L.A. Kornetsky - Gin & Tonic 02 - Fixed

by L. A. Kornetsky

  Teddy knew all of that from the file, but he wanted to keep the man talking, see what fell out.

  “And, of course, the volunteers who are in daily contact with the animals are trained to spot signs of discomfort or distress. But there are things that take a trained eye, and an actual exam, to identify. Here, we’ll start with Sweetums.”

  Sweetums was a hound of some mix, the size and shape of a small hippo, but with a trusting expression. When Teddy opened the cage, her tail wagged so hard, he thought her ass was going to come off.

  “She’s well named,” he said, coaxing her out onto the wheeled table they’d brought with them. It had a cotton pad on top of the metal surface, and an assortment of brushes, combs, and other tools on the shelf underneath. Sweetums acted as though this was all terribly routine, letting him drop her onto the cotton pad without a wiggle.

  “Yes, she is,” Williams agreed. “As soon as we get her down to fighting weight, she’ll be adopted quickly, I think. Won’t you, girl?”

  He had reached out to touch her head, and then had to jerk his fingers back as the overweight dog growled at him.

  “Whoa,” Teddy said, surprised.

  “Easy, Sweetums,” Williams said softly, his surprise not translating into any harsh sound or movement. “Easy. What’s wrong, girl? Are you okay?”

  She didn’t growl at him again, but the tail stilled, and her head lowered slightly as though embarrassed by her behavior.

  “All right, girl. If you’re not up for being handled, that’s okay. Teddy, if you could mark her chart that she’s NFH, and my initials, please?”

  “NFH?” he asked, adding the notation to the chart with the pencil tied to the clipboard.

  “Not for handling. It gives her a day off to recover. The last thing you want is a dog growling at someone who might want to adopt them.”

  “I know a lot of people who could use that warning on their charts.”

  That got a smile out of the older man.

  “So you do this on a volunteer basis? That’s a hell of a commitment.”

  Williams was studying Sweetums, clearly doing as much of a visual exam as he could. “The shelter covers the basic costs, the surgical supplies, and a small fee for my time, which, I will admit, barely covers the cost of my gas to get here. It keeps me humble, filling out the invoice every week.” Scott kept talking as he offered his hand again to Sweetums, who had apparently exhausted her annoyance and now submitted calmly to being examined. Teddy had watched Ginny handle Georgie enough to know that most dogs weren’t thrilled with having their gums pulled back or their ears lifted and cleaned: the vet made it look easy. So the guy was competent, and not easily spooked.

  “So, for the love?” he asked, to keep the man talking.

  “Most of these animals, they’re good, sweet-tempered beasts. They deserve homes with people who will love them, not to be euthanized simply because someone didn’t give them a little time and effort. So, yeah.” He smiled a little, giving Sweetums a scratch behind her ears. “For the love.”

  They finished with Sweetums and moved on, only to discover that almost every dog they handled had the same reaction—pleasure that their cage was being opened, but the moment they went on the cart, their entire demeanor changed. A small terrier, faster than the others, even managed to nip Williams, although not hard enough to break the latex of his gloves.

  “That’s odd,” Williams said, frowning at the terrier less in anger than puzzlement.

  “They don’t seem to like you this morning,” Teddy said. Most of the dogs had squirmed a little when he reached in for them, but none of them had reacted that badly to his touch.

  “Something must have disturbed them overnight,” Williams said. “Hopefully, once the regular crew gets here and can bring them out into the run for breakfast and playtime, they will calm down.”

  “Yeah, that should do it,” Teddy agreed, but he was dubious. One dog, or maybe two, you could see having an off night. All of them? And the reaction seemed specific to the vet, or they’d be snapping at him, too, right?

  He didn’t know enough about dogs. He’d have to toss this one to Mallard.

  “Hey, doc. Oh.” The voice came from a man standing at the far end of the kennel corridor. A much older man, with a hairless scalp and a protruding chin, he was definitely the guy they’d seen in the dog run, their last visit. Now he stared accusingly at Tonica. “Who’s this?”

  “A volunteer, who helped out while you were catching your beauty sleep,” Williams replied. “But now that you’ve deigned to roll in…”

  “Bite me entirely,” the other man said, but without any heat: clearly, the two of them had a good relationship. Stephen, the other volunteer. “You’re just about done with the puppies, then? I’ll go prep the kittens.”

  “Good. And thanks for your help, ah—”

  “Teddy,” he supplied.

  “Right, Teddy. You can dump the gloves and smock in the bin over there, and there’s a washroom off to the side where you can clean up. And tell Margaret that you earned access to the coffee machine in the back—that’s where they hide the good stuff.”

  He hadn’t managed to get the man to open up as much as he’d wanted—although he now knew enough about ear mites and signs of ringworm infestation to put him off breakfast and possibly lunch as well, but Teddy didn’t mind. He’d learned something unexpected: the dogs, for whatever reason, didn’t like their otherwise competent vet.

  * * *

  The coffee was damned good. Having an actual mug to pour it into rather than a Styrofoam cup didn’t hurt, either. Teddy doctored it to his satisfaction and took another sip.

  “Oh. Hello.”

  The man who had come up to the coffeemaker looked at Teddy quizzically, as though he assumed he should remember his name, if he just wrinkled his forehead enough. Teddy sized him up quickly: anywhere from late fifties to early sixties, a narrow frame hunched in on itself slightly, an intelligent, open face with once-dark hair now more salt than pepper, and a carefully trimmed beard and soul patch that didn’t disguise the pallor of his skin underneath.

  “You must be Roger,” he said, taking a calculated guess. “My name’s Teddy. I’m a friend of Nora’s, helping out this morning.”

  He wasn’t comfortable as Mallard, bending truth, but it was close enough. He had helped out that morning.

  “Ah. I’m afraid I don’t know all the new volunteers as well as I should.” Roger smiled, briefly. “I’ve been sick, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”

  Teddy allowed as how he had, yes.

  “So welcome aboard, and I see that you’ve already been directed to the stash. Este keeps trying to talk me into retiring a hundred percent, but when the employee discounts are this good…”

  Roger noted Teddy’s puzzlement, and smiled with a hint of embarrassment. “I retired from the desk job when we started the shelter—I always hated that job, honestly—but I work part-time as a roaster for Bean There, over in Fremont. So we’re always stocked with the best caffeine in town.”

  “If you put this out in the front lobby,” Teddy agreed, “you’d probably adopt out every animal in twenty-four hours.” He’d never heard of that coffee place, but this was Seattle, it was hard to keep track.

  “That’s a thought,” Roger agreed, then his attention was distracted by the sound of voices from one of the interior offices. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have been informed that there is a massive pile of paperwork that I need to sign off on, or risk Este’s not-insignificant wrath.”

  Teddy raised his mug in farewell, just as Nora walked in from the lobby.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, clearly surprised to see him there.

  “I seem to get that a lot around here,” Teddy said, mock-ruefully. “I’m sorry, I know I was early, but—”

  “No, I heard, I just hadn’t thought… Well, anyway. Um. Thank you for helping out. Scott’s a great guy, and he does so much work here for free, we feel guilty. So I’m glad we were able to k
eep him on schedule. And you found the coffee! Isn’t it great?”

  The coffee was very good, even for local standards. But it wasn’t that great, that everyone kept mentioning it. She seemed distracted, more the ditz she’d seemed on their first meeting than the professional whose face she’d put on when showing them the kittens the day before.

  Focusing on small, probably insignificant but easily identified items was a popular evasion technique, he’d discovered over the years. Normally he’d let it ride, allow the person to unload at his or her own pace. But he didn’t have that luxury now. At any moment, someone would remember that he really shouldn’t be back here, and ask him—politely, no doubt—to leave.

  “Is everything okay, Nora?”

  “What? Yeah, of course. I mean… other than, you know, that thing. Everything’s fine. We’re just a little crazed here on the weekend, what with the clinic work and full hours, and—” She shrugged, a little half smile pasted onto her face. “Is there anything you need, anything I can do?”

  “Nope. Just point me toward the kittens, and let me shmooze,” he said, rinsing out his mug and placing it in the sink.

  He might not have found out what he came here for, but something even more interesting was going on: between Margaret’s false start and immediate shutdown this morning, and the reaction of the other volunteers to his being there, something was definitely not-okay. Something that seemed to have happened overnight, something the vet seemed oblivious to. And then there was the matter of the dogs being so upset… .

  It might be worthwhile having Gin make a closer run at Scott Williams’s background.

  8

  Mom, no.”

  “But—” Her mother had That Voice going. Ginny had to be ruthless, or she’d be talked into something that would give her an ulcer.

  “No. Seriously. And especially not with Aunt Dee and Uncle Alex coming, okay? If we’re still together next year, then yes, I will ask him if he wants to come.” Hopefully, that would hold her mother off.

  “All right. But—”

  “I love you, Mom. Gotta go.”

  Ginny ended the call, and put her head down on her hands. She shouldn’t have mentioned her date, should have known better. Normally Ginny wouldn’t even let her mother know she was seeing someone until they’d been together for six months, certainly not after only two dates. She’d been trying to distract her mother from worrying about Thanksgiving, and it had slipped out, and God, when would she learn?

  “Georgie, your human is an idiot. Fetch me some more coffee, will you?”

  Under her bare feet, the shar-pei shifted and muttered something, showing no inclination whatsoever to head into the kitchen and refill Ginny’s mug.

  “As a housegirl, you’re an utter failure, dog,” she said, digging her toes into the soft brindle pelt.

  Georgie rolled over on her back, presenting her belly for toe-scritches.

  “Forget about it,” Ginny said. “You didn’t get me coffee, so I have to go get my own.”

  Feet removed, Georgie rolled back over on her side, barely waking up long enough to notice her human was leaving the room, secure in the knowledge that Ginny would be back.

  “Huh. Was a time, dog, when you followed me everywhere.”

  Even to the bathroom, waiting anxiously as though she were afraid the human might disappear behind that door forever. Ginny had to admit that she was glad that particular habit had been broken. It was weirdly difficult to pee, knowing that a dog was staring at you on the other side of the door.

  She refilled her cup from the carafe, and added milk and sugar, thinking about the work she’d been doing before her mother called. She had been hired, originally, to arrange the baby shower for a young couple who were about to have their first baby, and who’d utterly flipped at trying to maintain their jobs plus all the baby-related essentials that needed to be done. That had gone so well they’d also asked her to work with their contractor and designer in putting together the nursery, and arranging for house cleaning and food delivery and all the things that they knew they’d forget or be too tired and stressed to manage once the baby was born. They were lovely people, perfectly willing to spend money to get things done right the first time, but they kept trying to get involved in the things they’d asked her to handle. She was ready to give them both a time-out until the baby was born.

  If she didn’t like them so much, and if they didn’t pay so well, she’d probably kill them.

  “Dogs are much easier to bring home than babies,” she said to Georgie as she went back into the office. “All you needed was a bed, a leash and collar, and a couple of rawhide chews, and you were happy. Why can’t humans learn that?”

  Georgie woofed, but it was probably in response to whatever dream-squirrel she was chasing.

  Thankfully, the shelter job was more of a challenge. She had been in the process of doing more in-depth searches on the staff when Tonica called—luckily she’d just talked to Nora and done a quick search on the names, so she wasn’t caught out by his information. Teddy was smart, and keeping a step ahead of him was a goal more than a guaranteed achievement. But then, that was part of why she liked him, and most of why they worked together so well. She never had any hesitation that he was doing his share, and she assumed he felt the same.

  Her office took up what would have been the second, larger bedroom of her apartment. An L-shaped desk was split between the computer on one side, and on the other piles of paperwork, to-file baskets, an empty bowl that had held oatmeal a few hours ago, and a pile of micro-USB chargers that she needed to untangle and sort and hadn’t had a chance to yet. Once she would have been uber-organized; she really needed to get back to that. The past week, things had just gotten… disorganized somehow.

  “That’s the downside of working with someone else; you’re having to wait for them to bring their part of the puzzle in, before you can put everything together, and that starts to run over into the rest of your life, too. Fine. Whatever. I am still a capable and competent person, and I bet I can still kick his ass on trivia night, if I ever get back to it.”

  Maybe that was the answer: help her team kick his team’s ass, and reassert the proper pecking order. If they got this wrapped up by Tuesday…

  Sitting back down at the desk, she opened her email program and sent off a quick email to the painters, confirming that they would be there on Monday morning to finish the trim in the nursery, and then clicked open the spreadsheet she’d put together for the shelter case.

  Tonica could go do his thing, and she’d do hers, which in this case was chasing the money. Or the lack thereof. She was used to dealing with people who could throw money at problems—or rather, throw money at her to make problems go away, current clients a case in point. But everyone involved with the shelter seemed to be in that gray area of “decent income.” That meant, in her experience, that they were conscious enough about money that they wouldn’t take from someone who needed it. Only the wealthy and the desperate did that.

  “This would be much easier if they’d kept the damn money in a bank account, and paid people by check. Who does everything on a cash basis, anyhow?

  “People who don’t want to have to report income,” she answered herself. “Not so good-looking for the home team. I wonder how much they’re actually paying the vet to do these surgeries? Is it just enough to cover the costs, the way the terms of the grant specified, or is he getting an extra payoff… or maybe less? I wonder how much they fudged the expected costs, to get more money in… or maybe they screwed up and underestimated?” She needed to see an invoice.

  The sound of a buzzer startled her: she looked up, and Georgie scrambled to her feet, alerted by the noise. The phone she could ignore. Visitors were more rare.

  The buzzer sounded again. Ginny got up and went to the front door, touching the intercom pad. “Yes?”

  “It’s me.”

  Tonica. Georgie let out a little whine, recognizing the voice even through the static.
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br />   Ginny hit the building’s door buzzer, giving him access, and looked around the apartment to make sure the place wasn’t too much of a disaster. Then again, the last—and first—time he’d been here had been after the break-in, when someone had literally tossed the place, so it had to look good now, in comparison. She spent most of her day in the office, so the main room wasn’t too bad: the sofa only had pillows tossed on it, the rug only had a scattering of dog toys, and there wasn’t any indiscreet clothing tossed around.

  Hell, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn indiscreet clothing, much less left a trail of them. Ginny made a mental note to change that during her next date, for her own good if not his quite yet, and then opened the apartment door when Tonica knocked.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I brought lunch,” he said, holding up a white paper sack.

  Her stomach rumbled at the smell of warm food, and she realized that it was well past lunchtime. She’d been running on fumes and coffee since 7 a.m.

  “In that case,” she said, “come on in.”

  “Hope this isn’t a bad time,” he said, following her into the apartment. “I just finished at the shelter, and figured we should catch each other up on notes.”

  “Yeah. Good idea.” She hoped that he’d gotten further along than she had.

  “Sorry, Georgie,” he said, bending down to tousle the dog’s ears in an affectionate noogie when the shar-pei sniffed at the bag hopefully. “You’re stuck with whatever Gin feeds you.”

  “She eats more expensive food than I do,” Ginny groused, and went into the kitchen, gathering plates and napkins together and handing it all to Tonica. “Put this on the coffee table, will you?”

  She grabbed a container of green salad out of the fridge and followed him out to where he was pulling things out of the sack: a cheeseburger for him, and a chicken club for her. He’d seen her eat often enough to know what she liked, apparently.

  She placed the salad container on the table. “At least put some lettuce on that thing, pretend it’s not trying to kill you.”