Page 45 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Norm Metzger was so angry the moustache above his goatee quivered with rage. He slapped a folded copy of this morning’s paper onto Nikki’s desk. She’d expected the explosion, had caught his angry glances all morning, and seen him beeline into Tom Fink’s office as soon as the editor had shown up this morning.

“I found an angle and ran with it.” She leaned back in her chair and stared up at him, not giving in an inch. She was tired, had barely slept a wink because of the note in her apartment, and wasn’t about to take any of Metzger’s guff. Not today.

Hooking a thumb at his chest, he growled, “It was supposed to be my story.”

“Take it up with Fin

k.”

“I have. But you already know that.” Metzger leaned over her desk, pushing his face close enough that she could smell the coffee on his breath. “You’ve been trying to muscle in on my territory for years, Nikki, and it’s just not going to work.”

“Muscle in on your territory?’ Oh, come on, Norm. Who are you? James Cagney in some old tough-guy black and white movie from the forties?” She managed a smile and noticed the corners of his mouth were so tight his lips had paled. “As I said, I saw an angle and ran with it. I talked it over with Tom and he decided to go with the story.”

“You could have run it by me.”

“Why? Would you have if you were in my position?”

He straightened. Looked up at the ceiling. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“So you want to work with me on this?” he asked as if granting her a great favor. When she was the one with the source and the scoop.

“I work better alone.”

He snorted. “You don’t prescribe to the two heads are better than one theory?”

“Only a man, because of his anatomy, would think that.”

He slid her a glance that was meant to be glacial. “You know, Nikki, you act tough, but you’d better be careful. This is a small newspaper in a town with a long memory. You got yourself into trouble a while back, so you’d better be sure you don’t make the same mistake twice.”

“I won’t,” she said with more confidence than she felt as he walked back to his desk.

Trina slid her chair back. “Ouch. Looks like someone’s fragile male ego has just been bruised.”

“And battered, but not broken.” She glanced down the hallway. Metzger was grabbing his coat and wool cap, making a big exit and a bigger point. “He’s just ticked cuz I aced him.”

“And he won’t forget it. I wouldn’t want to be on Metzger’s bad side.”

“Is there a good one?”

“My, my, look who’s full of herself today.” Trina laughed and winked as her phone rang and she rolled her desk chair into her cubicle.

Nikki called her landlord and had the locks of her apartment changed. Fortunately, the man who owned the building loved doing handyman tasks and he promised that he’d change the dead bolt, tumblers, and have the entire project done by the time she got home. She could pick up her new set of keys at his apartment on the main floor this evening. When he asked why she wanted them changed, she told him about an ex-boyfriend who was bothering her and there were no further questions. She spent the rest of the day avoiding Metzger, putting together her story on Dr. Francis and the school board, while doing research on the Grave Robber case. The sheriff’s department in Lumpkin County offered up a few more details, the hospital in Atlanta wouldn’t let her talk to the kid in the accident and the other kid was off-limits, his old man insisting on payment for any interview with Billy Dean Delacroix. Frustrated, Nikki put a call into Cliff again, then tried to locate any information she could on the two women in the grave. Barbara Jean Marx’s husband wouldn’t speak to her and the employees at Hexler’s Jewelry Store were closemouthed as well.

But Nikki wasn’t about to give up.

Nor did she forget about the two notes she’d received.

TONIGHT.

And

IT’S DONE.

Whatever happened last night was now a fait accompli.

The headline was worth the trouble.

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