Tell Me by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

that Ruby and her brothers had known Blondell as a young girl. Before she’d married. Before she’d had children. Before she’d become involved with Roland Camp and the horrid tragedy had occurred. Background information.
    Ruby said to her granddaughter, “Come on, Janie, give me a break here.”
    Janie was having none of it, her waifish face twisting as she wound up for what looked to be a colossal wail. “Noooo!”
    In a hurry, Nikki asked, “How much do I owe you?”
    “Seventeen fifty. I clipped his toenails too.”
    She fished in her wallet and came up with two fives and a ten. “Keep the change.”
    Ruby’s broad face brightened. “Thank you.” She tucked the bills into the pocket of jeans that were a couple of sizes too tight and peered over Nikki’s shoulder to the exterior door. “I hope the others come. I close up at five. Got dinner to get on the table, y’know. Seth, he comes home from the garage and he’s hungry as a bear. Growly as one too, if dinner ain’t on the table. Y’know what I mean?”
    Janie was winding up again. “Hungry!” she cried.
    “In an hour,” her grandmother admonished.
    “I want a snack!”
    “You eat now and I know what’ll happen. You won’t want any of your dinner.”
    “Hungrrrrry,” the little one insisted, grabbing hold of Ruby’s leg again, clutching her rather substantial thigh.
    “Oh, for the love of Pete. Here!” Ruby opened a drawer and pulled out some kind of packaged fruit snacks that looked suspiciously like red jelly beans though the wrapper proclaimed the health benefits of zero fat and a high percentage of vitamin C “in each and every bite.”
    Snagging the packet, Janie finally released her grandmother’s leg and skipped off, her tears miraculously disappearing, her pigtails bouncing as she took off through an archway, separated by a series of child gates, toward the living room, where a television was visible, the screen flickering with the bright colors of a cartoon show.
    “I swear, that one has me wrapped around her little finger, and it’s worse yet where her granddaddy is concerned. Man oh man, does she get her way around Seth.” Ruby was shaking her head as the beams of headlights flashed, splashing against the back of the house. “Oh, good. Looks like Margaret is here to pick up Spike. I was wondering. She’s not the most reliable tool in the shed, if you know what I mean.”
    Nikki didn’t comment. Glancing at her watch, she knew she just had time to run Mikado home before driving to City Hall to hear firsthand why Niall O’Henry had decided to change a story he’d clung to for nearly twenty years.

CHAPTER 4
    U nprecedented was the first word that came to Pierce Reed’s mind as he stood, collar to the cold wind, watching the growing throng of people gathered around the steps of City Hall. Grandstanding was the second.
    Standing behind a podium that was set up under one of the stone arches of the portico was David Blass, a senior partner in the firm of Blass, Petrovich, and Sterns. A tall man with broad shoulders and what appeared to be an expensive suit, he leaned into the microphone. “Let me be clear,” he said in a voice that boomed into the crowd, where reporters with cameramen jockeyed for position. He held up one hand, as if for effect. “There will be no questions. Mr. O’Henry is here just to make a simple statement.”
    The less-robust man beside him had to be Niall O’Henry, son of Blondell. He appeared uneasy, as if uncomfortable in his own skin, and was a good three inches shorter than his attorney. While Blass’s skin was tanned by hours on the golf course, Reed imagined, O’Henry was pale in comparison, a smaller, nervous man in a much cheaper suit. His features were sharp, his lips tight, his eyes staring across the milling crowd rather than into it. Had he looked healthier, Reed decided, Niall O’Henry, with his large eyes, aquiline nose, and high cheekbones, could have been a handsome man. As it