The Third Grave (Savannah #4) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,85
which looked like an original black and white photo that had been tinted.
So maybe that’s why the color was off.
Her pulse ticked up.
The sign for the inn had been tinted a deep crimson and the lettering a distinctive script in white.
“Oh, God,” she whispered as she remembered the boat hidden in the shadowy branches of the willow tree at the Beaumont estate the day the bodies were discovered. It, too, was red but faded, and she hadn’t been able to read the graying lettering, had only caught a glimpse, but now, staring at the sign for the Marianne Inn, she was certain it was the same.
“Let’s see,” she said to herself as she sat down at her computer and googled the old inn once more, searching through the images, which were an array of photographs of the inn in its heyday. Shots of the pine-paneled interior with its massive staircase and rock fireplace that climbed two floors, the waitstaff in the dining area, smiling cooks in crisp white dresses, pristine aprons and hairnets working over a massive stove. There were shots of guests lounging outside the French doors that opened to the river, women in swimming suits from the fifties and sixties sunbathing. Other shots of men decked in fishing gear while proudly displaying strings of catfish, bass and sunfish, the scales of their catches glinting in the sunlight.
She found several pictures of the back of the lodge and the private pier jutting into the river. Rowboats and motorboats were tied, each with the distinctive white on deep red logo of the Marianne Inn.
“Bingo,” she whispered.
The color was off as the boat she’d thought she’d spied lurking under the drooping branches of the willow tree had been more of a faded orange than deep red, but the flowing script had been identical. The boat had once been part of the old lodge’s small fleet.
And Nikki Gillette thought she was the only one who knew about it. She bit her lip and wondered who had been at the helm of the small craft. And more importantly, why had he or she been at the Beaumont estate on the day the two decomposing bodies of the Duval girls had been discovered?
* * *
It was after ten at night when Bronco cracked open another bottle of SweetWater, then flipped the cap of the pale ale into the overflowing trash. Only one bottle left in the fridge, along with half a hamburger and the usual bottles of catsup, mayo and mustard.
Not much else.
He’d become a hermit.
Ever since finding those damned bodies, he’d holed up in his house, only getting out for that meeting with the attorney and cops and a couple of runs to the closest convenience store, a mini-mart, where he also filled up his truck.
He’d lost his job a few weeks earlier and his unemployment hadn’t kicked in and, the real problem, he hadn’t found anything of value at the Beaumont estate. Just those dead girls. Their thin skeletons dressed in fraying girls’ clothes from an earlier decade still haunted his dreams. The locket, the tennis shoes, the ring and hairband.
His insides went cold and he took a long swallow.
He thought about driving to his regular haunt, down to the Red Knuckle, where he would drink a few more beers and watch the Braves play.
But he didn’t.
He was too spooked.
And the word had gotten out that he’d found the bodies.
More than one reporter had called.
He walked to the living room and peered through the window to the night beyond. The TV was tuned into the station that had aired the Braves game but right now there was a newscaster on the screen with yet another “breaking story.” Of course it was about the Duval girls. He watched. As he always did. As the nightmare continued. The police were looking for people who might know something about the crime of course, and the report focused on two teenagers who’d never come forward at the time, boys captured on tape. He squinted at the grainy image of kids at the refreshment stand in the theater. Two guys who looked like every other teenager twenty years ago. No one he remembered. He frowned, took a pull from his longneck.
The next shot was of two men, computer-enhanced images of what those teenagers from two decades ago might look like, and he paused the screen shot. Had he seen either of them? He didn’t think so, but . . . maybe?