“No, I didn’t.”
“Besides, it’s good you’re here. You need to hear this, too.”
Finally Frank butted in. “Since I’m probably going to be disbarred over this anyway, I think I’ll go ahe
ad and have the drink I desperately need. Either of you interested?”
He indicated for them to follow him toward the rear of the house where he had a home study. The plaques and framed citations arranged in attractive groupings on the paneled walls attested to the honorable man that Frank Perkins was, personally and professionally.
Hammond and Alex declined his offer of a drink, but Frank poured himself a straight scotch and sat down behind a substantial desk. Alex took a leather love seat, Hammond an armchair. The lawyer divided a look between them that ultimately settled on his client. “Is it true? Have you slept with our esteemed assistant county solicitor?”
“There’s no call for—”
“Hammond,” Frank brusquely interrupted, “you are in no position to correct me. Or even to cross me, for that matter. I should kick your ass out of here, then share your confession with Monroe Mason. Unless he already knows.”
“He doesn’t.”
“The only reason you’re still under my roof is because I respect my client’s privacy. Until I know all the facts, I don’t want to do anything rash which might embarrass her any more than she’s already been embarrassed by this travesty.”
“Don’t be angry with Hammond, Frank,” Alex said. There was an honest weariness in her voice that Hammond hadn’t heard before. Or perhaps it was resignation. Maybe even relief that their secret was finally out. “This is as much my fault as his. I should have told you immediately that I knew him.”
“Intimately?”
“Yes.”
“How far were you willing to let it go? Were you going to let him indict you, jail you, subject you to a trial, get you convicted, put you on death row?”
“I don’t know!” Alex stood up suddenly and turned her back to them, hugging her elbows close to her body. After taking a moment to compose herself, she faced them again. “Actually I’m more to blame than Hammond. He didn’t know me, but I knew him, and I pursued him. Deliberately. I made our meeting look accidental, but it wasn’t. Nothing that happened between us was by chance.”
“When did this meeting-by-design occur?”
“Last Saturday evening. Around dusk. After the initial contact, I exercised every feminine wile I knew to entice Hammond to spend the night with me. Whatever I did,” she said, her voice growing husky, “worked.” She looked across at him. “Because he did.”
Frank finished his drink in one swallow. The liquor brought tears to his eyes and caused him to cough behind his fist. After clearing his throat, he asked where all this had taken place. Alex talked him through the chain of events, beginning with their meeting in the dance pavilion and ending in his cabin. “I sneaked out the following morning before dawn, prepared never to see him again.”
Frank shook his head, which seemed to have become muddled either by a sudden infusion of alcohol or by conflicting facts he was finding difficult to sort out. “I don’t get it. You slept with him, but it wasn’t… you didn’t…”
“I was her insurance,” Hammond said. It was still hard for him to hear her admit that she had set him up, that their meeting wasn’t kismet or the romantic happenstance he wished it had been. But he had to get past that. Circumstances demanded that he focus on matters that were much more important. “If Alex found herself in need of an alibi, I was to be it. I was the perfect alibi, in fact. Because I couldn’t expose her without implicating myself.”
Frank gazed at him with unmitigated puzzlement. “Care to explain that?”
“Alex followed me to the fair from the Charles Towne Plaza, where I’d met with Lute Pettijohn.”
Frank stared at him for several beats before looking to Alex for confirmation. She gave a small nod. Frank got up to pour himself another drink.
While he was at it, Hammond took the opportunity to look at Alex. Her eyes were moist, but she wasn’t crying. He wanted to hold her. He also wanted to shake her until all the truths came tumbling out.
Or maybe not. Maybe he didn’t want to know that he had been as gullible as the horny young boys and dirty old men who had paid half-brother Bobby for her favors.
If he loved her, as he professed, he would have to get past that, too.
Frank returned to his chair. Twirling his refilled glass on the leather desk pad, he asked, “Who’s going to go first?”
“I had an appointment with Pettijohn on Saturday afternoon,” Hammond stated. “At his invitation. I didn’t want to go, but he had insisted that we meet, guaranteeing that it would be in my best interest.”
“For what purpose?”
“The A.G. had appointed me to investigate him. Pettijohn had got wind of it.”