The Alibi

“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.”