The Alibi

“Good point. But if I had said that I spent that Saturday afternoon riding horseback nekkid down Broad Street, Sarah would have agreed. You know that.”

“You weren’t confined to your bedroom all day with a headache?”

She laughed and ran her fingers through her hair, combing out some of the tangled curls. “In a manner of speaking. I was in bed all day with my masseur, who turned out to be not only a headache, but a boring pain in the butt. Sarah didn’t want to sully my good reputation by telling you the truth.”

Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. Turning his head away from her, he stared through the windshield toward the row of straggling shrubbery. His jaw was knotted with tension. Davee didn’t know if that was a good sign or bad.

“Am I a suspect again, Rory?”

“No. You wouldn’t have killed Lute.”

“Why don’t you think so?”

His eyes came back to hers. “Because you enjoyed tormenting me by being married to him.”

So he knew why she had married Lute. He had noticed, and, furthermore, he had cared. For all his seeming indifference, there was blood in his veins after all, and at least a portion of it had been heated by jealousy.

Her heart fluttered with excitement, but she kept her features schooled and her inflection at a minimum. “And what’s more…?”

“And what’s more, you wouldn’t have put yourself out. Knowing that you could have gotten away with murder, why bother?”

“In other words,” she said, “I’m too rich to be convicted.”

“Exactly.”

“And a divorce is only marginally less trouble than a murder trial.”

“In your instance, a divorce is probably more trouble.”

Enjoying herself, she said, “Besides, as I told Hammond, the prison uniforms—”

“When did you talk to Hammond?” he asked, cutting her off.

“I talk to him often. We’re old friends.”

“I’m well aware of that. Did you know he was with Lute the day he was killed? At about the tim

e he was killed?”

No longer relaxed, Davee was instantly on guard and wondering how far Rory would go to pay her back for the torment she had caused him. Would he charge her with obstruction of justice for withholding evidence? She had turned over to Hammond the handwritten notation from Lute, indicating his appointments on Saturday. The information could be totally insignificant. Or it could be key to the solution of Rory’s murder mystery.

Whichever, it was the investigator’s job, not the widow’s, to determine what bearing it had on the case. Even if Hammond’s meeting with Lute didn’t factor into the murder itself, it could compromise him as the prosecuting attorney. The second appointment had never taken place, if indeed that second notation had indicated a later appointment. There’d been no name with it, and by the time specified, Lute was already dead.

Davee was trapped between being caught for wrongdoing and fierce loyalty to an old friend. “Did Hammond tell you that?”

“He was seen in the hotel.”

She laughed, but not very convincingly. “That’s it? That’s the basis of your assumption that he was with Lute, that he was seen in the same building? Maybe you need to take a vacation, Rory. You’ve lost your edge.”

“Insults, Davee?”

“The conclusion you’ve reached is an insult to my intelligence as well as yours. Two men were in the same large public place at approximately the same time. What makes you think there’s a connection?”

“Because for all the times we’ve talked about the hotel last Saturday afternoon, never once has Hammond mentioned that he was there.”

“Why should he? Why make a big deal out of a coincidence?”

“If it was a coincidence, there would be no reason for him not to mention it.”