The Third Grave (Savannah #4) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,47

knowing full well she would never let a story go, especially a mystery that had swirled around Savannah as the Duval girls’ story had, especially one involving people she’d known, girls she should have grown up with.

A thicket of trees had been uprooted by the hurricane, the sidewalk buckled and cordoned off with neon cones and yellow tape for several yards, so she jaywalked across the street and eyed the small home where the family had resided. The stucco exterior was painted a soft gray with white paned windows with black shutters and flower boxes filled with trailing petunias in pink and white. The yard was tended, any debris from the storm already raked away. The house appeared to be one story, but the pitch of the roof and windows cut into the eaves on either end suggested a bedroom or two upstairs.

This was where the girls had lived.

Where Harvey and Margaret had raised their family.

Where Owen Duval, too, had made his home. She’d tried to contact him already, using the phone number that Millie had found, but he hadn’t picked up and she’d left her name and number asking him to call. So far, he hadn’t.

As she stared at the house, she tried to remember Owen, to conjure up something she’d known about him when they were in school, but couldn’t recall ever speaking with him. Even though he’d lived in the area, she’d never run into the boy who had lost his sisters that fateful day.

She’d looked up pictures of him, from the high school yearbook and from any photos she’d located on the Internet. But she’d found no recent shots of Duval, so she was stuck with the image of a dark-haired sullen youth with a perpetual frown and thick black eyebrows.

She wondered where he’d slept in this house. The people who owned the place now were an elderly couple with the neat front yard, tidy detached single garage and a lush, if hurricane-ravaged vegetable garden of squash, pumpkins, pole beans and rows of corn visible through the opening between garage and house.

Nikki had come here on a whim, thinking that seeing the home where the Duval family had once resided might give her some insight, a different slant on the story, but the house was like so many others on this street.

Had pure evil resided here?

Hidden by the charming facade?

She felt a chill run down her spine as she stared at the upper windows, but told herself she was letting her imagination run away with her. Whatever malevolence may have resided here, it had left when the Duval family moved on.

Still bothered, she walked the few blocks east, toward the street where the cinema had been built, a wide boulevard skirted with storefronts, cafés, a couple of bars and an apartment building. The theater, a staple in this part of town for over a hundred years, had closed not long after the Duval girls’ disappearance. It had been on the market, empty for years before the owner had sold to a developer, who had converted it to this mini-mall, but the original ticket-taking booth was still positioned in front of a double set of glass doors.

Inside, of course, everything had changed. Where once the floor had descended with row upon row of seats, it was now level, skylights cut high into the domed ceiling. The lobby with its old-fashioned refreshment counter, alcove leading to separate restrooms and doorways to the stairs leading to a projection room and offices one floor above were gone, replaced by two stories of small shops and kiosks tucked against the walls, all of which opened to the center courtyard where café tables had been strewn around an old caboose from a train that had been converted into a bakery and coffee shop. A balcony rimmed the entire building, with staircases at each corner. In one glance Nikki noticed a florist, a T-shirt shop, a sunglasses “emporium,” a wine shop and a kiosk that promised “the freshest homemade candy in all of Savannah.”

Her phone buzzed as she was passing a small deli, and she saw the call was from her mother. She walked out a side entrance and took the call. “Hi, Mom.”

“Nikki? Where the devil are you?”

“Out. Why?”

“I stopped by. Well, we did. I was with Lily. Your sister and I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine, Mom.” Nikki didn’t say it, but she wasn’t all that sure Lily had wanted to visit, or spend any time with Charlene.