Page 11 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

“Careful now, I’m a good old southern boy, too.”

“You know what I mean,” she said with a sigh. Cliff was getting on her nerves, but then, he usually did. Always had. Cliff Siebert had been her eldest brother’s best friend in high school. Andrew had gone on to Duke University. Cliff had gone through the police academy and had finished college while working at the Savannah Police Department. His family owned property outside of town, three farms that had been in their family for six generations, but Cliff had balked at becoming a farmer. He’d wanted to be a cop from the first time he’d seen a black and white cruiser patrolling the streets of the small town where they’d grown up. The weekend Andrew had died, Cliff was supposed to have visited him but had bagged out at the last minute. He’d been swimming in guilt ever since.

“Metzger really gets under your skin,” he said now.

“Amen.” Nikki tapped her pencil angrily. She’d had it with men who talked out of both sides of their mouths, the ones who extolled the virtues of the working woman by day, only to pull a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde routine after quitting time when they expected dinner on the table at six and their wives to act like thousand-dollar call girls—well, after the late night news and latest sports report, of course. Didn’t that attitude go out in the fifties? The NINETEEN fifties?

Tom Fink, the Sentinel’s editor, could breathe fire, brimstone and right-wing politics all he wanted to from his side of the glass ceiling. But he wasn’t going to hold Nikki Gillette back. No way, no how. She planned to bust right through that invisible barricade. The way she figured it, Fink could cut himself a whole new attitude with the shards that flew out as she rocketed past him on her way to the big time. All she needed was the right story. Just one. She sensed that whatever was happening up in Lumpkin County might just be it. “Come on, give. What’s going on?”

There was a heavy sigh, a loud creak, as if he’d turned in his chair, and then a lowering of Cliff’s voice. “Okay, okay. Listen. All I know is that Pierce Reed roared out of here. Fit to be tied. On his way to the sheriff’s department in Lumpkin County, if you can believe that. He left about twenty minutes ago. I don’t know what that was about, but I did hear that a kid was life-flighted from the backwoods in that part of the mountains, fell down a cliff or something, and he’s on his way to Mason Hospital in Atlanta. I don’t know all the details, don’t even know the extent of the kid’s injuries or how the whole mess is connected to Reed, but from what I can piece together all this came down about half an hour before Reed got the call.” He fell silent for a minute. “You know, Nikki. You didn’t hear it from me.”

“I never do.” Nikki glanced at the clock. “Thanks, Cliff,” she said, mentally on her way to north Georgia. “I won’t forget this.”

“Do—forget it. Okay? I didn’t tell you anything. If you spout off, it could cost me my job. So, remember, how you found out about this—you picked it up on the police band or something.”

“Right.”

“And Nikki?”

“Yeah?” She was reaching inside her purse for her keys.

“Say hi to your mom for me.”

Nikki stopped cold. Just as she always did when she thought of her mother these days. Her fingers brushed the metal of her car keys and they felt suddenly icy. “I will, Cliff,” she promised, then hung up. In her mind’s eye she caught a fleeting glimpse of her mother, now frail, unhappily married, dependent upon a big bear of a man who, if he didn’t love her, at least wasn’t unfaithful. Well, as far as anyone knew. From outward appearances, Judge Ronald Gillette was the epitome of propriety, ever the doting husband to a sickly wife who was often confined to her bedroom.

As Nikki shot to her feet she tried to shake off the sadness that settled like a blanket over her soul whenever she thought of her mother too long.

At the reception desk, she marked herself out for the rest of the day and pushed all thoughts of her family out of her head. Holding her jacket tight around her, she hurried outside where the wind caught in her hair, blowing wild red-blond strands over her eyes and slapping at her face. The day was already dark, twilight pressing in as she dashed across the street to her little hatchback parked beneath a street lamp.

What the devil was Pierce Reed doing in Lumpkin County, so far out of his jurisdiction? It smelled like a story, but she tried not to get her hopes up. Maybe this was all a wild goose chase. Yeah, well, if that was the case, then why was Norm Metzger hot on Reed’s trail? No, there was definitely a story there. Ramming her car into gear she sped toward I-16, pushing the speed limit. It would take her at least five hours to get to Dahlonega, and then what? Even if she caught up with Reed, what were the chances that he’d fill her in?

Slim and none.

Nada and zilch.

Unless she found a way to get to the man.

She maneuvered through town to the interstate while half listening to news radio. She also had the police band on and heard about traffic violations and a robbery at a convenience store on the south end of Savannah, but nothing about whatever it was Reed was involved in. Nothing at all.

She passed a semi hauling something flammable and pressed her foot hard on the accelerator. The trucker honked and she gave him a cursory lift of the hand as she flew by like the proverbial bat out of hell. She didn’t know what she’d find in Lumpkin County, but she figured it was ten times more interesting than the latest action by the Savannah School Board. Anything surrounding Detective Reed was.

Handsome, stoic, all business, Pierce Reed was a prickly one, a detective who never let anyone too close, a man who totally clammed up when it came to dealing with the press.

But that was about to change.

Reed just didn’t know it yet.

“So, this is what we make of it. Whoever brought the coffin up here used this old logging road.” Sheriff Baldwin pointed to a fork in the twin ruts and angled the nose of his Jeep to the right. “We figure he probably used a truck with a lift and a winch. I’ve got a detective already talking to the DMV about possible owners of that kind of truck. We’re also lookin’ for any that might have been stolen.”

“Good idea,” Reed said, unbuttoning his jacket. Baldwin was in his late fifties, but as lean as when he’d been a drill sergeant in the army some thirty years earlier. A no-nonsense man with a craggy face, sharp eyes and thick gray moustache, he had the heater cranked up, and it rumbled as it blew hot air onto the windshield and into the interior of the department-issued vehicle. The police band crackled with static and the engine whined as the rig bucked up the hill.

“It’s a start. But not much of one. Hell, I’ve worked for the county for twenty years. Never seen somethin’ like this.” Baldwin shifted into a lower gear. The Jeep’s headlights slashed through the gloom, beams bouncing off dried grass, sparse gravel and the rough trunks of scrub oak and pine. An opossum appeared from beneath a scraggly bush, its eyes shining, then it turned and lumbered awkwardly into the darkness of the surrounding brush.

“I just can’t figure why anyone would go to all this trouble.”

Neither could Reed. As the Jeep bounced and whined its way through the woods, he glared into the darkness. What the hell was he doing up here, near the little two-bedroom house where he’d been born? How had his name been on a note inside a damned coffin with two bodies up here? From the moment Baldwin had called, Reed had thought of nothing else. He’d brooded about it during the helicopter ride, and the sheriff, when Reed had met him at the courthouse, hadn’t had enough answers to satisfy him. No one did.

Yet.

---