Collared: A Gin & Tonic Mystery
Page 16
“What happened?” she asked.
“Someone broke into your place.”
Ginny knew that already: the message had been from the cops, trying to reach her. She wanted details. “I was on a job, I didn’t have my phone on, I didn’t know until now. What happened?”
“I did the best I could: I let them in, told them what I could, but,” and he shrugged, clearly helpless in the face of police authority. “You’re supposed to call them.”
Ginny, realizing she wasn’t going to get anything from him, pushed past the man into her apartment. She stopped just inside the door frame, not sure if she could keep moving.
“Oh God.”
“Call them,” Hoyt said from the doorway. “You want I should make you a cup of coffee?”
“No. Thank you. I . . .” Georgie, aware something was wrong, pushed up against Ginny’s leg, the weight almost making her stumble. “Could you take Georgie for me?” And she held out the leash behind her. Taking care of owners’ pets was not in his job description, but she’d give him credit for the way he took the leash without hesitation.
Ginny stood where she was, dialing the number the voice mail gave her, and identified herself, then waited while she was transferred to the correct person. The young man who eventually greeted her sounded too young to be wearing a uniform, as though his voice hadn’t even broken yet.
“Don’t worry,” the boy-cop said, not at all reassuringly. “We’ve already been through, so you can go in. It seemed as though they were more interested in making a mess than taking anything, since your electronics were still there, but we’d like you to confirm that for us?”
No, she didn’t see anything missing, although the state of her once-neat desk made her want to cry. No, she didn’t know anyone who would do this as a prank, who would do such a thing? Yes, the filing cabinet that had been broken into held client information, yes, it was confidential, no, nothing was missing and she didn’t hold on to anything that could be useful to thieves or—her patience broke at that point, and she asked the boy-cop, flat out, if they—being professionals—had actually gotten anything useful, or if they were going to wait for her to discover a clue?
“Ma’am, I understand that you’re upset—”
“Upset?” She wasn’t upset. Upset was when she broke a mug in the sink, or missed a bus, or had a run in her stockings. What she was feeling now had nothing to do with upset.
Stepping over the debris of what had been her paper-recycling pile, she braced herself to look into the bedroom. There was nothing they might have stolen there, unless they wanted her clothing, but . . .
Whoever it was hadn’t restricted themselves to her office. Weirdly, that made her feel better. The bedclothes had been pulled off and dumped on the floor, and the pillows were slashed open as though someone had gutted them. The rug had been shoved halfway across the room, and all of her drawers were half open, as though someone had gone through them quickly, riffling dirty fingers through her clothing.
Her privacy had been invaded, in a way she hadn’t ever thought of before. Her computer in the office was intact, though—she’d checked to make sure the external hard drive was still attached—but now she wondered if they’d rifled through her files there, too. Her password was strong, but she’d never had any reason to encrypt her digital files. Had they hacked her bank accounts? Her social media? God, had they read her email? Suddenly she wished that she did have scandalous emails. What if they’d read them and been bored?
“Mallard, focus,” she told herself, holding the phone away from her ear. “You’re getting hysterical.”
She backed out of her bedroom, and went into the kitchen. It looked intact, but then she noticed that things were out of order, and there were traces of sugar and flour all over the place, suggesting someone had even searched the Tupperware containers. What the hell? Or had the cops done that?
Her feet dragging, she went into the bathroom, but other than the laundry hamper spilled on the floor, it looked unmolested.
Now the boy-cop was telling her that they’d be in touch if anything came up, but since nothing was taken, she should just change her locks and update her insurance. All the while, a voice that sounded a lot like Tonica’s was telling her that now was the time to tell the cops about the text, about the job, about everything. But she couldn’t, the memory of Joe’s words—his worry about disgracing his family’s name—holding her back. She couldn’t be the one to bring the cops into this, especially since there was absolutely no evidence any of this was connected. Ginny did believe in coincidences. Sometimes.
So instead, she thanked the too-young cop as politely as her mother had taught her, and put the phone away again.
The thought of staying here, of dealing with the cleanup, faced with the mess, and the fingerprint dust everywhere, was too much for her to deal with just then. She picked up her bag, grabbed a Tupperware container of Georgie’s food, and retreated without any shame from the disaster of her apartment, locking the door behind her. The lock hadn’t been broken; it was still turning and locking easily. She saw no point, despite the baby-cop’s advice, in putting in new locks: if they wanted to come back, it wasn’t as if she could stop them, anyway.
Hoyt and Georgie were sitting on the stoop of the building, Hoyt smoking, Georgie sniffing at the grass without much interest. When she came outside, they both lifted their heads and got up.
“You okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Fine. Thanks.” She took the dog’s lead from his hand, tried not to gag on the cigarette smoke, and warded off any other questions by stepping away and putting a formal distance between them.
She’d thought, at first, randomly, to call a car service and go to her parents, or maybe call one of her friends and ask for crash space. Instead, she turned and headed back to Mary’s.
10
The walk to Mary’s soothed the worst of her jangled nerves, enough that Ginny could feel her heart rate slow down and, in the process, her common sense return. Living in a city, you expected certain things to happen, eventually. She’d been robbed before—she’d been mugged, too, and had shaken it off after a few hours, since all she’d lost had been her wallet and some jewelry. It wasn’t the fact of the break-in itself that so upset her. So what was it?
Part of it was the sheer disruption, the violence that they’d done to her belongings. And then to have nothing gone . . .
They hadn’t taken any of the easy-to-haul valuables. Which meant that, contrary to her first instinct, whoever had broken in hadn’t been looking for something to pawn or sell, but something else. Something less valuable but—to them—more important. And something that hadn’t been in her apartment.
The only things she had with her were her wallet, her tablet, and Georgie, and she didn’t think anyone would break in to steal a half-grown dog, no matter how much Ginny loved her.
“Oh. Oh fuck.” She stopped dead, and Georgie pulled at the leash, clearly anxious to get to their destination. “Sorry, baby,” she said, although not sure if she was apologizing for stopping, for her language, or for thinking there might be something more valuable with her than her dog.
Valuable was how you defined something someone wanted. Badly. And she could only think of one thing that could be of interest to someone, which wasn’t in her apartment.
The papers. The papers Joe took, the ones that could prove that Walter Jacobs was up to something not-good.
She didn’t have those papers, but someone else might not know that.
DubJay? No. She wasn’t going to tell him anything yet, but he didn’t know that, and anyway, this had to have happened before they talked to Joe, for the cops to have come and gone already. Even if DubJay was pissed at her for not responding to his email earlier, it made no sense.
Someone else? Someone who wanted to see Jacobs Realty get into trouble? Someone might have figured out what DubJay had hired her for, and thought, like she did at first, that it was to find the papers and bring them back.
She needed to talk to Tonica, now.
Ginny checked around the back before going in: the cop car was gone, the parking lot filled up with the usual mix of nice cars and beaters, both the back and front doors open, and the sound of voices falling out into the evening air. Everything looked totally normal.
Georgie, not sure why they were standing in the back lot, pulled her around to the front, heading for the bike rack her leash was usually hitched to. There was another dog there, a large apricot standard poodle that didn’t even bother looking up when Georgie came by. Ginny chose another hitch a few steps away, just in case the two decided that they didn’t like each other, and tied Georgie’s leash to it, then set out the travel bowl, filled it with water from the bottle that came with it, and put down a handful of kibble on the sidewalk. “Stay here, and if someone tries to take you away, you growl at them and bark for me, okay?”
Georgie looked up at her as though to say “of course I will, Mom,” and Ginny laughed, gently roughing up the dog’s wrinkled head in farewell before going inside.
Ginny hadn’t even made it to the front door before Penny appeared, picking her way over the sidewalk, past the poodle, to stare up into the shar-pei’s face. “You’re back. What happened? Were the men still there? What happened?”
“They were gone. It’s a mess! She’s not happy.” When her mistress wasn’t happy, Georgie wasn’t happy. “Why didn’t you scare them off?”
“Me? What did you expect me to do?” Penny’s whiskers twitched in disbelief.
“They messed up her desk. I’m not allowed to even touch her desk, or the box she puts things in, and they tore it all up.”
That made Penny’s whiskers twitch in the other direction. Interesting. She started to groom her left ear, always a sign that she was thinking thinky thoughts.
“What?”
“I don’t know yet. But someone tried to tear this place up, too. I wasn’t here, but all the humans are angry and worried and excited, fussing about.”
Georgie didn’t have whiskers that twitched, not the way Penny’s did, but if she did, they would have. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. They talked to people all day, and got more and more worried, and then they went into a place where they didn’t bring me, and they came out and Herself was upset. And now this?” A whine escaped her, and she lowered her head to her paws, trying to pretend it wasn’t her who’d just made that noise. A sideways look showed that the poodle was ignoring both of them, his head high in the air and focused intently on the door to the busy place. His owner was inside, and the dog wanted to go home.
“Stop whining,” Penny said, pulling her attention back to the conversation. “You wanted her to stop being so worried, didn’t you? She’s up and doing things, on the scent, excited . . .”
Georgie let out one last whine, rested her muzzle on her paw, and stared at Penny accusingly. “Not if it makes her say the bad words! Penny, we have to fix this!”
“We will.” The tabby looked unconcerned, but the tip of her tail flicked, giving her away. “We will.”
Ginny walked into Mary’s and could see nothing different from a usual Saturday night—although she wasn’t here often on Saturday. Too noisy, too many people intent on drinking more than talking, or if they were talking it was to stave off the fact that they’d be going home alone.
Ginny was comfortable with the thought of going home alone. In fact, she preferred it. With everything that was going on in her life—and after the way her last relationship had fizzled—she wasn’t eager to return to the dating mindset. Her social life was just fine, thanks, no matter what her parents thought.
As though to prove that, she had no sooner made it through the cluster of people at the door when someone called her name, and a long arm waved her over. “Hey girl, you missed all the excitement!”
“Hi Mac.” Ginny accepted the kiss on the cheek from her friend and sat down at his table, squeezing in thankfully on the offered stool before someone could steal it away for another table. “What excitement? Did someone finally break the two-hundred wall?” Mary’s had a beer club that kept track of how many different beers you had tried. People had gotten to 130, but never higher. Not that they admitted to, anyway.
Mac was in his element, thinking he finally knew something Ginny didn’t. “Someone broke in this morning.”
“Broke in?” That explained the cop car outside, when they arrived. She blinked, then said, “Oh shit,” under her breath, the possibilities tumbling around in her head. But no, there was no way it could be connected to her break-in. Why would someone look for Joe’s papers here? She and Tonica had gone over this in the car, about who knew what. DubJay came here, but he didn’t know that Teddy was helping her. Joe didn’t come here, and they hadn’t mentioned the bar to him at all—no reason to. He’d known Tonica’s name but . . . no, the timing was off.
Ian and Zara? They’d sent them off to talk to Joe, while . . .
No, that was insane. She was really starting to lose her mind now.
“Was anything stolen?”
“Hundred or so dollars, and a bottle of Walker Blue. Patrick, for all that he’s a shit, isn’t such a dummy to leave the Friday-night receipts laying around.”
There was history behind Patrick and Mac. Ginny didn’t know if it was business, personal, or romantic, and had no intention of asking.
“I bet they were looking to score booze, not cash, but the storeroom was locked tight, and the alarms went off before they could get through that. So they tore things up a little, just to make a point, and ran.”
“Huh. And you know all this . . . how?”
“Oh hell,” Mac snorted, “Patrick’s been telling everyone, all night. He’s proud as fuck that the thieves didn’t get much. Although, seriously: Who robs a bar on Saturday morning? Friday night when it closes, yeah. Lots of cash on hand then.”
“Yeah.” She picked up Mac’s cocktail napkin and started shredding it into narrow strips, thinking hard. Maybe she was insane, maybe she wasn’t. Saturday, some time between when the bar had closed, and before they’d opened. After she had met with Teddy, after they had left. About the same time that someone had broken into her place and not stolen anything.
Two break-ins on the same day? In places connected to her, even remotely? It was probably a coincidence. This area of town was a nice place, but nowhere was safe from break-ins. But Ginny had an orderly, logical mind, and coincidences were messy things.
“Virginia, leave my napkin alone!” Mac took the pieces away from her. “Yo, Teddy! Ginny needs a drink, before she drives me crazy!”
Ginny didn’t want a drink. She also didn’t want to go home. She’d come here looking for distraction and had gotten it, although not the sort she’d expected. Thankfully, Mac was noisy and exuberant and didn’t need Ginny to say anything other than “Uh-huh” or “No!” or “Really?” at the right places, while waiting for Tonica to take a break.
Stacy slid through the crowd, dropping drinks off at tables with an almost-practiced ease. She was getting better—her first Saturday, she’d dropped her tray three times, and almost quit. Ginny’s usual landed in front of her, napkin square underneath, without a drop spilling.
“Thanks,” Ginny said with a smile, and Stacy was off again
.
“So I was telling you about the guy whose dinner we’re doing, right? Because he pulled shit again this morning, changed the entire menu. All that, and then the bastard says to me, he says, ‘But it’s all okay, because Mac, you’re our girl, you can do it!’ And I’m thinking ‘bastard.’ He’s the client, so I laugh and don’t knock him over the head with his own paella. But oh, I was tempted . . .”
Mac’s stories were all variations of the same thing: clients who were demanding and insane, and Mac saving the day through sheer talent and the patience of a saint. Ginny would be tempted to chalk them up to dramatic interpretation, except that she’d worked for Mac a time or three when he was overbooked and she’d hit a slow period. She would have brained the guy for being an asshat.
“You’re lucky,” Mac said, finally slowing down. “You get to keep a screen between you and your people.”
“Yeah.” She smiled, but couldn’t stop thinking about Joe, alone in his hotel suite, while they all waited for Tonica to get in touch with his contact and pull a miracle out of his back pocket.
Teddy saw Ginny come in, but he didn’t have the time—or inclination, honestly—to say hello. The bar was its usual busy scene, with the added push of having Patrick hanging over his shoulder, muttering about break-ins and the cost of installing new alarm systems. Teddy wanted to tell him to shut up already—losing a couple-three bottles of booze and a hundred dollars in spare change was less than the cost of doing business, and anything short of gunmen busting in and shooting up the place wasn’t a disaster. But he kept his mouth shut and poured the drinks, and didn’t play favorites or chat anyone up, keeping Stacy moving, delivering drinks, and Seth clearing tables so they could keep the crowd under control. Thankfully, it looked to be a mellow night, for all the morning’s excitement—or maybe because of it. People were talking more than they were drinking; not that they were going dry.