Doghouse Read Free Page B

walk-in freezer incident. He had a full-time job—hell, he had a more-than-full-time job. So did Ginny. Neither of them needed more stress, and it wasn’t as though Seth was going to be able to pay them much, considering he knew exactly how much the old man earned. . . . But Seth was a stand-up guy, for a grouch, and he’d asked them for help.
    And it sounded like Deke needed somebody on his side.
    â€œAll right,” Teddy said, like there had ever been any doubt. “We’ll look into it for you. But”—he held up a finger when Seth started to mutter what might have been a thank-you—“if there’s even the slightest hint that your friend is guilty, we’re done and you drop it. All right?”
    â€œHe’s not guilty.”
    â€œAll right?”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œFinally!” At Ginny’s feet, Penny let out a satisfied grunt. Her eyes were half lidded as though she were still asleep, but she had been listening to the humans talking above them. Georgie’s wuffling snore rumbled underneath her, and there were other people talking, so she couldn’t hear all the words, but she knew the tone in her human’s voice, and Georgie’s human, too. They were sniffing something new out. Something that needed doing, or fixing. And that meant that things were about to get interesting again.
    Penny yawned, her tongue curling against her teeth, and stretched her body out lazily, slowly waking all the way up. She wanted to wake Georgie up, too, but the dog would get too excited and distract the humans. For now, Penny would do what she did best: listen, watch, and learn.

2
    T he start of a new job was always a tangle of excitement and nerves. Despite her exhaustion, Ginny couldn’t fall asleep until well after midnight, nearly an hour after she’d gotten home from Mary’s. Part of her brain was whirring excitedly, wanting to fire up the laptop and start doing research. But she knew that starting anything now would mean that she wouldn’t get to bed until three at the earliest, and she’d be a wreck all the next day. She wasn’t twenty-five anymore, that she could get by on four hours of sleep.
    What that meant, though, was that she slept through her alarm, and woke up half an hour late. Georgie was waiting patiently by the side of her bed, paws on the mattress, tattered pink leash in her mouth, large brown eyes doleful. When she saw Ginny was finally awake, she let out a pitiful whine.
    â€œI’m sorry, baby,” Ginny said, reaching out. “Gimme a minute, okay?”
    A glance at the clock said it was only six forty, so she wasn’t too far off schedule. Lucky, otherwise Georgie might have broken training and left a puddle on the floor.
    The weather was damp and cool after last night’s rain, but the trees were starting to show green, and there was a feel to the air that said it might turn out to be a nice day after all. Ginny nodded a silent hello to the other people walking their dogs, but didn’t run into anyone she knew well enough to actually say good morning to. Back in the apartment, she fed Georgie and took her shower. Just because she worked at home now was no reason to fall into bad habits, and her brain worked better once she was washed and dressed.
    On the dot of seven thirty, barefoot but otherwise dressed in black slacks and a button-down silk blouse, she walked into the small bedroom she used as an office, pushed a pile of paperwork she’d planned to file off to the side, and opened her laptop. She had until 10 a.m., when Tonica had said that he would pick her up, to do the first strokes of preliminary investigation.
    â€œResidential leases, and Washington State law,” she said to herself. “Start there, see what turns up.”
    An hour and a half later, she left Georgie sleeping under her desk, grabbed her shoes, and went down to the sidewalk with a travel mug of coffee in