Meaning of “someone who can smell an expense account at forty paces”?

Question

What does "the ones who can smell an expense account at forty paces" mean?The sentence comes from this excerpt.>‘Nope. You would have been far too busy looking at the tall blonde girls with the endless legs and the big hair, **the ones who can smell an expense account at forty paces**. And anyway, I wouldn’t have been here. I would have been serving the drinks over there. One of the invisibles.’

Answer 1

Hello there,

In the context of the excerpt , the connotation of the phrase is implicating that the type of woman that person is attracted to is not only conventionally beautiful but interested in partners that have money. To do even deeper, the connotation may imply that she is a woman who is able to determine what time of person has money or not. While indeed a hyperbole (an exaggeration) - it is intended to paint a picture of the person being spoken to.