Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery (17 page)

“Yeah, the neighbor said the same thing. That he didn’t have a record, anyway. Doesn’t mean he’s not, just that he hasn’t been caught.”

“Yeah well, I’d say someone caught him doing
something
.” Innocent people get killed every day, but getting beaten to death when you’re already involved in something illegal, and the feds are sniffing at your tail, upped the odds of not-a-sad-coincidence significantly. And Teddy might never have met the guy but he knew he didn’t like the company he kept.

She nodded. Her shoulders were tight, and her fingers were still on the desk, not drumming the way they usually did when she was brain-deep in figuring something out. Everything about her screamed
stress
, and he could feel his own body reacting to it.

“Mallard.” He said it softly, but it got her attention; she looked up at him. “You know, we don’t have to keep digging. We’ve got a reasonable guess why you were called in, even if not
who,
and if we’re not actually investigating his murder because the cops seem to actually be on that . . .”

“We could just close up shop and go home? Forget about reaching Kim, getting her to talk?”

“Yeah.”

“And the girls on that list? Seven of the nine are seniors this year; the other two graduated last year. They don’t deserve to have their attacker exposed for the sleaze he was?”

“He might not have . . . We don’t know for certain. It might have been a client list, maybe he was running a side deal, not cutting his partners in? That’s a real good way to get your neck broken and your face punched in, and Collins looked strong enough to do it.”

“Maybe. But Collins . . . He’s a jerk but he didn’t seem like the brutal killer type.”

“From what I’ve read, you don’t know who’s the type or not until they’re beating your head in. Sorry,” he added when she winced. “But all we know so far is that his neighbors called him a nice guy—and that’s
always
a warning sign—and his erstwhile business partner didn’t seem all that broken up that he’s dead. Maybe something else went wrong—he might just have been a small cog in a larger disaster, and Asuri was doing us a solid, warning us away from it.”

“But she didn’t, did she? Not really. You’re the one who pointed it out, that she said just enough to make me jump for it.”

He exhaled, unable to argue with that, since yeah, he had been the one to say it first.

He realized that he’d clenched his hands and forced them to relax. Ginny angry was terrifying but exhilarating. Seeing her furious with guilt—he could have lived his entire life without that. But going into overprotective mode in response wasn’t going to help.

“This entire shitstorm, it’s been me being manipulated. Someone wanted me down here, and Asuri took advantage of that, played me, and I dragged Ron into it, dragged you down, too, and . . .”

“I dragged my own self down here,” he said sharply.

“Okay, yeah.” She wasn’t so guilty that suddenly the entire world was her fault, and he was thankful for that, at least. “But you wouldn’t have if I hadn’t gotten so tangled up in this, like Penny when she can’t get her claws out of something and ends up doing a faceplant.”

“Gin, stop it. If we’re right, this guy was at the very least a sexual user, and nobody knew about it, because nobody was talking. Whatever Asuri’s using us for, whatever game she’s playing with her own case, none of that matters. You said the girls were scared, but not unhappy that he was dead, right? If we’re right, we’ve got the chance to expose him for being a sleaze.”

Because if the feds were looking at him for identity theft and crap like that, they weren’t going to care about what he did on the side. Not enough to dig into it. Not if none of his victims could make a difference in their case. And they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to get the girls to talk.

He didn’t say any of that to Ginny. He didn’t have to: she was smarter than he was, she already knew it.

“All right.” Her body untensed, just enough. “All right. So you don’t think I was supposed to find the body?” He could see her turning that idea around in his head, reslotting the puzzle pieces until the picture made sense again.

“Maybe not. Maybe that was just the worst possible timing in the history of bad luck? Maybe you were supposed to arrive when he was harassing Kim?” The timing was too uncertain, the case too flimsy, but for once in all this mess, it felt right.

“Maybe it was one of the girls on this list,” she said, finally. “Or a friend of theirs, or a parent who didn’t want their daughter to have to step forward, not if they could protect her. That makes sense. All right.”

“You good?”

“No,” she said. “But it’s going to have to do. Poking further is liable to run us into the murder investigation, and I’m not going to count on Asuri bailing me out again, no matter what game she’s playing. And I don’t feel like doing the feds’ dirty work, not without a please and thank-you and maybe a tax break out of it.

“I’m tired of being someone else’s puppet, Teddy. If Kim doesn’t get in touch with me . . . it’s time to go home.”

He must have betrayed his surprise, because she smiled at him, a wry curl of her lip. “Ron texted me while you were out. Either he got in trouble or he got assigned something else big, because we’re on our own. So that door’s shut and . . . short of going to Asuri, I don’t know what else to do. This isn’t a matter of public records I can search out, or witnesses you can schmooze, not if Kim won’t talk to us.” She frowned. “And the younger girl, Sally, I think her name was. I should have pushed more to see what she remembered, but I didn’t want to challenge Asuri without knowing what she was up to, and now . . . if Sally’s folks are smart, and I’m betting they are, they won’t let me talk to her without some kind of official notice and identification.”

“Her memory’s not worth it now, anyway,” Teddy said. “Even trained witnesses have memory degradation after a few days. A kid? Between what she actually saw and what she’s heard since then, there’s gonna be a lot of gray.”

“Like I said, there’s not much more we can do. And it’s not like we have a case, or a client, anyway. I just wish I’d—” A sound came from her phone, and they both jumped. Georgie, reacting more to the movement than the sound, opened one eye, then, seeing there was nothing going on, went back to sleep. “It’s Kim.”

*    *    *

“Damn it, cat, what is with you? You feel the need to make my life
more
difficult?”

The tabby stared at her, those unblinking eyes still unnerving, and flicked her tail once as though to say “you idiot human, I’m trying to
tell
you something.”

“Yeah well, I’m not the boss, Mistress Penny. I don’t speak cat, fluent or otherwise. So please leave the damn tip jar—and my arms—alone, okay?”

She righted the jar for the third time and glared back at the cat, daring her to tip it over again.

“Seriously. What’s with you?”

The bar phone, an old-fashioned landline, rang just then, interrupting their staring match.

“Mary’s Place, how can we—hey, boss. No, everything’s fine, you were right, I humbly apologize for even doubting you an instant, all right?” Stacy rolled her eyes, although there was nobody at the bar just then to see it. They’d opened late, her morning gig running overtime, but there was no need to tell Teddy that, not if nobody was around to hear it. Fridays started slow—Thursday nights were busy but the afternoon after was the calm before the storm. “Yeah, no, no, I—”

There was an ungodly noise, like a car engine stalling, and Stacy looked up to see Penny stalking toward her, tail erect and whiskers quivering, demanding—and there was no other way to describe it—to be heard.

“That? Is your cat, boss. I think she’s pissed at you.”

She laughed at his response. “Nuh-uh. Let me put you on speakerphone.”

“Hey, Penny,” Tonica’s voice came through. “You keeping everyone in line up there?”

Stacy was pretty sure Penny said something rude in reply, and a deep woof came from the background on the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry, did you want to say something?” she heard Teddy say, muffled enough to be turning away from the phone, and she could imagine Georgie looking up at the boss, asking where Penny was, why she could hear her but not see her.

Penny let out another meow, this one less insistent if still as loud, then came up to the phone and butted her head against Stacy’s hand, a rare signal of affection. Or, possibly, asking for control of the phone held in that hand.

“No,” she told the cat. “Not until you grow opposable thumbs. And start paying for your share of the phone bill.”

Teddy came back on the line. “All right, I accept that the place hasn’t burned down in my absence. And Seth hasn’t given you any backtalk?”

“I think he’s actually better behaved than when you’re here, honestly,” she said. “He likes being the sole rooster.”

That got her a snort, and she heard Ginny saying something in the background.

“Well, he’s got the chicken legs for it,” Teddy said, and he had to speak loudly to be heard over Georgie’s woofs, and that was odd, because Georgie was usually quiet, not like Parsifal, who still yipped like a crazy thing every time he saw her. “Damn it, dog, hush.”

Penny was sitting on the bar in front of her, ears pricked up, eyes wide and staring at the phone like she expected it to turn into a mouse at any moment.

“We’re going to be here another day, looks like,” Teddy said, “but I’ll be back in time for tomorrow night, promise.”

“You’d better,” she said. Friday nights were bad, but Saturdays were when things could get iffy, if they picked up overflow from other bars, and she was already going to be exhausted working double shifts today. “I’m going to make Seth bus tables tonight, because there’s no way we can keep up.” They’d managed last night, but only because their regulars weren’t drunk assholes, and started clearing up after themselves. She couldn’t count on that over the weekend.

“Call in Allison to work the floor,” he said. “Off the books.”

That would help. Allison was a retired career waitress who could still handle the average drunk with a quip and a touch on the shoulder, and she never minded picking up an under-the-table shift over the weekend, to help pay off her tab.

“Seriously, kid, how’s it going? You going to be okay working double shifts today?”

She wasn’t, really, but he’d never asked her to do this before and she knew it was because Ginny needed help, so she’d suck it up and hold it over him later. And like Allison, she wasn’t going to turn down the extra paycheck. Being an artists’ model—her other job—meant less time on her feet, but the tips were for crap and there was only so much posing she could stand before the need to talk to someone got overwhelming.

“You guys just finish up whatever you’re doing and come home safe,” she said. “If you leave me here alone much longer, though, I’m gonna redecorate. I think a nice retro eighties look would really bring in the crowds, don’t you?”

She hung up before he could reply, and grinned triumphantly at the cat. “That’ll get him back here, don’t worry.”

*    *    *

Penny could feel her tail lashing back and forth, and she stalked the length of the bar, aware that one careless flick could send something breakable to the floor but not caring a bit. Just then, if there had been something she knew Theodore cared about, she would have happily pushed it to the floor while he watched, just to say “so there.”

But he wasn’t there. He was Elsewhere, and Georgie needed her help, they all needed her help, and she was stuck here. They were sniffing out something, and she wasn’t part of it, and meanwhile there was a threat here, and while Stacy was kind, and good-tempered, she wasn’t up to Theodore’s or even Ginny’s level. Yet
. There might be hope for her, but Penny couldn’t wait for that to happen now.

Penny swatted at the girl’s paw in annoyance, careful to keep her nails sheathed, but the girl tried to scoop her off the bar anyway. She hissed, ears back and tail flat.

“Hey!
” The girl sounded outraged and hurt and Penny felt a little bad but not enough to apologize. Some moods, humans should just know to keep their hands to themselves. If she wanted Penny to get down—

“Penny, off the bar.”

She waited a minute just to show that it was her idea, not just following orders, then leapt down to the floor, her tail a warning to anyone else that she was not in the mood to be admired today.

There was a ledge at the back wall, high enough above that nobody could reach her, and most people never looked up to even see her. Only Theo, and Theo wasn
’t here today.

Three leaps and she was invisible, blending into the shadows near the ceiling. It was quiet, the girl moving behind the bar, the old man in the back, his muttering a soothing, familiar sound, and no other humans had come into her domain yet. She curled her tail around her flanks, unable to keep the tip from twitching irritably, even here.

The new girl had upset the proper order of things, with her taking of things out of the jar. That had to be dealt with first. Once she had made sure the Noisy Place was running smoothly, she’d get back to solving Theodore’s other problem, now that
Georgie had—finally—checked in.

A rumble of irritation rattled in her throat. Georgie said that they were about to go meet with someone, the girl they’d talked to before, because the girl might be in trouble, but that was all the dog knew. Georgie had been stressed, unhappy.
Georgie wasn’t good going into situations she didn’t know; she needed Penny to explain things. And she. Wasn’t. There.

Penny intensely disliked not being in the middle of things. Georgie and the humans were good, but they weren’t good enough. Not without her.

14

I
t had been an awkward-as-hell
conversation, but Kim had agreed, very reluctantly, to meet with them after school, in the gym. Ginny figured that meeting on school grounds—Kim’s turf, as it were—might make the girl feel more in control of the situation. The point here was to get information from the girl, not scare her. If they were right, she’d had enough of that already. God, if she could just lay hands on that bastard, and he wasn’t dead already . . .

“Ease up, Mallard.”

“What?”

“You look like you’re about to go in like an avenging angel. Ease up. So maybe the guy traded sexual favors for fake IDs. Maybe. Your yelling at her isn’t going to—”

“Is that what you think?” She turned to face him, her eyes wide with a mix of shock and irritation. “Is that what you think I’m . . . You think that’s what happened?”

“You can’t assume worst-case scenario off the bat, Mallard.”

She made a sound of disgust. “Only a male would say that. Didn’t any one of your sisters ever explain the facts of life to you, Tonica? Always assume the worst-case scenario is going to happen. Because you’re right more often than not, and that assumption’s what might keep you safe. So, no, I’m not going to assume it was consensual until she says so.” And maybe not even then. Seventeen was about as dumb as you got, from her memory.

“Shit.”

“You really didn’t—” She stopped herself from saying it. He was a guy, however good a guy he was, however well his sisters might have taught him not to be a jerk. His brain wouldn’t automatically go to the same place hers did.

“I hope you’re right,” she said, instead. That would be bad enough, but not as bad as it might be.

Bu somehow, Ginny didn’t think it was going to be only bad. Only bad didn’t end up on a hidden list of underage girls, or have someone hiring a PI to poke around, without telling them why or what they should be looking for.

“This might all still just be tied into the identity theft stuff,” he said. “Maybe one of his partners . . .”

“When was the last time someone got beaten to death for identity theft, Tonica? Collins is a sleaze, but can you see him actually taking a tire iron to someone else’s face? Or spending money hiring someone to do it?”

He didn’t have an answer to that.

*    *    *

The school was a large, gray stone building, and the halls echoed the way buildings that are normally filled with people do when they’re empty. It wasn’t that long after 3 p.m., but Ginny thought final exams might have started already, and anyone who didn’t have to be here wouldn’t be.

Kim was waiting for them in the gymnasium, sitting on the second-to-bottom step of the risers. She was wearing running pants and a tank top with her school’s name on the front, her dark red hair pulled back in a ponytail and her skin flushed, as though she’d just finished a hard workout and cool-down. Ginny was uncomfortably reminded that she’d let her own exercise routine slack off in the past week, and that she wasn’t a teenager anymore.

“All right, I’m here. What do you want?” Kim was, if possible, even less comfortable talking to them now than she’d been before.

Ginny looked at Tonica, and he shrugged. They’d discussed their approach, briefly, on the way over. If Ginny’s worries were true, he needed to back off, project his nice-guy-only-here-as-support aura, and not seem even remotely threatening. He might be the people-schmoozer, but she was the one who had talked to the girl before, and odds were she’d open up to a woman more than she would a guy, especially a stranger. The problem was, Ginny had absolutely no clue how to begin. “Did the guy who died touch you in bad places?” was a crappy opener.

Georgie, obviously recognizing the girl from their previous meeting, came to the rescue, settling herself at Kim’s feet and pressing against her leg with the “please pet me my life will be incomplete if you don’t pet me” expression that nobody could resist. Kim was no exception. She started rubbing George’s ears, and they could see her shoulders ease out of their tight hold.

They joined her on the bleachers, Tonica on the bench below with Georgie, and Ginny sitting next to the girl, careful to leave enough room that she didn’t feel pressured.

“Thank you for meeting with us,” she said finally. “I have a few questions I’m hoping that you could help answer?”

“About Jamie? Mr. Penalta, I mean?”

“Yes.” Interesting slip, using his first name, but not unexpected, based on what they knew. But it didn’t incriminate, one way or the other: everyone said he spent a lot of time with the neighborhood kids, and in her experience that meant you either went full-on formal to maintain respect, or encouraged informality to improve communications. It didn’t curse or exonerate him, either way.

Kim stopped petting Georgie for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay, yeah. I figured. What questions?”

Ginny decided, on the spot, that the only way this was going to work was if they didn’t go in the direction Kim was clearly bracing herself for, if they kept her in her comfort zone and didn’t freak her out. So the obvious questions were out, at least at first.

“You called him Jamie? Makes sense—not that much older than you, really.” Ginny wasn’t all that much older than the dead man, but she knew that the difference between mid-twenties and early thirties would be huge to a seventeen-year-old.

“Yeah, I guess. It was . . .” She toyed with the lace of one sneaker, picking at the plastic end. “Stupid. It made us feel older, I guess. Important. Like we were on the same level, or something.”

Ginny flicked a glance at Tonica, who was frowning, his arms crossed over his chest, and for a minute she saw him the way a teenager might: a large older guy with a military-style haircut, muscled and slightly fierce, with that frown on his face. She widened her eyes at him and shook her head slightly, trying to tell him to ease up a little. He was supposed to be stern, not scary.

“Being seventeen sucks,” Ginny said in response to the girl’s words, less to Kim directly than a memory of her own, and the girl scoffed bitterly, like Ginny had no idea what she was talking about. “Yeah, it really does. You’re supposed to know everything, what you want, who you are, but nobody lets you actually
do
anything. And please, don’t tell me ‘it gets better,’ because when? When does it get better?”

“My mom says around forty,” Ginny said, so dryly that it broke through Kim’s quiet rant, and she looked up in surprise, then laughed—only a little, barely a huff, but it was a real laugh. “Yeah. My mom said that, too. That sucks.”

“So you thought getting a fake ID would make things better?”

Kim looked like she was going to deny it, then all the air went out of her, and any defiance with it. “Maybe not better, but different. All my friends were getting into clubs . . . It wasn’t about drinking, we just wanted to dance. And I’m going to college in the fall, and everyone has fake IDs there. . . .”

“Not everyone,” Tonica said, and when she looked at him he smiled at her, and shrugged, the charm turning on again, if powered down enough that it wasn’t even remotely flirtatious. “I’m a bartender. I check a lot of ID. And we’re pretty good about spotting fakes.”

“Oh.” Kim looked a little taken aback by that, more than anything else. Ginny hid a smile. She hadn’t been a big drinker when she was a teenager, either, but the lure of being able to go where they weren’t supposed to, to pass as adults . . . she remembered that. She thought, though, that reassuring the girl that there would still be bars she could get into, especially in a college town, wouldn’t be the most responsible thing to say just then.

“Guess I spent a lot of money for nothing, then. He wasn’t cheap.” Bravado shone on her face, even though she kept her tone even, a little irritated but not too put out. She was good, Ginny would give her that, trying to be an Adult talking to Adults while her body was practically curled over Georgie, asking for reassurance. “But I’d heard from everyone how good his work was, all year, and I’d saved up enough money for my own, finally.”

Ginny nodded, and let her own hand rest on Georgie’s backside, a nonverbal reminder to the girl that the dog trusted Ginny, and she could, too. “So you got your ID from him, before he died?”

“Yeah. I’d gone over the week before and had my photo taken, and he’d texted me the day before to say that it was ready.” She looked at Ginny quickly, then dropped her gaze again. “That was the day before he . . . before he died, I guess.”

“And you went over to pick it up that morning?” That was their guess, that she’d been at least one of the people Sally claimed to have seen on the porch. “Did you go alone?”

“Yeah. I brought him the cash—he never made you pay up front, just when he delivered—and . . .” She stopped talking and rubbed Georgie’s ears again, frowning at the planked floor of the gym like it held an answer to whatever question she was asking herself. Tonica looked at Ginny and she shook her head slightly. They should wait the girl out, not push her, or ask if anyone else had been there. It was the longest few minutes Ginny could ever remember, waiting to see if the dam would break, or get reinforced.

“He was always such a nice guy, you know? I mean, he wasn’t creepy-nice. He didn’t give us booze or anything or act weird, he was just . . . nice. He didn’t talk down to us, and he didn’t try to pretend we were anything other than dumb kids, you know what I mean? It was just . . . it was like he remembered what it was like, having everyone shouting at you to figure things out and at the same time telling you that you couldn’t do anything.” Once she started talking, Kim didn’t seem capable of stopping. “So I guess we trusted him?”

Ginny noted the past tense, and didn’t think it had anything to do with the guy being dead. Damn it, she hadn’t wanted to be right, she really hadn’t. She wanted to look at Tonica, to see what his reaction to that was, but she was afraid to take her attention off Kim, as though that would be an insult or betrayal.

“So you went over there, alone.”

“Yeah. That was one of his rules; that any business had to be done solo. He said if you weren’t able to do things on your own, you weren’t old enough to have a fake ID. And I didn’t think anything about it, until . . .” She was still petting Georgie, still focused down, but still talking. “Until he’d taken my money, and given me the ID, and then he was up in my face, trying to push me against the wall.” She swallowed audibly, and the hand on Georgie’s head was trembling. “He said it was a bonus, just a little bonus, he said, and his hands were everywhere and I freaked. I totally panicked and forgot everything we’d ever been told about self-defense, or anything. I couldn’t get him off me no matter how hard I shoved, and he just kept talking like it was okay, like I wanted it, and I didn’t.”

Even without looking, Ginny would tell when Tonica tensed up. She didn’t know much about his childhood, or even his life before he came to Mary’s, but she did know he’d been surrounded by sisters and female cousins, and she knew enough about him to know that right now all he wanted to do was a) beat the dead guy to a pulp and b) comfort Kim, and neither one of those things was going to be useful right now because a) dead guy was dead and b) another guy touching her right now was not going to make it better.

She was really, really sorry she’d been right, and Tonica had been wrong.

“Did he—?” She stopped, not able to get the words out of her throat.

“He got his hands under my shirt, and he was grabbing at me, and he kept
talking
. And then he tried to give me a hickey. On my neck. It was so gross, I started to cry, and I sneezed on him ’cause my nose runs when I cry, then the doorbell rang and I guess that freaked him out enough that he let go, and I grabbed my stuff and I ran.”

Ginny let out a sigh of relief. But at the same time, her brain was shuffling the pieces around, trying to make room for this new information. “Kim did he ever . . . Did you ever hear of him trying that on anyone else?” Because if there was one thing you learned it was that creepers rarely creeped on only one person. Especially if their preferred target was teenagers And if they were in a position of having something said teenagers wanted.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head, but didn’t seem certain. “Maybe? I mean . . . guys like that, it’s not about me, right? That’s what Nancy says, it’s not me that set him off, it’s them?”

If it wouldn’t have freaked Kim out more, Ginny would have hugged her, and then and found her friend Nancy and hugged her, too. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re a hundred percent right. They . . . But you never heard anything?”

Kim shook her head, her ponytail swishing gently. “Nancy said we should ask around, but even if he was . . . he was the only source for decent ID, you know? Nobody’d want to hear it. We’d be the ones making the problem, not him.” She swallowed. “And then . . .”

Oh Christ, there was more?

“And then you came by, and we found out that he was dead.”

Ginny inhaled, then nodded slowly. No wonder they’d looked so shocked, and also, yeah, she could see it now, relieved. She’d basically just told them that the monster was dead, that they didn’t have to decide what to do because someone else had taken care of the problem for them.

Except there was still a monster out there: the guy who’d done it.

“And you didn’t see anyone else there that morning?”

“No. Oh, wait.” Kim frowned, and Ginny could see dots connecting in the girl’s head. “When I left, I ran out the front door and there was a woman there. She’d rung the doorbell, I guess, it was all kind of a blur then, and . . . she made him let me go. Or he let me go because she was there?”

The two people the little girl said she had seen on the porch with Penalta. Kim, and the unknown woman. Ginny felt a stir of excitement, the way she felt when she was
this close
to figuring out a problem, or cracking a case.

“Did he know her? Did he mention a name?”

Kim shook her head, face still down and intent on Georgie’s back. “If he did, I don’t remember. But . . . he was killed just after that, wasn’t he? That’s what they’re saying, that he died mid-morning, and I was there before school, and . . . oh my God, was she the killer? She touched me!” She was shuddering now, her eyes tearing, and from the way she kept sniffling, her nose was probably starting to run, too.