Doghouse (4 page)

A quick check of the time told him he was doing fine—and if he was a few minutes late, well, despite Gin's parting crack, that was the bonus of being the manager. God knew there had to be
some
bonus to it.

He was about to head out the door when guilt tagged him, and he paused by the phone. “Damn it . . .”

Hating himself, he hit the play button on the phone and waited.

“Theo. It's Maggie.” He could see her, glaring at something across the room, maybe putting the fear of God into a peon, as she spoke. “Please call me, okay? No more bullshit. I know why you're ducking our calls and I don't
blame you a bit but you need to stick an oar into this, too.”

No, he thought, he really didn't. He had a bar to run and an investigation to make, and a life to lead, and all of that was on this coast, not back on the East Coast, where he'd—he'd thought—left all of his headaches. And his heartaches.

Maggie sighed. “Okay, it's Friday, and barely noon your time, so you're probably sleeping—or pretending to be asleep and ignoring me”—and despite himself he laughed, because she was right, that's exactly what he would have been doing—“but please, call me? You're an idiot, I love you, bye.”

“I love you, too,” he told her, when the message ended. Teddy deleted the message, picked up his jacket, keys, and wallet, and headed out. His cousin knew he wasn't going to call.

3

P
enny spent most of Friday
evening tucked on a high shelf along the far wall of the Busy Place. It was dark enough there that she couldn't be seen—and was therefore left alone—but she could see the humans perfectly well. Not that she cared about most of them: only a few. Two. Her whiskers twitched. Maybe three.

Ginny wasn't there, which meant Georgie wasn't, either. Theo was behind the bar, working with the other male who came in sometimes. Not the blustering old one, the younger one who was always trying to bribe her with treats, as though she were a dog.

She could tell even at this distance that Theodore was thinking things he wasn't happy about. Her human's ears didn't move and he didn't have whiskers, but his shoulders and hands moved differently when he was unhappy. But she didn't know
what
he was unhappy about. Was it the way the younger male was behaving? Or was it something else? Was it about the new sniffing they'd started? How was she supposed to help him if he didn't talk about it where she could
hear
?

Georgie was able to go with them, hear what was happening, see what they were up to. But Georgie wasn't here. Neither was Ginny. Was Ginny off doing things? Had she taken the dog with her? Penny felt her tail twitch in frustration. She didn't want to get
in the car, didn't want to go strange places, not unless she decided where she was going. But she needed information!

So when the lights came up and the Busy Place emptied, and then Theo turned the lights out again, Penny slipped out through her own exit and approached the car, giving her best “where are we going?” meow. There was no way Theo could resist that.

When the
alarm went off Saturday morning, Teddy rolled over and groaned, slapping a hand over the clock to shut it off. It had been a hellish shift: Jon had nearly quit over yet another imagined slight, then two college kids decided to get into a dustup on the street outside. And when he'd finally been able to call it a night and close the place down, Penny started acting up, as though she didn't want him to leave—or she wanted to come home with him.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he'd told her, lifting her body and firmly placing her, again, outside the coupe. “I may be your human, but you're the bar's cat. You stay here.”

Penny had actually hissed at him, frustration in every quiver of her whiskers, and he'd had enough: he'd left her by the side of the road, come home, and fallen into bed, the new blinking light on his landline a match to the message light on his cell.

“No,” he told the ceiling now. “I am not awake. I am very much not awake.”

But there were things to be done, so he rolled out of bed and into the shower.

He'd ignored the message indicators until the morning,
and then—out of some faint hint of guilt or masochism—let the messages play out while he brushed his teeth, listening to Maggie's voice fill his studio apartment. Apparently, she'd been the designated nagger.

“Theo? I know you don't want to get involved, but you should be. You're part owner, too. Call, okay?”

He deleted the messages again before he left the apartment. What could he say if he called? “Do whatever you want and tell me when it's done?” They knew his feelings on the subject. It wasn't a matter of life or death, just selling an old summerhouse nobody had time or energy to keep up anymore, and yeah, it had been in the family for two generations, but it was just a house. Sell it already.

But his cousins and sisters all wanted to
talk it out
and
make a group decision.
Better just not to call and let them sort it out, avoid all the yelling and guilt.

Of course, if he really wanted to avoid the guilt, Teddy thought, walking to his car, he should stop listening to the messages altogether. But he couldn't bring himself to do that. He didn't
want
the responsibility, but he couldn't make the final, full break, either.

“And if that's not the story of my life, I don't know what is,” he told himself.

The sky was blue, the air dry, and Teddy found himself humming under his breath as he drove, despite his earlier bad mood, as though he were taking a pleasure drive instead of planning to break, enter, and snoop.

He contemplated parking around the corner, just in case anyone called the cops, but decided that trying to explain
why he hadn't parked in front of a house he claimed to have every right to enter . . . yeah, no reason to borrow trouble. He parked at the curb in the same spot he'd taken on their first visit, got out, and walked back up to the house.

Oddly for a nice Saturday morning, there didn't seem to be anyone taking a walk, working outside, or just hanging out on their front porches. Maybe they were all sleeping in. Teddy felt a moment's bitter jealousy, and promised himself another cup of coffee as soon as this was done.

This time, he skirted the front porch, knowing that the door would be locked, and walked around to the back. There was a wooden gate at the side of the house, but the door was a simple lift latch and the hinges didn't creak when he pushed it open.

The backyard was surprisingly large, an expanse of dirt and sparse grass. Like the house itself, it looked like a space that with a little money and effort could be nice, but right now was barely on the plus side of run-down. There was a cellar hatch snug against the side of the house. The aluminum door was dented, but the padlock and chain across the handles were sturdy enough to resist anything short of a lowland gorilla yanking on it. Teddy scanned the yard, but didn't see anything that might have suggested dogs had ever been out here: no animal-sized shelters, no chain wrapped around a tree where a dog might have been tied, no remains of dog poo in the grass. Of course, everything might have been cleared out already, or he might be missing something that would be obvious to a dog
owner—Ginny really should have come here, not him.

The cellar might have been barred, but the back door, as he'd expected, was unlocked. Teddy shook his head: he knew that there probably wasn't anything in the house worth stealing, and anyone who snuck up on Deke deserved the knuckle sandwich they'd probably get, but it was still stupid.

The back door opened into the kitchen, which looked like it hadn't been updated since the house was built in the 1950s. White linoleum and battered, peeling countertops were topped by wooden cabinets. He checked a few of them, and found basic pots and pans, some cereal, and packets of instant coffee, but not much more. There was a pizza delivery flyer taped to the refrigerator door, and inside a carton of eggs, soy milk, and more small packets of condiments than Teddy had seen since his college roommate's collection. Clearly, Deke wasn't a happy homemaker, kitchen edition.

The rest of the small house was similarly barren. They'd seen the main room through the front door earlier: two battered sofas and an old television and VCR, plus piles of old paperbacks. Teddy picked one up and looked at the cover, curious.
The Parsifal Mosaic,
by Robert Ludlum.

“Classic,” he said, and replaced the book where it had been. There was a room off the back that was clearly the bedroom, if only because there was a narrow single bed against the far wall, and a closet full of clothing that looked remarkably similar to what Deke had been wearing the day before. The only other room was the bathroom,
which was exactly as depressing as Teddy had expected it to be: threadbare towels, denture polish, and medications. He glanced at the bottles, but didn't recognize any of the names. He took a picture of each one with his cell phone, so Ginny could check them later. He didn't think it would be relevant, but it might be.

“If this is getting older, man, I opt out.” The old-man bathroom gave him the creeps.

He went back out into the main room and looked around. Ginny had a cleaning service come in every week, and she was moderately compulsive about keeping things neat, but every time he'd been over there, Georgie had toys under the coffee table and left abandoned by her food dish, not to mention the quilted dog beds, one in the office, the other by the sofa. There was none of that here. If there ever had been dogs in this house, that had been cleared up, as well.

There was a narrow staircase at the other end of the main room. The stairs creaked badly, leading to an open space about half again the length of the house. The ceiling was low, barely a crawl space, and it was filled with cardboard boxes, all taped and marked in black, some with a woman's name on them. A lifetime, packed away but clearly not forgotten. Teddy felt another twinge of guilt, and decided not to pry. He might be wrong, but he was pretty sure nothing here had anything to do with the case. And if he was wrong . . . well, these boxes weren't going anywhere.

“If there's anything, it's going to be in that basement,”
he said, going back downstairs. “Damned unlikely that there wouldn't be an internal entrance, as well as the outside door . . .”

A quick search found another door in the kitchen, bolt-locked, that opened to a steep flight of stairs going down. The wall switch cast a bright light onto the steps, and after making sure that the door was wedged open, just in case, Teddy went down into the basement.

The smell hit him before he was halfway down. His nose wrinkled, and his eyes watered a little. Urine, he realized. Like a pipe had burst in the bathroom upstairs. No, not burst, leaked. A slow leak over years.

“Man, did nobody ever come down here?” He almost went back upstairs, but instead breathed through his mouth and kept going. Another light switch at the bottom revealed a space running the entire length and width of the house, doubling the square footage. On one wall was the door that must lead to the backyard; on the other side there were two windows, high up and blocked by the hedge outside. The floor was cement, and looked cracked and stained. There were tables along the far wall and what looked like a laundry basket. He went closer, and nodded. An old plastic laundry basket, filled with more of the threadbare towels he'd seen upstairs. Was there a washing machine down here?

Something made a noise, and Teddy froze. If anyone ever asked, he would totally deny being scared of rats, but he wasn't exactly
fond
of them, either.

He waited a moment, trying to place the sound. Was it
upstairs? Outside? He thought he saw something move on the other side of the windows, a sway of greenery, but then the noise came again, closer. Inside.

“Here, kitty kitty,” he said, hoping for a best-case scenario.

There was a low whine, and Teddy turned, tracking the noise. Behind the table, in the shadows. Moving cautiously, in case he was wrong and it really was a rat waiting to leap out and eat his face, Teddy bent down and reached out a hand. “Hey there. Hey, boy. C'mere, boy.”

His hand reached a small, warm bundle of fur, and a warm, wet tongue scraped across his fingers, making Teddy laugh in relief before he sobered again. Not a rat, no. But proof there had been at least one dog here, despite Deke's claim.

Normally, Ginny
was able to make a plan of attack, and then attack it without hesitation. That was her stock-in-trade, her MO. Friday afternoon, despite a good meeting and plenty of time afterward to work, she was deeply unsatisfied with the research she'd been able to do on the case. Oh, the legal stuff about tenancy and leases had been simple enough. But the rest of it . . .

“Damn Seth for mentioning dogfighting, anyway.”

She hadn't wanted to click on any links, as she'd admitted to Tonica, because she'd been afraid of what she would see. Considering that even before Georgie came into her life she'd teared up at those manipulatively evil ASPCA
ads . . . no. So she'd put a tight filter on and stuck to the text sites, the newspaper articles and dry legal findings about the mechanics of dogfighting. That was what she needed, to discover what might be involved in this, why they might need Deke, and his little house. Just one link that might give them a hold on
how
Deke might be tied into this . . . or if it was impossible that he could be.

Even avoiding the more graphic sites, by midmorning Ginny knew more about dogfighting, both the historical basis and the modern iteration, than she had ever not-wanted to know. “Gambling and drugs,” she muttered, drawing a triangle on a sheet of paper. “Dogfighting, gambling, and drugs. That says mob, right?” Apparently the government agreed, since there was a push to use RICO charges to nail dogfight organizers after the Vick case in 2007.

“You'd think someone who got violent professionally would have gotten his aggressions out, and not have to watch dogs get hurt for his jollies,” Ginny muttered. “People suck.”

She found a site that offered to set people up with—oh God—a dogfighting starter kit. They were blunt about the money that could be made. Even allowing for marketing BS, it was still in excess of a thousand dollars pure profit for each fight, and that didn't take into account any sideline betting that was probably changing hands. House share would be gravy on top of that. And none of it reported to the IRS.

Ginny really needed to scrub her brain after this. But
one of the things that seemed pretty clear was that there needed to be space for a dogfight. A “fight ring” was twelve feet or more. A little suburban house, even with minimal furnishings, didn't seem large enough. Although it might have been used as a training area; the articles she'd read said that fighting dogs were sometimes kept caged up, beaten, and starved until they were desperate enough to fight, just to get fed.

She took a sip of her coffee, and grimaced at the now-cooled bitterness, although the taste could have been less the temperature, and more the fact that her stomach hurt to begin with. She drew a box above the triangle and wrote “Deke” inside it. Then “Deke's house” in smaller letters. “Tonica will find anything there is to find, if there's anything to find.”