“Oh honey, I sure did. She was a sweetheart. Didn’t have an enemy. Everyone loved Lillian. That was a terrible thing that happened to her. She was killed on her day off. I couldn’t believe it when I heard. And they never caught the guy who did it. They had a suspect for a while, but it didn’t turn out. I tell you, if I knew who killed Lillian he’d never come to trial.”

“Actually, I lied about my sister,” I said. “We’re investigating Lillian’s murder. There’ve been some new developments.”

“I figured,” the waitress said. “You get to be a good judge of people with a job like this and Rambo’s got ‘fed’ written all over him. A local cop would have ordered pie.”

Ranger looked at me and winked and I almost fell off my seat. It was the first time he’d ever winked at me. Somehow Ranger and winking didn’t go together.

“Did Lillian have a boyfriend?” I asked.

“Nothing serious. She was going out with this one guy, but they broke up. She hadn’t seen him for a couple months. His name was Bailey Scrugs. You don’t forget a name like Bailey Scrugs. The cops talked to him early on. So far as I know she wasn’t dating anyone when she was killed. She was real depressed after breaking up with Scrugs and she spent a lot of time on her computer. Chat rooms and stuff.

“Do you want to know what I think? I think it was one of them random killings. Some nut saw her out walking in the woods. The world’s full of nuts.”

“I know this all happened a while ago,” I said. “But try to think back. Was Lillian ever worried? Scared? Upset? Anything unusual happen to her?” Like was she ever shot with a tranquilizer dart?

“The police asked me all those same questions. At the time I couldn’t think of anything to tell them. But there was something that popped into my head months later. I couldn’t decide if I should go tell someone. It was sort of an odd thing and all that time had passed, so I ended up keeping it to myself.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“This is probably stupid, but a couple days before she was killed someone left a red rose and a white carnation on her car. Stuck them under her windshield wiper with a card. And the card said have a nice day. Lillian was kind of upset about it. She brought them in here and threw them away. I guess that’s why it bothered me when I remembered. She didn’t say anything more about them, like who they were from or anything. Do you think the flowers might have been important?”

“Hard to say,” Ranger told her.

“You should talk to her neighbor,” the waitress said to us. “Carl. I don’t remember his last name. They were real good friends. Nothing romantic. Just good friends.”

I ate my pie and Ranger drank his coffee. Neither of us said anything until we were out of the cafe and into his truck.