The Alibi

But Davee’s speaking to Mason on his behalf made Hammond uneasy. While he appreciated her recommendation, it could later turn out to be a conflict of interest if she was the one put on trial for her husband’s murder.

“Davee, it’s my duty to ask… how good is your alibi?”

“I believe the term is ‘ironclad.’ ”

“Good.”

Throwing back her head, she laughed. “Hammond, darlin’, you are just too cute! You’re actually afraid you’ll have to charge me with murder, aren’t you?”

She slid off the massage table and moved toward him, holding the sheet against her front and trailing it behind her. Coming up on tiptoes, she kissed his cheek. “Lay your worries to rest. If I was going to shoot Lute, it wouldn’t have been in the back. What fun would there be in that? I would want to be looking the bastard in the eye when I pulled the trigger.”

“That’s no better a defense than laziness, Davee.”

“I won’t need a defense. I cross my heart I did not kill Lute.” Putting her words into action, she drew an invisible X on her chest. “I would never kill anybody.”

He was relieved to hear her deny it with such conviction.

Then she spoiled it by adding, “Those prison uniforms are just too dowdy for words.”

* * *

Davee lay on her back, eyes closed, replete and relaxed from Sandro’s massage, followed by sex that had required no participation from her except to enjoy her orgasm. She felt the pressure of his unappeased arousal against her thigh, but she was ignoring it. He lightly stroked her nipple with his tongue. “Strange,” he murmured in accented English.

“What?”

“That your friend made his hints, but he never asked you if you had killed your husband.”

Pushing him away, she looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Because he’s your friend, he doesn’t want to know for sure that you did it.”

Davee’s eyes moved to an empty spot just beyond his shoulder and involuntarily spoke her thought aloud. “Or maybe he already knows for sure that I didn’t.”

Chapter 11

As Hammond pulled away from the Pettijohn mansion, he hoped to God that he never would have to cross-examine Davee on the witness stand, for two very good reasons.

First, he and Davee were friends. He liked her. She was hardly a pillar of virtue, but he respected her for not pretending to be. When she claimed not to be a hypocrite, it wasn’t an empty boast.

He knew dozens of women who gossiped viciously about her but who were no more moral than she. The difference was that they sinned in secret. Davee sinned flamboyantly. She was considered vain and selfish, and she was. But it was a reputation she herself cultivated. She deliberately spoon-fed her critics reasons to shudder over her behavior. None realized that the persona they censured wasn’t the real Davee.

The finer aspects of her personality Davee kept concealed. Hammond reasoned the charade was her self-defensive mechanism against getting hurt even more than her childhood already had hurt her. She turned people away before they had an opportunity to reject her.

Maxine Burton had been a lousy mother. Davee and her sisters had been deprived of Maxine’s attention and affection. She had done nothing to earn their love or devotion. Nevertheless, Davee visited her mother faithfully each week at the elite nursing facility where she was confined.

Not only did Davee finance and oversee her mother’s care, she was directly involved with it, taking care of Maxine’s personal needs herself during her routine visits. Probably he was the only person who knew that, and he wouldn’t have known had Sarah Birch not confided it to him.

The second reason he wouldn’t want to cross-examine Davee at trial was because she lied so beguilingly. Listening to her was such a delight, one ceased to care whether or not she was telling the truth.

Jurors found witnesses like her entertaining. If she were called to testify, she would arrive at court dressed fit to kill. Her appearance alone would make the jury sit up and take notice. While they might doze through the testimony of other witnesses, they would listen to and anticipate every sugar-coated word dripping from Davee’s lips.

If she testified that, while she hadn’t killed Lute, she wasn’t sorry he was dead, that he had been an unfaithful husband who cheated on her too many times to count, that he was basically wicked and cruel and deserved to die, jurors of both sexes would probably agree. She would have persuaded them that the son of a bitch’s character and misdeeds justified his murder.

No, he wouldn’t want to put Davee on trial for her husband’s murder. But if it came down to that, he would.

Being awarded this case was the best thing that could have happened to his career. He hoped that Smilow’s team would provide him plenty to work with, that the accused wouldn’t plead out, that the case would actually go to jury trial.

This was a case he could sink his teeth into. Certainly it would be challenging. It would require his total focus. But it also would be an excellent proving ground. He fully intended to run for county solicitor in November. He wanted to win. But he didn’t want to win because he was more attractive, or had a better pedigree, or was better funded than the other candidate or candidates. He wanted to merit the office.