Collared: A Gin & Tonic Mystery

by L. A. Kornetsky

  “So what now?”

  “Now? Now you go home and tell your client the sad news. And you will forget anything you ever knew about this entire incident, or the players involved.”

  “But—” Ginny started to protest.

  “Go home,” Asuri repeated. “Cash your paycheck. Be thankful it ended as well as it did.”

  There really wasn’t anything to say to that, except point out that they had no ride home. Which was how they ended up being driven back to Mary’s, courtesy of SPD’s finest squad car.

  “I’m never going to get the smell of vomit and coffee out of my clothes,” Ginny muttered as they waved the patrolman good-bye.

  “Just be glad you got to sit up front.”

  They were doing their best to banter like normal, but nothing was normal. Even time seemed askew: it should have been nearly evening, but Ginny’s phone told her it was barely 2:00 p.m. Mary’s wasn’t open for business yet, the after-church drinkers still an hour away.

  “Hopefully, Stacy noticed my note before your pooch mugged her,” Teddy said, heading for the door. Ginny had never actually been there on a Sunday before; usually she’d be having dinner with her parents—

  “Oh, shit.” She stopped. “I’ll be right in.”

  She pulled her phone out of the bag, and saw without surprise that there were two missed calls from her mother. Shaking her head, she dialed her stepfather’s cell phone, instead.

  “Dad, hi, I . . .” She waited. “No, I can’t make it, I . . . Dad! Please. My missing dinner every now and again does not mean I’m either stuck in a depressive wallow or out gallivanting. Sometimes it just means . . . I have other plans. Believe me . . . I’d rather be giving Mom grief about her gravy.”

  She listened to the voice booming through the tiny speaker. Nothing put life back into perspective like disappointing your parents. Joe had been like a father to DubJay, he said.

  “Yes, Dad, I’m working on Sunday. We’re not going to go into the ‘where has your faith gone’ thing again, are we?”

  She listened again, her lips twitching despite her bleak mood.

  “Don’t start. I love you both, and I’ll see you next week.”

  When he grumbled a good-bye, she looked at her phone, shook her head, and turned the ringer to OFF before dropping the phone back in her bag. If DubJay—or her mysterious texter—tried to reach her, she was off the clock for the next few hours.

  By the time she got inside, Teddy had already settled up with Stacy, and Georgie was comfortably settled on one of the banquettes, a dish of water on the floor next to her. Surprisingly, Georgie’s usual companion was nowhere to be seen. Ginny shrugged: the only thing she knew about cats was that they did their own thing.

  “You look wrong, on this side of the bar,” she said to Tonica.

  “It feels wrong. But Stacy won’t let me on the other side.” He glared at the brunette, like she’d betrayed him somehow.

  “Good for you,” Ginny said. “Don’t let him boss you around when you’re the one on duty.”

  “Your dog was practically pathetic in her gratitude to see someone,” Stacy said. “She’s a total love.”

  “Yeah, she is, isn’t she?”

  “Don’t know where she gets it from,” Tonica muttered. “Not her mom, that’s for sure.”

  “Leave my dog alone, Tonica. Even your cat won’t hang around you for more than a couple of minutes.”

  “I told you, she’s not my cat.”

  The banter flowed, but it felt wrong. Like there was a dead body stuck between them, on the floor between their bar stools.

  In effect, there was.

  Stacy went down to the other side of the bar, unloading glassware, and Ginny drummed her fingers on the countertop, her gaze elsewhere. “We told him we’d help.”

  “We told him we’d try to help,” Tonica corrected her.

  “What if he didn’t believe us? What if he thought we were going to turn him in? What if—did she know? Why didn’t she stop him?”

  “Sounds like she tried.”

  Ginny pursed her cheeks and blew out a long stream of air, making Georgie look up to see what was wrong. “I have to call DubJay. Damn it. If we’d only told him where the old man was . . .”

  “Then what? Joe might be alive, yeah. But DubJay would have his evidence back. And I think we both agree that wouldn’t be what Joe wanted?”

  “Right now, Tonica, I don’t know anything. Do you . . . do you think he really killed himself?”

  “If someone else had done it, the papers would be gone,” he pointed out.

  “If the goons who approached you, yeah. But DubJay—nobody would question his right to claim anything on his uncle’s person. So he could have left them there, not done anything to make it look suspicious. And . . . this entire thing, hiring us to find him, would be evidence that he was concerned about his uncle, that there was a risk to the old man’s life because of depression, or odd behavior . . . we’d be his alibis, almost. God. Is that why he hired us?”

  Teddy started to brush off her concerns, or mock her for paranoia worthy of her old movies, but instead stared down into his soda and thought about it for a few minutes. “We can’t prove anything, Gin. And if DubJay really did off his own uncle . . . you can’t say anything. He can’t kill us, not without risking someone putting it all together, but he can make life difficult. Really difficult.” The kind of difficult that involved a guy who knew where they lived, as well as the kind that spread business gossip.

  “Let him believe that we did just what he asked you to, and nothing more; that we never actually talked to Joe, just scouted him out, and then tried to call . . . he’ll have a record that you tried to reach him, but didn’t want to discuss sensitive matters on a recording.”

  Her fingers were back in her hair again, scrunching the curls into a tangled mess. “I feel like we failed.”

  “We put Asuri on the trail of whatever it was Joe was worried about. She’s not going to let that slide. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Yeah. But even if they take DubJay down, it’s not going to be for Joe’s death.”

  They looked at each other, a steady, sad look, and Ginny looked away first. “Damn. I’d better put my invoice in fast, before he’s under indictment. I’ll never get paid, then.”

  He almost laughed. Almost. “Now that’s the Mallard we all know and sorta like.”

  “Bite me, Tonica.” She lifted her glass, and a man’s hand came down gently on her wrist, pushing it back down onto the counter.

  Not Tonica’s. Not Seth’s. A strong hand, with a nice watch, attached to some very strong fingers that were pressing hard enough to turn her skin white under the pressure.

  Tonica turned on his stool, even as Ginny twisted enough to see who her assailant was.

  “Ms. Mallard. Mr. Tonica.” The man stood between the two of them, smiling pleasantly, his female companion a pace behind, covering his back and watching them with careful eyes.

  The chair jammed in the door, as usual for the hour before they opened, had given the two access. A quick glance showed that Georgie was sacked out, unnoticed by the newcomers. Ginny wanted to keep it that way.

  “Do I know you?” Ginny asked cautiously, not struggling against the pressure.

  “Your partner and I have met,” the man answered.

  “She’s not my . . . never mind. What do you want?” Teddy flicked a glance sideways to Ginny, as though trying to warn her of something. She’d already figured out that these were the two who had stopped him that morning. Based on that look, she played against instincts, and kept quiet.

  “The same thing as before. Only now we have a little more room to negotiate.”

  The pressure on her wrist increased, and Ginny bit back a curse, her back and shoulders stiffening with the effort to not react. Already, she didn’t like their idea of negotiations. Why couldn’t they pick on the big burly guy, instead?

  “I told you—” Tonica started to say,
and the man interrupted.

  “We are aware of recent events. It is a sad thing. However, we also know that you have not had time to report back to your employer. All you need to do is hand over the material now, and tell him that you were unable to locate it. A small, simple lie, and everyone profits.”

  The guy’s voice was so calm and cultured, it made her toes curl, and not in a good way. They thought she and Teddy had been hired to reclaim the papers, not just find Joe. But they didn’t have them . . .

  “You know the Feds are already on site?” Tonica said.

  “We aren’t worried about that. Give us the files.”

  The lock on her wrist tightened and turned, creating an intense, hot friction. Unable to help herself, Ginny yelped in distress, her fingers loosening on the glass and her entire arm spasming, the pain overriding everything else.

  The next thing she knew, the pressure on her arm was released as the man fell backward, fifty pounds of irate shar-pei attached to his leg by the teeth. The force of the attack threw him off balance, and he staggered backward even as he bent forward and tried to detach the dog’s grip. His action caught his companion off guard, and she turned to him, taking her eye off Tonica for a minute. But when he started to move toward her, she reached under her jacket as though going for a gun.

  “Georgie!” Ginny cried out, more worried about the woman shooting the dog, not Tonica, who could take care of himself. Without thinking, Ginny launched herself off the stool, making an ungraceful—but effective—flying tackle, and hitting the woman square in the torso.

  The woman went down to her knees, but the impact knocked the breath out of Ginny, adding chest pain to the agony still burning in her wrist, and the woman was able to shake her off, throwing Ginny hard to the ground, her shoulder taking the brunt of the fall.

  “Shoot it,” the man said, his voice gritty with pain. “Kill it!”

  The woman’s gun wavered between Tonica and Georgie: she wasn’t dumb enough to give Tonica a shot at her. Then suddenly there was a shout—a woman’s shout—and Stacy entered the fray, her seemingly slight form revealing some impressive muscles as she grabbed the woman and wrestled her to the ground, holding her there by dint of twisting one arm behind her back in a classic wrestling pose. The gun clattered to the floor.

  Ginny rolled to her side, trying to figure out who was where, doing what. Her body hurt, and her eyes were watering, but she saw the man try to stand up, reaching for the abandoned pistol.

  “Georgie, hold!”

  The three hundred dollars’ worth of training sessions they’d never tested were, thank God, still imprinted in the canine’s brain. Georgie kept her teeth in the man’s leg, not biting down further but not letting go, either, her gaze fastened on his face as though daring him to struggle.

  Like any wise rat, he didn’t.

  “You got the alarm, boss?” Stacy asked.

  “They’re on their way. And what the hell do you think you were doing? You were behind the bar, you’re the one who hits the alarm, not make like some kind of macho vigilante.” Tonica sounded pissed.

  Ginny shifted onto her side, and winced as the bruises she’d just picked up started to make themselves known. Teddy was on the other side of the bar, rifle in his hand—he must have practically thrown himself over the counter the moment things went to hell, to get to it that fast. He was glaring at Stacy like she was the dumbest thing he’d ever seen.

  “I wasn’t going to let them rob the place again,” she said, equally irate. “And you were just sitting there while Ginny did all the work, so I figured it was girl-power day.”

  Ginny let out a snort of laughter; it wasn’t funny, but it was. Now that they were all safe, anyway. Even better: Stacy’s interpretation meant that they didn’t have to explain what the two had actually come here for . . . attempted B and E was good enough, especially if they had been the two to break in earlier.

  “Now, if you’d get off your male backside and get the cuffs?” Stacy said, still running on bravado.

  “You have handcuffs behind the bar, too?” Ginny knew there was a club and a first-aid kit, but like the rifle, handcuffs were new.

  “Took ’em off a drunk a few months ago when he tried to cuff a woman he was interested in to the railing. Funny enough, he never came back for ’em.”

  Tonica placed the rifle within easy reach on the counter, then ducked under the break and emerged with a pair of metal handcuffs that looked alarmingly official, and a length of narrow plastic. He cuffed the man first, then looked at Ginny.

  “Georgie, release,” she said.

  The shar-pei opened her jaws and let go. Blood seeped through the torn pants leg, but nothing that would indicate he was in any immediate medical need. The man went down to his knees, either in pain or shock.

  “Good girl, Georgie. Guard.”

  The shar-pei squared her legs under her and stood still, watching the bound man as though he were holding an entire bag of pup-tarts.

  He glared at the dog, then looked away when she let out a low warning rumble. Ginny had never heard her sweet doofus of a dog ever make that noise before, but she wasn’t about to reprimand her for it.

  The narrow plastic piece appeared to be another kind of cuffs: Teddy fastened it around the woman’s wrists, behind her back, and Stacy removed her knee from the small of her back once she was secured.

  “There. All collared and ready for a walkie.”

  Georgie’s ears lifted a little at the word walkie, but she held her position.

  “My leg,” the man whined. “That damn dog bit me! I need to go to a hospital—it probably has rabies.”

  Ginny glared at him. More likely, he’d given her dog something nasty.

  “You might want to shut up until the cops arrive,” Tonica said mildly, the tone not hiding the threat. “Anything you say now might just annoy us. Or worse, Georgie.”

  “You’re a hero, Georgie,” Ginny said. The dog, her eyes still fastened on the object she was determined to guard, let out a rare woof, as though to acknowledge the obvious. With a gentle thump, Penny dropped from the top of the display cabinet down onto the counter, and then down again to the floor, stepping disdainfully past the bound man to sniff at Georgie’s ear, then give it a delicate lick, Ginny thought, as though to say “well done.”

  “Nice of you to join the party, Mistress Penny,” Tonica said, even as she heard sirens, and a police car came roaring down the street.

  Whatever the cops might have been expecting when they responded, it probably wasn’t two figures, bound and facedown on the floor, a delicate gray tabby sitting on the back of one as though she had done all the work herself.

  Stacy, still riding on her adrenaline high, was perfectly willing to explain it all to the cops, how the couple came into the bar while they were prepping for the open and threatened Ginny physically—showing her badly bruised and swollen wrist as exhibit A—and how Georgie defended her mistress and gave them time to disarm the gunwoman and call the cops, and wasn’t Georgie the hero of it all?

  “Yeah, regular superhero,” the older cop said. “Just be careful they don’t come back and sue you for some crap or another, having a dangerous beast on-premises or something.” The dangerous beast, meanwhile, was having her ears pulled affectionately by the younger cop, who had previously pulled a doggie biscuit out of his uniform pocket and fed it to her while his partner was taking down their report.

  Ginny, who normally monitored Georgie’s diet like a Jenny Craig instructor, decided to let that one go. If nothing else, it would get the taste of jerk out of Georgie’s mouth.

  “Will we have to testify, or anything?” Stacy seemed almost overeager to be part of the justice process. Ginny, her wrist sunk in the ice sink behind the bar, just wanted them to go away so she could have a well-deserved meltdown. Tonica, sitting on one of the bar stools, had his eyes closed like he had a headache.

  It had been a rough couple of days.

  “We’ll let you know if you�
��re needed,” the older cop said, which sounded like “Don’t call us and we won’t call you.”

  And like that, the duo was led away, the cop cars pulled out, and Mary’s was returned to a peaceful quiet.

  For about three minutes.

  “Shit, we’re supposed to open in ten!” Stacy yelped, and flew into manic activity, intent on getting everything perfect for her first open. Seth, who had been in the parking lot dumping trash when it all went down, and therefore of no interest to the cops, clattered the mop and bucket, and yelled something about trouble always being trouble and hadn’t he warned Teddy?

  “Let it go, Seth,” Tonica muttered, but not loudly enough to be heard in the kitchen.

  Ginny, who had been looking out the window after the now-vanished cop cars and the gawkers still hanging around, barely heard him, either.

  “What happens now?” she asked, almost wistfully.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing, probably. Joe’s dead. Whoever sicced those two on us wanted whatever we knew before DubJay got it, you heard them. Well, call DubJay, and they won’t have any reason to come after us again.”

  She kept staring out the window, feeling like everything in her body was made of lead—except her wrist, which hurt like only flesh could. He leaned over the bar and put a hand on her shoulder, looking in her face like she had something written on it. “Come on, let it go, Gin. It’s over.”

  “Yeah.” She blinked, then winced, looking down at her arm. “Yeah. You think Seth would make me a sandwich? I’m starving.”

  Seth had been willing to make a platter of sandwiches. And all four of them fell on the food like they hadn’t eaten in weeks. Then the doors opened and the first customers wandered in, a couple still in their Sunday best. Teddy set Ginny up with her usual, Georgie, still the heroine, left unmolested at her feet.

  After a few sips of her drink to stiffen her nerve, Ginny pulled out her phone and called DubJay at home. Teddy leaned on the bar and listened as she told their client what had happened—leaving out several details that were both important and no longer mattered. They had tracked Joe to the hotel—only to discover that he had killed himself. The police were called, they were handling things now. She was terribly sorry for his loss, she said, and that she had not been able to help effect a reconciliation between the two men.