“It was an oversight, some failure of oversight, not a willful forgery.” But the look in his eyes made Ginny think he was trying to convince himself of that, more than believing it. She tried to think about her own company being that damaged because someone she’d trusted had screwed up that badly, and couldn’t imagine how angry she would be.
Angry enough to send a family member to jail? Not her parent, no. Never. She had an aunt and an uncle, and they had two sons, but she’d never been particularly close to them—they lived out in Texas, and visits were few and far between.
“You made a comment about us being here to help you or kill you,” she said, remembering. “Was that for dramatic effect, or do you really think that your life is in danger?”
Joe stood up, pacing back to the window, his hands shoved into his slacks pockets. “I don’t know,” he said again. “I wish I could say it was drama, or some ill-advised attempt at humor, but . . . I don’t know.
“When I decided to take some time off to think about it, I had my bags packed and brought them down to my car, and then had to go back upstairs because I had forgotten something. When I came back—not twenty minutes later, someone had broken into my car and stolen my things. My suitcase, my briefcase . . . but they’d left my wallet, in plain sight.”
“They took the papers?”
He laughed. “No. That’s what I had forgotten, what I had gone back for. But I felt . . .” He shrugged.
“Threatened,” Tonica said.
“Yes. I called my local shop, arranged for them to take the car in for repairs, cancelled the original reservation I’d made, and came here, hoping they’d have a room available. Zara brought me a change of clothes, and I’ve been . . . waiting, ever since then.”
That explained where the car was, anyway. Ginny ticked one item off her mental list, even though it didn’t matter anymore. She hated loose ends.
Tonica, meanwhile, cut to the chase. “Do you think your nephew had someone break in, to steal the papers?”
Joe looked like he’d heard a vaguely offensive joke. “Wally has the keys to my car,” he said. “He wouldn’t need to break in.”
“Unless he wanted to scare you,” Ginny said.
“Or threaten you,” Tonica added. “Or sent people who like breaking into cars as a way to leave a message.”
It was as though they’d hit him, the way he flinched from each suggestion, like they were cutting at him . . . No, Ginny thought suddenly, not at him, but at his certainties, the things that held him steady. She desperately wanted to talk to Tonica, to get his read on things, but there was no chance.
Then she felt his hand on her shoulder, a brief, firm grip, a faint squeeze of his fingers, as though to draw her attention to something, and she exhaled. He’d seen it, too.
“Is it possible, sir?” she asked, gently. “Not that he wanted to hurt you, but that he wanted to warn you from doing anything rash? Anything that might hurt”—she almost said you and then changed it to—“the company?”
Jacobs licked his lips, like they’d gone dry suddenly. “Yes. I had considered that. Sitting here has given me a lot of time to think. Wally isn’t a boy anymore. He’s a man. A man who has done things he knows I would not approve of. Things that would be easier to hide, with me out of the way.
“You never want to believe your own kin could . . . but then, that’s where they say most threats come from, isn’t it? People you know? Especially when there’s money—or pride—involved.”
“What are you going to do?” Ginny asked. Her entire body felt both weirdly relaxed and utterly tense, and she didn’t like the feeling at all. She’d been so wrapped up in finding this man, thinking that once she did, the job would be over. She’d collect her fee and that would be that.
But her 3:00-a.m. panic attack returned, full force. This wasn’t a party, or paperwork. This was someone’s life. No, it was two someones’ lives.
Even if she wasn’t feeling much sympathy for “Wally” right now, though, she wasn’t the one making the decision. Joe had to.
“I don’t know.” He must have known how that sounded, so he added, defensively, “I’ve been trying to figure that out for days now, going over my options, again and again. But each choice seems like a worse dead end, with no way to get out. So when you showed up, and used the law firm’s name, I thought . . . well, one way or the other, time’s up.”
9
Teddy excused them, as politely as he could, and took Ginny by the arm, dragging her over to the far side of the suite for a “quick business conference.”
“Mallard, stop, please. Think before you agree to anything. Joe is giving off all the right vibes, yeah. And he’s in a crappy situation. But I know the type—he’s going to look to us for the solution to his problems, so he doesn’t have to make any ugly choices. I don’t know about you, but that’s way above my pay grade. And I don’t want this on my hands—and neither do you. Trust me on that.”
Her normally bright eyes were troubled, her brow furrowed, and she kept running her fingers through her curls, her dead-giveaway tell during trivia nights, when she didn’t know the answer. “We can’t just walk out on him.”
“Yeah, we can.”
“Teddy.”
She so rarely used his first name, and he could hear the different strands in her voice: horror, objection, disappointment. The stab of regret that hit him was an old friend: he swallowed it, and went on. “Gin. Listen to me. We are not private investigators. We are not legal arbiters. We sure as hell aren’t family counselors. And this particular knot needs all three, not two amateurs looking to score a paycheck.”
“What would you suggest, then? Just turning around and walking out of here?”
“Yes. Wasn’t that always the plan? Find him, and ‘hey look, the job’s done’?”
He could see the thoughts going across her face: that was the thing about Ginny, she was so used to working behind a computer screen, she’d never learned to hide her thoughts. The woman shouldn’t be allowed within ten feet of a poker table, ever.
“We can’t just . . .”
“Yes.” He nodded firmly, feeling like an utter heel. “We can.”
Her eyes widened, and her jaw got a stubborn jut. “We shouldn’t.”
Damn the woman. No, they shouldn’t. It would be like turning your back on an injured cat: it might be able take care of itself, but odds were it would just crawl off somewhere and die quietly.
“It’s not like he’s helpless.”
“He is. He’s like . . . Hamlet.”
“He’s not at all like Hamlet.” Teddy considered the story, and the man waiting behind them. “Okay, he is like Hamlet. Nobody could help him, either, remember?” More, Teddy remembered what happened to hapless would-be heroes in Gin’s beloved old noir detective movies, when they played outside their game. He wasn’t going to let that happen to her. Or him, for that matter.
She tilted her head, and her eyes got a speculative cast. He had the sudden, unnerving thought that she looked a bit too much like Penny at that moment for his comfort.
“You have contacts. You could ask around, see what can be done, and nobody would connect you to Jacobs Realty, so there wouldn’t be any risk.”
“You have an inflated idea of who I know.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I do. You’re one of those people who’s a vector—even if someone you know isn’t the right person, they know someone who is. You’ve got that kind of personality.”
“The right kind of . . . right.” He knew what she meant, and she was right. He didn’t know anyone firsthand, but he knew a guy who might know a guy. In this case, the second guy was a woman who worked for an organization that might be interested in knowing about things like this—interested enough to cut some immunity for the person or persons reporting said information.
Maybe.
“Even if I did . . . Joe’s still got to be willing to pull the trigger. You think he’s got the guts to do it?”
�
�I don’t know.” Her gaze went vague for a moment, like she wasn’t looking at him any longer. “No. But what are we going to do, just leave him stewing in his own indecision?”
“For now, yeah. I’ve got to get to work. And it will take a day or so to get an answer from my guy. So he’s got to sit tight for a while.”
Her focus sharpened again. “We only have until Monday,” she reminded him.
“Thirty-six hours. Piece of cake.”
“God, I hope so. All right.” She turned back to the elder Jacobs, moving across the room with increasing confidence, selling whatever she was going to tell him.
“Sir, we think we know a way out of this. But it’s going to take some doing. You need to sit tight for another day, all right? Don’t call anyone, don’t text anyone, and for God’s sake, don’t let anyone else in, all right?”
“I won’t.” Joe looked relieved, supporting Teddy’s worst fears: he was hoping to lay it all on them, so he’d be blameless for whatever happened to his nephew.
Teddy wasn’t sure relief was called for, not yet, but it wasn’t his problem. He had one more thing to do, and then he was done, damn it. And maybe next time he’d know better and stay out of Ginny Mallard’s business.
They had to wait a few minutes for the valet to retrieve Tonica’s car. She could tell from the way he was shifting from one foot to another, carefully sneaking a look at his watch, that he was worried about getting to work on time. The fact that she was starting to be able to “read” him pleased her, but she also felt guilty.
“Just let me off at Mary’s,” she said. “Georgie and I can walk home from there.” The air felt wet and chilly, but it wasn’t actually raining, yet.
“Yeah, okay, thanks. Like I said, they’re not going to fire me, but Saturdays can get hectic behind the bar, and Stacy—”
“Stacy’s gonna steal your job in another year or two.”
“Yeah, she’s got potential, but she’s not there yet.”
The car pulled up, and the valet handed over the keys. Georgie was sitting in the passenger’s seat, her head hanging out the window, her blue-black tongue hanging out of her mouth.
“Damn it,” Teddy muttered. “If there’s drool—or poo—in my car . . .”
“Took her for a walk,” the valet said. “Sweet girl.”
Ginny slipped him an extra five in addition to Teddy’s more grudging tip, and shoved the dog into the backseat, getting a broad swipe of Georgie’s tongue across her cheek in return.
“Sit, Georgie. Stay down.” She did a quick check for drool or poo, and—relieved but not surprised to find none—sat back in the seat.
They were both sunk in their own thoughts on the way back, the only sound in the car Georgie’s breathing. Then Tonica broke the quiet, the words rushing out of him. “Jesus, that was sad. The guy runs—ran—his own company. And he’s been sitting there for days, with one change of clothing, waiting for someone else to come in and tell him what he already knows, and handle it for him.”
Tonica sounded somewhere between disgusted and surprised, and Ginny felt the weird need to defend the old man.
“It’s a family thing. They make you crazy, no matter who you are, or how much money you’ve got.”
That got a snort of agreement. “Amen.”
“Most of my clients are like that,” Ginny added, thinking about it. “About wanting someone else to do for them, I mean. Sometimes it’s time management, about allocating and delegating the things that really aren’t worth their time to do, when I could do it cheaper. And sometimes I’m doing things for them they could do themselves just as easily, but they either don’t want to, or they think it makes them look more important to have someone else do it—or they know it’s going to require telling someone something they don’t want to say.” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I once had to break an engagement for someone.”
She could feel Tonica’s shock. “What?”
She could remember without cringing, now, but back then it had taken every ounce of professionalism not to tell the client to take a long walk off a short pier. “Yeah, I know. This job is crap sometimes, and people suck. But in the long run, I think I was the gentler option, and she could rail at me and know I was sympathetic, that the guy was scum and she was better off single than married to him.” Ginny had taken extreme pleasure in cashing that paycheck.
“Whoops.” Belatedly, and a little guiltily, she reached into her bag and pulled out her cell phone, turning the sound back on and checking to see if any messages had come in since they went into the hotel.
“Huh.”
“What?” He glanced over at her, and then back at the road. “Wally again? Or another anonymous text?”
“Neither. Someone called, but I don’t recognize the number.” It was local, but not one of her clients, or her family or friends, or anyone in her extensive address book.
“Still no idea who might have texted you?”
“No. And it’s not like it matters now anyway, right? I mean, we found Joe.”
“Right.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“It was probably Zara,” Ginny said, holding on to her pet theory. “The woman pulled a gun on us, a little text is totally within the realm of possibility.”
He countered with the one flaw in her logic. “How would she have known you were on the case, much less how to reach you?”
“How would anyone have known?” she countered. “You, me, DubJay . . . did you do it?” She stared at him with suspicion.
“No, I did not. Jesus, Mallard.”
The irritation and disgust in his voice made her snicker. “It doesn’t matter, anyway, like I said. Job’s done. This call’s probably a new client. Or my mother, trying to reach me in a sneak attack through someone else’s phone.”
“She does that?”
“If she thought of it, she would.” Ginny waved a hand in dismissal. “My mom. I love her but she’s high maintenance.”
“So you duck her calls.”
“Occasionally, yeah. Guilty as charged. Don’t give me that look, Tonica, you haven’t met my mother. And yours, apparently, is all the way across the country, so shut up.”
He shut up.
“If it’s a friend, or my mom, they can wait until I’m home. And if it is a new client, I need to be at my desk, anyway. There’s only so much magic I can work on a tablet.”
He glanced at her again, then looked away. “So what are you going to tell Wally?”
“Nothing. Not yet, anyway.” She was, as she’d said, good at ducking calls when she had to.
“And on Monday?”
“I’ll tell him we found Joe and conveyed his message. After that, it’s up to Joe himself—and your friend’s friend—what happens. Joe either tattles on his nephew or keeps his mouth shut, and deals with the fallout either way.”
He started to say something, then shut his mouth with an audible click.
“Yeah, I know.” Ginny knew what he’d been about to say, and why he didn’t say it. “It sucks. My job, sometimes it’s cut and dried, but sometimes you see into the messy corners of peoples’ lives.”
“Like the broken engagement?”
“And others, yeah.” She had seen and heard things she would never repeat—it wasn’t just the NDA she occasionally signed, but basic decency. You saw too much of peoples’ insides, in this job. “The one thing I’ve learned is that you can only fix the stuff you’re hired to fix. Everything else is off-limits. You’re not Fixit Advice Bartender Guy, here, Tonica. They don’t want you poking around there, and they don’t welcome advice.”
“Yeah, like that ever stops you.”
“I don’t offer advice,” she corrected, a little sharply. She didn’t. She commented, and she one-upped, but she never offered advice unless someone asked her directly.
“Okay, yeah. True enough,” he said. “That’s what keeps you from being insufferable.”
“Sweet-talker.”
They pulled into Mary’s parking lot
a few minutes after his shift would have started, but there was another car in the spot Tonica usually took.
A cop car.
“Oh, hell.” He pulled into the slot next to it and cut the engine, then stared ahead for a minute before getting out of the car. Ginny understood his reaction: Mary’s wasn’t exactly a cop hangout, and certainly not while they were still on duty. A cop car probably meant that something was wrong.
Ginny wavered a moment, wondering if she should go in with him, then decided that if anything had happened, it had nothing to do with her, and she’d just be in the way. Besides, Georgie needed her pre-dinner walk, and then dinner. She’d been a very patient puppy, but the trainer they had gone to had been explicit about the importance of a regular feeding schedule for a young dog.
“C’mon, girl,” she said, holding the door open and snapping the lead to the shar-pei’s collar. “Let’s go home.”
While Georgie snuffled at the familiar-smelling verge of grass, a tabby-striped gray cat emerged to sniff at Georgie’s face in greeting. Although “emerged” would suggest a slow and dignified move, and for the first time since Ginny could remember, Mistress Penny seemed actually agitated. Georgie put her face down within reach, and the two of them seemed to be catching up with each other.
“Nice to know you guys gossip, too,” Ginny said, and then curiosity got the better of her, and she took her phone back out and picked up her messages. Five seconds into the first one, her eyes widened and her body language shifted from satisfied exhaustion to worried tension. Ten seconds in, and she was yanking at Georgie’s lead, pulling her away from the fascinating smells of the grass and cat, and heading at a fast walk back toward her apartment, the phone—message still playing—shoved back into her pocket.
Behind them, Penny sat in the parking lot, watching them go, her whiskers twitching.
“Ms. Mallard?”
The building manager met her when she reached her floor—had obviously been waiting there for her. Normally Hoyt was a friendly man, his long dark hair pulled into a ponytail, his brown eyes wide and open, but there was a crease through his forehead and a frown on his face that made Ginny stop, even as she held out her cell phone to him, as though to offer evidence of what, clearly, he already knew.
Collared: A Gin & Tonic Mystery Page 15