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stopped him before he answered. I knew what he was going to say. “I know, it’s not what we think, it’s what we can prove . . . or disprove.”
    “You’re worried about your chef.” Romeo motioned for the bartender to give him one of what I was having. “You like him, then?”
    “What’s not to like?” I stared into my glass, trying to sort out my jumbled emotions, but that proved to be like capturing lightning bugs: when you opened the jar to trap another, those inside escaped and flew away.
    Romeo eyed the bottles behind the bar as he swirled the Diet Coke in his glass. “You wouldn’t have something with a bit more kick to it, would you?”
    “Bourbon for breakfast? I’m not sure I could live with myself if I led you down the road to sin and perdition.”
    “Seriously?” Clearly, Romeo thought I was amusing.
    Glancing at him, I realized he had aged a decade during our brief association, and he was developing some of my bad habits, which didn’t make me feel good in the least. “I guess I’m not the best influence,” I admitted grudgingly. To be honest, my recent comfort with the bottle had me a bit worried, not something I would readily admit. Heck, it was hard enough to admit it to myself. Delusion—sometimes desirous, sometimes disastrous. I knew I needed to be careful—while balance was a concept I understood, I found it next to impossible to apply.
    Vegas and temptation, virtually synonymous . . .
    “Wow, you’ve gone all quiet and pensive. I didn’t know you had it in you,” Romeo teased.
    I knew he was trying to lighten my mood. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you suck at it.”
    “As I recall, we established that some time ago.”
    That got a grin out of me, despite my best efforts.
    “Ha!” He pointed at me like a kid rubbing it in. “See, I can be taught new tricks.”
    “I think we established that some time ago as well.”
    His smile faded as he backed off his stool. “Save some of that firewater for later, okay?” he told the bartender.
    “Sure thing, sir.” The young lady shot me a questioning shrug.
    “We’ll be back.” I pointed to a bottle on the top shelf. “And the 101 is ours.”
    Romeo put a hand on my shoulder. “Right now, I’ve got a crime scene to process. Care to join me?”
    “For old time’s sake?”
    Romeo had been a greenhorn when we met chasing a weasel. We’d cemented our relationship tracking down a killer who had tossed an oddsmaker into the shark tank. Since then, we’d gone on to bigger and better things. Once the teacher, I’d now become the sidekick, and I actually liked it—expectations were lower.
    In a perfect Columbo impersonation, Romeo patted his pockets as he tilted his head forward and looked at me from under his brows. “Don’t let it go to your head. I’m just throwing you a bone to keep you from gnawing on my leg.”
     
    * * *
     
    Jean-Charles’s food truck was parked on the unpaved, sandy expanse at the rear of the parking lot behind the Babylon. Technically not part of our official lot, guests used it anyway. So did the hotel, parking extra corporate vehicles back there. The rub was that, since it wasn’t an official public-use area, our video surveillance didn’t cover it.
    As Romeo and I pushed out the back doors of the hotel, I got a full view of the Presidio, my former home—one floor below Teddie’s penthouse. The apartment building had been perfect, for a while. I could walk to work. Walk upstairs . . .
    A tall cylinder of glass and steel, the Presidio was the finest place to live in town . . . at least, that’s what the brochure said. Rectangles of dark and light formed a mosaic up the side of the building as various occupants opened their shades to welcome the sunlight or left them shuttered against the growing warmth of the day. My eyes followed the pattern to the top floor. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t resist.
    The windows of the penthouse were uncovered—the shades that had