Page 54 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

Letting General outside, she followed after, and the big dog tore around the corner of the house. “Oh, no,” she whispered, and her skin crawled a little.

The dog was heading to the shed, where, beneath the floorboards, Alfred kept his snakes in some kind of bunker. She’d never seen his collection, and they’d never spoken of it, but she’d heard the rumors about Alfred, confirmed by that ever-gossiping Vera, that he bought and sold all kinds of vipers.

Vera had said he kept them belowground, out under his shed, and today it looked like Nola-Mae was going to see for herself. “Alfred,” she called loudly as she opened the door to the outbuilding and stepped inside. “Look, come on up!”

General was barking and going out of his friggin’ mind. “Shh! You stop!” she ordered as she couldn’t hear a thing. “Alfred!”

The dog held his nose to the trapdoor, which was visible as an old rug had been thrown off it. Alfred had to be in the underground space. “Oh, great.” Steeling herself, she yanked hard on the ring that served as a handle, and the door creaked open. As the light from the shed pierced downward into the cavern below, Nola-Mae spied a hand on the bottom rung.

And then the hand began to move, fingers twitching. She started to call her brother’s name again when General began growling, and there, on the uppermost rung, so close she could have touched it, was a diamondback rattler, its tail vibrating with a warning rattle.

“For the love of St. Peter!” Heart pounding, Nola jumped back, pulling the dog with one hand, grabbing her phone with the other and dialing 911.

With one eye on the clock, Nikki made several calls, setting up appointments; then, before she left for what would be several hours, she walked Mikado down the exterior stairs. At the landing to the second floor, just as the clouds parted and allowed in a little sunshine, she saw the glint again, a bit of light catching on a piece of metal down by the trash cans. The dog sniffed at the shrubbery, then spied a squirrel in a low-hanging branch of the magnolia tree and began barking uproariously. “Forget him and get at it. Do your business,” Nikki said. Meanwhile she let herself through the back gate and walked to the far side of the alley.

Glanc

ing up at the third-floor window, she tried to determine where the offending glint had originated, based on the angle necessary to refract light into her eyes. A fence on the far side of the narrow alley separated the neighbor’s yard from the back of Nikki’s place, and a tall utility pole rose above the garages and roofs.

“Mikado! Enough!” she said as the squirrel found its way onto a wire running across her yard and deftly skittered over the fence and across the alley to the pole, where posters and signs had collected. The rodent scurried down the pole and past one of the rungs. As she watched it land on the fence and scramble down the far side, she saw a tiny black object wedged between the boards of the “good-neighbor” fence. It was just above her reach, so she stretched, her fingers brushing the cool metal.

It’s just a piece of junk, and here you are making a fool of yourself. If anyone looks out the window, Nikki, they’ll think you’ve gone around the bend.

Still, with one hand she balanced herself against the side of a board and extended her other arm upward. She couldn’t reach it, but she could bat it down if she was careful and didn’t push it through to the other side and onto Mrs. Milliford’s garden, which was overrun with bamboo.

One more slap and the object fell onto a clump of weeds near the trash bins. She picked it up and stared at it, her heartbeat accelerating. This wasn’t a piece of junk or leftover trash some hot-shot teenager had tucked into the boards of the fence; this little object, she was certain, was a tiny surveillance camera. Holding it in her palm, she let her gaze climb up the walls of her house to stop on the third floor, where her kitchen, bedroom, and living-area windows overlooked her back garden.

Someone was spying on her?

“No way,” she whispered, but she could feel the cold prickle of fear as it climbed up her neck. Who would care what she did? Who would try to get a picture of her doing what? Working? Cleaning house? Dancing to an exercise tape? Undressing?

Weirded out, she thought of her enemies.

Norm Metzger didn’t like her much at all and had made no bones about it, but she couldn’t really see the crime writer at the Sentinel caring what she did in her off hours. He wasn’t a perv, as least as far as she knew.

Someone else from the Sentinel?

Kevin Deeter, the computer tech, the editor’s nephew, and the newspaper’s resident odd duck? Kevin was a loner whose social skills were just about nil, and who had creeped her out on occasion, but really?

Then there was Effie, who seemed to show up everywhere Nikki did and who’d followed her from the coffee shop. But, again, really? Effie was overzealous, for sure, but this was . . . something else.

But maybe it wasn’t someone connected to her work at all. For reasons she didn’t want to explore too closely, her mind jumped to Sean, her ex-boyfriend. He was back in town and had called a couple of times but had, she thought, gotten the hint.

Or maybe the camera’s aim was off and the target was really the Arbuckles. Her gaze drifted to the second-story unit.

Or...

She looked at the first-floor unit where Leon Donnigan resided. Talk about a loner. When he wasn’t inside the apartment he shared with his mother, he was outside, walking in the back yard, smoking and talking on his phone.

Nikki had always gotten a weird vibe from him.

But was he a Peeping Tom?

The idea seemed far-fetched, yet someone was definitely watching the building.

Not knowing who was behind all this, she slid the camera into the pocket of her coat. “Sorry, bastard,” she said, as if whoever had planted the camera could hear her. “Show’s over.” Hurriedly, she crossed the alley and walked back through her gate. Whistling to Mikado, she scurried quickly up the exterior stairs.

Inside her apartment, she bolted the door and tried to keep a panic attack at bay. Maybe it was an old camera, left years before, someone having ditched it quickly—if so, what was on it? She gave thought to the idea that it might be aimed at someone else, another apartment, but deep in her heart, she knew better.

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