In frustration, Archer plowed the fingers of both hands through his hair. “I’m done talking,” he said to Nikki. “I didn’t kill my wife. I … I was hoping to divorce her, yes, but I never … I never would have done anything to hurt her.” He sighed into the night. “I didn’t want Annie to be dragged into this mess. I was just protecting her.”
Beside him, Annie seemed to thaw a little, her smile faltering as she stared up at him adoringly.
Her hero.
Tarnished and rusty as he was.
“Did Mavis know?”
“Yes. Yes, she knew.”
Nikki couldn’t discern if he was telling the truth about that or not.
“That is all you need to know,” Archer said with finality as he looped an arm around Annie’s shoulders and she nestled closer to him. “I didn’t kill Mavis. I know it looks bad, but that’s the truth.” His arm tightened around Annie, and his backbone stiffened. “Why don’t you do us all a favor, Ms. Gillette, and find Mavis’s real killer instead of bothering us?”
“I have a few more questions,” Nikki said.
“And I’ve got no more answers. Nor does Annabelle, so please leave, right now. Otherwise, I’m going to call the cops.”
She thought about calling his bluff, but couldn’t really, as he’d already called hers.
Neither one of them wanted the police to show up.
Also, she knew, Archer Greenlee had told her all he was going to.
And she thought he was mostly telling the truth.
No matter how in love he was with Annabelle, whether it was the real thing or just a post-midlife fantasy, he hadn’t pushed his wife down the stairs, cut her throat, and placed a stone on her body. She couldn’t see Archer Greenlee filled with the anger and fury the killer had exuded.
She was mentally scratching Archer Greenlee from her list.
But if he wasn’t the killer, who was?
Chapter 20
Two victims. From two different worlds.
In her office, the lamps lit, night closing in beyond the windows, Nikki thought about Mavis Greenlee, an icon of Savannah society, childless, rich, and outwardly living the perfect life. A woman who’d once had an affair with Nikki’s own father, which, of course, did bother her, though it had been decades before and Big Ron was long dead. A woman who was divorced twice and whose third marriage was on the rocks.
She leaned back in her desk chair and wiggled the pen in her fingers, clicking it on and off as she thought about Billy Huber. Unlike Mavis, he’d wed just once, was a father, and a collector of all oddities, a hoarder, who made no bones about getting along with anyone and was in debt up to his eyeballs and beyond.
The only thing they had in common was that no one liked them. Not their families, not their neighbors, and not their so-called friends.
As far as Nikki could see, the only person who had crossed both their paths was Westin Stark, the preacher at All Christian. But while Mavis Greenlee was very much a part of the church community, Billy Huber hadn’t set foot through the wide double doors leading to the vestibule since he buried his wife. At least as far as Nikki knew from her conversations with other parishioners and Westin Stark himself.
The reverend.
The reformed sinner.
The born-again Christian.
A man with a mean streak that ran deep.
She chewed on her lip and tossed her pen onto the desk.
Reverend Stark wasn’t the connection.
He was just the only person who seemed to know both victims, and he was a person Nikki still didn’t like. “Get over yourself,” she said aloud, and Arlo, ever-vigilant, was on his feet in an instant. While his fur was starting to grow in near his tail, he still looked a little ragtag. But she loved him.
