mon ami. No, no cash involved. I need to find out if someone’s left their car at one of the pay lots in town, or out at the airport.”
He smirked, the look of someone who was going to enjoy giving someone else a hard time. “Oh, don’t give me that. And don’t tell me you don’t occasionally do sweeps to make sure everything’s clean. I just need to know if it’s there, is all.”
He held up a hand to keep Ginny from saying anything. “No, I don’t . . . no. I don’t care when it came in. I just want to know if it’s there. Doable?”
Penny appeared out of nowhere, as she usually did, rubbed once against his hand, and then jumped off the counter—he presumed to say hello to Georgie, who had been quietly settled at Ginny’s feet throughout their discussion.
“All right. That’s all I ask. And yeah, yeah, slate’s wiped clean.” He held out a hand, and Ginny flipped through the previously untouched paper file until she came to the sheet she wanted, then slid it across the bar to him.
“BMW, dark green, plate’s seven-niner-Robert-Joseph-Joseph. Yeah, a vanity plate. Okay, thanks, man.” He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his jeans pocket.
“Who did you call? He can do that?” Ginny was practically vibrating with impatience and curiosity.
“He’ll try. And his try’s usually damn good.”
“Huh.” She vi
brated a little more, then figured out he wasn’t going to tell her anything more, and subsided a little. “It’s a pity we can’t just go beat it out of people, like in the old pulps.”
He eyed her cautiously. She was kidding, right? She was. Probably. He made a note to never introduce her to Adderly, and thought maybe it was time to stage an intervention, before she started believing she was a PI, and went out and bought a gun. Or a fedora. “Ginny, you can’t do that. Beating people up. Hell, you can’t even talk to people, technically.”
“What?”
“No, seriously. Without a PI’s license . . . you can’t do anything except research, and talk to people, casual-like.” The guide he’d been reading was really clear on that, although he hadn’t gotten very far in the book, yet.
“That’s all I am doing: research.” She looked almost too innocent when she said it. Her definition of “research” was probably closer to a hacker’s than a cop’s. “But hey, you can talk to people. Casually. You’re a bartender.”
She said the word like it solved all problems, and that light in her eye was definitely trouble. He should be running like hell. Why was he not running like hell? Right. Because she had challenged him, and he had bit like a damn dumb fish. And he had promised. “Only when I’m behind the bar. I’m a bartender behind the bar, I mean.”
She made a scoffing noise. “Oh, come on . . . don’t be a jerk. You know what I mean. You have that bartender-vibe thing going on.”
“No, seriously. People think of me as the bartender. I’m the guy they talk to, the one who solves their problems just by listening and pouring a beer. They’re not seeing me, they see”—and he made air quotes—“ ‘The Bartender.’ I’m iconic, not personal. That’s how it works.”
“Uh-huh. Tonica, I’ve seen you schmooze. You turn on the charm, and look them in the eye, and I don’t know how you do it, but you convince people that you give a damn.”
“I do give a damn.” He scowled at her, realizing that he’d just gotten played. Again. Point to Mallard, more fool him for walking right into it. “And yeah, okay, people like to—or they’re willing to—tell me stuff in return, if I ask. It makes them feel like they’re even on the scales, or something.”
Collared: A Gin & Tonic Mystery Page 6