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Grabby's buddies had apparently decided to treat this as hysterical rather than threatening, and were laughing their asses off. In the corner, someone hooted in derision, and there was a scattering of applause for Stacy before everyone went back to their drinks and conversations.

That was Mary's. Patrick was insane if he thought fiddling with it was going to improve things. Teddy shook
his head and wondered, briefly, if Ginny was enjoying her evening as much as he was.

At that moment, an older man walked in, and Teddy raised a hand in greeting. “Hey, Simeon!” Ginny had said he owned a dog who came from the shelter. Maybe he'd gotten to know some of the staff there.

*  *  *

Ginny woke up a few minutes after 6 a.m., still bleary-eyed from getting in too late—alone, but not entirely sober—and utterly unwilling to do the responsible dog owner thing, even with Georgie's big brown eyes staring hopefully at her from the side of the bed.

“No.” Her voice was too thick, and she coughed to clear it. “Go back to sleep, baby. 'Nother hour?”

Georgie whined a little, deep in her throat, and Ginny relented.

“All right,” she said, reaching out to tousle Georgie's flopped-over ears. “All right, give me a minute. Go get your leash.”

The sound of clawed paws on the hardwood floor receded into the living room, and Ginny slipped into sweatpants and a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt, shoved her bare feet into sneakers, and went out into the living room, where Georgie sat patiently waiting, leash in her mouth. She took the leash—no longer wincing at the inevitable drool on it—and hooked it to Georgie's collar, and then the two of them took the elevator down to the street.

Saturday morning walks were more social than the
weekday ones—fewer people rushing through before heading off to work. Ginny spoke with the owners of a pair of Pomeranians named Max and Valerie, a Labradoodle she only knew as “Pookie,” and Chester, a black-and-tan mutt of dubious but friendly origins, passing the time while their four-legged companions did their thing.

It was a good day for shmoozing: the leaves on the trees were turning pale red and gold, and the morning wind rustled them lightly, making people even more inclined to take it slow. They talked briefly about the weather, the latest local zoning scandal, and the chances of the Seahawks making a decent pick in next year's draft. Ginny didn't actually care about football, but she'd done some work with a player's wife back when she started her business, and had discovered that being able to half-ass some interest was a good networking tool.

Ginny knew that she should have been trying to work the dog owners for information while they chatted, see if any of them had heard any rumors or gossip about the shelter, but couldn't think of any way to bring it up, short of “and is your dog a rescue,” and then what? “Oh, have you heard anything about them maybe having financial trouble?”

It was a relief, after that, to be alone again on the street, just her and Georgie. Ginny's head ached despite the fresh air, and her ankles ached from wearing heels all night, and all she wanted to do was crawl back into bed and have a lazy weekend watching movies, or catching up on her reading.

Freelancers didn't get weekends, though. And freelance investigators certainly didn't get weekends, not once they were on the job. Once they said yes, the clock started ticking. Problem was, unless Tonica had found something out last night, they had no idea where to start.

She'd totally blown chances this morning, probably. Tonica could have done gotten information from the other dog owners without blinking, and made them believe that they were the ones who'd asked originally. She was good at telling people what needed to be done, or asking them what they needed and making it happen, not getting them to share something without making it seem important.

She did have one undeniable skill that Tonica lacked, though. And she could do it while Tonica was still asleep. Ginny had learned from experience that after a closing shift, he wouldn't wake up until ten at the earliest, and more likely noon.

So as soon as Georgie finished her social and scatological rounds, and had been rewarded with breakfast, Ginny went into her office, flipped open the slender file she had tossed there the night before, and went to work.

“This,” she told the dog, who had curled up and settled in for a nap under her feet, “this I can do better than anyone else. Well, better than most, anyway.”

Georgie merely burped in response.

The employee records she had gotten from the shelter were bare-bones, just their resumes, start dates, job
descriptions, and salaries where applicable, but it was enough to start digging through the public records, at least.

“First things first. Nobody has any immediately obvious outstanding debt, but how do they look under the surface?” She tapped her fingers on the desk, frowning. “And how do I look under the surface, without access to a Social Security number or authorizations?” Usually a client gave her the information she needed to do her job. Here . . . the client didn't have access to that, and Este was too savvy to leave a detail like Social Security numbers in the files she handed over.

Usually Ginny appreciated competence, but here it was making her job more difficult, not easier.

When in doubt, ask someone sneakier. Or someone who has that access legally, and owes her a favor they really want to pay off.

She picked up the phone again and checked a number against her database before dialing it.

“Darren. Buddy. Old pal.”

Her IT guy grunted a response, already suspicious.

“How would you like to dump that poker game debt you've been carrying for the past few years?”

“I've already worked it off twice over, fixing your computer, woman,” he said. “Just tell me what you want and I'll tell you if I can do it.”

And Tonica said she had no people skills.

*  *  *

Several hours later, feeling rather pleased with herself despite now owing Darren a large, unspecified favor, Ginny called her partner and told him to meet her “at the office” in an hour.

She got to Mary's a little later than that. After pausing to say hello to the regulars, already set up for the afternoon, she saw Tonica, looking rumpled despite his brush-cut and freshly pressed shirt. He was behind the bar even though he wasn't working that afternoon. He'd probably chased Jon, the new guy, off for not wiping a glass right, or something. Not that she had any right to nitpick someone else's perfectionism tendencies . . . “Hey,” she said.

“Hey yourself,” Tonica said, half of his attention on the drink he was mixing. She slung herself onto a bar stool, placing her bag on the stool beside her and pulling out her tablet and a folder.

He finished what he was doing, took a sip, and made a face, dumping the rest of the drink into the sink behind the counter. “Okay, whoever requested that drink last night is insane, or a masochist.”

His voice had the usual tone of cranky bullshit he'd perfected, but there was something off. “What's wrong?”

She was getting better at reading people. Or maybe she just knew him well enough now to see that the usual easy snark was strained today.

He made a face. “Busy night last night, and Patrick came by earlier. He brought people in to look over the place. They were making notes and drawings and basically annoying the hell out of everyone.”

“Drawings?” She knew he'd been giving them crap about costs, and hanging over their shoulders rather than letting them get work done, but this sounded like something new.

Tonica lifted his hands in a “who knows” sort of gesture. “Architects, their card said. I think he wants to do renovations. Maybe, I don't know, turn the parking lot into an open-air patio? They spent a lot of time out there.”

“Well. It would be nice, in the dryer weather,” she said, doubt coloring her voice. It wasn't as though all that many people drove to Mary's except on trivia night, so parking wasn't an issue, but she wasn't entirely sold on the need for a patio, either.

“This place is exactly the way it should be,” he said. “It's got the right vibe, we have enough room, and shutting down even for a while, or trying to make a go of it during renovations, could be a disaster. He's an idiot. But he's the idiot who owns this place. It just made last night somewhat stressful.” He shrugged, and gave the bar back to the new guy, then came out to join her on a stool on the customer side. “So, how was your night?”

She felt herself blush, and hoped against hope that he didn't notice. Yeah, no luck there.

“Why Gin Mallard, did you have a date last night?” He leaned forward, his expression moving smoothly from annoyed to intrigued. “A good date, from the way your ears just turned red. Do tell.”

“A pretty good date, and no, you don't get any details.” So much for her theory that he wouldn't be nosy. She
should have known better—if he thought he could get under her skin somehow, he'd never let up. Teddy Tonica was like the king of annoying, if he thought it might be useful later—or amusing, now.

The truth was, it hadn't been so good that there were any details to share, anyway—unless he really wanted to know how her veal had been, or how many glasses of wine it took her to consider and then discard the idea of inviting her date up for a nightcap.

At least one more than she'd had, it seemed.

“Waiting for Max to show up before you spill, huh?”

“I don't tell Max
everything
,” she retorted. Not now, anyway. When she and Max worked together, he'd had more chance to dig the details out. Of course, there had been more details to dig then. And Max had shared all of his, too. In intimate and occasionally gory detail.

“But I, at least, did not let play interfere with work,” she said, changing the subject. “Spent the morning working my mojo, which, despite what you may think, is just as useful as poking people until they squeal.” She put the folder down on the countertop with a solid thwap. She preferred to copy everything from her desktop onto her tablet for convenience, but Tonica liked paper. And since she didn't trust him not to drop her tablet, or spill something on it, she was perfectly happy to give him printouts.

“I have never doubted your ability to make the Internet sit up and beg,” he said. “Or anything else, for that matter.”

“Flattery gets you nothing not already agreed to,” she said tartly, and he grinned back at her. Whatever had been
bothering him when she came in, it seemed like work was the cure. She totally understood that.

“There are a total of eight people working at the shelter, plus occasional volunteers who only come in every now and then, or when they hold one of their sidewalk paws-and-greets, like where I saw Georgie. I'm discounting them for now, because it's unlikely they'd have access to the inner office, and certainly not unsupervised.”

“Okay,” he nodded, listening. “So who do we have?”

“Starting with the bosses? Este Snyder and Roger Arvantis founded the place when they retired. Not married, have never filed any partnership papers, but they've been living together for the past twenty years, although it looks like Este owns the condo, at least on paper. She worked PR, was really hot stuff for a while, and he was office manager for the firm, so I'm guessing that's where they met. He's younger than she is, by the way.”

She looked up to see how he took that, but he just raised his eyebrows and waited for her to continue.

“Since they started the shelter, she's been the public face, such as there is one, doing all the daily hands-on stuff, while he's more behind-the-scenes. Once an office manager, always an office manager, I guess. And, as we learned, he handled the grant-writing. At least until he had heart problems about six months ago, at which point we know what happened.”

“What kind of heart problems?”

“I don't know.” She hated having to admit that, and she knew he knew it. “Digging into hospital or insurance
records is harder than it looks, without access to, well, anything personal.” Her agreement with Darren definitely did not go that far, even if he had the knowhow to hack hospital records.

“Not to mention all that's probably illegal.” Tonica worried more about that than she did, which wasn't to say she didn't worry at all. Just . . . not as much. Especially if she had plausible deniability.

“They're private people, once they retired. Not much in the public eye, which supports my thought that Este, at least, got burned-out on the corporate whirligig. She's got the shelter, and that's about it. No other charities, no board work, no volunteering at the local playground, et cetera, et cetera.

“Arvantis, though, keeps his hand in a couple of other concerns,” she added, “none of which seems to have anything to do with animals, or money. He's low-key about it, too—a volunteer, not on any boards or holding an official position.”

Tonica finally looked at the top sheet. “Huh. ‘Younger' is an understatement; she's almost a decade older.”

Ginny could practically feel her shoulders go back. “Would you comment if it was the other way around?”

“Probably not, because that's more of a societal norm. Quit trying to push my buttons, Mallard.”

She stared at him, silently calling him on the fact that he'd just been trying to do exactly the same thing to her. He just smirked at her, and she made a face, annoyed at being caught out.

“Anyway, any discrepancy from the norm is something to make note of,” he said. “It can trigger people in weird ways.”

“So noted. Then there's Margaret, the woman who was at the front desk. She's their only full-time paid employee. Even Roger and Este don't take salaries.”

“The girl with the middle-class dreadlocks? I talked with Simeon and the one thing he did say was that he thought Margaret was the boss there, the way she ordered everyone around and made decisions. How much does she make?”