He scowled down at his plate. “This is putting me off my pie.”
“Nothing could put me off this pie, not even Summerset sex. But, God.”
“Say no more about it. I’m deadly serious.” He pulled a leather strip out of his pocket, tied his hair back into a stub of a tail.
Letting pie and coffee soothe away the weird thoughts and images, Eve began to pick through the bar receipts.
In her designated time frame she found only one cash payment, and the itemized receipt management provided listed.
Two mineral waters, the first according to the time stamp ordered four minutes after Mars placed her drink order.
Just water, she thought. No caffeine to make you jumpy, no alcohol to slow your reaction times. Two waters, and a serving of spiced almonds. Just enough to hold a table for one without causing any interest.
She culled through, found what had to be the group of four. Eight drinks, two fancy appetizers—group size. She ran the name on the credit card.
Jonah R. Ongar
She ran him, sat back, drumming her fingers on the counter. After printing out ID shots, she rose, walked to her board to add them.
“You have something?” Roarke asked her.
“Two of the four—and it was a group of four. Four types of drinks times two orders of same. This one paid for the table, so we’ll have a talk. Ongar is thirty-two, single, no marriages on record, currently cohabbed with Cheyenne Case, thirty-one, mixed race—who I’m betting was one of the four at the table. She’s city government, works in procurement. He’s one of the legal team for the New York Times. No major criminal bumps on either. She’s been arrested a few times in protests, and he’s got a D and D that’s a decade old—and just happened to come down on his twenty-first birthday. They live downtown, about six bloc
ks from the bar.”
Eve sat, studied the new faces on her board. “I’ll talk to them tomorrow. And I’ve got this guy.” She ordered another printout. “The single walk out, according to the credit receipt. I also have a wit statement from the guy he was drinking with. Business associates, discussing a mutual project over drinks. The wit stayed back to take a ’link tag that came through just as they were about to leave. Associate had another meet—wit states this—so went on his way. Wit took the tag, a personal one from his sister, which we’ll confirm easily enough. They look clear to me, but we’ll check them.”
Still, she added them to the board.
“The two women who left together?”
“Mallie Baxter paid—they each had one drink and the straw things DeWinter likes. Mixed-race female, age twenty-six, one former cohab, no marriages. Assistant manager at some downtown boutique. No criminal. Again, looks clear, but we could have a partnership. One covers the bar area, one follows her down, does the job.”
“The third man in the group of five?”
“Paid cash—the only one who paid cash in the time period I set up. Two mineral waters and some fancy nuts. First water order minutes after Mars ordered her drink. I get a time stamp on his cash payment, six minutes, twelve seconds before I engaged my recorder. I need to know who served him the drinks, get a description.”
“Put up the receipt.”
Eve called it up on screen.
“He ordered and paid through the menu app—that’s the clever way to do this,” Roarke told her. “Minimal contact with waitstaff.”
“How can you tell?”
“There’s a code for it on the receipt. And for the section as well. Give me a minute.”
He did something on the computer, waited a beat. “I’ve got the section here and, according to the schedule, Cesca Garlini had it tonight.”
“She waited on us. He was in the same section.”
“On screen,” Roarke ordered, and the table layout for the bar flashed on. “Where were you?”
She snagged a laser pointer. “This booth. DeWinter already had her drink on the table, so I sat with my back to the door. I thought about switching—it just bothers me—but figured she’d just make a thing. Ah, Mars was here, her back to me. Or more her side. Where was the third man?”
“Here. A two top—high top. That’s behind you.”
She closed her eyes, tried to bring it back. Walking in, doing that automatic, instinctive scan of the area. “You’ve got a lot of flowers and ferny things. And fancy bottles. A wall along the side of the booths with flowerpots on it. I couldn’t get a view of the room over it. Somebody … impression only. I can’t see him because he’s behind the damn flowers.”