She could see Georgie through the front window, her golden brown pelt highlighted by the streetlamp overhead, the smaller dark shadow to her side probably the terrier. It was misting slightly, but not actively raining, and Georgie didn’t seem to mind it at all.
“Native Seattle raindog,” she said fondly. Her mother’s old poodle had refused to go outside in the rain without a slicker wrapped around his delicate body. Georgie? Barely even noticed. She was game for anything.
Ginny’s attention was brought back to the table when her tablet dinged, telling her that an email had landed. It was from one of her other clients, confirming receipt of the requested information and invoice. It was a crazy world where someone else would pay her to research sleep-away camps for their preteen, but some people had more money than time. And thank God for that, or she’d be out of a career.
No matter how tough some days were, the thought of going back to a cube farm, or whatever configuration they were shoving people into these days, did not appeal, at all. So until someone showed up naming her the heir to a million-dollar fortune . . .
She amended that to multimillion. A million didn’t go far these days, not even in Seattle. So if keeping Mrs. K happy meant finding the perfect place for Little K to spend his summer, then Mallard Services would do it, and Mrs. K would come back the next time she had money to throw at a problem.
All it took to be successful was to get the job done and never let the client know what you really thought of them.
“Hey, Ginny.” It was a familiar voice, coming out of the din, and Ginny reached backward to bump fists, a gesture that felt incredibly silly to her, but Mac insisted on.
Her friend looked over her shoulder. “Girl, are you working?”
“I am.”
“Phagh.” Mac draped himself elegantly over the chair across the table from Ginny and made a noise of expansive disgust. “Work work work.”
“Not all of us pull down a paycheck for not doing anything, Mac.”
“Oh, don’t you start that. You know I bust my ass. I just do it efficiently.” Mac was a former co-worker who, like Ginny, had decided not to stay in the industry, and struck out on his own. Mac now owned a catering service—where “owned” meant “hired other people to do the actual work.” Mac’s expertise was in talking people into hiring his company rather than someone else’s.
“Sorry. I promise, I’ll be more fun next week.” A lot more fun, if she managed to pull this job off, and collect the rest of her paycheck.
“Don’t work too hard, you. Causes heart attacks, and headaches, and other fun-killing things.”
“Go bother someone else, Mac.”
One strong hand squeezed her shoulder, and Mac was gone. He meant well, he just . . . he was the butterfly and Ginny was the grasshopper. No, it was grasshopper and mouse. Or something like that. He flitted, and she trudged, and they still managed to be friends, so long as she resisted his insistence that she come to work for him. That would be an utter disaster.
Left alone again, Ginny tried to ignore the noise and stared at the screen, considering the data.
Who and when, where and how. She’d managed to put together an impressive dossier on Joseph Jacobs’s friends, family, and everyday associates. Maybe she had too much information? Sometimes that happened. Then you had to filter it, and filter it again, until a pattern emerged, something that actually told you something. Like who she needed to talk to.
“Hey.”
Tonica had left the bar and headed her way, under the pretext of refilling her glass. Alcohol did not mix with working, so she was drinking ginger ale with lime, but poured into a highball glass, it could pass for alcoholic, so nobody gave her shit.
“Hey,” she said to him in return. Normally, that greeting would be followed by some trash-talking before or after a trivia game, or an exchange about the Seahawks or, occasionally, the Rollergirls. Or even to thank him for the pizza, which she assumed he had ordered. But her new partner in not-crime had a look on his face that usually showed up just before his team whomped hers on a high-point question. “What’s up?”
Penny, who did not suffer from the same exile that poor Georgie did, took that moment to come up and rub against Ginny’s ankles, a purring figure eight. She bent down to scoop the cat up, rubbing her ears idly the same way she would Georgie, and the little cat tilted her head as though to say “right there, please.”
Tonica sat down opposite her, which was a definite change from his usual “float lightly” policy when he came out from behind the bar. “One of my contacts just came through. Apparently, there’s a rumor floating around that Jacobs’s company had irregularities in one of the buildings they’d leased.”
“Which means what? I don’t know crap about real estate.” She frowned, annoyed. “I need to learn about real estate. It could be useful again.”
“Which means there were rumors that they’d paid off inspectors and fudged occupancy reports, among other things.” He frowned at Penny, who was now happily kneading at Ginny’s sleeve. “I mean, paid off more obviously than is usual or accepted.”
“That’s bad?” It sounded bad, but if payoffs were normal business . . .
“That’s not good. Even if it’s not true—and all that anyone’s heard are rumors and gossip, no actual proof—it’s not what you want fueling the industry gossip mills. Especially if safety issues might be involved. I’m thinking, since our Uncle Joe looks to be so squeaky clean, it’s probably DubJay who’s involved. Unless you think Uncle Joe might be playing a deeper game?”
Ginny removed Penny’s claws from her sleeve, and considered what she’d been able to learn about Joe Jacobs.
“He’s careful,” she said finally. “Cautious, even. Everything’s . . . neat. A person like that, I don’t think they’re the type to cut corners, or let anything go by they aren’t personally comfortable with.” She shook her head. “No. He built the company. It’s his only legacy, far as I can tell—no wife, no kids, not even any pets. It’s all there . . . he wouldn’t do anything that might damage it.”
“And DubJay?”
They were both obviously thinking the same thing: that DubJay Jacobs was the sort of person to do whatever he thought best, and worry about the rules later.
Ginny thought about her anonymous text warning again, but couldn’t see why, after hiring her, DubJay would then warn her off.
“If Uncle Joe found some evidence that Junior was doing something he didn’t approve of,” Tonica said, his voice thoughtful, “would he choose family, or firm?”
“The papers DubJay needed to file?” Ginny could feel the puzzle under her hands, but the pieces weren’t fitting together yet. “He didn’t want me anywhere near them, did he? But he wants his uncle found, or why hire me?”
Tonica shook his head, not having an answer.
“Do you think Uncle Joe took the papers? But why?”
“I have no idea. So he can hide ’em? Destroy them? Figure out how to break an agreement or dump property before they get hit with hefty fines or sanctions? But whatever he’s planning, I’m pretty sure that DubJay isn’t happy about his uncle’s flit, and if he’s as savvy a businessman as you say, Joe’s going to know that. Finding him isn’t going to be easy. Assuming he’s not packed up in the trunk of a car somewhere.”
“Oh, nice.” Ginny winced. She’d never met the guy, but she’d developed a sort of proprietary fondness for him over the past twenty-four hours. She didn’t want to think that he was dead.
Especially since whoever killed him might not want anyone looking for the old man.
Tonica was apparently on the same page. “Gin, I don’t like this. At all. Uncle Joe may be clean . . . but I’m not so sure DubJay is. I mean, even more than being slightly on the side of shady.”
Penny butted at Ginny’s hand, reminding her that she had paused in the petting. Automatically, Ginny resumed, the motion helping her think, the same way petting Georgie did. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that feeling,
too. But if he’d had anything to do with his uncle’s disappearance, why hire me? I mean, I can see why he wouldn’t want PIs or cops, but why even ask me to look for him? His uncle’s a grown man and then some, not in any way disabled or impaired, and all DubJay would have to do was assume, publicly, that he’d gone off on a long weekend and not done anything about it.”
Tonica sucked at his lower lip, thinking. “The missing papers?”
Ginny dismissed them with a wave of her free hand. “Papers can be refiled, resubmitted. Happens all the time. This must be a time issue, probably a penalty if it’s delayed. But even if we’re right and Uncle Joe absconded with something important, they’re not going to be the only copies in existence, and I doubt there’s anything Joe signed for that DubJay couldn’t, too. That would be seriously stupid. And I think we can agree that DubJay, whatever his other flaws, does not look to be stupid?”
“Yeah. It would be easier if he was, though.”
Oh, that was something Ginny disagreed with, strongly. “Nuh-uh. Smart people are, in their own way, predictable. They’ll do things in their own interest. It’s the dummies who do stuff you’d never be able to predict, because, well, they’re dumb.”
That got a laugh out of Tonica. “I never thought about it like that, but yeah . . . the wildcard of dumb. So what now? I mean, if we’re getting into hinky waters . . .”
“Nothing hinky about it. I mean, okay, yeah.” She stopped petting Penny again, and the cat batted lazily at her hand in protest. “Watch it, cat. I’m not your human, to abuse like that. Look, it’s not good news about the hinky stuff, no, but we’re not involved in any of that. The job’s just to track down his uncle and tell him to get the hell home. So I need to go talk to people, get them to tell me where he’s holed up. If you want to back off, fine. But I still have a job to do.”
She took a sip of her drink, then went back to petting the cat draped over her lap, waiting for his response. She needed him; she didn’t want to need him—it pissed her off to admit that there were things that she couldn’t do as well as anyone else—but she was also a big fan of facing facts.
Ginny knew herself: she was fantastic at getting information out of search engines and random facts, but not so much when it came to convincing people to give up secrets. Tonica, though, had those skills. It was that bartender-vibe thing again. She was going to need that. If he backed out, she was screwed.
“I know all that. And yeah, right now all we have is a maybe-shady and a might-be-dirty. It’s all conjecture, and we don’t have a damn thing to take to the cops, and even if we did, they wouldn’t be able to do anything before the deadline.” He pushed back his chair, as though suddenly aware that he’d left the bar for too long. “I know you’re not going to back off. It’s professional pride as well as your damned stubbornness. I get that. But . . .”
“But?”
“Let me go with you, when you talk to people. Just in case.”
Even though that was exactly what she’d wanted, Ginny felt her jaw set in what her mother used to call her “unpleasantly mulish” look. “What, you think someone’s going to try and, what, lean on me? Intimidate me? Say ‘boo’ and make me burst into tears?”
“Oh, for the love of Pete, Mallard!” That was his “you’re annoying me” voice. She’d almost missed it. “Isn’t that exactly why you wanted me to help out in the first place?”
As though upset by the tone of his voice, or to echo his request, Penny meowed, and reached up to butt her head against Ginny’s chin.
Arguing against something because she hadn’t been the one to suggest it was exactly the kind of stupid she usually hated. And yes, he was right. Letting her ego get in the way of best practices would be as stupid as . . . something stupid. She had planned to send him off to talk to people. She just hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to let go of any part of the job. This would be why she worked alone, probably.
But she needed him. And he knew it, damn it. He was just standing there, looking at her with that “don’t be a moron, Mallard” look he got, that he knew made her insane. And his cat kept knocking her head against her chin, and putting her paw on her arm, with just enough claw showing to make it not-cute, like some kind of silent encouragement. Or scolding.
“All right, fine. Saves me from having to reserve a Zipcar, anyway.”
“Oh for . . . fine.” He shook his head, and went back down the bar to relieve the other bartender, still shaking his head and muttering something under his breath.
“So he’s better at talking to people. I can handle myself just fine,” Ginny said to the cat, who—job done—leapt down from her lap and headed for the door, tail held erect as she wove her way through the customers’ legs. “I just hate driving.”
“What’s going on?” Georgie lifted her head from her paws and stared at Penny as she stepped across the damp sidewalk, side-winding around a human who tried to reach down and pet her. “You said you’d go in and find out what was going on. What are they talking about? And is there any food? I’ve been out here for hours and I’m bored . And hungry.”
“You are not bored,” Penny said, settling between the dog’s forepaws, making sure that she was out of the way of clumsy human feet. Her tail curled around her hindquarters, and flicked across Georgie’s nose, making the dog sneeze. “You’ve been getting more attention here than you would have staying at home. And probably more treats, too.”
The dog looked abashed. “I’d have saved you one, but they tasted too good.”
“Ugh. No, thanks. The things you eat . . .” She licked her paw, then spread her claws out and dug at the fur between.
“Pen, stop grooming and tell me what’s happening! What did they talk about? I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier, about her being worried, and you’re right; when we went for a walk she was mumbling to herself, and she only does that when something’s wrong. And something happened this morning that made her angry but she didn’t talk to anyone and nobody came by, so I didn’t know who to growl at and if she’s upset I’m supposed to growl at whatever’s upsetting her, that’s my job, the trainer said so!”
“Calm down,” Penny said, ignoring the fact that Georgie probably didn’t even know how to growl. “You didn’t tell me about anything when you got here.”
Georgie dropped her head, bonking Penny on the top of her head. “I forgot.”
“Well, she didn’t say anything, either, not while I was listening. Mostly it was about the slick-smell man. They don’t think he smells right, either.”
Penny had never been impressed by the slick-smell man, when he came to the place. She hadn’t liked it when the slick-smell man talked to her particular humans, either, making all smooth when he was claw-and-hiss underneath, and so she made a point to learn his name. Knowing names was important.
“I knew it, I knew it.” Georgie stood, dislodging Penny, who had to scramble to her feet, her tail lashing in annoyance. “I knew he smelled slick. Was he the one who upset her? I don’t like him, Penny.”
“Yeah, you’ve said that, too.” Georgie said a lot, and didn’t always remember it later. But she was sweet, even if she was a little dim, and she listened to Penny, which was more than could be said for most dogs. Or people, for that matter.
“Oh. So what are they going to do? Are they going to chase him?”
“Not him, Georgie. The missing-man. I told you about him, remember? They’re chasing him.”
“He’s here?” Georgie looked up and down the sidewalk as though expecting someone who smelled like the slick-smell man to appear.
Penny tried not to get exasperated. “No, not here. Georgie, come on, you’re smarter than that. They’re going after him. The missing-man. Out there. Georgie, sit down. You’re going to make Her worry and come out here, and maybe take you home.”
A shar-pei’s face fell into wrinkles naturally, but Georgie managed to add a few, scrunching her eyes up with worry, even as she settled back onto the sidewalk. “Alone
? She’s going alone?”
“Not alone. Teddy’s going with her.”
“Oh.” Georgie didn’t seem quite satisfied by that, and Penny twitched her whiskers. “They’ll be fine, Georgie. They go outside every day, and they’re fine.”
“But . . . you said the slick-smell man was bad. And something upset her. I don’t like any of this, Penny. And I’m supposed to protect her. We need to stop them.”
Penny reached up with her paw and pulled Georgie’s head down so that she could groom the dog’s ear, her rough tongue barely making an impression on the shar-pei’s plush coat. The action, as expected, calmed the dog down. “No, we don’t. Humans do what humans do. This is good, not bad. And we can help them, like you wanted. You just need to stop worrying. You can do that, right?”
Georgie considered the question seriously. “No.”
Penny sighed. Dogs.
5
At exactly 10:28 on Saturday morning, Teddy sat in his car and contemplated his cell phone. It was a stupid phone—able to make calls and take grainy photos, and text, if you were able to use the cramped little keyboard, but just then it seemed like a possible savior. All he had to do was text her, tell her that he was out. He didn’t even have to make an excuse, he could just say “can’t do it, good luck” and he was free. Nobody would know—just him and Mallard, and she would never say anything about it.
“No, but she’d know,” he muttered. “She’d just know, no matter what I said, and she’d never say anything but it would be in her head, all the time. That I couldn’t hack it. That I’d run, and left her in the lurch. And then she’ll go and deal with the job, because she’s too damn stubborn to give up, and always there’d be that, that she did it and I . . .” He was psyching himself out. How had it gotten to the point that she didn’t even have to be there, with that Look on her face, to mess with him?
“Screw it.” He dropped the phone onto the seat next to him, and inserted the key in the ignition. His semi-ancient Volvo coupe came to life, the clutch coughing a little until he eased up and maneuvered it out of his parking spot.
Collared: A Gin & Tonic Mystery Page 8
