Page 40 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“They’re my boyfriend’s,” she said. “He moved in about four months ago.” Then, as if she realized she’d gotten off track and said too much, Blythe turned serious again. “You said you knew Amity. Before you start asking questions, why don’t you tell me about that?” Blythe acted as if she suddenly doubted Nikki’s claim. “Amity was a year older than you, and you didn’t come from the same neighborhood. Considering what I know about my sister, I doubt you were in the same Brownie troop together.”

“Amity and I both went to Robert E. Lee. We had a couple of classes together,” Nikki said. “P.E. was required for both freshmen and sophomores, a blended all-girls class. We saw each other there and in biology. We were lab partners.

“I tested high enough as an entering freshman to skip general science and was pushed into biology, which was a sophomore class,” Nikki explained when Blythe looked suspicious. “Your sister ended up being stuck with me as a lab partner.”

“Amity wasn’t into school all that much.” Blythe said it as if it were a documented fact.

“That was probably true.”

“You carried her, didn’t you?”

“Sometimes.” Nikki remembered a time when she’d actually helped Amity cheat on a biology exam.

“You did her homework?”

“Once in a while. Yes.”

“You weren’t helping her, you know. That was part of Amity’s problem, getting others do her work for her, or so my father used to say. Then again, Dad and June were strict. Unbending. Even with Emma-Kate, and she was their darling, of course.”

Nikki nodded, remembering Calvin and June’s daughter, born just after Blondell’s trial.

“Dad told me that Amity had nearly been flunking out and didn’t seem to care.”

“That was the next year.”

“I guess you weren’t there to bail her out.”

“No.”

“How about Hollis McBaine?”

“How do you know Hollis?” Nikki asked.

“I don’t. But I’ve learned a lot in the past few years. I had a lot of questions about what happened and not many answers. I knew that Dad and June saw things one way, in black and white, as they do with everything, so when I could, I read all there was to read about my mother. I was, like, obsessed with what had happened. My shrink says I’m looking for answers I can’t find, but I think that’s crap. The answers are out there. Someone knows the truth

.”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m hoping to talk to your mother.”

“Good luck with that.” Behind her shaggy bangs, Blythe rolled her eyes. “For a few years I visited her in prison, with a social worker. My dad and stepmother wouldn’t be caught dead near the prison, and then, when I was older, I went by myself. I’m not completely bound to this chair, y’know. I can drive and walk with a walker, but it’s hard. Anyway, like I said, obsessed.”

“What about your mother? Was she anxious to see you?”

“Never,” she said, then amended that statement. “That’s not really true. I think she was glad for a break from the boredom and routine, but I don’t kid myself into thinking it had anything to do with motherly love. To me, she’s always been indifferent. Maybe even cold, and certainly narcissistic.” She glanced at the recorder, its red ON light glowing. “Anyway, I just pieced as much information together as I could. I knew my mother’s lawyer had a couple of kids who had died, so I googled them and read all the articles and realized that Hollis was the same age as Amity, and she had died just a couple of months before my sister. How weird is that?” Blythe lifted her shoulders in the tiniest of shrugs. “But, then, what isn’t weird about all of this?”

“Nothing,” Nikki admitted.

CHAPTER 12

Niall O’Henry squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “I heard something. Loud voices, I believe. My mother. Angry. No, no, furious was more like it,” he said, looking from Reed to Morrisette in the interrogation room. “I’ve always thought she was yelling at Amity, but now . . . now I believe she was yelling at the intruder. Anyway, I shot out of the bed. I was in the top bunk, and I hurried to the stairs when I heard a shot. I couldn’t see much. I’ve worn glasses since I was three or four and hadn’t put them on, just ran to the stairs and started going down. The only light was from the fire, but I saw Amity on the bed and then a blast, a bright light, and I was hit. I thought my mother was the only person in the room, so I assumed she’d shot at me, but now, thinking back, I think there might have been someone else downstairs. Someone threatening us. Attacking us.”

He appeared earnest and sounded a little desperate, his wheezy breath more apparent as he became more agitated. “Look, I really don’t know what I saw. I was just a kid, a myopic kid in the semidark with bullets flying. I heard screaming, yeah, and then Blythe was behind me. I remember that. As I fell down the rest of the stairs, I saw her near the top and there was another shot and she . . . somehow slipped through the rails.” He closed his eyes tightly, almost cringing, his face seeming to fold in on itself. “And then . . . I kind of blacked out, I guess. I remember Mom carrying me to the car. Amity and Blythe were already inside, and Mom was bleeding.”

“You didn’t see anyone shoot her?” Reed asked.

Niall was shaking his head. “I don’t know how it happened.”

“You testified that she shot herself.”

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