Page 89 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

“You gonna tell me?”

He pocketed the disk and receipt. “On the way to the place where he works.”

“You know where that is?”

“That I do,” he said, and looked as if he could eat steel and spit nails. “Let’s go.”

Nikki flew down the highway, pushing the rental car and the speed limit as her thoughts burned through her brain, thoughts she hadn’t wanted to consider. Had her uncle really been involved with Blondell O’Henry? Is that why she chose him as her attorney rather than some high-profile criminal lawyer who would have loved to have made his name representing a beautiful woman accused of the most atrocious of crimes, a monster who was nearly movie-star gorgeous?

If so, Nikki wondered, had her parents known? Her father, the judge who presided over the trial? The prosecution? Garland Brownell, the district attorney?

She saw a patrol car on the highway ahead, checked her speedometer, and saw she was fifteen miles above the speed limit. “Damn,” she muttered, but lucked out as the patrolman had already pulled someone else over. Slow down. You’ll get there; five or ten minutes one way or another won’t make any difference. You’re not Danica Frickin’ Patrick, for crying out loud!

Her phone rang, and she popped in her ear device, then answered. “Gillette.”

“I guess I’ll forgive you for standing me up,” Trina said, a smile in her voice. “A snake in the car trumps a friend at the bar any day. So how’re you doing today?”

“Busy and lucky. Almost got a ticket. Just passed a state cop doing a few miles over the limit.”

“Yikes. Slow down, lead foot.?

?

“Believe me, I am. So how about we have that drink tomorrow?” Nikki asked, with one eye on the speedometer. “Tonight I’m booked.”

“With that hunk of a cop, I hope.”

“Not quite. The hunk part is probably right, though, of course I wouldn’t really know as I’m an engaged woman these days, but the cop part is off. I think he tried to be one once and it didn’t work out for some reason.” Damn but the speedometer kept inching up. “I’m talking about Holt Beauregard.”

“Ahh . . . The black sheep of the Beauregards?”

“Could be a whole flock in that family.”

Trina laughed. “You’re right. But there is a reason I called, you know, and it’s because of the whole snake thing.”

“Yeah?” Nikki forced herself to stay in the slow lane even though the guy in front of her in an aging Pontiac was taking the speed limit literally.

“This is probably nothing,” Trina was saying, “but a guy by the name of Alfred Necarney died today, at a hospital in north Georgia.”

“Never heard of him.”

“I know. No one has. His home is an old family spread located in the hills outside of Dahlonga. First report is that he’s an Army veteran who lived alone, kind of a hermit. His sister hadn’t heard from him for a few days, got worried, and found him near dead from a blow to the head; he died at the hospital.”

Where was this going? “And?”

“So far, the news is sketchy, but he ran an interesting side business. He sold snakes for a living, completely black market, under the radar.”

Nikki’s hands tightened over the wheel. “And?” she said again.

“And a lot of the snakes were let loose, running, er, slithering around free. They hadn’t bitten him, the theory being that he was just lying on the floor, unconscious, not threatening, so they left him alone, just sidled up to him for warmth. Anyway, either he lifted the lids from their cages or someone else did and let them out.”

“What?” Nikki’s pulse elevated a bit.

“From what I can piece together, they’re trying to figure out how he slipped and hit his head and knocked off not one, but several lids of the terrariums he kept them in.”

“Not likely,” Nikki said.

“Uh-huh, and when the animal handlers came to recapture the snakes, six seemed to be missing from their marked cages.”

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