by Lisa Jackson
She glanced back at her notes, to Elton’s name. His father had become Blondell’s attorney. It was all so deeply entwined, she thought, scribbling Uncle Alex’s name with an arrow pointing to Blondell and Elton. How well did Alex McBaine know Blondell O’Henry when he took her case? Had they met before? Possibly because of Elton? Was that the connection to the cabin? At the time of Amity’s murder, the rumor mill had been churning out theories and speculation about Blondell. Some people had thought that the baby Blondell had lost had been fathered by Roland Camp, the man who supposedly wanted nothing to do with her existing children. Others believed Calvin O’Henry, Blondell’s mercurial ex, still the most likely candidate for the child’s baby-daddy. Still others, the crueler bottom-feeders of the gossip chain, had sniggered that Blondell’s attorney might be the man.
Nikki’s own family, from Charlene to Aunty-Pen, had pooh-poohed that catty theory as the rubbish it was, but now Nikki couldn’t help but wonder. She couldn’t ask her aunt, because Penelope would either be furious with her for bringing up old, painful nonsense or go glacially silent on the subject.
Either way, Nikki wouldn’t get an answer from Penelope McBaine. Nor would Nikki have any more luck with her uncle. With his advancing dementia, there was little chance of getting through to him.
And if she mentioned the rumor to her mother, Charlene might have a stroke, so for now she had to find a back-door way to get the information, something DNA could certainly confirm or deny.
There was a chance the paternity of Blondell’s unborn child wouldn’t matter in the least, just as naming the father of Amity’s unborn child might not make a difference. However, those little facts made for interesting speculation and certainly good reading. She could almost see the ending of a chapter midway through the book where she named one or the other of the heretofore unknown fathers.
She had her work cut out for her, but there was something else, another way to discover further information, if she dared consider it. As Alexander McBaine’s favorite niece, she knew where there was a key to his house—and the den that had become his home office before his mental health had started to decline. She might not be able to get info from Reed, but should the right opportunity arise, she could search through the defense team’s notes.
Maybe.
If they still existed, and if Jada Hill hadn’t gotten her hands on them yet.
Nikki would have to work fast.
CHAPTER 16
What the hell was Alfred up to this time?
Nola-Mae drove her old Ford Taurus up a final turn on the rocky, once-gravel road that led to their granddaddy’s shack, a place her brother had called home ever since returning from that god-awful war where he’d gotten himself all torn up. He’d never been right since, she thought; then again, maybe he never had been. The war might just be an excuse.
As she rounded the corner and the trees surrounding the lane opened up, she spied Alfred’s old pickup where he always parked it. General was lying on his rug on the porch, and a light glowed from within. Or maybe it was just the television.
If that was the case, if Alfred was sitting in his chair watching the latest sporting event, she might just have to kill him. She’d driven twenty-five miles because she couldn’t get him to answer his damned phone. To Alfred, the phone was a one-way device. He called when he wanted you, and if not, he didn’t bother to answer. However, ever since caller ID had come to this backwoods area and he’d upgraded to be able to see who was phoning, he’d started picking up for her.
But not for the last three days—or was it four? Enough time for her to worry. Her cousin Vera had said she hadn’t seen him in town at all. That might not mean much, loner that he was, but still Nola-Mae had decided to make the drive. Even brought him a batch of his favorite bar cookies: blondies that Great-grandma Simms always made for Christmas.
But if he was just holing up, pulling his head into his shell like a damned box turtle, she might just throw the blondies into his stupid flat-screen, the only modern convenience he’d allowed himself.
Climbing out of the car, she slammed the door shut and stalked toward the house as General, baying, bounded over to her and scattered the chickens that were searching for bugs or seeds near their coop. The fence that was supposed to keep them contained was down again, and three hens and a rooster had escaped into the yard.
“Hey, there, buddy,” she said and gave the dog a scratch behind his long ears. General was having none of it, running and howling, as if he’d gotten himself into a tussle with a porcupine and come out on the losing end. “I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” she said and felt the first little premonition of dread. Usually by the time she pulled up, Alfred had climbed out of his chair and was standing at the screen door.
Sure enough, the heavy oak door was wide open, only the screen separating the house from the porch. “Alfred!” she called, carrying the paper plate covered with the cut brownies and wrapped in plastic. “Hey, I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Did you know the chickens are out again?” She pushed through the door, and General, still putting up a fuss, shot inside. “Alfred?”
The door slapped shut behind her, and she stood in the living area. Yes, the television was on, a game show playing. That was odd in and of itself, but the fact that there was a drink sitting untouched by the chair, watered-down, from the looks of it, as if ice cubes had melted, was damn unnerving. She’d never known her brother to take a nip before six or so, but she supposed that could have changed.
“Alfred, are you here?” She walked past the tiny kitchen and down a short hallway that led to the bath and a single bedroom. Opening both doors, she found no one.
“What the devil?” she said, then saw General at the door, whining, half-jumping to get outside again. “Where is he?” she said, as much to herself as the dog.
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.
Hadn’t she sensed that someone had been following her? What about the guy in the park when she’d gone running? And then there was that time when someone had tried to run her down with a sports car—or at the very least scare her. She’d thought it just a lack of judgment, a near miss by a speeding driver, almost an accident.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
“Don’t let it get to you,” she said aloud, wondering if whoever was on the other end of the camera could hear her—a possibility she didn’t like. She considered destroying it but immediately reconsidered. She needed to find out who the voyeur was first. But she didn’t want the damn thing still functioning, so she located the battery pack, opened it, and removed the power to the little device. “Take that,” she said, then glanced around her unit. Surely there were no other bugs or microphones.
Shivering inwardly, she recalled another time and place, when she had been locked in a tight space, unable to breathe, a tiny microphone recording her terror. Sweat suddenly beaded along her hairline, and she felt her pulse elevate as it always did with her panic attacks. Don’t go there. Everything is fine. Just go about your business.
Slowly, eyeing her connecting rooms, she took several deep breaths. She couldn’t lose it now. She had calls in to Niall O’Henry and Holt Beauregard, along with a few other people Amity had gone to school with or who had known Blondell before she’d been incarcerated.
She just didn’t have time to fall apart. At least not yet.
Nobody knew it, but Morrisette had a deep, innate fear. She hated prisons or jails or any kind of lockup, and the thought of spending time behind any kind of bars nearly paralyzed her insides.
As a teenager, she’d been caught with her boyfriend in a house they’d broken into. She’d lived in Bad Luck, Texas, at the time and had been hauled in by the city police. A big bear of a woman whose name she couldn’t remember had locked her in a holding cell and warned, “You’d better straighten up, little missy, or you’ll find yourself in jail for the rest of your life.” She’d left Morrisette alone for seven hours, and the isolation and lack of freedom had done the trick. From that moment on, Morrisette had taken the big cop’s snarled advice and determined she never wanted to hear the sound of a lock turning behind her again; in fact, she planned to be on the other side of the barred door, and so she’d become a cop.
Not that it wasn’t a great feeling to lock up some scumbag and throw away the key, but she preferred to fill out the paperwork and send the jerk up the river rather than step inside a penitentiary.
Today the old tightness in her chest was with her as she walked inside Fairfield Women’s Prison. She and Reed had waited in the reception area, been escorted to the warden’s surprisingly homey office, then, after a quick briefing, had been escorted to a private interrogation room that was a little too much like a prison cell, in Morrisette’s opinion. Though it was insulated from the general population and the cages where they were held, it still made Morrisette need to tamp down her case of the willies and wonder why the hell she’d ever given up smoking. Right now, she could use a Camel straight.
The area had cinder-block walls painted a dull green and wasn’t much larger than the bedroom in Morrisette’s duplex, and it was a lot less cozy, with its jail-cell door, metal table bolted to the floor, and intense artificial light. The concrete floor had been worn smooth, paths nearly visible on it, compliments of thousands of feet that had shuffled in and out of its barred door.
They waited, as they’d planned, with Reed taking a chair at the narrow table so that he could face the prisoner and her attorney, while Morrisette hung back, leaning against the wall, observing the conversation.
She heard footsteps in the outer hallway and looked up just as Blondell appeared, shackled and escorted by an armed guard whose expression suggested she didn’t know how to smile. Blondell was the older and by far the prettier of the two. Her auburn hair, strands of silver visible, was long and pulled away from he
r face; her cheekbones were still high, and above them large, gray eyes still held a child-like innocence, despite the charges that had been brought against her, despite twenty years of lockup.
Along with the prisoner and the guard came, of course, Blondell’s new attorney, Jada Hill, who looked like some Hollywood producer’s idea of a smart, black woman who had clawed her way to the top. Dressed in a suit that probably cost half a month of Morrisette’s take-home pay, Jada Hill was thin and athletic-looking, with a defined jaw, mocha-colored skin, and a badass attitude that radiated from her.
“For the record,” Jada said, before the interview even got started, “my client maintains her innocence, as she has for the past twenty years. Her story hasn’t changed.” She smiled then, a grin that didn’t touch her dark eyes as she introduced herself, snapped open her briefcase, and slid a crisp business card across the table.
“We just want to hear her side of it,” Reed said affably, as if hoping to diffuse what promised to be a tense situation. “I wasn’t around during the original trial, so I’d like to ask a few questions of my own.”
Attorney Hill wasn’t about to be smooth-talked. “You’ve read her testimony and gone over her deposition?”
“Yes.” Reed nodded.
“So this is just a formality?” Blondell’s attorney clarified.
“I just want to hear it from her own lips, in her own words, as much as she can remember. As I said, I wasn’t a detective on the case at the time; in fact, I wasn’t even in the state of Georgia.”
“You have the records,” Hill pointed out again, but Blondell lifted a hand and in her soft-spoken Southern drawl said, “Of course, I’ll answer your questions, Detective. What is it you want to know?” She smiled easily, in a manner that was part innocence and part seduction, and Morrisette suddenly realized both were part of her personality. If she’d used her brain, she would have toned down the flirtatious glint in her dove-gray eyes, but she probably didn’t even know she was being coy.
