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Penny had come down to the shelter, hoping to sniff around a little more, when she saw them standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, Georgie with them. She folded herself around the corner
of the building and hissed lightly, pitching it for a dog's ears, not humans. Georgie looked up and saw her, and let out a low woof of greeting, mixed with the suggestion of something new learned, something new to tell.

Something had happened. Not bad, or the humans would be reacting differently, and Georgie would be upset. But something enough to get them here . . . but in the wrong place.

Penny hissed again, and stepped forward, her tail erect and her head held high, just enough for Georgie to see her, and then faded out of sight.

Another low woof told her that the message had been received, and then there were the sounds of humans talking, Herself trying to scold Georgie as the dog tugged at the leash, pulling her toward the corner of the building where Penny had just left her scent.

“Georgie, sweetie, where are you going?”

And then Theodore, his voice a comforting rumble next to the woman's higher voice: “That's the clinic wing. I wouldn't have thought she'd be so eager to head back there.”

“Hush.” The woman was laughing: good. Humans were easier when they were happy. “She probably scented something. A squirrel, maybe. She's just discovered squirrels. Or—”

They came around the corner, and Penny waited, confident that neither human would see her in the underbrush.

“What is it, Georgie? Suddenly you think this parking lot would be better to do your business in? Or—”

“Gin.” Theodore's voice, solemn. “Look.”

Penny preened her whiskers, satisfied in her choice of humans. You had to lead them to it, sometimes, but they picked up the scent reasonably well after that.

*  *  *

“At what?” Ginny tugged at Georgie's leash again, then realized that Tonica was staring at the same wall Georgie seemed fascinated by. “What?”

“Does that look like someone tried to wash off graffiti, to you?”

She looked, then shrugged. “Yeah.” Then she looked again. “Yes. And recently, too. Funny that nobody mentioned graffiti.”

“Well, no reason to, really,” Tonica said. “We get a smattering of it on the back wall at Mary's, sometimes the front window. Mostly kids leaving tags, trying to be gangster, or someone being a wiseass after a few too many drinks.”

Ginny stepped closer to the wall, tracing her fingers along the faded lettering. Pale pink, which meant that it had probably been red at first. Georgie pressed against her legs, as though trying to get her to move, but Ginny flicked the leash gently, and the dog sat down with a muffled sigh.

“Let not the innocent be . . . replaced? Reduced? Renounced?” She scowled at it as though daring the words to make sense. “That's not the usual kind of slogan of a drunk.”

“No.” Tonica stood next to her, studying it, too. “And the writing's too even—usually by that point they can't paint a straight line. And it's not a gang tag, either.”

She didn't ask how he knew about gang tags. “But the shelter folk were determined to erase it totally, even back here where most folk wouldn't see. So what is it, and who put it there?”

“You think it's relevant to what we're investigating? C'mon, Ginny. Kelley said he chased kids away from here, remember? This could just be more of that.”

Georgie whined again, but didn't move from her spot on the ground.

“I don't know,” Ginny said. “But right now, we can't afford to ignore anything. And if it isn't part of our case . . .” She paused, then added, “We can mention it to the cops. As concerned citizens.”

“Este and Roger won't like that,” Tonica said.

“Right now, I'm not finding myself overly concerned with what Este and Roger want. You?”

He shook his head slowly. He was all for making lemonade out of lemons, but there were limits, and the way Roger and Este had been willing to use the dead man didn't sit right with him. He was glad that he and Ginny were in agreement on that.

T
hey stood in the back
parking lot, contemplating the graffiti and their own thoughts until a truck rumbled by, the noise breaking the moment.

Teddy looked at his watch, then at his partner. “You going home?”

Ginny nodded, and then shrugged. “Probably. Easier to work on the desktop, for some of this stuff.” But she didn't sound enthusiastic about it.

“Look, let's swing by your place and pick up your laptop, and go to Mary's. It's delivery day, so Seth will be there, and Stacy's working this afternoon. You can work there. It only makes sense, so we can discuss the job in person, rather than trying to text or email.”

He waited while she considered the options. He could tell when she'd decided to give in.

“Yeah, all right. You're right.” She didn't sound too grudging about it, either. She must be as tired as she looked, her curls falling out of her clip, the somber clothes making her look oddly washed-out.

Leaving a message for Nora to get in touch with them when she got off shift, the three of them—Teddy, Ginny,
and Georgie—piled into Teddy's coupe. By now the shar-pei seemed to accept the small backseat as her due, settling on the upholstery like it was her dog bed back home. She stayed there while Ginny ran inside at her apartment to collect her laptop, and Teddy found himself reaching backward between the front seats to rub at the wrinkled skin of her head.

“What do you think, pup?” he asked. “Did the dead guy take the money? Did our client? Or do you think it just slipped behind a credenza, and the cleaning lady found it?”

A blue-black tongue swiped at his hand, and he pulled it back, grimacing. “Thanks, dog,” he said, rubbing it dry against his jeans. “Score one for cats.” Penny occasionally groomed him, but her tongue was raspy and dry, not sloppy-wet.

The passenger-side door opened and Ginny slid back in, her computer bag on her lap and a dark purple bag in her hand that Teddy recognized as holding Georgie's assorted bowls and toys. “Right. Let's go.”

*  *  *

Mary's wasn't officially open yet, but there were lights on behind the blinds covering the plate glass front, and the red-painted door was unlocked.

“You realize, of course,” Ginny was saying as they walked in, “that people are going to start thinking I work here, I'm in place so often when you guys open. Hi, Stacy.”

“Hey, Georgie!” Stacy cried out a welcome from behind
the bar, only adding, almost as an afterthought, “Hi, Ginny!”

“And I don't even get a hello?” Teddy groused, bring up the rear.

“Hey, boss. Sorry, boss.” Stacy didn't sound sorry.

She was here way too early, and from the way she was looking over the clipboard in front of her, she'd come in to get a jump on the afternoon's shift. If Teddy actually was the boss, he'd be thinking about promoting her to nights, and icing their current off-nights bartender to afternoons.

But that wasn't his decision. Anyway, Jon wasn't going to last long—his behavior last Friday night had been a serious warning sign of someone who thought too highly of himself for teamwork—and then maybe they'd be able to promote her. Or maybe she'd quit, too. If Patrick kept giving them shit . . .

“You do work here,” he said to Ginny. “In fact, we're thinking of putting your name on one of the stools. ‘Here rests the second-most-winning cheeks of trivia night.' ”

“Excuse me?” Her eyes widened, even as she slid onto one of those stools. “Whose team beat the pants off yours last time?”

“Only because I missed that night. We'll see who's smirking tomorrow night.”

She let that drop, and pulled her tech out of her bag—phone, netbook, charger—and started setting up on the bartop.

Georgie, allowed into the bar rather than left in her usual spot outside, had immediately headed for the wooden banquette against the far wall, settling underneath it with a tired sigh. Teddy guessed getting up at 5 a.m. wasn't her idea of fun, either.

“I need to set up,” Ginny was saying. “Password still the same?”

“If we ever changed it, we'd all be screwed because nobody would remember the new one,” Stacy said cheerfully. “You want your usual?”

“Please.”

Ginny's usual, before sundown, was a ginger ale with lime, in a highball glass. She'd told Teddy once that if she drank soda in a soda glass in a bar, people gave her shit. If they thought it was booze, they left her alone.

“Where's Seth?” he asked Stacy, looking around the bar. The deliveries were due soon; he'd have thought the old man would be fussing in back by now.

“Called in sick,” she said, her voice muffled as she bent below the bar, checking on supplies.

“What?” Seth hadn't been sick a day since Teddy had started working at Mary's. Seth didn't
get
sick. He would take it as a personal affront if a cold germ dared land on him, much less take up residence.

“That's what he said.” She popped up again, placing a box of swivel sticks on the counter and opening it up. “Sick.”

Teddy scratched at his shoulder, frowning. “He sound sick?”

“Not really, no. If it were anyone else I'd say he was slacking off. But, y'know, Seth. So I'm covering for him, since you said Useless wasn't supposed to sign for anything. But hey, now that you're here. . . .”

“Right. You need anything hauled up from the back?” Normally he wouldn't dare imply a woman couldn't handle a job—he had too many sisters and female cousins to be that dumb—but he had at least forty pounds and five inches on the younger woman, and a case of booze was heavy.

“Nope, I'm good. I don't know what we're going to do about the kitchen, though.”

“Mondays tend to be slow,” he said. “We just tell 'em the kitchen's closed, or even more limited than usual. I can whip up something later.” So much for his day off. He really should know better than to show up when he wasn't on the schedule. “Meanwhile, I'm starving. Think Jilly's is open yet?”

“It's not even noon,” Stacy said. “Maybe, I don't know. Don't you ever eat breakfast?”

He decided against telling her that he had been hauled out of bed at 5 a.m. on his day off. “Nope, just coffee this morning.” Callie's Shack was known for three things: her coffee, her history, and breakfast platters meant to feed the fishermen and lumberjacks who used to work this section of Seattle. They were filling, but greasy as hell, and he wanted his arteries to see forty unimpaired.

“Jilly's opens at one,” Ginny said. “But there's usually someone in there early. If you go and make piteous faces
at them, maybe they'll have sympathy and throw you a burger.” She looked up from her tablet and saw their expressions. “What? I've lived here longer than either of you. There are some things I know that you don't.”

Tonica chose not to debate that fact, just took their orders and slipped back out the front door, making sure to close it carefully behind him.

*  *  *

Ginny heard the click and looked up, then exchanged a glance with Stacy, who shrugged a shoulder as though to say that she wasn't responsible for anything the boss did, and went back to counting glassware.

Not too long ago, Mary's front door would have been wedged open with a chair when someone was setting up but the bar wasn't open yet, letting fresh air in—and, Ginny suspected, giving Penny the resident feline an easier entrance than whatever cat-sized route she normally took. But then, a few months ago, during their first case, two well-dressed thugs had taken advantage of that open-door policy to attack her, Tonica, and Stacy. Georgie had saved them—Georgie, and Stacy's surprising skills at wrestling takedowns—but Ginny hadn't seen the chair since then, no matter how nice the day. The door was still unlocked, though, when they had come in. Anyone could have come in.

Tonica had locked it when he went out, just then.

Ginny thought about getting annoyed at him for being overprotective, then remembered how terrified they'd all
been when the two goons showed up with guns. She decided she didn't mind the extra caution, at all.

“That door, you really shouldn't,” she said, and stopped, not sure if she had the right to lecture Stacy at all.

Stacy sighed. “Yeah, I know. Especially without Seth here. I just . . . yeah. Okay. Promise, next shift, even if Seth
is
here. The door stays locked until we open.”

“Maybe you can get Patrick to get windows that open,” Ginny suggested, logging into the bar's network. “Instead of a patio, or whatever, just give us some air flow inside, if the door's going to be closed?”

“Patrick? Spend money?”

“Tonica said he had architects in . . .” Ginny said, but Stacy shook her head.

“Boss was yanking someone's chain,” the other woman said. “He's about making money, not spending it.”

Ginny couldn't argue with that, so she let the topic drop and went back to what she had been doing. Pulling up a browser, she entered “Let not the innocent” into her search engines, and waited, sipping at her drink while the machine worked.

Most of being a good researcher was getting a sense for what “information clutter” you could ignore. A broad search returned too much: you had to winnow it down. She looked at the first batch of returns. Religious quotes, maybe. Historical quotes. . . . Roman? Probably not, but couldn't be ignored. Fan fiction? Ginny checked the source, and then shook her head. Highly unlikely. But that still left too many options to check easily, and none
of them seemed to scream out as relevant to an animal shelter.