Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery

by L. A. Kornetsky

  “I’m working in a sitcom,” he muttered, and the woman waiting for her drink grinned at him. “Not Norm!”

  “You’re all Norm,” he shot back, to the confusion of the twenty-somethings waiting their turn. And for a moment, just a moment, the sense of something being out of place subsided.

  “Hey, boss, Seth says we’re out of bread because, and I quote, we have two-legged locusts, end quote, and should he run out and buy more bread or just tell ’em the kitchen’s closed?” Stacy widened her eyes at him, waiting for an answer, even as she loaded the three waiting beers onto her tray.

  “Jesus, it’s barely seven, the kitchen just opened.” He’d accuse Seth of tossing perfectly usable bread because he didn’t want to make more sandwiches, except the older man might take a swing at him. Or quit. He’d come back after Teddy groveled a little but that was an extra argh he really didn’t need this week. Any week. They’d hired a second waitress last month, but it wasn’t enough. They needed more people, and they needed people who would stick around.

  Once upon a time, he’d just been lead bartender: no responsibilities, no obligations, no need to mediate. A lot fewer headaches. Where had it all gone wrong?

  “Tell him to keep the kitchen open and roll the meat and cheese in the lettuce, then stick it with a toothpick. Call it, hell, I don’t know, ‘No-Carbwiches’ or something.”

  “Boss, you’re occasionally brilliant.” Stacy took her tray and disappeared into the back to pass the news on to Seth. The old man liked her; he wouldn’t growl at her too much for bringing bad news.

  Grabbing a piece of chalk from the speed rail, Teddy turned to change the chalkboard with the night’s offerings. If the orders actually went up, they’d put it on the regular rotation, no matter how much Seth moaned about trendy food and idiot hipsters. The old man had been on a steady tear about hipsters for a month now, ever since they’d gotten a write-up in one of the little community newspapers.

  “You didn’t want hipsters, you shoulda moved to Cleveland, not Seattle,” Teddy said, as though the old man could hear him through the wall and over the noise of the bar, and could hear the disgusted snort he was likely to get in return, if the old man had heard him. Personally, Teddy shared that opinion about hipsters, but while he might not be as gung ho as Patrick, the bar’s owner, to expand their clientele, he liked seeing the place busy, and hipster money was as good as anyone else’s. And they caused less trouble overall than both college students and middle-aged happy-hour habitués.

  At that moment, the red-painted front door swung open, and a large group of twenty-somethings came in, making the noise level rise noticeably for a moment. Teddy watched them head for the tables that had been pushed together, making a mental note to keep an eye on them, and leaned forward to better hear what the couple at the bar were ordering. Thankfully, they stuck to basics; it was too early for someone to order a Fuzzy Pink Marsupial, or otherwise try to play stump-the-bartender.

  “Where’s Ginny?” The question was directed at him, and he shrugged. “Do I look like her keeper?”

  “Yes?” the other man said, and his companion laughed.

  “You want me to spit in your beer, Mac? Keep it up. . . .” Teddy shook his head and passed the beers across the bar. “She’s out of town on a job,” he said. “That’s all I know.”

  And that reminded him that he hadn’t heard from her how the client meeting went. It was good that this place kept him busy, both hands and brains, because it kept him from checking his phone for a text message or voice mail, just then, and for a while after. Not that there was any reason for her to check in—like he’d said to Stacy, she was working her own gig, not one of theirs. No reason for her to check in, nope. Just because they’d gotten into the habit of talking over the day like an old married couple, her coming in for a drink most afternoons he worked before the crush hit, didn’t mean it was a thing they always had to do. And he’d talked to her just a couple of hours before, so he knew she was all right. . . .

  Just because he had a niggling sense of empty where she usually sat didn’t mean he had to indulge it.

  “Too many sisters already; I don’t need another one,” he muttered to himself. “She’s a big girl, more than capable of driving out of town on her own and doing her job without falling into trouble. Get a grip.”

  * * *

  Above him, Mistress Penny-Drops woke from her doze, stretching her body along the cabinet and flexing her claws slightly, just to feel them stretch and retract. It was almost too warm atop the bar shelves, and the noise made her ears flatten against her head in annoyance, but the view of the room was too good to abandon. She liked being able to keep track of everyone with a swift glance. Plus, Theodore was just below her, behind the counter, close enough that a single well-timed leap could land her on his shoulders.

  If she were to do that, she knew from experience, she would be dumped onto the floor. Penny didn’t resent that: her claws were sharp, and human shoulders were unsteady; it was natural to dig in to make sure you kept your balance. But she tried not to do that unless Theodore was wearing a jacket, to give him extra padding. Generally, when she decided to grace him with her presence, she leapt down to the bartop. It was a longer leap, but an easier landing. But tonight, she was content to sit, and watch.

  And, watching, she could tell that Theodore was worried. Humans worried about so many things, all the time; one of the reasons she enjoyed his company was that he didn’t do that, didn’t have the wound-up energy that made other humans difficult to sit near. Except when they were actively sniffing something out, of course. But that was different. Hunting was different. But he wasn’t sniffing anything out now—was he? He didn’t do that without Georgie’s human, Ginny, and neither Georgie nor Ginny had been in today. Or yesterday.

  Penny’s whiskers twitched as she tried to remember the last time she’d seen Georgie. It had been not-long-ago, but not-recent, and her whiskers twitched again, even as her ears flattened slightly. Georgie liked to think she was rough-and-tumble, but the dog needed Penny to explain things to her, keep her focused. What was she doing, without Penny?

  And why was the new woman who had come to work at the Busy Place doing that? She tracked the woman’s hands for a moment, puzzled, then was distracted by the conversation below her.

  “She’s out of town on a job. That’s all I know.” Theodore’s voice was smooth, but she could hear it cut through the clatter as he spoke to the humans who approached the bar, his hands moving quickly, surely, as he passed bottles and mixed drinks. “Two Dead Guy ales and a Holy Spirit, check. You going to run a tab?”

  The people laughed; he had said something amusing, although she didn’t understand what. Those were people who were often with Ginny; had Ginny come in with them? No, she hadn’t, and no Georgie, either. Was that the she he’d mentioned? Out of town where? Why hadn’t Georgie told her they were leaving?

  Her tail lashed once, before she got it under control. She needed more information. But Theodore was busy serving other people now, his hands moving surely, without speaking. Stacy? No, the other human was too far away to hear, even if she’d been saying anything of interest.

  It had gotten more crowded in the bar since she had last looked around. Humans were so noisy. Penny much preferred the afternoons, when only a few people were here, talking in low voices. When Theodore moved more slowly, and looked up when he spoke to her, and Georgie was sprawled on the floor, making a perfect cat bed. But it was night and busy, and even if Georgie were here, they wouldn’t be allowed on the floor, she would have to be in the back room, or outside if the weather was good, and then Penny wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on everything.

  Penny settled back down on the cabinet, feeling the urge to sulk. Her humans were too busy to pay attention to her. And Georgie wasn’t here, and neither was her human. Penny’s tail twitched again, and her whiskers quivered. Why weren’t they here?
Where were they? Why hadn’t Georgie told her, if they were going away?

  Penny was a creature of order. She did not like it when things weren’t in the right place, people where she could see them.

  She didn’t trust them not to get in trouble without her.

  4

  If she had to get stiffed by a client, Ginny thought, then this was the way to deal with it: dinner with an old friend, and no worries. The restaurant Ron had suggested was nice—some sort of gastropub where they’d actually considered acoustics, so they could hear each other talk, but not also have to listen in to the conversations happening at the tables around them. She dug into her cheeseburger—locally sourced, the menu informed her—with a ferocity that made her companion laugh.

  “Shut up,” she said. “I haven’t eaten anything since . . . God, since this morning, I think.” She’d had a protein bar during the drive down, but nothing else since breakfast in her apartment in Seattle. There had been an honor bar in her room, but she’d taken one look at the prices and blanched.

  “Being on the most-wanted list builds an appetite, huh?”

  Ginny shook her head. “Don’t even joke about that.” She’d told him about what had happened, and how the cops had questioned her, but then had asked that they go on to less stressful topics, like politics.

  Ron stopped laughing, giving her a long look. “It’s bothering you, huh?”

  She put down her hamburger and stared at him. “It wouldn’t bother you?”

  He shrugged. “Not particularly, no. But then I’m a jaded bastard used to getting the stink-eye from cops of all descriptions.”

  She laughed, because it was true—he’d grown up on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks, and stayed there, professionally. “Yeah well, I’m still new to that.” Then she sobered, picking at her fries without eating one. “And yeah . . . yeah, it’s bothering me. Not just finding the body—I wish it were that, but I guess I’ve gotten jaded enough that once the shock was gone it was just sad. And it’s not just because they’re side-eyeing me, because I’m not only innocent, because I can pull up an airtight alibi of being somewhere else at the time, assuming the guy was killed more than twenty minutes before I got there. But that’s it, you know? I was sent there, Ron. And that’s . . .” That was eating at her, sending her thoughts around in tighter and tighter circles, even as she tried not to think about it. “Someone might have set me up, and I don’t know who, or why. Wouldn’t that bother you, just a little?”

  Ron smiled at her response. “I was born with the need to dig up answers, Virginia.” Then he leaned forward, looking up over his glasses to study her expression. “You want me to see what’s going on?”

  She did. She really did. “Can you do that?”

  “I can do many things, my dear.” The leer he sent her was so at odds with his appearance—a narrow man with a narrow face fringed with long graying hair and wide, impossibly innocent blue eyes behind those horn-rimmed glasses—that she laughed. They’d been friends for nearly a decade, after fighting on the same side of a local zoning issue just after she got out of college, when he’d still been working in Seattle, and he’d never once hit on her. Then again, he’d never hit on anyone she knew, male or female, and if he’d been dating anyone in all that time he’d never said. He was either incredibly discreet or happily asexual.

  But one thing she knew was that Ronald O’Riley could do many things. Her friend was a wizard, although instead of a wand he carried a little black book. An actual little book, full of names and secrets, coded in case it fell into the wrong hands. After twenty-seven years as a reporter, Ron knew everyone who was worth knowing in the Pacific Northwest, and probably down into California, too. It wouldn’t surprise her at all if he had a half dozen local cops on speed dial, even though his normal beat was politics, not crime.

  Although, when she thought about it, there probably was a lot of overlap between the two.

  “All right, do your worst to set my mind at ease,” she said, smiling as though she were joking. They both knew she wasn’t. He patted her hand once, avuncular, and got up to make a few phone calls out in the hallway, where fewer people might overhear.

  While she was waiting, Ginny checked her own messages—nothing urgent, and nothing from Tonica—and ordered them another round of drinks. Just as the waiter brought them over, Ron returned. But the expression on his face was no longer amused. “Kid, you got a problem.”

  “What?” That had not been what she expected to hear. “Holy shit, Ron, don’t tell me they really think I did it?” She was making a joke, but the look on his face, if anything, got gloomier.

  “Your alleged client? No such person. Anywhere.”

  “Yeah, I was beginning to suspect as much.” She’d been able to find a baby-sized footprint online in that first search, but once she went deeper, it was clear that everything had been created within the past year, and none of it went down another layer—no comments on any forum she’d been able to find, no reviews left anywhere, and no photos or references kicked back by any of her search engines. And no email associated with that name beyond a freebie account . . . Who had only one email these days? But she’d been waiting to get home before she dug deeper—there was only so much she could do from the road, without her own little book of people to call. “But that just means I got punked, that’s all. There’s nothing to tie me—”

  Interrupting her—something he would never do, normally—Ron went on, “And your name and phone number were found in the dead guy’s pocket.”

  * * *

  Ginny walked into her hotel room, closed the door behind her, leaned against the door, and said, “Today has, without a doubt, sucked.”

  Georgie looked up from where she’d been sleeping on the bed, the hotel room too small for her to have the usual “hear Mom at the door, run to greet her” reaction time. Her tail wagged once, and her jaw dropped open slightly, as though to say, “But I’m here; you got me!”

  Ginny dropped her coat on the floor, toed off her shoes, and slid the door’s security locks into place before sitting down heavily next to the dog on the bed. She rubbed the top of Georgie’s head with her knuckles the way the shar-pei liked and managed a smile. “Yeah, I got you, kid, and that’s no small thing. Dogs are awesome.”

  Ron had paid the bill and sent her home, warning her to go directly back to the hotel and stay close to her room, where she’d told the cops she would be. “I’m not saying there’s going to be trouble, but there’s already trouble and you don’t want to be making it worse.”

  She really didn’t. Ginny had spent the entire drive back telling herself that this wasn’t anything she should get her fingers into, that every indication pointed to the fact that she’d been baited and hooked and left to swing, and she should let professionals sort it out. That anything she did would just piss off those professionals and possibly make things worse.

  Contrary to her parents’ opinion, she did have a head full of common sense, and contrary to the opinions of certain other people, she didn’t actually enjoy being hip-deep in trouble.

  But—a little voice had been saying, counterpoint to the very sensible voice—she made a living getting her hands dirty fixing other people’s problems. And she was good at it. So how could she just sit back and ignore her own? And didn’t she have experience solving crime? She did. Well, she did, with help. Ginny looked at the digital time display on the television. A little after nine thirty. She sighed, imagining what Mary’s looked like right now. Probably a madhouse, with the trivia game about to start and everyone getting their drink orders in. Even if she’d been there, she wouldn’t have been able to get Tonica’s attention. Anything short of a siren going off on his phone would be ignored.

  But sitting here doing nothing was going to drive her mad. She needed to bounce this off someone, and Georgie, loving as she was, gave terrible advice.

  With one last sc
ritch between Georgie’s ear for luck, Ginny pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket and sent a text message to her partner. “Call when can. Trouble.”

  A few minutes later, she got a response: “Watering the savages. Skype in twenty?”

  Cell phone reception in the back office was crap, unless you stood at exactly the right angle and sacrificed a chicken. She’d installed Skype on the office computer and taught Tonica how to use it—under protest—but this was the first time they’d be using it for an actual conversation, rather than a test drive.

  Thankfully, she’d paid for high-speed connectivity when she did her Net search earlier, justifying it as a business expense. “Okay.”

  Twenty minutes was enough time to take Georgie for a quick walk in the hotel’s doggie “recreation area” again—it was just off the parking lot, which should be in clear enough view for the cops if they’d decided to keep active tabs on her, or quizzed the night clerk later about her behavior.

  “It’s not paranoia if they really do have you under surveillance,” she told Georgie, who seemed pleased to be going outside, even if people were watching.

  There were two other people walking their dogs: an older woman with a tiny dog that was all hair, and a younger woman with an overenthusiastic hound puppy. They nodded to each other, the way people did when their dogs passed on the street, but nobody seemed to be in the mood for conversation. Ginny wondered, briefly, if one of them was an undercover cop, tried to imagine the pocket pup as a K-9 officer, and had to force herself not to break into a bad case of the giggles.

  “C’mon, Georgie, do your thing,” she said to the dog, flicking the leash lightly. “Before I become one of those moms and embarrass you in public.”

  Ginny didn’t believe that Georgie actually understood more than five words, total, and most of those had to do with “walk” or “dinner,” but the shar-pei was pretty good at picking up moods. She did her business quickly after that, and was willing to go back upstairs a few minutes later, despite the appearance of a midsized collie and its owner, who looked like they wanted to make friends.