Elsie followed the Denny’s waitress down an aisle and scooted into a booth across from her.
“This is my section,” the waitress said, looking around with a frown. “They’ll be wondering why I’m not taking care of them.”
Elsie rummaged in her purse and pulled out the notepad she’d used to jot notes at the PD. Under the handwritten scrawl that read “Marvel Marketing,” she circled “Denny’s” and “Th afternoon.”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you. This is really important.” Glancing at the nametag on the woman’s chest, she added: “Brigitte.”
Brigitte grabbed a stray napkin and began to scrub the table with it. “The busboy is just plain lazy,” she muttered. She wadded the napkin into a ball and stuffed it into the pocket of her black nylon apron. “You need me to get you something? Coffee?”
Elsie would have killed for a cup of coffee; but asking the woman to wait on her felt wrong. She needed to treat her as a witness rather than a server.
“No, ma’am. Thank you. Can you give me your full name, Brigitte?”
“It’s Clifton. Brigitte Diane Clifton.”
Elsie looked up from her pad. The left eye was moving again; so Elsie fixed her focus on Brigitte’s right eye.
“And you’re from Barton?”
“All my life. Do you not know me? Because I sure recognize you.”
Elsie faltered, struggling to recall the woman. Brigitte was too old to claim a high school kinship; and she didn’t recognize her as a courthouse regular. From her grim vibe, it was unlikely that they’d shared a beer and a laugh at the Baldknobbers Bar.
Elsie hazarded a guess. “I bet it was here. At Denny’s?”
Bingo. Brigitte nodded, and her eye steadied momentarily. “I don’t see you so much these days. A while back, I used to work the graveyard shift. You’d come in after you were drinking. Order breakfast.”
The blush started to crawl up Elsie’s neck. She huffed a regretful laugh. “Back in my old college days, I bet. My wayward youth.”
“Not so long ago as that. You’d come in with that policeman.”
Elsie drew up in her seat, with an air of injury. “Brigitte, Detective Ashlock can’t be accused of stumbling into Denny’s under the influence.”
“Not him. The other one. The good-looking cop.” Her face was stern. “And he wasn’t the one doing the stumbling.”
Oh Lord. Elsie’s history was biting her in the ass again: Noah Strong, her cop boyfriend from the bad old days. The woman’s memory was probably accurate.
Which was embarrassing for Elsie, but good for the interview. She was glad to know the woman had strong powers of recollection.
“Let’s talk about last Thursday. You waited on the two girls you described?”
“I didn’t just wait on them. I saw them in the restroom first.”
At the mention of the restroom, Brigitte smoothed her hair with her hands and tightened the elastic band that held it away from her face.
“The restroom? Here at Denny’s?”
“Yeah. They were painting their faces like a couple of Jezebels. Couldn’t have been old enough to be in high school yet.”
Elsie shook her head, trying to envision Taylor Johnson wearing makeup. She had a perfect complexion. Elsie had never seen the girl with any look other than a scrubbed face.
She asked, “Did you observe anything else in the bathroom?”
“The short girl with the curly hair was putting on a pair of high-heeled slippers. Looked three sizes too big for her.”
It occurred to Elsie that the waitress had missed her true calling. With her sharp recall of detail, she could’ve worked for the CIA.
“Did you overhear their conversation? Did they say what they were doing there?”
“I told them. I said the restroom was for customers only. Because it is.” Her lips thinned into a hyphen on her face.
“Anything else?”
“Not then. Next thing, they turned up in my section.”
Elsie edged closer to the tabletop. “So, you waited on them?”
“If you want to call it that. Didn’t hardly order anything.”
Elsie’s heart began to pound in her chest. She felt adrenaline surge in her veins as she asked: “Was anyone with them?”
Brigitte nodded.
Elsie kept her voice under control as she asked: “Can you describe the individuals who met the girls?”
Her hand clenched the pen, ready to write. Waiting for the words.
Brigitte tilted her head to the right. “It was a woman.”
“A woman?”
“Yeah. About your age. Had a cup of coffee.”
“Was she alone? Are you certain?”
“Yeah. Until the two girls joined up with her at the table.”
Elsie looked down, trying to hide her disappointment. She’d hoped to score a description of Tony, the man with Marvel Modeling. But at least she would get a description of the woman.
“What did the woman look like?”
The waitress fixed her good eye on Elsie, looking her up and down. “Skinnier than you. Not as tall. Shoulder length red hair, all curled up in a fancy hairdo.”
“Any distinguishing features?”
“She wore a lot of makeup. And she had an accent. Not anything from around here. More Southern than us.”
She dropped the pen on the pad. “Did you pick up any of their conversation?”
“I don’t eavesdrop on the customers. Or waste time on chatter. Not like some people around here. I do my work. It’s a job, not a social time.”
Elsie nodded politely. She sneaked a glance at her watch. When she saw the time, she reached for her purse; Madeleine and Chuck would have her head on a platter for being out of pocket so long.
“But I remember one thing. The black girl didn’t ask for anything, not even water. The curly head wanted sweet tea.”
She paused, as if giving Elsie the opportunity to respond. So Elsie nodded and repeated the words: “Sweet tea.”
“But the woman grabbed her arm, said no sugar. Not if she wanted to be a model.”
Elsie dropped her purse and snatched up the pen again. As she scrawled detailed notes, recording every scrap the waitress recalled regarding the red-haired woman and her meeting with the girls, Elsie completely forgot about the time.
But Brigitte had her eye on the clock.
“It’s almost noon. If I don’t do the lunch business, this day will be a loss for me.”
Elsie had exhausted her questions; she put the pad into her purse. Smiling at Brigitte, she said, “I really appreciate your help today. I know it was a sacrifice, breaking into your workday like this.”
“You’re right. It was. So, thanks. But I didn’t do it for you.”
Taken aback, Elsie waited to see if the woman would speak again.
“I did it for your mama.” The waitress scooted out of the booth, preparing to walk away.
But Elsie held out a restraining hand. “What do you mean?”
The waitress looked down. Elsie had to steel herself, not to glance away from the roaming eye.
In a whisper, Brigitte said, “She was my sixth-grade English teacher. At Barton Middle School, right before you were born. Back then, they called me names at school. Wall-eye, Cock-eye, Cross-eye. They had a lot of them.”
Elsie stared into the stationary eye, trying not to blink.
“Your mama put a stop to it. To this day, I don’t know how she did it. She was a saint.”
Before she walked away, Brigitte had a parting word. “With a mother like that, you ought to know how to behave better.”