She starts with the reporter, and he agrees to meet with her for lunch at the Yard House Restaurant in Palm Beach Gardens. The Yard House is a barn-sized restaurant in a shopping complex developed a decade ago near Military Trail and PGA Boulevard. The inside is open and in the center is a massive square bar with six bartenders handling the siege from all sides. Drop from the ceiling into the center of the bar are 154 pipes, connecting it with 154 different types of keg beer from a back room. The bar pulls a mix of young professional happy hour goers and students from Florida Atlantic University. At lunchtime it’s mild enough and the food isn’t bad. Samantha is early and waits in a booth until the hostess leads a man to her table. He’s in his sixties and dressed in sloppy denim. He looks like all the aging, male coastal Florida residents who found out too late that Jimmy Buffett is not a truth teller. Rick Henly had covered the hit-and-run for the Miami Herald.
