The Alibi

by Sandra Brown

  She rolled her eyes. “I was afraid that possibility might have escaped you. Men rarely think of their dicks as anything except a magic wand with which to cast spells over grateful women. That’s why a stiff prick is so goddamn exploitable.”

  Alex Ladd sprang immediately to Hammond’s mind. If Loretta knew about how gullible he had been last Saturday night, she could really lambast him.

  She was saying, “Steffi Mundell would screw a rottweiler if she thought it would get her where she wants to be.”

  “Cut her some slack. True, she’s ambitious. But she’s had to claw and scrape for every achievement. She had a domineering father who gauged everyone’s value on a testosterone meter. Steffi was expected to cook and clean and wait on the menfolk, first her brothers and father, then her husband. Devout Greek Orthodox family. Not only was she not devout, she was—is—a nonbeliever. She had no help or encouragement through university or law school. And when she graduated at the top of her class, her father said something like, ‘Now maybe you’ll stop this foolishness and get married.’ ”

  “Please, my heart’s bleeding,” Loretta said sarcastically.

  “Look, I know she can be annoying as hell. But she has good qualities that outweigh the bad. I’m a big boy. I know what Steffi’s about.”

  “Yeah, well…,” she muttered, unconvinced, “then there’s Smilow.” She reached for her glass of whiskey, but Hammond reached across the table and gently removed it from her hands. “Can’t I even finish that one?” she wheedled. “It’s a waste of good whiskey.”

  “Starting now, you’re on the wagon. Two hundred dollars a day and sobriety. Those are the terms of this agreement.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Solicitor Cross.”

  “I’ll also cover your expenses, and you’ll receive a hefty bonus when the job is finished.”

  “I wasn’t referring to the pay. That’s generous. More than I deserve.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “It’s the no-drinking clause that’s causing me to balk.”

  “That’s the rule, Loretta. If you take a single drink and I find out about it, the deal is off.”

  “Okay, I got it,” she said irritably. “I’ll just have to gut it out, that’s all. I need the money to pay Bev back. Otherwise I’d tell you to stuff your ‘terms’ where the sun don’t shine.”

  He smiled, knowing that her gruff act was just that. She was thrilled to be working again. “What were you about to say about Smilow?”

  “That son of a bitch,” she sneered. “He’s the reason I was fired. He gave me an impossible assignment. Dick Tracy couldn’t have done it in the amount of time Smilow specified. When I couldn’t produce, he blamed my drinking, not his own impossible deadline.

  “He went to the chief and said that demoting me from criminal investigation wasn’t good enough. He wanted me out, period. Called me a disgrace, a blight on the entire department, a liability. He actually threatened to quit if they didn’t fire me. After being issued an ultimatum like that, who do you think the powers that be were going to choose? A woman cop with a slight drinking problem or an ace homicide detective?”

  It could be argued that everything Smilow had alleged was true, and that Loretta’s drinking problem was more than “slight,” and that Smilow had merely forced his superiors to do what they had needed to do but were hesitant to do, fearing a sex discrimination suit or something equally cumbersome.

  As unfortunate as it had been to Loretta, Smilow’s ultimatum might have prevented a catastrophe. For months leading up to her dismissal, she had been perpetually drunk. She should not have been working as an armed policewoman, investigating assaults and crimes against persons, a dangerous beat under the best of circumstances.

  But Hammond understood her need to vent. “Smilow isn’t very tolerant of human weaknesses.”

  “He has some of his own.”

  “Such as?”

  “His love for his sister and his hatred for Lute Pettijohn.”

  Recalling the condensed story Davee had told him the night before, he asked, “What do you know about that?”

  “Same as everybody knows. Margaret Smilow was one sick ticket. Bipolar, I think. Smilow was a protective older brother. When she fell hard for Lute Pettijohn, Rory disliked the idea from the start. Maybe he was jealous of the new protector in his sister’s life, or maybe he simply saw Pettijohn’s true colors when everybody else was blind to them. For whatever reason, Rory disapproved of the marriage.”

  “I understand they had some violent quarrels.”

  Loretta harrumphed. “One night Rory and I were investigating a convenience store holdup and murder. He got paged to call his sister immediately. Margaret was hysterical and begged him to come right then. He was so upset, we turned the crime scene over to our backup team, and I drove him.

  “Hammond,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief, “by the time we got there, she had totally wrecked that house. Hurricane Hugo didn’t do that much damage. There wasn’t a piece of glass that wasn’t broken. Not a pillow that wasn’t ripped open. Not a shelf that hadn’t been swept clean. You couldn’t walk across the floor for all the debris.

  “Apparently she had discovered that Pettijohn had a girlfriend. When we got there, Margaret was in the bathroom holding a straight razor to her wrist and threatening to kill herself. Smilow sweet-talked her out of the razor. He called her doctor, who was kind enough to come over and medicate her. Then Smilow had me drive him to Pettijohn’s rendezvous.

  “Long story short… he barged in and caught this gal sitting on Lute’s face. He and Pettijohn each got in a few good punches before I intervened. I had to physically restrain Smilow because nothing I said was getting through. I honestly believe that if I hadn’t been there to wrestle him down, he would have killed Pettijohn that night. I’ve never seen a man—or woman—that enraged.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she tapped the ugly Formica with a jagged, dirty fingernail. “And till the day I die, I’ll believe that’s what Rory Smilow holds against me. To the world he reveals this bloodless persona. He comes across as being unfeeling. Cold. Passionless. But I witnessed him being as human as the next man. More human than the next man. He lost control. That’s why he couldn’t tolerate having me around every day as a reminder.”

  Hammond didn’t question her veracity. For all her flaws, he had never known Loretta to lie or even to embroider a story. “Why did you tell me this?”

  “Just throwing out some possibilities.”

  “Possibilities? You think Smilow killed Pettijohn?”

  “All I’m saying is that he could have. I don’t know about opportunity, but he for damn sure had motivation. He never forgave Lute for Margaret’s suicide. And these aren’t just the delusions of an old drunk, either. Your friend Steffi thought of it, too. I overheard her bring it up that night at the hospital. She remarked on how much Smilow would enjoy seeing Pettijohn die.”

  “What did Smilow say?”

  “He didn’t confess, but he didn’t deny it.” She chuckled. “Not in so many words, anyway. As I recall, he turned the tables and dumped the deed on her.”

  “On Steffi?”

  “He broached the idea that Pettijohn might have been paving her way into Mason’s office when he retires.”

  Hammond laughed. “Smilow must’ve been having an off night. If Lute was doing someone a favor, why would they kill him?”

  “That’s what Steffi came back with, and the conversation died there. Besides, he was only being provoking because Steffi was of the opinion that Davee had rid the world of Pettijohn.”

  “Davee was her first suspect. But now she’s got someone else in her crosshairs.”

  “This Dr. Ladd?”

  Nodding, Hammond passed her an envelope containing some advance money. “If you drink that—”

  “I won’t. I swear.”

  “Find out what you can on Alex Ladd. I want the skinny as soon as you can get it to me.”

  “This may sound presumpt
uous—”

  “And I’m sure it is.”

  Ignoring him, Loretta continued. “Has she been arrested?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But apparently you think Smilow and company are off base.”

  “I’m not sure.” He gave her a summary of the day’s events, starting with Daniels’s story and ending with Alex’s denial that she even knew Pettijohn. “They’ve found no connection. Speaking as a prosecutor, his case is weak.”

  “And speaking otherwise?”

  “There is no otherwise.”

  “Huh.” Loretta was watching him like she didn’t believe him, but she let it drop. “Well, God help this Dr. Ladd if she didn’t kill Pettijohn.”

  “Don’t you mean, God help her if she did?”

  “No, I meant what I said.”

  “I don’t follow,” Hammond said, puzzled.

  “If Dr. Ladd was at the scene, but didn’t kill him, she could be a witness.”

  “A witness? Wouldn’t she have told us?”

  “Not if she was afraid.”

  “What could she fear more than being accused of murder?”

  Loretta replied, “The murderer.”

  Chapter 18

  Alex drove with one eye on her rearview mirror. She recognized her symptoms as paranoia, but she figured she was entitled, having spent most of the day being questioned in connection with a homicide. With Hammond Cross in the room. Knowing she was lying.

  Of course, he had been lying, too, by omission. But why? Curiosity? Perhaps he had wanted to see how far she would carry her lies about her whereabouts on Saturday night. But when she concluded her false story about Hilton Head, she had fully expected him to denounce her as a liar.

  He hadn’t. Which indicated to her that he was protecting his own reputation. He hadn’t wanted his colleague Ms. Mundell and the frightening Detective Smilow to know that he had slept with their only lead in the Pettijohn murder case on the very night of the murder. For today, at least, he had been more interested in keeping their meeting a secret than he had been in nailing her as a suspect.

  But that could change. Which left her vulnerable. Until she knew how Hammond intended to play this out, she must do everything possible to protect herself from incrimination. It might not come to that, but if it did, she must be prepared.

  She arrived at her destination, but eschewed the porte cochere and valets and instead pulled into the public parking lot. Bobby had gone upscale. When she had known him, he’d been no stranger to flophouses. Now he was registered in a chain suite hotel near downtown. She hadn’t called first to notify him that she was on her way. Surprising him might give her a slight advantage over what would doubtless be an unpleasant confrontation.

  In the elevator, she closed her eyes and rolled her head around her shoulders. She was exhausted. And terribly afraid. She wished she could turn back the clock and rewrite the day Bobby Trimble had reentered her life after twenty years of freedom from him. She wished she could delete that day and all the subsequent ones.

  But that would mean also deleting her night with Hammond Cross.

  She hadn’t known much happiness in her life. Even as a child. Particularly as a child. Christmas had been just another day on the calendar. She’d never had a birthday cake, or an Easter basket, or a Halloween costume. Not until her late teens had she learned that ordinary people, not just people in magazines and on television, were allowed to participate in holiday celebrations.

  Her young adulthood had been spent undoing the damage of the past and creating a new individual. She had been greedy to absorb everything she had been denied. At university she had applied herself to her studies with such diligence that little time was left for dating.

  By the time her practice was established, her energy had been devoted to it. Through her volunteer and charity work she met eligible men. With some she had forged friendships, but romance had never been an element in these relationships, and that had been her choice.

  She had settled on being content with her accomplishments, and with the satisfaction that came from helping troubled people to work through their problems and realize their worth.

  Real happiness, the giddy, effervescent kind of joy she had experienced with Hammond that night, had escaped her. It was an elusive stranger to her, so up till now she hadn’t realized its addictive powers. Or its potential hazards. She wondered now: Was happiness always this costly?

  As soon as the elevator doors opened, she heard music and figured it was probably coming from Bobby’s room. She was right. She approached the door and knocked, waited a moment, then knocked again, harder this time. The music was killed.

  “Who is it?”

  “Bobby, I need to see you.”

  A few seconds later the door was opened. He was naked except for a towel around his hips. “If you’re bringing the heat on me, so help me God, I’ll—”

  “Don’t be absurd. The last thing I want is for the police to know I was ever associated with you.”

  His eyes scanned the hallway. Finally satisfied that she was alone, he said, “I’m relieved to hear that, Alex. For a while today, I was afraid you had double-crossed me again.”

  “I—”

  Movement behind him drew her gaze beyond his shoulder. First one girl, then a second, appeared. He glanced over his shoulder and, when he saw the girls, smiled and pulled them forward, keeping an arm around the waist of each. If either was eighteen, it wasn’t by much. One was wearing a pair of thong underwear, nothing on top. The other was wrapped in a sheet that Alex assumed had been stripped from the bed.

  “Alex, this is—”

  “I don’t care,” she interrupted. “I need to talk to you.” She leveled an impatient stare on him.

  “Okay.” He sighed. “But you know what they say about all work and no play.”

  Shooing both girls back into the room, he swatted their fannies and asked them to give him a few minutes alone with Alex. “We’ve got business to settle. Then the party will really begin. Okay? Go on, now.”

  With their whining admonitions not to keep them waiting long, he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door.

  Alex said, “You’re stoned, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t I have a right to be? Seeing cops at your front door wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I came to see you today.”

  “Where did you buy the dope?”

  “I didn’t have to buy it. I know how to pick my friends.”

  “Your victims.”

  He grinned, taking no offense. “These girls were well supplied. Quality stuff. Why don’t you have some?” He reached out and gave her knotted shoulder a squeeze. “You’re all tense, Alex. How about a little pick-me-up?”

  She slapped his arm away.

  “Suit yourself,” he said with an affable shrug. “Where’s my money?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  His smile slipped a notch. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

  “You saw the policemen at my house, Bobby. How could I possibly bring you that cash now? I came here to warn you not to come near me again. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want you to drive past my house. I don’t want to know you.”

  “Hold on just one goddamn minute. We agreed, remember?” He waggled his hand between his chest and hers. “We made a deal.”

  “The deal is off. Circumstances have changed. They questioned me about Lute Pettijohn’s murder.”

  “That isn’t my fault, Alex. You can’t blame me for your screwup.”

  “I told you last night—”

  “I know what you told me. That doesn’t mean I believe it.”

  It was pointless to argue with him. He hadn’t believed her yesterday, and he wasn’t going to believe her now. Not that she cared what he believed. She just wanted to be rid of him.

  “As agreed, I’ll give you the hundred thousand.”

  “Tonight.”

  She shook her head. “In a few weeks. As soon as this is cleared up. It
would be crazy to give it to you now when the police are watching me so closely.”

  Placing his hands on his lean hips, he leaned forward from the waist, bringing his face down to the level of hers. “I warned you to be careful. Didn’t I warn you?”

  “Yes, you warned me.”

  “So how’d they mark you?”

  She wasn’t going to stand in the hallway of a family hotel with a nearly naked man and discuss her police interrogation. Besides, he didn’t really care how the police had linked her to Pettijohn. He cared about only one thing. “You’ll get your money,” she said. “I’ll contact you when I feel it’s safe for us to meet. Until then, stay away from me. If you don’t, you’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot.”

  Apparently his high was wearing off, because his expression was no longer cool and congenial, but belligerent. “You must think I’m really dense. Do you honestly believe that you can get rid of me just because you want to, Alex?”

  He snapped his fingers hard only inches from her nose. “Think again. Until I get my cut of that cash, I’m your shadow. You owe me this.”

  “Bobby,” she said evenly, “if I repaid you what you were owed, I would have to kill you.”

  “Threats, Alex?” he said silkily. “I don’t think so.” Then he surprised her by poking her hard in the chest with his index finger, causing her to fall back several steps. “You’re in no position to be threatening me. You’re the one with the most to lose. Remember that. Now, I’m going to say it for the last time. Get me that money.”

  “Don’t you understand that I can’t? Not now.”

  “Like hell. You’ve got an alphabet soup of letters strung out behind your name. You’ve got all the smarts you need to figure this one out.” His eyes narrowed into mean slits. “You get that money to me. That’s the only way I’ll disappear.”

  Hatred burned red-hot inside her. “Do those girls realize that they’ll wake up tomorrow morning without their jewelry and money?”

  “They’ll get what they want in return.” He winked. “And then some.”