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  “Probably.” He nodded, as if to himself.

  “Any idea who?” she asked, sipping the cosmo but barely tasting it.

  He looked up at her. “No.”

  “Steve Manning? Brad Holbrook?”

  “They were before me, I think. But I really didn’t keep track.”

  “Maybe an older guy?”

  He zeroed in on her as he tossed back his drink. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re pushy?”

  “I may have heard it a time or two,” she admitted.

  “I bet. Well, as I said, don’t know. Could’ve been someone older, I s’pose.”

  “Maybe Elton McBaine?”

  He shook his head. “I think she kinda liked him, but he wasn’t the one. Didn’t he go with, oh, what’s her name?” He thought for a second. “Mary-Beth Emmerson. That was it. I remember she was really broken up after the accident, but as ‘in love’ with Elton as she was, she found a new boyfriend pretty quick. Ended up marrying him, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, that she did,” Nikki said, then turned the conversation back to Amity. “So what about the guy Amity was interested in?”

  “I don’t know, but I saw her once with her mom’s boyfriend, and she was like, all giggly and girlie. Not like her.”

  “You think she had a crush on Roland Camp?” Nikki asked, surprised.

  “I don’t know what you’d call it, but there was something going on there, something I didn’t really want to think too long and hard about.” With that he twirled his drink, ice cubes clinking.

  “One more thing,” Nikki said, now that she’d gotten all the information she could from him about Amity. “What about your dad and Blondell? They knew each other, you know, growing up.”

  “Don’t think so.” He shook his head, his blond hair catching in the soft light.

  “I heard he had the hots for her. That a lot of guys from that neighborhood did.”

  “What’re you getting at?”

  “That Amity wasn’t Calvin O’Henry’s biological child,” she said boldly.

  “So?” He glowered at her. “Oh, you think my old man was? Come on. Amity was younger than I was and Mom and Dad have been married for . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “Just because Dad blew a gasket that I was seeing Amity . . .” He stopped short and set his drink on the table and said through his teeth, “You know what, this interview is over.” A vein was throbbing near his temple as he glared at her. She knew she’d pushed him as far as she could.

  “I’m just trying to find out the truth.”

  No answer. Just stony silence.

  “Fine, but if you change your mind . . .”

  His eyes were cold as a glacier.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “Thanks for the drink.”

  Then she left, and as she pushed open the door to the outside, she heard him order another whiskey on the rocks.

  CHAPTER 28

  Deacon Beauregard was furious, his face a color Morrisette had never associated with the human complexion as he leaned over his desk. His office was small, crammed floor to ceiling with books, with barely space for his law degrees to be displayed.

  “I find it impossible in these days of DNA analysis and photographic enhancement and all the other effing forensic advances, that you couldn’t find enough evidence to keep Blondell O’Henry behind bars!” He was leaning forward over his desk, looking for all the world as if he truly were going to have a heart attack or stroke or some kind of major health trauma, all of which was just fine with Morrisette. She’d always figured him for a prick, and he was doing his best this afternoon to prove it.

  “All the evidence hasn’t been gone over yet,” Reed said, “even though the lab is working overtime. We hoped that there would be something found, like epithelial tissue collected under Blondell O’Henry’s nails or DNA that matched from the cigarette butt, or that the weapon could be located or something, but in this case time was our enemy. The DNA is inconclusive or too corrupted. It’s been too many years since the crime occurred and too little time since Niall O’Henry decided to recant his testimony. We even had the lab check those love letters that were located in Blondell O’Henry’s house. Her fingerprints were all over them; they were all written in her hand and are assumed to have been meant for Roland Camp. She’d testified to the same in the original trial.”

  “You just didn’t look hard enough,” Deacon accused. “This is my dad’s case. His reputation!”

  Morrisette had heard enough. “Maybe if he would’ve worked harder on building his case on evidence rather than the testimony of one little kid, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The fact is your dad had a hard-on for nailing Blondell from the get-go,” she said, then, hearing herself, stopped short.

  Deacon charged, “And maybe if you’d been following legitimate leads instead of visiting my mother and asking for her help with your case, we would have wrapped this up by now and Blondell O’Henry would be staying where she belongs: in Fairfield Prison.”

  “That’s enough!” Kathy Okano must’ve heard the last part of the conversation as she walked into the room, because she too was agitated. She and Beauregard were both ADAs, but she’d been with the department longer and was therefore his senior. “Let it go, Deacon. It’s over.”

  “The case was solid!” Deacon insisted.

  “Not solid enough.” Morrisette wasn’t backing down. The guy was no better than his old man.

  “Enough said.” Through her glasses, Okano looked from one to the other. “We have other cases. Was justice served for Amity O’Henry? Who knows? Was Blondell O’Henry put away for a crime she didn’t commit? Again, who knows?”

  “The problem is,” Beauregard pointed out, “if we do find evidence now that proves undeniably that she’s guilty, then she can’t be tried again. Double jeopardy applies.”

  Okano inclined her head. “She’s served twenty years.”

  “And her daughter is dead, along with the child that daughter was carrying. And two other people—”

  Okano cut him off, “It is what it is. Tomorrow she goes free.”

  “Unless we come up with something in the next twelve hours.” Deacon looked from Morrisette to Reed. “Come on. Let’s not let her walk. She can’t win.”

  “I don’t think anyone could accuse Blondell O’Henry of winning anything,” Reed said.

  “She’s a murderer, Detective. You know it and I know it, now just find a way to prove it!” He glowered at Okano. “And it’s not over. Not until tomorrow.”

  She looked about to argue, then simply turned away. “Fine,” she said, “Twelve hours.”

  “Working late. Beauregard’s on the warpath. Will explain soon.”

  Reed’s text came in just as Nikki walked into her apartment and dropped her computer bag onto the couch. “Looks like it’s just us again,” she told the animals, at which point Jennings accepted a few pets and Mikado did his happy dance at her feet. Surprised at how disappointed she felt that Reed was delayed, she decided it was a good sign. After all, they were getting married soon. Thanksgiving was next week, and then the countdown really began.

  “Wonder if we’ll make it?” she joked to the dog, who was having none of her small talk. He yipped loudly and kept up his frantic twirls, toenails clicking on the hardwood. “I know, I know. Dinnertime. But first, let’s go out, shall we?” The dog was already racing to the door, and as soon as she pulled it open, he shot through, little legs jetting him down the steps. She followed after him and noticed Leon Donnigan on the patio, cell phone to his ear, cigarette burning in his free hand.

  “Hey!” she yelled at the big lug. “Hey!”

  He looked up and pointed at the phone with his cigarette.

  “I don’t care, I want to talk to you!” She was already at the bottom of the stairs.

  “. . . have ta call ya back, dude,” he said and clicked off, the expression on his face one of exasperation and disbelief. “I was on the phone.”

  “I saw.”

>   “Well, that was rude!”

  “So is setting up spy equipment. Not only rude, but illegal. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “I messed up. Okay?” he muttered.

  “No. Definitely not ‘okay.’ ”

  “Don’t get mad at me. Charles needed to look in on his old lady and he hired me to do it. But I got the angle off. I was gonna fix it, but you found it first. It was an honest mistake.”

  “Dishonest mistake.”

  He lifted his shoulders. “So sue me.”

  “Maybe I will,” Nikki ground out.

  “And are you gonna tell my mommy on me too?”

  “You bet I am.” Some of her anger was starting to fizzle out, but staring up at the big galoot, she wanted to shake him. “Get it together, Leon. For your mother’s sake, grow up.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so pissed at me,” he said with a smile that suggested he knew something she didn’t. “I made a mistake. It wasn’t like I was tryin’ to get a picture of you or anything. Not like that stalker you picked up.”

  “What stalker?”

  “I’ve seen her, taking pictures of the house. Even saw her on your deck, clicking shots through the door.” He pointed toward the back door of her unit. “Climbed all the way up there.”

  “You’re lying,” she said, but the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes told her he enjoyed thinking he had one on her.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Leon . . .” Her patience was about to snap.

  “That woman who writes the blog for the damned paper. I recognized her from her picture on the Sentinel’s Web site.”

  “Effie Savoy?” she asked, stunned.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, that’s her, I think.”

  “She was here? At my house?”

  “That’s what I just said,” he pointed out, as if she were thick as a brick.

  “I’ll check on that,” Nikki assured him.

  Smoke filtered out of his nostrils, and as he tossed the remainder of his cigarette onto the patio, crushing it beneath the heel of his boot, he asked, “Has anyone ever told you you’re a bitch?”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she snapped. “Pick up your trash. This is my patio, not a garbage dump, and I’m tired of cleaning up after you.”

  “It’s just a butt, for crissakes!”

  “Just do it.” She whistled to Mikado and made her way up the stairs as the dog bolted up in front of her. When she reached the third floor, she heard Leon’s voice rising upward from the patio as he reconnected with his call.

  “Yeah, sorry about that . . . just my bitch of a landlady . . . who knows? Probably on the fuckin’ rag or somethin’. ’Cept she’s always like that.” He chuckled deep in his throat, and his skin-crawling snigger filtered up through the branches of the magnolia tree. Then she heard his lighter click as he lit up again.

  Nice, she thought. If she didn’t have so much to do, she’d take up his attitude and actions with Dorothy. If not for his mother, Nikki would evict him on the spot. But not tonight.

  Tonight, it seemed, she was going to deal with Effie Savoy.

  “What the hell was all that about Flint Beauregard?” Reed demanded as they walked to an all-night diner a few blocks away. Night had fallen, the streetlights were glowing, and only a few other pedestrians were walking along Oglethorpe, the traffic remarkably thin.

  “Something went on with Beauregard,” Morrisette said. “I found out he knew Blondell before she was married. They went to the same high school, though he was a few years older.”

  “This isn’t exactly a newsflash. He’s lived in Savannah all his life.”

  “And Flora didn’t like it much when I brought it up. Practically came unglued when I mentioned Blondell and her husband in the same breath.” She glanced up at him as they walked past Colonial Park Cemetery, where gray headstones stood out starkly against the night.

  “So what’re you getting at?” Reed asked.

  “I was just wondering who Amity O’Henry’s biological father was. Blondell has never said, not once, even when asked. It didn’t come out in the trial, probably wasn’t considered relevant, and no name was listed on her birth certificate. I double-checked. So I figure most likely it wasn’t Calvin, as he adopted her and wasn’t around when Amity was conceived.”

  “And you think Flint Beauregard knew,” Reed said, though he was beginning to understand where Morrisette was heading with all of this. “Or that he was Amity’s father?”

  “I’m saying it’s a possibility. He sure was pissed at Blondell. Did everything he could to convict her,” Morrisette said.

  “Why would he do that?” Reed asked, trying to understand her logic. “If Amity was his kid?”

  “Who knows? He probably thought Blondell was behind Amity’s homicide, or at the very least should have protected her.”

  “Kind of a big leap, isn’t it?” he asked as they crossed the street. Rain was just beginning to fall.

  “Maybe. But I’m checking. I even have a call in to Jada Hill, because the easiest thing would be for Blondell to tell the truth, especially now that Flint’s dead.”

  “Why hasn’t she?” Reed asked as they reached the diner and he held the door for her.

  “She must have her reasons. Enough people have asked—at least they did during the trial—and she wouldn’t say. It’s funny, you know.”

  “What?”

  “For the past twenty years, I’ve thought Blondell O’Henry pulled the trigger and that justice was served. I went into this investigation hell-bent to prove just that, but now I’m not so sure. That twelve-hour ultimatum Deacon just delivered? I think it might just blow up in his face.”

  “We have DNA from Amity.”

  “Which wasn’t available twenty years ago.”

  “We’ve got nothing from Beauregard.”

  “But we have both his sons, now, don’t we?” she said, “Should be enough of a match to prove if Amity was their half-sister.”

  “Okay.”

  “Deacon Beauregard gave us twelve hours to figure out this case,” she said. “I just want to make sure he gets what he deserves.”

  “You do that,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’m going to talk to a guy about a snake.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “The good reverend Ezekiel Byrd.”

  “You think he put a copperhead in your fiancée’s car?”

  “I think he might know who would be a likely candidate. Either Byrd catches his own pit vipers or he buys them. One way or another, he’s as close as anyone to the reptile trade.”

  Fired up from her confrontation with Leon, Nikki was laser-focused on having it out with Effie. By rote she fed the animals and ate a slice of cold, leftover pizza that she washed down with the remains of a half-drunk bottle of diet soda she’d found in the fridge, then headed for the Sentinel’s records and Effie’s address. It turned out to be less than half a mile away from Nikki’s house, on the far side of Forsyth Park.

  Close enough that Effie could have walked the distance. So near, in fact, that Effie could easily have been the person Nikki had felt was watching and following her.

  But why?

  She was afraid she might not like the answer to that question, but was determined to learn what it was anyway. Grabbing her purse, her uncle’s set of keys, and her cell phone, she was nearly out the door when her phone jangled.

  She didn’t recognize the number and almost didn’t answer, but thought better of it. “Hello?” Holding the phone to her ear, she shouldered her bag, walking outside and locking the door behind her.

  “Is this Nikki Gillette?” a woman’s voice asked tenuously. “I got a call from her. I’m Nola-Mae Pitman.”

  “Ah, yes, Ms. Pitman.” Finally Alfred Necarney’s sister had returned her phone call. “Thank you for getting back to me,” she said as she hurried down the stairs, where the scent of Leon’s latest smoke still lingered. “I’m glad you called. I’m a reporter with
the Savannah Sentinel.”

  “I know. I googled you. I figured this was probably about my brother, Alfred.”

  “Yes. And I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Oh, my.” Her voice cracked a little. “Losing Alfred was a blow,” she admitted, sniffing loudly. “Thank you. But you didn’t call me to offer your condolences.”

  Nikki unlocked the gate and shut it behind her as she made her way to her car. “No, that’s true.” After unlocking her Honda with her remote, she quickly slid into the car’s interior; she opened the console, found her notepad and a pen, and was ready to take some notes. “I’m doing a series of articles about Blondell O’Henry’s release and double-checking some facts.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that, except what I read in the papers. As for Alfred, I’m certain he never met her. He was a solitary man. Lived alone. Liked it that way. He rarely went into town, and I’d be surprised if he’d ever been to Savannah.”

  “But he did sell snakes. For quite a while.”

  “We never discussed it, but yes . . . he did.”

  “How long was that?”

  “I’m not sure. A while, I suppose.”

  “Years? Ten? Twenty? Maybe more?”

  “Probably started soon after he got out of the service, I suppose. He’d always liked those kind of things, but after the war, he well, he was different, and snakes held a new fascination for him, but as I said, we never discussed it.”

  “At least twenty years, then.” Nikki was scribbling on her notepad.

  “I’d say so. I don’t really know, but . . . Oh. Are you trying to connect Alfred with the O’Henry murder?” She sucked in her breath. “There was a snake . . .”

  “I’m not accusing your brother of anything.”

  “Well, I should hope not! Alfred was a good man! A veteran! It wasn’t his fault that horrid little Mandy-Sue dumped him! He never got over her, y’know. Even though she was a tramp. I know she was messing around with Bobby Fullman while Alfred was in Vietnam and still writing my brother love letters,” she said, her voice trembling with outrage.

  “I’m interested in Alfred’s customers,” Nikki cut in. “Who would buy his snakes—specifically, his pit vipers.”