Collared: A Gin & Tonic Mystery

by L. A. Kornetsky

  They left Broderick’s office half an hour later with a list of places Uncle Joe might be likely to hole up in, and a sense that they were finally getting somewhere.

  Teddy held his silence all the way back to the parking garage before it finally escaped. “I told you we should have gone to him first.”

  “If we had, without Zara’s apology—or at least her guilt for being a badass gun-slinging suburban vigilante wannabe—he might not have given us anything. And seeing Joe’s apartment confirmed that he’d gone on his own, not been yanked off the street. Probably. It was all important.”

  Gin sounded pissed, and he held up his hands in semi-apology. “You’re the boss.”

  “Hah.” She wiggled her shoulders a little in mock pride. “Yeah, I am, aren’t I?”

  “Don’t run mad with power. Especially since I still have the car keys.” He reached for the keys in his pocket, and caught sight of the time. “Damn, it’s getting late. Give me a second, okay?”

  He pulled out his cell phone, and dialed the bar’s office number. “Hey. It’s Tonica.”

  The afternoon bartender, a new guy, sounded a little frantic. Apparently, Patrick—the owner—and Seth were having another one of their dustups

  “Yeah, I know. Look, just ignore them, okay? They do it all the time. And if I run late, just cover for me, okay? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Tonica put his cell away and glared up at the sky, which looked even more like rain than before. That morning, eight hours had seemed more than enough time to give Ginny and still make it back for his shift on time. But everything seemed to take longer than expected, and ducking back for the damned dog had eaten even more time.

  “Going to be cutting it close,” he said to himself, trying to calculate things.

  “I don’t need you to take me,” Ginny said. She had taken Georgie for a quick stroll down the street while he checked in at Mary’s. “We can get there on our own.”

  “Yeah, I know. But it’ll take you three times as long using mass transit, and I agreed to help you today and today’s still on.” It wasn’t like the boss was going to fire him—he worked his ass off keeping the place in top shape, closed most nights, handled the scheduling . . . Teddy might not have the official title or paycheck, but he was de facto manager, and everyone damn well knew it. “If he’s not at the first or second place, I’ll dump you and run for it, I promise.”

  He meant it. She could hire cabs to take her around town if needed, and with Georgie with her, he wouldn’t even feel guilty. Gin had been right: the dog might be a sweet doofus, but she’d proven she could act the part of a guard dog, anyway. Putting up a strong front was more than halfway to avoiding a fight, and he thought it might be closer to three-quarters of the game when you had four legs and a hard-biting jaw.

  It wasn’t as though Ginny couldn’t take care of herself. He’d seen her arm-wrestle for a bar tab one night with her friends, and those curves weren’t all soft. Ginny Mallard was hardly a frail flower, physically or mentally. So there was no reason to feel guilty. At all.

  “There are seven places on this list,” she said, even as she was urging Georgie back into the car. By now, the dog had figured out the car wasn’t going to eat her, and hopped in without too much trouble, curling up and waiting for the humans to follow. “Five hotels, two bed-and-breakfasts. Most of them are in town, thankfully.”

  “So let’s get going,” he said. “Pick the ones that’re closest to where we are, and give them a call, see if you can get a clue from the front desk if he’s there or not.”

  She huffed a bit at that. “You really think they’re going to just give out a guest’s name?”

  “I have learned to have the utmost respect for the incompetence of most of the service industry,” he replied, most of his attention on pulling out into traffic, which had picked up considerably since they arrived. An equal number of people leaving and coming, he guessed. Tourists mostly, small families and groups of teenagers, male and female, gathering in clutches.

  Ginny looked like she was going to argue the point more, then decided against it, punching in a number from the list and waiting while the call went through. “Hi. I’m calling for Joe Jacobs. Can you connect me to his room, please? Great, thanks.”

  She shot him a wide-eyed look, clearly amazed that it had worked.

  “Hang up!” he hissed, worried that a call coming in would spook their missing man, but she waved him off, frowning to tell him to hush.

  “Ciao, è questo—questo non è Gracie? Ah, le mie scuse. So sorry.” And she hung up.

  He was, reluctantly, impressed. “I didn’t know you spoke another language.”

  “Tourist-level Italian, but hearing someone speak a different language on the phone unexpectedly typically freaks people out enough they don’t wonder why, or who it might be.”

  “Smart.”

  “Well, yes.” She gave him one of those looks, the one that said she thought she’d one-upped him. In this case, he gave it to her; she had.

  Keeping score was more difficult when you were with someone all day, rather than just a couple of hours. He wasn’t even sure who was leading on points anymore.

  She pursed her lips, and then said, like a peace offering, “Talking to people is more useful than all the research I did yesterday.”

  It was, but he didn’t think it would be politic to rub it in. “If you hadn’t done the research, we wouldn’t have known what questions to ask—or what leads to not bother chasing, like a plane ticket, or stuff like that.”

  “Yeah. Point.” She sounded happier, with that.

  “It’s weird, though. Do you get the feeling we’ve been really lucky so far, with all this?”

  “No.” Ginny shook her head. “I think we’re dealing with a bunch of amateurs.”

  “Um. We’re amateurs,” he reminded her.

  “You are. I’m a professional researcher and fact finder.” Her confidence was coming back, and with it, some of that annoying arrogance.

  He didn’t have the energy to argue. “Okay, fine. Still. It’s just been . . . too easy?”

  “What were you expecting? Roadblocks at every turn? He’s not some escaped convict, Tonica. Just a guy who skipped out for a few days at a bad time.”

  “Someone you were already warned against trying to find,” he reminded her.

  She made a scoffing noise. “I still think it was Joe himself. Or the girlfriend. Nothing serious.”

  “Nothing serious? Gin, the woman had a gun. I call that plenty serious.”

  “But she told Broderick, and he helped us. They’re not the bad guys, just worried friends.”

  Teddy wasn’t convinced, but if she wanted to believe the best of people, he didn’t have the heart to argue. He kept quiet and focused on the traffic, thankful they weren’t trying to do this during a weekday rush hour.

  He just hoped to hell that she was right, and he was wrong.

  The hotel was nice enough that the valet didn’t ask if they were guests at the hotel, merely accepted Teddy’s key and the fact that there was a dog in the car without hesitation.

  “Leave the windows down,” Ginny told the valet as she got out. “She won’t go anywhere.”

  “You want I should take her for a walk?” The kid was maybe twenty, and eager to please.

  “No, she’s good.”

  “She’d better be,” Teddy muttered. If there was even a hint of doggie business in his car when they got back, Ginny was paying for a full cleaning, roof to floor.

  The lobby was small but it didn’t feel cramped. He noticed the details—there were fresh flowers in vases along the gleaming marble walls, and a narrow, deep blue carpet led directly to the check-in counter, and then again to the elevator bank. There were people sitting in a small seating area, clearly waiting, and a handful of uniformed employees moving briskly about their business. This was no mid-range chain; everything here whispered “boutique,” and shouted “money.”

  “What now?
” Teddy asked. “It’s one thing to be put through on the switchboard, but they’re not going to just tell us what room he’s in, and I really doubt he’ll invite us up if we announce ourselves at the front desk.”

  “Bet you he will,” Ginny said, leading the way to the nearest available clerk, a middle-aged man with an expectant, professional smile.

  “Hi. Could you please tell Joe Jacobs that we’re here?”

  “Of course. Your names, please?”

  “We’re from King, Backer and Jacks,” she said, using the law firm’s name. “He’s not expecting us, but we have information that couldn’t wait.”

  “Just a moment.”

  While the clerk dialed the room, Teddy jerked on Ginny’s sleeve urgently, pulling her a step away.

  “You lied,” he hissed, low enough that the clerk couldn’t hear.

  “You had a better idea?”

  He hadn’t. And it seemed to be working, as the clerk was speaking to someone, then nodding and hanging up the phone. “Room 417. Use the left-hand elevator.”

  “Thank you so much,” Ginny said politely, and walked away, leaving Teddy no choice but to follow her to the elevator.

  “You just misrepresented yourself. Us!” This was exactly what he’d been afraid of: Mallard so focused on the goal that she did stuff like this. The book had been clear about how bad it was to misrepresent yourself. Involving cops bad.

  “Well, Ian did send us. And we do have new information that really can’t wait. So it’s only technically a lie.”

  “It is not technically a lie. It is a lie!”

  The elevator came, with two other people already in it, and he had no choice but to shut up, glaring at her sideways the entire trip. She seemed oblivious.

  Room 417 was actually a suite, with double doors that opened from the hallway into a large sitting room. The doors were open, and standing by the window looking out over the view, as though he’d posed for dramatic effect, was a tall, gray-haired man.

  He didn’t bother turning around. “I’m assuming you’re here either to help me or kill me.”

  Ginny admitted that she was rarely caught without anything to say, but that stopped her cold.

  “Drama queen, much?” she heard Tonica say, sotto voce, behind her, and had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from replying. Now was not the time, or the place, for snark. But really, yes.

  “We’re not here to kill you,” Tonica said, shutting the doors behind him.

  “My nephew did not send you?”

  Ginny blinked, but Tonica beat her to the question. “Do you have reason to believe that your nephew wants you dead?”

  “At this point I’m not sure of anything, anymore.”

  He turned to face them then, and while Ginny saw a definite resemblance between DubJay and the older man, this was a more honed, thoughtful face. Looks, though, could be deceiving. Especially in someone who was, basically, in sales.

  “Actually, Ian Broderick did send us, like we told the clerk,” Tonica said. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “We spoke with him,” Ginny said. “Also with Zara. They told us . . . where they thought you might be found.”

  “Everyone always hedges,” the older man said, less bitter than contemplative. “Are we taught to do that, or is it an instinctive reaction?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” The sir came naturally to her, although she couldn’t remember ever using it before with someone not a cop.

  “No. Nor do I.” He came forward, looking at them carefully. “And you are?”

  “Ginny Mallard. And this is Teddy Tonica.”

  “Any relation to the New Hampshire Tonicas?”

  Next to her, Tonica made a weird jerking move, like someone had poked him in the back. “Ah. Yes sir. Distantly.”

  “Distantly as in ‘barely related,’ or distantly as in ‘they’re on the East Coast, and you’re here’?”

  “Yes sir. The latter.”

  Joseph—it seemed wrong, to Ginny, to refer to him as Uncle Joe, now—exhaled in what was almost a laugh, and gestured to the seating arrangement. “Come, sit down. And stop sir-ing me. I was an enlisted man, and I’m not old enough now to warrant that kind of respect.”

  It had nothing whatsoever to do with age, but neither of them argued the point, following him over to the grouping of sofas and love seats. The arrangement had them facing each other, three points across the glass coffee table.

  “Interesting choice for a hideout,” Tonica said, breaking the silence before it got uncomfortable.

  “You think I should have been in a grungy motel, twitching aside the curtain to peer at every car that drove by?” He smiled, a little grim, a little smug. “I’ve watched enough cop shows to know that seedy motels will turn you over for a twenty-dollar bill, while expensive hotels guard privacy far better. They have more to lose if something unpleasant happens on their property.”

  The nose and eyes weren’t the only resemblance between the two generations of Jacobses; the quick-thinking brains were there, too. But Jacobs Senior seemed . . . less hard, even as he was evaluating them. There was a wry humor there, and in his voice—something that was lacking in his nephew, even when he laughed.

  In light of that, Ginny decided to go for broke, and hope that wasn’t an unfortunate choice of words.

  “Your nephew hired me—us, to find you. That was all he hired us to do: to discover where you had gone, and convince you to return.”

  “You’re PIs?” Unlike Ian, he didn’t seem surprised or disbelieving.

  “I’m a researcher,” she said, leaving Tonica out of it for the moment.

  “And so not bound by any particular legal constraints, save those of an ordinary citizen, and not a credible witness in case of dispute. Yes. That sounds like Wally.”

  “Wally?” Tonica echoed in disbelief.

  The nickname made Ginny want to smirk, too, but she restrained it better than Tonica.

  “And Ian and Zara sent you to me?”

  “After she pulled a gun on us,” Ginny admitted.

  “Oh. Oh, Zara . . .” He winced, much as Ian had done. “I am sorry about that. I think I frightened her when we last spoke.”

  “At dinner. You told her that you were going to disappear?”

  “Not as such. She knew my concerns, and . . . she has never had a high opinion of Wally. She worked on a downtown improvement committee, and he had a building involved, and . . . that was how we met, actually.” He smiled, some fond memory coming to the fore.

  “You two were, ah . . .” She made a vague gesture in the air, trying not to be too crude, but not sure how to ask.

  “No. Nothing like that. It was purely mutual interests, although I like to think that we’ve become friends.”

  “Generally, one doesn’t pull a gun to defend the whereabouts of someone you don’t like,” Tonica said drily.

  “Indeed. That’s true.” Joseph suddenly looked happier, as though one cloud of worry had been removed.

  Ginny hated to have to push him, but sympathy didn’t close the deal, and she still needed to know what they were going to tell DubJay come Monday morning.

  “So you spoke with Zara and Ian, and they decided you were to be trusted, and here we are.” He spread out his hands, and asked, “What now?”

  That was a damned good question. Ginny had expected, once they found him, he’d be able to answer that. Apparently not.

  Breathe in, she told herself silently. Breathe out. Pretend he’s your dad, handle him the same way.

  “Why did you disappear?” She let her voice rise at the end, making it a question rather than an accusation—she hoped. “Your cleaning lady said you cleared off your desk, and DubJay”—she started to say Wally, then changed her mind—“Walter said there were papers that needed to be filed, that you hadn’t handed over, so I’m assuming that’s what this is all about? Paperwork?”

  “Certificates.” He sighed, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.
“Wally couldn’t have told you anything, of course. He couldn’t, not without breaking confidentiality agreements.” He studied them again, and Ginny tried not to hold her breath or look guilty. “It doesn’t matter now. The deal we’ve been putting together, it’s not a particularly major one, but significant nonetheless. An old warehouse was going to be converted to commercial use, owned by a nonprofit that will . . .” He must have sensed that his audience was beginning to glaze over. “Well, it’s all rather complicated and not germane to the point, but when I was going over the papers, I saw discrepancies in the Certificate of Occupancy. Discrepancies that, in my experience, meant that someone hadn’t actually looked at the building, but just signed off on the paperwork.

  “I tried calling the man whose name was on them, and was told that he’d been on medical leave for the past month. There was no way he would have signed off on those papers.” Joseph’s face turned stern, very much the disapproving patriarch. “Things were not done properly—and Wally had to have known. He was the one who handled this; I trained him, I know that he checks every detail. If word ever got out . . .”

  “So you thought that by absconding with the paperwork, you could keep the deal from going through?” Tonica’s voice was even, but Ginny thought that she could detect a faint whiff of disbelief. He knew more about these certificates than she did, she suspected.

  “Delay it. At least until I decided what to do. I’ve been too lax with the boy lately. My health, and . . . no. No excuses. I let things slip.” His face was still stern, but there was a flicker of something behind those sharp eyes that spoke of sadness and a deep regret. Ginny, knowing she should—had to—remain impartial, still wanted to comfort him.

  “We don’t have much family left. This—if word got out that the papers hadn’t been legal, that we brokered a deal with that sort of cloud, everything we did from here on in would be suspect. It could hurt the family name. If he . . .”

  “If he were suspected of fraud, your company would be ruined.” Tonica was blunt, although still respectful. “Real estate is about reputation—if they don’t trust the properties you bring them, you’re screwed.”