Tell Me (3 page)

Hence, she flew down the cement sidewalks and cobblestone streets, along asphalt county roads or muddy paths, speeding along the beach or cutting through woodlands. Mile after mile passed beneath her feet, and as they did, the nightmares that came with restless sleep and the fears of closed-in spaces seemed to shrivel away and recede, if only for a little while. Exercise seemed safer than a psychiatrist’s couch or a hypnotist’s chair or even confiding in the man she loved.

“Oh, shut up,” she said aloud.

By the time the first raindrops fell, she’d logged three laps around the perimeter of the park and was beginning to breathe a little harder. Her blood was definitely pumping, and she slowed to a fast walk to alleviate a calf cramp that threatened, veering into the interior of the park again, only to stop at the tiered fountain. Sweat was running down her back, and she felt the heat in her face, the drizzles of perspiration in her hair. Leaning over, hands on her knees, she took several deep breaths, clearing her head and her lungs.

Straightening, she found herself alone. Gone were the dog walkers and stroller pushers and other joggers.

No surprise, considering the weather.

And yet . . .

She squinted and found she was mistaken.

On the far side of the fountain, beneath a large live oak, stood a solitary dark figure.

In the coming rain, she and the man in black were alone in a shadowy park.

Her heart clutched, and a sense of panic bloomed for a second as the stranger, an Ichabod Crane figure, stared at her from beneath the wide brim of his black hat, his eyes hidden.

Every muscle in her body tensed. Adrenaline fired her blood.

It was so dark now that even the streetlights cast an eerie hue.

It’s nothing,
she told herself, cutting her rest period short. With one final glance at the man over her shoulder, she took off again, feet splashing through new puddles, her lungs burning as she cut through parked cars, ignored traffic lights, and sprinted home.

Nonetheless, she raced as if her life depended upon it, and as the rain began in earnest, fat drops falling hard enough to splash and run on the pavement, she came around the huge, old mansion she now owned and, taking the key from the chain on her neck, unlocked the back door, then ran up the stairs two at a time.

Once inside her own space, she threw the dead bolt and leaned against the door, gasping for breath, trying to force the frantic images of confinement and darkness from her brain.

Something brushed her leg.

She jumped, letting out a short scream before recognizing her cat, who was attempting to mosey through a series of figure eights around her legs. “For the love of God, Jennings, you scared the crap out of me!” She slid onto the floor.

When had she become such a wimp?

But she knew . . . trapped in the coffin, listening to dirt being tossed over her, feeling the horror of a dead body beneath her, the smell of rotting flesh surrounding her . . . in that moment her confidence and take-the-world-by-the-throat attitude had crumbled into dust.

She’d been fighting hard to reclaim it ever since.

She was safe now, she told herself, as she reached up and checked the door to see that it was locked a second time, then a third, and after pushing herself to her feet, she made a perimeter check of the house. All windows and doors were locked tight, and no boogeyman hurled himself at her when she opened closets and checked inside.

Unconcerned about Nikki’s paranoia, Jennings hopped onto the counter while Nikki, still edgy, downed a glass of water at the kitchen sink and stared through her window to her private garden three stories below. Rinsing her glass, she sneaked a glance at the gate. Still latched. Good. She took another look around the garden area, with its small table and chairs and huge magnolia tree, now devoid of leaves, but saw no malicious figure slinking through the shadows, nor, when she stepped out onto the small balcony, was anyone hiding on the fire escape that zigzagged its way to the ground. Double-checking that dead bolt as well, she decided her home was secure.

Finally, she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Kicking off her wet shoes, she walked through her bedroom, where she saw her wedding dress, wrapped in its plastic bag, hanging from a hook on the closet door. Her heart tightened a bit, and she ignored the thought that perhaps she was marrying Reed for security’s sake.

That wasn’t true, she knew, peeling off her soaked sweatshirt and stripping out of the rest of her clothes. She loved Reed. Wildly. Madly. And yet . . .

“Oh, get over yourself.” In the shower she relaxed a bit, and once the hot spray had cleaned her body and cleared her mind, she felt better. There was no dark, sinister madman after her any longer. She loved Reed, and they were going to get married. Her bank account was low, but she could sustain herself for a few more months . . . so all she had to do was come up with a dynamite story for her publisher.

“Piece of cake,” she said as she twisted off the taps and wrapped her hair in a towel. “Piece of damned cake.”

Within twenty minutes she was back at her desk, a power bar half eaten, a diet Coke at her side, her hair air-drying in wild ringlets. Scanning the newsfeed on her computer, she noticed a breaking-news report running beneath the screen:

She stared at the words in disbelief. “No!” Quickly, she googled for more information.

Blondell Rochette O’Henry, a beautiful enigma of a woman, had already spent years behind bars, charged with and convicted of the heinous crime of killing her own daughter, Amity, and wounding her two other children in a vicious, unthinkable attack.

Nikki’s heart pounded as she remembered all too clearly the blood-chilling crime. Her mouth turned to dust, because Amity O’Henry had been her best friend back then, and Nikki knew, deep in her heart, that in her own way, she too was responsible for the girl’s untimely and horrifying death.

“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered, wondering if the report was true as she worked the keys on her computer, searching for verification of the story. In her mind’s eye, she saw the image of Amity, who at sixteen was whip-smart and as beautiful as her mother, with thick, auburn hair framing a perfect, heart-shaped face, wide, intelligent eyes, lips that were sexy and innocent at the same time, and legs that wouldn’t quit. And Amity O’Henry had the same naughty streak and sexual allure as her mother.

Nikki skimmed story after story, but they were all the same, nothing of substance, no details as to why Blondell was being released.

Nikki worried her lip with her teeth. She’d never really told the truth about the night Amity had been killed at the cabin in the woods—never admitted that Amity had asked her to come—and she’d buried that guilt deep. But maybe now she’d have her chance. Maybe now she could make right a very deeply felt and festering wrong.

Her search earned her an article about Blondell, written years before. The picture accompanying the article didn’t do the most hated woman in Savannah justice, but even so, dressed in a prim navy-blue suit for her court date, her blouse buttoned to her throat, her makeup toned down to make her appear innocent, almost as if she were about to attend church in the 1960s, she was beautiful and still innately sensual. Her hair was pinned to the back of her head, and even though her lawyer was hoping she would appear demure, it was impossible to hide her innate sexuality.

Staring at the photo, Nikki knew one thing for certain: Finally, she had the idea for her next book.

As for a personal connection to the story?

She’d been Amity’s friend. If that wasn’t personal enough, she didn’t know what was.

N
ikki drove like a madwoman to the new, downsized offices of the
Sentinel.
The newspaper had been a Savannah standard for generations, a bastion of the Southern press, but it was slowly dying, doorstep delivery and print pages giving way to electronic data zapped to computers and handheld devices, detailed stories cut into sound bites or tweets.

Many of the writers she’d worked with had moved on or were contributing to the electronic blogs, posts, tweets, and whatever was the latest technological blip in the ever-changing face of communications.

Located on the third floor of an old warehouse that had been converted to offices, the new headquarters were tucked into a weathered brick building that had stood on the banks of the Savannah River for centuries. Inside, the sleek interior, steeped in electronics, was about a third the size of the old offices where she’d spent so many years at a desk.

Nosing her Honda CR-V into a spot in the near-vacant parking lot, she grabbed her bag and braved the weather again. Dashing across the lot, through the rain, she skirted puddles as she locked her car remotely. A familiar beep told her all was secure as she reached the front doors beneath a wide awning. Into the building she ran and, with a quick wave to the security guard, took the stairs, water dripping from the edges of her coat as she used her personal code to open the door at the third floor.

With a click, the lock released and she hurried into the newsroom, where a few reporters were still at desks near the windows, separated by partitions, and the interior walls were dominated by a bank of computers for the digital feed. The employee lounge was cut into one corner, the restrooms another. Slick. Efficient. No unnecessary frills.

Few reporters were still at their desks, the day crew already having left and only a handful working the night shift.

“Hey!” she yelled to Bob Swan, the sports editor, as he appeared from the direction of the lunch room with a folded newspaper under his arm. “Is Metzger still here?”

“Home sick.” Shaking his bald head, Bob added, “Picked up the bug from his mother at the retirement center where she lives. Whole place is shut down by the health department. Quarantined. But not before Metzger got hit.” Bob chuckled as he turned into his cubicle, and Nikki followed to stand at the opening near his desk. “Hear he’s sicker than a dog. Maybe now he’ll finally lose some of that weight he’s been complaining about.” He dropped the paper he’d been carrying onto his desk.

“Too bad,” she said, without much sympathy as Norm Metzger, the paper’s crime reporter, had been a thorn in her side for as long as she had worked for the
Sentinel.
“I saw something about the lockdown at Sea View on the stream at home,” she admitted. “And I caught something else.”

Above the lenses of his half glasses, Bob’s dark eyes glinted. “Let me guess. About Blondell O’Henry? Helluva thing, that. But with Metzger down with the stomach bug, looks like you’re up.” Then, realizing he’d overstepped his bounds of authority, he added, “But you’d better check with Fink.”

“I will.” Since the Grave Robber story, Tom Fink had grudgingly allowed her to report some of the local crime, albeit they were usually the stories that Norm Metzger didn’t want. Nikki had never understood why Fink relied so heavily upon Metzger, apart from the fact that the heavyset reporter was more of a veteran with the paper. And maybe, just maybe, Fink was a bit of a misogynist, compliments of divorce settlements by his ex-wives. Whatever the reason, he’d never really given Nikki the chance to prove herself. Hence her high-handed refusal to take over the crime beat after the Grave Robber case had wrapped up.

She’d thought she’d move on to a bigger, more prestigious newspaper in the Midwest or Atlanta, maybe even New York, but then she’d fallen in love with Reed and eaten a bit of humble pie, mixed with crow, and decided to work part-time here in Savannah, the place she’d always thought of as home.

However, since Metzger was home sick, this was her chance at a story that could go nationwide, be picked up all across the country, and gain her legitimate access to Blondell O’Henry.

“I assume Levitt is on deck,” she said, mentioning the newspaper’s photographer.

“You know what they say about assuming anything,” Swan said from his desk chair. “If this
is
yours, getting Levitt is on you. And you might have to fight Savoy for him.” Inwardly, Nikki groaned. Effie Savoy was a recent hire, a woman whose blogs on the
Sentinel
’s web site were gaining popularity, a pushy reporter who was always around and dead set on being Nikki’s new best friend. She was a real pain in the rear.

“Again?”

“She’s a go-getter,” Swan said. “Kinda reminds me of someone else a few years back.”

“Yeah, right.” She wasn’t about to argue the merits of one of the newspaper’s reporters, but it seemed odd, in this era of downsizing that, out of the blue, Effie Savoy had been hired to write a blog about all things domestic, and more. Her articles—or musings or whatever you wanted to call them—were all over the place, as was Effie. Nikki was forever running into the newbie, but somehow Effie had connected with the younger crowd. The worst part of it was that she reminded Nikki of someone; she just couldn’t remember who.

Now she said, “I just thought I’d check the news feed.”

“You’d probably get more info from Reed,” Swan advised, raising his thick eyebrows.

“Not likely.” That was the problem with this place. Everyone assumed she had a quick link to more information because she was engaged to a detective, but as she’d already told Ina, Reed was decidedly close-lipped about all his cases or anything to do with the department. She couldn’t count the times she’d tried to gain a little info from him. Only three days ago, at the breakfast table in his apartment, she’d asked what she’d thought was an innocent question about a current case, and he’d just kept right on reading his paper, taking a sip of his coffee, even a bite of his toast, before saying, “Talk to Abbey Marlow,” without so much as making eye contact with her. “She’s the department spokesperson.”

“I know who she is,” Nikki had grumbled, tossing down the rest of her orange juice and biting back her frustration. “I just want the—”

“Inside scoop.”

“Nothing like that.”

He’d actually folded his paper onto the table and cocked his head, as if sincerely interested. Brown eyes, light enough to show gold glints, assessed her. “Exactly like that.”

“It’s just that you’re the lead detective on the Langton Pratt case.”

“And you’re fishing again.”

“I just want an angle.”

“Seems to me you’ve got plenty.” His razor-thin lips had twisted into a bit of a smile, that same self-mocking grin she’d found so intriguing when she’d first met him.

Infuriating, that’s what it was, she thought now, as she knew she’d get no further with him than any other reporter on the street. “Reed’s on lockdown, too,” she said and headed for the cubicle she shared with Trina Boudine, who worked with human-interest stories and was her best friend at the office.

The two desks inside the cubicle faced each other and were separated by a thin panel with a few shelves. Trina’s was neat as a pin, the desk clean, even her trash can empty.

Nikki’s area was more cluttered and, as she called it, “lived-in,” even though she worked only part-time. Pictures of her and Reed were pushed into a corner, along with a framed photograph of her niece Ophelia, known as “Phee,” who Nikki could barely believe had started kindergarten two months earlier.

Plopping down, she unbuttoned her raincoat and let it drape behind her on the back of the chair as she logged onto her desktop computer and checked her e-mail. Sure enough, there was a quick memo from Tom Fink asking her to handle the Blondell O’Henry case as Metzger wasn’t available.

“Yes,” she said under her breath, happy that her name would finally appear in a crime-story byline again. It still bugged the living hell out of her that she was the second go-to for the crime beat, even after nearly being killed by the Grave Robber. It just went to show that, as far as editor in chief Tom Fink and the owners of the newspaper were concerned, it was still a “good ol’ boys” network.
Such a load of garbage,
she thought, but she intended, once again, to prove herself and get paid while researching her next blockbuster. Smiling to herself, she started perusing the feeds.

The trouble was, she thought, as she scanned the bits of news that came through, Bob Swan was right. No doubt Reed had a lot more information on Blondell’s release. “Bother and blood,” she muttered under her breath, repeating a phrase she’d often heard from her late father, Judge Ronald, “Big Daddy” or “Big Ron,” Gillette. Known for his sometimes salty phrases of exasperation in the courtroom, he’d been held in high esteem by both prosecution and defense teams. Big Daddy had been a fair judge who put up with little nonsense in his courtroom.

So maybe there was a way to get information out of her fiancé, she thought, as she searched through the press releases. She was certainly going to try. All he could say was no, which he was pretty good at, but for now she was stuck with the wire services.

And then she saw it. The reason for Blondell’s immediate release: the recanting of key prosecution testimony from none other than one of the victims himself. Niall O’Henry, Blondell’s son, now a grown man, was changing his story and saying that he was mistaken when he pointed a finger at his mother in the courtroom and, with tears streaming from his eyes and his tiny chin wobbling, had sobbed and whispered, “Mommy had a gun.” Across the screen of her memory, Nikki saw him as he’d been: a scared boy, blinking in surprise, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just said. Then as the courtroom grew silent, every ear straining, he’d forced himself to say more, his little lips moving awkwardly as he struggled with the horrid words. He’d looked at the prosecutor and caught the slight nod; closing his eyes, he’d added, “Mommy shot Amity.”

 

“I can’t believe it!” Sylvie Morrisette raged as she took a corner a little too fast and the police cruiser’s tires chirped. They were heading back to the station, and she was doing a good ten miles over the limit on Victory Drive. “That bitch should be locked up for the rest of her life!” She slid a glance at Reed and eased up on the accelerator. “Even that would be too good for her. I say, fire up old Sparky again and let her fry.”

“Nice,” Reed commented as they sped along the tree-lined street. Giant palms rose in the median of the boulevard, and large antebellum homes and live oaks draped with Spanish moss graced the sides of the street. “Were you on the force when she was convicted?”

“Hell no! That was twenty years ago.” She buzzed around a green pickup that was loaded with landscaping tools and lumbering slowly. “How old do you think I am? I was still in Texas, probably mooning over Bart or some damned thing,” she said, mentioning her ex-husband, with whom she had a contentious relationship. “But I remember it—boy, oh, boy, do I.” Her West Texas drawl was becoming more pronounced, just as it always did when she was agitated. “She’s an abomination to women, that one. Beautiful. Smart. And deadly as a cottonmouth, I’m tellin’ ya.” Reluctantly Morrisette slowed for a light, but her fingers held the wheel in a death grip.

She was a little bit of a thing, tough as nails, not an ounce of fat on her, mother of two and always, it seemed, pissed off at the male population as a whole. With spiky platinum hair, little makeup, and a quick temper, she was a definite force to be reckoned with. She’d given up her eyebrow studs and toned down her bad language as her two kids had gotten older, but she was still, as Kathy Okano, the assistant district attorney, had said often enough, “a pistol” in her ever-present snakeskin boots and bad attitude.

“You have to remember the case,” she said, sliding him another glance. “You’re a Georgia boy.”

“I was in San Francisco at the time.”

“It was freakin’ national! All over the news, for Christ sakes. What were you, hiding under a damned rock?”

He didn’t honor the question with an answer. “So refresh my memory.”

She stepped on the gas and made short work of a Volkswagen Beetle that wasn’t as quick on the draw. Whipping around the smaller car, she said, “The long and the short of it is that Blondell took her three kids up to a cabin for the weekend or something. Two younger kids up in a loft, Amity, the teenager downstairs, I think. Blondell claimed that an intruder with a gun came in, a struggle ensued as she confronted him, and everyone, including Blondell, ended up wounded. Of course, there was no phone in the cabin, and it was twenty years ago, before everyone and their toddler had a cell, so she tried to get the kids to a hospital, almost wrecked the car, and the girl died on the way.”

“And the others?”

“Not good.” Sylvie had turned grim. “The son, Niall, wounded in the throat, I think, and the little girl . . . what was her name?” Her eyebrows drew together as she checked over her shoulder and switched lanes. “Bella, I think; no, no . . . Blythe!” Snapping a finger, she said, “That’s right. There was all kind of mention of Blythe’s bravery because she took a bullet in the spine, ended up in a wheelchair.”

“Sounds a lot like the Diane Downs case in Oregon years ago.”

“That’s the hell of it. People think Blondell purposely copied Downs. Saw a way to get rid of her kids and used it. Who knows? Reach into the glove box and see if there’s any more gum, will ya?” She slowed and cranked the wheel, guiding the car into the parking lot near the station house on Habersham, a brick edifice that had originally been built nearly a century and a half before, as Reed found the pack of Nicorette and handed it to her. With the agility of a twenty-year smoker, she retrieved a piece and tossed it into her mouth. “I hate this crap,” she muttered, and he didn’t know if she was talking about the gum or Blondell O’Henry’s impending release from jail. Probably both.