Page 7 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

She’d been Amity’s friend. If that wasn’t personal enough, she didn’t know what was.

CHAPTER 2

Nikki drove like a madwoman to the new, downsized offices of the Sentinel. The newspaper had been a Savannah standard for generations, a bastion of the Southern press, but it was slowly dying, doorstep delivery and print pages giving way to electronic data zapped to computers and handheld devices, detailed stories cut into sound bites or tweets.

Many of the writers she’d worked with had moved on or were contributing to the electronic blogs, posts, tweets, and whatever was the latest technological blip in the ever-changing face of communications.

Located on the third floor of an old warehouse that had been converted to offices, the new headquarters were tucked into a weathered brick building that had stood on the banks of the Savannah River for centuries. Inside, the sleek interior, steeped in electronics, was about a third the size of the old offices where she’d spent so many years at a desk.

Nosing her Honda CR-V into a spot in the near-vacant parking lot, she grabbed her bag and braved the weather again. Dashing across the lot, through the rain, she skirted puddles as she locked her car remotely. A familiar beep told her all was secure as she reached the front doors beneath a wide awning. Into the building she ran and, with a quick wave to the security guard, took the stairs, water dripping from the edges of her coat as she used her personal code to open the door at the third floor.

With a click, the lock released and she hurried into the newsroom, where a few reporters were still at desks near the windows, separated by partitions, and the interior walls were dominated by a bank of computers for the digital feed. The employee lounge was cut into one corner, the restrooms another. Slick. Efficient. No unnecessary frills.

Few reporters were still at their desks, the day crew already having left and only a handful working the night shift.

“Hey!” she yelled to Bob Swan, the sports editor, as he appeared from the direction of the lunch room with a folded newspaper under his arm. “Is Metzger still here?”

“Home sick.” Shaking his bald head, Bob added, “Picked up the bug from his mother at the retirement center where she lives. Whole place is shut down by the health department. Quarantined. But not before Metzger got hit.” Bob chuckled as he turned into his cubicle, and Nikki followed to stand at the opening near his desk. “Hear he’s sicker than a dog. Maybe now he’ll finally lose some of that weight he’s been complaining about.” He dropped the paper he’d been carrying onto his desk.

“Too bad,” she said, without much sympathy as Norm Metzger, the paper’s crime reporter, had been a thorn in her side for as long as she had worked for the Sentinel. “I saw something about the lockdown at Sea View on the stream at home,” she admitted. “And I caught something else.”

Above the lenses of his half glasses, Bob’s dark eyes glinted. “Let me guess. About Blondell O’Henry? Helluva thing, that. But with Metzger down with the stomach bug, looks like you’re up.” Then, realizing he’d overstepped his bounds of authority, he added, “But you’d better check with Fink.”

“I will.” Since the Grave Robber story, Tom Fink had grudgingly allowed her to report some of the local crime, albeit they were usually the stories that Norm Metzger didn’t want. Nikki had never understood why Fink relied so heavily upon Metzger, apart from the fact that the heavyset reporter was more of a veteran with the paper. And maybe, just maybe, Fink was a bit of a misogynist, compliments of divorce settlements by his ex-wives. Whatever the reason, he’d never really given Nikki the chance to prove herself. Hence her high-handed refusal to take over the crime beat after the Grave Robber case had wrapped up.

She’d thought she’d move on to a bigger, more prestigious newspaper in the Midwest or Atlanta, maybe even New York, but then she’d fallen in love with Reed and eaten a bit of humble pie, mixed with crow, and decided to work part-time here in Savannah, the place she’d always thought of as home.

However, since Metzger was home sick, this was her chance at a story that could go nationwide, be picked up all across the country, and gain her legitimate access to Blondell O’Henry.

“I assume Levitt is on deck,” she said, mentioning the newspaper’s photographer.

“You know what they say about assuming anything,” Swan said from his desk chair. “If this is yours, getting Levitt is on you. And you might have to fight Savoy for him.” Inwardly, Nikki groaned. Effie Savoy was a recent hire, a woman whose blogs on the Sentinel’s web site were gaining popularity, a pushy reporter who was always around and dead set on being Nikki’s new best friend. She was a real pain in the rear.

“Again?”

“She’s a go-getter,” Swan said. “Kinda reminds me of someone else a few years back.”

“Yeah, right.” She wasn’t about to argue the merits of one of the newspaper’s reporters, but it seemed odd, in this era of downsizing that, out of the blue, Effie Savoy had been hired to write a blog about all things domestic, and more. Her articles—or musings or whatever you wanted to call them—were all over the place, as was Effie. Nikki was forever running into the newbie, but somehow Effie had connected with the younger crowd. The worst part of it was that she reminded Nikki of someone; she just couldn’t remember who.

Now she said, “I just thought I’d check the news feed.”

“You’d probably get more info from Reed,” Swan advised, raising his thick eyebrows.

“Not likely.” That was the problem with this place. Everyone assumed she had a quick link to more information because she was engaged to a detective, but as she’d already told Ina, Reed was decidedly close-lipped about all his cases or anything to do with the department. She couldn’t count the times she’d tried to gain a little info from him. Only three days ago, at the breakfast table in his apartment, she’d asked what she’d thought was an innocent question about a current case, and he’d just kept right on reading his paper, taking a sip of his coffee, even a bite of his toast, before saying, “Talk to Abbey Marlow,” without so much as making eye contact with her. “She’s the department spokesperson.”

“I know who she is,” Nikki had grumbled, tossing down the rest of her orange juice and biting back her frustration. “I just want the—”

“Inside scoop.”

“Nothing like that.”

He’d actually folded his paper onto the table and cocked his head, as if sincerely interested. Brown eyes, light enough to show gold glints, assessed her. “Exactly like that.”

“It’s just that you’re the lead detective on the Langton Pratt case.”

“And you’re fishing again.”

“I just want an angle.”

---