Page 111 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

“Off duty.”

“So are you,” Reed pointed out.

“Yeah, but I’m dedicated.”

“Siebert isn’t?”

“Let’s not go into that one, okay?” she muttered irritably as she lit a cigarette. “Okay, let’s do this thing, but it better not be a wild goose chase, Reed.”

Simone Everly kept a key hidden on a hook beneath the porch of her condo. Nikki found the spare and they walked into the foyer to be met by a little scrap of a dog that yapped and barked from the top of the stairs.

“Come on, Mikado, it’s me, Nikki.”

The dog kept up his vigil on the upper landing. Only when Nikki climbed the stairs and picked him up did the noise stop and the wiggling begin. Aside from the useless pet, the condo was devoid of life. Most of the rooms were so tidy that vacuum tracks showed on the cream-colored carpet and there wasn’t a speck of dust to be found on furniture that looked old, but was obviously new. It all was color coordinated and appeared expensive.

There were no messages on the answering machine except for Nikki’s panicked and breathless call. Nothing stored in the memory. When Morrisette called for the last number dialed, it was Nikki’s cell phone number. But there were phone numbers on a Caller ID list and Morrisette quickly wrote them down. “You recognize any of these?” she asked Nikki who was still holding the dog. Now Mikado was wagging his tail and washing her face feverishly.

“No, but then, Simone and I really don’t run in the same circles.”

“Why not?”

“We never have.”

“You’ve been friends a long time.”

“Yeah. She dated my brother and was going to marry him…at least, that was the plan until he broke up with her. That was right before he died.”

“How’d they meet?”

“I introduced them.”

“She go to school with you?”

“No…I met her in another exercise class…kind of jazz dance. It was right after the Chevalier trial and I found out she’d been one of the jurors. I tried to get close to her, you know, for a story, but that didn’t pan out. I’d already been burned on that one.” Rubbing the back of Mikado’s neck, she felt some of the old embarrassment. “Anyway, we hit it off.”

“The Chevalier trial,” Reed said, and he was deathly serious.

“Yeah.”

“She was impaneled?”

Nikki nodded and saw his expression change. “Do you know the names of any of the other jurors?”

“No, but…” Her heart stopped. “Oh, God…”

“Can we get a list of everyone who was on the jury?” Reed asked, looking at Morrisette.

“Now, wait a minute. Just because this woman is presumably missing, doesn’t mean that it has anything to do with LeRoy Chevalier.”

“But he’s out now, right? Have you heard from his parole officer?”

“Yeah, he made his appointment last week.”

“Let’s go check with him. Make sure that LeRoy’s been a good boy. And we’ll need to find out the other jurors who were on that trial.”

“What about Barbara Jean Marx. Did she ever mention it?”

“Not to me,” Reed said, “but our relationship was brief…kind of in the moment. We didn’t do much discussing of what had happened a long time ago.” He pulled out his cell phone and notepad, then dialed quickly, waiting a few seconds until the other party picked up. “Mrs. Massey, this is Detective Reed, Savannah police…Yes, I was there the other day…I’m fine, but I need some information about your husband. Can you tell me if he was ever on jury duty? The case I’m concerned about is the LeRoy Chevalier trial. He was convicted of killing his girlfriend and two of her children.”

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