Best friends for more than 20 years, Danielle Stislicki and Sarah Pollack made sure to connect almost daily, whether that meant hanging out together or texting and talking to each other over their cellphones.

Pollack turned to her bestie on Friday, Dec. 2, 2016, the last day Stislicki was seen before her disappearance sparked high-profile searches throughout the region.

Stislicki, then 28, suggested a sleepover because Pollack was having a bad day at work.

“I was texting to her and asking her if she wanted to get together to do dinner,” Pollack testified Monday in 47th District Court in Farmington Hills. “She said ‘yeah’ (and) that she was going to leave work. She would go home and pack a bag and then come stay the night.”

Stislicki never showed and never responded to Pollack’s texts regarding her whereabouts. Pollack never heard from her best friend again.

She fought back sobs soon into the preliminary examination of Floyd Galloway Jr., a 32-year-old convict accused of murdering Stislicki that winter day in 2016.

At the time, he was a student, security guard and married man. His wife was in the hospital.

He knew Stislicki from previously working at Stislicki’s place of work, the MetLife office in Southfield. Pollack said she knew nothing about him until after her best friend went missing. Police started circling around him a few days later.

Monday’s courtroom was filled with Stislicki’s friends, family, supporters, court players and media representatives. Galloway sat with his attorneys.

He faces life in prison if found guilty of murdering Stislicki. He now resides at a state prison because he pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct - or assaulting with the intent to sexually penetrate a Hines Park runner in Livonia the September before Stislicki’s disappearance.

He wasn’t working at MetLife when Ann Stislicki’s daughter went missing. But she remembered him, since she also worked at MetLife.

“You would see him coming and going,” she testified. “He also frequently would talk to Danielle. He would go ahead and come up to our fourth-floor cafeteria. I thought it was strange for him to be up there and questioned why he was up there. I’ve never seen any other security guard up in the cafeteria during anyone’s break, let alone the time that Danielle and I were specifically taking our lunch together.”

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She said they seemed to be on friendly terms. The daughter once found flowers on her desk from a “secret admirer,” who said, in a note found in her apartment, he hoped they made her smile.

“She was quite disturbed,” Ann Stislicki said. “As much as it was exciting to have a secret admirer, she was concerned and a little creeped out about someone just going ahead and leaving flowers on her desk.

A MetLife co-worker testified that she left work Dec. 2 and saw Stislicki talking to Galloway in the parking lot. His car hood was up. Another said he saw Stislicki drive out of the parking lot with Galloway in the passenger seat.

Police detectives said they later talked to a cab driver who said she picked him up at the Tim Horton’s near Grand River Avenue and 10 Mile Road, about a 10 minute walk from Stislicki’s Independence Green apartment on Lincoln Court in Farmington Hills.

Detectives testified to finding Stislicki’s keys and Fitbit near there.

Her Jeep Renegade was parked outside the apartment building when Pollack and her best friend’s parents went there, trying to find Stislicki. Police shared video footage that seemed to show Stislicki’s Jeep Renegade, with distinct mud stains, traveling eastbound on 11 Mile Road around 5:03 p.m. and then westbound on 7:56 p.m.

Eleven Mile, police said, was a convenient thoroughfare to Galloway’s residence on Oxford Road in Berkley.

They also shared a patch of carpet in Galloway's master bedroom near the bed, where they had detected evidence of blood, and texts between Galloway and Stislicki. Stislicki did not respond to the last text police were able to retrieve.

Testimony continues Tuesday morning and could take the entire week before Judge James Brady decides to bind over the case.

Stislicki remains missing and supporters hope the ongoing court proceedings will help the family find her body.

Contact Susan Vela at svela@hometownlife.com or 248-303-8432. Follow her on Twitter @susanvela.