“Laissez les bon temps rouler.”
She stopped, stared. “What?”
He smiled. “We’ll have to go down for Mardi Gras one of these days.”
“Yeah, that’s what we’ll do. Go party with the drunks, the street thieves, and the half-naked people riding on those—whatever they are.”
“Floats. Should I arrange for a shuttle?”
She rubbed her eyes. “Damn it. It’s a stone, and you’ve got to turn it over. It just feels like I’m not going to find anything under it but those creepy bugs.”
“Ants are industrious and useful.”
“No, not those. Those little white wriggling—never mind,” she said when her ’link signaled. “Dallas.”
“Oh, hey, um, Lieutenant Dallas, this is Darci at Salon Pro. You and Detective Peabody came in this afternoon. I got all flustered because I just so hearted the Icove vid.”
“I remember.” Just as Eve remembered the squeals emanating from the perfectly coiffed and made-up twentysomething assistant manager with the enormous, emeralds-on-steroids eyes. “Did you find something on the nail kit?”
“No. I mean I didn’t. I’m going to get flustered again! We don’t have a record of a sale of the Adora Nail It deluxe with the On a Moonlit Sea polish, but my friend Carrie—she’s salesperson of the month—we were just talking about it because she totally hearted the vid, too. And she was all sad she was on a break when you and Detective Peabody came in so she didn’t get to meet you and—”
“Darci.” For the sake of her own sanity, Eve interrupted. “Do you have any information for me?”
“Okay, well yeah, that’s the thing. We’re talking, Carrie and me, when we’re closing up for the day, and I’m telling her, and she says how it’s abso on the weird that she sold this old man, I mean this older gentleman, a Lovelle Pro Deluxe Faux Nail kit with the choice—it has a deal where you get one choice of standard Lovelle color, or a discount on the Super—and he got the Super in Midnight Madness.”
Eve stabbed a finger at Roarke, said, “Peabody.”
“She said how she thought oh crap when he came in because it was pretty close to closing, but he knew just what he wanted. The brand, the color, so it was just peasy, right? I mean it’s not the kit and color you said, but the thing is,” Darci went on, “there’s not a whole lot of difference in the product. I mean to say, they’re, um, comparable, so we sort of wondered if maybe there was a mistake on the brand.”
“It’s possible.” Comp glitch, she remembered.
Convenient.
“When did he come in, when did he buy the kit?”
“Oh, just yesterday, Carrie said, and I went ahead and checked the receipts. Cash purchase at, um, four-fifty-eight. He had a pro license and everything.”
Peabody came on the run, with Roarke and McNab behind her. Eve held up a hand. “You have in-store security feed.” She’d seen the cams.
“Oh yeah, sure. You gotta.”
“Do you have the feed from yesterday when he was in?”
“Uh-huh.”
Eve doubted two syllables had ever brought her such pleasure.
“We loop it back every forty-eight hours, so—”
“I need to see that feed, Darci. I’d rather not take the time to come to you, so I need you to send me the feed.”
“Oh, I mean, I know the boss would want me to do whatever, but I don’t know how to do that. It’s just me and Carrie here now, and—”
A second woman shoved her face next to Darci’s and waved frantically.
“That’s Carrie, and it’s just that we don’t know how to do that.”
Before Eve could yank out her own hair, Roarke nipped the ’link out of her hand. “Hello, Darci, why don’t I walk you through how to do what the lieutenant needs?”
“Oh! My! God!” The squeals followed, in stereo, and knowing his wife’s threshold for such things, Roarke strolled out into the hall.
“He’s the right age. Run Dawber, Peabody.”
“You think—Jesus. Dawber—do we have his full name?”
“Fuck me.” Eve squeezed her eyes shut, took herself back to the lab, to Harvo, to the walk to Dawber’s area. “Andy. Try Andrew. Dawber, Andrew. See if he was adopted or in the foster system.”
“Dallas, if I can have your desk unit, I can set it up for what Roarke’s having them send you.”