Page 82 of Nightshade

“She said she would, that she had a boyfriend who would cough it up, but that never happened.”

Stilwell remembered Peter Galloway and didn’t think it was likely that he was the boyfriend who could cough up five hundred dollars.

He moved on to the stack of books. The first one he recognized because Tash had read it when they’d gone on a camping trip to Little Harbor on the back side of the island. It was calledIf I’d Known Then.Tash told him it was a collection of letters women in their twenties and thirties had written to their younger selves with words of advice they wished they had received back then. The edge of a business card used as a bookmark stuck out from the middle of the book. Stilwell flipped it open to find that it was a card from Charles Crane, the general manager of the Black Marlin Club.

The next book was calledEverything I Know About Loveby Dolly Alderton, and its bookmark was near the end of the book. It was a business card from a Los Angeles attorney named Daniel Easterbrook. The last book was calledFruiting Bodiesby Kathryn Harlan. It too had a business-card bookmark, this one from a Century City oncologist named Leonard Koval.

Stilwell laid the business cards out on the bed and took individual photos of them before returning them to the pages where he found them. He wasn’t sure why he was re-marking the pages when he knew Leigh-Anne Moss would never finish the books.

“Looks like she was a reader,” he said, more to himself than to Sneed.

“I don’t have a TV,” Sneed said, “so she did a lot of reading.”

“Did she keep any of her property anywhere else in the apartment?”

“No, just in here.”

“Can we move the cat? I want to check the bed.”

Sneed went to the bed and picked up the cat, who mildly protested at being woken, and held him while Stilwell checked under the pillows and then lifted the mattress off the box spring to look between them. He found nothing.

Stilwell next got down on his hands and knees and looked under the bed. He saw a shoebox and nothing else. He slid the box out and opened it. It contained a pair of black high-heeled pumps.

“Prada—nice,” Sneed said.

Stilwell saw the brand mark on the insole.

“Yours or hers?” he asked.

“Hers, definitely,” Sneed said. “Too small for me.” She giggled.

“What?” Stilwell asked.

“It’s just funny,” she said. “I never saw her wear those and I can’t think of a place on this island where you would. Except up at the Ada, maybe.”

The Mount Ada was the island’s only four-star hotel. It was once the Wrigley mansion and sat high up on the hill overlooking the harbor and Santa Monica Bay. It had a formal dining room, but Stilwell knew that Sneed was right—the island wasn’t a place for high-end high-heeled shoes. So the question was, why did Leigh-Anne Moss have these shoes on the island? He doubted she would have brought them from the mainland. They had to have been a gift from someone here.

“She didn’t wear these for work, right?” he asked.

“No, no way,” Sneed said. “You can’t work with those spikes. Not when you’re on your feet all day.”

“Probably a gift, then. Any idea who from?”

“None. She never even mentioned those to me. I’d never seen them before you pulled them out.”

“You think they’re the reason she wanted to get back into the apartment? Prada stuff is expensive, right?”

“Very. Those probably cost somebody a grand, at least. Probably one of the guys she was playing.”

Stilwell looked up at her for a long moment.

“Let’s go down to the station,” he said. “I want to talk to you about that.”

“Fine with me,” Sneed said.

“I’m going to take these, see if we can figure out where they came from.”

“Take ’em. They wouldn’t fit me.”

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