Tell Me

  “It’s not his wedding,” Nikki had pointed out.

  “No, you’re right,” her sister said as she’d reached for her pack of super-long, black cigarettes. “Apparently it’s Mother’s.”

  “Oh, Lily, for the love of God, don’t smoke in here.”

  “Dad did.”

  “He smoked on the veranda,” Charlene said tightly.

  “Whatever,” Lily dismissed. “Watch Phee for a second, will you?” She slid her gaze from her sister to her mother. “I’m going out to the veranda,” she said, carrying her cigs and glass of tea.

  The memory faded. Nikki had lost the battle over the country club, conceding to her mother’s wishes more as a means to keep peace in the family than because it was anything she wanted.

  Now she pulled into the long drive of her mother’s home and parked behind a white van decorated with images of happy brides painted on its sides. The script over the sliding doors read A TO Z WEDDINGS, ARIELLA ZONDOLA, THE WEDDING PLANNER.

  Nikki inwardly groaned. This was so not her. She should have probably tried harder that day in August, but she hadn’t had the heart to destroy Charlene’s dream of watching at least one of her children walk down the aisle. Andrew was dead, Lily a lost cause, and who knew when, or if, Keith would even have a girlfriend. Nikki, in her mother’s eyes, was her only chance.

  Switching off the ignition, she picked up her phone and speed-dialed Reed. He answered on the second ring. “I was wondering if I would hear from you.”

  “Wondering or dreading?” she teased.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Care to drop everything and come over to Mom’s to discuss chairs and the color of slipcovers with Ariella?”

  He groaned audibly. “Is that where you are?”

  She glanced at the house, where her mother was just turning on the lamps and gazing out the window. “Uh oh, the jig is up. Mom’s seen me.” Charlene was standing on the other side of the glass, impatiently waving her inside.

  “I think I’ll take a pass.”

  “Chicken.”

  “You can handle it.”

  “Why do I feel abandoned?”

  “Because I’m bagging out on dinner tonight too.”

  “Again?” she asked, disappointed.

  “But I’ll be over later, if I’m still welcome.”

  “You’re never going to be welcome at my place again and you know it.” As he laughed, she caught her reflection in the rearview mirror and saw the twinkle in her eyes.

  “You’re a tough woman, Nikki Gillette.”

  “That’s why you love me.”

  “Just one of the many and various reasons.”

  “I’ll expect a list tonight. When you come over.”

  She heard another voice, muffled in the background, as, no doubt, someone at the station needed his attention. “I’ll see you later,” he said.

  “You’d better,” she said, but he’d already clicked off.

  Her mother was still in the window, hands on her hips, giving Nikki the evil eye, so she tucked her phone into the pocket of her purse and steeled herself for her entry into the lion’s den of white linen, ivory lace, and furrowed brows.

  CHAPTER 14

  “So that’s it?” Charlene eyed the chiffon bows with a dubious eye, and her lips turned down a bit. “No slipcovers? Just this fabric woven and tied through the wooden slats on the backs of the chairs?” Tapping a fingernail on the portfolio, open to a picture of a table set for eight, chairs visible, Nikki’s mother obviously wasn’t a fan of anything so untraditional as the sleek bows.

  “I love the look,” Nikki said, daring to speak up. She’d been at her mother’s house for nearly two hours and was wired, her nerves jangled from the three cups of coffee she’d drunk as they’d discussed in excruciatingly minute detail every aspect of the reception decor. They’d settled on a beach theme, with shells and candles on off-white linens.

  “But I thought you were doing a Christmas theme. Holly sprigs, mistletoe, and white and red roses,” Charlene had whispered at one point.

  “Reed and I like the beach. The ocean. You know, something fresh. Airy.”

  Charlene, poring over the array of idea books set upon the table, slid one across for Nikki’s perusal. The book was open to a photo of an elegant lobby of white lights, with snowy-looking blossoms tucked into holly wreaths. A heart-shaped ice sculpture held center court in a room bedecked with cedar garlands and tables draped in white. “It’s December.”

  “In Georgia. Mom, people won’t be coming here in sleighs.”

  “I think you’re becoming a bride-gorilla,” Charlene said tartly.

  “The term is bridezilla, Mom, and no, I’m not.”

  “I know the term, Nicole. I was just double-checking to see if you were even paying attention.”

  “What Nikki’s chosen will be really beautiful,” Ariella cut in, spreading oil on the emotional waters yet again. Slim, with olive skin, dark eyes, and ringlets of dark hair, she’d gone to school with Nikki years before and after college had somehow gravitated to wedding planning. Her business had taken off, and she now had three assistants on the payroll but, because she knew Nikki, was handling this wedding herself. “We can twist a little bit of metallic ribbon in the bows, the same aquamarine shade as the place settings, and the look will be stunning.” She found a narrow strip of sea-blue ribbon that shone in the light. “The metal will reflect the light from the candles and the holiday pearl lights, which will not only touch on the ocean theme, but the season as well.”

  “You’re certain?” Charlene said, unconvinced.

  “Absolutely.” Ariella’s confidence was infectious.

  “Done deal!” Nikki was already pushing back her chair. “Does that do it?”

  Ariella started packing up her portfolios. “For tonight.”

  “If you say so.” Charlene was still frowning as she picked up her now-cold cup of coffee. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously, Nicole.”

  “Mom . . .” Nikki fought back a sigh as she bussed her mother on the cheek. She then grabbed up her coat and purse while Ariella picked up her display books and samples.

  “I, uh, heard you saw your uncle the other day.” A shadow passed behind Charlene’s eyes. “How is he?”

  She thought about his lucid moments and the warning he’d sent her but kept it to herself. “Not so great. But . . . he didn’t seem unhappy.”

  “Well, that’s good, at least. Living with Penelope had to have been trying.”

  “You should visit him,” Nikki said. “Either at the retirement center or when Aunty-Pen takes him home.”

  “Yes, I should,” Charlene said without an ounce of conviction.

  Nikki knew it would never happen. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “In the afternoon. I have bridge luncheon, you know.”

  Like clockwork. “Yeah, Mom, I remember.”

  To Ariella, Nikki said, “Let me help you with these,” and she picked up two small baskets of samples, as Ariella’s arms were overloaded, and helped her tote her portfolios to her van.

  Once they were outside and the door was shut firmly behind them, Nikki said, “She’s wrong, you know. Mom thinks I’m not into the wedding or the marriage, at least not enough to suit her standards, but I’m just dealing with it differently.”

  “I get it.” They made their way along the lighted, curved path through the lawn to the drive. “Everyone’s different.” Ariella clicked the remote, and the lights of the van flashed.

  “So you do this for a living, but you aren’t married?”

  “Haven’t found the right guy.”

  “What do you mean? You’re still with Jim, right?”

  “Living together, but he’s traditional in ways that I’m not. He wants me to take his last name.”

  “And you don’t want to?”

  “It’s Smith. James Smith. Which is fine. Really. But I’m not giving up my business. A to Z, get it? Ariella Zondola. My initials. N
ot A to S.”

  “Can’t you keep both?”

  With another click of the keyless remote, she opened the van’s sliding door, causing the happy brides painted on the side panel to appear to dance out of the way before she placed the baskets and her portfolios inside. “I don’t know why, but Jim and I aren’t in any hurry. I don’t feel my biological clock ticking, at least not yet. Some people, like you, are sure, and thank God for you all or I wouldn’t have a job!”

  Nikki smiled, not admitting to her own doubts. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Reed, and she wasn’t put off that he was a cop, which would make lots of women think twice. The truth was that marriage was a big step, and the unions in her family had never been all that solid. Not her parents’ marriage, despite their facade, nor her aunt and uncle’s, with its rumors of infidelity. And going backward, even her grandmother Ryback had been married more than once. As for her biological clock, it was ticking so loudly it sounded like a time bomb in her head.

  “You don’t get any pressure from your family, or Jim’s, you know, about having a kid or passing on the family name?”

  Ariella shook her head. “None I can’t handle. I tell them my life is my business and they back off.”

  Nikki glanced back at the house, where her mother was standing in the front window, the lights of the living room throwing off their warm illumination as Charlene squinted into the darkness at them. “I don’t know what it would take to convince my mother to take a step or two back.”

  “Different strokes for different folks, right?” She hit the button again and the brides on the panel were restored to their normal position.

  “Right.”

  “Looks like tomorrow we get to see her majesty, the queen of all things evil,” Morrisette said as she walked into the training room now dedicated to the O’Henry case.

  Reed said, “Innocent until proven guilty.”

  “We did that once. Proved the guilt.” She strolled around the long table where Reed was working, her gaze scraping the pictures he’d placed on display on the long bulletin board across one wall. The photos were gruesome, showing the extent of Blythe, Niall, and Blondell’s injuries as well as full-body shots of Amity O’Henry lying on a slab in the morgue. Her color was already blue, the gunshot wound visible just under her sternum, tiny puncture wounds from the snake’s bite showing just below her hip. “So young,” Morrisette said, as if reading Reed’s own thoughts. “So senseless.”

  “I know.”

  “Here’s my problem,” she said, “Why the kids? Really? The theory was the same as with that Diane Downs case in Oregon, that she wanted to get rid of them for her new lover, Roland Camp, because he didn’t want them. But she had an ex-husband, and obviously Calvin O’Henry and June would have taken them if she really needed to get rid of them.”

  “Some people don’t want something they have, but they don’t want to give it to anyone else either, especially not an ex-spouse.”

  “I know, but attempting to kill your kids? Wounding yourself?” She shook her head. “That’s just so unnatural for a mother.”

  “Maybe she didn’t do it.”

  “You’re buying the masked stranger with the serpent tattoo?”

  “I’m just saying we’re here to find the truth, not manipulate the facts to keep Blondell O’Henry in jail.”

  “Has the femme fatale of Savannah reached through the prison walls to ensnare you too?”

  “Oh, so you found me out. Just don’t tell Nikki, okay? It might make for an awkward wedding ceremony.”

  “Funny, Reed. You’re a funny man.” She plopped down in a chair. “Okay, convince me.”

  “I don’t know if Blondell’s guilty or not, but the motive’s weak, as you said.”

  “Then let’s look for another one.”

  “Yep,” he said, and they turned their attention back to the board.

  After hours at the computer, checking facts and finding names, addresses, and phone numbers of the people she wanted to interview, Nikki stood and stretched, clambered down the stairs from her loft, and took Mikado outside. The night was cool, but dry, thin clouds scudded across a half moon, which she viewed through the branches of her magnolia tree.

  “Hurry up,” she told the little dog, who sniffed at every bush and shrub before doing his business and racing her into the house again. The lights of the downstairs units were dim for the night. Charles and Gloria Arbuckle lived on the second floor. Happily childless in their midforties, they were fitness buffs who left early in the morning for their separate jobs, usually met for dinner, which they ate out, and were seldom around on the weekends, as somewhere there were mountains to climb, rivers to kayak, and marathons to run.

  Tonight, on the first floor, which was occupied by Dorothy Donnigan and her thirtysomething son, Leon, a flickering bluish light was visible through the drawn shades of Leon’s room. Perpetually unemployed despite the college degrees that gave his mother bragging rights, Leon was a loner. A true gamer and marijuana enthusiast, Leon, tall and scrawny-bearded, rarely stepped outside their apartment except to smoke a cigarette and talk softly on his cell phone. Nikki had said “hello” a few times when she’d returned from her run or a trip to the store and received a nod from deep in the hood of his sweatshirt. His apple-cheeked mother was middle-aged and fighting a losing battle with her weight; she was quick with a smile, but her son seemed just the opposite. Nikki supposed Leon took after his never-seen father, who, Dorothy had explained once as Nikki had helped her haul groceries inside her apartment, was “a bit of a do-nothing, if you know what I mean. Not that I would bad-mouth Leon’s father, you know.” She’d actually looked ashamed at admitting what she thought.

  “Maybe you should,” Nikki had suggested as she’d set her grocery bag on the counter and seen a pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

  “Well, then I’d be just another bitchy ex-wife, wouldn’t I?”

  “I’m not sure I would worry about it, if I were you.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” At that moment Leon, unshaven and wearing his uniform of sweatpants and hooded shirt, had lumbered into the kitchen. Seeming as if in a fog, he’d dropped yet another dirty dish onto the pile, and without a word had walked outside onto the brick veranda, where he’d unceremoniously lit up.

  “All he needs is a job,” his mother said, her gaze following after him as he closed the door. She’d cranked on the hot water, squirted liquid cleaner into the filling sink, then started putting away her groceries, Nikki had said a quick good-bye and escaped. Outside, she’d skirted Leon who, puffing away while kicking at leaves, already had his phone clamped to his ear, and as she’d hurried up the exterior stairs, she’d felt his assessing gaze follow her every step of the way.

  Like father, like son, Nikki had thought at the time, and her opinion hadn’t changed in the nearly two years that Dorothy and Leon had been her tenants.

  Now she wondered just how long Mrs. Donnigan would take her son’s lack of ambition. Not that it was her business or her problem, but time, as they said, was marching on.

  With Mikado yipping at her feet, she climbed the outside stairs to her third-floor retreat and stepped inside. Tonight, the apartment seemed empty. Lonely. She wondered how it would be when she and Reed married. To date, he’d left a shaving kit, a pair of jeans, a couple of shirts, and one suit in her unit, but after the wedding he was planning to move in permanently, and they’d talked about having a child.

  Life would be very different, and she figured eventually they might have to take over the rest of the house, or at least the second floor.

  A baby. She smiled to herself as Mikado raced into the kitchen and danced at her feet while she, by rote, found him a tiny scrap of a biscuit. In her early twenties she hadn’t thought much about children, but then Lily had brought Phee into the world and Nikki had done a quick one-eighty. For the first time, she’d envisioned herself having a child, a cousin for little Phee, and had imagined them playing together. Of course, she’d been
with Sean then, and thankfully that relationship had disintegrated. The bad news was that the years since then had rolled quickly by, and now, even if she got pregnant on her wedding night, there would be nearly seven years between the cousins. Quite a gap. But certainly not one that couldn’t be bridged.

  The little dog barked again, demanding attention or food, probably the latter. “Enough,” she said. “Dinner was over hours ago.” While Mikado was a frenetic bundle of energy with an insatiable appetite, Jennings, always looking for a place to curl up, could barely be bothered with the mundane task of eating. Tonight’s Tuna and Chicken Delight, guaranteed to make any housecat’s mouth water, had been left, untouched as usual, and she’d been forced to put the bowl on the counter, out of marauding Mikado’s quick eye and sharp nose. Unlike Jennings, Mikado always found the cat’s food absolutely enticing.

  Her cell phone rang and she pulled it from her pocket. Reed’s name and picture appeared on the display and she felt her heart soar.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Guess.”

  “Still at the station.”

  “Yeah, but on my way, in”—he paused, as if checking his watch—“less than an hour.”

  “Dinner’s cold,” she told him.

  “You cooked?” Disbelief tinged his words.

  “In my fashion. Thai takeout.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?”

  “Depends upon who’s the judge.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I can reheat. You have a microwave.”

  “My most-used kitchen appliance.”

  He chuckled. “And I have a confession to make: I had barbecue two hours ago.”

  “Of course you did.” She smiled, leaning a hip against the kitchen counter and stared through her window. “So how’s it going?”

  “Slowly. Tomorrow I have to run up to Statesboro.”

  “What?” she said, suddenly all ears. “You’re interviewing Blondell at Fairfield Prison?”

  “I figured that would get your interest.”

  “You have to take me with you! I’ve been trying to see her since this story broke.”