by Lisa Jackson
“It’s charming,” she said aloud, “not scary.” But she couldn’t ignore the little drizzle of fear that slid down her spine as she parked, locked her car, and hurried up the interior staircase. On the third floor she was greeted by Mikado’s sharp barks as she let herself into her apartment. The little dog spun circles and did a happy dance that always ended up near his food bowl, just in case she felt generous. “You’re a little pig,” she teased, picking him up and petting him, only to be rewarded with a tongue to her face and the not-so-pleasant odor of doggie breath. “First, outside with you, then I’ll think about it.”
Jennings had shown up as well and was pacing across the back of her couch. “Yeah, you too,” she said to the yellow tabby before she found Mikado’s leash and, as promised, walked him downstairs and into the backyard, where the porch light offered soft illumination and the patio furniture and shrubbery cast weird shadows. She stood on the old brick veranda, shifting from one foot to the other, a cool breeze cutting through her light jacket, her mind on the article that was forming in her mind.
All the while, as she waited for the little dog to sniff and take care of business, she thought of Niall O’Henry and how she would spin the story about him.
“Are you about done?” she asked and looked around for the dog, who had disappeared into the shadows. “Come on, Mikado! I’m freezing.”
No answer.
“Buddy?” Her gaze scoured the magnolia and crepe myrtle lining the brickwork, but she couldn’t see the dog, nor did he respond. All she heard was the hum of traffic in the city. “Mikado?” Whistling, she walked toward the fence line, hoping he hadn’t found a space to crawl under. “Come!” Her heart started to pound a little faster when she finally saw him, unmoving, staring toward a corner of the yard. “What is it?” He growled, and her nerves tightened, even though she knew he could be focused on a cat on the other side of the fence, or a squirrel or some other rodent.
Hearing the soft rustle of something moving through the undergrowth, the hairs on the back of her neck raised. Reed’s warning, “Be careful,” echoed through her mind. Shivering, she said, “Let’s go, buddy,” and quickly picked up the dog. His little body was tense, his ears cocked, his eyes trained on the encroaching darkness. “Give it up,” she said, and scratched him behind the ears as she hurried into the house and up the stairs.
Once in her apartment, she snapped off the lights and moved into the kitchen to look down at the garden below. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. When she squinted into the darkness beyond the fence, she thought she saw movement, someone hurrying through the shadows of the yard and alley behind her property, but she couldn’t be certain and chalked the image up to her overactive imagination.
Mikado barked for a treat, and she broke a small doggie biscuit into two pieces before making a cup of hot tea. She then headed up the stairs to her writing alcove and computer.
The article came together easily, but there wasn’t a lot of meat to it, nothing special, and she frowned at her cell phone as Niall O’Henry’s lawyer hadn’t deigned to return her call. “Par for the course,” she grumbled and made the best of the information she had.
Tomorrow. If she could just get in to see Blondell, then she’d have a real story. Somehow, she had to make it happen. For now, she logged onto her e-mail account at the paper, found the pictures Jim Levitt had turned in and picked two. One was a close-up of Niall as he stood solemnly at the podium. The second was a broader shot that showed the crowd that had convened around the steps of City Hall. It still wasn’t enough, so she searched through the paper’s archives and located several pictures of Blondell O’Henry at the time of her trial. Even in grainy black and white, she’d been a striking, petite woman with dark hair that framed a heart-shaped face. Her features were even, her cheekbones sculpted. Her large, smoky-gray eyes were rimmed in thick lashes, and her full lips were parted, showing perfect teeth and creating a slight enigmatic smile that could only be called sexy. Despite having three children, she’d been thin, with a few curves that were, as her father had said often enough, “in all the right places.”
After attaching the digital photos she’d chosen for the piece, she sent everything to the Sentinel, then started work on a synopsis of the book she planned to write. It would take her a week or two to put the idea together and then to flesh it out enough so that Ina and her editor, Remmie Franklin, would approve.
After working for two hours straight, she decided to call it a night, but as she was starting down the stairs, she spied her high school yearbooks piled on the bottom shelf of her bookcase. Her copies of the Robert E. Lee High School Traveller, named after the Southern general’s famous horse, had collected dust since she’d moved in. Now Nikki walked up the stairs again and sorted through the four volumes to find the school year she was looking for—the last year of Amity O’Henry’s life. Almost gingerly, she pulled the volume from its resting place to carry it downstairs.
Once she’d changed into an oversized nightshirt, she plumped up the pillows on her bed and settled in. Mikado curled up beside her, and Jennings found a spot near the footboard. Carefully, she turned the pages, spying pictures of classmates as they’d been twenty years earlier, wearing eager, fresh faces, once-cool fashions, and hairstyles that were no longer in vogue. She found Amity O’Henry’s junior-year picture, and Nikki’s throat tightened as she studied it.
As beautiful as her mother, Amity looked into the camera. Her dark hair fell past her shoulders, her big eyes a cool blue and the smile that touched the corners of her lips sensual. Not yet seventeen, she appeared to be a grown woman with almost innocent eyes. There had been something about Amity that had caused heads to turn and boys to fantasize.
And one had done more than that, obviously.
Amity had dated a lot of boys, her relationships as volatile and short-lived as a firecracker on a rainy Fourth of July, sputtering out quickly.
So who had gotten her pregnant? Flipping through the pages of the yearbook, Nikki saw the faces of the boys who had openly dated Amity. Brad Holbrook, the baseball jock, and Steve Manning, a do-nothing stoner who was Hollywood handsome, were the two Nikki remembered, but that was because Amity tended to date older guys, in their twenties—“men,” she’d called them, though the ones Nikki had met hardly seemed like adults. Nikki, a year and a half younger, had been given strict curfews, and boys who dared to take her out learned very quickly that Judge Ronald Gillette expected his daughter to be brought home and walked to the door. She remembered one particularly excruciating experience. Tate Wheeler had asked her out, and upon his arrival at the house, they’d both been summoned into her father’s den.
“You will have her home by midnight,” he’d said, eyeing Tate as if he might be a deadly rattler ready to strike.
Standing in front of the desk where the judge had been seated, both Tate and Nikki had squirmed. Leather-bound books filled several tall cases that flanked the windows, while family photos, law degrees, awards, and antique weapons vied for the remaining wall space. Half-glasses at rest on his nose, the judge had selected a cigar from his humidor but hadn’t bothered to light it, just fingered the rolled tobacco, as he repeated, “Midnight.”
“Yes. Of course, sir,” Tate had responded, and Nikki had withered inside. Why did her father have to be so old-school?
“Good.”
Tate, in an effort not to shrink before the man, had said, “Nice guns,” and nodded toward a wall of pistols and rifles mounted above a mahogany credenza.
“Thank you. I’ve collected arms all my life, and they each have a unique history.” Pointing with his cigar at a long-barreled pistol, he’d said, “I have it on authority that this pistol was used in the War of Northern Aggression. I believe it killed at least one Yankee soldier, though of course there could have been more.” His smile was cold as ice, and the look he sent Tate was usually reserved for prosecutors and defense attorneys who irritated the hell out of him in the hallowed walls of his courtroom.
Getting to his feet, he added, “You know, son, this pistol is worth a fortune, I suppose, but the most important thing about it is that it still works. I took it out just last week. Hit a target dead on from twenty paces. The way I see it, a collection of firearms isn’t worth a damn if the guns don’t work.”
She’d shot her father a “don’t do this” look, which, if he caught, he’d ignored. “You kids run along. Have a good time.” His fleshy fingers moved in a quick “be off with you” motion as he sat in his creaky leather chair. “And remember: midnight. Not one o’clock, not twelve-twenty, not even twelve-oh-one. Midnight.”
That had been that. Any hoped-for relationship with Tate Wheeler had died a quick death in the judge’s den.
She’d been home by ten-thirty, and Tate hadn’t called again.
“You’re trying to ruin my life,” she’d charged the next time she and her father had been alone. She’d found him at the fence line, watching his small herd of horses; two mares grazing in the lush grass, a foal frolicking on spindly legs.
“What do you mean?” He hadn’t taken his eyes off the field, where sunlight had played upon the mares’ backs, giving their bay coats a reddish sheen.
“All that crap about the Civil War pistol and getting me home by midnight! No one does that anymore!”
“I do.”
“Old-school, Dad. You just like embarrassing me. You get off on it.”
He’d chuckled, which had only infuriated her all the more.
“What I’m doing, Nicole, is separating the wheat from the chaff. Any boy worth his salt will be back again and not be intimidated.”
“Don’t you know how scary you are?”
“Not if you get to know me.”
“For the love of God, Dad, no one gets a chance! You frighten them all away.” She’d let out a world-weary sigh and watched one of the mare tails twitch at a horsefly. “None of my friends’ dads pull this kind of crap.”
“Watch yourself, Firecracker,” he’d warned, using the pet name he’d given her. Then, less sternly, he’d added, “Have you ever thought that your friends’ dads don’t care as much as I do?”
“They just don’t enjoy mortifying their daughters.”
“Is that what I do?” He’d actually grinned.
“Yes!”
“Good.” He’d slid her a knowing glance. “And if you think what I put them through is bad, just be thankful they don’t have to deal with your mother.” His eyebrows had lifted over the tops of his glasses, “Now, there’s a woman who can be scary!”
Nikki sighed. No, Amity O’Henry hadn’t had a father who acted like a medieval king who was dead set on protecting his daughter’s chastity. Amity had been allowed to do what she wanted, with whom she wanted, when she wanted. All that freedom that Nikki had so envied had been a curse, and she missed her father more than she could ever have imagined as a teenager. To think about the last time she’d seen him . . . She closed her eyes at the memory, a frigid wind cutting through her soul.
“Don’t go there,” she whispered, chastising herself. To push the image aside, she found Amity’s picture again and remembered her friend’s last anguished plea:
“Please come. I need to talk to someone and you’re my best friend.”
And Nikki, daughter of privilege and harsh curfews, had failed her.
CHAPTER 5
As Nikki had expected, she wasn’t the only reporter waiting to interview Blondell O’Henry. Though she’d arrived at Fairfield Women’s Prison before eight the next morning, two television news vans were already parked in the lot near the front gates. One reporter, Lynnetta Ricci, a tiny blonde from WKAM, stood in position for an exterior shot of the guarded entrance, her cameraman already filming. Another team, DeAnthony Jones and his cameraman were finding a spot for the obligatory exterior shot of the prison.
There were others arriving as well, reporters she didn’t recognize, but all sharing the same eager fever she’d felt upon hearing about the potential of Blondell O’Henry’s release.
The gates opened electronically at eight, and they were ushered inside to a waiting area where they each showed their identification and turned off their electronic devices before surrendering them, along with their valuables, to a grim-faced African-American woman seated at a desk behind thick glass. Her hair was white and close-cropped, her eyes dark with suspicion. Her ID tag read Officer M. Ulander, and she didn’t so much as crack a smile as she received the items passed through the two-sided drawer. Asking for their signatures, she returned visitors’ passes with dexterity, if not pleasure.
Nikki hoped to be the first person allowed inside, but she was disappointed. She was third, behind Lynnetta Ricci and a man she didn’t recognize, who had introduced himself as Ryan Nettles, a twentysomething, eager stringer for a newspaper in Atlanta. DeAnthony Jones had to settle for fourth.
She fidgeted on the padded bench in the anteroom, all the while cognizant of the cameras that were filming this sterile room along with all the other corridors and common areas of the new prison. The gates were electronic, the guards stern, the air inside the prison filtered and yet stale-feeling.
Her claustrophobia was trying to raise its ugly head. She hated the idea of being locked away, be it in a closet, a prison cell, or a damned casket.
The reporters before her filed in and out, and finally she was led by a guard through a series of electronic gates that hummed and clanged, her footsteps echoing on concrete floors as she was guided to an office on the first floor.
“Wait here,” the guard instructed, pointing to another small, windowless office, where a receptionist/secretary was hard at work on the keyboard of a computer. A heavyset woman with streaked hair meant to conceal her gray, she wore a telephone headset and glasses balanced on her pert little nose. A nameplate announced that she was Mrs. Martha Watkins, and several plaques that had been proudly hung on the walls led Nikki to believe Mrs. Watkins had been an excellent employee in the service of the state of Georgia for thirty-plus years.
“Warden Billings will be with you shortly,” the woman said, not missing a beat in her typing, though she did slide a quick glance as Nikki entered and the door closed behind her, clicking loudly, as if it too were locked.
Nikki fidgeted in her seat for almost ten minutes before the inner door opened. A tall, serious woman in a slim skirt and collared sweater introduced herself as Warden Jeanette Billings, then asked Nikki into the inner sanctum of her office. A large window allowed sunlight into the room, where a Thanksgiving cactus was starting to show orange buds, and Nikki breathed a sigh of relief.
The warden’s desk took up most of the office, where shelves of books and framed black-and-white photographs lined the walls. A laptop computer was open on one side of the desk and a tablet on the other. As if to add some age to the room, an antique globe, circa 1920, was positioned on a stand in one corner.
“Please, have a seat,” the warden offered, and Nikki dropped into one of the two visitors chairs. “I received your e-mail about an interview with Ms. O’Henry,” she said before Nikki could ask about it. “I did write you back this morning to let you know that Mrs. O’Henry is seeing no visitors.” Her features were sharp, her demeanor that of someone who was used to being in charge. “Obviously you, and the others, didn’t receive it or chose to ignore it.”
“I was on the road.”
One of the warden’s slim eyebrows arched as if she doubted Nikki’s word.
Nikki hadn’t driven for over an hour to end up empty-handed. “If you read my e-mail, then you know I’m not just here for a quick article or even a series of articles for the Sentinel. I’d like to write a book, tell Blondell’s side of the story.”
The warden’s smile was tiredly patient. “Again, Ms. Gillette, you’re not the first. Ms. O’Henry has been approached many times by different authors interested in her story.”
“But that was before. Now it looks like she could be released, a free woman for the first time in nearly two decad
es. I’d think she’d want the world to know how she feels, what really happened that night.” Nikki was on a roll now, but she could see the censure in Jeanette Billings’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Gillette. There’s nothing more I can do. I’ve passed your request along, with all the others, and Ms. O’Henry, under her lawyer’s advice, will decide if she would like to contact you.” She started to rise, as if the short interview was over.
“But I really would like to speak with her,” Nikki argued, not budging. “I was a good friend of her daughter’s. Amity called me the night she was killed, and I feel like I’m connected to it all in a more personal way.”
Little lines of disbelief puckered the warden’s eyebrows. “As I said, Ms. Gillette, I’ll relay the information. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
“I’ve met Blondell O’Henry. Spent the night in her house. Amity stayed at mine. My uncle was her defense attorney.”
“Was?” She picked up on the one word she apparently considered a weakness in Nikki’s campaign.
“Yes. Alexander McBaine.”
“But he is no longer representing her.”
“My uncle was forced to retire due to health issues, but I’m sure Blondell—er, Ms. O’Henry—will remember him and me as well.”
The warden walked around her desk. If Nikki had made the slightest inroad past the woman’s steely resolve, she couldn’t see it.
“Thank you,” Billings finally said, just as the door opened and the guard who had escorted her into the office was ready to usher her out again.
Great.
Just flippin’ great!
She walked back through the series of gates to find DeAnthony Jones glancing up expectantly as the doors opened and she stepped through. By this time there were two more people waiting, and Nikki would bet her next advance that they were reporters as well. “Good luck,” she said to DeAnthony as he rushed past and she stopped to collect her things through the drawer of the glassed-in desk.