Doghouse (17 page)

He nodded, his hands folded in his lap, his expression fixed in polite inquisition. Ginny once again had a flash of envy at how casually comfortable he was, talking to people. Her stomach was in flutter mode, and she was trying to
juggle too many thoughts at once. Even her tablet, ready at her lap, wasn't helping, because she really didn't have anything to write up.

“Truthfully, theft is more of an issue than gray-market adoption. We keep our prices low for families to adopt, but we also price it high enough to discourage idle or malicious adoptions. In addition, several states have databases of known animal abusers who are banned from adopting, and we ask for references, although we rarely have time to check them all.”

“Someone warned me about dog thieves this morning, while I was walking Georgie,” Ginny said. “I noticed that you have a lot of lost-dog posters in the lobby. Has there been an uptick recently?”

“Nothing that I'm aware of, although it's entirely possible. We track any reported missing animals, so that if they show up here we can alert the owner,” Este said. “I have been told that gangs will hit a neighborhood over a period of a few weeks, and then move on. By the time the residents realize that there's been a pattern, and alert the police, they're gone.” She shook her head. “It's a terrible thing.” She glanced down at her laptop, obviously checking the time, and then stood up. “If I can be of any further help, please do call.”

That was a more polite get-out-of-my-office than Ginny had been expecting. She stood and shook Este's hand, then waited for Tonica to do the same before they went back out into the lobby.

Georgie was waiting for them, lolling on the carpet while a little girl of about ten rubbed the dog's belly.

“You're disgraceful,” Ginny told the shar-pei, reaching down to attach the leash without getting in the girl's way. “Come on, sweetie, let your playmate find her own puppy.”

“We're getting a kitten,” the girl said, and her grin was infectiously happy. “Maybe even two!”

“Lisa!” Her father called her over, and the girl got to her feet and, with a last pat on Georgie's head, ran to join him at the door to the large “socialization” room, where the cats were allowed to roam freely with prospective adopters.

“Good luck!” Ginny called, and the receptionist, a woman with a wild array of blond dreadlocks, gave them a dirty look, as though her wishes were enough to jinx the little girl. Clearly, not everyone had forgiven them.

“Pity they didn't want a tiny little puppy,” Tonica said as they left. “I notice you didn't say anything to anyone about having an animal to surrender. . . .”

“Shut up,” she said. They'd left Parsifal sleeping in the dog bed, with plans for Stacy to swing by later and puppy-sit, but Georgie had looked so pitiful, waiting at the door, as though she didn't want to be left out, Ginny had decided to take the larger dog along.

The little parking lot outside the shelter was half full. It was only just past noon, when the shelter officially opened for adoptions, and Ginny found herself eyeballing everyone she saw, wondering if they were legitimate, or the front for a vile dognapping scheme.

“Stop that,” Tonica said.

“What?”

“That thing where you're assuming everyone's a villain. Stop it. Your hairy eyeball could scare off a saint.”

“My what?”

“That. That look you give. It's a hairy eyeball, and it's terrifying. Even Georgie's scared.”

“Go to hell,” she said, but tried to rein in the side-eye looks. He was right, the odds that someone would be here, right now, with that in mind . . . Yeah. A little paranoia was healthy, but that was a bit much.

“You working this afternoon?” Tonica used to have Mondays off, but his promotion to manager had changed his schedule severely.

“Not until six. Carl's doing scut work and deliveries while Jon's at the bar.”

“Carl and Jon?” She shook her head. “That's not going to end well.”

He sighed. “Jon's a talented asshat,” he admitted. “I wish he'd just quit already. He got up Stace's nose, that she's working weekends and he's not.”

“And I bet she meekly backed down and agreed to give him Friday nights?”

“Oh, yeah.” He chuckled, stepping over the parking lot curb to the sidewalk, and waited for Georgie and Ginny to join him. “Yeah, that's
exactly
what happened.”

“So which is more tangled: bar politics, or this case?”

“This case,” he said, but it took him a moment to decide. “At least with bar politics, I can see all the players, even if I don't know what they're up to. Here, not so much. We've got a cop, trained to be suspicious, who sees something and
makes assumptions, but we also have the director of the local animal shelter who hasn't heard a specific peep.”

“Yeah well, we already know that she's not good at seeing things she doesn't want to see.”

“True.”

They walked down the street, toward the busier downtown area. “So we're back to the name you got. Lewis Hollins. The podiatrist. Who, on the surface, is squeaky clean.” Ginny smiled, a quiet, almost satisfied curl of her lip that he'd learned to recognize. “Squeaky clean always makes me curious.”

“Yeah. We love that about you. I—” He stopped, and put a hand on her arm. “Gin.”

She glanced at where he was looking. It seemed the normal urban streetscape: a handful of people walking on the sidewalk, someone crossing against the light, a small delivery truck too far from the curb. At first scan she didn't see what had caused him to react, then her sense of the scene recalibrated, and instead of a guy unhooking his dog from a signpost, she saw the way the dog
wasn't
reacting to him, the lack of enthusiastic greeting dogs gave even when you'd only left them for three minutes to run in and grab a cup of coffee. More, the nervous twitch of the guy's shoulders when he looked around, clearly uneasy, and she was heading down the street only a half step behind Tonica, Georgie loping along without question.

“Hey!” Tonica called. “You with the dog!”

The guy—a kid, really, for all that he had broad shoulders and a decent beard—half turned, then stood up,
abandoning the dog and looking like he was about to make a run for it.

“Georgie!” Then Ginny hesitated, because did she really want to sic her dog on a guy who might just be an idiot, not a criminal? Before she could decide, Georgie still waiting for the next command, Tonica had taken the decision out of her hands. He'd already reached the guy, placing one large hand on his shoulder and using his I-used-to-be-a-bouncer voice to ask, “Where you going without your dog, son?”

“Not my dog,” the kid mumbled, his eyes wide but not daring to shake Tonica's hand off. “Friend's. We're having a few beers, I said I'd walk the damned thing, if he picked up the tab. But it looked like it was going to bite me, so screw that, he can come get it himself.”

Tonica kept his hand on the kid's arm. “Great. Let's go talk to your friend. Ginny, stay with the pup, okay?”

In case the real owner came by, she understood, which would be proof that the kid had been trying to steal it. Ginny would rather have gone along, because she trusted that kid about as far as she could throw him, but knew that Tonica wouldn't be dumb enough to go anywhere he could get jumped, or otherwise have the odds changed.

She watched them head off to the bar down the street and shook her head. She might leave Georgie tied up outside Mary's, but she could keep an eye on things through the front window. The poor dog was probably convinced he'd been abandoned. No wonder he was giving off unhappy vibes, especially if he didn't know his owner's friend.

“Georgie, sit,” she said, making sure that her dog was a fair distance away from the other animal just in case the guy was right. Now that she was closer, she could tell that it was some kind of German shepherd mix, and either very young or terribly underfed.

“Poor thing,” she said to it, keeping her voice low and not making eye contact, the way their trainer had advised dealing with possibly aggressive dogs. It whined a little but kept its head on the ground and its tail didn't wag, so she stayed put, out of potential lunging range. “You look like you need a bath. And a few weeks of good food. Your owner isn't treating you right, is he? I don't blame you for growling. But you shouldn't bite, not unless you're trained to do it on command. And even then you've got to be careful.”

She knew she probably sounded like a nutcase; only the fact that she was wearing clean clothes and had taken a shower that morning was keeping passers-by from assuming she was a street person.

“What do you think, Georgie? Is this a good doggie or a bad doggie?”

Her dog gave a heavy sigh and inched forward a little toward Ginny—also, she noted, staying out of reach of the other dog, who had opened his eyes and was watching her, but otherwise made no move.

She decided not to offer her hand for sniffing, just in case, and settled in on her haunches to wait, falling into an almost pleasant fugue state as people skirted around the three of them.

“Kid's telling the truth,” Tonica said, and she startled, almost falling over.

“That was fast.”

“Yeah, well, the owner took one look at me and started babbling. Just got the dog last week, says he was cheated, that the dog's sick, and bad-tempered, no fun at all.”

“Feeding the poor thing properly might have been a good start.” With Tonica back, she felt confident enough to reach into her pocket and pull out a dog treat. Georgie perked up, but the way the shepherd's eyes fastened on her hand decided it for her. She put the treat on the ground and pushed it forward to where she thought the dog might be able to reach. It didn't growl, didn't lunge, but watched her hand carefully. When she pulled back, it shifted forward, and took the treat up so fast she wasn't sure she'd even seen him move.

“Sorry, guy,” she said, after repeating it with a second treat. “That's all I got. So, we overreacted?”

“Maybe a little. Understandably. But what's interesting,” Tonica went on, “is where he said he got the dog.”

“Oh?” She looked up over her shoulder at him, having to shade her eyes against the sunlight to do so.

“From a guy he met down at Sammy's Gym.”

11

T
he front of the gym
didn't look any more impressive than it did the last time.

“I think I'm overdressed,” Ginny said, looking down at her outfit, black pants matched with a button-down blue blouse, and her usual two-inch heels.

Teddy gave her a once-over, then shrugged. “I wouldn't worry about it. Pretend you're checking the place out for a client.”

“Huh.” She clearly hadn't thought of that, but he could see the immediate change in her. Shoulders back, head tilted slightly to the left, her mouth pursed just a bit, as though she'd eaten something and wasn't quite sure what it tasted like yet. He imagined that this was the perfect picture of a private concierge, set to do a job, and do it well. Then again, she was the only private concierge he knew, so . . .

Then the façade cracked, and she looked worried again. “Nobody's going to take a swing at us, are they?”

“Probably not?”

“I don't feel comforted, if that's what you were going for.”

“I wasn't.” Teddy grinned at her, and she huffed at him in response, turning to let Georgie out of the back of the car.

“A pity we didn't bring Parsifal with us,” she said. “If someone recognized him, they might give something away.”

“I doubt the people we're looking for are able to tell one puppy from another. Not unless it's proven itself in the ring. I'm pretty sure the only thing Parsifal could take on was a throw pillow, and even then I'm not sure he would win.”

“Ouch. Poor Parsifal, he gets no respect at all.”

“I respect his ability to take down people with the cute,” Teddy said. “Speaking of respect, though, Georgie probably shouldn't come in with us.” His gaze flickered over the dog, then back to the gym. “The clientele here probably won't remember me from my earlier visit, but they'll sure as hell remember her. She made quite the impression on people.”

“I'm not going to leave her tied up outside in this neighborhood!” Ginny gave him a glare, daring him to argue. Considering the reason they were here, he really couldn't. It would be uncomfortably like staking a deer out in front of a lion pride, if what they suspected was true.

“All right, she can stay in the car.” They were parked in the shade, and it was a cool enough morning that she should be all right for a little while. “Will that be okay, if we leave the windows down? Or will she get out and try to follow us?”

“Georgie, stay,” Ginny commanded, and the shar-pei
whined a little, but went back into the car. Ginny pulled something out of her bag and unfolded it into a bowl, then filled it with water from her water bottle. “Here you go, baby,” she said. “We won't be long, promise.”

The dog didn't look happy, but settled down.

“You sure you don't want to give her a little brother?”

“Tonica, puppies chew, and terriers chew more than most. Even as it is now I'm probably going to go home and discover my apartment's been turned into a war zone. So, no. I really don't want another dog.”

He lifted his hands in a sign of surrender, then gestured for her to go ahead of him.

The gym
wasn't as busy as it had been during his last visit, or maybe he was better prepared for the sounds of gloves hitting bags, the low, repeating grunts and slaps that bounced off the walls, and the low, rattling hum of an overstressed air-conditioning unit.

There was a young black kid at the front desk this time, and, leaning back in his chair like he owned the place, he watched them walk across the floor.

“May I help you?” There was just enough sarcasm under the polite tone to amuse Teddy. Anyone who used “may” instead of “can” in a place like this, and implied that they were beyond help, was his kind of hire. He wondered if the kid was over twenty-one, and if he'd like to consider a change of employment.

A polite cough brought him back to focus, and he turned
slightly to his left, indicating that Ginny was the person who would be talking.

“I was wondering if I might have a tour of the gym?” She reached into her bag and pulled out her business card case, handing one to the kid as though he were a suited CEO. “I am working for a client who is looking for a . . . particular sort of place to work out. He prefers one that knows how to keep its members off the radar—no flash, no publicity, just a good hard workout. You understand?”

“Ah. Yeah.” Kid was well-spoken, sarcastic,
and
quick on the uptake, even if what he was taking up was an utter lie. Teddy was totally going to try to steal him. Unless he was involved with whatever was going on, of course.

“If you'll wait just a moment,” the kid was saying to Ginny, “I can arrange that.” He nodded toward the row of chairs against the far wall and put his hand on the phone on his desk, waiting for them to move away before he called the back office.

Teddy tensed: last time he'd just been waved on through to the back. Then again, last time he immediately established himself as one of the guys, with a connection to an old-timer. Ginny was going to get a different reception.

“Think they're going to check my bona fides?” Ginny sounded casually worried, like it was nothing more than waiting for a credit card to be authorized.

“Probably going to tell them they have a fresh, flush fish on the line,” Teddy said just as quietly as they sat down where indicated. The chairs were metal, and
uncomfortable, but he stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his arms across his chest, and tried hard to look like a bored but professional driver/bodyguard/purse-holder. “This place may not be gentrifying, but they're not going to risk offending a possible high-interest member, not if it's their ticket to being trendy.”

“Unless something really is going on here, and they don't want high interest.”

“Then they'll say they don't have someone to show you around right now and put you off politely. Relax.” That was easier to say than do: he could feel the strain in his shoulders as he tried to look casual.

“Uh-huh.” But she looked a little more at ease. “So what are you going to do while I'm getting the Sucker's Tour?”

“Talk to some people,” he said, letting his gaze rest on one person, then slip on to the next. He could tell who had something they didn't want anyone else to know. They were the ones really interested in the newcomers, while at the same time trying hard not to look interesting themselves. He'd already found a few of the gym's clientele that might fit that bill. “You know, schmoozing, the thing you haul me around for.”

“Technically, you haul me. Although it's nice that you acknowledge who's the brains of this operation.”

Teddy was trying to come up with a comeback when they were interrupted.

“Ms. Mallard?” The kid was standing now, and there was an older white guy next to him. He was wearing dress slacks and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to
his elbow, but somehow managed to look right at home in the gym atmosphere, like a boxer who'd gone into management rather than a manager who did some recreational boxing. Teddy was pretty sure the guy's nose had been broken at least once, and reset professionally. “This is Alan, head of our sales team. He'll show you around.”

Ginny stood up and walked over to shake the man's hand. “Thank you for accommodating me on such short notice,” she said.

“Not at all, my pleasure,” Alan said. He took out a business card and presented it to her with both hands. She took it with both hands as well, bowing slightly as she did so. “Will your companion be joining us?”

“Nah, I'm good,” Teddy said, waving at them without disturbing his slouch.

Alan gave him a once-over—a professional one, if Teddy was any judge—and nodded. “If you need anything, just ask Clarence.”

Teddy nodded in return and watched them walk away, and then returned to idly observing the activity in the gym until the kid at the front desk—Clarence, he presumed—lost interest in him. It took about five minutes. Thank God for cell phones and texting, Teddy thought as he stretched his arms out in front of him, and then stood up. Clarence didn't even look up, having relegated Teddy to background noise. He suspected that the only thing that would make the kid look up would be a yell from the back office, or the front door opening. That was a point against him: working in a bar, you had to constantly be aware of what was going
on around you, sensing problems before they happened, not after.

The gym seemed to fall into three sections. Up front, there were the guys jumping rope or doing floor work. It was serious stuff, requiring a lot of inward-focusing expressions. Teddy didn't bother to approach anyone there: interrupting one of them wouldn't be productive, and might get him punched. The other two areas were the raised rings, two small ones and a larger one in the center of the space, and the double rows of punching bags toward the back, their images reflected by a wall of mirrors.

He wandered around the raised rings, pausing to watch a trainer coaching two young fighters in one. Teddy had no interest in boxing as either a sport or a science, but he had to admit that they were definitely athletes: the teens were breaking enough sweat to make him feel like he needed a shower, too.

But the fighters in the ring weren't his target, either. Teddy kept moving, skirting the larger ring, toward the first individual he'd picked out, working one of the bags toward the back. As he did so, he caught sight of Ginny's curls across the gym, the blond noticeable where so many heads were either bald or wrapped in bandannas against the sweat. The guy she was with held open a door, and they disappeared behind it. The sign over the door said
LOCKER ROOMS
. Teddy assumed they were coed, since women were working out here, although not many, and if not, he hoped they knocked before poking their noses in. Guys
caught with their shorts down could take crude shots, and Ginny wouldn't let that go unanswered.

He almost wished he'd gone with them, just for that. But he had his own job to do. “Hey.”

“Hey,” the other man grunted, catching the bag he'd been hitting and letting it still. The guy was built like a brick shithouse, square and ugly, and nothing you wanted to mess with, but the eyes that met Teddy's were filled with curiosity, not challenge. When you looked like you could take all comers, you probably didn't have to, so much. Even in testosterone palaces like this place.

“Got a question, and you seem like the guy who could answer it.”

“Try and you'll get your ass thrown out.”

“What?” He hadn't expected that, nor the matter-of-fact tone the warning was delivered in.

“This is a clean shop. Owners don't allow drugs. Only stuff here's the aspirin, and you gotta get that out of the medicine kit they keep in the back. He don't have no truck with drugs, and if he finds you with it you'll get your ass thrown out—and mine, too, for talking with you.”

“Oh God, no, I wasn't . . . I have no interest in drugs.” He could see where the guy had made that assumption: he didn't know much about gyms, being more of a runner for his exercise, but yeah, these places were sort of designed for a low-end trade in whatever they were trading these days. He'd seen enough of that happening in the skeevier bars he'd worked at to not be surprised it happened here, too.

“So?” The guy paused, one hand resting on the bag, keeping it in place, the other on his hip. The smell of sweat and stale smoke wafted off him, making Teddy's nose itch. He turned away, just a little, and something caught his eye: a younger man, not so heavily built, was watching them. Teddy let his gaze linger, challenging the kid to join the conversation. Instead he broke eye contact and turned away, picking up a jump rope as though that was what he'd been meaning to do all along.

Teddy turned back to the first guy. “Dogs.”

“What?” And now they were even in the caught-off-guard sweepstakes.

“My question's about dogs. I'm looking for a dog to train for, you know,” and Teddy moved his hand in what he hoped looked like a convincingly casual-secret-code manner. “Something reasonably fierce, that would make a good guard dog.”

“And you thought I could help you with that?”

“I did.” And Teddy waited. Finally, after a few deep breaths, the guy let go of the bag and started stripping off his gloves and unwrapping the tape, shaking his fingers out, not looking at Teddy.

“Clarence sent you?”

The kid was immediately knocked off Teddy's list of potential hires.

“Okay, yeah. I might know someone who knows something about dogs,” he said, finally, when Teddy just looked at him. “What you looking for?”

Not why, Teddy noted, but what. “The woman I came
in with, she owns a shar-pei. I like the way it moves, but it's too . . . It's a really sweet dog. I don't want sweet.”

“Huh.” The fighter studied him, taking in Teddy's clothing, his military-style haircut, the paper-thin scars across his knuckles, old but not entirely faded. “Okay. Yeah. Gimme your number and I'll see what my friend has to offer. But his dogs don't come cheap.”

“I understand.” Teddy found a scrap of paper in his wallet that didn't have anything written on it, and jotted down the number for the phone behind the bar at Mary's. Anyone did any digging, they could connect him to Mary's and figure it out, but if they just looked it up in the directory, it would be reasonably anonymous. In that vein, he wrote “Theo” on the sheet, not Teddy.

“Great. Now beat it.”

Teddy nodded, moving on as though he'd just stopped to pass the time with a random fighter, wending his way to the back wall. The guy who'd been watching them was jumping rope now, his attention focused on the wall of mirrors. He might have been watching his form—or watching Teddy without having to look directly at him.