The Alibi
A safe full of cash at Alex’s house.
An empty safe in Pettijohn’s hotel suite.
A safe inside the closet.
The closet. The safe. Hangers. Robe. Slippers. Still in their wrapper.
Hammond jumped as though a jolt of electricity had shot through him, then fell impossibly still as he forced himself to calm down, think it through, reason it out.
Go slow. Take your time.
But after taking several minutes to look at it from every conceivable angle, he couldn’t find a hole in it. All the elements fit.
The
conclusion didn’t make him happy, but he couldn’t allow himself to dwell on that now. He had to act.
Scrambling from his chair, he grabbed the nearest cordless phone. After securing the number from directory assistance, he punched in the digits.
“Charles Towne Plaza. How may I direct your call?”
“The spa, please.”
“I’m sorry, sir, the spa is closed for the evening. If you wish to make an appointment—”
He interrupted the switchboard operator to identify himself and told her with whom he needed to speak. “And I need to talk to him immediately. While you’re tracking him down, put me through to the manager of housekeeping.”
* * *
It didn’t take long for Loretta to decide that coming to this fair was a bad idea.
Fifteen minutes after parking her car in a dusty pasture and going the rest of the way on foot, she was sweating like a pig. Children were everywhere—noisy, rowdy, sticky children who seemed to have singled her out to annoy. The carnies were surly. Not that she blamed them for their querulous dispositions. Who could work in this heat?
She would have sold her soul to be inside a nice, dark, cool bar. The stench of stale tobacco smoke and beer would have been a welcome relief from the mix of cotton candy and cow manure that clung to the fairgrounds.
The only thing that kept her there was the constant reminder that she might be doing Hammond some good. She owed him this. Not just in recompense for the case she’d blown, but for giving her another chance when no one else would give her the time of day.
It might not last, this season of sobriety. But for right now she was dry, she was working, and her daughter was looking at her with something other than contempt. For these blessings, she had Hammond Cross to thank.
Doggedly she trudged from one attraction to another.
“I just thought you might remember—”
“You nuts, lady? We’ve had thousands o’ people through here. How’m I s’posed to remember one broad?” The carny spat a stringy glob of tobacco juice that barely missed her shoulder.
“Thank you for your time, and fuck you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Now move it. You’re holding up the line.”
Each time she showed Alex Ladd’s photograph to the exhibitors, ride operators, and food vendors, the response was a variation on a theme. Either they were outright rude like the last one, or they were too frazzled to give her their full attention. The shake of a head and a curt “Sorry” was the usual answer to her inquiries.
She canvassed long after the sun went down and the mosquitoes came out in force. After several hours, all she had to show for her trouble was a pair of feet that the humidity had swollen to the size of throw pillows. Analyzing the tight, puffy flesh pressing through the straps of her sandals, she thought it was a shame that this carnival didn’t have a freak show. “These babies would have qualified me,” she muttered.
She finally acknowledged that this was a fool’s mission, that Dr. Ladd had probably lied about being at the fair in the first place, and that the likelihood of bumping into someone who had been there last Saturday and who also remembered seeing her was next to nil.
She swatted at a mosquito on her arm. It burst like a balloon, leaving a spatter of blood. “I gotta be at least a quart low.” It was then she decided to cut her losses and return to Charleston.
She was fantasizing about soaking her feet in a tub of ice water when she walked past the dance pavilion with a conical ceiling strung with clear Christmas lights. A scruffy band was tuning up. The fiddler had a braided beard, for crying out loud. Dancers fanned themselves with pamphlets, laughing and chatting as they waited for the band to resume playing.