“Not attacked. I thought you had punched out his lights, and that, if your meeting had gone anything like mine, he probably deserved it. That’s why I followed you. Later, if Pettijohn filed a complaint against Bobby and me, if I was implicated in a crime, who better to have as my alibi than the D.A., who himself had had an altercation with Pettijohn?” She looked down at her hands. “Several times Saturday evening, I began to feel guilty about what I was doing, and tried to leave you.”
She glanced at Hammond, who guiltily looked up at Frank, who was scowling at him like the gatekeeper of hell.
“By Sunday morning I was very ashamed and left before Hammond woke up,” she told her lawyer. “That evening Bobby came for his money—there was none, of course. But to my astonishment he congratulated me for killing our only ‘witness.’ ”
“You didn’t know until then that Pettijohn was dead?”
“No. I had listened to CDs on the drive home, not to the car radio. I didn’t turn on the TV. I was… was preoccupied.” After a brief, tense silence, she said, “Anyway, when I heard that Pettijohn had been murdered, I believed the worst.”
“You thought I had killed him,” Hammond said. “That he eventually had died from my assault.”
“Right. And I continued believing that until—”
“Until you heard that he had died of gunshot,” he said. “That’s why you were so shocked to learn the cause of death.”
She nodded. “The two of you didn’t struggle?”
“No, I just stormed out.”
“Then his stroke must have caused him to fall.”
“That would be my guess,” Hammond said. “The cerebral thrombosis caused him to black out. He fell against the table, causing the wound on his forehead.”
“Which I couldn’t see. I didn’t realize how bad his condition was. For the rest of my life, I’ll regret that I didn’t do something,” she said with genuine remorse. “If I had called for help, it probably would have saved his life.”
“Instead someone came in after you, saw him lying there, and shot him.”
“Unfortunately, Frank, that’s right,” she said. “Which is partially why I have
n’t used my alibi.”
“And why I came here tonight,” Hammond said.
The attorney divided a puzzled glance between them. “What have I missed?”
Alex was the one to explain. “Thanks to Smilow’s thoroughness, and now the media, everyone knows that I was in Pettijohn’s suite last Saturday afternoon. But the one person who knows with absolute certainty that I did not shoot him is the person who actually did.”
“And that person made an attempt on Alex’s life last night.”
Frank’s jaw went slack with disbelief as he listened to Hammond’s account of their encounter in the alley.
“Alex was his target. He was no ordinary mugger.”
“But how do you know it was Pettijohn’s killer?”
Hammond shook his head. “He was only a hireling, and not a very accomplished one. But Lute’s murderer is accomplished.”
“You actually think you’ve solved the mystery?” Frank asked.
Hammond said, “Brace yourselves.”
He talked uninterrupted for another quarter hour. Frank registered shock, but Alex didn’t seem all that surprised.
When he finished, Frank expelled a long breath. “You’ve already spoken to hotel personnel?”
“Before coming here. Their statements bear out my hypothesis.”
“It sounds plausible, Hammond. But, my God. It couldn’t be more difficult, could it?”