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“I think Patrick wants to expand,” Teddy said glumly, when Stacy just shrugged. “Or at least, renovate.”

“What th—why? Everything's fine the way it is. And he won't even let me use more expensive cheese, but he wants to rip the place apart? Insane, I told you, damn it, he's gone insane. Teddy, you gotta talk to him. Tell him this is foolishness.”

Teddy shook his head, something he felt like he was doing a lot of lately. “He doesn't listen to me any more than he listens to you, Seth. I'm just the bartender.”

The old man stomped off, muttering, and Teddy went
back to his note-making until a familiar thump-thump alerted him that Miss Penny had arrived.

“Hey, cat,” Stacy said as the tabby leapt down to the bartop and stalked past the bartender, allowing a quick pet before jumping to the floor and heading toward Teddy's table.

“Hey there, lady,” he said, and turned so that she could, as usual, jump to his shoulder.

But when the small tabby landed on her preferred perch, rather than curling her tail around his shoulders and kneading his arm until she was satisfied, Penny took one sniff and leapt off him, down to the floor. Once there she sat with her back to him and, pointedly, started to groom her tail.

“What's that all about?” he asked, surprised. He went to sniff his arm to see if there was something on his shirt that put her off, and then he laughed, realizing what must have happened.

“Yeah, all right. You caught me. I've been consorting with other kittens. I promise, none of them meant a thing to me.”

Penny, still grooming herself, twitched an ear, but otherwise seemed unappeased.

Seth wasn't distracted by Penny's arrival. “I swear, if he starts changing things, Teddy, I'm gone. I mean it. I swear.”

“He hasn't started anything yet, Seth. Relax.”

But it looked like the boss was considering it enough to bring in pros to give him costs. That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all.

He looked down at the tabby. “Maybe it's time, just in case, to reconsider the short-term game.” He worked hard at keeping his life uncomplicated, no obligations or undue stress, able to walk away if he needed to. If keeping that simplicity meant leaving Mary's . . .

And the thought came to him, weirdly, considering the way she had just snubbed him: Would Mistress Penny-Drops come with him, or stay at the bar? Did he even have the right to take her, without any way to know what she wanted?

She's a cat, Tonica
, he could almost hear Ginny say.
She'll let you know what she wants.

*  *  *

Penny purred quietly, the tip of her tail twitching ever so gently. He smelled of other cats, and dogs, and the smell of a place where too many of them lived. She had been irritated at first, then cat-sense kicked in: that was good, that he smelled of the old place, the shelter. That meant they'd gone, and looked. But had they seen? She couldn't tell, and he wasn't talking about it, with his writing and his muttering she couldn't decipher.

There were other ways to read humans, though.

She jumped back into his lap and rested her nose on the crook of his arm, lifting her lips a little to better scent him, but there were only familiar, common things. Nothing of the smells were the things the other dog had described, the smells-wrong and the sounds-wrong that so upset the rest of the kennel.

Either it was gone, or they hadn't gone to the right place. Georgie
had been with them: she could smell the other's scent, fresh on the human. She needed to talk to Georgie, hear what the dog had found out.

But for now, she was content to sit in his arms, and let him pet her, while he talked to himself. A cat knew how and when to leap, and when and how to be patient, and let the mouse come within paw's reach.

*  *  *

At the shelter, the doors officially opened to visitors at noon, a little after Ginny and Tonica left. Only a single couple with a little girl in tow came by, leaving with an orange-striped kitten clutched carefully in the little girl's arms, and then the parking lot was quiet until around 2 p.m., when a car pulled into the lot and a man got out. The car was a Ford sedan, old enough to be nondescript but new enough to not draw attention, and still in good enough shape that it ran quietly and smoothly. The man followed a similar style: mid-thirties, hair conservatively cut, wearing jeans and a button-down Oxford, smack dab in the middle of business-casual range. Rather than going inside, he circled the building, heading for the back, and the blocked-off employee parking lot.

When he got there, though, he discovered that he wasn't alone.

“Hey, you.” The man the younger woman had called “doc” earlier was standing there, now wearing a pale green lab coverall that was stained with darker blotches. He
turned to look when the man came around the corner, and then stepped forward, getting into the newcomer's personal space. “This entrance is closed.”

“I'm sorry, I—”

The man in the coveralls narrowed his eyes and studied the newcomer. “Hey, I know you.”

“No, I'm sure . . .”

“Yeah. You're a reporter. From
In and About
. I've seen your photo on the website. Why're you sneaking around here?” The man moved forward again, his bulk just enough to force the other man back a step, or risk an actual confrontation.

“I just wanted to get some photos . . .”

“No press here without permission. We don't like getting the animals upset—or people, either. You have permission?” The tone said, quite clearly, that he knew the reporter didn't.

“It's not that big a deal, I just . . . you're the vet for the clinic, right? What're you doing—is that blood?” and the reporter pointed to the dark red stains, his voice quivering with manufactured excitement, trying to get a rise out of the other man.

“It's paint,” the veterinarian said, not biting. “And the only thing you ‘just' want to do is go 'round front and talk to our receptionist. Give her your bona fides, and she'll set you up with a formal interview and all the photos you want.” The vet kept moving forward as he spoke, forcing the other man into a backstepping dance until they were back around the corner of the building, well out of sight of what was left of the graffiti.

“Hey! The press has a right to know about events that affect them, and this shelter, and what's going on—”

“The press has no rights on private property. This? Is private property. You want to come in, you come in during our regular hours. But you don't snoop around and you don't take photos that aren't approved. That simple enough for you, Simon?”

“My name's—” The reporter recognized the reference and shook his head. “All right, fine. But there's going to come a day when you want my help, and boom, guess what?”

“We'll take that risk.”

He watched as the reporter got back into his car—not, as expected, going inside to ask for an official interview—and waited until the car drove away.

“Damn it.” The fact that a reporter—even from a small-town freebie rag like that—was snooping around meant that someone had let something slip. LifeHouse wasn't newsworthy, any other way. He looked at his hands, and then he went back inside through the front entrance, ignoring the looks that two young girls waiting in the lobby gave him, and told Margaret to call Este. They had a problem.

O
nce the two architects were
gone and the first of the afternoon crowd wandered in, Teddy started to relax. The familiar noises of drinks and conversation formed a backdrop to his work, soothing without being distracting. He was trying to put together a list of reasons why people would steal cash, and matching it against what he'd seen in the staff members he'd interacted with, but it was hard. You could play with theory and psychology all you wanted, but the truth was that most people, if presented with available, theoretically untraceable cash, probably
wouldn't
steal it. He wasn't sure if they were naturally honest, or naturally afraid of being caught, or if the two were somehow actually the same thing, but the results were the same: most people, unless in dire need, or utter personal shits, wouldn't take someone else's money.

He hadn't gotten the “personal shit” vibe from anyone he'd met at the shelter. Admittedly, he hadn't met everyone yet, and some folks could keep their stink hidden, but . . .

“If it were easy, they wouldn't hire you guys to do it,” he said, and flagged Stacy down for that coffee. While he
waited, he took his phone out of his jacket pocket and entered a contact number. Nobody answered—he hadn't expected them to—so he left a message. “Hi, it's Tonica. I was wondering if you know anything about Lightspeed Security? Give me a call. It's not life-or-death, but it's kind of time-sensitive. Thanks.”

Ginny might have contacts in local government and with credit card companies; he knew bouncers and bartenders. And bouncers, as a general rule, knew about security companies. Especially, they'd know if the company hired part-timers and college students rather than trained professionals. Not that he suspected the night watchman of being their thief—most of them knew better—but better to rule that out now rather than regret it later.

Despite the growing crowd, as the after-work rush built, nobody came over and bothered him while he worked, for which Teddy was thankful. The beer at his elbow was refilled without a fuss, a platter of cheese and coarse toasted bread showing up at one point, although the kitchen wasn't open yet. He ate and drank methodically, and at six o'clock switched over to water, before the start of his own shift.

When his phone rang just as he was closing the notebook, dissatisfied with his results but unable to think of anything else, he stared at it in surprise, as though not sure what it was at first, then accepted the call.

“Hello? Oh, hey, I didn't expect to hear . . . huh. Really?”

He'd hit the jackpot: his contact not only knew Lightspeed, but had done some work for them.

“Good to work for? They pay on time? Hire decent people? I mean, other than you.”

His parenthood got roundly insulted, and then his contact gave him the skinny on the company. Teddy opened the notebook again and jotted down whatever he thought was relevant, and asked a few more questions before thanking the other man and hanging up the phone.

“Hrm.” He poked his notes with the pen, thinking through what was written there. Nothing that needed to be acted on—or even could be, considering it was after business hours on a Friday night. There were ways to reach people, especially security service people, after hours, but if it wasn't urgent, that only pissed them off, and rightfully so. It could wait.

Besides, he was on shift, and Stacy looked like she could use the relief.

*  *  *

Friday nights were usually pretty quiet at Mary's. It wasn't the kind of place where people got out-of-control drunk, more like politely shitfaced, and normally the only time Teddy had to break out the bouncer moves was when a guy creeped a little too much over the line—and most of those times, the patrons shut it down before he had to go under the bar and get involved. That was another reason that he really liked working at Mary's.

Tonight, though, a little after nine o'clock there was a tension in the air that was making him scan the crowd more alertly than usual. It wasn't terribly crowded, but the
noise level was high. Clive had gone home, Seth was in the kitchen, and Stacy was back to working the tables, taking orders and clearing away tables as people left. Everything looked normal.

If Ginny were here, she'd—but she wasn't. Dinner plans, she'd said. Jesus, when had he gotten so used to her being around all the time?

He finally spotted the trouble when Stacy let out a yelp that carried, even through the noise. Three guys, college students or recent grads, well dressed and well into their third round, and they might've been drinking before they got here, too. One of them seemed to think that Stacy—petite and young-looking—was fair game, and his buddies weren't dissuading him.

“Damn it.” Normally he'd send Seth over—it took a seriously drunk idiot to hit an old man who looked as tough as Seth still did—but it would take too long to get his attention in the kitchen. And leaving the bar unattended was a massive Don't.

“Hey!” His voice cut through the crowd, conversations falling silent in its wake. The three drunks looked up, same as everyone else, wondering who he was shouting at.

“Hands off the staff   !” Teddy said, still not shouting, but clearly audible. He'd done time onstage in high school, and some lessons you remembered, even two decades later. “Yes, you three,” he added, even as Stacy was removing herself from Grabby's hands, giving him a glare worthy of Mistress Penny at her most offended.

There was a moment when everything could have stayed
calm, where the three would either slink out, embarrassed, or shake it off as harmless fun, or—

Teddy saw the sea change in Grabby's face, the hint of anger that too often led to violence, and he was heading under the bar before anyone else got involved. He didn't bother grabbing for any of the implements of drunk-correction stashed within reach. With luck, nobody would try to play hero, because he really didn't want the cops coming back here anytime soon.

“You sleazy little prick,” he heard Stacy say, while he was still half under the passway, and came up again in time to see her swing at Grabby's face, her fist connecting perfectly with his chin.

Seth, the ex-boxer, had been teaching her some moves. Grabby didn't go down completely, but he did let go of her, falling backward into his chair like someone had cut his strings.

Teddy halted his forward momentum and watched as she took a handful of the guy's collar and leaned in to say something in his face. She'd taken down their would-be assailant last time, too, although she'd used a tackle to do it. Maybe he'd let her handle all the drunks from now on?