Chapter 15
For the next five days, Nikki was stymied.
All of her investigating hadn’t turned up much.
Though she and Pierce had agreed to share information—she promising not to print anything without the department’s approval, he saying he’d give her an “exclusive” first interview once the cases were solved—she was stuck in the house.
Chloe had come down with a cold. Both Lily and Phee were battling runny noses and wet-sounding coughs.
Her only break had been when Phee had been well enough to go to her riding lesson and Nikki had taken her to the stables to spend the next two hours watching Phee learn from the older girls.
Her favorite instructor was Annabelle Van Camp, a friendly girl with rosy cheeks and an athlete’s body.
Annabelle could ride a horse as if she’d been born to do it, seemingly at one with the animal as it sailed over fences or streams.
Phee had been exhilarated to have gone riding, but probably she shouldn’t have gone and relapsed slightly the next day.
As difficult as it was, Nikki worked from home, alternately making soup, taking Chloe’s temperature and reading to her, and doing what research she could via the Internet.
She brought her laptop downstairs so that she could manage the household and set up a work space at the dining room table while Chloe was wrapped in blankets on the couch, Lily was curled in a nearby chair with the TV on low, and Phee was cloistered in the bedroom she shared with her mother.
The dogs took up spots by the fire, while rain peppered the windows and Jennings found a spot on the chair next to hers, his long tail twitching slightly as he slept.
By the sixth morning, Nikki was about to go out of her mind, as Pierce had admitted that the investigation into Mavis’s death was hitting roadblocks.
The same was true with Billy Huber. “All the alibis have checked out,” he’d told her just this morning as he’d stood in front of the bathroom mirror while adjusting his tie.
“You mean her husband’s?” Nikki had asked.
“Times three. Not only was Archer where he claimed to be, but Radley Bowers was—”
“Her first husband?”
“Yes, he was with his wife. And as for number two, Leonard Armstrong? He was in Atlanta at a Braves game with clients.”
“And none of them had a connection to Billy Huber?”
“Not that we’ve located.”
“What about the alibis of everyone else who held a grudge against Billy Huber?” she asked, meeting his gaze in the mirror.
“Still double-checking. It seems he pissed off about everyone he met.”
She grunted an assent. “Including his daughter.”
“Right. So, we’ll see.” He eyed his reflection. Satisfied with the knot, he brushed a kiss against her forehead. “I’ll see you later, Nurse Nikki.”
“Very funny,” she said, hearing him laugh as he headed downstairs.
But later in the morning, after she’d seen a twinkle in her daughter’s eye when Chloe had asked for hot chocolate with marshmallows for breakfast, Nikki checked the little girl’s symptoms. Thankfully, she was no longer running a fever, and her little nose had stopped dripping, and yes, Nikki had allowed the cup of cocoa.
Even Lily, who stumbled downstairs later than usual, admitted that she was feeling better.
“Thank God. For the first time in, like, forever, I actually got a good night’s sleep,” she admitted, making a beeline for the coffeemaker, where half a pot of coffee was steaming.
She poured herself a cup and added a shot of cream.
As Chloe was still picking melting marshmallows out of her mug, Lily clicked the rim of her cup to her niece’s.
“Cheers!” Chloe said brightly.
“Back at you.” Lily rumpled Chloe’s curls, and the little girl giggled.
“No!” she objected, tossing her head out of the way, but still grinning widely.
Lily said, “I guess we can call off the quarantine,” before pouring more cream into her cup and adding a teaspoon of sugar.
She tasted her brew again and sighed contentedly.
“That’s better. Why don’t you get out of here?
” she suggested to Nikki. “I know you’re going bat-sh …
er, crazy cooped up here when you could be out, poking around and getting into trouble. ”
“You make my job sound so glamorous. You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m keeping Phee home one more day, just to play it safe, but she’s feeling better, too, and caught up on her homework. Isn’t the Internet wonderful?”
“A lifesaver,” Nikki said and didn’t argue any longer as she was pulling at the bit to get out of the house. While packing her tote, she said, “The dogs and cat have been fed. Don’t believe them if they tell you differently. They lie.”
“I’ve heard that about dogs,” Lily said, “but cats?”
“Slyer. Much more duplicitous.”
“There you go with your big words again.” She saw Nikki hesitate at the back door. “So go, already. We’re good here. If there’s an emergency, I’ll call you. Promise.”
“Okay. Oh, wait! Did you know that Kyle has emerged?” She realized that between all the sniffles and coughs and cleaning up, she hadn’t given Lily the news about their brother.
“What?”
“Yeah. I forgot to mention. I’ll fill you in later, but suffice it to say that he seems to have decided to join the living, or maybe the family, or maybe just connect with Mom, but he’s communicating with her.”
Lily’s lips twisted. “Will wonders never cease?”
“I know. Gotta run.”
And, with that, Nikki was out the door. Nearly a week cooped up in the house with two unsolved murders to dig into had totally frustrated her.
She’d submitted a couple of stories to the paper, all Pierce-approved, and spent hours on her computer or the phone.
She had called everyone on her list, people associated with either Mavis Greenlee or Billy Huber.
She seemed to be failing to connect with any of them.
They’d either been away from their phones, not answering, or in some way or another unavailable.
Worse, Fink was demanding a more “in depth” story about the crimes, and then there was Ina, who had gotten wind of the two murders and the possibility of a new book in the works.
“This would be perfect,” she’d enthused the day before in a Zoom call.
“Two murders within days of each other in Savannah … such a beautiful, historic city and … well, if the crimes are connected, you know, by a serial killer, so much the better. You could expose the dark underbelly of the city.” Lighting a cigarette, she’d added, “And by the way, serial killers are hot.”
“Yeah, right,” Nikki said now as she drove through the glistening streets.
It had rained during the night, but the morning sun was finally daring to peek through thin clouds overhead to reflect on the pavement.
As for Ina’s suggestion, it was ridiculous.
Nikki was a long way from writing a book about the recent murders.
First, the homicides needed to be solved, then positively linked; then the killer had to be revealed, arrested, and convicted.
It could take years, and that was if the crimes were solved.
That thought had occurred to Ina as well. “So, you keep notes on those, but in the meantime, we need something fresh, something you can deliver in the next six months.”
Impossible! Nikki had actually laughed. “Let me call all my serial-killer friends. I’m sure they’ll sit down and fill me in.”
“Make fun all you like,” Ina had replied, “but I’m serious. Your editor and your fans are eager for another book. You should be flattered.”
“I am,” Nikki agreed, “but everyone will just have to wait a little longer.” Or a lot longer, if her new book was to be about whomever was behind the Billy Huber and Mavis Greenlee murders.
To that end, she was about to interview Mavis’s mother, Blanche Crawford, and hopefully get a little insight into the dead woman’s life.
She figured Blanche’s perspective could add a human element to her story and maybe give Nikki some insight into Mavis’s character, and why anyone would want her dead.
As for Billy Huber, she’d learned his relatives had little social-media presence and few friends.
While spending most of the week at home, she’d left messages for his brothers, Robert and Terence.
Then there was Calvin Smith, aka Smitty, the man with whom Billy had been in a bar fight years before, after the death of his son.
She’d found out that Calvin had been in and out of jail, an angry man who had lived in the area years before but now was in the wind.
She made a mental note to find him, and surely Pierce could help with that.
She had left a message for Smith’s parole officer, but again was waiting for a call back.
She was starting to get irritated.
Didn’t anyone use a cell as an actual telephone these days?
Now, as she drove down the shaded street to Blanche Crawford’s home, her thoughts returned to Mavis Greenlee, and Nikki wondered about the dead woman’s finances.
Who inherited? Most likely her husband, who was currently holed up on Tybee Island.
Were there any life-insurance policies? If so, who were the beneficiaries?
Follow the money was the axiom, but that was only if financial gain was the ultimate goal of the killer.
That seemed unlikely, considering the fact that she believed, as the police did, that the murderer of Mavis and Billy was one and the same.
If monetary reward was the objective, then Billy Huber was a poor choice of a victim.
What was the link?
She slid her Subaru into an open spot on the street in front of a single-level ranch-style home straight out of the fifties. A silver Lexus was parked in the drive, nose to bumper behind an older, dented Honda minivan, white but dirty, with Wash Me written into the grime by an unsteady finger.