Chapter 26 #3
Leaning back in her chair, she considered the All Christian Church connection, but it was thin.
Too thin. Mavis had been a parishioner and active in the church, but Billy Huber was far from churchgoing.
So he had a collection of Bibles. So what?
He had a collection of everything. It was true, Linda-Sue, his wife had been a member, but that had been years ago.
As for Jeanne LaRoux, she’d been raised as a Catholic, but practiced a weird blend of voodoo, paganism, and Christianity that seemed unrelated to the other victims. And it didn’t connect her to All Christian and Westin Stark.
So, another dead end.
She finished the pizza and wiped her hands on a napkin.
Arlo raised his head, as if hoping for the last scrap of pepperoni, but she’d eaten it all.
Leaning back in her chair, she glanced out at the moonlit night; then her gaze landed on a map of Savannah and the surrounding area.
On a whim, she brought a similar map up on her computer, one from the county, and enhanced it by adding in the victim’s houses, where each had been murdered.
It would have been easy enough to find Billy Huber alone. He had no friends or family nearby.
As for Jeanne LaRoux, she, too, was a loner.
Not so, though, Mavis Greenlee, who lived within the city limits of Savannah.
Yes, her house had been protected from view from the street, and the neighbors, too, were at a distance, separated by thick foliage.
But she didn’t live alone. At least not all the time.
Archer might have had his lover tucked away on Tybee, but he ostensibly had lived with his wife, though, of course, who really knew?
The thing she did notice on the map was that Jeanne LaRoux’s property was not far from the acreage belonging to Billy Huber—it was just across the road, in fact—though Huber’s property was accessed by another road, parallel to the one that ran past the LaRoux acreage.
The Huber farm was only buffered from the LaRoux place by a strip of land owned by Otis Childers, a piece that ran the width of the Hubers’ place and butted up against the Wheelan property.
Was that something?
She dug through the county records and discovered that, eight years earlier, Childers had bought the parcel from Huber, the reason having to do with water rights, as far as she could determine.
She thought about Otis Childers and his wife, Daria, and wondered if the sale of the property was before or after Billy had ogled the wife and Childers had come at him with his grandfather’s shotgun.
Did it matter?
Probably not. She was grasping at straws, and it was nearly midnight.
Aside from Arlo softly snoring, the house was quiet as she carried her plate and glass to the kitchen and left them in the sink. Passing by Pierce’s study near the bottom of the stairs, she heard the muted click of computer keys. She knocked softly on the door and poked her head inside.
His back was to her, but he said, “I’ll be up in a minute.”
“I just have a couple of questions.”
“Wife questions or reporter questions? No, wait, let me guess.”
“We haven’t discussed what happened to Jeanne LaRoux.”
His shoulders stiffened.
She reminded him, “We have a deal.”
He clicked off his computer and turned to face her. She thought he might argue with her, but his face relaxed. “Okay. But what I’ve got is strictly off the record.” His gaze met hers. Held. “Right?”
Holding up a hand as if she were taking an oath, she nodded. “Right.”
“Victim of homicide,” he said and went on to explain that LaRoux had been found by a would-be client and that she was hung from the crossbeam over a fire pit in her own sanctuary, clutching a polished stone with the number 1 carved into it.
Like the others. Hebrew on one side, Arabic on the other.
“The numbers are significant,” he told her. “We just need to find out why.”
“Did you know that the back of the Childers’s property abuts the road leading past the LaRoux place?”
“Granger told me,” he said, nodding, and then once more stated that everything they’d exchanged was off the record.
Nikki tried to learn more about Jeanne LaRoux’s death, but Pierce had limited answers.
“You’re holding out on me,” she charged when it was evident she was getting no more information.
“I’m telling you what we know for certain. No hypotheticals. No guessing.”
“You don’t trust me!”
His eyes narrowed a bit. “Put yourself in my position for a minute, would you? I know where you’re coming from.
You’ve got a pushy editor to report to as well as an agent who seems to be salivating for your next book.
That’s it. But I have protocol. And a chain of command to report to, as well as an investigation I can’t compromise.
“Now the Feds are involved. It’s looking very much like there’s a serial killer here in Savannah again. So the FBI is taking over.”
“But you’ll still be investigating.”
“Yes. In conjunction with the Bureau. You know how it works, Nikki. Everything has to be done by the book. I can’t be confiding in my wife, the journalist, no matter how much I trust her.”
“I can help!”
He shook his head. “Just think how it looks.”
“It doesn’t matter. If I can help.”
“After what happened last time?”
Morrisette. She closed her eyes. Remembered that horrid day on the river.
“I’m sorry,” he said and stood, folding his arms around her. “But this is the way it has to be. The way we play it.”
Though a part of her itched to escalate the fight, to make him see her perspective, to force him to understand that she was just trying to help, she bit her tongue.
She would have to run her own investigation around him.
It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done, and breaking off his embrace, she said, “Fine,” but didn’t mean it.
Leaving him watching her, she headed back upstairs, not to their bedroom, but again to her office, where Arlo was still dozing. She plopped down in her chair with enough force to cause it to roll back and hit the edge of the dog bed.
The shepherd was instantly awake, on his feet, hackles raised. He emitted a sharp, low growl. A warning.
“Shhh. No, no, no! It’s okay,” she whispered and patted his head, calming him.
“No barking.” The last thing she wanted was to wake up “Fussy Pants.” He turned dark eyes up to look at her as she stroked him.
“That’s better. Go back to bed.” With a slow wag of his tail, he curled up again, and Nikki was left stewing over the same questions that had plagued her for the past three weeks:
Who would commit these heinous murders and why?
If Pierce wouldn’t help her figure it out, she’d damn well do it herself.