Fixed (24 page)

Maybe it wasn't relevant. Maybe they had someone channeling Cicero, or the Old Testament. Seattle was definitely not immune to either classicists or religious nuts. Or, for that matter, fan fiction. She needed to check anything that looked viable, to remove the possibility.

“Let not the innocent be re,” she typed in this time, giving the search the option to fill in the last word, which had been cleaned up on the wall beyond legibility.

She barely had time to take a sip of her drink before a new batch of returns appeared on her screen. She scanned them, and her eye stopped, four lines down.

“Let not the innocent be reduced,” she read out loud.

“What?” Stacy looked up, but Ginny flapped a hand at her, indicating it was nothing. With her other hand, she tapped on that link.

“Let not the innocent be reduced!”
the banner screamed, over a picture of the sweetest, most appealing puppies and kittens Hallmark could ever have concocted, all fluff, tails, and oversized, pleading eyes. She forced her gaze off the banner, and started to read the text.

“Oh, lovely,” she muttered, wishing she'd gone for something alcoholic. “I just got crazy-bingo.”

*  *  *

Nora got off work at 4 p.m., officially. She showed up at Mary's at 4:40. She was wearing different clothes than that
morning, so Teddy suspected she'd gone home and taken a shower first. He didn't blame her.

Ginny had taken Georgie for a walk around the block, so Teddy saw their client come in and look around, clearly searching for Ginny's blond curls and not finding them. It was before the postwork rush, such as it was on Monday, so there weren't many people—he had been prepping the kitchen to cover for Seth while Stacy handled the bar. He'd called Clive's cell phone and left him a message to come in to cover the back after 7 p.m., when things got busier. The kid would welcome the extra money, probably, and he could plate up prepared food without too much trauma. Hopefully.

For now, everything was under control, so he wiped his hands down on the bar rag and flipped it back over his shoulder, then waved Nora over. She seemed relieved to see him; he figured at this point, any familiar face was a friendly one.

“It was insane today,” she said, sitting down on the stool and planting her elbows on the bartop. Her usual perk had faded considerably, and her gaze skipped over the taps and went straight to the bottles behind him.

“Rough day,” he said sympathetically.

“Yeah. And whatever you said to Roger and Este didn't help. They were yelling at each other all morning, and then not talking to each other at all, all afternoon. I would not want to be living in that house right now. Give me a vodka sour.”

Teddy could tell a great deal about someone by what they drank, but he tried not to judge.

“What were they yelling about?”

“I don't know,” she said, shrugging, watching him mix her drink. “When they get that mad, they start yelling in Swedish.”

“Swedish?”

“I think so. Maybe Danish?” She shrugged. “Lots of folk around here come from there, and Este's family's been here since forever. It's not German.”

“They both speak it?

“Roger not so fluently, but yeah. I think they use it like my folks used to use pig Latin, when I was a kid: so people can't understand private conversations.”

His parents had done that, too, until his middle sister accidentally let them know that all the kids had learned it in self-defense, years ago. Interesting, though. There had definitely been trouble on that front, but the shouting was an escalation.

“How is everyone else holding up?” He put her drink down in front of her and waited.

“Once the shock wore off, everyone was okay. I mean, it's not like anyone really knew Jimmy, except in passing, maybe.”

“Because he worked at night.”

Ginny came in, sans Georgie, and saw them immediately. She came up behind Nora and slipped onto the empty stool next to her, without saying anything.

“Yeah.” Nora didn't seem to notice Ginny's arrival. “I
guess Paul, that's our janitor, might've actually said more than ‘hi' and ‘bye' to him. But Paul's working in the kennels, the outside area, and the dog run. He wouldn't go into the office, except when he had to report—”

She stopped, and he heard the same automatic jaw-clamp that Margaret had done a few days before. This time he didn't let it go.

“When what?”

“Nothing.”

“Nora.” He pitched his voice low, commiserating but stern, and she made an unhappy face, but shook her head, not saying anything.

“Nora. Does it have anything to do with the graffiti on the clinic wall?” Ginny asked. “Has the shelter been targeted?”

“I . . .”

There were times you waited for someone to spill their guts, and times you had to hook it out of them. “Este told everyone not to talk about it, didn't she?” Teddy said. “That's why everyone got so skittish. It wasn't the money that had her stressed, it was the graffiti? The clinic's being targeted by protesters?”

Nora nodded, still looking miserable.

“Antineutering.” Teddy was still having trouble getting around that idea, despite Ginny's having shown him the website. “Like it's some kind of noble thing, to let your pets breed endlessly?”

“They're a little crazy,” Nora said, her misery sliding into indignation. “They think it's cruel or inhumane or
something to interfere with the natural breeding cycle. Like animals are still in the wild and need to have a litter of ten just to make sure two or three survive, or . . .”

“Yeah, their website was pretty clear on their philosophy,” Ginny said dryly. “ ‘Free the Womb' was a catchy slogan; I'm surprised the anti-choice protesters haven't picked it up.”

Nora continued the litany of offenses, clearly glad of the chance to vent. “They've hit us a few times before, but usually it's pamphlets, sometimes a ‘no spay' sign sprayed on the wall, once a window got broken and they left their brochures in the waiting room, but this one, last week, was worse. Doc Williams found the graffiti there, it was all over the wall, and some kind of sticky paint, gross. He saw it and called Este . . . the same morning you met her.”

“So they tried to wash it off, and pretend it didn't happen . . . why?” Ginny tapped her fingers on the counter, a restless move that meant she was thinking hard. She pulled her tablet out of her bag and pulled up a screen—Teddy couldn't see if it was the Spreadsheet of Doom, or something else.

“Roger said, first time they came around, that we should ignore them. The cops said they couldn't do anything, they had the right to be there, so long as they didn't bother anyone. I guess Este figured that went for the graffiti, too.”

“Not a bad theory, normally,” Teddy said. “But you guys have been having a run of serious bad luck, and if this all started with the protesters . . . maybe it's time to do more than ignore them. It did start with protesters?”

“Three or four of them, yeah. Handing out pamphlets in front of the shelter, first, trying to convince people coming in to refuse the low-cost neutering. It didn't work, mostly, but it was . . . annoying. And then they started papering the clinic with their flyers, and then with the graffiti.”

“And the cops knew?” Ginny was making notes on her tablet—at least he assumed that was what she was doing; her fingers were moving faster than he could ever have managed.

“Yes. That's why they came out so fast, when Jimmy died. Because it might have been something, but it wasn't. There wasn't any sign of break-in or struggle, so they're ruling it an accident, or maybe natural—you were right, they have to wait for the autopsy report before they'll tell us anything officially, but they pretty much said it was just bad luck he died there, and not at home.” She made a face, as though aware of how callous that sounded.

“There were never any actual problems with these loons, I mean, other than the annoyance factor?” Teddy asked, while Ginny kept tapping at her tablet.

Nora shook her head. “No. They're crazy, I mean stupid-crazy, and annoying, but harmless. Even though Este wants to kick them all into tomorrow for the cost of cleaning up after.”

“Harmless—you mean they're not physically threatening anyone, or making them feel threatened?” Ginny asked, not looking up from her tablet. “But crazy-dedicated to their cause?”

By now Nora had finished her drink and was seriously
looking like she was considering another. Teddy pulled a glass of water and set it next to her instead.

She looked at it and made a face, but took a sip anyway. “Yeah . . . pretty much.”

“Dedicated enough to break into the shelter and steal the money expressly earmarked to pay for neutering, and leave everything else alone?” Ginny pressed.

“Oh. Oh . . . dear.” Nora clearly hadn't thought of that. She took another sip of water. “How would they know, though? And how would they get into the inner office? We lock that.”

An insider told them. Teddy figured Ginny was thinking the same thing.

“We did have a set of keys go missing, about six–seven months ago. But in the chaos after Roger got sick, we just thought that they'd gotten misplaced.”

Ginny and Teddy exchanged glances over her head, and he shook his head. If people would just
tell
them things, this wouldn't be so hard.

As though sensing their annoyance, Nora paid for her drink and left, not even asking what they were planning to do. Probably, Teddy thought, because at this point, she didn't want to know. What had seemed like a small, serious problem had exploded into an entire can of worms, and he couldn't blame her for not wanting anything to do with any of it. At least she had the sense to know they couldn't just be ignored.

“All right,” Ginny said, finally. “So the first thing is, find out more about our spray-painting pamphlet-happy
fanatics, maybe shake them down and see if anything falls out.”

“You are definitely cut off of those detective movies,” he muttered, already knowing who was going to be volunteered for shakedown duty.

*  *  *

Penny sat above the humans, hidden from sight on top of the liquor displays, and cleaned her whiskers thoughtfully. She didn't understand much of what humans did, but they seemed to be chasing their tails on this, rather than their noses, despite everything she'd done.

She needed to talk to Georgie. Maybe the dog would have a better idea of how to get them to pay attention to the right things.

Silently as she came, Penny turned around in the cramped space and slid through the unfinished crawlspace that led to a small, decorative window. It was stuck open just enough to let one small cat through, an easy leap from a tree on the street—and she made sure that no squirrels or birds thought they could claim it.

The air smelled like decay and cold, the sun still high enough to reach over the buildings, but not casting any warmth on the ground. It was easier to move at dusk or night, but a cat did as a cat must.

The others at the shelter were counting on them.

I
s this your first meeting?
Welcome!”

The woman standing at the door, handing out pamphlets and greeting people as they came in, had short faux-red hair that had been chemically treated too many times, and a face that had seen too much sun. Teddy took one of the pamphlets automatically, grunted at the greeting, and went inside the meeting hall—really just the basement of the local Y, set up with chairs in the center, a chalkboard at the far end where, he guessed, the speakers would be speaking, and a table at the far back that seemed to hold the inevitable snacks.

There were about thirty chairs set up, and half of them were filled. He'd expected to see earnest young people, straight out of college or maybe still students, but there were a number of older men there, too, and a few women clearly out of their twenties, scattered throughout. Most were white, a few were black, and at a quick scan none of them looked either poor or wealthy, not that you could tell much from people's clothing around here. Although Ginny probably could.

It made sense, though. Worrying about the animal population was a middle-class thing.

The slogan “Free to Breed” was written on the chalkboard, and a tall woman was standing by it, talking intently to two younger people, a boy and a girl, definitely college-aged, who seemed to be hanging on to her every word.

Teddy had agreed to come scope the meeting out, to see if their vandals let anything slip, see what he could pick up by watching them in their native habitat. Ginny had suggested it was because he was better at reading people—although she was getting better, he would give her that—but he had agreed without too much argument because he had some small sympathy for the group.

Not the unrestricted breeding—he didn't think that was smart for anyone, human or four-foots—but being against the way that humans tried to regulate animals . . . yeah. He would, under pressure, admit to being Penny's human, and that she was his cat, but the idea of putting a collar on her and chipping her, of claiming ownership and control over another creature, still bothered him a little. He knew he had issues, he was okay with his issues, thank you very much.

So, yeah, he'd volunteered to come and scout out their vandals and see what was up. And part of him hoped really they weren't the guilty parties in the shelter case.

Then the room settled and the tall woman got up and started to speak. By the time she introduced their guest, a doctor of something-or-other specializing in “wild psychology,” Teddy had decided that everyone in the room might not be criminals, but they were definitely wackos.

Not spaying or neutering house pets was just the start. They not only wanted animals to be free to breed; they wanted animals in the zoos to be freed, too. Teddy wasn't a big fan of cages, but he was pretty sure he'd read somewhere that most endangered species survived only because of the breeding populations in major zoos, worldwide.