Family Money(42)

I took a shot in the dark. “Can you tell me if someone named Greta Malone was a guest here at that same time?”

“Like I said, I’m not allowed—”

“Come on, help me out. It’ll take you two seconds to check, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

The clerk gave another quick glance over his shoulder, then typed on his keyboard. “No Greta Malone.”

“Anyone else around here you think might be helpful to me?”

“The most connected person here is Ms. Marley. She runs a bar downstairs called Off The Record. The bar is closed right now, but she usually comes in early to get things rolling.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

I found my way down to an upscale lounge that basically felt hidden in the basement of the hotel. As the clerk suggested, the bar was currently closed, but I did see some activity in the back. I navigated the oversize wingback chairs sitting below brass chandeliers and noticed all the caricatures of political figures on the walls. A young guy with a well-trimmed beard wearing a white button-down shirt and a gray vest was stacking up glasses behind the bar.

“How’re you doing?” I said, stepping up to the bar.

“Good, man. We don’t open for a bit.”

“I know. Any chance Ms. Marley is around?”

He nodded over his shoulder. “In the back.”

“You mind asking her if I can have a moment?”

“She’s a little busy right now.”

He didn’t seem overly eager to be helpful. I reached into my pocket, took out some cash, and placed a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. “I’d really appreciate it.”

He eyeballed it for only a second before snagging it. “You got a name?”

“Alex. But she doesn’t know me.”

After stuffing the twenty in his pocket, he walked to a door into the back of the bar and disappeared. I stood there for a few minutes, wondering if the guy had taken my money and just gone for a smoke break. But finally, a woman in probably her late forties with bleached blonde hair, wearing the same white shirt and gray vest combo, appeared from the back.

“You looking for me?” she asked.

She had a raspy smoker’s voice.

“You’re Ms. Marley?”

“Depends. What do you want?”

“I come in peace, I promise. I’m just looking for some answers about my father-in-law, who was killed earlier this week. He stayed here at the hotel about ten days ago. I wondered if he might have come into the bar.”

My explanation seemed to disarm some of her initial skepticism about me. Ms. Marley made her way closer to me and stood behind the bar. “How was he killed, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“We were on a family trip to Mexico. He was kidnapped. We found him dead the next day.”

“Sorry to hear that. But what does that have to do with my bar?”

“I’m not sure. I think his death might somehow be connected to some people he met with while he was in DC.”

“You have a photo?”

I nodded, pulled up a photo of Joe on my phone, showed it to her.

Ms. Marley tilted her head, her shoulder sagging. “No, really?”

“You recognize him?”

“Yeah, I do. He gave me a monster tip.”

“Joe was a very generous man.”

“Yeah, he was a sweet guy. He got me talking about my daughter, and I told him how I was struggling to pay for her college tuition. I think his bill was only, like, thirty dollars or something. But his tip was for five hundred. He wrote a nice little note, wishing me and my daughter the best of luck. Sucks to hear a guy like that is no longer with us.”

“Was he in here by himself?”

She shook her head. “No.”

I pulled up another photo on my phone of Greta Malone, taken from a recent campaign event. “Was he with her?”

Ms. Marley stared at the photo. “Yep. They sat over there at that table.” She pointed toward a booth against the wall. “There were two other guys with them.”

This caught my attention. “Really?”

“Yeah. It looked like serious business. They weren’t laughing it up and telling stories like most others do in here.”

I wondered if one of the guys could’ve been Ethan Tucker. I had not thought to ask Sheila Tucker if Ethan had taken a recent trip to DC. On my phone, I quickly went back to the website for Ethan’s financial firm, pulled up his profile page, which had thankfully not yet been taken down, and showed it to Ms. Marley. “Was this one of the guys?”

“Yep.”

“What did the other guy look like?”

“Bald with a thick mustache. Decent shape. About your height. Maybe a few years younger than your father-in-law. He was the first one here and sat at the end of the bar for a bit until the others arrived.”

Bald with a thick mustache? I thought of the guy who had followed me around downtown and whom I’d spotted with me in Dallas yesterday.

“Probably a long shot, but any chance you noticed if the bald guy had a crossed-cannons navy tattoo on his left wrist?”

“Bingo. That’s the guy. I notice everything, hon. I even asked him about it because my brother served in the navy.”

“You get his name?”