“You can look, go on and look, all my texts. I can show you.”
“I can find them.” Eve called them up, ignored the gossip, the nonsense, the bullshit displayed. And saw ever yone with the Jadar signature line.
“All right, did you lend your ’link to anybody?”
“As if!”
“Was it in your possession all evening?”
“Right on the table.”
“Right on the table, say, when you all got up to dance.”
“Sure. Nobody’s going to steal it, right? And I’ve got more at home anyway. Not like my hoodie. Somebody took my hoodie right off the booth, and it was my favorite mink. Anyway, I didn’t text Loxie.”
“I need the ’link. I’ll give you a receipt.”
Janis sighed. “Bummed.”
“Run it through for me, from the time she came in.”
“Okay, well, I saw her over at the G-man’s booth. He was there with a group, and I saw her hitting on him pretty hard, but he didn’t bite, right? So she came over to hang with us, took my drink, right, Dodo?”
“Slurped it right down. You gave her a tab of—Hey,” Dodo objected when Janis jabbed her with an elbow. “What the fuck does she care?”
“Anyway,” Janis said quickly. “Loxie said how she needed another drink, but then she slithered up Bennie to dance some sexy, then she came back, drank her drink down. Then she … she fell on the floor. Plop, then puke. Everybody scrambled up because, wow. I didn’t think she really died. I didn’t think.”
Do you ever? Eve wondered. “How did she get the drink, the one she had before she died?”
“Ah … I guess she ordered it?”
“Who served it?”
Janis shrugged, looked at Dodo. Another shrug, looked at Bennie.
“It was there when we came back to the booth.”
Eve looked at the second male, got a snarky smile.
“Speak.”
“Little tits. I notice tits.” He brushed his hand over the partially covered breast of the woman currently curled up, passed out, and snoring beside him.
“The server had small breasts.”
“Barely made bumps in her top. Like yours.”
She let that pass. “Did you happen to notice anything else about her?”
“Some fan.” He started to reach for the unconscious woman’s breast again, caught the hard glint in Eve’s eyes. Laid his roaming hand back on his thigh.
“Why do you assume that?”
“I assume it wasn’t a waitress because they all wear short black skirts and tight red tops, and she wasn’t. Hangers-on send over drinks all the time. And other things,” he added with that smile.
“What was she wearing?”
“It wasn’t that. Home dye job, red, fake side dreads, blue.”