How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Gillian Roberts

asked.
    He nodded. “I’ve got five grandkids myself,” he said softly. “I’ll give it my best. And I’ll explain about having to report it next time, except that might make her switch casinos, not habits.”
    I hugged Lucky, suggested that next time he bring along books and crayons and something electronic for entertainment. Maybe if he made enough little-boy mess and noise, and I made some very real grown-up noise, our combined impact would stun the management into noticing that they had both children and a problem on their hands.
    I checked the desk for messages, but Mackenzie had obviously not yet located Dunstan Farmer, a situation I found both frustrating and oddly satisfying. I left a message as to my whereabouts and set off for Frankie.
    There were very few patrons in the bar. My back hurt and my head was dizzy with competing problems. I wanted wine along with information, but I hadn’t eaten all day and was afraid of making alcohol my midday meal. I sat down at the curved teak bar and ordered a glass of mineral water. “I’m Amanda Pepper,” I said, to jog his memory.
    “Hey, no problem.” I found that response distinctly confusing. “I’m permitted to serve alcohol to strangers,” he added. Obviously, I had not made much of an impression on him.
    He didn’t ask for my ID, either. I have not, alas, been carded in the past three years, since two days after my twenty-eighth birthday, not that I’m counting.
    “I’m Sasha Berg’s friend. I met you last night.”
    He sucked in his breath and nodded. “Big mess, all right,” he said. “I can’t believe it, just can’t believe it. You’re the roomie, okay. But where were you? I mean when it…it happened in your room.”
    “Out. On a date. All night.” I felt a recidivist flash of embarrassed fear, as if Frankie might phone my mother. “Mandy didn’t come home all night,” he’d tattle.
    He did some more deep breathing. “You know, she came in here yesterday to say hello when you were checking in, and I thought maybe I’d impress her. Always had a soft spot for Sasha. So I called on a favor and got her that suite. Didn’t know you were along, by the way. Then Reese shows up dead in that very room. Some way to impress a girl, right? She was going to meet me here when my shift ended. Finally going to get the girl, like in a movie, only my luck…” He shook his head and sighed.
    “Do you remember what time she came in here last night?”
    He shrugged. “Tenish? I dunno. I been stuck with two shifts, covering for a sick pal, like today again, and it gets blurry.” He was tall, with wide shoulders, around Sasha’s height, but quite slender. He didn’t fit the witness’s description of a small man—unless the man was referring to girth, not height, but even so, and despite his candid style, I couldn’t bring myself to trust him completely. Frankie was still in the best position to have set Sasha up.
    “If we can get her out, maybe you can still get the girl,” I said. “You know her date? This Dunstan Farmer?”
    “Never heard of him.”
    “How about Jesse Reese?”
    Frankie shrugged. He was probably a good and classic bartender, best at responding quietly to others’ stories, but not too good at telling his own. This was the time for the other night’s—impossible to believe it was only last night’s—aggressive and verbal bartender, but life doesn’t work out that way. “Knew him like I’d know you if you came here on a regular basis and talked a little.”
    “Is—Was—he a drinker?”
    Frankie shook his head. “Not particularly, although last night he seemed tanked by the time he left. Probably would have flagged him if he’d asked for more. Started celebrating somewhere else, I guess.”
    Not tanked. Drugged, Mackenzie had said. Very possibly and logically in here. By Frankie? Was his wide-eyed speculation all an act? “What time was that?” I asked, inwardly begging him not to say with Sasha or when Sasha left