The Alibi

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?”