Page 106 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“He’s not here.” Peggy Shanks stood at the door, blocking any view into Roland Camp’s house; from beneath her shaggy bangs, she glared at Reed as if he were trying to break in to do her bodily harm. Her thin arms were folded across her chest, her small jaw jutting in anger, her attitude as bristly as ever.

“When do you expect him back?”

“Don’t know. He’s been gone a while.” She slid her gaze away from Reed’s.

“How long is ‘a while’?”

“Since last night some time.”

“Can you call him?”

“You don’t think I’ve tried that? Sheeeiitt. I’ve called and texted, but he’s not picking up.” She lifted a scrawny shoulder. “It’s no big deal,” she said, as if to convince herself.

“Tell him I’m looking for him.”

“Oh good. He’ll like that.” Again she glared at him with pure, undisguised hatred, the kind of loathing, he suspected, she felt for any officer of the law.

From inside the house a baby began to wind up, his cries becoming louder and louder.

“I’m serious, Ms. Shanks,” Reed insisted, his gut warning him that Camp’s disappearance was trouble. He had no serious evidence of it, but he’d been in law enforcement long enough to sense when something was coming down. “It’s important that I speak with him.”

“Yeah, me too. I’m pretty sick of him just takin’ off!”

“Could he be with Donny Ray Wilson?”

“I just said, ‘I don’t know.’ Look, I gotta deal with the baby. If Roland . . . I mean when Roland gets home, I’ll tell him to call you, but, really, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“Maybe he’s planning to meet up with Blondell O’Henry tomorrow,” he said, just to rattle her cage a bit.

“He is so over her,” she snapped. “She cheated on him, and Roland, he can’t abide that.”

“It was twenty years ago.”

“Exactly.”

“Does he still hold a grudge?”

“No.” But she looked away, avoiding eye contact.

“Does he still care about her?”

“No way!” she nearly yelled, her lower lip trembling just slightly. “She did a number on him. Throwing him over for her stupid attorney, but Roland, he’s got me now. Even if she does get out of prison, he’s got me. And his son. And that’s enough!”

Donny Ray Wilson was nervous. Lately Roland had been going a little crazy, more than slightly off the rails, and Donny knew why. It was because that bitch Blondell O’Henry was getting out of jail. She was the one woman who’d turned his stepbrother into a head case, and once again,

Roland was talking all crazy-like.

“Look, just leave it alone, man,” Roland was saying, pacing in front of the couch, destroying Donny Ray’s view of the basketball game in progress on the big screen, a monster of a television set Donny had bought just before flat screens had become the thing. It filled up a third of his single-wide, but he really didn’t care, the picture was just so damned big. “Chill out,” he advised his stepbrother. “Who cares if she gets out?”

“I do. And you should too.”

“She didn’t rat us out before. Why would she now?” He and Roland had had this conversation a hundred times in the last twenty years—no, more like a thousand times. Roland just didn’t know how to calm down.

“Not only the police, but that bitch Nikki Gillette is poking around. She’s called a couple of times.”

“You talk to her?”

“Not yet, but she’s not the kind to give up.”

---