City of Fear. Alafair Burke

      He squinted, mentally pulling up an image of the body he’d seen at the crime scene. ‘You’re sure?’

      ‘Positive.’

      He was silent for a few seconds, and Ellie assumed he was having the same thoughts that ran through her mind when she’d first made the observation. No pawnshop would buy what was obviously costume jewelry, so there was no point following that avenue. The earrings could have fallen out in a struggle. Or, more interestingly, they could have been removed as a souvenir.

      ‘Any ideas about how we use that information?’ Rogan asked.

      ‘Not yet.’

      ‘Well, at least we know what to look for.’

      ‘If only we knew where to look.’

      Bell returned from the back office carrying a thin stack of paper just as Rogan’s cell phone rang. Rogan flipped open the phone, read the screen, and excused himself to the corner of the bar.

      Bell handed Ellie a two-page document, neatly stapled together in the upper left-hand corner. ‘This is a list of bills last night for parties with bottle service – amounts with form of payment. A couple of them paid cash, but there’s a bunch of credit cards there as well.’

      Ellie gave the single-spaced document a quick scan and had to suppress a cough. The two parties who paid with cash had racked up bills of nearly a thousand dollars each. Most of the credit card charges went into the four digits.

      ‘Are these charges just for drinks?’ she asked.

      Bell folded his arms across his chest, his confidence returning for a subject matter that was familiar territory. ‘Depends on what you mean by ‘just drinks’. We don’t serve food, that’s for sure. But people pay big for bottle service.’

      ‘That just means you pay for a bottle of liquor. Even if you use a triple markup, how much can that be?’

      ‘We don’t look at it as a markup.’ His grin told a different story. ‘It’s not just a bottle. It’s bottle service. You get the VIP room. You get a private server assigned to your room to mix and pour the drinks. It’s the personal touch that people are paying for.’

      ‘That,’ Rogan said, returning from his phone call, ‘and not having to wait in a five-man-deep crowd around the bar, just to get a drink.’

      Ellie suddenly got the picture. In a world where a $15 martini bought you crummy service, the wealthy were willing to pay for something different.

      ‘So how much is, I don’t know, a bottle of Grey Goose, for example?’

      ‘We’re at $350.’

      Now she did allow herself a cough.

      ‘Bungalow 8’s at $400,’ Bell continued. ‘I hear a few places are about to go even higher.’