The Morning After by Lisa Jackson Page A

found either. Anything else?” she asked. “Because if not, I’ve got work to do.” At that moment, the photographer asked her a question and Reed backed off. He walked to the telephone and looked at it. The message light was not blinking. So someone else had been here, after his evening visit.
    They left after another ten minutes and Morrisette took the wheel again as they headed back to the station. The night seemed darker, headlights bright as they flashed by, street lamps giving off a false blue sheen. A few Christmas lights adorned houses lining the streets, and every once in a while he caught a glimpse of a decorated tree, festively aglow in a large window.
    He’d forgotten it was the yule season.
    Not that it mattered.
    Morrisette gunned the engine as they whipped by Colonial Cemetery. The graveyard looked barren and bleak with its ancient headstones and dry grass. And this was the return address for the missive he’d received yesterday morning. As if whoever had penned the note had been here. “We need to check with all the local cemeteries,” he said, eyeing the few leafless trees planted between the old grave markers. “See if any of the graves have been disturbed.”
    “You think whoever planted the coffin up in the mountains got it from down here?” McFee asked.
    “It’s possible,” he thought aloud, but then, anything was. Glancing through the back window he wondered if he was being followed. Had Bobbi’s killer been watching him? Seen him walk familiarly through the house? Or had he been hiding in the shadows, in a tiny nook or cranny, and Reed had walked right by him? Or was it someone else who had the key to Bobbi’s place and had come looking for her? What about her husband? Jerome Marx had still been paying her bills. As far as Reed knew, Bobbi’s part-time job wouldn’t pay her Visa bill.
    Morrisette wheeled into the parking lot at the station. “I’ll start calling around, checking with everyone who knew Barbara Jean.” She stood on the brakes and the cruiser slid into its spot. McFee was staying on another couple of days, sending his reports by fax and E-mail to the Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Department and, in Reed’s opinion, generally getting in the way. He wanted to take the bull by the proverbial horns and run the investigation, but he couldn’t. Morrisette was right. He had to watch his step.
    Outside, the night was cold and damp, the air thick with the feel of rain about to fall.
    “Christ, it’s cold,” Morrisette muttered as she jabbed the rest of her cigarette into a canister of sand near the door.
    “It’s winter,” McFee said.
    “Yeah, but doesn’t Mother Nature know this is the South?”
    Reed shouldered opened the door, held it for her and McFee, then walked with them up the stairs, their boots ringing on the steps as they made their way to the second floor. McFee peeled off at the temporary desk he’d been assigned while Morrisette followed Reed into his office. “I’ve got to get home,” she said, almost apologizing. “I haven’t seen much of the kids lately.”
    Reed glanced at his watch. “Aren’t they in bed?”
    “I forgot, you don’t have children. Lucky you…or maybe, lucky them.”
    “Very funny,” he countered, taking off his jacket. The inside of the station was warm, over seventy, even though it was night and the offices were relatively deserted. Only a few diehards like himself, mostly those without families, were at their desks. He felt a sense of melancholy about his solitary state, but it was fleeting. He wasn’t the kind to settle down. All his relationships had failed, including the one that had mattered in San Francisco. Helen had been a schoolteacher and professed to love him, but it hadn’t been enough to keep him in the city after the tragedy. Nothing could have. So he’d returned to Savannah and the few relationships, if you could call them that, had been fleeting, including his short-lived affair with Bobbi Marx. “Go