An Alibi A Day

by A. R. Winters

  Briefly companionless, Larry spun around on his barstool.

  “Well, well, well,” he said with a terrifying grin.

  It wasn’t the grin itself that was terrifying—he just looked alarmingly happy—it was the about face since last time they’d seen him. While before he had been aggressively hostile, now he seemed almost... amiable. And that didn’t seem right at all.

  “Hello, again,” said Allie with a nervous smile, while Jackie just raised her chin in his direction but didn’t say anything.

  The two girls maintained their distance, just in case he started yelling at them like last time. Or worse.

  “Come and have a drink with me,” he said, patting the stool that had been occupied until just a moment earlier.

  “I can’t drink, I’m afraid,” said Allie. “Even a single one makes me drunk as a lord.”

  “That sounds fun. What about you, sweet-cheeks?” he asked in Jackie’s direction.

  She patted her stomach. “I’m on a diet.”

  Larry took an aggressive sip of his whisky, clearly annoyed by the rejection.

  “Sorry about the other day,” said Jackie.

  Allie frowned to herself, not entirely sure what Jackie was doing. It wasn’t them who had been rude.

  Larry waved her apology away. “Sorry myself. I was in a bit of a tizzy, what with me dad dying and all.” Another sip, and he licked his lips. “But that policeman told me he didn’t think you did it.” He shrugged. “So let bygones be bygones, yeah?”

  “Umm right, yes, indeed,” said Allie.

  “So, you here to speak to me?”

  Both girls nodded.

  “Come here then—I’m not shouting to you all the way over there. I won’t bite your heads off.”

  Allie looked at Jackie for guidance. She offered a shrug in return.

  “Unless you want me to!”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You hear that, Bob!” shouted Larry Junior down the bar. At the far end the bartender, a bald-headed man in an old England football shirt looked up at him inquisitively. “I said I won’t bite their heads off, unless they want me to!”

  The barman tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Very funny,” he said without even the slightest hint of movement in the corners of his mouth.

  “I don’t think it’s very funny,” whispered Allie.

  Despite her misgivings, she slowly walked towards him. She wasn’t going to sit on a stool—not in a dump like this—but they’d come here to speak to him, and so speak to him she would.

  Jackie trailed along half a step behind, until they were both standing in front of Larry Junior.

  His stool was still spun around, and he was leaning back on the bar behind him as he contemplated them with glassy eyes and a grin that was dangerously close to a leer.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “We also spoke to the police officer,” said Allie. “The one who said it wasn’t us. And he said... Well, now we’re trying to find out if there are any suspects.”

  “You’re working with the police?” he asked with a squint.

  Allie had just begun to sound out the ‘n’ of a no when Jackie cut in loudly.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Working with the police. To help find out who killed your father. If you tell us what you know, maybe we can get to the bottom of it all.”

  Larry nodded in understanding, as if it were usual for two out-of-towners to assist the police in a murder investigation.

  Maybe it was usual in the countryside, Allie pondered. Or maybe this situation was so unusual for all of them, none of them actually did know the normal procedures.

  “Can you think of anyone who might have had a problem with your father?” asked Jackie.

  “Or might benefit from his death?” Allie followed up.

  Larry Junior put his elbows up on the bar behind him as if settling in for a while.

  “Dad was a bit of a grouch, didn’t get on with everyone. Didn’t have my way with people.” He looked at them for a second before laughing far too loudly at his own joke. Out of politeness, Allie and Jackie tittered back at him as if he was funny.

  “So, he had a lot of enemies?”

  “I wouldn’t say that exactly, not enemies. Not ones who would actually want to kill him anyway. He was more of a lovable grouch than a killable grouch, if you know what I mean.”

  “What about beneficiaries from his death? Is it just you?”

  “I wish!” His response was loud and did nothing to disguise the emotions underneath.

  Allie and Jackie looked at each other.

  “Who else is there?” asked Allie.

  “Ruth, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Jackie with a nod.

  Allie looked at her. “Who’s Ruth?”

  Jackie shrugged. “No idea.”

  They both turned back to Larry Junior who was giving them a strange look, not used to the way they interacted with each other.

  “Ruth was Dad’s girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?” asked Allie with arched eyebrows. Larry hadn’t seemed the type to have a girlfriend.

  “Yep. They’ve been together about two years now. She used to be his cleaner.”

  Well, she hasn’t done any cleaning in the last two years, Allie thought, but wisely decided to keep that thought to herself. “And she’s in his will?”

  Larry Junior rolled his eyes. “I’ll say! The stupid old codger put the gold-digging bint in it over me!”

  “What, you’re not in the will at all?” asked Jackie sympathetically.

  “Nah. I’m in it. But instead of getting it all, I only get half! She’s getting the other half of my inheritance!”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Allie, trying to sound understanding. “Your father must have really loved her.”

  “Yes, I suppose, in his way, he did.” Larry Junior leaned back further, looking up at the ceiling with a wistful expression on his face. “Though goodness knows what she saw in him,” he said with a shake of his head.

  Jackie and Allie looked at each other again and exchanged a look of mutual understanding.

  “Money?” they both said at once.

  Larry Junior shrugged. “Maybe. It certainly wasn’t his personality!”

  “Or his looks,” said Allie with a misjudged grin.

  Larry sat up straight with a start and lasered his eyes onto Allie. “Are you saying my dead dad was ugly?”

  “Yes,” said Allie. But when she saw the panicked look on her sister’s face, she realized she might have made a mistake.

  “Err...” offered Jackie.

  He stared at the pair of them while they nervously shuffled backwards.

  After ten intimidating seconds that felt more like ten intimidating minutes, he slapped his hands down on top of his knees and let out a guffaw.

  “He was an ugly old goat, wasn’t he? They say that’s where I got my looks from!” He slapped his knees again with even more vigour than the time before and began to laugh uproariously. The girls each gave a tight smile of forced amusement.

  They waited for him to finally stop laughing. “Is there no one else you can think of? No real enemies?”

  Larry wiped a tear of mirth away from the corner of his right eye. “Oh, I dunno. Could be anyone, right? What about his tenants? Maybe they didn’t want him to sell.”

  Allie pondered that for a second. One of the tenants. Was that a possibility? Bree or Michelle? It didn’t seem likely.

  They had known both of them for years and never had any reason to suspect them of being anything other than lovely hostesses and popular local business owners. Though Michelle had been a little cagey when they had questioned her about Larry.

  “It makes you think, doesn’t it?” Larry Junior’s tone was unusually pensive, and the look on his face could almost have been described as thoughtful, if it hadn’t been for the fact that his face was incapable of such an expression.

  “Everything makes m
e think,” said Allie with a frown that creased her forehead.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jackie, ignoring Allie’s misjudged answer.

  “That we can disappear—our lives erased—just like that. One minute you’re landlord, the next you’re six feet under. Boom. Like flicking a switch. Alive, then dead.” He held out a hand in front of him and flicked an imaginary switch. “Just like that.” He held his arm out for a few seconds more before finally lowering it. “Do you know what I was doing when he was being bashed over the head?”

  “What were you doing?”

  “I was in the cinema. Watching Keanu Reeves kill people. And just think, I could have gone over to Dad’s place instead for the real thing.” He laughed again, seemingly amused at the idea of watching his father being murdered.

  The girls did not laugh.

  “Which cinema?” asked Allie.

  Larry Junior gave her a curious look. “Don’t worry, I had the ticket stub and everything. Gave it to the police, in fact. It was the New Village Cinema on Benbury Road.”

  “I don’t like cinemas,” Allie told him. “They’re too dark. You can’t see if the seats are properly clean, and the floors are always sticky.”

  Larry didn’t seem to be sure what to do with that information. He stared at Allie for a few seconds, then gave a shrug and moved on. “Tell you what though, are you still interested in buying me dad’s old property? The buyer he had lined up scarpered when he saw what a nightmare it would be after he died.”

  Allie looked at him thoughtfully. “You want to sell it to us now?” Things seemed to be going remarkably well compared to the last time they spoke to him, much to Allie’s surprise.

  He shrugged. “It’s my half of the inheritance. And what would I want with it? Some old building in the sticks? With whinging tenants on mates’ rates? Nah, I want the cash.”

  “I suppose we could consider it,” said Allie with a thoughtful nod. She didn’t want to appear too eager.

  The truth was though, owning a building had recently become a lot more appealing than a boring old investment in an index fund or bonds.

  Since the idea had first floated to the front of her mind, it had grown more and more prominent, and now she couldn’t stop thinking about how nice it would be to own an investment property in the Cotswolds.

  Larry peered at them solemnly. “When all the will stuff is finished, we’ll chat some more. I can’t do nothing until the solicitors are done stuffing their wallets and the building’s in my name.”

  “That sounds...” began Allie.

  “...great!” finished Jackie. “But we’ve got to be getting on now. We’ve got things to do, don’t we, Allie?”

  “Oh yes. I’ve got to vacuum my room again, and then—”

  Jackie’s secret-signal nudge was enough to stop that train of thought.

  “Nice to see you girls. Give me a bell in a couple of weeks, and I’ll flog that building to you. All right?”

  “Wonderful. Enjoy your afternoon.” Allie gave him a pleasant smile.

  Larry Junior turned around on his barstool, downed the rest of his drink, and then began waving the empty glass in the air in the direction of the barman.

  Allie and Jackie didn’t wait to see what happened next.

  They had places to go and things to do.

  Chapter 11

  Allie drove the Toyota while Jackie leaned back in the passenger seat with her eyes closed. She didn’t like to take her eyes off the road to check, but she suspected Jackie was doing some kind of core-strengthening stretch.

  They were driving down the major A road that passed just outside Hawthorne, linking it to Buckleminster town and then on to other major arteries. The weather was clear, and the traffic was light, so the journey should have taken them a little less than twenty minutes.

  “He was definitely lying.”

  Allie glanced over for a second. Jackie had opened her eyes and was now sitting with her arms crossed and a frown on her face.

  “What do you think he was lying about?”

  “The cinema,” said Jackie with conviction.

  “And why do you think that? He said he had a stub, and he gave it to the police.”

  “I know he did, that’s why I think he’s lying. Pull over.”

  “You want a jumper?”

  Allie glanced over again and was surprised at the withering gaze she received from Jackie. Then she got it. “Oh, you mean pull the car over? Where?”

  Jackie pointed out the window.

  Just up ahead was the cinema that Larry Junior claimed he’d been at while his father was being murdered.

  It was part of an ugly, out-of-town retail complex. All big box-shaped buildings and not a block of the beautiful local stone that the old villages and towns had been created from.

  “I won’t be a minute,” said Jackie, hopping out the car after Allie had parked it outside the cinema.

  Allie sat in the car, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel while she waited. She counted the seconds, and when she got to fifty-nine, she turned to her left to check the passenger window and door. Jackie wasn’t there.

  Why were people so unreliable? Allie kept counting and had reached one hundred and thirty-five by the time Jackie returned, swinging the door open and dropping into the car like a sack of potatoes.

  “You’re late,” said Allie.

  “Late? For what?”

  “You said you wouldn’t be a minute.”

  “Well, how long was I?”

  “I counted to a hundred and thirty-five seconds before you opened the door again.”

  “Hmm. And a minute is sixty seconds. So, there you go. Just like I said: I wasn’t a minute.”

  Allie frowned at being outwitted by her illogical friend. “So, what were you doing?”

  Jackie didn’t answer the question with an answer. To Allie’s annoyance, she answered it with another question. “Where was I an hour ago?”

  Allie considered making a smart-aleck comment, but finally decided to just play along with whatever Jackie was playing at. “You were in the Bull and Butter in Buckleminster with me.”

  Jackie shook her head. “No, I wasn’t.”

  Allie glared at her. “Yes, you were! We were both there! It was just now!”

  Jackie shook her head again and withdrew a ticket stub from the pocket in her tracksuit bottoms. “See, I wasn’t. I was here. I was watching a movie, and I’ve got the ticket stub to prove it. I could show it to the police.”

  “Oh.”

  Jackie nodded. “Oh. See, he was lying to us.”

  “Do you think so? I thought he’d drunk too much to lie properly.”

  “Hmm.” Jackie tapped the ticket stub against her knee. “Maybe. Anyway, he could have been lying about being at the cinema.”

  “Do you think he would kill his own father?”

  “Who knows? People do all kinds of crazy things, don’t they?”

  Allie couldn’t help but agree. “They do! I saw a man throw his receipt onto the floor instead of the rubbish bin while you were in there!”

  “Exactly. Same thing, basically.”

  “Anyway, he’s a suspect then, even if the police don’t think so.”

  “He is. Now, onto our next one. Driver, take me to Ruth’s house!”

  Allie contemplated her for several long seconds before shaking her head and starting the car again.

  Grandma Em had been an invaluable resource for them. As a local resident, and one who kept her ear very firmly to the ground, as she put it—or a total nosy parker, as those with less kind phrasing would say—she knew all the goings-on.

  Hawthorne was reasonably small, so she knew where pretty much every resident lived, and if they were doing anything interesting, she knew about that too.

  It was she who’d told them where to find Larry Junior, and it was Grandma Em again to the rescue when they wanted to find out where Ruth lived.

  “Pickering Road? I don’t remember that one,” said Jack
ie with a frown as she looked at the address.

  “Nor I. Put it in your phone and direct me, and we’ll go and see. It’ll be like an adventure!”

  When they arrived, they found that Ruth lived in a part of Hawthorne that had hitherto been hidden from Allie and Jackie.

  In all their trips to visit Grandma Em, Aunt Kay, Jackie’s cousins, and everyone else they knew, they had spent their time in either the historic village, out walking in the glorious country, or visiting historic sites.

  But not everyone in Hawthorne could live in a beautiful, ancient Cotswold stone cottage. In the 1970s, the local council had built a sizable ‘modern’ housing estate a mile or so outside of the village proper. The estate certainly looked its age.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it, that something built in the 1970s can look so old and run down, but buildings a hundred or two hundred years old still look absolutely lovely.”

  Allie couldn’t help but agree. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? We used to be able to build beautiful homes. But now...”

  They were sitting in the car, outside of Ruth’s house. It wasn’t a bad house, per se; it just wasn’t what you imagined when you thought about homes in the Cotswolds. It could have been anywhere. There was no sign of local materials or the traditional skills of the local craftsmen having been put to use in the construction of the homes there.

  The two women weren’t actually all that interested in the local architecture though. No, right now they were stalling.

  “Do you think she’ll be nice?” asked Jackie.

  “No.”

  “You really know how to encourage people, don’t you?”

  Allie grinned at her. “You didn’t ask me to encourage you, you asked me whether I thought she would be nice. Do you want me to encourage you?”

  “Yes, please.” Jackie’s voice was small, and in that moment, she sounded like a little girl.

  “Ruth will no doubt be absolutely lovely. Probably offer us some carrot cake or another proper sit-down cream tea. She’ll be clever, witty, and charming and absolutely delighted to meet with us. She’ll probably ask you to become her personal trainer, and give us—”

  Jackie held up her palm in the universal stop gesture.

  “Okay. I’ve had enough of that. Let’s get this over with.”