There was an entrance into the back of the bar off the parking lot, but Teddy instead went around the building and leaned against the front wall, waiting for Ginny to walk down the street, her stride probably hampered by Georgie’s slower pace and constant need to stick her doggy nose into something.
He didn’t know why he was even dithering; he knew how this was going to go down. There would be that look on her face, the one that said she knew something he didn’t and was going to tell him about it. And, in the telling, change his mind. Which he hadn’t made up yet.
“No, Ginny.” He tried saying it out loud. “Absolutely, no.”
Even the air, damp and cool, seemed skeptical.
“Shit.”
He looked down the short, tree-lined block one more time, but it remained empty of anything other than a few midday shoppers and one jogger in professional-grade orange running gear, clearly not Ginny. He checked his watch: five after noon. She was running late, and he was, technically, on the clock.
Mary’s front door was an old wooden beast, painted a bright red, and currently wedged open by a straightback wooden chair stuck between door and frame. Teddy stared at it, then sighed. After the bar had been robbed, and then would-be killers had gotten in a few months back, he’d suggested to Seth that maybe they should keep the door closed when the bar wasn’t actually open for business. Obviously, that suggestion hadn’t made a dent in the old man’s habits.
“Seth!”
There was a clatter in the tiny kitchen, in response. Teddy shook his head, amused. Seth’s bad moods were by now a source of comfort rather than concern.
Normally he’d have come in early and immediately gone behind the bar to check that everything was in shape before his shift started, obsessively prepping everything so that he was ready the moment the clock ticked over, no matter if it was a lazy afternoon shift or a hot-from-the-start Saturday night. Today he ignored the bar entirely, pulled one of the small tables out from the wall and dropped himself into one of the chairs, stretching his legs out in front of him and contemplating the tips of his boots.
Teddy wasn’t sure when meeting for lunch had turned into a semiregular thing, but Tuesday through Thursday, the three days during the week he took afternoon shift, Ginny would come downtown and grab lunch with him before Mary’s opened for business. Sometimes she brought Georgie; sometimes Seth or Stacy would join them if they were on shift. Sometimes the conversation was serious, but more often it was casual. Mainly, Teddy thought, Gin used it as an excuse to get away from her desk for a while, force her to stop working for an hour.
He wasn’t sure what he got from it, himself. Bad enough he was dragging himself out of bed earlier to get here in time. But he admitted, at least to himself, that he enjoyed the new routine. It wasn’t that they’d become close friends, exactly. The competition that had formed between them over a year’s worth of trivia nights was still as fierce as ever. Things had somehow shifted while they were working together on the Jacobs job, though she was still an occasionally irritating workaholic know-it-all.
“We’re missing a case of tonic water,” Seth said, coming out of the kitchen, and clearly cranky.
Then again, Seth’s normal state was cranky. Teddy sometimes thought the older man had been born muttering “get off my lawn.” He certainly looked the part. Seth had been a half-decent boxer in his youth, before he decided that getting beaten up for a living wasn’t a good long-term strategy, and his body reflected that, even in his sixties. He routinely wore baggy pants and a gray hooded sweatshirt, and could have come from the set of Rocky 14, as the down-but-not-out trainer for a promising street kid. Nobody looking at him would believe that he could take a galley kitchen and a limited budget and turn out surprisingly solid food. “Was it not delivered, or did it go missing, after?”
“Wasn’t me who took possession,” Seth grumbled. “Talk to that useless boy.”
Useless Boy was the unofficial name for Clive, the recent grad who was supposed to be helping Seth out with the general chores after school and on weekends. That was a new development, and one Seth still wasn’t entirely on board with.
“You’re supposed to sign off on anything that comes in during his shift,” Teddy said, exasperated. “He’s still too new to know what to look for.” Besides, the kid was barely twenty-one, and while he might be legal to work here, he wasn’t what Teddy considered reliable enough to be signing for anything. The moment he got a real job, he’d be gone, and Teddy doubted he’d bother to even give notice.
Seth made a rude gesture that summed up Clive, and then scowled at the table, out of its usual place. “Suppose you’ll be wanting food, too. And her, too?”
“If it’s not too much of a bother.”
Seth muttered something under his breath about trouble and disappeared back into the kitchen. A few seconds later, more rattling of pans and slamming of cabinet doors could be heard.
“What’re you grinning about?”
He looked up to see Ginny silhouetted in the doorway, the midday sun filling in behind her. She wasn’t his type, particularly, but made a nice silhouette, he had to admit.
“Seth still thinks you’re trouble.”
“What did I ever do to him?” she asked, taking the other chair opposite him. She was wearing a brown top, with a deep V-neck that he’d have to be dead not to appreciate. Her hair was pinned up, the shoulder-length blond curls tamed for once.
“You’re female,” he said. “Seth naturally assumes all females are trouble, two-legged or four.” The old man wasn’t too fond of Mistress Penny-Drops, the bar’s unofficial adopted cat, either. Teddy realized, with that, that he hadn’t seen Penny in a day or two. Not that he kept track of her, but she usually showed up for the evening shift, at least long enough to wind around his legs and collect some attention before disappearing to do whatever it was cats did.
He took a second, closer look at Ginny’s attire, noting that she was dressed more formally than usual. “You had a meeting this morning?”
“Yeah. Kinda.” She looked evasive, which was unusual for her. “Breakfast meeting, so I just killed time downtown for a while. Georgie is going to sulk when I get home.”
“New client?”
“No, it was personal.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Not that kind of personal, Tonica. I had to meet with a lawyer.” She made a face, as though the lawyer left a sour taste in her mouth, and reached up and started unpinning her hair, as though his comment had reminded her of the combs and pins. Once the curls were loose, she shook her head and let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, that feels better. I swear, one of these days I’m going to get a haircut like yours.”
“You could probably carry it off,” he said, “but every femme from here to Portland would be lining up at your door like a lovesick puppy.”
She took that as a compliment, smiling as though to say “of course,” and he shook his head, wondering why he’d thought otherwise. Ginny had a lot of issues and hot-buttons, and he was learning how to punch some of them, but as far as he could tell, sexual politics didn’t faze her a bit. Then again: Seattle. He’d grown up in a more conservative part of New England, and the cultural learning curve had been tricky his first year here.
Seth came out of the kitchen and stood there, hands on his hips, staring at them.
“I got grilled cheese with tomato,” he said, finally, grudgingly, as though telling them that was the worst part of his day.
“And a salad?” Ginny asked.
His mouth twitched, as though he were going to respond, then he simply grunted and turned back into the kitchen.
“You know how he feels about green salads,” Teddy said.
“I know. It’s just so much fun to see his head spin around. Is Stacy working today?”
“Later. She’s got a gig today.” Mary’s sole waitress and bartender-trainee was also an artist’s model. Teddy didn’t get it—she wasn’t particularly pretty—but apparently goo
d bones were more important. It brought in enough money that she could afford to work at Mary’s the rest of the time, though, and for that he was thankful.
“So. Did you decide?”
Ginny’s dog might not be a bloodhound, but Gin herself was rarely distracted from anything for very long. Teddy sighed and leaned back in his chair, making the wooden frame creak.
“You remember what Agent Asuri said? That we shouldn’t stick our noses into things we’re not trained for? We got lucky last time, Gin. You know that, right?” Asuri was the fed who had responded when he put out a friend-of-a-friend call for help, when they’d realized they needed more info than even Ginny could dig up. The agent hadn’t been much impressed by them.
“We were lucky to figure things out, and we were lucky nobody got—” He almost said “killed,” but someone had died, even if the jury was still quiet on if it had been murder or suicide. “What makes you think we’ll get lucky a second time?”
“First, we weren’t ‘lucky’ ”—and she used air quotes to emphasize the word—“to figure things out. That was basic logic, deduction, and a bit of your mad people-shmoozing skills.”
“A bit?” He mimed being wounded, slapping one hand flat against his chest.
She made a face at the theatrics. “All right, a lot.”
They argued, mocked, battled, and occasionally outright fought, but from the first, he’d liked Ginny Mallard. If he were called on it, he’d admit that she was at least as smart as he was, good-looking if you liked curvy blondes, and could keep up in a battle of wits. Could win them, a fair percentage, too.
He wouldn’t lie and pretend that he’d never thought about getting her into bed, but mostly it had been early on, the passing sort of thing you did when a new woman showed up. As far as he could tell, she’d never thought of him that way at all. He didn’t buy into the “friend zone” thing, but they seemed to have slotted each other there, or something like it, without conscious effort. He guessed that was a good thing, since they were working together now.
“And it’s not likely anyone’s going to do violence over a few thousand dollars,” she continued, obviously still determined to convince him to take the job. “I mean, yeah, people say they’d kill for a couple of thousand, but here? I doubt it. More likely someone’s just skimming off the till to pad their vacation fund or something. They probably are telling themselves they’ll put it back before anyone notices. You’d investigate something like that here, wouldn’t you?”
“No, I’d line everyone up and read them the riot act,” he said bluntly. “And the next time, I’d call the cops.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Ginny said. “You like everyone here too much.”
“I would, too,” he said. “I can like ’em all I want, but if I don’t report a theft, that’s my job and my reputation on the line.”
Ginny frowned, and tapped her fingers, three sharp clicks. “But what if you couldn’t? If reporting a theft meant Patrick would have to close Mary’s down? Because that’s what would happen at LifeHouse.”
“It’s not the same thing, Gin.” But before he could explain why, Seth came out again, carrying a tray loaded with plates. Rather than bringing it over to them, he set it down on the bar. “This ain’t no damn restaurant,” he growled. “And I ain’t your damn server. Come get your own damn food.”
“Think of the kittens, Tonica,” Ginny said, getting up and following him to the bar to grab a plate. “The sweet, homeless animals! Think of the amazingly good karma you’d rack up!”
Seth had already grabbed his food—sandwich and salad—and gone to the table, pulling another chair up to join them.
“More animals?” he asked, coming in on the tail end of the conversation. “You’re not bringing more animals into this place, are you? Bad enough that cat, and her wrinkled excuse for a dog. What’s next, a parrot?”
“This place could use a parrot,” Ginny said, and then added, “and where is Mistress Penny?” She sat down with her own plate and looked around, as though expecting to see the little tabby appear out of thin air.
“I haven’t seen her for a while,” Teddy said. “She may be sulking because you didn’t bring her girlfriend along.”
Penny might or might not be his cat—opinions varied on that, with his firmly in the “no” category—but Georgie was definitely Penny’s dog, as much as she was Ginny’s.
“And no,” he said to Seth. “No more animals. And no, Mallard, we don’t need a parrot.” He wasn’t a pet person, and Mary’s was a bar, not a refuge for wayward critters. Although, thinking about some of their regulars, he had to admit that there were nights . . .
“The shelter animals need us, Tonica,” Ginny wheedled. “We’re their only hope.”
“Hrmph. You two should just keep your noses tucked into your own business,” Seth said. “Last time, we near all almost got killed.”
“Oh, let it go already,” Teddy said, exasperated, even though he’d been making the exact same point earlier. “You weren’t even in the bar when it happened.” That was half the problem—Seth had been taking out the recycling when the goons tried to use force to get them to talk. By the time he came back, the excitement was over, and he was still peeved about that.
Ginny interrupted after she took a bite of her food. “Oh man, Seth, this sandwich is good. Please tell me you’re going to put this on the menu?”
Seth looked pleased, but then he scowled again. “Too expensive. Good cheese, have to charge more’n seven dollars, and Patrick’s new ‘cheap bites’ idea puts the kibosh on that.”
“He’s probably not wrong about a nine-dollar sandwich, with this crowd,” Teddy said. He took a bite, and his eyes almost closed in satisfaction. That was good cheese, yeah, and good bread, and the tomatoes were nearly perfect, even though they were off-season.
“You offer people good grub, they pay for it. You offer ’em crap, and they’ll go somewhere else. That dumb sonofa—”
“Not while I’m eating,” Teddy said, and took another bite. The sandwich—thick with cheese, tangy with tomato, and crunchy with toast—deserved his full attention, not to be ruined with a rant about what a dick their boss was being.
* * *
Ginny studied Tonica’s face, listened to the tone of his voice, and decided that she’d let him eat in peace instead of pushing the pros of this job at him. She might not be the shmoozer he was, but she could read him pretty well. His brain was turning it over, had probably been turning it over all night, and the fact that he hadn’t said no—or anyway, hadn’t said no in the tone of voice that said “final decision”—meant that he hadn’t decided yet, so there was still a good chance at yes.
Besides, she hadn’t eaten much at breakfast, too focused on business, and Seth had seriously outdone himself with the sandwiches. When she was a kid, she would never have believed a simple GC&T could taste so good.
When she’d cleared her plate of the last chip and crumb of sandwich, she wiped her mouth and fingers with her napkin, put the paper onto her plate, and looked across the table at Tonica.
“So?”
He sighed, and bused their plates back to the tray on the counter, for Seth to take back and wash. “You’re going to do this, aren’t you?”
There wasn’t much point in denying it. “Yeah.” She’d made up her mind on the way back home last night, watching the happy wag of Georgie’s tail.
“Christ.” There was a lot packed into that word, and she didn’t think all of it was directed at her. So she just sat and waited while he thought, one elbow leaning against the bar, his gaze looking somewhere past the far wall. Tonica was more of a seat-of-his-pants decision maker, usually, but he was still harboring doubts that this “pseudo-PI” gig was a good idea. With someone else, she might have tried to do a soft sell—or a hard one—but Tonica liked to think that he was making up his own mind.
There was a soft thump above them, and then a delicate-boned gray tabby cat dropped down from her usual perch on top of
the bottle display, onto the surface of the bar itself, as daintily as if she’d stepped from limo to curb.
Ginny had no idea how Penny got into the bar without anyone seeing her—the vents, maybe? Some hidden crawlspace only cats knew about?—but she came and went with a quiet that Ginny, accustomed now to Georgie’s nosier entrances, could only marvel at.
“Oh there you are, you,” Tonica said, looking sideways at the cat. “Where’ve you been, lady?”
As though responding to his question, the tabby padded the length of the bar, her tail held high, to sit next to Tonica’s elbow.
“Sweetie, down,” he said to her, and then turned his attention back to Ginny. “I don’t know. I—” He broke off as Penny lifted one paw and pushed on his arm. It wasn’t a pat, or a pet; it was a very definite shove.
“What?” he asked her, as though she was going to answer, and Ginny hid a grin. Once you start talking to the animals, she knew firsthand, it was all over. Tonica could claim that Penny wasn’t his cat all he wanted: he was her human.
Possibly irritated that he hadn’t gotten the point the first time, Penny reached up and swatted his arm again, claws out but not digging into shirt or skin.
“Ow! What?” he asked again, but the cat, her message apparently delivered, merely sat there blinking peacefully at nothing in particular, a soft rumbling purr coming from her body.
“See?” Ginny said, unable to resist. “Even Mistress Penny thinks it’s a good idea, to help the shelter out.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Seth said, even though nobody had asked him. “Whatever it is, if Blondie came up with it, it’s trouble.”
Good sandwich or not, that nickname really pissed her off, calling up every “dumb blonde” joke she’d ever been subjected to. “One of these days I’m going to teach you not to call me that, old man.”
He snorted at her threat, then got up and re-piled the dishes on the tray as though Tonica had done it wrong, and started carrying it back toward the kitchen.
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