AllFreeNovel
Share Us
At the events, Beulah had never left the shade of the veranda but had sat in her wheelchair as if it were a throne, sipping from her tall glass of her own special Chatham Artillery punch. The boozy recipe included more than a little sugar and lemons, along with a concoction of whiskeys, rum and champagne “kissed with lemons and oranges,” as Beulah herself had often drawled.
Even as a five-year-old, Nikki had made it a point of avoiding Beulah’s watchful eyes; there was just something fraudulent in her seemingly gracious smile when she greeted the Gillette family and offered sweet tea or “something a little stronger.”
But that was long ago. Before Beulah had passed and her stepson, Baxter, had inherited the house and surrounding acres.
Now, still hidden in the foliage surrounding the overgrown lawn, Nikki watched as a couple of deputies talked by the ME’s van parked near the rear of the old house. Other cops came and went through a back side door, but she didn’t spy Reed.
Good.
But was he still inside, or had he left in the time it had taken her to park her SUV and jog back through the forest? She slid her cell phone from her pocket, hit the camera app and zoomed in on the porch. Reed would really have a fit if he found out she was taking photos, but he was going to have one anyway.
She wanted to talk to some of the officers involved but couldn’t chance it just yet. Not when Reed was probably still nearby. A mosquito buzzed near her ear and she slapped at it as she eyed the area and thought that if she skirted the house along the river, then cut into the old rose garden, she might be able to overhear a conversation or even get a
peek inside the house.
The house sat on a point where the river turned nearly back on itself, the grassy bank overhanging a narrow rocky beach. Not great cover, but it would have to do.
She slid her phone back into her rear pocket, then eased from the cover of the undergrowth to crouch beneath the rim of grassland. Noiselessly she started circumventing the grounds and past the point and the remains of what had once been a dock and was now reduced to a few weathered boards and dark pilings nearly obscured in the swollen river. Debris moved swiftly downstream—branches, limbs, a bucket and a volleyball swirling by.
Nikki edged carefully beneath the overhang, her boots slipping on wet rocks. She had to slip through the reeds, but all the while she watched the house and wondered what had happened.
She couldn’t fight the rush of adrenaline as she imagined finding out the facts to whatever story was evolving on this old plantation. Who had been killed? When? Why? She just didn’t have enough information. Who had phoned in the crime to the police—who was that anonymous caller? She needed to get to the bottom of this story, or at least be the first to report it. Carefully she eased along the bank and hoped she didn’t step into an alligator nest or come across any snakes or . . . Stop it. A tomboy in her youth and a daredevil in her teens, she didn’t let too many things frighten her, so she wouldn’t worry too much about the creatures she’d grown up with, and she moved as quickly as possible as darkness was encroaching, shadows fingering through the marshy bank.
She was starting to perspire and nearly crawling along the bank, the smell of earth and the river heavy in her nostrils, a slight breeze playing with the tendrils of her hair. She had always been athletic and agile, but she was making slow progress past the old dock, around the bend, relying on the scant overhang and impending darkness as cover. Here the river was deeper, the narrow bank and cattails giving way to dark depths, where, as youths, her brothers had dived and swum and boats could maneuver close to the shore.
It was tricky going, pebbles and rocks slick under her boots, and she braced herself by hanging on to any exposed root or weed on the underside of the shelf. She picked her way around a garden rake and a broken dollhouse that had been carried away during the storm, inching around the point, feeling a burn in her thighs from crab-walking. The thought crossed her mind that this might not have been the best idea she’d ever come up with, but she ignored it and kept moving, shifting her weight, trying not to turn her ankle on the slick pebbles and stones. By the time she’d rounded the point and was on the north side of the grounds, she was wet with sweat. But at least she was closer to the weed-choked rose garden and long lane that curved to the back of the house. Unfortunately, here the shoreline was nearly nonexistent, the overhanging shelf much lower, and ahead she saw in the gloaming that soon the land would level off, the shelf disappearing into a marshy lowland. There would be no hiding place.
So what then?
Expose herself?
Hope Reed had taken off?
Pretend that she’d gotten past the deputies at the front gate?
Take a chance that one of the cops would talk to her?
This would be the tricky part.
Biting her lip, she dared straighten a bit and peek over the ledge of the overhang, and her heart nearly stopped as she caught a glimpse of white-blond hair. Sylvie Morrisette was standing only a few yards away from the river, but fortunately she was turned back to face the house and didn’t catch a glimpse of Nikki.
Crap!
Of all the people to be nearby. Reed’s damned partner.
Just what she did not need.
Nikki fought a surge of panic; after all, this was bound to happen. She just had to be careful because she didn’t want to be found out until she could explain the situation to her husband first and convince him that she would be a help rather than a hindrance to the case!
So what now?
Keep moving!
Adrenaline pumping through her, she bent even lower and scrambled over the slick stones and mud. All the while she scoured the area for a spot to hide until Sylvie Morrisette was out of sight.
Where, where, where?
There had to be a hiding spot. Had to!
