Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dodge. But her curiosity was warring with her desire to disappear, and curiosity was winning. As usual.
    “So what happened?”
    The second cop was still scowling, shooting a glance over to where a woman with short, graying hear, wearing a Portland Police Department windbreaker and cap, but with no obvious gun, was standing, looking at the house. She must’ve arrived in the second car. “And you have no idea who the individual inside might be?” the female cop asked again, ignoring Ginny’s question.
    Ginny shook her head, feeling the once-smooth knot of hair at the back of her head start to fall apart, curls brushing against the back of her neck. She didn’t even bother to try to tuck them back in: nobody was going to be impressed by her professional appearance at this point. “No. Mrs. Adaowsky”—except that there was no Mrs. Adaowsky here, it seemed—“didn’t mention having a son or a caretaker, so no. Is he, was he . . .”
    Of course he was: you didn’t end up shoved under the kitchen table accidentally, not like that, not without any signs of an accident, but she had to ask, anyway.
    “That’s still under investigation, ma’am.” Deadpan stonewall. “You’ll be staying locally, in case we need to speak with you again?”
    They didn’t tell her not to leave town, but it was implicit in the tone. The fact that she’d come here to see someone who didn’t seem to live here at all, and found a dead body . . . Yeah, she wouldn’t let her leave town, either. Ginny smiled politely and told them again where she was staying, and watched them write it down again. The advantage to telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth was that it was a lot harder for someone to catch you out in a lie. But it got boring, repeating it over and over again.
    She glanced at the activity on the front porch of the house, then at the small crowd of rubberneckers, trying to decide if they were more interested in the activity on the porch or the two local news teams now covering the activity, then looked at her watch again.
    “May I go now? I left my dog at the hotel, and she’ll need to be walked soon. . . .” Georgie would probably be fine for another hour or two, but as reasons to go it seemed like one cops couldn’t give her grief about.
    The first cop flapped his hand at her, which she took to mean “yeah, go on, get out of my face.” They were taking the body away now, a covered gurney, and Ginny hesitated a moment, then shook her head. She wasn’t involved, she didn’t need to linger—especially since if one of the news crews saw she was off the cop’s leash, they might try to corner her for an interview. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone right then: she just wanted to get back to her hotel, walk Georgie, and let everything that had happened today shake down into some kind of sense.
    Of course, she was too flustered to pay attention to where she was going, missed a turn, and got lost on her way back to the hotel. By the time she let herself into the room, enough time had gone by that her excuse was true: Georgie was nearly frantic with the need to go for a walk, although she’d been a good girl and not done anything that would have required apologizing to the housekeeping staff.
    Despite the worry and chaos that was tangling her thinking, Ginny smiled at the dog’s exuberance, all other thoughts put aside for a few seconds. “Hey, girl, you were a good girl, weren’t you?” A blue-black tongue washed her face, paws pushing against her legs as she knelt down to say hello. “Yeah, okay, hang on a minute.”
    The act of clicking the leash onto Georgie’s collar and shoving a few poo bags into her jacket pocket was familiar enough to be soothing, as was watching her dog’s simple pleasure at the smell of the air outside, the feel of grass under her paws, and the relief of being able to pee. The shar-pei dragged her from one end of the designated dog walking area to the