Tomasetti points at him. “I’ll do it. You get the information Chief Burkholder needs.”

“You don’t know how to run the cash register.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

Hire’s face turns bright red. I see sweat on his forehead. He looks at me as if he wants to throttle me. “You cops aren’t allowed to do stuff like this.”

I don’t like Tomasetti’s tactics, especially since he’s not here in an official capacity. But if it gets me the name, I’m willing to look the other way. “Just get us the name and we’ll get out of your hair.” I glance past him to see Tomasetti hand a carton of Virginia Slims cigarettes through the window.

“He’s going to screw up my inventory,” Hire whines.

“In that case, you’d better hurry.”

Cursing, he takes me past a rattling refrigerated display case. Traversing the place is like walking through a camper jam-packed with enough food for a decade. At the rear of the store, he opens a narrow door. A pretty young woman with burgundy hair and big doe eyes sits behind a steel desk. She’s drinking a Budweiser and smoking the same brand of cigarette as Hire. A plaque on the desk tells me her name is Cindy Hire, but I can’t tell if she’s his wife, daughter or sister.

“Can I help you?” She asks the question in a way that tells me the last thing she wants to do is help. That cooperative spirit must run in the family.

“I need the name of a customer who purchased a bottle of Chianti on September twenty-second,” I say.

“We don’t keep credit card info,” she says. “It’s against the rules.”

I look at Hire. “Remember, the race this weekend.”

Growling like a cross dog, Hire says to the woman, “It’s in there. I haven’t purged the records in a while. See if you can query by date. Get her the name and address of this customer.”

For a second, Cindy looks like she wants to argue, then acquiesces. “I think the computer just keeps the number, expiration and name.”

“All we need is the name,” I tell her.

Putting the cigarette between her lips, squinting against the smoke, she begins pecking at the computer keys.

If my memory serves me, I’m pretty sure card processing rules mandate that merchants destroy or purge all credit-card information every so often due to the threat of data leaks and hackers. I find myself hoping Hire’s computer system is in as much disarray as their store.

I watch as the computer screen turns blue, then data entry boxes appear. Squinting at the screen, Cindy types the date into one of the boxes.

“Got it.” She hits Enter and waits. “Looks like the guy used a Visa. Card stolen, or what?”