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

by L. A. Kornetsky

  Ginny, with Georgie at her side, left Teddy to his interrogation and went in search of the vet tech, who had reportedly arrived while they were in the office. She found the other woman out back, watching some of the dogs roughhousing in the dog run. It was the shelter equivalent of a playground: a narrow concrete-floored courtyard with a dog-washing setup at one end, and a pile of old tires and well-chewed ropes at the other.

  “Nope, I never met him,” Alice, the vet tech, said. She had been called in to make sure none of the animals had been upset, and clearly wanted to deal with that, not answer questions. But she had been amenable to letting Georgie go play with the other dogs, so Ginny was inclined to like her. “But he had a good rep, and Este said we were lucky that he volunteered. Otherwise we’d have to hire someone, and decent accountants aren’t cheap.”

  * * *

  They needed somewhere to talk, away from the chaos of the shelter. Tonica had suggested Callie’s Shack, the diner down the street.

  “So the one thing we can say for certain,” Tonica said, once they were settled in their booth, and his hands were wrapped around a mug of coffee like it was his lifeline, “is that James McAdams hadn’t taken this job to expand his social network. He worked at Latham and Ford, previously. I suspect he considered most of the shelter workers, including Este, to be several steps down the ladder from the sort of company he was accustomed to.”

  Most of the time Ginny didn’t think about it, but every now and then something Tonica did or said reminded her that his family, apparently, came from East Coast Money. Or at least East Coast Society. This was one of those moments: he not only recognized the name of the accountant’s firm, but knew it well enough to extrapolate what sort of clients they had.

  “And he didn’t do it for the money,” she said, tapping the rim of her tablet, placed well away from her coffee. “All I can find is the public record stuff, but he was well-paid, didn’t have any obvious debt, and was living well within his means. Unless he had a secret blackmailer hidden somewhere, or a relative bleeding him dry…”

  “Likelihood of that?”

  “Anything’s possible. But usually, after a while, rumors float. He wasn’t shiny-shiny—there was a newspaper article that quoted him as being part of a fracas at the local development meeting. Apparently he took objection to a restaurant in his neighborhood wanting to get a café permit.”

  “A fracas?”

  “He shoved someone, who shoved back. I swear, grown men.”

  She moved her foot, half expecting to feel Georgie’s bulk under the table, and then remembered that the shar-pei was back at the shelter, hanging out with the other dogs in the courtyard while they had a late breakfast. She really should try to find a playgroup for Georgie.

  “I’ve seen worse over less,” Tonica said, bringing her attention back to the discussion at hand. “But usually there’s booze involved. Any charges filed?”

  “None that show up on search.” Ginny had no false modesty about her abilities in that regard: even if the charges had been dropped, she would have found a mention.

  “Excuse me?”

  A man stood next to them: older, white, and grizzled. He was wearing faded jeans and an equally faded blue denim shirt, but they were clean, and his remaining hair was neatly trimmed.

  “You the two working for the animal shelter?”

  Ginny had a moment of inner panic, and beat it down with a thick mental stick. “Depends on what you mean by ‘working for,’ ” she said, pleased that her voice sounded cool and steady. “And who’s asking.”

  She half expected the man to flash a badge, some kind of undercover cop who’d put them on the top of his list of suspects. Instead he just nodded and looked around as though afraid someone else was paying attention to them. Nobody was.

  “My name’s Paul. Paul Kelley. I work there, nights. Cleaning the cages.”

  “You’re the one who adopted the two dogs,” Tonica said.

  Kelley looked surprised, then pleased. “Yeah, AJ and Max. Trouble with feet and fur, those two, but I never regretted it, not for a moment. But that ain’t why I tracked you two down.”

  “Please, sit down,” Ginny said, glancing at Tonica, who shoved over on the bench, giving the other man room to join them. The waitress came over, sensing another tip, and offered to refill their coffee.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Kelley said, and waited until she retreated back to her corner to go on. “I work nights. Late nights, early morning, really. Been doing it since they opened, three–four years now. Seen staff come and go, seen things… heard things.”

  “Things you should maybe go to the police about?” Tonica asked.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I didn’t see anything, and they mostly want to know about seen.”

  “But you heard something?” Ginny sneaked a look to see what Tonica was doing, what his body language said. He’d told her once, after a few drinks, that she got too intense, scared people away from talking, so she wanted to copy what he was doing. But no, he was sitting forward, too, intent on the man’s next words.

  “Heard… Yes, ma’am. I heard things. The past couple–three months, there’ve been noises when it shoulda been quiet. I know Jimmy was in some nights, he’d come by to let me know he was there, so I wouldn’t get spooked.” That seemed to amuse Kelley. “Good man, he was. Damned shame.”

  “But you heard these noises over a period of months?” The same time period, according to Nora, that the money had gone missing.

  “I did. And… there were nights, the animals were all twitchy. Like they could smell something wrong on the road up ahead. I listen to it when dogs get upset, but ma’am, sir, I listen real hard when cats are upset.”

  “What sort of noises,” Ginny asked, even as Tonica said, “Where did the noises come from?”

  He had the better question, she admitted.

  “There’s the thing,” Kelley said. “Different noises, from different places. None of it from the areas I’ve got access to; otherwise I’d have gone and checked ’em out. Nothing messes with the four-foots while I’m there, and if there’d been something wrong and I didn’t see what’s what, I’m not doing my job.”

  His job, Ginny recalled, involved disinfecting the floors and emptying cages, and sorting out the trash and recycling. Not patrolling the building. That was what they had a security guard for, technically.

  “One of the noises, I figured was never-my-mind, if you know what I mean.” His grizzled face lit in what Ginny could only call a reminiscent smile. “From the main office that was, couple–three times.”

  Never-his… Ginny blanked, and then his expression tipped her off. Oh. Tonica still looked puzzled, though, so she filled in the blanks.

  “Someone was using their access to avoid paying for a hotel room?”

  “Two someones, ma’am, and I would not venture to accuse anyone but… they didn’t sound like they needed a third interfering.”

  “But that wasn’t what had the animals upset.”

  “No, sir. That was the nights the noises came from the clinic wing, the office itself. I don’t have the keys to go in there, on account of there being drugs and whatnot stored there. I don’t want any part of that, but a few times I’d walk by, after, to see if there was anything I saw out of place, worth writing up to Ms. Este about.”

  “Was there?”

  He shook his head. “Once, I ran into a couple kids, hightailing it out of the parking lot, the one the volunteers and delivery trucks use. But kids, they’re always hightailing it out of somewhere. No broken windows, no damage I could see. Bunch of papers scattered, like somebody’s upended the recycling bin, so I dumped them in the trash and went home.

  “There was one night, though… there was a light on in the clinic. At three in the morning, there shouldn’t be any lights on save the security lights, and those’re red, not white. I may be getting old but I know the difference.”

  He might be getting old, but Ginny would have hired him in a min
ute, if she had actual staff. This one conversation had given them more information than talking to the entire daytime staff, Este and Roger included.

  “And that’s all I have. You two have a good day.”

  “Wait, is there somewhere we can reach you, if we need more information, or… anything else?”

  Kelley stared at her a long minute, then, apparently deciding that she was worthy of such information, fished a pen out of his shirt pocket and scratched something down on the clean napkin in front of her.

  “You can reach me there,” he said, and turned and walked away.

  She glanced at the phone number, then turned to look back at him, but he had already left the small café.

  “Well. That was interesting,” Tonica said. “Especially in light of what I saw the other day with the vet.”

  “What?”

  “The way the animals reacted to the vet? Maybe it wasn’t him. If there was something happening in the building, enough to make them twitchy, then they could still be upset come the morning.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah.” She shook her head, annoyed at herself for having forgotten that. “But if something was happening in the clinic, Teddy, then it has nothing to do with our investigation of money gone missing from the office. Or what happened to the bookkeeper.” She frowned, and stared down at the napkin. “Does it?”

  Tonica toyed with the remains of his eggs, then finally put his fork down, no longer hungry. “You noticing that the more we look under the surface, the more stuff floats up?”

  “I’m trying not to,” Ginny said. “I’m trying really hard not to.”

  * * *

  Back at the shelter, it seemed almost like a normal day: Margaret, behind the front desk, was slightly subdued, but there were cats sleeping and playing in the socialization room, an unfamiliar older woman in there with them, while a small, short-legged dog with a black and white coat was keeping Georgie company in the lobby. Stephen came out to greet a young woman waiting in the lobby, and Teddy was pretty sure he blanched when he saw the two of them waiting there.

  “Just here to collect Georgie,” Ginny was saying to Margaret, even as the shar-pei abandoned the other dog and came to stand by her legs, leaning against her so heavily she almost fell over. “Georgie, sweetie, I wasn’t gone that long. Relax.”

  “And we’d like to have a word with Roger and Este,” Teddy said. “If they’re still here?”

  They were. They didn’t look particularly happy to be interrupted, either; apparently the argument hadn’t been settled. Or it had and neither of them had won.

  “I had a question about—”

  Este interrupted him. “I think maybe it’s best if you simply ended the investigation.”

  “What?”

  “Let it go. There’s been so much… in light of this recent tragedy, it’s best if we simply move on.”

  “The money is still missing,” Ginny said sharply.

  Este swallowed. “We know. We’ll find a way to replace it. Take out a loan, if need be. If anyone asks… we’ll say that Jimmy took it.”

  Teddy had heard a lot of justifications in his life, but that one staggered him. “You’d libel a dead man, throw his reputation in the trash, to avoid a little bad publicity?”

  “Jimmy would be okay with that. He believed in the shelter. That’s why he volunteered here.”

  “We could hold a fund-raiser in Jimmy’s name,” Roger said, and it was clear that they’d already discussed this. “Bill it as a way to remember him, raise the money that way. We could raise more than a few thousand dollars, I bet.”

  “You know that whoever took the money won’t just disappear,” Ginny said. “In fact, you’ll be encouraging him to take more, by covering it up.”

  “We won’t keep cash in the building anymore,” Este said. “Roger and I have agreed on that. Scott will have to be paid by check, same as everyone else.”

  Too little, too late, Teddy thought.

  “So thank you, but we won’t be needing your help any longer,” Roger said, giving them the smoothest bum’s rush Teddy had ever seen or experienced, escorting them out of the office, through the lobby, and out to the parking lot without giving them a chance to protest or any of them looking rude to observers.

  The door closed behind him, and Ginny and Teddy were left blinking at each other.

  “Well,” Teddy said, at a loss.

  “We don’t work for him,” Ginny pointed out, ever practical. “Or Este.”

  Teddy had to, reluctantly, give her that. And neither of them was good at giving up, not once the puzzle had started.

  “It seems wrong not to find out what happened. I mean, they’re being naïve, thinking that if they just replace the money, no harm, no foul. Anyone who gets away with it will just feel emboldened, right? So more things could go wrong, and hurt the shelter.”

  At their feet, Georgie looked back at the kennel wing, and let out a low woof, as though agreeing with her mistress.

  “What if Nora agrees with him, and tells us to stop investigating?”

  Ginny looked at him with wide, utterly innocent hazel eyes, a look that made knowledgeable men step back. “We don’t ask her.”

  * * *

  Penny had come down to the shelter, hoping to sniff around a little more, when she saw them standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, Georgie with them. She folded herself around the corner of the building and hissed lightly, pitching it for a dog’s ears, not humans. Georgie looked up and saw her, and let out a low woof of greeting, mixed with the suggestion of something new learned, something new to tell.

  Something had happened. Not bad, or the humans would be reacting differently, and Georgie would be upset. But something enough to get them here… but in the wrong place.

  Penny hissed again, and stepped forward, her tail erect and her head held high, just enough for Georgie to see her, and then faded out of sight.

  Another low woof told her that the message had been received, and then there were the sounds of humans talking, Herself trying to scold Georgie as the dog tugged at the leash, pulling her toward the corner of the building where Penny had just left her scent.

  “Georgie, sweetie, where are you going?”

  And then Theodore, his voice a comforting rumble next to the woman’s higher voice: “That’s the clinic wing. I wouldn’t have thought she’d be so eager to head back there.”

  “Hush.” The woman was laughing: good. Humans were easier when they were happy. “She probably scented something. A squirrel, maybe. She’s just discovered squirrels. Or—”

  They came around the corner, and Penny waited, confident that neither human would see her in the underbrush.

  “What is it, Georgie? Suddenly you think this parking lot would be better to do your business in? Or—”

  “Gin.” Theodore’s voice, solemn. “Look.”

  Penny preened her whiskers, satisfied in her choice of humans. You had to lead them to it, sometimes, but they picked up the scent reasonably well after that.

  * * *

  “At what?” Ginny tugged at Georgie’s leash again, then realized that Tonica was staring at the same wall Georgie seemed fascinated by. “What?”

  “Does that look like someone tried to wash off graffiti, to you?”

  She looked, then shrugged. “Yeah.” Then she looked again. “Yes. And recently, too. Funny that nobody mentioned graffiti.”

  “Well, no reason to, really,” Tonica said. “We get a smattering of it on the back wall at Mary’s, sometimes the front window. Mostly kids leaving tags, trying to be gangster, or someone being a wiseass after a few too many drinks.”

  Ginny stepped closer to the wall, tracing her fingers along the faded lettering. Pale pink, which meant that it had probably been red at first. Georgie pressed against her legs, as though trying to get her to move, but Ginny flicked the leash gently, and the dog sat down with a muffled sigh.

  “Let not the innocent be… replaced? Reduced? Renounced?” She scowle
d at it as though daring the words to make sense. “That’s not the usual kind of slogan of a drunk.”

  “No.” Tonica stood next to her, studying it, too. “And the writing’s too even—usually by that point they can’t paint a straight line. And it’s not a gang tag, either.”

  She didn’t ask how he knew about gang tags. “But the shelter folk were determined to erase it totally, even back here where most folk wouldn’t see. So what is it, and who put it there?”

  “You think it’s relevant to what we’re investigating? C’mon, Ginny. Kelley said he chased kids away from here, remember? This could just be more of that.”

  Georgie whined again, but didn’t move from her spot on the ground.

  “I don’t know,” Ginny said. “But right now, we can’t afford to ignore anything. And if it isn’t part of our case…” She paused, then added, “We can mention it to the cops. As concerned citizens.”

  “Este and Roger won’t like that,” Tonica said.

  “Right now, I’m not finding myself overly concerned with what Este and Roger want. You?”

  He shook his head slowly. He was all for making lemonade out of lemons, but there were limits, and the way Roger and Este had been willing to use the dead man didn’t sit right with him. He was glad that he and Ginny were in agreement on that.

  11

  They stood in the back parking lot, contemplating the graffiti and their own thoughts until a truck rumbled by, the noise breaking the moment.

  Teddy looked at his watch, then at his partner. “You going home?”

  Ginny nodded, and then shrugged. “Probably. Easier to work on the desktop, for some of this stuff.” But she didn’t sound enthusiastic about it.

  “Look, let’s swing by your place and pick up your laptop, and go to Mary’s. It’s delivery day, so Seth will be there, and Stacy’s working this afternoon. You can work there. It only makes sense, so we can discuss the job in person, rather than trying to text or email.”