Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery (18 page)

“Ease up,” Tonica said, his hand gentle on her shoulder. “Breathe out, then in, slowly.”

Kim shuddered, and Georgie pressed harder against her knee, doggie breath a comforting miasma against her cheek. “Breathing, right.” But she followed his instructions, until she could speak easily again. She glanced at the clock up on the wall, then stared at the wall itself.

“He was alive when I left, I swear it.” She didn’t look at either one of them, her eyes steady on the wall, her jaw tight. “I was scared, and I was angry, but I didn’t kill him. But if that woman did . . . I’m going to have to go to the cops, aren’t I?”

That had been their best-case scenario, that Kim raised that option herself, rather than their mentioning it.

“You probably need to talk to them,” Ginny said, keeping her voice soft. “Don’t worry, they’re not going to think you did it. I saw the body, Kim. I’m pretty sure even if you were in a rage, you couldn’t have done that.”

She looked at Ginny then, and the confusion on her tear-streaked face solidified Ginny’s thought that Kim couldn’t have murdered the guy; she had no idea how he’d been killed, and hadn’t even
thought
that the cops might suspect her.

“Whoever it was, they beat him to death, Kim. They beat him so badly his face was . . . It was ugly.” And that was why she’d assumed the killer as male, to show that kind of rage. . . . If a guy had done that, she’d have been pissed at the assumption that a woman couldn’t kill just as easily as a man. They’d been idiots.

Ginny shook it off. They had a suspect now, and if they could get a description out of Kim, maybe the cops would have a good chance at catching her.

But that only solved the cops’ problem, not hers: they still had no idea who had actually hired her—Kim hadn’t, obviously, and the thought of trying to track down every other girl on that list, knowing they’d probably have the same story . . .

Maybe it didn’t matter, after all. Maybe it was enough that she was here, and he’d never hurt anyone again.

Not that she was condoning murder . . .

The chorus of “He Had It Coming” from that musical earwormed into her brain, and Ginny winced. Now she’d have that in her head all day.

“Oh God. Poor—no, he deserved it. But—”

There was the sound of a door squeaking open, and they all stilled, suddenly aware that they were discussing this in a semi-public place, but the footsteps echoed into the gym from the hallway, someone walking away. Ginny was worried that the interruption would make Kim freeze up again, but having decided to unburden herself, she was going to go all the way.

“Yeah. Maybe I should, yeah, I should tell you, because maybe that explains—”

She could
see
Tonica’s ears prick up, the way Penny’s did sometimes. “Explains what?”

Kim took a deep breath, trying to settle herself, not at all weirded out by the fact that the until-now-quiet guy had asked the question. “I didn’t think anything about it at first, because, well, I didn’t notice, honestly. But when I got home that day, the day he . . . I emptied my bag out, because I was going to switch bags—I use one for school and one for after,” and Ginny nodded, although that was a level of teenager she didn’t remember at all, “and there was a thumb drive in there. I mean, who uses thumb drives anymore?”

Ginny didn’t respond to that. Tonica, who probably still used Zip drives, wisely stayed quiet, too.

“It was his, it had to be. I thought at first it must have fallen into my bag when he . . . But then I remembered something catching at my bag when I tried to leave the house, and I didn’t stop because I was just so glad to get out of there, but what if Jamie dropped it there when he saw the woman waiting for him? What if she wanted it, and when it wasn’t there, she killed him?”

From the look on Tonica’s face, he thought the girl was reaching with that theory. Ginny couldn’t disagree, but she wasn’t going to dismiss the girl out of hand, either.

“You’re sure it came from his house?” Tonica asked.

She nodded. “It was silver, and I’d never seen it before, and that was the only place I could have gotten it.”

“What was on it?”

Kim shrugged, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, then pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, to try to stop the tears that were still leaking, turning her eyes bloodshot. “I don’t know.”

“You never plugged it in, tried to use it?” That, Ginny didn’t believe.

The girl shrugged, as though Ginny had asked a stupid-adult question. “I did, and it was protected, password encryption something-or-other. And I . . . Then he was dead, and I didn’t really want to know? I guess.”

“Fair enough,” Tonica said. “What did you do with it?”

“I threw it in my drawer, figured maybe I’d need it someday, I don’t know. It felt good, knowing I had something of his, after what he tried to do, which is weird but—”

“No, that makes perfect sense,” Ginny said. She got it: the guy’d made Kim feel weak, helpless. Having something of his, something that he’d maybe valued . . . It was a quiet, safe kind of payback.

“But then after you came by I started to think maybe . . . something was going on. And maybe . . . maybe I should have given the drive to the cops?”

“Ya think?” Tonica said, not quite quietly enough, and Kim flushed angrily. “All right, yeah. I was dumb. I get it. That’s . . . that’s why I agreed to meet you. I mean, in the real world, who cares about fake IDs? It’s no big deal. But the way you were talking, and that other woman who was asking questions, and all the cops, obviously
something
was going on.”

Kim might be seventeen and oblivious, but she wasn’t dumb.

“And let’s face it,” she went on. “Him being a creeper isn’t enough to get everyone so worried about him being dead. And the way you said he died . . . That’s someone who was pissed-off. Really pissed-off.”

“Probably, yeah,” Tonica said.

Ginny patted the girl’s arm, caught between feeling glad that the girl was talking, and mildly frustrated because great, they were solving her problem, but they still had no idea who had dragged them into this in the first place. And how did you put “helped expose a sexual predator after he was dead” on your resume, anyway?

“I need to give the drive to the cops. Even if it’s nothing, it might not be something. It could be . . .” Her imagination failed her, and her eyes suddenly went wide, as though she’d just thought of something horrible.

“I can’t believe I have to go talk to the cops. My parents are going to kill me,” Kim wailed mournfully, burying her face in the soft folds of Georgie’s plush back. Ginny’s own thoughts seemed somewhat less inane after that, and when Teddy caught Ginny’s eye and rolled his own, she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Grounding until the girl was
thirty
, at least, would be a good start.

Tonica started to say something, then checked himself and asked instead, “Did you bring the thumb drive with you, Kim?”

“I . . . Yeah.” She hesitated, then dug into her pocket, pulling out a small silver object. “I’ve kept it on me ever since then. I was . . . If I couldn’t lay hands on it, I started to get a panic attack. I know, a guy was dead and all, but if I took it to the cops, they’d know I bought a fake ID and that’s a crime and my mom would kill me and there’s no way there’s enough extra activities to make a college overlook that, is there?”

Ginny looked at Tonica; he had more experience with that sort of thing than she did, since her experience level was pretty much zero. “Did everyone who hung out at his place buy fake IDs?”

“No . . . no I don’t think so.”

“Well then,” Tonica said, with the air of someone disposing of a problem. “You were there hanging out, the way you guys did sometimes, and he tried to be a jerk and you ran, and the next day you discovered the drive in your bag and once you realized what it was and what it might mean, you took it to the cops, and you’re a hero.”

Kim looked at Ginny as though to ask if she thought that would work. “And if they . . . if they find out?”

Ginny had wanted the guy exposed but not if it meant shredding Kim’s future—or even the
risk
of that. Georgie shifted, stepping on Ginny’s feet, pressing against her leg, and she reached down without looking to shove the dog away. “I think, if you help catch a killer, that makes up for it, in the eyes of most colleges.”

There was the sound of a floorboard creaking, and a smooth voice said, “Or, we can simply make this entire situation . . . go away.”

Georgie shifted again, and Ginny realized that the shar-pei had been going on guard, getting to her feet between Ginny and the newcomer. The woman in the well-cut suit was holding her high-heeled shoes in one hand, explaining how she’d managed to walk up behind the bleachers without alerting them—and there was an ugly little pistol in her other hand.

And the muzzle was pointed at Kim.

16

O
nce upon a not so
long ago, Teddy was reasonably sure that feeling the fight-or-flight pulse of blood in his veins had been a rare experience. In the past few years, the feeling had gotten more frequent, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t okay with that.

And yet, here they were again.

He shifted his upper body, getting ready to stand up—or launch himself, if needed—and the woman tipped the pistol in his direction. “Please don’t. I have no desire to make this messy, or any messier than it’s already become, and I’m sure you don’t, either. So let’s discuss the matter rationally before anyone does anything that can’t be undone, hmmm?”

There was a look in the woman’s eye that told Teddy that rational had left the station a long time ago. They stared at each other, her weapon matching up against his mass and greater relative strength. Out of the corner of his eye Teddy saw Ginny reached out to place a hand on Georgie’s collar, just in case the dog suddenly decided that the newcomer was a threat, and didn’t wait for a command.

He might refer to the dog as the world’s largest marshmallow, but he’d seen how fierce she could get. Forty pounds of muscle and teeth was nothing to underestimate. But no dog was fiercer than a bullet.

And that went for human mass, too.

Teddy could hear noises in the distance, people walking and talking in the hallway outside the gymnasium, and he prayed that nobody came in, almost as hard as he was praying that someone
would
. The woman’s eyes were brown, her hair almost black with a scattering of silver, and the hand holding the weapon didn’t shake, not even a little.

She’d beaten a man’s face in.

Kim, almost forgotten, broke the silent stalemate. “You killed Jamie?”

The woman in the suit didn’t look at Kim; the girl was fourth in her concerns, apparently, after the two adults and the dog. Just once, Teddy wished they could come across one of those fabled idiot criminals, who were easily distracted and never planned anything out ahead of time.

“Ah, Mr. Penalta. He was a very talented forger, but he had become a risk factor. I manage my risk factors very carefully.” The stranger pursed her lips, as though she was considering smiling. She was in her mid-forties, and good-looking in an utterly ordinary way, Teddy thought. The kind of person you’d pass on the street—or the steps—without even noticing. “I was perfectly willing to settle this in a businesslike manner. He refused to accept his dismissal gracefully, however. In the ensuing discussion, it turned out that his little hobby with young girls had given the local authorities a handle with which to turn him.

“After that revelation, I thought that it might be best if he was removed from the equation entirely. And, truthfully, he was no loss at all to society.” The potential smile became a very definite frown. “He should have been put down long before.”

Ginny let out an ill-timed but understandable snort, and Teddy couldn’t blame her; agreeing with killers left a bad taste in his mouth, too. But Penalta’s skeeviness wasn’t the point. The point they needed to focus on was the fact that the woman in the suit still had a gun pointed at them. And in front of three witnesses she’d just admitted to killing a man.

That fact didn’t seem to bother her at all.

Sociopath, his brain whispered. She doesn’t even seem to realize that killing someone is a not-good thing to do, talking about it like admitting she took the last cookies on the plate.

Teddy shook his head, huffing a laugh like he couldn’t believe what his life had turned into. Probably a year or two too late for that, but whatever. “So, what, you followed us?”

“Her, actually.” The gun didn’t waver, but her chin tilted in Kim’s direction. “As she told you, she had the misfortune of being the last of Penalta’s . . . hobbies, the morning I had a conversation with him. I was going to leave her be . . . and then she spoke with Ms. Mallard here, and, well, that suggested a risk.”

“You were watching me?” Kim shuddered, like someone had walked over her grave.

“She was watching the house,” Ginny said suddenly. “That was you in front of it that morning. . . . I thought you were a cop, but the car wasn’t quite right, not the same model the police force actually uses for their unmarked cars.”

The woman smiled tightly. “And then you came back, and led me to Kim here. And I’ve had my eye on her ever since. I told you, I manage my risks carefully.”

Oh, keep talking, Teddy thought, keep talking, and give us time to figure out how to get out of this. “So that was you lurking outside the door earlier, too, waiting to make the perfect entrance?”

“As a matter of fact . . .” The stranger smiled, and shrugged. “I was actually listening to see if the girl was stupid enough to incriminate herself as a thief as well as an idiot. Which, indeed, she was.”

“Wait, what? I didn’t steal anything!” Kim said, her body jerking forward as though she needed to make her protest physical as well.

“Shut up,” Ginny muttered, although it wasn’t clear if she was talking to the girl or Teddy, or the woman with the gun. Probably all three. She put her free hand on Kim’s wrist, keeping her still. “So you killed him—not premeditated, maybe, but definitely manslaughter at the least, am I right?”

The woman shrugged. “In front of a court of law, perhaps. It was a business decision, perhaps tempered with a little annoyance of my own. I dislike predators. And I needed his former partners focused on our mutual interests, not distracted by a possible police investigation. Using violence allowed his . . . infelicitous behavior to be considered a reason why he might be so brutally murdered, and made it all too easy for everyone to look down that rabbit hole, rather than dig deeper into his professional dealings.”

Either the woman didn’t know about the feds being in town, or she thought she was smarter than they were. Or maybe the feds were here about something entirely different. Because if Asuri had set them up as bait for this psycho, he was going to have serious words with her afterward. Assuming he was still alive to do so.

“And why me?” Ginny asked. “Why did I get dragged into this?”

“I have no idea,” the woman said. “He had a great many people who disliked him, I’m gathering. It could have been any of them, no? And bad timing, to be caught up in the middle of it all. But once here, I could not ignore such a useful tool. I needed to be sure that the body was discovered in such a way that the investigation would head
away
from my area of interest.”

“Okay, but why use
me
?” Ginny could be worse than her dog sometimes, when she got something between her teeth.

“After we encountered each other outside the house, I did some research,” the woman said, her smile oddly and disturbingly warm. “And I was intrigued by your dedication, above and beyond the financial aspect of things, the both of you. And your curiosity, of course. I tend to see alternative uses for traditional things, you see, and I thought certain that, in the right place at the wrong time, you would not be able to resist checking the house, and thus discovering the body. And then, once intrigued—and possibly fearing that you had been implicated—you would dig just enough to redirect the police investigation elsewhere. As, in fact, you have. Quite impressive.”

“A fan club among criminals? Oh no, that’s not creepy at
all
.” Ginny shook her head. “And you didn’t think our poking around would lead back to you? I mean, with your connection to the . . . operation he was part of?”

Ginny also had a really bad habit of poking bears with very short sticks. But while the woman’s attention was on her, Teddy had been able to shift just enough that—given a distraction—he could probably hit her at the knees, and take her off balance enough that even if she managed to get off a shot, it wouldn’t hit anyone.

Probably. With a distraction. But the next shot—and Teddy wasn’t going to kid himself that the woman was good enough to recover in time to take that next shot—
would
hit someone. Ginny was brave, but the few self-defense classes she’d taken weren’t going to make her bulletproof, and Georgie could be checked by a hard kick, if you were determined and nasty enough.

This woman seemed both, in spades. But she also seemed . . . weirdly calm, even considering she was the one with the gun. Almost as though they were having a nice chat over the bar. Probable sociopath. Right.

“None of this needs to end badly.” The woman was still focused on Ginny’s question. “You certainly have no need to fear me, so long as you do nothing ill-advised.”

Like try to jump her, he assumed. Or go to the cops with a description, assuming she left them alive.

“Shooting you would be pointless bloodshed, further complicating a situation that should have been simple. I fully expected the police to spend the next few weeks chasing some unknown, faceless irate father or boyfriend—or, not to dismiss the female of the species—mother or irate victim.

“If, however, they did follow the track of his illicit activities, all they would find would be his former associates, who have nothing whatsoever to do with the crime, are in fact horrified by what happened, and therefore would not be able to shed any light on the situation. And I, by then, intended to be holding the reins from a very long, and untraceable, distance, as usual. Getting hands-on was never the plan.”

Teddy was pretty much done for the rest of his life with sociopathic bad guys who needed to tell everyone how smart they were. Hell, he was tired of heroes who had to do that, too, but they were less prone to pointing guns at him. But the ego-blabbering could be useful—and if she was talking, she probably wasn’t going to be shooting.

Probably.

“So what went wrong?” he asked, putting as much of a taunt into it as he could.

Unfortunately, that also moved the woman’s attention to him, so any element of surprise his attack might have had was lost. “Ah. Yes, something does always go wrong, does it not? As I said, the local authorities had a handle on Mr. Penalta—but his bad habits did not include stupidity, and he informed me that he had recorded information that could, indeed, link me to his actions.” She sighed, the noise of a disappointed teacher. “He threatened me with that, told me to sweeten the severance deal, or he would give all of it to the authorities.” She shook her head. “It really was a shame he couldn’t keep everything in his pants; the boy could have gone far.”

Teddy wasn’t sure if she knew how creepy she sounded. He was betting on not.

“The thumb drive.” Kim got it now, a little late. Her eyes were wide, and she was biting her lower lip hard enough to probably hurt. Great, the kid had taken—intentionally or otherwise—something that tied the killer to the victim.

“Yes, my dear. A rather nasty little potential blackmail package. He used his last breath to taunt me with that fact.” She tilted his head to the side, and as though admitting a slightly amusing foible, said, “that may have been when I lost my temper with him.”

And beat the guy to death for it. Whatever the definition of sanity was these days, she didn’t fit it.

“Unfortunately, once he told me what to look for, I could not find it. It has been a vexation, forcing me to linger . . . until you returned it to me, my dear. I thank you for that, and for the knowledge that it is encrypted, and therefore was not copied, while it was in your hands.”

“So you come in and, what, kill us? All three of us?” Teddy pretended to do the math in his head, then pursed his lips and shook his head. “Not going to work. You shoot one of us, sure. But that leaves the rest of us to rush you, and even if you’re fast, you’re not going to be able to get off three shots well enough to stop all of us.” Plus Georgie, but he didn’t think now was the time to mention how strong the dog’s jaws were.

“Oh, no,” she said, seemingly genuinely insulted. “As I said earlier, I’m a practical women, and dead bodies, especially when they pile up, are deeply impractical. You have no—what is the phrase? No skin in the game, that’s correct. I go my way and you go yours, and everything works out best for everyone.”

“Lady, you’re not playing with a full duck. Or even half a duck. Maybe a duck wing.”

Ginny’s outburst made Teddy want to slap her. Was she
trying
to upset the sociopath?

“Perhaps not.” Sociopath lady seemed amused by the thought. “But I don’t believe in waste, and you two are far too interesting to waste. Although I will without hesitation if I am threatened, you should be aware of that.” She gestured toward Kim with her gun. “Now, we all know that the young lady there has something that belongs to me. I’d like it back.”

“Oh, is this yours?” The girl held up the thumb drive, her eyebrows raised. The scared, hesitant girl of just minutes ago was gone, and in her place there was a sassy, sarcastic teenager. Knowing it was a façade, Teddy decided, only made it all the more awesome, even as he wanted to tell her to sit down and shut up before she got herself—and them—killed.

“Jamie was an idiot,” Kim went on, tilting the drive back and forth in her hand. “I mean, sure, it looks cool and all, but the cloud is way more portable: you just access it wherever you set up shop. He could have totally screwed you over with a dead man’s drop.”

Teddy was pretty sure she had no idea how macabre that term sounded, in context. Or maybe she did.

“Well then, I am fortunate that he was not as wise as you—and that you may yet learn that attempting to blackmail people rarely leads to a happy ending for the blackmailer.” The woman tilted the muzzle of the gun up, an emphasis that was not lost on anyone. “Now, if you will give me that drive, and come with me—”

“Hey, no, wait a minute,” Teddy started, and stopped when the pistol was turned on him again.

“Please don’t make this difficult. Things have gotten slightly off plan, but that’s easily correctable.” She gave Kim a look that might almost have been fond. “The girl has been foolish, but not stupid . . . yet. For now, she is merely insurance.” She paused, her free hand reaching out for Kim. “Come on, then. And you two—you three, stay here.”