Page 48 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“Different strokes for different folks, right?” She hit the button again and the brides on the panel were restored to their normal position.

“Right.”

“Looks like tomorrow we get to see her majesty, the queen of all things evil,” Morrisette said as she walked into the training room now dedicated to the O’Henry case.

Reed said, “Innocent until proven guilty.”

“We did that once. Proved the guilt.” She strolled around the long table where Reed was working, her gaze scraping the pictures he’d placed on display on the long bulletin board across one wall. The photos were gruesome, showing the extent of Blythe, Niall, and Blondell’s injuries as well as full-body shots of Amity O’Henry lying on a slab in the morgue. Her color was already blue, the gunshot wound visible just under her sternum, tiny puncture wounds from the snake’s bite showing just below her hip. “So young,” Morrisette said, as if reading Reed’s own thoughts. “So senseless.”

“I know.”

“Here’s my problem,” she said, “Why the kids? Really? The theory was the same as with that Diane Downs case in Oregon, that she wanted to get rid of them for her new lover, Roland Camp, because he didn’t want them. But she had an ex-husband, and obviously Calvin O’Henry and June would have taken them if she really needed to get rid of them.”

“Some people don’t want something they have, but they don’t want to give it to anyone else either, especially not an ex-spouse.”

“I know, but attempting to kill your kids? Wounding yourself?” She shook her head. “That’s just so unnatural for a mother.”

“Maybe she didn’t do it.”

“You’re buying the masked stranger with the serpent tattoo?”

“I’m just saying we’re here to find the truth, not manipulate the facts to keep Blondell O’Henry in jail.”

“Has the femme fatale of Savannah reached through the prison walls to ensnare you too?”

“Oh, so you found me out. Just don’t tell Nikki, okay? It might make for an awkward wedding ceremony.”

“Funny, Reed. You’re a funny man.” She plopped down in a chair. “Okay, convince me.”

“I don’t know if Blondell’s guilty or not, but the motive’s weak, as you said.”

“Then let’s look for another one.”

“Yep,” he said, and they turned their attention back to the board.

After hours at the computer, checking facts and finding names, addresses, and phone numbers of the people she wanted to interview, Nikki stood and stretched, clambered down the stairs from her loft, and took Mikado outside. The night was cool, but dry, thin clouds scudded across a half moon, which she viewed through the branches of her magnolia tree.

“Hurry up,” she told the little dog, who sniffed at every bush and shrub before doing his business and racing her into the house again. The lights of the downstairs units were dim for the night. Charles and Gloria Arbuckle lived on the second floor. Happily childless in their midforties, they were fitness buffs who left early in the morning for their separate jobs, usually met for dinner, which they ate out, and were seldom around on the weekends, as somewhere there were mountains to climb, rivers to kayak, and marathons to run.

Tonight, on the first floor, which was occupied by Dorothy Donnigan and her thirtysomething son, Leon, a flickering bluish light was visible through the drawn shades of Leon’s room. Perpetually unemployed despite the college degrees that gave his mother bragging rights, Leon was a loner. A true gamer and marijuana enthusiast, Leon, tall and scrawny-bearded, rarely stepped outside their apartment except to smoke a cigarette and talk softly on his cell phone. Nikki had said “hello” a few times when she’d returned from her run or a trip to the store and received a nod from deep in the hood of his sweatshirt. His apple-cheeked mother was middle-aged and fighting a losing battle with her weight; she was quick with a smile, but her son seemed just the opposite. Nikki supposed Leon took after his never-seen father, who, Dorothy had explained once as Nikki had helped her haul groceries inside her apartment, was “a bit of a do-nothing, if you know what I mean. Not that I would bad-mouth Leon’s father, you know.” She’d actually looked ashamed at admitting what she thought.

“Maybe you should,” Nikki had suggested as she’d set her grocery bag on the counter and seen a pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

“Well, then I’d be just another bitchy ex-wife, wouldn’t I?”

“I’m not sure I would worry about it, if I were you.”

“Maybe you’re right.” At that moment Leon, unshaven and wearing his uniform of sweatpants and hooded shirt, had lumbered into the kitchen. Seeming as if in a fog, he’d dropped yet another dirty dish onto the pile, and without a word had walked outside onto the brick veranda, where he’d unceremoniously lit up.

“All he needs is a job,” his mother said, her gaze following after him as he closed the door. She’d cranked on the hot water, squirted liquid cleaner into the filling sink, then started putting away her groceries, Nikki had said a quick good-bye and escaped. Outside, she’d skirted Leon who, puffing away while kicking at leaves, already had his phone clamped to his ear, and as she’d hurried up the exterior stairs, she’d felt his assessing gaze follow her every step of the way.

Like father, like son, Nikki had thought at the time, and her opinion hadn’t changed in the nearly two years that Dorothy and Leon had been her tenants.

Now she wondered just how long Mrs. Donnigan would take her son’s lack of ambition. Not that it was her business or her problem, but time, as they said, was marching on.

With Mikado yipping at her feet, she climbed the outside stairs to her third-floor retreat and stepped inside. Tonight, the apartment seemed empty. Lonely. She wondered how it would be when she and Reed married. To date, he’d left a shaving kit, a pair of jeans, a couple of shirts, and one suit in her unit, but after the wedding he was planning to move in permanently, and they’d talked about having a child.

Life would be very different, and she figured eventually they might have to take over the rest of the house, or at least the second floor.

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