Page 77 of Nightshade

Up at the golf course, he asked the hostess for a table at the Sandtrap and requested Leslie as his server. It was before noon, and the lunch rush hadn’t started. In case this was a dead end, Stilwell had brought the printout of the search warrant with him to edit while he ate.

Soon, a woman in her twenties with her brown hair in a ponytail came to his table. The name tag clipped to her light blue golf shirt saidLESLIE. He recognized her from his past stops at the restaurant but realized he had never registered her name. He was in his usual uniform—tan cargo pants, holstered weapon and badge on his belt, green polo shirt with a sheriff’s badge embroidered on the left breast—but it didn’t seem to register.

“What can I get you today?” she asked.

“I’ll go with a BLT on wheat toast,” Stilwell said.

“Anything to drink?”

“Iced tea.”

“You got it.”

“Are you the Leslie who called our office this morning about Leigh-Anne?”

She raised her eyes from her order pad and seemed to notice the embroidered badge on Stilwell’s shirt for the first time.

“How did you know that?” she asked.

“The woman you talked to is a regular customer here,” Stilwell said. “I know you’re in the middle of work now, but I need to ask you about Leigh-Anne.”

“Uh, okay. Was she the girl they found in the water?”

“I can’t really answer that at the moment. But why did you call about her?”

“Because she owes me money and I sort of heard that there was going to be a reward for, you know, information that helps with the case.”

“How did you hear about the reward? That was just approved.”

“Oh, you hear a lot of things at the tables. City Hall people have breakfast here almost every day. I heard them talking about the reward this morning.”

Stilwell nodded. “You said Leigh-Anne owed you money. For what?”

“She rented a room from me and stopped paying.”

“When was this?”

“She started renting it in January but she stopped staying there a couple months ago and she didn’t pay me for the month before she left.”

Stilwell sat forward, fully focused on the piece of luck he had just been served.

“What’s your full name, Leslie?”

“Leslie Sneed.”

“So Leigh-Anne stayed with you while she was working at the Black Marlin Club?”

“Usually she was here on the weekends. Sometimes on Thursdays if she got a shift. And then she stopped staying and decided she didn’t have to pay me for the last month.”

Stilwell nodded sympathetically.

“Listen, I need to talk to you more about this, but this is notreally the right place to do it,” he said. “Can you come down to the sheriff’s station with me?”

“You mean, like, now?”

“Yes, now.”

“I… uh, I don’t think the manager will let me leave. It’s about to get busy here and I also need the tip money.”