Page 86 of Nightshade

“Those heels from Prada, they were probably a gift,” he said. “Do you remember if there were other gifts from these men?”

“She got some stuff,” Sneed said. “Most of the time she just sold it for the money. That’s how she paid me, until she didn’t.”

“How did she do that? Sell the stuff, I mean.”

“Online. Fashionphile and the RealReal. A lot of sites resell good stuff like that.”

Stilwell nodded. He knew he had to add some of this information to the probable cause statement in his search warrant application. It would support the need to get inside the club.

“Okay, I think that’s good for now, Leslie,” he said. “Thank you for your help. I’ll get you back up to the Sandtrap or your apartment or wherever you want to go. Just give me a minute.”

“And you’ll put me in for the reward money?” Sneed asked.

“If we make an arrest, I think you will be very eligible for at least part of it.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Stilwell stood up and left the interview room, hoping to find one of the day-shift deputies in the sub who could run Sneed back up the hill.

Only Mercy was there.

“Everybody’s out?” he asked.

He noticed that she was wearing disposable gloves and that the shoebox was out of the evidence bag and open on her desk. The pumps and the tissue paper they had been wrapped in were next to the box.

“Everybody’s out,” Mercy replied. “I found this at the bottom of the shoebox. Did you see it before?”

She held up a card with a drawing of a smiling kitten on the front. Stilwell had no gloves on, so he didn’t touch it. “No, I didn’t see it before,” he said. “What’s it say inside?”

Carefully holding the card at the edges, she opened it. There was a handwritten note:For you, Nightshade—Dan.

Stilwell pulled out his phone and looked at the photos he had taken of the business cards used as bookmarks. He focused on the card with the name Daniel Easterbrook—the attorney from L.A.

“We need to bag that separately and send it to the lab for fingerprinting and touch DNA,” he said.

“I’ll send it over on the Express tonight,” Mercy said.

28

AFTER DROPPING LESLIESneed off at the Sandtrap, Stilwell went back down to Crescent and then up Wrigley Road to the Mount Ada hotel. He agreed with Sneed that in a golf-cart town, only the Mount Ada was formal enough for Prada pumps, and he decided to check it out. The small but upscale two-story bed-and-breakfast catered to the wealthiest visitors to the island. The rooms were easily a grand a night on weekends in season. The opulence of the setting was accentuated by the man behind the front desk, who wore something seldom seen on Catalina: a suit and tie. Stilwell introduced himself and then pulled up Leigh-Anne Moss’s driver’s license photo on his phone. The deskman had a nameplate on his jacket pocket that saidGILBERT.

“I’m wondering if you recognize this woman,” he said. “This photo doesn’t show it, but she might have had a purple streak in her hair. It was in the front and went down the left side of her face.”

Gilbert didn’t hesitate.

“Sure, she’s been here,” he said.

“You mean she stayed here?” Stilwell asked.

“A few times, at least. I checked her in.”

“Was she by herself or was someone with her?”

“I just recall checking her in. I don’t know who she was with or who she might have met, sir.”

“And you’re sure it’s the woman in the photo?”

“When you mentioned the purple streak, that made me remember her, yes.”

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