Tell Me (12 page)

“Mom!” Nikki said, hearing the little tremor in Charlene’s voice over the sound of street traffic and the sigh of the wind. “Look, I’m working right now. Can’t Ariella figure it out? Isn’t that why we hired a wedding planner?”

“But she can’t get hold of you, and these decisions have to be made. By you. Soon. You’re the bride.”

“I know.” This is why she’d wanted a simple wedding, just family, but that idea had been squelched, not intentionally, but just as the guest list had grown, so had the event, and her frail mother had actually seemed healthier and stronger now that she had a purpose, that of marrying off her daughter. “Look, I’ll call her as soon as I’m off work,” Nikki promised.

“I’ll let her know. Five, then.”

“Mom, you know I don’t work regular office hours. I’ve got a major story I’m working on!”

“That Blondell O’Henry business, yes, I know.” There it was, the underlying tone of disapproval in her mother’s voice—if not of Nikki’s chosen profession, then of the woman who had been convicted of murdering her own daughter. Charlene had never minced words when it came to Blondell O’Henry.

“Just let Ariella know that I’m busy and not purposely avoiding her. I’ll call her the minute I get a second.”

“Do that, honey,” her mother reprimanded gently, her Georgian drawl a little more evident. “Remember, this is your wedding we’re talking about, the most important day of your life.” And with those words of wisdom, she’d managed to lay down the law, along with a good measure of guilt.

Great,
Nikki thought as she stepped off the curb. A horn blasted. From the corner of her eye she saw motion. Quickly she jumped backward, twisting her ankle just as a black sports car sped through the intersection.

“What the hell?” she cried as the BMW sped off.

“Whoa!” a teenage boy on a skateboard said, his eyes rounding beneath the edge of his watch cap. “That dude almost hit you! Man, it was like he was trying to run you down!”

“He missed. This time,” she said, flashing a smile as she looked after the car that was racing away, windows dark, license plate smudged. An accident? Probably. Just some anxious, lead-footed idiot who hadn’t seen her or maybe even wanted to scare her as he sped through a red light. Nothing more. Nothing the least bit sinister.

Right?

But she couldn’t stop the little frisson of fear from running down her spine.

“That light just wasn’t kinda pink,” the kid said. “It was really red. That douche bag is lucky someone didn’t T-bone him!” Then he took off, throwing down his board and pedaling with one foot as he streaked across the street. Ankle throbbing, Nikki hobbled in front of the stopped traffic to the far sidewalk. The pain lessened as she made her way to her car, and she told herself it was nothing, just a case of an impatient idiot wanting to beat out the cross traffic.

Still, as she climbed into her Honda, she checked the rearview mirror and tried to ignore the skateboarder’s assessment.

Shivering inwardly, she slid behind the wheel, then locked all the doors before starting the car.

Gritting her teeth, she backed out of the parking spot, then rammed her Honda into gear. Throughout the day, she’d made notes to herself on her cell phone after locating several addresses of people she wanted to interview.

Of course, Niall O’Henry hadn’t picked up his phone, nor had his attorney returned Nikki’s calls, but she figured she may as well try to locate Blondell’s son and find out exactly why he had decided to recant his testimony after twenty years. What had happened to him to make him change his mind? Then there was Blythe, Blondell’s daughter, who had survived the attack but was paralyzed from a ricocheting bullet. She was a grown woman now and still living in an apartment that was just off Bull Street, near one of the buildings housing the Savannah College of Art and Design, and happened to be less than half a mile from Nikki’s home, which would be perfect.

She desperately wanted to talk to both Niall and Blythe. Since she’d struck out with Blondell, Nikki figured she’d go to the kids.

Checking her rearview mirror again, she watched the traffic behind her, but no dark sports car was visible, no other vehicle following.

“Just your imagination,”
she told herself and considered calling Reed, just to check in. It wasn’t to ask him about the O’Henry case, or so she tried to convince herself, as she turned onto Victory and headed a few blocks east to a quiet neighborhood with shaded streets.

Niall’s home, a cottage with a large picture window and a raised porch, appeared to have been built sometime in the 1940s. The shrubbery wasn’t as neatly pruned as some of his neighbors’, and dead leaves were scattered over the tufted grass and skittered across the sidewalk. The house was in sad need of a new coat of paint, and one of the gutters dangled precariously from its eave. Parking across the street, she made her way up a concrete walk that was badly chipped in places, with weeds poking through a few cracks.

Inside, the curtains were tightly drawn, and wedged into the screen door was a pamphlet, fat from rain, yellowing with the sun. Once she’d stepped onto the porch, she rang the bell and heard it chime; when there was no response from inside, she knocked on the screen door.

Nothing.

No sound of footsteps hurrying across seventy-year-old hardwood. No barking dog. No movement of the closed drapes.

“Ain’t no one there!” a voice called, and Nikki jumped, turning to find a woman in a broad-brimmed hat, bib overalls, a flannel shirt, boots, and gardening gloves standing on the other side of an untrimmed row of boxwoods. “Hasn’t been for, oh, nigh onto a month now, I reckon.”

Nikki stepped off the porch and crossed the soft lawn. “You know Mr. O’Henry?” Maybe this woman could help her.

“Oh, hell, no. No one does. I’ve lived here sixteen years now, and I never spoke but half a dozen words to him. Same with his wife, though I saw her with the kids once in a while. She never waved, just hurried to the car. Well, to tell you the truth, I’m surprised he’s even married. He’s a loner, you know, and really, who could blame him? Everyone in the whole damned town knows what he went through.”

She was staring at Nikki through glasses that darkened as the sun peeked through the clouds. Without removing her gloves, she found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the voluminous pockets of her overalls.

“You aren’t the first one to come calling,” she added and managed somehow to light a long cigarette, holding it in lime-green gloves. “Lots of people been knocking on his door. I’ve watched ’em.” She shot a stream of smoke from the side of her mouth.

“He used to go to work at seven-twenty every morning, on the dot—I’d hear his pickup fire up—then return around six. Just like clockwork. The missus, Darla, I think her name is, if she left the house at all, it was during the middle of the day in that old red Dodge—a Dart, I think it was.” She took another drag. “It was weird, though. I never even heard the kids playing in the yard. Kinda odd, don’t ya know. Well, good riddance. That’s what I say.”

“Why?”

“They moved out. Oh, must’ve been three weeks now, maybe four. Went back to work on his father’s farm, that’s what I heard. You know Calvin O’Henry?”

“I know of him,” Nikki said. “Blondell’s ex-husband and Niall and Blythe’s father. A strange man, from all accounts.”

She frowned. “I know the wife, June. Her son and my boy were in the same class at school. She’s a strange one, though, let me tell you. I’m sure as heck glad she’s not my stepmother. I think she makes Nurse Ratched . . . from that movie, what’s it called?”

“
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
.”

“Yeah, that one. I think maybe they made a book from it.”

“Anyway, June makes that nurse look like an angel, I’m tellin’ you. Religious too, and not in a good way, y’know. I’m a Christian woman, mind you, go to church and Bible study and believe in the Savior, Jesus Christ, but June O’Henry, she takes it too far. That church she attends? It’s one of those snake-handlin’, speakin’-in-tongues sects. Let me tell you, it gives me a case of the willies.”

Nikki had heard, somewhere, that Calvin O’Henry’s second wife was part of a religious sect far outside the mainstream, but snake handling? Why had she never heard this? “In Savannah?” she asked.

“Not in town, but outside. Yeah, I know everyone thinks they only exist in Appalachia, in the mountains, but that’s just not correct.” She was rambling on before she realized Nikki hadn’t introduced herself. “So who’re you? Reporter or something?”

Nikki was remembering Amity’s wounds from a snake bite, and it took her a moment before she extended her hand. “Nikki Gillette,
Savannah Sentinel
.”

“That rag?” she said, then hesitated, “Wait a minute. Gillette?” Her eyes narrowed behind her glasses, and her pleasant, gossip-sharing smile faded. “I know all about you. Big Ron or Big Daddy or whatever the hell it was they called him, he was your father. Right?”

“Yes, and—”

“You’re the one who was nearly killed by that psycho a few years back? Wrote a book about it?” Her lips compressed and she clucked her tongue. “I should’ve recognized you.”

Nikki was nodding, but before she could say another word, the woman backed up a step, away from the overgrown hedge. “I got no use for you, nor that father of yours. I know he’s dead and I say that’s a blessing. He sent my Clarence up the river for twenty years.” Hooking a thumb at her chest, she added, “Twenty damned years! I know it was his third DUI, but hell, no one died in that wreck. For the love of Christ, I ain’t talkin’ to the likes of you. What happened to your daddy was too good for him.” Jettisoning her cigarette into the moist grass, she turned and stormed toward the neat bungalow she called home.

“Wait a minute,” Nikki said, jumping over the boxwoods and following the woman to her porch. “I’m just looking to talk to Mr. O’Henry.”

“You and the rest of the world. You ain’t hearin’ any more from me. I don’t give Big Ron Gillette’s progeny the damned time of day!” She hurried up the cement steps and reached for the handle of the door. “You’ve got about three seconds to get off my property before I call the cops and have you arrested for trespassing!”

T
wo days later, before the interview they were scheduled to have with Niall O’Henry, Reed and Morrisette took a drive to the cabin where Amity O’Henry had been killed.

“This place certainly wouldn’t win any awards from
House Beautiful,
” Morrisette muttered as they walked into the cabin. Remarkably, the key the station had on file still fit the lock, just as the key to the gate at the end of the lane had. As the door creaked open, Reed had to agree with his partner.

It was as if they’d stepped back in time. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, mantel, and windowsills, and the carcasses of dead insects were visible, along with a myriad of spider webs. The air inside was musty and smelled stale, as if no one had cracked open a window during the past twenty years.

A few pieces of furniture remained, but the hide-a-bed where Amity O’Henry had been shot was gone, and the desk and table seemed to be falling apart.

The room was large, with a high, pitched ceiling where, it appeared, wasps had nested in the rafters. Stairs ran up the far wall to the open loft area that was about half the size of the lower level, and in the center of the room, on the wall opposite the loft, a crumbling stone fireplace climbed two stories to dominate the room.

“It’s like time stood still,” Morrisette remarked as she clicked on her flashlight and ran its beam around the small living area. The fireplace was empty, devoid of ashes or a grate, and yet there was the faint odor of soot lingering in the air. “Kind of gives a person the creeps.”

“It could,” Reed agreed, as Morrisette pointed the beam of the flashlight to the wooden stairs running up the far wall to the loft. Reed glanced up and wondered about the children who had been put to bed upstairs. Niall, barely eight at the time and little Blythe, not quite five.

How terrifying for them to hear . . . what? An argument? A door bursting open? Cursing? Gunfire? A smashed lantern? Screams? Whatever it was, it had to have been loud enough to wake them up and cause them to come stumbling down the stairs without knowing they were attracting a killer’s attention.

If they’d stayed in their beds, would the attacker have come up the stairs and killed them as they slept, or would the killer have let them live? Had their own mother fired on them, or was it truly a stranger, a maniac with a gun and an unknown motive?

Beauregard and the team had theorized that Blondell had shot her daughter as she’d awoken following the snakebite, but how the hell did the sibilant creature get into her bed in the first place? On its own? Was it planted?

Beauregard’s theory was that while Amity lay bleeding out, conscious or not, the little ones had tumbled out of their beds, only to be mown down by their own mother, who had been callous enough to shoot herself in the arm and smash her head against the mantel or some other surface to add to her alibi. Then, once she was clearheaded enough, she’d hauled her injured kids into the car to make that slow, harrowing journey to the hospital and get rid of the murder weapon. True, the car showed signs of being wrecked, and a tire rubbing against the wheel well and the alcohol in her bloodstream could have contributed to her inability to drive fast. Blondell swore that she had trouble focusing because of her head injury, and that driving was difficult also because of her shattered arm. And the car, after she’d sideswiped an oak, was nearly impossible to drive. All of the above hampered her speed to the hospital, she claimed.

Cell phones weren’t prevalent back then, and there weren’t many phone booths scattered throughout the Georgia countryside, so she couldn’t call for help.

Other evidence that had thrown the cops off—the snake that had apparently bitten Amity before being run over on the drive and a cigarette butt—could have been planted before she started her rampage. What the hell was a copperhead doing in the cabin in January, and who had left the cigarette?

“Beauregard couldn’t find evidence of another person in the cabin besides Blondell and her children,” Reed said as they stepped through the gloomy rooms.

“Not at that time. Too many people had used it back then.” She eyed the empty interior. “It lost a little of its luster and popularity, you know, after the murder.”

“Who owned the property?”

“Same people that do today,” Morrisette said, running her flashlight’s beam toward the archway leading to a small kitchen at the back of the cabin. “The acres surrounding the cabin and the lake belong to the Eleanor Ryback Trust, which is essentially her descendants.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “One of those descendants is your fiancée.”

His head jerked up. “Nikki?”

“Unless you’ve got another one tucked away somewhere. Eleanor Ryback was married twice, first to Frank McBaine and after he died, to Marshall Gillette. She had two sons, Alexander McBaine with husband number one and Ronald with number two.” Morrisette swept the beam of her flashlight up the face of the fireplace to where the chimney disappeared into the ceiling. “She’s long dead now, but was the mother of Big Ron or Big Daddy or whatever you want to call him, the Honorable Judge Ronald Gillette, as well as mother to Big Ron’s half-brother, Alexander McBaine, who was Blondell’s attorney at the time of the trial.”

“I knew that much. Surprised it happened. I mean, weren’t there cries of nepotism by the prosecution?”

“Probably, I don’t know. But Flint Beauregard and the DA at the time played poker with Big Daddy. Either side could have cried foul. And it gets even more incestuous,” she added. “Jesus, is that a bat up there?” Her light was positioned in a crack between the main beam supporting the ceiling and butting up to the chimney stack. Tiny eyes reflected. “I hate those things!”

“How does it get more incestuous?” he asked, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer as they were discussing Nikki’s family.

“Well, the rumor was that Alexander McBaine fell in love with his client.”

He hadn’t seen even a hint of a love affair in Beauregard’s notes and said as much.

She lifted a shoulder as she turned to run the light over the stairs. “Speculation, for the most part, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“A rumor.”

“You know, it happens more often than you’d think, the lawyer-client love affair, probably from working so closely together. But I just don’t get it.”

Reed offered up. “She was a beautiful woman.”

“Oh, bite me! There are thousands of beautiful women right here in this town. And there were just as many twenty years ago. Come on. Blondell O’Henry is accused of murdering her daughter, and then her lawyer—no, rewind: make that her
long-married
lawyer—falls for her? Sick, if you ask me.”

“But Amity’s murder happened before Alexander McBaine took Blondell’s case, obviously,” Reed thought aloud. “Did he know her before? Why use this cabin?”

“That’s a good question, but I think it didn’t come through the McBaine side. Your fiancée knew Amity O’Henry, I think”—Morrisette scowled a bit—“so she might have been the connection between them.”

“Because she was friends with the dead girl?” Reed said, bothered, refusing to admit that the same thought had crossed his mind. “That’s a big leap. She was what? Fifteen or sixteen at the time.”

“Even so, Nikki Gillette’s father owned an interest in this cabin, where the murder occurred.” Morrisette cocked her head and stared at him. “I’m just sayin’. So maybe you should ask her.”

“I will,” he said, and he felt an unanticipated premonition of dread seep through his bones. The evil that had occurred within these crumbling walls still hadn’t evaporated.

He eyed the loft from the ground floor. According to Beauregard’s notes, some of the evidence found in the cabin had supported Blondell’s story, and some didn’t. The case would have probably been a stalemate except for Niall’s whispery testimony. Spoken through a larynx that was shattered by a bullet fired from the assailant’s gun, his words convinced the jury that he’d seen his mother take aim at him and fire.

Yes, it had been dark that night, and yes, he’d been a terrified, myopic eight-year-old at the time, but frail, reluctant Niall O’Henry had been a convincing witness.

The defense had countered by insisting it had been far too dark for anyone to see clearly, much less a child who wore glasses and hadn’t put them on when he’d bolted out of bed that night.

Blondell had insisted her son had seen her wrestling for the gun, but in his blurred vision mistakenly thought she’d aimed the weapon at him and pulled the trigger.

To this day, she repeated the same story and vowed she was innocent. The “intruder” with bushy hair and a serpent tattoo, with whom she claimed she’d fought, was never located, though many men, mostly those who knew her, had been questioned. Of course, the murder weapon had never been located. According to the notes, the police had interviewed neighbors of the cabin, but no one had been awakened by the sound of a car backfiring or by a barking dog. Then again, they were located so far away from the cabin, they might not have heard the gunshots over the storm. Both of the neighbors who had been called to testify, those with property abutting the property surrounding the cabin, could recall only the sounds of the pouring rain and the wind racing across the marshland.

Nor had a second set of tire prints or footprints been discovered that night, though the rain could have washed them away.

Other than the snake and cigarette butt, and Niall’s now-recanted testimony, the police didn’t have much.

Blondell’s side of the events had continued with her panicked trip to the hospital, the swollen creek, the treacherous bridge, and hitting the tree and mashing her fender. Amity had died on the way to the ER.

Blythe had been rushed into surgery, but her spinal cord had been damaged, leaving her in a wheelchair ever since.

Niall’s injuries—broken ribs and a shattered right ulna—had healed for the most part, and even his nearly destroyed larynx functioned, but as with his sister, Blythe, his mental scars would never heal, or at least that was the conclusion of one of the many psychiatrists he’d seen, who had testified at Blondell’s trial.

“So what have we got here?” Using the beam of her flashlight, Morrisette walked to the stairs, tested them, then started up the rough-hewn steps to the loft. “Oh, man, take a look at this.” She was halfway up the flight when she stopped and stared at the wall and stairs: dark stains were splattered against the wall and risers.

Reed’s stomach turned.

Morrisette’s attitude changed. “When I think of my kids and realize what that little boy and girl saw.” Shaking her head, she stared at the twenty-year-old blood, then made her way up the remaining steps to the loft. Reed, more somber than before, followed her to the wide-open area with its open railing and dusty plank floors. In one corner, a bureau was still standing and supported a cracked, fly-spotted mirror.

So the little ones were up here. The frame of an old bed still stood, mattress long gone, but Morrisette ran the beam of her light over the rusted rails. “Damned nightmare for those kids. The way Blondell told it, she was surprised by an intruder with a gun, they wrestled for it, she got shot, and then he hit Amity. The kids up here, hearing the commotion, started running down the stairs, despite her yelling at them to stay where they were. The killer spied Niall running down and hit him midway. Where we saw the blood.”

“And the girl comes to the top of the stairs, sees her mother, and somehow falls over?” Reed said, stepping to the rail.

“Gets hit, slips through the spindles, I think . . . see, they’re handmade, not up to code, if there even was one when this place was constructed. She slides through and falls the eight feet to the floor below, breaking her back.” Morrisette’s jaw tightened, her lips becoming a razor-thin line as she met Reed’s gaze. “A damned shame all the way around.”

“Even if Blondell didn’t try to kill them.”

“Oh, she did. Her story is just that, a massively sick and tall tale.” Morrisette was convinced. “Why in the world would a stranger follow her to the cabin? No one was supposed to know she was here, spending time with the kids, sorting out her life or some such tripe. So let’s just say that she’s telling the truth. Someone comes in, to what? Rob her? Nothing was taken. Rape her? Didn’t happen, no matter how wounded she was. Wipe out her whole family? Why? Because they saw his face? Nuh-uh. It was dark. The kids can’t even remember if another person was here or not. And then there was that damned snake. Maybe it was nothing, just a weird anomaly. But I don’t like it. And it bothers me that Calvin married a woman who’s into a church where they handle poisonous snakes.”

Reed had seen the notation in the file about the Pentecostal church June O’Henry belonged to and their strange practices. In the file, Flint Beauregard had simply written “snakes” in a notation beside June’s name, but if he’d further connected it to Amity’s death, the detective hadn’t left a record of it.

“You think June Hatchett or Calvin O’Henry brought a snake to the cabin, then proceeded to shoot Amity?” Reed asked now, trying to keep his skepticism to a dull roar.

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but still it’s weird, something to consider, and we’re running out of time. Jada Hill is pushing for Blondell’s release. Could be any day now.” She glanced around the loft one last time and said in disgust, “Let’s go.”

At the base of the staircase, Reed peered into a small bathroom. Once a minuscule “three-piece,” the room was now composed of a tiny shower without fixtures, a basin that was as dry as a bone and held rusted pieces of pipe and dead insects, and a toilet with no lid on the tank that no longer held water, just showed rings and dirt from a time when it had actually functioned.

“Lovely,” Morrisette said. “Reminds me of Bart’s place.” At least her black humor had returned. Bart Yelkis was one of Morrisette’s exes, the father of her children, and a deadbeat who was always late on his child support.