“No. Only a few servers work Fridays—the most senior people. I’ve only been there a year. I always wanted to know what made Fridays so special. So I saved up and bought a ticket.” She shrugged, trying for nonchalance, but Grant saw the disappointment in her eyes. “Richard saw me at the bar and decided he’d take me home.”

“Was it worth it? The ticket price, I mean,” he added when her penciled brows shot up her forehead.

“Oh.” She laughed. “Not really. The clientele is richer. I saw a lot of fur coats, which I didn’t know was even still a thing.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “The bar jacked up the booze prices, I can tell you that. I nursed a twenty-five-dollar martini until Richard came downstairs and spotted me, then he bought the drinks.”

Downstairs? “What’s upstairs?” Grant asked, tilting his head and trying to look mildly curious. Hopefully secret poker games requiring a special invitation.

“The suites. There are only, like, ten of them and they’re hella expensive, but the boat is really old, so people like to spend the money to stay there.”

“Was he alone when he came down?” Grant asked with a sly wink, implying that there might have been another woman, but hoping that there would have been several poker players.

“Yes,” Dawn said. “I mean, it wouldn’t have stopped me if he had been with someone, but he hadn’t. He smelled like smoke.” She wrinkled her nose again.

Grant remembered seeing the No Smoking signs everywhere when he’d been on the boat the night before. “The casino allows smoking?”

“No, and that makes for a lot of angry people, I’ll tell you. They take it out on the servers. Filthy-mouthed fuckers who don’t tip for shit.”

“Maybe the upstairs guests can smoke.”

She shrugged. “I asked him that, because the smell of smoke was heavy in his jacket. He kind of laughed and said those clients were rich enough that they could do anything they wanted. Wish I’d bagged one of them. None of ’em could be a bigger asshole than Richard.”

Grant made himself chuckle, even though he wanted to be sick. Wes was posing as a rich man. He’d sold heroin for the cash to play a role. Had Wes really come to Cincinnati looking for their sister or had he succumbed to the temptation that taunted the vice detectives? Had he become one of those men who believed he could do anything? Like shoot a detective with an unregistered gun?

He forced his mind back to his search. Dawn didn’t sound like she’d know about the poker game he was seeking, but he needed to find a way to ask. “That sounds like it’s over my pay grade. Are the upstairs rooms for sleeping or for gaming?”

She gave him a narrow-eyed stare. “Why?”