Page 33 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“Do that, honey,” her mother reprimanded gently, her Georgian drawl a little more evident. “Remember, this is your wedding we’re talking about, the most important day of your life.” And with those words of wisdom, she’d managed to lay down the law, along with a good measure of guilt.

Great, Nikki thought as she stepped off the curb. A horn blasted. From the corner of her eye she saw motion. Quickly she jumped backward, twisting her ankle just as a black sports car sped through the intersection.

“What the hell?” she cried as the BMW sped off.

“Whoa!” a teenage boy on a skateboard said, his eyes rounding beneath the edge of his watch cap. “That dude almost hit you! Man, it was like he was trying to run you down!”

“He missed. This time,” she said, flashing a smile as she looked after the car that was racing away, windows dark, license plate smudged. An accident? Probably. Just some anxious, lead-footed idiot who hadn’t seen her or maybe even wanted to scare her as he sped through a red light. Nothing more. Nothing the least bit sinister.

Right?

But she couldn’t stop the little frisson of fear from running down her spine.

“That light just wasn’t kinda pink,” the kid said. “It was really red. That douche bag is lucky someone didn’t T-bone him!” Then he took off, throwing down his board and pedaling with one foot as he streaked across the street. Ankle throbbing, Nikki hobbled in front of the stopped traffic to the far sidewalk. The pain lessened as she made her way to her car, and she told herself it was nothing, just a case of an impatient idiot wanting to beat out the cross traffic.

Still, as she climbed into her Honda, she checked the rearview mirror and tried to ignore the skateboarder’s assessment.

It was like he was trying to run you down.

Shivering inwardly, she slid behind the wheel, then locked all the doors before starting the car.

Don’t do this, Nikki. Don’t fall victim to fear again. Especially where there is no threat, none. It’s all in your mind.

Gritting her teeth, she backed out of the parking spot, then rammed her Honda into gear. Throughout the day, she’d made notes to herself on her cell phone after locating several addresses of people she wanted to interview.

Of course, Niall O’Henry hadn’t picked up his phone, nor had his attorney returned Nikki’s calls, but she figured she may as well try to locate Blondell’s son and find out exactly why he had decided to recant his testimony after twenty years. What had happened to him to make him change his mind? Then there was Blythe, Blondell’s daughter, who had survived the attack but was paralyzed from a ricocheting bullet. She was a grown woman now and still living in an apartment that was just off Bull Street, near one of the buildings housing the Savannah College of Art and Design, and happened to be less than half a mile from Nikki’s home, which would be perfect.

She desperately wanted to talk to both Niall and Blythe. Since she’d struck out with Blondell, Nikki figured she’d go to the kids.

Checking her rearview mirror again, she watched the traffic behind her, but no dark sports car was visible, no other vehicle following.

“Just your imagination,” she told herself and considered calling Reed, just to check in. It wasn’t to ask him about the O’Henry case, or so she tried to convince herself, as she turned onto Victory and headed a few blocks east to a quiet neighborhood with shaded streets.

Niall’s home, a cottage with a large picture window and a raised porch, appeared to have been built sometime in the 1940s. The shrubbery wasn’t as neatly pruned as some of his neighbors’, and dead leaves were scattered over the tufted grass and skittered across the sidewalk. The house was in sad need of a new coat of paint, and one of the gutters dangled precariously from its eave. Parking across the street, she made her way up a concrete walk that was badly chipped in places, with weeds poking through a few cracks.

Inside, the curtains were tightly drawn, and wedged into the screen door was a pamphlet, fat from rain, yellowing with the sun. Once she’d stepped onto the porch, she rang the bell and heard it chime; when there was no response from inside, she knocked on the screen door.

Nothing.

No sound of footsteps hurrying across seventy-year-old hardwood. No barking dog. No movement of the closed drapes.

“Ain’t no one there!” a voice called, and Nikki jumped, turning to find a woman in a broad-brimmed hat, bib overalls, a flannel shirt, boots, and gardening gloves standing on the other side of an untrimmed row of boxwoods. “Hasn’t been for, oh, nigh onto a month now, I reckon.”

Nikki stepped off the porch and crossed the soft lawn. “You know Mr. O’Henry?” Maybe this woman could help her.

“Oh, hell, no. No one does. I’ve lived here sixteen years now, and I never spoke but half a dozen words to him. Same with his wife, though I saw her with the kids once in a while. She never waved, just hurried to the car. Well, to tell you the truth, I’m surprised he’s even married. He’s a loner, you know, and really, who could blame him? Everyone in the whole damned town knows what he went through.”

She was staring at Nikki through glasses that darkened as the sun peeked through the clouds. Without removing her gloves, she found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the voluminous pockets of her overalls.

“You aren’t the first one to come calling,” she added and managed somehow to light a long cigarette, holding it in lime-green gloves. “Lots of people been knocking on his door. I’ve watched ’em.” She shot a stream of smoke from the side of her mouth.

“He used to go to work at seven-twenty every morning, on the dot—I’d hear his pickup fire up—then return around six. Just like clockwork. The missus, Darla, I think her name is, if she left the house at all, it was during the middle of the day in that old red Dodge—a Dart, I think it was.” She took another drag. “It was weird, though. I never even heard the kids playing in the yard. Kinda odd, don’t ya know. Well, good riddance. That’s what I say.”

“Why?”

“They moved out. Oh, must’ve been three weeks now, maybe four. Went back to work on his father’s farm, that’s what I heard. You know Calvin O’Henry?”

“I know of him,” Nikki said. “Blondell’s ex-husband and Niall and Blythe’s father. A strange man, from all accounts.”

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