Page 52 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

He sighed loudly, as i

f he were about to make the biggest mistake of his life and was regretting it already. “All right. Tonight.”

“You name the place and time and I’ll be there.” She turned toward the river and the offices of the Sentinel. She felt like something the cat had dragged in and then discarded, but she didn’t have time for a shower or change of clothes. The school board article was due this afternoon and she had more work to do on the Grave Robber story. Lots more work. The bombshell Lindsay Newell had dropped earlier this morning, about Bobbi Jean Marx being pregnant and involved with a cop, gnawed at Nikki.

Cliff still hadn’t answered her. “Cat got your tongue?”

“It should have.”

“Oh, Cliff, give it up, would ya? Where do you want to meet?”

He hesitated a second. “Weaver Brothers. You know the place I’m talkin’ about? It’s a truck stop off Ninety-Five just across the Carolina border. They’ve got a diner that’s pretty quiet.”

“I’ve heard of it,” she said, trying to picture the place on the interstate. “What time?”

“Eight, eight-thirty?”

“That’ll work. I’ll even buy you dinner.”

“I couldn’t allow that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a woman.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. We’re far into a new millennium, remember? Those antebellum days of genteel southern charm have gone the way of the dodo, Siebert.”

“Not in my book. There’s always room to treat a lady like a lady.” Inwardly she groaned and noticed that there was no lilt to his voice, none of the exuberance of the Cliff Siebert who had been her brother’s best friend, the boy who had flirted outrageously with her, the teenager who had gone squirrel hunting with Andrew. Those easygoing days and Cliff’s happy-go-lucky personality had also been eroded by the passing of time and tragedy.

“I’m not a lady, Cliff. Not tonight. I’m an old family friend.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Yeah. It is. I’ll see ya later.” She hung up and felt a nagging sense of guilt. She’d known Cliff had been interested in her for years. It had been his running gag while growing up. All too vividly she remembered a hot summer day when she’d come in from playing tennis. She’d been wearing shorts and a sweat-drenched T-shirt, her hair pulled into a ponytail, a visor shading her eyes. Cliff and Andrew had returned to her parents’ home early from squirrel hunting. As she’d arrived she’d found them sitting at a patio table in the shade of a wide blue umbrella, happily guzzling Big Ron’s stash of beer.

“You’re savin’ yourself for me, ain’t ya, Nikki-gal?” Cliff had teased, all piss and vinegar in his early twenties, that long-ago summer before Andrew had died. Cliff’s eyes had sparkled, his grin sliding from one side of his jaw to the other with easy, country-boy charm.

“In your dreams, Siebert,” she’d joked back, laughing and wiping the sweat from her forehead.

“So you know about those dreams, do you?” He’d winked slowly. “Kinda X-rated, aren’t they?”

“You’re sick.” She’d walked past them as Andrew had opened long-necked bottles and sent the caps whizzing into the thickets of magnolia, pine and jasmine.

“Oh, honey, if you only knew…” Cliff had admitted, the sound of his voice trailing after her. It hadn’t been the first time she’d realized that he’d only been half kidding when he’d flirted with her.

It was sad, she thought now, as she wheeled into a parking lot not far from the newspaper’s offices, how that boyish bravado and her innocence had both been destroyed with Andrew’s death. So many things had changed.

None for the better.

Roberta Peters’s home looked more like a museum than a house. Constructed of apricot-colored stucco and flanked by a wrought-iron fence drowning in ivy, the house looked like something from the Italian countryside. It boasted porches front and back complete with balconies, floor-to-ceiling windows that were accented by gleaming black shutters, and gardens thick with lush shrubbery, even in early December. Two Christmas wreaths hung on the double front doors.

An officer had been posted at the gate, but Diane’s team was already inside and Reed and Morrisette, careful not to disturb anything, walked cautiously through rooms filled with historical artifacts, furniture, and in Reed’s estimation, just plain clutter.

“Shit, I wonder who her cleaning lady is,” Morrisette remarked as she eyed shiny knickknacks arranged on glass shelves. “I could use her number.”

“Probably a full-time maid. We need to talk to her.”

“And the gardener and the guy who fixes the plumbing.”

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