Between the air-conditioned interior and the warm summer rain outside, the windows overlooking the Riverwalk were too fogged up for him to see the water.
Although it was now almost 2:30, the restaurant’s main room was at least half full of customers who dawdled over coffee or dessert before plunging back out into the rain. At the bar, more people nursed beer mugs or wineglasses and watched a baseball game being played somewhere under clear blue skies while four or five members of the waitstaff and the bartender chatted off to the side, all the time keeping a watchful eye on their stations in case someone should call for the bill.
The manager was there at the reception stand when Edwards entered and he gave the detective a sour look. “What now?”
“I’m still trying to find Kyle Armstrong. You hear from him yet?”
He waited till the manager finished his rant about inconsiderate, unreliable help and then said, “He seems to have skipped town. You have any idea why?”
The manager gave him a shrewd look. “Hey, you don’t think he had anything to do with that judge getting killed, do you?”
“What do you think?”
“Kyle? Naw. It’s gotta be a coincidence. He’s been talking about Hollywood from the day I first hired him. Maybe he finally just up and went.”
“Maybe,” Edwards said. “When’s payday?”
“Friday.”
“So you still owe him money for the weekend?”
“Two shifts. Yeah. Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch.”
“Seems to me if I was taking off for LA, I’d get every penny owing me first.”
“That’s you,” the manager said. “Kyle’s a space cadet.”
“All the same, I want to talk to everybody who was here Saturday night, starting with you.”
“Me? I wasn’t on the floor and I left around eight.”
“Yeah? You didn’t come out to welcome the judges or ask them how everything was?”
“I’m not that kind of a manager. I make sure everything’s running smoothly behind the scenes and leave the front to whoever’s working this reception stand. Unless there’s a major problem, I don’t come out.”
While the manager continued to insist he did not normally interact with the customers, Edwards glanced around and decided that the empty side room was as good a place as any to conduct his interviews. It was separated from the main room by a waist-high wall topped by glass windows that went up to the ceiling so that there was plenty of light and he would not be overheard by the diners. “How about we talk in there?”
“It’s set up for a tour group that’s coming in at five,” said the manager, “but yeah, I reckon you can use it, long as you don’t mess it up too much. Who you want to start with?”
“Who do you have?”
The manager looked around. “There’s Mandy, but she was off this weekend. Mel was here. I think she and Kyle got into it a little. Hank was working reception. Art, Clarence, and Mike, of course, at the bar.”
“Tell me about Mel. How long’s she been working here?”
“Just since the season started. Same for most of them. Kyle’s been here about three years. He and Mike both. They work year-round.”
“You say Kyle and this Mel mixed it up? Why?”
“Who knows? I’ll send her in and you can ask her yourself, okay?”
“No, let me talk first to the guy that was working reception. Hank? He the one I spoke to Sunday?”
The manager nodded.
“Yeah, we worked the lunch shift Sunday,” said the waiter. “You came to ask us about the judge that got killed Saturday night, remember? He sat at Kyle’s table.”
Hank Barlow was as earnest as Edwards remembered from Sunday: clean-cut, neatly trimmed hair, polished shoes, crisp shirt. There were dark circles under his eyes today and he smothered a yawn as he sat down.
“Sorry. I thought I could sleep in this morning, but Sam called and said they were shorthanded and now it sounds like Kyle might not make it in this afternoon. Sam says you told him Kyle’s left Wilmington?”
Edwards realized he should have told the manager to keep his mouth shut about that. Too late now.
“Did he tell you he was moving?”
Barlow shook his head and explained that this was his first summer working down here at the coast. “We usually head for the mountains but Mel thought the beach would make a good change.”
“You go to school in Greensboro, right?”
“Yeah, UNCG.”
“You or this Mel ever hear of Judge Jeffreys before Saturday night?”
Hank shook his head.
“What about Kyle? He in school?”
