“So, you think he’s hiding something?”
“Didn’t say that.”
Evan took a sip of the espresso. “What time was that?”
“About eight-fifteen, eight-twenty.”
“What about later?”
“Eight forty-seven. I know the time because I was calculating last call for the champagne. Caleb headed for the side exit toward the service corridor. Carrying something under his arm. Dark fabric. Folded flat.”
Mick met his eyes. “Five minutes later, the lights went out. Five minutes after that, the ornaments were gone. And Caleb was back at my bar ordering another club soda.”
“Anything else?”
“One more thing.” Mick picked up his cloth. “When the lights came back on, I looked at his hands. They were dirty. Sand. On his palms. On the cuffs of his khakis.” He held a glass to the light.
“Have you told anyone about this?”
The bartender chuckled. “I tend bar. Besides, nobody asked. Until you.”
Sand. On the hands of a man who’d been inside the pavilion all evening. Sand that matched the beach where Evan had found the glass shard, the drag marks, the keel grooves.
He left the bar and texted Margot. Two words.Dock shed. Now.
She was there in four minutes. He knew because he counted.
He told her about Mick. The timeline. The collapsed crate under Caleb’s arm. The performing-after-five-minutes observation. She listened, standing still, eyes sharp, one hand resting on the workbench near his.
Then he told her about the sand.
“On his hands? After standing in a pavilion all evening.”
“And on the cuffs of his khakis.” He added.
She was quiet for a moment. He could see her running the route in her head. Breaker panel. Display case. Beach. Boat. Bar. All in five minutes of darkness. “That’s not just planning. That’s rehearsal. He walked that route before he did it.”
She was right.
He could see the whole route laid over the resort like a chart. The breaker. The case. The dunes. The slip. The bar. Five minutes, walked in the dark by a man who’d walked it in daylight first. “It’s still circumstantial. A figure in a vendor polo. Sand we can’t test. A man acting strange to a bartender.”
He turned the espresso cup in his hand. “We need someone who can put the keycard in Caleb’s hand. We need Derek.”
“The junior staffer.” She glanced at her pen in her hand. “He’s on shift. Breakroom, this hour.”
They found Derek in the staff breakroom, eating a granola bar and looking like he wanted to disappear.
Margot sat across from him. Evan stood near the door. He watched her work. The warm voice. The even tone. The way she told the kid he wasn’t in trouble. She handled people the way he handled boats. With competence and care and the kind of attention that made the other person feel seen.
He was falling for her. He knew it. He’d known it since the stairwell. He just hadn’t had a word for it until right now, watching her be kind to a scared twenty-year-old in a windowless breakroom.
“Derek, I heard you helped Caleb move equipment from the storage room the day before the showcase.” Margot smiled.
Derek nodded. “Yes. Was I not supposed to?”
“You were being helpful. Nothing wrong with that. Was helping him move equipment the only thing he asked?”
“He said he left his phone. I gave him the lanyard. He was gone maybe ten seconds.” He stared at the lanyard in his hands. “That evening my card was gone. I figured I’d dropped it somewhere. I’d been hauling stuff all day. Front desk gave me a new one. I didn’t want to make a thing of it.”
