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“Nora will come out in a minute. Why don't we bring gorgeous Georgie over here, and I can get a good shot of her? No, that's all right, I can manage her, can't I, girl?” she said to Georgie. Then, to Ginny, “You can stay on the sofa.”

Teddy closed his eyes and waited for the explosion. You didn't just tell Ginny Mallard to stay on the sofa, especially where Georgie was concerned.

Ginny, surprisingly, didn't say anything. But Georgie did. A short, soft bark that had Teddy turning around, surprised. Georgie was the quietest dog he'd ever met—she
didn't bark much, and never without provocation. But this was clearly a warning noise.

The shar-pei, still at Ginny's feet, had lifted her blunt-muzzled head and uttered her warning, her entire body language shouting “back off.” The receptionist, clearly not a fool, had frozen with her hand outstretched, obviously having intended to take Georgie's leash. He suspected that not every dog that came through here was as easygoing as Georgie.

Then again, easygoing Georgie had bitten someone who threatened her mistress. Even sweet-tempered dogs had teeth. He needed to remember that.

“Georgie!” Ginny sounded surprised, but not entirely disapproving. “Baby, what's wrong?”

“Oh.” The young woman recovered some of her confidence, once assured that this was an unusual occurrence. “I was working with kittens this morning, maybe she smells them?”

Teddy almost laughed at the hopeful suggestion.

“No, I don't think that's the problem,” Ginny said, still busy soothing her dog, the leash safely wrapped around her wrist.

No, not likely. Georgie's best friend was a cat, and Teddy didn't care if that was anthropomorphizing: anyone who had seen Georgie and Mistress Penny together would agree. It was weird, but it was. Something had clearly spooked the normally mellow dog, though.

“Oh.” The girl scrunched her face up in thought, sitting back on her heels. “My perfume?”

“I think she's afraid of your hair.” He couldn't help it: the way the dreads moved around her head, they looked like snakes, and if he were a dog, he'd be freaked out by them coming at him, too.

“My . . . oh.” The girl touched her head protectively, and Teddy held his breath for half a second, worried he'd put his foot in it badly enough to get them kicked out. Women could be touchy about their hair: he'd gotten smacked enough times by his sisters to know that.

Then the receptionist laughed and said to Georgie, “Is that it, sweetie? You want me to tie them back?”

Apparently, that was all it took: once the woman's hair was gathered in a scrunchy, and no longer swinging over her shoulders, Georgie was happy enough to have her photo taken by this strange woman.

And taken, and taken. First, lying down, then standing up, then a side profile, made more difficult by Georgie's need to turn her head and see what this strange person was doing. Finally, the woman seemed satisfied, and Georgie was returned to Ginny's care, just as Nora came down the hallway, looking slightly more professional in khakis and a pale green shirt than she had in the bar the day before. Compared to the receptionist, Nora's color-dipped hair looked practically sedate, but Teddy wondered if some variation of braids was a requirement for working here.

“Hi. Sorry for the delay, I was just finishing something up. C'mon back. Este wants to meet you.”

They left the receptionist slotting the memory card into
her computer, promising to have the picture up by the time they came out, and the four of them, Teddy, Ginny, Nora, and Georgie, walked down the hallway to a sliding panel door. Once inside, the panel closing behind them, they were in what was clearly the heart of the operation: a large room with three oversized secondhand metal desks and chairs, none of them anywhere as nice as what was in the lobby, and a laptop on each desk, chained with a security lock.

“We all work here,” Nora said. “Open floor plan, mainly because we didn't have the money to put up internal walls. It can get pretty chaotic at times, but it's nice, too.”

She led them through the bullpen, to where two doors were set into the wall, both of them closed. Teddy looked up to where the wall met ceiling and decided that these had been original to the building, not part of the renovation.

Nora knocked once on the far left door, and then opened it without waiting for an answer.

Inside, the office was more comfortable, if no less shabby. The woman behind the desk stood up and offered her hand to the newcomers. “My name is Este Snyder. And this must be Lena!”

Their surprise must have been obvious, because the older woman laughed. She had a good laugh, full and soft, and smiling softened the severe lines of her face, making the pale gray strands in her dark hair seem brighter, somehow, less like signs of age and more . . . Teddy wasn't sure, but he felt himself warming to her, immediately.

“She's Georgie now,” Ginny said. Her voice was slightly stiff, but not unfriendly, as she shook the woman's hand.

“Of course. A new life needs a new name. Hello, Georgie. You're looking quite well.” She looked up at the humans then, and her face lost some of its animation.

“Nora told me what she had done, this morning.”

And she didn't approve, clearly. Teddy was glad he'd listened to his gut and dressed well today. Ginny had worn a slacks-and-sweater combo that managed to look both casual and stylish, flat shoes showing under the hem of the slacks. Together they should be able to calm any fears of scammers or con artists. Or maybe they looked like scammers and con artists trying to look reputable, and were about to get tossed out on their ear.

Thankfully, convincing the woman to trust them was Ginny's job, not his.

*  *  *

Tonica had that look on his face, the one that meant he was assessing the person in front of him, trying to suss her out purely from body language. Ginny took the lead, distracting the older woman so he could do his thing. “So now you have official awareness that the money is missing.”

“I knew it was missing.” Her tone was matter-of-fact: Ginny couldn't tell if the woman was irritated at having to admit to that knowledge or not. “I had hoped that whoever it was who had taken it would reconsider, and return it before I had to take official notice. But that has not happened.”

Resigned, but not annoyed, Ginny decided. Maybe.

The woman sat down again and indicated that they should sit, also. There were two chairs in front of her desk:
Nora perched herself on the sill of a window that had been blocked up with bricks on the outside, creating an alcove that had been filled with several anemic-looking plants.

Using the moments of distraction while they settled in to do her own assessment, Ginny knew that the woman was in her early sixties: the narrow face and silvered hair were offset by a lean, muscled body that reflected care and exercise rather than age. That matched with what little had been available in public records about the shelter's founders: Hester “Este” Snyder had retired at fifty-eight from a boutique PR firm that specialized in corporate image repair—although they called it “Facilitating Corporate Relations”—and started the shelter that same year with her long-term partner, Roger Arvantis. After that, they had become quite private, leaving no Internet footprint that Ginny could trace, not even the usual animal-related local charity events you might expect someone in their position to take part in.

That, to Ginny's mind, was the sign of someone either pathologically shy or with something to hide. A former PR person was probably not shy—Este certainly didn't hold herself that way. Something didn't fit, here, and when things didn't fit, it usually meant there was something very important missing from the picture. But was that something criminal, or even slightly questionable, or had Este just burned out? Ginny admitted that she had an active imagination, but she didn't see this woman as being a criminal, and there was too much public history for her to be in the witness protection program.

Ginny would have loved to have gotten Tonica's take, but there was no graceful way to speak to him privately, now. She pulled her tablet out of her bag and, as discreetly as she could, started jotting down notes.

“First off,” Este continued with a nod of acknowledgment at Ginny's tablet, “I want to reiterate that I did not authorize your hire, and you are not being paid by the shelter itself.”

Probable translation: we are not your employer, you will not be answerable to us, and we will probably ignore and disavow anything you discover if we don't like it.

“However—”

Ginny amended her translation to include “but the money used to pay you came from my pocket, one way or the other, and therefore I will feel free to interfere.”

“I would appreciate your sharing anything you discover with me, in exchange for the access we allow you. And”—Este paused, then went on—“your discretion in discussing these matters. With
anyone.
”

Disavow, or derail if needed. “Part of our services includes absolute discretion within the bounds of legal obligation,” Ginny said. Without a written contract, those words were meaningless, but it was the same rule she kept for her concierge business, too, and her reputation was everything. Short of the cops demanding info, warrant in hand, the details of her work were shared only with the client.

Some day, one of their off-the-books clients was going to ask for a written contract. She made a quick note to draw one up, just in case.

“You don't want Roger to know,” Nora said, reading between the lines better than Ginny could. “Oh, Este . . .”

The older woman shook her head. “Don't lecture me, Nora. His health isn't good; it hasn't been for a while, you know that. The last thing I want is for this to stress him further.”

“But—”

“No, Nora.”

And that was that. It didn't seem as though Este and Roger were partners in the familiar sense, as well as in running the shelter, but clearly Este had a protective interest in the man.

“And you will tell us everything that you know, in order to fill out the picture?” Tonica had his bartender voice on again, slightly lower than usual, raspy and almost intimate, without being creepy. Ginny wondered if he knew he was using it, an intentional put-on, or if that just happened whenever he played bartop confessor.

“Please, Este,” Nora added, already recovered from being crushed minutes before. “Whatever you know, even if it doesn't seem important, might be useful.”

The director of the shelter sighed. “In for a penny, I suppose. I'm not sure how much more I can add to what Nora has already told you. I first became aware several months ago that the available cash was off what it should be, but we'd been so busy, and we were almost at the end of the year anyway, I didn't worry too much about it. I suppose I thought we'd overspent and would just have to make up the money from somewhere else.” She gave a
half-apologetic shrug. “I balance my personal checkbook only under duress. Finances have never been my strength. Roger worries about those. Or rather, he did.”

Ginny controlled her shudder at that. Yes, she balanced her checkbook every month, and reconciled her accounts to the penny. She ran her own business, damn it. Sloppy records could put her out of work. “You said that your partner has been ill? Did the discrepancies appear before, or after that?”

Este looked thoughtful, and then pulled a manila folder forward on her desk and opened it, looking at a sheet of paper within. “After, when I noticed, but I didn't have time to go back and check if there had been any earlier losses. Certainly Roger would have mentioned it, if we came up short halfway through the year?”

“The costs are variable every month,” Nora said. “Depending on how many animals we had in the shelter that needed neutering, and if there were any unusual expenses in the clinic. Sometimes we don't need all the money in the account that quarter, or we run over and have to dip into the next quarter. We don't do the actual tally until the end of the year, and yeah, I know, but we just don't have time or staff.”

“Yes . . . everyone's doing three jobs, at least; that's just the nature of the beast,” Este said, regretfully. “And with Roger not able to carry his usual load here, all the financial matters fell to me, and I'm afraid I've been playing catch-up ever since.”

“So you think that someone here took advantage of his being sidelined, and started skimming?” Tonica asked.

Este gave that elegant half-apologetic shrug again, like she'd never really thought about it at all. “It was such a small amount of money. . . .”

Ginny tried to imagine being that nonchalant over missing money, and failed. A sideways glance at Tonica showed his usual calm expression, but she thought she saw a faint tic at the side of his mouth.

“It was a small and important amount of money, Este,” Nora said, quietly reproachful. “Because it wasn't
ours
. It belonged to the foundation that gave us that grant. And we have to account for it, at year's end—which is now—or we don't get another. And if we don't get another . . .”

“Yes, I know, Nora. You've explained it all to me quite well.” Este's tone was sharp, but the look she gave the younger woman was fond. “I'm an idiot when it comes to these things, which is part of why I handed this off to you.”

“You think it's someone on staff   ?” Ginny asked, making another note on her tablet.

“It would have to be,” Nora said, her expression glum. “Nobody else would have access back here, even if they knew about it. And we generally don't let outsiders back here—visitors only have access to the kennels under supervision, and if someone brought friends in without permission, they'd be fired, and everyone knows that.”

Este didn't look happy, either, but she had clearly resigned herself to this being investigated, no matter her
personal opinions. “You have my permission to look at anything you need: our paperwork and books—with our bookkeeper present, if you don't mind, to answer any questions you might have—and our security feed . . . whatever you ask for.”