Page 20 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“Good.”

“Oh, and how’s your mother?” She asked out of duty; they both knew it.

“Okay, I guess.” Charlene Gillette, never a particularly healthy woman, had, in recent years, grown frail to the point that she hovered somewhere just above a hundred pounds, which wasn’t much for even her petite frame.

“She’s got to be ecstatic about the weddin

g, though. You’re her great last hope.”

“She’s looking forward to it,” Nikki agreed, but she bristled a bit, knowing what was coming next.

“You’d think Lily would settle down.”

“She doesn’t want to.”

“But for Ophelia? What’s Lily thinking, raising her without a husband?”

“It’s the thing now, Aunty-Pen. Women don’t need a husband to start a family.”

“Don’t be silly, Nicole. That’s ridiculous! Any woman needs a husband, and certainly every child needs a father.”

“That’s antiquated thinking,” Nikki said, and her aunt sent her a look guaranteed to cut through steel.

“You can be as modern as you want to be, but let me tell you, marriage is more than a ritual and a piece of paper. It’s not just a privilege, it’s a sacred union, not to be taken lightly. You’re sure you’re ready?”

“I think so,” Nikki said, fighting her irritation. She knew the well of Aunty-Pen’s grief and how it came out in these picky little ways. She would never get to be mother of the bride, never have grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. Rather than argue, Nikki changed the topic. “How about I drive this afternoon?”

“Let’s just not speed as if we’re running from a fire. The world won’t stop if we arrive at Pleasant Acres five minutes late.”

Reed spent most of the morning sipping bad coffee and reading through Flint Beauregard’s notes. The case file was thick and seemingly complete, at least at first glance, but he intended to study the notes in greater detail once they’d sorted through all the physical evidence, read the statements, and gone over the testimony at the trial. There were depositions to read, witnesses to find, and lab work to scrutinize and double-check with today’s technology. Along with all the physical evidence found at the scene, there was a bundle of letters, yellowed with age, written in Blondell’s distinctive loopy handwriting, all addressed to “My Love.” None, it seemed, had ever been sent. They had been preserved in plastic, and as Reed read them, he felt as if he were invading a couple’s privacy. The notes were intimate and sexy and flirty and spoke of undying love and desperate need, but gave no indication the author intended to do anything malicious or harmful. If anything, they seemed more like a plea for the same adoration the writer was offering.

Bothered, he set them aside and concentrated on the scientific evidence rather than the romantic yearnings of a woman who eventually would be found guilty of murder.

Meanwhile, Morrisette worked on organizing the evidence and sorting through what, in her opinion, was relevant and what wasn’t. A junior detective was given the job of searching all the Internet databases looking for the addresses and phone numbers of the witnesses for the prosecution, as well as those who had spoken for the defense. The idea was to see if anyone else was changing his or her testimony and, if so, what would it be. The state hoped someone would come forward with more damaging evidence, but Reed wasn’t betting on it.

Skimming the files, Reed made notes to himself. A few anomalies jumped out at him, not the least of which were Blondell’s injuries. Had she somehow fallen against something on purpose to make it look as if she’d been attacked, and had she really fired a gun point-blank into her own arm to add credence to her story? If so, it was a gutsy move, but her injuries, for the most part, weren’t life-threatening. No serious concussion or blood clot on her brain, no nicked artery in her arm. In that respect she had been much luckier than her children. While the defense had insisted she’d been wounded in a struggle with an assailant for the gun—hence the gunshot residue on her hands—the prosecution had argued that Blondell, a woman who could murder her own child in cold blood and try to kill the others, could certainly shoot herself. Reed wasn’t convinced. Not completely. If she’d been dead set to get rid of her kids, why even drive them to the hospital? Why not finish the job and say she’d been knocked out in the attack, that the assailant had thought he’d killed her.

Why leave witnesses?

No, despite the outcome of her trial, it didn’t quite jibe that she was a cold-blooded killer, so he figured it wasn’t so much his job to find the evidence to keep Blondell O’Henry in jail as it was to uncover the truth.

Meanwhile, the press was all over the case, and he’d declined to take any calls he didn’t recognize. The public information officer could handle any and all questions. Of course, that didn’t include Nikki, who was already hounding him.

She was like a terrier with a bone when she wanted a story. He’d learned that lesson long ago, and while she’d irritated the hell out of him, she’d intrigued him as well, and he, who had sworn off women after the debacle in San Francisco, had found himself falling in love with her. He’d fought his attraction, of course, but in the end she’d gotten under his skin like no other woman, and he, once a confirmed bachelor, found himself proposing to her.

Now, as he looked at the autopsy report on Amity O’Henry, he inwardly cringed. She’d been so young, a child really, yet three months pregnant. He wondered if Blondell had known about the baby, though she’d sworn she’d had no idea that her daughter was even sexually active, let alone pregnant. Nor had Blondell been able to come up with the name of the child’s father. Again, DNA testing would help, as long as the father was in the database.

Unfortunately, there was no blood, amniotic fluid, or anything from the fetus, and twenty years ago paternity testing wasn’t as precise as it was today.

So who was the guy? Nikki said she knew Amity. Maybe she could provide a list of boyfriends the girl had been dating. Beauregard did have two names listed, but according to the reports, each had submitted to a blood test and had been ruled out as the father of the unborn child, whose blood had been O-negative, which, since Amity was A-positive, indicated the father had negative blood, a rudimentary identification test by today’s standards, but still accurate.

His mind wandered for just a second to another paternity test a few years back, when he’d learned that a victim of the Grave Robber, a woman he’d been involved with, had been pregnant with his child.

His heart still twisted at that thought, and now that he was again dealing with a case in which an unborn child was a secondary victim, it made him all the more angry and determined to ferret out the truth.

Unfortunately, Beauregard’s notes weren’t as thorough as Reed would have liked, and the biggest piece of evidence against Blondell O’Henry—the testimony of her young son—was now being recanted. Reed would have loved to see portions of the trial, so he’d taken a quick look online and found some just-posted clips on YouTube, generated from the renewed interest in the case. He’d seen the defendant, demure and quiet, hands folded in front of her as the trial progressed. Garland Brownell, a former football star, had handled the prosecution’s case well, his style subtle when it was called for and more passionate when that was needed during the examination of his witnesses. Alexander McBaine had been as smooth as silk, a good ol’ Georgia boy who oozed Southern charm. He too had dealt with each witness expertly. However, the cut-up pieces of the trial that Reed had found weren’t cohesive. He longed for the missing tapes.

One thing he noticed: in every clip he saw Blondell was the same. Cool. Beautiful. Serious. Judging from her appearance, no one could have imagined her capable of the evil of which she was accused.

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