Chapter 5
“Let me get this straight,” Pierce said, his voice tight on the other end of the wireless connection. “You’re at the clinic? The veterinary clinic, with Billy Huber’s dog?”
“Arlo. That’s the dog’s name,” Nikki said from the privacy of the clinic’s parking lot. “At least according to the tag on his collar.”
“I told you not to—”
“And he was shot,” she said, cutting Pierce off before he went ballistic over the phone.
“Shot?”
“Yeah,” she said moving to the shade of a small dogwood tree.
“Dr. Vasquez found bird shot in his backside. Right near his tail. Surprisingly, not serious. I told the vet to keep the pellets for the department.” He didn’t reply and was obviously still trying to rein in his anger, so she barreled on.
“They’re keeping Arlo here for observation until someone from animal services comes for him, but I was thinking that maybe we could—”
“Stop. Right there. We don’t need another dog.”
“I know, but Mikado’s getting old and—”
“And we have a houseful as it is.”
“You’re the one who invited Lily and Phee to come live with us,” she reminded him.
“I know, but you needed help and …” He paused, then added, “Look, I’ve got another call coming in. It’s a ‘no’ on the dog, and you’re not to go back to the Huber place until we’re done—no, wait. Don’t go there at all. Nikki, seriously, we discussed you staying away from crime scenes.”
And they had. But not for a long while. Not since directly after the case of the missing Duval girls had been solved and she’d written the book about it. Now, though …
She countered with, “I think we should reopen the discussion.”
“Not now,” he said, then, “I really have to go.”
“Okay. Love you,” she said, and she meant it.
He sighed, but added, “Love you, too,” then clicked off.
She blew out her breath. She hated these fights, but their marriage was full of the pushes and pulls needed to keep them both aware of each other’s needs and wants. Before she went back into the clinic, she called Lily to check on Chloe.
“I’m loading up the car now,” Lily told her. “Mom called, and she wants to go to lunch at the country club, if you can believe that.”
“You’re surprised?”
“No, I guess not. But, God, I hate that place. It’s so … what’s the right word …?”
“Fake? Hypocritical? Pretentious?”
“All of the above.”
“It’s everything you hate and Mom loves.”
“That’s it! But if it’ll get her to eat, then fine. I’ll suffer through the stuffy pseudosophistication and snobby hypocrisy.”
Nikki smothered a smile as she stepped onto the sidewalk outside the vet. An older Toyota Camry pulled into the lot and aimed for a handicapped spot. As soon as the car was parked, the driver, a woman with a cloud of white hair, climbed out and retrieved a cat carrier from the back seat.
“Mom just can’t get over the fact that she was the wife of a judge,” Lily was saying. “Big Ron Gillette. Dad’s been gone nearly ten years, and she still wears her rings and the mantle, or more precisely the tiara, of being his missus, if you know what I mean.”
“Queen Bee.”
“Yeah, that’s it. And she called to make sure that I would wear a dress and that the girls would “dress appropriately” as well. No jeans, you know. God, are we stuck in the nineteen-fifties, or what?”
“Maybe the sixties.”
Lily asked, “Sure you don’t want to join?”
“When you offer it up like that? Hard to resist, but no, I think I’ll take a hard pass.”
“Fine, but you owe me.”
“A dozen times over,” Nikki admitted as the woman with the cat entered the vet clinic. “How is Chloe?”
“Bubbly as ever. Babbling about seeing ‘Gam-Gam.’ But do you think she’ll ever say, ‘Auntie Lily?’ Nope. Not a prayer. She’s as stubborn as her mother.”
“Well, good luck,” Nikki said, still smiling. “I’ll catch you this afternoon.”
She ended the call, then climbed into the warm interior of her Subaru and drove to the offices of the Savannah Sentinel.
Even though she was no longer on staff, she had full use of the paper’s resources.
Tom Fink, who was the editor, allowed her access, though grudgingly, and usually there was a price to pay.
He’d never really forgiven her for branching out and writing full-length crime books; she suspected that he harbored more than a little jealousy at her success.
But he hadn’t cut her off from access to the paper’s computers because he needed her. Nikki’s articles were often picked up by national news sources, and it didn’t hurt the Sentinel’s reputation that she was a crime author of note, her books hitting most of the bestseller lists.
Fink’s favorite line was, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” The quid pro quo that always got under her skin because the way he said it almost sounded dirty.
She parked on the street, a block down from the brick warehouse where the Savannah Sentinel was now housed. After using a code to gain access to the building, she made her way to the stairs, as the elevators were iffy at best.
On the third floor, she noted that Celeste, the receptionist and Fink’s on-again, off-again mistress, wasn’t at her desk. Maybe things were off-again.
Nikki slipped past cubicles where a smattering of reporters were at their desks, eyeing monitors, fingers diligently clicking on keyboards.
Along one wall dedicated to online content, two employees were seated on stools, checking the news feeds and updating the Sentinel’s website and social-media platforms. Conversation hummed over the rumble of the air conditioning and the ever-present sounds of footsteps, keyboard clicks, and ringtones.
There was an energy here that, deep down, she missed.
With a glance to the corner, Nikki noted that the door to Fink’s glassed-in office was closed, the blinds drawn, a sign he wasn’t in.
Good.
She didn’t want to deal with him if it could be avoided, as he was always pressuring her for more information than she had.
Fink seemed to think that, because she was married to a homicide detective, she had access to privileged information about ongoing cases and therefore should share it with the Sentinel and its readership.
No matter how many times she’d explained that she wasn’t privy to the case files, nor would she share information if she were, Fink never let up.
So she was better off not working here full-time.
“I figured you’d show up,” Kendra Phillips said, looking up from the computer screen on her desk.
Kendra was relatively new to the paper and a bit of a gossip, friendly enough, but always pumping Nikki for information.
Slender and pushing thirty, Kendra wore her brown hair straight, didn’t cover her splash of freckles with makeup, and wore a single diamond stud in one nostril.
“So, let me guess. You’re already on the Huber murder, right? ”
“Just doing a little research.”
“When Fink’s not in. Clever.” Kendra sipped from a straw planted deep into the oversize cup she kept filled with Diet Pepsi. “What’re you ‘researching’?” She didn’t use air quotes, but the tone of her voice suggested Nikki was being evasive.
Which she was.
“Just backup information.” Nikki kept walking.
“On Billy Huber?” she asked. “You know I heard he killed his wife.”
Nikki stopped in her tracks. “Killed her?”
“Walked away from a single-car accident when he was driving. The wife didn’t make it. He did.”
So it seemed someone else was doing her own research. No surprise there. Kendra was nothing if not ambitious, and with Nikki working freelance, that left only Norm Metzger on the crime beat. And he was half out the door already.
“Ignore her,” Roy Lutz whispered as he swept by, papers in his hand. “But be on alert. She’s a barracuda, not a guppy.”
“If you say so.”
“Oh, I do. You know it.” Roy’s eyebrows raised over the tops of his fashionable glasses.
Self-confident and whip-smart, Roy worked on the arts and leisure section of the paper.
Everything about him was casual haute couture, from his Dior polo shirts to his Gucci sneakers.
“She wants to be you,” he confided to Nikki.
“What’s he saying?” Kendra wanted to know, but Nikki took Roy’s advice and didn’t respond, at least for the moment.
Roy said lightly, “Nothing.”
Kendra rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a girl!”
“Maybe you should try being one,” he said, breezing out the door.
Kendra muttered something under her breath, but picked up her cup and was about to catch up to Nikki when her cell phone rang.
Making a frustrated face, Kendra plopped down in her chair and, answering, peered around the edge of her cubicle, her calculating gaze following Nikki as she settled into the desk she shared with several other freelance reporters.
Tuning out the office drama, Nikki logged on and started her search into Billy Huber’s life.
The bullet points were quickly organized:
He’d been born fifty years earlier in Chatham County and had lived on the same property for most of his life, aside from a short stint in the army. He’d bought out his mother after his father had died and had been married to Linda-Sue Farmer for nearly a quarter of a century.
As Kendra had alluded, Linda-Sue had died suddenly at the age of forty-seven in a single-car accident. Billy Huber had been at the wheel, and while Linda had been thrown out of the vehicle and was pronounced DOA at the hospital, Billy had survived with minor injuries.
But had he “killed” her? Certainly not intentionally. Still, Nikki made a note to check further.
According to the county records, William and Linda-Sue had two children. The first, Caleb, was born five months after the marriage and died shortly after birth, which explained the sad, nearly forgotten altar in the attic at Huber’s house.
His only surviving child was a daughter: Janelle Alice.
She found Janelle’s birth certificate and marriage license and current address in Florida, where she resided with her husband; there were no children of record.