Secret Alibi

by Lori L. Harris

  “I sometimes give myself pep talks, too,” the woman said. Then she noticed the cast on Lexie’s right hand, and her smile faded.

  Lexie held it up. “In-line skating.”

  The woman actually looked relieved. Lexie wasn’t certain if she’d lied for the woman or for herself. But either way, she didn’t like it. She wanted her life back.

  When she returned to the table, Jack stood so that she could slide in. “You okay?”

  She managed a tight smile. “Yeah. I just pushed myself a little too hard, that’s all.”

  There was a small pot of tea already waiting for her, and she assumed Jack must have ordered it for her. The other morning she’d been drinking the beverage, so he probably assumed that was what she preferred.

  As the bacon, eggs and grits were delivered to the brothers, Lexie reached for the tea, first with her injured right hand and then with her left. Jack took the pot from her and filled her cup. She smiled in thanks.

  The waitress pulled out her pad. “I don’t have to ask anymore what these two want, but what can I get you?”

  Having never opened it, Lexie handed the waitress the menu. “Rye toast, please. And can you make it dry, but with a little butter on the side?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  Lexie stirred three teaspoons of sugar into the tea. She wasn’t so worried about Jack guessing the reason behind her sudden inability to handle food as the brother with the pregnant wife.

  She spent some time blowing on the tea before taking that first sip. Only then, believing she was prepared, did she allow her gaze to connect with Alec’s. And didn’t like the speculation she saw in his eyes.

  Jack leaned back, rested an arm along the seat back behind her in an almost protective gesture. As he did so, Alec’s mouth tightened. If she hadn’t been watching closely, she wouldn’t have seen it. Alec’s opinion of her obviously hadn’t changed completely. He still saw her as a problem for his brother. A complication.

  Using his knife and fork, Alec sliced up the over-easy eggs, the yolks leaking out over the plate.

  Feeling a resurgence of the nausea, Lexie took another sip of tea. If you make a dive for the restroom again, he’s going to guess. He was a keen observer, just as his brother was. The difference was that Alec wasn’t quite so close to the situa tion. And because he wasn’t, he might recognize her condition more easily.

  All Lexie wanted to do was survive breakfast.

  “So who makes the hit list today?” Alec asked, shifting his attention to his brother. “I’ve dug pretty deep into the victim’s life. I have a few more details to run down, though. I plan to fly down to Miami tomorrow to talk to some of the people he worked with during his residency. Probably won’t get anything useful, but it’s about the only aspect of his background I haven’t covered.”

  “Talked to his parents again?”

  Alec nodded. “Yeah. Nothing new there.”

  Jack finished off his orange juice. “I’ll try to chase down Amanda today and question her. Do the same with the other women whose charts were on the desk that night.”

  Lexie picked up her spoon and dipped it in her already-stirred tea. The shoptalk made her uncomfortable. Everything about this morning made her uncomfortable, especially Alec.

  “Maybe we should start interviewing friends, mutual acquaintances of Dan’s and Lexie’s,” Jack suggested.

  “Sure,” Alec said, “but it might be best if I handle those interviews. Even if someone knows something, they’re not going to talk in front of her.”

  Jack nodded. “You’re right. She can work up a list for you to work from. And I think with this much ground to cover, it might be a good idea to hire some help.”

  “I have a private investigator I sometimes use.”

  “Sounds good.” Jack grabbed a paper placemat from the next table, flipped it over and handed Lexie a pen. “Put down names, and perhaps type of contact. Keep it simple.”

  Writing with her left hand was difficult, but she’d already listed quite a few when Alec added, “And any male who asked you out recently and that you turned down. Even if it was just for an ice-cream cone.”

  Without looking up, Lexie nodded. She jiggled the tea bag in the small pot as she ran back through her mind one more time.

  Catching Alec watching her, she passed him the list. He briefly scanned it, then folded it and slipped it into the pocket of his sweatpants. “I talked to the woman Dawson was seeing. They were supposed to meet Wednesday night, but he cancelled. She said that he seemed upset. She assumed it was the situation with Lexie, but he didn’t give her any real details.”

  Alec was looking at her again. “She did tell me something that I found interesting.”

  Having finished his breakfast, Jack shifted his plate to the side and reached for the coffee. “What’s that?”

  “Dan Dawson believed the baby Lexie lost wasn’t his.”

  Stunned, Lexie’s chin popped up. “That’s absolutely ridiculous!”

  Alec’s eyes narrowed. “Is it?”

  The gazes of both men were on her now, the silence at the table heavy, like a wet mattress flung down on top of her. She felt her facial muscles stiffen. What must Jack be thinking now? That she was easy? That she lacked morals? That she had been cheating on Dan all along? Lexie forced her spine straighter.

  Jack removed his arm from the seat back—a withdrawal of support.

  “Is it, Lexie?” Alec repeated. “Or was the father of the last child the same as the one you’re carrying now?”

  Lexie felt Jack stiffen beside her, but she didn’t glance in his direction. She didn’t want to see his face just then. Didn’t want him to see hers.

  “No. I was never unfaithful. No matter what Dan thought, Lindy was his daughter.” She took a deep breath. “Dan made the accusation only once. He’d gotten Lindy’s autopsy report that day and I assumed he was just looking to strike out.”

  “Did he say anything else?” Alec asked.

  “If he did, I was too angry to listen.” She looked down at her hands.

  Alec didn’t say anything. It was obvious that he was waiting for her to go on. As the man sitting beside her was.

  Lexie forced her gaze to meet Alec’s. “As for the father of the baby I’m carrying now, it’s none of your damn business.”

  “But it is my brother’s business.” Alec’s tone was harsh, filled with disdain. “He’s put his career on the line and you haven’t even been honest with him. Isn’t it possible that your lover might have killed Dan?”

  “No!” Realizing just how loudly she’d said it, Lexie lowered her voice. “No. I’ll say it again, Alec—the baby I’m carrying has nothing to do with my ex-husband’s death.”

  Jack turned toward her. “How far along are you, Lexie?”

  She realized that his voice didn’t sound any different from his brother’s—cool, with an edge of contempt.

  She lifted her gaze to his. No reason to continue hiding it. He’d already guessed. And from the hard look in his eyes, it wasn’t good news.

  It didn’t matter. At least that’s what she’d been telling herself. But like so much recently, she was wrong about that, too. She wanted Jack’s understanding, but she suspected she wasn’t going to get it.

  “Eight weeks and six days.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Jack ran a hand over his face, trying to figure out how he was supposed to feel about the two-ton bombshell that had been dropped on him. God. What was he going to do? All these years. Never a slip. Never once had a woman shown up on the doorstep with this kind of news.

  Needing privacy, he and Lexie had walked across the street to the park and now made use of the gazebo. The early hour and the fact that rain came down in hard, gray sheets meant that they weren’t likely to be interrupted.

  Lexie stood on the opposite side of the structure, her back to him, staring out at the rain.

  How was he supposed to act toward her? About the situation?

  “I would hav
e been less shocked if you had admitted to murder.”

  “It was a shock to me, also.” Facing him, she folded her arms in front of her. “I planned to tell you.”

  “When?”

  Her eyes were bright. Not with tears, though. With anger. “I don’t know! When I was ready. When I knew what I wanted!”

  A knot formed in his gut.

  “What in the hell is that supposed to mean? That you considered terminating the pregnancy?”

  “You say it as if that’s no longer an option. As if now that you’re involved, decisions will be made for me.” She turned and paced to the steps, almost as if she contemplated making a run for it. “Well, I’ve got news for you, Jack Blade. Most of the decisions about my life have been ripped away. They’re beyond my control. But not this. I will not relinquish this. This is my decision.”

  He grabbed her by the upper arm. “Like hell it is! What becomes of that baby is as much my concern as yours.”

  She removed his hand from her arm. “One night, Jack. That’s all you really have invested in this child right now.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You don’t know me. If you did, you would know that I wouldn’t harm this child or any child.”

  “Were you thinking about raising the baby alone, then? Never telling me?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, I was.”

  Life had been so easy before he’d met this woman. He’d had a good job. A future in law enforcement. No real personal problems other than the sometimes-strained relationship between him and his brother. Yeah. Perhaps life had seemed a little too tame at times, but it had also been uncomplicated. Which was what he’d been looking for when he left the Atlanta PD. A chance at a regular life.

  “And you thought that was okay? Not to mention to a man that he was about to be a father?”

  “To be honest, right now, I don’t know what I think about a lot of things. I just found out on Monday. With a trial date set for two months from now, I figured the murder charge was more urgent.”

  “Three days? You’ve known for three days? Two words. That’s all it would have taken.” He raised two fingers. “I’m,” he said, and lowered the first. “Pregnant.” He dropped his hand. “If you’d managed one word a day for just two of those days, I wouldn’t have had to sit across from my brother and have this kind of revelation dropped into my lap.”

  He paced away. Hell. He’d nearly made love to her last night. Had nearly taken advantage of her vulnerability. Just as he had the first time. She’d been needy and he’d been a convenient shoulder. He had fully intended to keep his distance. At least until she was cleared of the charges. But last night, if there’d been a condom in the house…

  “How in the hell is this even possible? I protected you each time.” Jack glanced away, embarrassed by his words. “Okay. I know it’s possible.”

  What he didn’t know was what he was going to do now. What a man was supposed to say when a woman he’d slept with only one night turned up pregnant, demanding…

  That was the problem, wasn’t it? Lexie wasn’t demanding anything of him. Didn’t seem to expect anything of him.

  He was the one doing the demanding here.

  Lexie stopped in front of him. Her hair had come loose again, her face was void of any makeup, but he still found her the sexiest woman he’d ever met.

  “Look, Jack. I’m not asking you to decide right now if you want a relationship with this baby. Or, if you do, what kind of relationship.” She rubbed her arms. “And I’m sorry you found out the way you did. That was never my intention.”

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth briefly, and he realized it was the first time he’d ever seen her do it. “I would have expected you to ask for a paternity test.”

  He shook his head. “It never even crossed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.” But he was. He’d never doubted the baby’s paternity because he trusted Lexie.

  There were a few people, perhaps even his brother, who would question his judgment. But Jack realized that he no longer did where Lexie was concerned.

  THE CALL CAME IN JUST after nine o’clock that night. Jack was helping himself to a beer, but recognizing crime scene tech Andy Martinez’s cell number, he left the beer unopened on the counter and picked up the phone. Though he and Andy were friends, Jack didn’t figure it would be a social call.

  “You didn’t hear it from me, Jack.”

  “Didn’t hear what?”

  “The tox screens came back earlier today.”

  “And?”

  “It showed Talzepam. A presurgical dose. Dan Dawson probably didn’t even know what was happening to him.”

  “How’d it get in his system?”

  “Shepherd went back over this afternoon and found a sample packet, one that’s distributed to doctors. There was a pristine thumbprint dead in the center of the packet.”

  “Lexie’s, I assume?”

  “You got it.” Andy sighed.

  “That still doesn’t explain how it got into his system. And if it was a sample, it’s not surprising that the thumbprint of the rep would be on it. Since it wasn’t collected during the initial investigation of the scene, there’s no way to be certain that it was even there that night or that it’s the actual package. Arguably, it could have been placed there at a later date.”

  “That’s not keeping the state attorney from taking the tox report to the judge. I hear that he’s going to ask for the charges to be upped to murder one and that bail be revoked.”

  And when she went to trial, she’d be facing the death penalty. In the state of Florida, that meant lethal injection.

  Jack’s gut sickened as he thought about giving this news to Lexie. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe the judge wouldn’t go along with the state attorney.

  “But you didn’t hear it from me,” Andy repeated.

  “Thanks, Andy. I owe you one.”

  “You don’t owe me nothing. Just watch your back. There’s been a rumor circulating that maybe Lexie didn’t act alone. That she had help.”

  “Help? As in me?” To be honest, he wasn’t even surprised. Once it was established that Lexie and he had been seen leaving a bar late at night together and that he was now helping her, it wasn’t all that far a leap to believing that he might somehow be involved in the murder of her ex-husband.

  “Shepherd hasn’t turned up anything yet, but he’s working the angle really hard.”

  “He’s not going to find anything.” Even as Jack said it, he knew it wasn’t completely true. If Shepherd dug deep enough, he’d find out that the reason it had taken Jack so long to get to the crime scene that night wasn’t because he’d been out driving. That Jack didn’t have an alibi for the time of the murder. At least not one he was willing to reveal.

  “I know that, Jack. Do you need anything? I have some extra time on my hands.”

  “I appreciate that, Andy. And I appreciate the heads-up. But if anyone finds out that you’re helping me, your ass will be out on the street.”

  “If you change your mind…”

  “I won’t.”

  Jack hung up the phone. Now what? How was he going to tell Lexie? Turning, he saw her standing in the doorway and realized that she’d overheard the conversation. At least his side of it. Enough to know that things had gone from bad to much worse.

  They’d spent most of the day trying to get a lead on Amanda Wilkes. The address on her Florida driver’s license and the one the social security office had on file was her mother’s home in Pierson. There hadn’t been any withholding taxes reported in the past year and a half, leaving him to wonder how Amanda was supporting herself. And there were no records of utilities under her name. Which meant she might have a sugar daddy who paid all the bills, or she was working in some profession that the IRS wasn’t able to regulate—cleaning houses, maybe—and had a place where the utilities were part of the rent.

  Lexie had seen the inability to track the girl as a real set
back; Jack still wasn’t certain if she was even one of the pieces they needed.

  Their attempts to talk to some of the women represented by the charts hadn’t been any more successful. Of the three they’d managed to find either at home or at work, two had said they’d miscarried, and the third had refused to talk to them.

  Lexie closed the distance between them. “What happened?”

  Again, he briefly considered not telling her all of it, then realized withholding information was what he’d accused her of that morning.

  “The tox screen showed Talzepam.”

  To her credit, she filled in all the blanks. That it was just another piece of circumstantial evidence that would be piled with the rest. Another link between her and the murder of her ex-husband.

  Maybe Garland Ramsey would be able to convince the jury that it was rare in a murder for all the pieces to fit together quite so seamlessly. But Jack felt fairly certain that the lawyer would fail.

  Moving past him, Lexie sat at the kitchen table. She’d showered and changed. He was beginning to find the shorts and T-shirt that she favored as sleeping attire to be sexier than silk lingerie. It was the juxtaposition between the male-like attire and the female body it covered. He realized her contradictions intrigued him. He liked her competitiveness. Possibly because it challenged him. There was nothing artificial about Lexie. She could be one of the boys, but she was totally feminine. In bed, most of all.

  Her hair had been left down after she washed it, and was full, glistening beneath the lighting. It also lent a softness to her face that was absent otherwise. There was worry in her eyes, and shadows beneath them.

  He poured her a glass of grape juice and grabbed the beer before joining her at the table. “Judge probably won’t let the packet with your fingerprint be admitted in evidence,” he said.

  “But he’ll allow the tox screen. It will prove that I have easy access to a drug that was in Dan’s system,” she said.

  “He was a doctor. He would have easy access to Talzepam, too,” Jack said as he sipped his beer. “You said Dan liked to take Valium occasionally?”