Page 35 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“Not at that time. Too many people had used it back then.” She eyed the empty interior. “It lost a little of its luster and popularity, you know, after the murder.”

“Who owned the property?”

“Same people that do today,” Morrisette said, running her flashlight’s beam toward the archway leading to a small kitchen at the back of the cabin. “The acres surrounding the cabin and the lake belong to the Eleanor Ryback Trust, which is essentially her descendants.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “One of those descendants is your fiancée.”

His head jerked up. “Nikki?”

“Unless you’ve got another one tucked away somewhere. Eleanor Ryback was married twice, first to Frank McBaine and after he died, to Marshall Gillette. She had two sons, Alexander McBaine with husband number one and Ronald with number two.” Morrisette swept the beam of her flashlight up the face of the fireplace to where the chimney disappeared into the ceiling. “She’s long dead now, but was the mother of Big Ron or Big Daddy or whatever you want to call him, the Honorable Judge Ronald Gillette, as well as mother to Big Ron’s half-brother, Alexander McBaine, who was Blondell’s attorney at the time of the trial.”

“I knew that much. Surprised it happened. I mean, weren’t there cries of nepotism by the prosecution?”

“Probably, I don’t know. But Flint Beauregard and the DA at the time played poker with Big Daddy. Either side could have cried foul. And it gets even more incestuous,” she added. “Jesus, is that a bat up there?” Her light was positioned in a crack between the main beam supporting the ceiling and butting up to the chimney stack. Tiny eyes reflected. “I hate those things!”

“How does it get more incestuous?” he asked, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer as they were discussing Nikki’s family.

“Well, the rumor was that Alexander McBaine fell in love with his client.”

He hadn’t seen even a hint of a love affair in Beauregard’s notes and said as much.

She lifted a shoulder as she turned to run the light over the stairs. “Speculation, for the most part, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“A rumor.”

“You know, it happens more often than you’d think, the lawyer-client love affair, probably from working so closely together. But I just don’t get it.”

Reed offered up. “She was a beautiful woman.”

“Oh, bite me! There are thousands of beautiful women right here in this town. And there were just as many twenty years ago. Come on. Blondell O’Henry is accused of murdering her daughter, and then her lawyer—no, rewind: make that her long-married lawyer—falls for her? Sick, if you ask me.”

“But Amity’s murder happened before Alexander McBaine took Blondell’s case, obviously,” Reed thought aloud. “Did he know her before? Why use this cabin?”

“That’s a good question, but I think it didn’t come through the McBaine side. Your fiancée knew Amity O’Henry, I think”—Morrisette scowled a bit—“so she might have been the connection between them.”

“Because she was friends with the dead girl?” Reed said, bothered, refusing to admit that the same thought had crossed his mind. “That’s a big leap. She was what? Fifteen or sixteen at the time.”

“Even so, Nikki Gillette’s father owned an interest in this cabin, where the murder occurred.” Morrisette cocked her head and stared at him. “I’m just sayin’. So maybe you should ask her.”

“I will,” he said, and he felt an unanticipated premonition of dread seep through his bones. The evil that had occurred within these crumbling walls still hadn’t evaporated.

He eyed the loft from the ground floor. According to Beauregard’s notes, some of the evidence found in the cabin had supported Blondell’s story, and some didn’t. The case would have probably been a stalemate except for Niall’s whispery testimony. Spoken through a larynx that was shattered by a bullet fired from the assailant’s gun, his words convinced

the jury that he’d seen his mother take aim at him and fire.

Yes, it had been dark that night, and yes, he’d been a terrified, myopic eight-year-old at the time, but frail, reluctant Niall O’Henry had been a convincing witness.

The defense had countered by insisting it had been far too dark for anyone to see clearly, much less a child who wore glasses and hadn’t put them on when he’d bolted out of bed that night.

Blondell had insisted her son had seen her wrestling for the gun, but in his blurred vision mistakenly thought she’d aimed the weapon at him and pulled the trigger.

To this day, she repeated the same story and vowed she was innocent. The “intruder” with bushy hair and a serpent tattoo, with whom she claimed she’d fought, was never located, though many men, mostly those who knew her, had been questioned. Of course, the murder weapon had never been located. According to the notes, the police had interviewed neighbors of the cabin, but no one had been awakened by the sound of a car backfiring or by a barking dog. Then again, they were located so far away from the cabin, they might not have heard the gunshots over the storm. Both of the neighbors who had been called to testify, those with property abutting the property surrounding the cabin, could recall only the sounds of the pouring rain and the wind racing across the marshland.

Nor had a second set of tire prints or footprints been discovered that night, though the rain could have washed them away.

Other than the snake and cigarette butt, and Niall’s now-recanted testimony, the police didn’t have much.

Blondell’s side of the events had continued with her panicked trip to the hospital, the swollen creek, the treacherous bridge, and hitting the tree and mashing her fender. Amity had died on the way to the ER.

Blythe had been rushed into surgery, but her spinal cord had been damaged, leaving her in a wheelchair ever since.

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