by Sandra Brown
“Did you pay by credit card?”
“Cash.”
“I see. With one of those large bills.”
Hammond saw the trap and hoped that she did. Most self-serve stations and convenience stores didn’t take bills larger than a twenty, especially after dark.
“With a twenty, Mr. Smilow,” she said, giving him a retiring smile. “I bought twenty dollars’ worth. I didn’t get change.”
“Veddy, veddy cool.”
Steffi had spoken beneath her breath, but Alex heard her. She glanced in their direction, looking first at Steffi, then at Hammond, and he vividly remembered holding her face between his hands and bringing her mouth up to his.
“Don’t say no. Don’t say no.”
Smilow’s next question drew Alex’s attention back to him. Hammond exhaled without making it obvious that he’d been holding his breath.
“What time did you arrive at Hilton Head?”
“That was the beauty of the day. I had no plans. I wasn’t on a schedule. I wasn’t watching the clock, and I didn’t take a direct route, so I don’t remember what time it was when I actually got there.”
“Approximately.”
“Approximately… nine o’clock.”
At approximately nine o’clock, they were eating corn on the cob that had left her lips greasy with melted butter. They had laughed over how messy it was, and elected to forget their manners and shamelessly lick their fingers.
“What did you do on Hilton Head?”
“I drove the length of the island down to Harbour Town. I walked around, enjoyed the music from the various open-air bars. Listened to the young man performing for the children there under the large live oak. Basically I strolled around the marina and out onto the pier.”
“Did you talk to anybody?”
“No.”
“Eat in a restaurant?”
“No.”
“You weren’t hungry?”
“Apparently not.”
“This is ridiculous!” Frank Perkins protested. “Dr. Ladd admits to being in the hotel on Saturday, but so were hundreds of other people. She’s an attractive lady. A man—this Daniels being no exception—is likely to notice her even in a crowd.”
Hammond was still watching her, so when her eyes shifted to him, it was a repeat of that first glance across the pavilion. He felt an instantaneous connection, a sudden tug in his gut.
Perkins was still making his argument. “Alex says she wasn’t anywhere near Pettijohn’s suite. You have nothing that places her there. This is only a lame stab in the dark because you’ve got nothing else. While I sympathize with your ability to come up with a viable suspect, I’m not going to allow my client to suffer the consequences.”
“Just a few more questions, Frank,” Smilow said. “Indulge me.”
“Make them brief,” the lawyer said curtly.
Smilow fixed the psychologist with a hard stare. “I’d like to know where Dr. Ladd spent the night.”
“At home.”
Her answer seemed to surprise him. “Your home?”
“I berated myself for not making a reservation on Hilton Head. Once I got there, I considered staying over. I would have liked to, but I called several places and everything was booked. So I drove back to Charleston and slept in my own bed.”
“Alone?”
“I’m not afraid to drive after dark.”
“Did you sleep alone, Dr. Ladd?”
She stared at him coldly.
Frank Perkins said, “Tell him to go to hell, Alex. If you don’t, I will.”
“You heard my solicitor’s advice, Detective.”
Smilow’s mouth slanted upward in what passed for a smile. “While you were at Harbour Town didn’t you speak to anyone?”
“I browsed in one of the art galleries, but I didn’t talk to anyone. I also bought an ice-cream cone at the base of the lighthouse, but it’s a walk-up place and they were very busy. I couldn’t pick out the young woman who served me. She had so many customers that night, I seriously doubt she would remember me, either.”
“So there’s no one who can corroborate that you were there?”
“I suppose not, no.”
“From there you drove home. No stops?”
“No.”
“What time did you get home?”
“The wee hours. I didn’t notice. By then I was very tired and sleepy.”
“I’ve indulged all I’m going to.” Frank Perkins assisted her from her chair politely, but in such a way that brooked no argument from either her or Smilow. “Dr. Ladd deserves an apology for this. And if you so much as breathe her name to the media in connection with this case, you’ll have not only an unsolved murder to contend with, but a staggering lawsuit as well.”
He nudged Alex toward the door, but before everyone could shift positions and make room for their departure, another detective opened the door. He held a folder in his upraised hand. “You asked for this as soon as it was available.”
“Thanks,” Smilow said, reaching for the folder. “How’d it go?”
“Madison’s persnickety. Says he apologizes for the time it took.”
“As long as he was thorough.”
“It’s all in there.”
The detective withdrew. For the benefit of the others, Smilow said, “That detective witnessed the autopsy. This is Madison’s report.”
Steffi crowded up against Smilow as he removed the documents from the envelope. She scanned them along with him.
Without looking up from the report, Smilow asked, “Dr. Ladd, do you own a weapon?”
“Lots of things could be used as a weapon, couldn’t they?”
“The reason I’m asking…” Smilow said as he raised his head to look at her, “is because it was exactly as we thought. Lute Pettijohn didn’t die from the blow to his head. He died of gunshot.”
“Pettijohn was shot?”
* * *
“I think it was genuine.”
Steffi squeezed lime into the drink that had just been brought to their table. “Come on, Hammond. Get real.”
“It was the first and only time that she showed any emotion or spontaneity,” he persisted. “I think her surprise was authentic. Up to that time she didn’t even know how Pettijohn had died.”
“I was surprised when I read that he had stroked out.”
That had been one startling fact to come out of the autopsy. Lute Pettijohn had suffered a stroke. It hadn’t killed him, but John Madison deduced that the stroke was massive enough to have caused his fall, which resulted in the head wound. He also determined that, had Pettijohn survived, he might have suffered paralysis and other disabilities. It wasn’t until after Frank Perkins had escorted Alex Ladd from Smilow’s office that they read the report more thoroughly and added this new information to the increasingly complex mystery.
“Was the stroke caused by an event, do you think?” Steffi wondered. “Or a medical condition he was unaware of?”
“We’ll need to find out if he was on medication for an existing condition,” Smilow said, sliding a napkin beneath his club soda. “Not that it matters. The stroke wasn’t fatal, but the gunshots were. That’s how he died.”
“Alex Ladd didn’t know that,” Hammond stated. “Not until she heard it from us.”
Thoughtfully Steffi sipped from her gin and tonic, then she shook her head firmly and gave him a smart-aleck smile. “Nope. She faked that astonishment. Women are good at playacting because we’re constantly having to fake orgasms.”
The remark was meant to insult him. It didn’t. But it pissed him off. “Women with penis envy.”
“Ah, that was a pretty good comeback, Hammond,” she said, raising her glass in a mock salute. “With practice, you might develop into a real jerk.”
Smilow, who had been following this repartee with divided attention, said, “Much as it pains me, I tend to agree with Hammond.”
“You think I have penis envy?”
He didn’t even
crack a smile. “I agree with him that Ladd’s shock was the real article.”
“You’re sharing an opinion with Hammond? That’s almost as shocking as your sharing a table,” she said.
The lobby bar at the Charles Towne Plaza was packed to capacity with the happy hour crowd. Even though the hotel was across town from police headquarters, it had seemed a fitting place for them to meet and discuss Alex’s interrogation.
Tourists, whether or not they were registered guests, shopped in the boutiques that rimmed the lobby. They photographed the impressive staircase and the chandelier it embraced. They photographed each other.
Two barefoot women wrapped in hotel bathrobes, their heads swathed in towels, giggled as they avoided being caught in a snapshot. Following Hammond’s empty gaze, Steffi said, “Ridiculous to walk around like that for the sake of a beauty treatment. Can you imagine what Pettijohn must have looked like stamping through here like that?”
“Huh?”
“Where are you, Hammond, lost in space?” she asked irritably.
“I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”
He hadn’t noticed the robed women. He had barely noticed anything since leaving Smilow’s office. He was thinking about her. About Alex Ladd and her reaction to how Pettijohn died.
She had seemed genuinely shocked, making him hopeful that she was right about Mr. Daniels when she surmised that he had noticed her in the hotel, but he was mistaken about when and where.
Hopeful of having an ally in Smilow, he leaned across the table, propping his forearms on the edge of it. “You said you agree with me. How so? How do you read it?”
“I think she’s clever enough to fake her surprise and make it appear real. For whatever reason, I don’t know. Yet. But it’s not her surprised reaction that concerns me so much as her story.”
“We’re listening,” Steffi said.
“If she had popped Pettijohn, wouldn’t she have left the hotel and immediately sought to establish an alibi?”
Striving for nonchalance, Hammond reached for his glass of bourbon and water. “Interesting notion. Care to expound?”
“They can place time of death with amazing accuracy. Within minutes, in fact.”
“Between five-forty-five and six o’clock,” Hammond said. Upon seeing that in the autopsy report, he had been overwhelmingly relieved. Alex couldn’t possibly be the murderer because she couldn’t have been in two places at one time. “Dr. Ladd said she left no later than five-thirty.”
“Too close for comfort,” Smilow said. “A good prosecutor like you would manipulate that time frame, allow for a margin of error. But, given that we don’t know exactly what time she got her car from the lot, Frank Perkins could chop that time line like a salami and use it to establish reasonable doubt. But it would only work if—”
“I see where you’re going—” Steffi interjected.
“If Dr. Ladd had an excellent—”
“Alibi.”
While Steffi and Smilow talked over one another, Hammond took another drink. The whiskey stung his throat. “Makes sense,” he said huskily.
Smilow frowned. “The problem I have with her story is that she didn’t have an alibi. She says she went to Hilton Head and talked to no one who could corroborate that.”
“I’m confused,” Steffi said. “Are you thinking that by not having an alibi, she appears more innocent than if she did?”
The detective looked across at her. “Not exactly. But it makes me wonder if she’s waiting to see how far this goes before springing an alibi on us.”
“Like she’s holding one in reserve just in case?”
“Something like that.”
Hammond, who had listened while they unknowingly played upon his greatest fear, joined in the speculation. “What makes you think she’s got this standby alibi?”
“Did you mean to rhyme?” Steffi asked.
“No,” he replied, irritated with her because he wanted to hear Smilow’s thoughts. “You were saying?”
“I was saying what I’ve said from the beginning,” Smilow explained. “She’s not nervous. From the time she answered her door and saw me and those cops on her porch, until Frank escorted her out a half hour ago, she was too unruffled to be completely innocent.
“Innocent people can’t wait to convince you of their innocence,” he continued. “They chatter nervously. They elaborate and expand their stories with each telling. They tell you more than you ask to know. Accomplished liars stick to the basics and are usually the most composed.”
“It’s a sound theory,” Hammond said. “But it’s not foolproof. Being a psychologist, wouldn’t Dr. Ladd have a tighter grip on her emotions than the average person? She must hear shocking things when she’s treating patients. Wouldn’t she know how to screen her reactions?”
“Possibly,” Smilow said. Hammond didn’t like the detective’s smile, and within seconds he learned why he seemed so complacent. “But Dr. Ladd is lying. I know that for fact.”
Steffi leaned forward so eagerly she almost spilled her drink. “What fact?”
Bending down, Smilow took a newspaper from his briefcase. “She must have missed this item in this morning’s news.”
He had used a red marker to circle the story. It wasn’t that long, but to Hammond it was a devastating four paragraphs.
“Harbour Town evacuated,” Steffi read aloud.
Smilow provided a summary. “Last Saturday evening there was a fire aboard one of the yachts moored in the harbor. The wind was up. Sparks were blown onto trees and awnings around the marina. As a safety precaution, the fire department cleared everyone out. Even people aboard other boats and those who were staying in the condos were evacuated.
“The fire was extinguished before it could do too much damage. But that’s some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Firemen were taking no chances. They closed Lighthouse Road to incoming traffic and put the whole area through an extensive check. Essentially Harbour Town was shut down for several hours.”
“From when to when?”
“From nine o’clock on. Restaurants and bars saw no reason to reopen when they got the go-ahead sometime after midnight. They remained closed until Sunday morning.”
Steffi whispered, “She wasn’t there.”
“Had she been, she would have mentioned this.”
“Good work.” Steffi raised her glass to Smilow.
“I think raising toasts is a little premature,” Hammond said angrily. “Maybe she has a logical explanation.”
“And maybe the pope’s a Baptist.”
He ignored Steffi’s wisecrack. “Smilow, why didn’t you confront Dr. Ladd with this when you were interrogating her?”
“I wanted to see how far she would carry it.”
“You were giving her enough rope to hang herself.”
“My job is easier when a suspect does it for me.”
Hammond searched his mind for a fresh approach. “Okay, so she wasn’t in Harbour Town. What does that prove? Nothing, except that she wants to safeguard her privacy. She doesn’t want it known where she was.”
“Or with whom.”
He shot a cold look at Steffi, then continued speaking to Smilow. “You’ve still got nothing on her, nothing that places her inside Pettijohn’s suite, or even near it. When you asked if she owned a gun, she said no.”
“But of course she would,” Steffi argued. “And we’ve got Daniels’s testimony.”
Hammond wasn’t finished with his own arguments. “According to Madison’s report, the bullets removed from Pettijohn’s body were .38-caliber. Your garden-variety bullets from your garden-variety pistol. There are hundreds of .38s in this city alone. Even in your own evidence warehouse, Smilow.”
“Meaning what?” Steffi wanted to know.
“Meaning that unless we find the weapon in the murderer’s possession, it will be nigh unto impossible to trace,” Smilow said, following Hammond’s thought.
“As for Daniels,” Hammond co
ntinued while he was on a roll, “Frank Perkins would make hash of him on the witness stand.”
“You’re probably right about that, too,” Smilow said.
“So what does that leave you?” Hammond asked. “Nothing.”
“I’ve got SLED running some test on evidence collected from the scene.”
“Hand-carried to Columbia?”
“Absolutely.”
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division was located in the state capital. Evidence that was collected, bagged, and labeled by the CSU was usually hand-delivered to SLED by an officer to prevent chain of evidence discrepancies.
“Let’s see what turns up,” Smilow said in the unflappable manner that only emphasized to Hammond his own unraveling temperament. “We didn’t get much from that suite of rooms, but we picked up a few fibers, hairs, particles. Hopefully something—”
“Hopefully?” Hammond scoffed. “You’re relying on hope? You’ll have to do better than that to catch a killer, Smilow.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, his mood growing just as fractious as Hammond’s. “You tend to your job and I’ll tend to mine.”
“I just don’t want to face the grand jury with nothing but my dick in my hand.”
“I doubt you could find your dick with your hand. But I’ll find the link between Alex Ladd and Pettijohn.”
“And if you don’t,” Hammond said, raising his voice, “you can always invent one.”
Smilow came out of his chair so fast, it scraped against the floor. Likewise, Hammond was on his feet within a heartbeat.
Steffi popped up, too. “Guys,” she said beneath her breath. “Everybody’s looking.”
Hammond realized that they did indeed have the attention of everyone in the bar. Conversations around them ceased. “I gotta go.” He tossed a five-dollar bill down on the table to cover his drink. “See you tomorrow.”
He didn’t take his eyes off Smilow until he turned and began making his way through the crowd toward the exit. He heard Steffi tell Smilow to order her another drink and that she would be right back, and then she came after him. He didn’t want to talk to her, but once they were outside she grasped his arm and brought him around.
“Would you like some company?”
“No,” he said, more harshly than he intended. Then, pushing his fingers up through his hair, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry, Steffi. It’s just been one of those Mondays. My dad came by this morning. This case is going to be a bitch. Smilow’s a bastard.”
