Fixed (15 page)

Pssssst.

The growl came from farther down, almost at the end of the fence. A flat face with an upturned nose stuck out through the slats. Dog, but not unfriendly.

“You the noser?” the dog asked

“I am. One of them, anyway.” But Georgie wasn't with her. Suddenly, she missed that larger bulk standing over her.

“C'mere.” And the nose withdrew, pulling the slat with it. That left enough room for a small-boned tabby cat to slip through.

On the other side, there were half a dozen dogs of various sizes, and Penny had to fight the urge to arch her back and hiss. None of the dogs seemed aggressive, huddling together at one end of the cement run. Unlike the rest of the building, the yard was well lit, with no shadows for a cat to hide in. A human was at the far end, spraying water around from a hose, keeping an eye on them but not really paying attention.

The dogs were restless, uneasy, their ears saying one thing and their tails another, and all the while their noses twitched, as though trying to smell something they didn't want to find. When they saw her, there was a small start of surprise, like they were resisting the urge to give chase, and waited while she moved cautiously toward them, the bulldog trotting at her side.

“This is the noser,” the bulldog announced, as though he'd gone out and found her himself. Since she'd still be on the other side of the fence if he hadn't stuck his nose in, Penny was willing to admit that he had, sort of.

That seemed to throw them into a mild frenzy. “Have you found out what it is yet? Do you know how to make it go away?”

Having only just then smelled what they were talking about, Penny had no answer for them. But she'd give up her whiskers rather than admit that. Instead she merely twitched one ear in a superior manner, and let them yammer around her, casting looks over their shoulders at the human every now and again as though looking for a signal. If she listened well enough, they'd tell her where she should look, and what for.

“All right, kids,” the human called, turning off the water and
coiling up the hose. “Last call. Everyone inside, so I can get my ass home, too!”

The dogs turned, with varying degrees of speed and grace, and raced to the other side of the enclosure, leaving Penny with the bulldog and one old greyhound.

“We can't do anything,” the greyhound said. “We go here, and we go into the kennel, but we can't go There.”

“We daren't go There,” the bulldog corrected. “We'd die. You be careful, noser.”

“Always careful,” Penny told them, and then touched noses briefly, before he trotted off to join the others being herded back into the building through a narrow door.

The human paused as the last tail went inside, and looked back over the courtyard as though thinking there was one animal left uncounted, but Penny had already disappeared by then.

Time to go hunting.

I
n the end, Teddy did
open the file in the morning, but only in the sense that it was after 2 a.m. Normally, when he got home after a night shift, all he wanted to do was fall facedown into bed and sleep for about ten hours straight. He stared at his bed, and then at the folder in his hand, and sighed. Part of it was the desire to do right by their client, to find out who took the money, and keep them from losing the grant next year. And part of it . . .

Part of it was the desire to get the drop on Ginny, to find something that would solve the case before she did. They weren't keeping score, not like on trivia night, but . . . they were still keeping score. A little. Maybe. And it would feel so good to find something that she had missed. Teddy wasn't proud of that fact, but he wasn't going to deny it, either.

“And there's only one way to win.”

With a painful flashback to college, and the all-nighters he'd sworn he would never ever pull again, he sat down at the kitchen table in his apartment, the empty silence echoing around him, and set a mug of coffee and the folder down in front of him.

“Rock on, old man,” he said, and flipped the file open.

Two more cups of coffee and ninety minutes later, he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, but he felt better about the case.

There wasn't all that much information on either the players or the shelter itself beyond what Ginny had already told him, but seeing it in print gave his brain something to chew on, matching what he had already seen to what was on the page. After rereading the same paragraph twice and not being able to remember what it said, though, he gave in. Giving up sleep to get things done became counterproductive after a while, and those all-nighters were for younger idiots.

Putting the file aside, Teddy rinsed his mug out and left it in the sink, then headed for bed. Maybe, if he was lucky, his unconscious mind might be able to sort through possible connections and loose threads better than his sleep-deprived conscious brain.

Before he made it to the mattress, though, his attention was caught by a book shoved into the bookcase, not shelved neatly like the other titles but resting sideways on top of them. The bright-colored cover, against the more sober spines of textbooks and hardcover novels, was like a yowl for attention. He pulled it out and held it, thinking.

He had bought
Investigation for Morons
months ago, half as a joke, half as a way to keep Ginny from making a mistake that could get them both arrested. Instead of giving it to her the way he'd originally planned, though, tied up in a bow like the most ironic present ever, he'd made the mistake of flipping it open randomly and starting to read.

An hour later, he had started dog-earing pages, and had highlighted at least three passages, and if he was going to give her a copy, he would have to buy another one, because this was his.

It wasn't that he had any great desire to be an investigator. In fact, reading the book had taught him that he had no desire at all to be an official, licensed private eye. But he was also fascinated by it, the way you could uncover things, even without official channels or authorization, how far it was possible to snoop without actually crossing the line. Everyone was so worried about the government snooping, they forgot to worry about their neighbor.

“What do you say about this gig, huh?” he wondered, and flipped to the index to see if “theft, petty and grand” was listed.

Petty theft, he learned, was the taking of anything under a set sum, usually around five hundred dollars, while grand theft was anything worth more than that amount. Petty theft was a misdemeanor, while grand theft was a felony. That much he'd known, more or less. It also convinced him that they were once again poking their noses into things better left to the cops. But, short of getting her nose chopped off, Ginny wasn't going to back down, and . . .

“And they're not going to go to the cops, so saying they should be handling it is a nonstarter. Go to damned sleep, before you get stupid.”

*  *  *

The alarm on his phone went off at 8 a.m., jolting Teddy unpleasantly from his pillow, his heart racing.

“Hell. Right. Oh hell.” He reached over and managed to fumble the alarm off, falling back against the pillow. Normally on a Sunday, he'd sleep in a few more hours to recover before picking up the evening shift. No such luck today. Too much to do.

“I hate you, Mallard,” he said out loud, and then reached his hand out and picked up his phone, typing those words in with laborious care. “I. Hate. You. Mallard.” He hit
SEND
and closed his eyes again.

Less than a minute later, his phone buzzed with the response.

“I have to deal with my mother today. You're getting off lightly.”

Hard to argue with that.

He got going, thanks to an energy drink and a painfully cold finish to his shower, dressed, and was out the door by 9 a.m. The air was cool and damp, and he had pulled his battered North Face jacket out of the closet for the first time since last spring, his watch cap still shoved into the pocket. No need for that, yet. But winter was definitely on its way.

The first stop was Lightspeed Security. They had an office in downtown Seattle, and another in Kirkland, but Teddy wasn't going to try the corporate office. On a Sunday morning that would be pointless anyway, since the only people he'd find there would be cleaners and midlevel grunts.

He wanted to talk to a low-level grunt.

The local office wasn't all that impressive to look at: a storefront in a strip mall, with frosted windows and a small sign that didn't say much about who they were or what they did. But the windows were well maintained, and when he pushed open the door, Teddy was greeted by a professional-looking office, with a receptionist who was alert and professional-looking as well.

“May I help you?” the young man asked, looking Teddy straight in the eye while still managing to assess his age, weight, probable income, and social status without offense. Teddy was impressed.

“I was wondering if you could answer a few questions,”

“About Lightspeed? Let me get someone who can help you.” He tapped a button on his console, and spoke into the headpiece set against his ear and chin.

Expecting that this would end in a polite runaround, Teddy prepared for a long wait, but almost immediately a door in the back opened and another man came out. He was wearing shirtsleeves and dress slacks, and had the look of a man who had been in the office for a while already.

“Hi. My name's Jerry Cavanaugh. I'm security coordinator for this office. What can I help you with?”

Teddy hadn't really had questions in mind; he was more of a read-the-person-and-wing it guy. In the noir movies Ginny liked, the PI would swagger in and demand answers, or sweet-talk it out of the secretary. Somehow he didn't think the young man at the desk would be amenable to sweet-talking, and he was all out of swagger.

“I'm doing some work for the LifeHouse Animal Shelter, out in Ballard,” he said. “And your company's name came up in discussion.”

“I'm afraid we cannot comment on any clients,” Cavanaugh said, and Teddy held up a hand to stop him.

“Of course not, wouldn't think of it. And there's no doubt being cast on your work, I assure you. No, I merely wanted to ask about your retention rate. I know firsthand that a lot of these jobs are temporary—college students and part-timers—but Ms. Snyder, the woman who runs LifeHouse, said that they had regular guards on duty, the same people every night?” He smiled, one former security guard to another. “That must be reassuring to the clients, to know the same person's on the job.”

“I can't speak to the specifics of that assignment,” Cavanaugh said, his shoulders easing, “but yes, we make a point, whenever possible, to keep people in a regular loop. We find that it builds a level of reliability, when a guard feels particularly responsible for one site. Plus, they are able to learn what is normal for that area and what is not, and therefore react more swiftly when something is wrong.”

Or, possibly, get too familiar with the assignment and start slacking off. Or poking around offices they shouldn't be in. But Teddy could see how you could argue both points of view.

“Of course, all of our employees are also regularly screened and reevaluated, and occasionally rotated as seems appropriate.”

“Of course,” Teddy echoed, even as he translated the corporate-speak in his head:
if someone screwed up, they were shifted to junkyard duty.

“Now, I'm afraid that if you have any further questions, you will have to direct them to our corporate headquarters.” Polite, still friendly, but a clear line was being drawn.

“Of course. Thank you so much for your time. You've been most helpful.” Teddy suspected that he was supposed to ask for the guy's card in case he needed to reference the conversation, or do a follow-up, but he didn't want Cavanaugh asking for one of his, in return. Especially since he didn't have any.

Back out into the parking lot, Teddy half expected one of the two men to come out and call after him, asking what exactly he was looking into and why he hadn't simply asked the guard himself. But that was why he'd come in person to a branch, rather than calling the main office: the odds were better that nobody working here was all that invested in making more work—or possibly bringing up trouble—for themselves by thinking too much.

He sat in the Volvo and pulled out his cell phone.

“Ginny, hi. Yes, I'm awake, give me a break, okay?” He would have rolled his eyes if she could see it, but it wasn't worth the effort without a possible reaction. “I talked to someone at the security company. Looks well run, reasonably organized, and the moment I started to prod they shut up and directed me toward corporate.”

Her voice came through clearly, despite background noise, and with more than a touch of exasperation. “So you think we should strike a suspect from the list because a midlevel manager fielded questions well?”

He just waited, silent.

“Right. Right. I know, a well-run organization is a sign of a well-run organization, fear of losing a semi-secure job will keep people on the straight and narrow, blah blah blah, and I should trust your people skills.”

He grinned at that, not bothering with his usual poker face since she couldn't see him.

“Also, I think we should strike them from the list because the troops know damn well what happens to them if there's a complaint—even to a starving college student, a few thousand dollars in cash set against being fired without a reference probably isn't worth it. Especially not if it requires them to break protocol and go inside a building when they're only supposed to be patrolling the outside.”

“Laziness is the surest road to law-abiding behavior? You're probably not wrong. Besides, apparently Nora, bless her perky eyes, spent some time flirting with both security guards and was willing to hand over their names. They both have student debt up to their eyeballs, but it's nothing out of the usual, and neither of them has ever missed a payment. Gates has never missed paying either his rent or his tuition, far as the school was willing to admit. The other one, Ford, his landlord said he's, and I quote, ‘an utter doll, pays two or three days late every month but in full.' ”