Page 73 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

Her thoughts plaguing her, she yanked off the headset and tossed it onto the seat.

Between Norm Metzger’s rant and Ina’s scheme for the book, she felt a little bruised. This is just the business. You know it. You didn’t steal Metzger’s job, and you surely didn’t have a hand in Amity’s death. And don’t even think about the phone call she made to you. So what? Do you really think you could have stopped a killer’s bullet?

She closed her mind to all the arguments waging in her head and paid attention to the road. Traffic was light, the road slick with rain, drops pouring from the sky. Turning up the speed of her windshield wipers, she achieved a clearer view of the surrounding farmland as it gave way to woods, pine and oak trees growing along either side of the road. Another two miles and the lake would come into view. Very soon she would be at the spot where Amity O’Henry had lost her life.

CHAPTER 22

“I haven’t seen him in what? Five? Maybe six days. Let’s just call it a week,” the woman on the other side of the rusty screen door said. Rain was pounding on the sagging roof of the porch that fronted the small bungalow, the last known address of Roland Camp, who until a week ago had worked the night shift at a mini-mart and gas station just west of town. According to the manager, Roland had called in sick and hadn’t returned. He’d given Morrisette and Reed the number of Camp’s cell, but so far no message had been returned.

So they had decided to pay Camp a visit. They’d been blocked at the door by a short, skinny woman with a ragged mop of brown hair that kept falling into her eyes—Peggy Shanks, the latest in a string of Roland Camp’s girlfriends—and she wasn’t giving the detectives the time of day. Balancing a baby of about eighteen months on one hip, she stared through the door at Morrisette and Reed as if they were planning to rob her rather than ask questions of her boyfriend. “Roland, he does this sometimes,” she explained. “Just goes and does who knows what? Hunts sometimes. Goes and finds a poker game. Whatever.”

Morrisette wondered how much BS they were being peddled. A couple of tons, she’d bet. Peggy tried to act cool, as if nothing bothered her, but she had a nervous tic near the corner of one eye, and it looked as if she hadn’t slept in about a month. The kid on her hip had a nose that kept running, no matter how many times Peggy swiped at his little red nostrils with a tissue. He made a face and turned away with each pass, and so the button of a nose remained wet.

“Did Roland disappear before or after Blondell O’Henry’s son recanted his testimony?” Reed asked.

“Beats me, but he didn’t disappear, okay? He’ll be back. I told you, this isn’t the first time, and I don’t know when exactly it was he took off.”

“This is his place of residence, though. He lives here. Most of the time,” Morrisette said.

Peggy’s gaze sharpened a bit, as if she thought Morrisette had thrown her a trick question. “Yeah, but it’s not a big deal that he took off for a few days. It’s not like we’re married.”

“Probably a good thing if he up and leaves whenever he wants.”

Reed slid her a look as Peggy protested, “It’s not like that.”

“You just said you had kind of a no-strings-attached relationship.” Morrisette looked pointedly through the ragged screen at the little boy, who was starting to fiddle with his mother’s hair. “Is Roland his father?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Seems like you have a pretty tight connection even if you aren’t married.”

“As if it’s any of your damned business. Look, I’m busy. I told you Roland ain’t here, and if he shows up, I’ll tell him you called,” Peggy said with a superior tone that irked the hell out of Morrisette. “But for the record, he ain’t a real big fan of the cops.”

“I’ll bet.” Morrisette didn’t even bother with a fake smile.

“Have him call,” Reed suggested, sliding his card through a tear in the screen.

Peggy snatched the card from his fingers.

Checking his watch, he said to Morrisette, “Let’s roll. We’re late as it is.”

As they stepped off the porch and into the driving rain, Morrisette said, “Where are we going in such an all-fired hurry?”

“Nowhere. Coffee maybe. And then a circle back.”

“A stakeout?” she asked, brightening.

“He probably never left town,” Reed observed.

“I like the way you think.” They climbed into her car, and she glanced back. “Look at that,” she said as a curtain moved in the window of the ramshackle house. “She’s watching us. Probably on the phone to Camp as we speak.”

“Better make it drive-through coffee, then,” Reed said.

A key from Uncle Alex’s ring fit the padlock on the gate, and Nikki sent up a quick prayer of thanks. While other reporters were locked out of the property marked clearly with NO TRESPASSING signs, she had access.

As ever, it paid to be the granddaughter of Eleanor Ryback. Even if someone saw her and found out her key had been “borrowed” from her uncle’s desk, Nikki had a reason and a right to be on the property owned by her grandmother’s trust.

She drove through and quickly shut the gate behind her, then, soaked to the skin, returned to her car and bumped down the overgrown lane leading to the cabin. As dark as it was, she had to turn on her headlights, and even then it was hard to see, an effort to keep the Honda’s tires in the overgrown dual ruts. Where there had once been a passable road cut through a stand of pine, oak, and ash, now potholes and weeds prevailed. With her wipers slapping away the rain, she edged carefully forward, bouncing and jarring through the woods before the trees gave way to a clearing where the hundred-year-old cabin was settling into the ground.

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