“Who interviewed the person for the job?”
“Came from an agency.”
“You know which one?”
The barman looked at Decker. “Why, you hit from that side of the plate?”
Decker pulled out his police credentials. “Working a case. This person might be someone I need to talk to.”
The man studied the credentials and said, “Okay. Matter of fact, I don’t know which one. It just showed up one day and started working.”
“And you didn’t question that?”
“Hey, we needed a waitress. The other one didn’t show. Said she’d been sent by the temp agency that management uses. So I put it to work.”
“When was this?”
“Day before you came in with that other guy.”
“And if she hadn’t been sent by the temp agency?”
“Well, why the hell would it lie about that?”
“You have a restroom here just for employees?”
“Yeah, in the back.”
“The person ever use it?”
“I’m sure it did. Everyone has to take a pee or something more, right? Either standing up or sitting down.”
“Show me.”
The barman led him down a rear hall to a battered door marked RESTROOM.
“You got any duct tape?” Decker asked.
“In the back.”
“Get it for me.”
The confused barman left and returned a minute later with a roll.
Decker proceeded to tape off the door with long strips crisscrossing the doorway.
“What the hell are you doing?”
asked the barman.
“I’ll have a forensics team here in five minutes. No one goes in.”
“But what if I have to use the facilities?”
“Use the one the paying customers do. And you’re going to be asked to give a description of it, so start racking your memory for every little detail.”
Decker made the call to Lancaster.
She said, “I’ll send them right now. How was your talk with Bogart?”
“Predictable.”
He clicked off and walked outside.
He had solved two things by coming here.
First, the waitress had taken the photograph of him and Leopold at the bar and sent it and the story elements to Alexandra Jamison. She was the only one who could have done it. The intent had been to ruin Decker’s reputation, to the extent he had one. But more than that, they wanted him to maybe even start questioning the truth.
Second, she had left the bar, gotten a car, and picked up Leopold when he left the bar. It must have been a hybrid or electric car, because Decker had not heard a car engine and he would have.
In the frames in his mind there was only the barman left that day when Leopold had exited. The waitress wasn’t there. Because she’d gone for the car.
* * *
A man in women’s clothing.
Or maybe a woman who used to be a man dressed in women’s clothing. It was like that movie he’d seen years ago with James Garner and Julie Andrews, Victor Victoria.
And maybe the waitress was Sebastian Leopold’s partner in crime.
Decker had not looked at the person’s feet, but now desperately wished he had. But if he had to guess, she would have been wearing a size nine. He tried to estimate her height in his mind. He had been sitting. She might have been wearing heels. He rolled the frames through.
Maybe five-ten or -eleven. And slim, with narrow shoulders and hips.
He held it up, measured it with his eye. It was a boot with no heel, but rather a thickened sole running the length of the footwear. Wearing it would raise a person’s height about three or so inches. And he concluded that it would do so more effectively than a heel. Three-inch heels would severely limit one’s agility. This was simply like walking on a level raised platform. He placed the boot against his own shoe. Far smaller. Nine or nine and a half.
He found the matching one a few seconds later.
He put the boots on the floor. Even though he couldn’t wedge his far larger feet inside them, he was able to stand on top of them.
Six-five instantly became six-eight.
The same way five-ten or five-eleven became six-two.