Read Clawed: A Gin & Tonic Mystery for Free Online

of heated smarter-than-you gamesmanship. And drinking. Teddy both hated it and loved it. Usually more the former than the latter, by the time he kicked the last person out and could close up.
    But it was routine, honed to perfection over the past few years. He had woken up around eleven, gone for his morning run, then showered and headed into work to open the bar for Stacy before heading out again to run some errands and coming back for his own shift. A perfectly ordinary day, no urgent phone calls or sudden disasters, nothing at all odd about it . . .
    Except there had been a niggling sense of something missing, something out of order. He gave the bar a quick once-over but found nothing that could explain it. He hadn’t turned the stove on that morning, so he couldn’t have left it on, and his coffeemaker was timed to shut off on its own.
    It wasn’t until he’d stumbled over doing his receipts that he’d realized what was missing: Ginny. And Georgie. Not that it was unusual for her to go a day or two without coming by, but Tuesdays had been sacred for as long as he’d known her. She was slightly fanatical about her team—a little competitive, was Ginny Mallard.
    Except she hadn’t been quite so into it the past few months, had she?
    Shaking his head, he told himself that he should be glad if Ginny was losing interest in trivia, because it meant his team could win more often. Not that, as manager, he played often anymore . . . When you had to keep an eye on everything both in front of and behind the bar, it was tough to focus on the questions.
    He finished pouring the current round of orders and took a thirty-second breather to check the action. Trivia Night wouldn’t start for another four hours, at nine o’clock, but someone had already pulled three of the smaller tables together, although there were only two people at it right now. He made a mental note that there would be a larger group hitting soon. Most of the other tables had bodies at them, but only half the bar stools were taken. It was normal enough business for an afternoon, not like Thursdays or Fridays, when people were starting to let off steam for the weekend.
    Not that anyone ever let off too much steam here, thankfully. He’d worked all kind of places over the years, from trendy clubs to dives, and Mary’s was his favorite—a neighborhood joint, warm but not flashy, where you took someone you’d already kissed, and liked kissing, and planned to kiss again.
    Or—he raised a hand to greet newcomers, already reaching for the pint glass, knowing what they would order—where you went and ordered the same thing every single time, and expected the bartender to know that . . . because he did.
    “I’m working in a sitcom,” he muttered, and the woman waiting for her drink grinned at him. “Not Norm!”
    “You’re all Norm,” he shot back, to the confusion of the twenty-somethings waiting their turn. And for a moment, just a moment, the sense of something being out of place subsided.
    “Hey, boss, Seth says we’re out of bread because, and I quote, we have two-legged locusts, end quote, and should he run out and buy more bread or just tell ’em the kitchen’s closed?” Stacy widened her eyes at him, waiting for an answer, even as she loaded the three waiting beers onto her tray.
    “Jesus, it’s barely seven, the kitchen just opened.” He’d accuse Seth of tossing perfectly usable bread because he didn’t want to make more sandwiches, except the older man might take a swing at him. Or quit. He’d come back after Teddy groveled a little but that was an extra argh he really didn’t need this week. Any week. They’d hired a second waitress last month, but it wasn’t enough. They needed more people, and they needed people who would stick around.
    Once upon a time, he’d just been lead bartender: no responsibilities, no obligations, no need to mediate. A lot fewer headaches. Where had it all gone wrong?
    “Tell him to keep the