The Alibi

by Sandra Brown

  “Okay, beer.” He took two bottles from the refrigerator, opened the first one, and extended it to her. She took it, but she continued staring at him as though his face had just broken out in oozing sores. He opened the second beer and tipped the bottle toward his mouth. “The suspense is killing me. What’s got you so hyped?”

  “Somebody murdered Lute Pettijohn yesterday afternoon in his Charles Towne Plaza penthouse.”

  The beer bottle never made it to Hammond’s mouth. He lowered it slowly, staring at her with total disbelief. Seconds ticked by. Gruffly, he said, “That’s impossible.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Can’t be.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  At first immobilized by shock, he eventually moved. He ran his hand around the back of his neck where tension had already gathered. Operating on autopilot, he set his beer on the small bistro table, pulled a chair away from it, and lowered himself into it. When Steffi sat down across from him, he blinked her into focus. “You did say murdered?”

  “Murdered.”

  “How?” he asked, in that same dry voice. “How did he die?”

  “Are you okay?”

  He gazed at her as though he no longer understood the language, then he nodded absently. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just…” He spread his hands.

  “Speechless.”

  “Flabbergasted.” He cleared his throat. “How’d he die?”

  “Gunshot. Two bullets in the back.”

  He lowered his eyes to the granite tabletop, staring sightlessly at the condensation forming on the cold beer bottle while he assimilated the staggering news. “When? What time?”

  “He was found by a hotel housekeeper a little after six.”

  “Last evening.”

  “Hammond, I’m not stuttering. Yes. Yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He listened as she described what the chambermaid had discovered. “The head injury was more than a bump, but John Madison thinks the bullets killed him. Naturally he can’t officially rule cause of death until he’s completed the autopsy. All the particulars won’t be known until then.”

  “You talked to the M.E.?”

  “Not personally. Smilow filled me in.”

  “So he’s on it?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course he’s on it,” Hammond muttered. “What does he think happened?”

  For the next five minutes, Hammond listened while she gave him the known details of the case. “I thought the office should be in on this one from the beginning, so I spent the night with Smilow—in a manner of speaking.” Her impish smile seemed grossly inappropriate. Hammond merely nodded and gestured impatiently for her to continue. “I was with him as he followed up on some leads, precious few that they are.”

  “Hotel security?”

  “Pettijohn died without a whimper. No sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle. And we can eliminate camera surveillance. All we’ve got on videotape is a monotonous sound track and writhing naked people.”

  “Huh?”

  When she told him about the bogus security cameras, he shook his head with dismay. “Jesus. He made such a big deal of that system and how much it had cost. The gall of the man.”

  Hammond was well acquainted with the unsavory personality traits and unscrupulous business dealings of Lute Pettijohn. He had been covertly investigating him for the attorney general for six months. The more he had learned about Pettijohn, the more there was to disdain and dislike. “Any witnesses?”

  “None so far. The only person in the hotel who had any real contact with him was a masseur in the spa, and he’s a dead end.” She then told him about the outbreak of food poisoning. “Discounting the kids, there are seven adults Smilow wants to question. Neither of us is very optimistic about the outcome, but he’s promised to call as soon as the doctor gives him the green light. I want to be there.”

  “You’re becoming very personally involved, aren’t you?”

  “It’ll be a huge case.”

  The statement lay between them like a thrown gauntlet. The rivalry was unspoken, but it was always there. Hammond humbly conceded that he usually held the advantage over her, and not because he was smarter than she. He’d ranked second in his law school class, but Steffi had been first in hers. Their personalities were what distinguished them. His served him in good stead, but Steffi’s worked against her. People didn’t respond well to her abrasiveness and aggressive approach.

  His distinct advantage, he admitted, was Monroe Mason’s blatant favoritism of him. A position had come open soon after Steffi joined the office. Both were qualified. Both were considered. But there was never really any contest as to who would be promoted. Hammond now served as special assistant solicitor.

  Steffi’s disappointment had been plain, although she had handled it with aplomb. She wasn’t a sore loser and hadn’t carried a grudge. Their working relationship continued to be more cooperative than adversarial.

  Even so, like now, silent challenges were sometimes issued. For the time being neither picked it up.

  Hammond changed the subject. “What about Davee Pettijohn?”

  “In what regard? Do you mean, What about Davee Pettijohn as a suspect? Or as the bereaved widow?”

  “Suspect?” Hammond repeated with surprise. “Does someone think she killed Lute?”

  “I do.” Steffi proceeded to tell him about accompanying Smilow to the Pettijohn mansion and why she considered the widow a likely suspect.

  After hearing her out, Hammond refuted her theory. “First of all, Davee doesn’t need Lute’s money. She never did. Her family—”

  “I’ve done my research. The Burtons had money out the kazoo.”

  Her snide tone didn’t escape him. “What’s bugging you?”

  “Nothing,” she snapped. Then she took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Okay, maybe I am bugged. I get bugged when men, who are supposedly adult, professional, and intelligent, turn to quivering towers of jelly when they get around a woman like her.”

  “ ‘A woman like her’?”

  “Come on, Hammond,” she said, with even more vexation than before. “Fluffy kitten on the outside, panther on the inside. You know the type I’m talking about.”

  “You typed Davee after meeting her only once?”

  “See? You’re defending her.”

  “I’m not defending anybody.”

  “First Smilow goes ga-ga over her, if you can believe that. Now you.”

  “I’m hardly ‘ga-ga.’ I just fail to see how you could draw a complete personality profile on Davee after—”

  “All right! I don’t care,” she said impatiently. “I don’t want to talk about Lute Pettijohn and the murder and motives. It’s all I’ve thought about for almost twenty-four hours. I need a break from it.”

  She left her chair, put her fists into the small of her back and stretched luxuriously, then came around the table to sit on Hammond’s lap. Looping her arms around his neck, she kissed him.

  Chapter 9

  After several quick kisses, Steffi sat back and ruffled his hair. “I forgot to ask. How was your night away?”

  “It was great,” Hammond replied truthfully.

  “Do anything special?”

  Special? Very. Even their silly conversations had been extraordinary.

  “I played football in the NFL, you know.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, but after winning my second Super Bowl, I went to work for the CIA.”

  “Dangerous work?”

  “The routine cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

  “Wow.”

  “Actually, it was a yawn. So I enlisted in the Peace Corps.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “It was okay. To a point. But after I was awarded the Nobel prize for feeding all the starving children in Africa and Asia, I started looking around for something else.”

  “Something more challenging?”

  “Right. I nar
rowed my choices down to becoming president and serving my country, or finding a cure for cancer.”

  “Self-sacrifice must be your middle name.”

  “No, it’s Greer.”

  “I like it.”

  “You know I’m lying.”

  “Your middle name’s not Greer?”

  “That much is true. The rest, all lies.”

  “No!”

  “I wanted to impress you.”

  “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I’m impressed.”

  Hammond recalled the touch of her hand, the sensation of swelling…

  “Hmm,” Steffi purred. “Just as I thought. You missed me.”

  He was hard, and it wasn’t for the woman sitting on his lap and fondling him through his trousers. He brushed her hand aside. “Steffi—”

  She bent forward and kissed him aggressively. Hiking her skirt up around her hips, she straddled his thighs and continued kissing him while her hands attacked his belt buckle.

  “I hate to rush,” she said breathlessly between kisses. “But when Smilow calls, I’ll need to dash. This will have to be quick, I’m afraid.”

  Hammond reached for her busy hands and clasped them between his. “Steffi. We need to—”

  “Go upstairs? Fine. But we can’t dawdle, Hammond.”

  Agile and energetic, she hopped off his lap and headed for the door, unbuttoning her blouse as she went.

  “Steffi.”

  She turned and watched with bafflement as Hammond stood up and rezipped his trousers. She laughed lightly. “I’m willing to try just about anything, but it’s going to be a little tricky if you don’t take it out of your pants.”

  He moved to the other side of the room and braced his arms on the edge of the granite counter. He stared down into the spotless kitchen sink for several moments before turning to face her again.

  “This isn’t working for me any longer, Steffi.”

  Once the words were out, he felt hugely relieved. He had left town yesterday afternoon burdened for several reasons. One of them—the least of them, actually—was indecision over his affair with Steffi. He was unsure he wanted to put an end to it. They had a comfortable arrangement. Neither made unreasonable demands on the other. They shared many of the same interests. They were sexually compatible.

  However, the topic of cohabitation had never come up, and Hammond was glad. If it had, he would have compiled a list of appropriate excuses as to why living at the same address would be a bad idea, but the real reason was that Steffi’s energy level would have worn thin very quickly. Apparently she hadn’t wanted him around her constantly, either. They kept their affair private. They saw each other regularly and when they wanted to. For almost a year it had been a perfect setup.

  But lately, he had come to feel that it wasn’t so perfect after all. He disliked secrecy and subterfuge, especially when it came to personal relationships, where he clung to the outdated belief that honesty should be a requisite component.

  He was dissatisfied with their level of intimacy, too. More to the point, there was no intimacy. Not really. Although Steffi was an ardent and capable lover, they were no closer emotionally than they had been the first time she had invited him over for dinner and they had wound up wrestling out of their clothes on her living room sofa.

  After weighing all the pluses and minuses, brooding over it for weeks, Hammond had resolved that the relationship had reached a plateau that left him wanting and needing more. Instead of anticipating their evenings together, he had begun to dread them. He was returning her calls later rather than sooner. Even in bed when they were having sex, he found himself distracted and thinking about other things, performing adequately but routinely, physically but unemotionally. Before indifference festered into resentment, it was better to break it off.

  What he wanted and needed from a relationship, he wasn’t sure. But he was certain that whatever it was, he wasn’t going to find it in Stefanie Mundell. He had come closer to finding it last night, with a woman whose name he didn’t even know. That was a sad commentary on his relationship with Steffi, but sound confirmation that it was time to end it.

  Reaching that decision was only half the problem. He was now faced with actually doing it. He wished to end the affair as gracefully as possible, preferably avoiding the temperamental equivalent of the Hundred Years War. The best he could hope for was that it would end with no more fireworks than it had started.

  The likelihood of that was nil. A scene was virtually guaranteed. He had dreaded it, and now he saw it coming.

  It took a moment for his meaning to sink in. When it did, Steffi swallowed, folded her arms over her open blouse, then, in a defiant motion, uncrossed them and let them hang at her sides. “By ‘this,’ I take it you mean—”

  “Us.”

  “Oh?” She cocked her head to one side and raised her eyebrows in a manner that was all too familiar. It was the expression she assumed when she was pissed off, when she was about to tear into somebody, usually an intern or clerk who hadn’t done a good job preparing a brief for her, or a cop who had failed to include an integral fact of a case in his report, or anyone who dared cross her when she was determined to have her way. “Since when hasn’t it been ‘working’ for you?”

  “For a while now. I feel like we’re moving in different directions.”

  She smiled, shrugged. “We’ve both been distracted lately, but that’s easily fixed. We have enough in common to salvage—”

  He was shaking his head. “Not just different directions, Steffi. Opposing directions.”

  “Could you be a little bit more specific?”

  “Okay.” He spoke evenly, although he resented her tone because it implied that he wasn’t quite as smart as she. “Eventually I would like to marry. Have kids. You’ve made it plain to me on numerous occasions that you’re not interested in having a family.”

  “That you are comes as a surprise.”

  He smiled wryly. “Actually it surprises me, too.”

  “You said you didn’t want to be to any unsuspecting kid what your father had been to you.”

  “And I won’t be,” he said tightly.

  “Isn’t this a recent change of heart?”

  “Recent but gradual. Our relationship was perfect for a while, but then—”

  “The novelty wore off?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? It’s not exciting anymore? Sleeping with the hot number in the County Solicitor’s Office has lost its appeal? Being Steffi Mundell’s secret lover doesn’t excite you any longer?”

  He hung his head and shook it. “Please don’t do this, Steffi.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” she retorted, her voice going shrill. “This conversation was your idea.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “Do you have any idea how many men would love to fuck me?”

  “Yes,” he said, raising his voice to the angry level of hers. “I hear the locker room gossip about you.”

  “It used to give you a thrill when they wagered on who the mystery man in my bed was, when all along it was you. We used to laugh about it.”

  “I guess it stopped being funny.”

  Left with nothing to say to that, she stood there and fumed in silence.

  He continued in a calmer voice. “In any case, I went away this weekend to reassess our relationship—”

  “Without even talking about it first? It never occurred to you to invite me to go away and reassess it with you?”

  “I didn’t see the point.”

  “So your mind was made up even before you went to your precious cabin in the woods to reassess,” she said, hissing the word.

  “No, Steffi. My mind was not made up. While I was away, I looked at it from every angle and always reached the same conclusion.”

  “That you wanted to dump me.”

  “Not—”

  “Dump? What word would you use?”

  “This is precisely the kind of scene I hoped to avoid,” he
said, finally shouting over her. “Because I knew you would argue. I knew you would beat it to death as though you were in court pleading your case to a jury. You would refute everything I said simply for the sake of argument and not give an inch, because with you every goddamn thing comes down to a contest. Well, this isn’t a competition, Steffi. And it isn’t a trial. It’s our lives.”

  “Oh, God, spare me the melodrama.”

  He snuffled a short laugh. “That’s just it. I need a little melodrama. Our relationship is totally devoid of melodrama. Melodrama is human. It’s—”

  “Hammond, what in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Everything in life can’t be summed up in a brief. All the answers aren’t found in law books.” Frustrated with his own inability to explain, he swore beneath his breath before making another stab at it. “You’re brilliant, but you never stop. The arguing, the besting, they’re constant. Incessant. There’s no down time with you.”

  “Forgive the pun, but I didn’t know that being with me had been such a trial for you.”

  “Look,” he said curtly. “I’ll spare you the melodrama if you’ll spare me the phony wounded-party act. You’re angry, but you’re not hurt.”

  “Will you stop telling me what I am and what I am not? You don’t know what I’m feeling.”

  “I know it isn’t love. You don’t love me. Do you? Given a choice right now, what would you take: Your career? Or me?”

  “What?” she cried. “I can’t believe that you would issue such a ridiculous and juvenile ultimatum. ‘Given a choice’? What kind of sexist bullshit is that? Why must I make a choice? You don’t have to choose. Why can’t I have you and my career?”

  “You can. But in order for it to work, it takes two people who are willing to make a few sacrifices. Two people who love each other very much and are dedicated to the relationship and one another’s happiness. What we do together,” he said, pointing upstairs toward the bedroom, “isn’t love. It’s recreation.”

  “Well, we’ve gotten to be damn good at keeping each other entertained.”

  “I don’t deny that. But entertainment is all it ever was, and it’s pointless to suspect it was something else.” He paused to catch his breath. She continued to stare at him stormily.