Page 61 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

Taking only her phone and a jump drive, she locked her car, then walked the three blocks to her uncle’s house, the same path she’d taken as a kid when she and Hollis had been sneaking in or out of the house. Overgrown, littered with some bits of trash, the trail wandered between the fence line of the neighboring lots and a green space designated as wetlands years before.

Shade trees canopied overhead, their branches, aside from the live oaks, bare and gnarled, rain beginning to drizzle from the gray sky.

“Lovely,” she murmured as she stepped around a small campfire pit where beer cans and cigarette butts had been left among the ash and charred bits of wood.

Rain was starting to fall as she slipped noiselessly through the back gate of the McBaine property. She felt a little bit like a criminal, a trespasser, but she knew that this was the only way to get the information from her uncle’s case files.

She’d considered calling her aunt and asking, but knew the answer before she’d dialed the phone. “Absolutely not, Nicole. Your uncle would never allow you or anyone else to violate his client’s privacy.” Of course, Aunty-Pen had a point, but Nikki didn’t care. If there was something in his notes that would help solve the case, all the better.

Rationalizing her way around her aunt’s shrubbery, she edged along the greenery flanking the fence, hoping no one would see her. As she sneaked around the perimeter, she thought of Reed and what he was doing. Surely he was out of his interview with Blondell O’Henry by now. She was desperate to talk to him, just to see how his face-to-face had gone.

At the side of the garage, she paused. Then, mentally crossing her fingers, she looked up to the space between the gutter and the eave and spied the extra key Hollis had kept hidden just out of eyesight. She had to stand on a decorative rock to reach it, but by stretching up her hand she was able to retrieve the key.

Of course, there was always the chance her aunt and uncle had installed a security system in the years since they’d lost their children, but Nikki hadn’t seen it when she’d stopped by the other day.

She unlocked the door to the garage. Her aunt’s older Mercedes was missing from its spot in the garage; the concrete, stained from years of tires and oil leaks, was all that met her eyes.

She skirted past Uncle Alex’s pickup and sleek Jaguar, both of which he’d driven until he’d given up his license over the last couple of years. Tucked into a deep bay behind the Jag was a draped vehicle she knew was Elton’s old Porsche, a vehicle her aunt hadn’t been able to part with. The Porsche wasn’t alone, as Aunty-Pen had never wanted to give up anything owned by her children.

Though Nikki really didn’t have a lot of time, she lifted the drape and remembered riding in Elton’s car and how her own mother had said her cousin was “over-indulged,” that giving a sixteen-year-old boy such an iconic and still speedy car was “just asking for trouble.” How ironic that he and Hollis had died not in the Porsche but in his father’s SUV.

Get on with it. You’ve got no time to trip down some melancholy memory lane.

She let the cover drop, and feeling as if she were tiptoeing through an automotive cemetery, one haunted by the ghosts of people she’d once known, she headed through the door leading into the utility room, closing it softly behind her. The dryer was still spinning, its digital display indicating there were still thirty-seven minutes on the cycle. So her aunt, or someone else, hadn’t been gone long.

Nonetheless, she had to work fast so as not to get caught and have to explain to Aunty-Pen why she’d parked her car three long suburban blocks away and come in through the back gate that she’d used as a child.

She was uneasy walking through the quiet house where the only sounds, other than some metal fastener rhythmically clicking against the dryer’s revolving drum, were the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the soft rumble of the furnace as it blew air through the house, causing the drapes to wave gently. The billowing sheers reminded Nikki of ghosts dancing and she had to give herself a quick mental shake to keep her fears at bay.

Getting a grip on her over-active imagination, Nikki made her way to the den, a room near the front of the house that had an entrance from the foyer and another that Uncle Alex had jokingly claimed was his “escape route”—a long hallway, used for storage, that led back to the garage.

A large bay window looked onto the front yard, and its blinds were open, so Nikki decided against lights, but she did snap the blinds shut, just so some nosy neighbor didn’t happen to see her going through her uncle’s computer files. Aside from the desk, with its massive executive chair, there was a long credenza with pictures of the family spread across it, above which were displayed all his diplomas, including a law degree from the University of Mississippi’s School of Law, and a few framed pictures of Uncle Alex with various local politicians.

The file cabinet was locked, but surely he’d converted all his paper documents to digital files, even old cases. His desk computer was turned off, so she sat in the executive-style chair and booted up the hard drive. When was the last time he’d sat on these leather cushions and checked his monitor? Six months earlier? A year? Three? As a teenager, she’d seen him working here often, although at the time it was evening, after-hours work, as he’d had an office downtown.

The computer monitor glowed, program icons beginning to appear on the screen, and there, in the upper-left-hand corner, was a shortcut labeled simply “legal cases.”

“Okay, so let’s see what we have,” she said aloud, her fingers on the keyboard, her nerves strung tight. She clicked on the icon and the screen changed to “Alexander McBaine, Attorney at Law” and then requested a user name and password.

Refusing to be stymied, she tried every combination she could think of, using family dates and names, and knowing it would be impossible. A computer hacker she wasn’t.

Think, Nikki, think. It has to be something simple, so he could remember it.

She looked around the desk, in the drawer, searching for any clues. Her uncle had been slowly losing his memory for years, so he would have needed some reminder in order to get into his own files.

Unless he relied on his wife to remind him.

Sweat began to bead over her forehead as she found a set of keys in the desk that opened the long, sweeping credenza situated behind his chair. The second key worked, and she flipped through files, mostly financial reports, health records, bills, receipts, and tax files.

Nothing about his cases, and no hint about his name and password.

It has to be somewhere nearby so he could remember. Somewhere close to the computer.

She closed the credenza and relocked it. All the while she was aware of time ticking by, seconds and minutes wasted; Aunty-Pen could be back at any minute. She looked in the obvious places—in the drawer below the computer, on the underside of the keyboard, on the CPU cabinet—and found nothing.

What to do. She tapped her fingers on the desktop. The code had to be close by . . .

Her gaze landed on his wireless mouse. On a whim, she turned it over and there, taped away from the roller, wa

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