Secret Alibi

by Lori L. Harris

  Lexie slowly slid down the door until she sat on the floor. But something had happened. Dan was dead. Why hadn’t she cried yet? Was there something wrong with her? Was she some kind of monster who couldn’t forgive even in death? Dead. The man she’d married. The father of her baby was dead.

  And she felt nothing. Not grief. Not even a tiny bit of sorrow. She just felt numb. As if someone had reached inside her and unplugged her emotions.

  After several long moments, Lexie climbed to her feet and doggedly walked into the kitchen. She grabbed a water glass from the cabinet and took one of the pain pills Ken Lattimer had prescribed.

  She was innocent. In time, the police would realize as much. She just needed to sit tight on this scary roller-coaster ride until it pulled into the station. And it would be easier to do if she had some clue to the ride’s duration. Would it be days, weeks or would it be hours?

  She glanced at the clock. Though it was already past four o’clock in the morning, it was still too early to call Fleming. What kind of questions had they asked him? And what kind of answers had he given?

  Lexie left the glass in the sink and headed for bed. As it always was, the door to the second bedroom was closed. She opened it and looked in, and it, too, was the same. Nearly eighteen months ago she’d redone the room into a nursery, fully expecting that once the baby came she and Dan would spend more time out here. She knew she needed to dismantle the room, pack away or donate the contents of the drawers, but so far she hadn’t been able to do it.

  Lexie changed into plaid boxer shorts and a white T-shirt in the dark, then crawled into bed, too weary even to wash her face. She rolled onto her side awkwardly, attempting to find a comfortable position for her injured hand.

  Closing her eyes, she waited for the drug to dull not only the pain, but also the overriding sense of doom that seemed to have taken hold of her. It felt as if her feet had been laced inside lead boots and that she was standing on the edge of the dock, waiting for that final push into the dark waters below her.

  She was beginning to wonder why she just didn’t let it happen.

  THE BABY. It was screaming.

  Fighting her way up from sleep, Lexie shoved the sheets off her and staggered out of bed. Disoriented, she felt her way to the bedroom door and opened it.

  As soon as she did, everything went silent. Motherly concern escalated to fear. Something was wrong. Very wrong. A baby didn’t just suddenly stop crying.

  A hallway linked the two small bedrooms on this side of the house. The night-light in the small bath between the rooms was bright enough that she could see the closed door of the second bedroom. Dread tightened her chest, as she opened the door. The drapes hadn’t been drawn, and the last of the night’s starlight slipped in through the large, multi-paned window and onto the pastel-colored carpet.

  As she leaned over the crib, her lungs suddenly locked tight and her world—the one she sometimes managed to escape into while she slept—came crashing down around her.

  Not just the night eleven months ago, when she’d briefly held her baby daughter in her arms, but the nights and days since that had been filled with emptiness and remorse.

  Crossing her arms on her chest as if she could protect her heart, Lexie stumbled through the living room and out onto the back deck.

  She stood at the railing dragging in the cold air. It had been months since the last nightmare. She’d convinced herself that she was doing better, that she’d finally come to terms with losing the baby. With her own culpable negligence.

  She should never have gone anywhere near Dan the night he’d pushed her down the stairs. She knew what he was capable of. It wasn’t the first time he’d shoved her when she tried to stop him from leaving the house after he’d had too much to drink.

  She hadn’t been thinking about the baby, though. And a good mother always thought of her baby first. Always protected her offspring. Even at the cost of her own life.

  In reality, Lindy’s death was as much Lexie’s fault as it had been Dan’s. And she was beginning to believe that she would never be able to put it behind her.

  She looked down at her fractured right hand. The anesthetic was wearing off and she was beginning to feel the sharp aching brought on by movement. Ken had assured her that in a matter of weeks it would heal. And if she lost any range of motion, rehab would restore it. She’d had no trouble believing him.

  So why didn’t she believe the psychologist she’d seen right after she’d lost Lindy? The speech both doctors had given was eerily similar. Take it easy. Don’t overdo. Don’t push. She’d done all those things.

  And look at her now. She was still just as screwed up.

  Tonight’s awful events and the surreal accusation that she was somehow involved didn’t help. Part of her didn’t believe Dan was dead. The same part that didn’t believe her baby was dead.

  Lexie looked out at the river, allowed her gaze to climb the low bank that gave way to a grassy expanse. The open space had been left by the harvesting of logs for the house. Several of the pines that hadn’t been harvested—perhaps because they’d been too small at the time—appeared to have broken away from the forest behind them. If she stared at them long enough, they seemed to be moving closer and closer.

  As a child she’d pretended the trees were actually coming for their downed brothers and sisters, and that in time, they would reach the house and reclaim their family.

  But even then, she’d known it was nothing more than childish imagination and a trick of the eye. Trees couldn’t walk. Just as she knew that her daughter couldn’t be alive.

  So why did everything inside her tell her otherwise?

  Chapter Four

  Lexie glanced around the hospital’s meeting room at the other members of the Saturday morning Sisters-in-Loss, a support group for women who had lost an infant. Since the last time she’d attended was nearly six months ago, most of the faces were new to her. She’d been hoping that would be the case.

  Before she’d left home this morning, three friends who had heard about Dan had phoned to ask if she was okay and to suggest that if she didn’t want to be alone she could come stay with them. Lexie had declined the invitations. Partially because she didn’t want her problems overflowing into their lives and partially because she believed it would be easier to be among strangers.

  Several women came up behind her.

  “It happened sometime last night,” one of them said. “It was all over the news this morning. Dr. Dawson was found dead in his home.”

  “Was it a burglary?” another woman asked. Lexie wasn’t about to turn around to see who was speaking.

  “No comment. At least that’s all Chief Blade was willing to say when they interviewed him this morning.”

  Lexie pushed past another small group of women talking at the door. Maybe coming here had been a mistake. Maybe she should just leave. Maybe, given the situation, anonymity was impossible. Even among strangers.

  But go where? Her appointment with the attorney wasn’t until one o’clock.

  Taking a seat, Lexie focused her attention on the serenity garden just outside. Instead of appearing serene, the space looked sad and empty. With the cold temperatures of two nights ago, the usual profusion of impatiens had melted into decaying masses, and because of poor drainage and the recent heavy rains, the pine nugget mulch that had once tidied the planting beds now resembled brown flotsam scattered across the lawn.

  “Ladies,” the leader announced several minutes later, clapping her hands. She was somewhere in her early sixties, wore a denim jumper with a black turtleneck, sneakers and an energetic smile. “Please come find seats. We need to get started.”

  A latecomer took the vacant seat on Lexie’s right. She’d seen the attractive Eurasian woman enter the room. At first, she’d thought that the woman had mistakenly wandered into the wrong meeting. Mostly because of her age, which had to be somewhere in her late forties, or even early fifties.

  The woman hung her red leath
er jacket on the seat back and placed her clutch across her lap before glancing at Lexie. “You weren’t saving this chair for anyone, were you?”

  “No. I wasn’t holding it.” Lexie said. “My name—”

  The woman turned to the young mother on the other side of her. For several seconds, Lexie found herself staring at the back of the woman’s head. Had she just been snubbed? By someone she didn’t even know?

  With a mental shrug, Lexie shifted her attention to the other women in the circle. Most of them were in their mid twenties to late thirties. Only the Eurasian woman and a young girl of perhaps eighteen or nineteen, who sat opposite Lexie, fell outside that range.

  “Okay.” The leader remained seated. Her job was to keep everyone on track, but not intrude. “I suppose I should ask who would like to open the session. And please remember, ladies, that we use only first names here.”

  For several seconds no one said anything, everyone looking around to see who was going to be the first.

  The young girl across from Lexie climbed to her feet.

  In spite of her untrimmed and slightly messy dark hair and her wrinkled cargo pants and sweatshirt, she was pretty.

  “My name’s Amanda.” Her eyes were large and brown and filled with uncertainty. “Most of you…” She fiddled with the zipper on her red sweatshirt. “You lost your babies.” She lifted her gaze. “I gave mine up.”

  No one in the room said anything. No murmured words of understanding as there had been in the past when someone finally worked up the courage to speak. No gentle touches on the lower arm or shoulder to encourage the speaker to go on.

  She must have known what they were all thinking. That she wasn’t one of them. That every member of this group would have gladly given their own life for that of their baby.

  After another few seconds of strained silence, Lexie uncrossed her legs. Wasn’t someone going to say something? Though the leader’s job was only to observe, was she going to leave this young girl standing there emotionally naked?

  Lexie scooted to the front edge of her seat. “Aren’t we all here because we need to talk about a painful time in our lives?”

  Most of the women immediately bowed their heads. Only two members continued to stare at the teenager. But under those stares, Amanda appeared to shrink. Her shoulders rolled forward so that they appeared even narrower than they had previously, and her spine seemed to collapse, stealing inches from her frame.

  “Ladies,” the group leader said at last. “Isn’t this group about nurturing and support?” She got to her feet. “We’re not here to judge, are we?”

  The nods of agreement from those with bowed heads were barely perceptible.

  The leader reached out and touched Amanda on the shoulder. “If you don’t want to talk just now, you don’t have to.”

  The young woman gave a hesitant nod. “I want…um…I don’t have anyone else to talk to about it, ma’am.”

  “Then you talk.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She released the zipper. “The doctor let me hold her before he took her away.” She looked down. “Until a couple months ago, I was okay with what I’d done. He said it was better for Janie. That she’d go to a good family who could give her things I couldn’t. Her father wasn’t around and my mom, she was sick, and I didn’t have no insurance….” She started to break down, but quickly caught herself.

  Her lips pressed together, she swallowed hard two or three times. “I tell…I tell myself she’s okay, that she’s out there with that other family and that everything is good for her….” She looked down at her hands. “But I can’t stop thinking about her. About what I did. About how a baby belongs with its mama.” She stood there, tears streaming from her eyes, and yet the other common signs of sorrow—the shaking shoulders and features twisted with emotion—were oddly absent.

  Such despair and sorrow in one so young. Where was her mother? Where were her friends? Lexie realized that where most of the women in the room had a spouse, a significant other, a mother of their own to talk to, Amanda didn’t. Lexie and the young woman were alike in that way.

  Amanda sat suddenly, almost as if someone had placed a hand on her shoulder and shoved her back down. As soon as her buttocks met metal, her hands folded on her lap and became still. In another few seconds, her spine relaxed against the chair back. She had essentially pulled on her armor. Had walled herself off from pain by retreating inwardly.

  More than a half-dozen other women stood up after that, talking about the past week and their emotional obstacles. When the meeting broke up, Amanda bolted for the door.

  Lexie was intent on catching up to her when the Eurasian woman grabbed Lexie’s upper arm.

  “I kept thinking your face looked familiar.”

  Only half listening, Lexie watched Amanda slip out into the hallway. The girl had seemed so alone that she had wanted to suggest they could go somewhere to talk.

  “But it wasn’t until just a few moments ago,” the woman continued, still holding on to Lexie, “that I realized where I had seen you before.”

  Lexie turned to her. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I need—”

  “You were married to Dan Dawson, weren’t you?”

  The room went instantly silent. Conversation ceased. Those still in the room turned and stared at Lexie.

  Lexie pulled free of the woman’s grasp. “I really do have somewhere I need to be.”

  So much for anonymity.

  JACK WAS SITTING in the back booth of Alligator Café having breakfast with his brother, Alec, on Sunday morning. As usual, the restaurant was crowded with both locals and tourists headed out to DeepWater Springs to see the manatees that had made their way up the river and into the springs after the cold snap.

  Jack and Alec had already done their five-mile run out at the springs and, as they did nearly every Sunday these days, had stopped for breakfast at the small restaurant where Alec had met his wife, Katie.

  It was here at the Café that Jack had first seen Lexie, too. Over a year and a half ago.

  She’d been sitting with a group of nurses when he’d entered. Initially, as he walked past her table, he’d noticed her attractiveness. Nice features, lots of blond hair, well-dressed and well-groomed. But it wasn’t her appearance that had held his attention after that, it was the way she’d seemed so full of energy and life. She talked with more animation than the other women and laughed more freely. There was no hesitation when she reached out to touch those closest to her. Warm would have been the word he would have used to describe her.

  He’d been so intrigued by her that when done with his lunch, he’d lingered with a second glass of sweet tea and a slice of key lime pie just so he could watch her.

  It wasn’t until the group rose to leave that she looked in his direction. Her smile had hit him dead center of his chest and gone through him like a thirty-eight caliber slug.

  Person of Interest. That’s how he’d labeled her that day, using cop jargon.

  As chief of police, he hadn’t found it difficult to learn her identity. What had been hard was curbing his disappointment when he’d discovered she was married.

  Jack unwrapped the napkin from around the silverware.

  She was still a Person of Interest—and, if the M.E. ruled Dan Dawson’s death a homicide, Jack wasn’t going to be the only one interested in Lexie Dawson. The state was going to be interested, too.

  He’d been trying not to form any opinions about the case, but hadn’t been completely successful. Partly because of what had happened between them two months ago and partly because of what he’d seen two nights ago when he’d interviewed Lexie. She’d been shaken. She’d been scared. But she hadn’t acted guilty. Even when he’d pushed her. Or maybe, if he was being completely honest with himself, it was that a part of him just couldn’t accept the possibility that she’d killed a man.

  “What about the autopsy?” Alec poured coffee from the carafe. “Any idea when you’ll get the report?” The Sunday paper, minus all the
advertising inserts, was piled on the end of the table between the two brothers.

  Though they hadn’t been discussing Dan Dawson’s case, Jack knew which autopsy Alec referred to because it was the department’s only open murder investigation.

  “The medical examiner’s office promised everything but the tox screen by Monday afternoon.”

  “That’s quick.” Alec located the sports section, but didn’t open it.

  “Yeah. Dan Dawson played racquetball with Brian Huffer and Harvey Sanderson.” Sanderson was the mayor and Brian sat on Deep Water’s city council.

  “Even in death, it’s not what you know, but who you know,” Alec offered.

  “Yeah.” Jack decided a change of subject was in line. This wasn’t a big city where a discussion of an ongoing police investigation would go unheard. Even in a busy restaurant. “How’s Katie doing?”

  “I think she’s ready to get the show on the road. She’s not getting much sleep. Baby’s been keeping her up at night, doing a lot of kicking.”

  Jack smiled. “I hear it only gets worse once they’re born. At least for the father.”

  “Katie and I have that all worked out. If the baby wakes up before 3:00 a.m., she gets it. After three, I do. Every third night, one of us gets a night off.”

  “Well, we know who came up with that plan. It’s a damn good thing you married someone who doesn’t mind having her life organized for her.”

  Alec’s expression eased. It was obvious that he loved his wife.

  Jack took a sip of water. “You intend to cut back on your travel after the baby?”

  As soon as he said it, Jack recognized his mistake. He watched his brother’s expression stiffen, the comfortable atmosphere of moments earlier evaporating.

  Alec jerked open the sports section. “As much as I can.”

  As hard as it was for Jack to hold on to his anger and his words, he did.

  Three years ago he had been visiting with Alec and Alec’s first wife, Jill, at Christmas when his brother, who was with the FBI at the time, had been called away on a child abduction case in Arizona. Normally Jack would have cleared out when his brother did, but Jill had been having a hard time of it right then. Alec was gone more than he was home. And even when he was home, he was distracted with his job. She wanted a baby, but couldn’t get pregnant. Wanted her husband’s attention, but couldn’t seem to capture it.