Page 34 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

She frowned. “I know the wife, June. Her son and my boy were in the same class at school. She’s a strange one, though, let me tell you. I’m sure as heck glad she’s not my stepmother. I think she makes Nurse Ratched . . . from that movie, what’s it called?”

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“Yeah, that one. I think maybe they made a book from it.”

Or the other way around.

“Anyway, June makes that nurse look like an angel, I’m tellin’ you. Religious too, and not in a good way, y’know. I’m a Christian woman, mind you, go to church and Bible study and believe in the Savior, Jesus Christ, but June O’Henry, she takes it too far. That church she attends? It’s one of those snake-handlin’, speakin’-in-tongues sects. Let me tell you, it gives me a case of the willies.”

Nikki had heard, somewhere, that Calvin O’Henry’s second wife was part of a religious sect far outside the mainstream, but snake handling? Why had she never heard this? “In Savannah?” she asked.

“Not in town, but outside. Yeah, I know everyone thinks they only exist in Appalachia, in the mountains, but that’s just not correct.” She was rambling on before she realized Nikki hadn’t introduced herself. “So who’re you? Reporter or something?”

Nikki was remembering Amity’s wounds from a snake bite, and it took her a moment before she extended her hand. “Nikki Gillette, Savannah Sentinel.”

“That rag?” she said, then hesitated, “Wait a minute. Gillette?” Her eyes narrowed behind her glasses, and her pleasant, gossip-sharing smile faded. “I know all about you. Big Ron or Big Daddy or whatever the hell it was they called him, he was your father. Right?”

“Yes, and—”

“You’re the one who was nearly killed by that psycho a few years back? Wrote a book about it?” Her lips compressed and she clucked her tongue. “I should’ve recognized you.”

Nikki was nodding, but before she could say another word, the woman backed up a step, away from the overgrown hedge. “I got no use for you, nor that father of yours. I know he’s dead and I say that’s a blessing. He sent my Clarence up the river for twenty years.” Hooking a thumb at her chest, she added, “Twenty damned years! I know it was his third DUI, but hell, no one died in that wreck. For the love of Christ, I ain’t talkin’ to the likes of you. What happened to your daddy was too good for him.” Jettisoning her cigarette into the moist grass, she turned and stormed toward the neat bungalow she called home.

“Wait a minute,” Nikki said, jumping over the boxwoods and following the woman to her porch. “I’m just looking to talk to Mr. O’Henry.”

“You and the rest of the world. You ain’t hearin’ any more from me. I don’t give Big Ron Gillette’s progeny the damned time of day!” She hurried up the cement steps and reached for the handle of the door. “You’ve got about three seconds to get off my propert

y before I call the cops and have you arrested for trespassing!”

CHAPTER 10

Two days later, before the interview they were scheduled to have with Niall O’Henry, Reed and Morrisette took a drive to the cabin where Amity O’Henry had been killed.

“This place certainly wouldn’t win any awards from House Beautiful, ” Morrisette muttered as they walked into the cabin. Remarkably, the key the station had on file still fit the lock, just as the key to the gate at the end of the lane had. As the door creaked open, Reed had to agree with his partner.

It was as if they’d stepped back in time. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, mantel, and windowsills, and the carcasses of dead insects were visible, along with a myriad of spider webs. The air inside was musty and smelled stale, as if no one had cracked open a window during the past twenty years.

A few pieces of furniture remained, but the hide-a-bed where Amity O’Henry had been shot was gone, and the desk and table seemed to be falling apart.

The room was large, with a high, pitched ceiling where, it appeared, wasps had nested in the rafters. Stairs ran up the far wall to the open loft area that was about half the size of the lower level, and in the center of the room, on the wall opposite the loft, a crumbling stone fireplace climbed two stories to dominate the room.

“It’s like time stood still,” Morrisette remarked as she clicked on her flashlight and ran its beam around the small living area. The fireplace was empty, devoid of ashes or a grate, and yet there was the faint odor of soot lingering in the air. “Kind of gives a person the creeps.”

“It could,” Reed agreed, as Morrisette pointed the beam of the flashlight to the wooden stairs running up the far wall to the loft. Reed glanced up and wondered about the children who had been put to bed upstairs. Niall, barely eight at the time and little Blythe, not quite five.

How terrifying for them to hear . . . what? An argument? A door bursting open? Cursing? Gunfire? A smashed lantern? Screams? Whatever it was, it had to have been loud enough to wake them up and cause them to come stumbling down the stairs without knowing they were attracting a killer’s attention.

If they’d stayed in their beds, would the attacker have come up the stairs and killed them as they slept, or would the killer have let them live? Had their own mother fired on them, or was it truly a stranger, a maniac with a gun and an unknown motive?

Beauregard and the team had theorized that Blondell had shot her daughter as she’d awoken following the snakebite, but how the hell did the sibilant creature get into her bed in the first place? On its own? Was it planted?

Beauregard’s theory was that while Amity lay bleeding out, conscious or not, the little ones had tumbled out of their beds, only to be mown down by their own mother, who had been callous enough to shoot herself in the arm and smash her head against the mantel or some other surface to add to her alibi. Then, once she was clearheaded enough, she’d hauled her injured kids into the car to make that slow, harrowing journey to the hospital and get rid of the murder weapon. True, the car showed signs of being wrecked, and a tire rubbing against the wheel well and the alcohol in her bloodstream could have contributed to her inability to drive fast. Blondell swore that she had trouble focusing because of her head injury, and that driving was difficult also because of her shattered arm. And the car, after she’d sideswiped an oak, was nearly impossible to drive. All of the above hampered her speed to the hospital, she claimed.

Cell phones weren’t prevalent back then, and there weren’t many phone booths scattered throughout the Georgia countryside, so she couldn’t call for help.

Other evidence that had thrown the cops off—the snake that had apparently bitten Amity before being run over on the drive and a cigarette butt—could have been planted before she started her rampage. What the hell was a copperhead doing in the cabin in January, and who had left the cigarette?

“Beauregard couldn’t find evidence of another person in the cabin besides Blondell and her children,” Reed said as they stepped through the gloomy rooms.

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