The Silver Slipper Club pulses with cheap perfume and cheaper dreams. You flash your badge at the bouncer—a mountain of a man with a broken nose who smells like regret and Brylcreem—and he unhooks the velvet rope with a grunt. Inside, cigarette smoke curls around the stage lights like spectral fingers. The showgirl they say ran off with Chase is headlining tonight—Lola DeVere, according to the peeling marquee outside.

You find her at the bar between sets, sipping something pink through a straw. Up close, she's younger than her stage presence suggests, with tired green eyes and a beauty mark penciled slightly crooked above her lip. 'If you're here about Tommy,' she says before you can speak, 'tell the bulls I don't know nothing.' Her rhinestone bracelet catches the light as she reaches for her drink. It's missing a stone—a gap in the glitter like a missing tooth.

You slide onto the stool beside her and place Chase's photograph on the sticky bartop. Her reaction is all wrong—not guilt, but recognition followed by something like pity. 'Poor sap,' she mutters, tracing the photo with a chipped red nail. 'Bought me dinner twice, handsier than a pickpocket on payday, but he kept crying about his wife.' She leans in, her whisper drowned by the trumpet solo. 'Last I saw him, he was getting into a black Caddy with some Chinamen. Had that look—the ones who know they stepped in it but don't know how deep.'

As she talks, you notice the monogram on her cocktail napkin—LDV—and remember the initials in the case files. The bartender glares as you pocket the napkin. Lola's hand trembles when she lights her cigarette. 'You didn't see me, copper,' she says, blowing smoke in your face. 'Golden Dragon boys play rough with loose lips.'

The stage manager calls her name. She adjusts her feathered headdress with a sigh, leaving behind a smudge of lipstick on her glass—the exact shade as the stain on Chase's handkerchief.