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you?”
    “Dunstan?”
    “Donald.”
    “Maybe somebody at Ivana’s will recognize you.”
    “Yeah.” She sounded doubtful.
    “Did he charge the dinner?” How many Dunstans could there be? Last name or not, we’d find his charge slip. And while we’re visiting fantasyland, let’s add that the charge slip wouldn’t be the preprinted form, but one of those vertical printouts that list the time of sale. And, of course, that would turn out to be precisely the same moment as Jesse Reese’s time of death. Alibi by Visa.
    Sasha was silent while she thought about this, and when she spoke, her voice was dull. “Cash. Said he’d just won a bundle. I think maybe he gambles a lot.”
    “Did you tell the police?”
    “About his bets?”
    “No, about—”
    “That I was on a sort of date with a man whose last name and address I don’t know at about the time when they think this man was murdered? Yes. They weren’t too impressed.” She sighed, and I could feel more bad news coming. “They have a witness,” she said.
    “How is that possible? To what?”
    “To my going into the room with Jesse Reese and another man, right before it happened.”
    “Another man? Who?”
    “How would I know? I wasn’t there! The witness is crazy. None of it’s true!”
    This seemed a good time to reassure her that help was on the way, in the form of the Pepper-Mackenzie posse, and to more privately cross fingers and hope that was the truth.
    * * *
    I set out with Mackenzie for Sasha’s jail, but en route I realized that I had to go to Trump’s instead. Mackenzie was not pleased by the idea.
    “Even if just for moral support, shouldn’t you be with Sasha?” he asked. “Ah’m certainly not a real welcome sight to her.” He was ahmimg , a sure sign he was agitated, really didn’t approve of my detour. Or he just didn’t want to be alone with Sasha, his longtime antagonist. But the ahmier he got, the more resolute I became.
    “Explain it to her,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, but meantime, somebody’s done a good job of making Sasha look guilty as hell, and this Dunstan is her only alibi.”
    “True,” Mackenzie said. “But even so—”
    “He told her he was coming back here after their date. We don’t have a last name or an address, so the first hurdle is finding him, and I have a better chance of, um, discovering him than you or the police.”
    “You playin’ bar girl or detective?” he grumbled.
    He didn’t particularly like my playing either role, so I stayed with my thesis. “You have a much better chance of speeding up the process with the local force than I do,” I said. “This is an appropriate division of labor. Find out what they know. About that witness, particularly. About what’s going to happen to Sasha.”
    “Still an’ all—”
    “What if Dunstan bolts and disappears when he picks up his morning paper and sees his date in a mug shot? I have to find him tonight, before he knows what’s going on.”
    “Maybe he’s left. Gone to bed.”
    “Easy enough to find out. If so, I’ll nurse a pot of decaf and wait for you. I’ll be safe, indoors, and I’ll feel like I at least tried to do something useful.”
    When he let me out of the car, he leaned over and gave me a brotherly kiss on the forehead. “Can’t tell you how much I didn’t want this kind of adventure,” he said. “Can’t begin to.”
    I took that inarticulate pronouncement to be the best news in a long time on the subject of us.
    * * *
    I tried to become Sasha, to add four inches to my height and geometric increments to my self-confidence. Otherwise, I would have had to admit how creepy I felt about sashaying into a bar in the wee hours of the morning. Particularly this bar, with columns that looked sequined and a loud combo playing “Feelings.” What else, but “Feelings”? How would Sasha do it? Why would Sasha do it?
    I tried a round of Intuitively Spot the Dunstan, and failed. Cary Grant’s image fell