Jonathon King - A Killing Night

I arrived just before seven and half the stools at the bar were taken. I took an open one at the close end near the windows and the door. A Steve Winwood CD was playing on the juke and the manager, a pretty woman with shoulder-length brown hair who I knew as Laurie was gathering receipts while a younger woman was refilling ice. Laurie looked over first.

"Hey, stranger. Haven't seen you in a while."

I nodded my hello.

"Rolling Rock, right?"

"Perfect."

Laurie turned to the other girl who pulled a cold bottle from the cooler and set it on a napkin in front of me.

"Hi," she said. "Run a tab?"

"Hi. No. Thanks," I answered, putting twenty on the bar top. "I'll pay as I go."

She had a clean, pretty face. Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota came to mind. She was bringing my change back when Richards came through the door. Determined.

She was wearing jeans and a collared blouse and her hair was pulled back and twisted into a severe bun. I turned away once she spotted me and looked down the length of the bar and my eye caught movement. A man at the opposite end got up faster than most comfortable drinkers would and started for the dim hallway. Guy just recognized a cop walk in the room, I thought, a grin pulling at my mouth. I marked him at about six feet tall, lean, clean trimmed dark hair from the back, and I would have let his image slip right through my head but for the look that the young bartender had on her face when she did a double take. First on the man, then back on Richards as she made it to my elbow and then back to the man disappearing into the hallway. There was a touch of confusion in her eyes that had melted into suspicion when she turned back to us. Richards said something to me but I was watching the girl as she walked down to the vacated place at the other end, picked up the money the man had left and the half-drunk bottle of beer. It was my brand.

"Max?"

Richards was repeating my name.

"Sorry," I said, turning to her. Her eye color was a definite gray and the eyes themselves were tightened down from lack of sleep.

"This is the manager?" she asked, nodding at Laurie.

"Yeah."

Laurie looked up from her receipts and Richards bobbed her chin up in a beckoning motion. Laurie raised an index finger, one minute please, calculating something in her head before coming over. Richards didn't like the finger, I could see it in the flex of her jaw muscle. But she let it ride.

"Sherry Richards, we talked on the phone?" she said when Laurie made it over.

"Oh, hi, yeah. Just let me get my things. We can sit back there if that's OK?"

The three of us took a table in the far corner. I brought my bottle with me.

"You two obviously know each other," Laurie said, and I apologized.

"Max Freeman," I said, reaching across the table to shake her hand.

"Rolling Rock," she said, smiling.

"You're very good at that. Remembering, I mean."

She shrugged.

"Part of the business. Half the people who come in here I know by their drinks. Half I know by their first names."

"Any full names?" Richards said.

"A handful," she said, looking Richards in the eye. "You know, it's informal. It's just the way it is."

"You ever see this guy in here?" Richards asked, taking out a shot of O'Shea and handing it across the table. She wasn't wasting any time worrying about tainting an eyewitness with a single suspect photo.

"Yeah. Not a real regular and not recently, but yeah, he's been in here. Uh, bottle of Bud and Irish whiskey, I think."

"Do you know if he knew Suzy? Dated her? Took her home some night?"

Laurie brought out a manila file folder and opened it on the table. Now she was all business, too.

"Like I told you on the phone, Detective, Suzy only worked here four months, till the end of the year. September eight, to, uh, just after New Year's, the third," she said, looking at the dates on the top sheet in the file. "Biggest paydays of the year, then she splits."

She looked over at me like I'd be sympathetic.

"I never had a complaint, but she mostly worked the later shifts when I wasn't around. She worked that last weekend and left."

"Disappeared," Richards said. "No forwarding address. No calls back to you for references. Didn't pick up her last check."

Laurie was answering each question with a shake of her head.

"I hadn't even heard her name mentioned until last week when her mom called all upset and then I reported it like she asked.

"I wish I had more for her mom, and you, but I don't," she said and pushed the folder an inch closer to Richards and crossed her arms. The manager was getting defensive.

"Laurie," I jumped in, pulling her eyes to me. "How unusual is that? I mean for an employee to just walk away?"

"It happens a lot. Not as much in a place like this, but in the big, high-traffic clubs, a lot. The girls can make good money, but they move around from place to place. Sometimes they'll work in three different bars at the same time. Different shifts, different days. If they decide to drop one, they just do it. Sometimes without telling anyone."

"What do you mean by not so much in a place like this?" I said.

"This is more of a neighborhood place. Quieter. You don't have to yell over the bass music just to take an order. The girls actually like to work here to take a break from those places. At least you can talk to the customers here."

"Was Suzy friendly with any specific customers?" Richards asked, pulling the conversation back on line.

"Not that I know of. A couple of guys asked where she went but they're our regulars. They get uncomfortable if things change. It's like a routine for them."

"So you don't know if anyone tried to pick her up?"

Laurie smiled.

"Honey, they're always trying. But Suzy was pretty shy. Kinda quiet. Some of the bartenders get into the girl talk thing. Even know each other's last names. But mostly they hang out with each other and do the other bars together, but they don't get that personal.

"They'll say 'whoa, check out gin and tonic down at the end' or they'll describe some date they had with the big tipper who went dutch over at Coyote's. You know, typical stuff. You were there."

This last comment was directed at Richards, who tried to look surprised.

"Yeah. I heard about you working some shifts over at Runyon's and Guppy's," Laurie said. "Gossip like that gets around."

"Not that it did any good," Richards said, looking away, the first time I'd seen her lose that hard edge of hers in public.

"Well, it did scare the shit out of everybody," Laurie said. "The girls started being more careful. They did this little half-serious game of picking out the killer in each shift."

"Yeah? And did they come up with any consensus?" Richards asked, digging right back in.

"Sure. Carmine. That creepy little delivery boy from the Italian place who is under age and is always trying to schmooze a drink."

She laughed at some mental image of Carmine. Richards was not amused.

"So, what? It's a joke and everything goes back to normal?"

"Almost," Laurie said, tightening her mouth back up. "But not until Josie, this girl who worked three different places and then dropped out of sight and nobody knew where."

Richards got out a notebook from her jeans pocket to write something down.

"Three weeks later she comes waltzing back in here one night with a big rock on her finger telling everybody how the Chivas Regal guy and her eloped to Vegas," Laurie said, again looking straight at Richards. "Then everything went back to normal."

The table went quiet for a couple of moments.

"Anyone else here close to Suzy we could talk to?" I said, making an obvious motion to the girl working behind the bar who I had been watching in the mirrored wall next to us. It may have just been her curiosity, but somebody she had more than a customer relationship with had bolted out of here when Richards came in and the bartender noticed it, and now she was way too twitchy watching her boss talk to us.