The attractive, thirty-something hostess — a tall brunette in a crisp white shirt with a tux tie and a black skirt — stood at a low-slung narrow lectern with a seating chart and a reservation book in front of her.
The woman had a ready, if brittle, smile.
“Good evening,” the hostess said. “I’m Julia — how many tonight?”
“Just one. Nonsmoking, please.”
“Did you have a reservation?”
Brennan shook her head.
Julia swiftly scanned her book, then said, “It’ll be a short time before a table is available. You can wait in the bar, if you’d like. Your name?”
“Brennan.”
The hostess wrote in her book.
“Julia, maybe you can help me. I heard a friend of a friend works here — Lisa Vitto? Is she on tonight?”
The hostess’s smile remained but her eyes tightened. “Friend of a friend? Ms. Brennan, are you by any chance police?”
“No,” Brennan said, and affected shock and confusion. “I’m an anthropologist, if it matters.”
Julia didn’t know what to say to that; her eyes cut to the bar, then returned to Brennan.
“Lisa’s a bartender?” Brennan asked.
With a little shrug, Julia said, “You didn’t hear it from me. I’ll go check on your table now.”
As the hostess disappeared into the dining room, Brennan went the other way into the small bar.
A couple sat at one of the dark tables off to the left while two or three middle-aged guys sat at the bar smoking cigarettes, nursing drinks, and watching the ball game joylessly.
The bartender was helped out by a single server, a haggard brunette in her late thirties wearing a white tuxedo shirt, black bow tie, and black slacks; she seemed surrounded by the bar as if life had provided her no way to get out.
Brennan selected one of the tall stools, sitting as far away from the smokers and the couple at the table as she could get.
Down the nearby wall hung framed photographs at various levels — the same two men, perhaps the owners, sometimes both, sometimes singly, were in almost every shot, shaking hands or getting kissed or hugged by presumed celebrities whose grinning faces Brennan mostly didn’t recognize.
Slowly, the bartender, who was almost beautiful, worked her way down to Brennan.
The woman had a heart-shaped face with large dark mascara-heavy eyes and a full red-lipsticked mouth; she might have been anywhere from her late twenties to early forties. A few gray streaks highlighted her hair, whether provided by otherwise ineffectual years or the beauty shop, Brennan couldn’t say.
She smiled, not at all brittle. “Long day?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I’m gonna guess wine.”
“Not your first night back there,” Brennan said with her own smile. “Chardonnay, please.”
“I coulda guessed that, too,” the bartender said, and lifted a glass from a shelf behind her before going over to pick out a bottle of wine.
She pulled the cork, poured, and brought the brimming glass down to Brennan. “There you go, sweetie.”
The word brought Brennan’s friend Angie to mind, and she immediately felt warmth toward this woman. An illogical response, but after two days digging out skeletons, Brennan would allow herself that.
Putting a twenty on the counter, Brennan kept a finger on it until the bartender tugged on it, then looked at her, still smiling but curious.
“I’ll, uh, bring you your change…”
Brennan said, “I’m not looking for change.”
“What are you looking for, honey?”
“Lisa Vitto…. Isn’t that you?”
The woman’s eyes flickered around the bar before returning to Brennan’s.
“I can use the twenty,” she admitted, in a whisper, “but not the grief. So I will bring you your change, you don’t mind.”
“Your choice.”
When she delivered the change, the bartender said, still whispering, “A female cop, this time? What’s the idea coming around the restaurant?”
“I’m not a cop. I’m just hungry. And thirsty.” She sipped the wine, but kept her eyes on the bartender.
“My name is Temperance Brennan — I’m a forensic anthropologist.”
“Well, uh… I guess somebody has to be. Whatever that is.”
“I’m a scientist. I study bones. I work at a museum, in DC.” She shrugged lightly. “So, you know, sometimes I help out the government…?”
The bartender turned, went down to the other end of the bar, gave the game guys some fresh beers, then slowly, seeming to think about it as she wiped the bar, made her way back to Brennan.
“So, then, sometimes you study bones for the FBI,” she said, the whisper hoarse and throaty. A guy would have found it sexy; Brennan read it as desperate.
She sipped wine. “On occasion.”
“You want to ask about Stewart.”
It was not a question.
And “Stewart” was her boyfriend, Stewart Musetti, Booth’s missing, presumably abducted witness.
“Yes, Lisa, I would.”
She shook her head and dark hairsprayed-shellacked locks bounced, or tried to. “Listen, Ms. Brennan — God knows I’d like to help find Stewart. But I told the FBI everything I know.”
“You’re sure.”
Lisa Vitto nodded. “And you do know where you are? Who owns this place?”
The Gianellis.
Brennan ignored the question, asking her own: “Do you love him?”
Tears welled in the bartender’s eyes and she wiped them away with a napkin she picked up from the edge of the bar; the industrial-strength eye makeup was unaffected. “Yes. I do. But you make it sound like he’s alive.”
“He might be.”
Her eyes were tearing again and she was shaking her head. “From your lips to God’s ears.”
“Lisa, did you tell the FBI guys that you love Stewart?”
“No.”
Casually, she asked, “What else didn’t you tell them?”
The glittering eyes tightened. “Honestly, I don’t know. I suppose there are things they didn’t ask about, but… I can’t think of a goddamn thing. I mean it.”
“Do you have any idea where he is?”
Lisa glanced around the bar again. “Look — I got a couple ideas on that score, but they aren’t about where he is.”
“I don’t follow.”
“They’re about where his body would be.”
“Oh. How about sharing one of those ideas?”
Behind the moisture, the eyes were hard. “I think they gave my guy a ride on the ol’ Dunes Express.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Brennan said.
“You don’t want to know, honey. They killed him, and they buried him. Deep.”
“They? You mean the father and son who own this place?”
Lisa just stared at her.
“You think they’re behind the death of the man you love, and yet you still work here.”
Nodding, Lisa said, “Stewart stood up to them, and look what that got him. He was brave, I’m not…. By staying on here, I show them where I stand.”
“That you stand with them, you mean? Not Stewart?”
“That’s right, because, honey? Stewart isn’t standing at all right now. He’s lyin’ down… and he ain’t never ever gonna get up again, much less get back at these boys.”
If I can find where he’s buried, Brennan thought, he might….
“Thank you, Lisa,” Brennan said, and she handed the woman a business card with the name and number of her hotel on the back. “If you think of anything, give me a call.”
Lisa arched an eyebrow. “If I do, it won’t be from here.”
But the bartender took the card, slipped it up her sleeve and moved down the bar without another word.
Brennan turned and found a man standing behind her.