From that last question, he worked his way down to business. “You don’t get away often, do you? What with your responsibilities here at the motel and your mama.”
“No, I don’t.” Even to Mick, who barely knew her, she sounded stiff and uneasy. How could the sheriff, who’d known her all her life, not hear it, too?
“In fact, that was your first vacation in... How long has it been?”
“Ten years. Since Daddy died.”
“Your daddy was a good man.” Mills waited for her to murmur agreement, then went on, “I imagine Miz Clark has already filled you in on what happened—that poor woman dying over at the resort and the fire, and her husband claiming he was right here in your motel with a red-headed woman name of Elizabeth. Do you know anyone fits that description?”
“No, Sheriff, I don’t. Sorry.” She started to walk away, but he called her back again.
“Hold on, Hannah. I’m not done yet. I know you’re awful busy around here. I won’t keep you too long. You know this Reilly fellow?”
“We’ve met.”
“Did he strike you as the sort of person who would murder his wife?”
“No.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“I am. I trust my instincts, Sheriff. Like you.”
Mills chuckled. “I trust my evidence, and right now my evidence is pointing directly at the husband. He wanted to get rid of his wife. He wanted to get rid of the resort. Crack her over the head with a pipe, pour eight or ten gallons of gasoline all around the place, and boom. No more nasty divorce, no more threat of financial ruin and, ideally, no evidence to point to you. Just ashes and soot.”
“Except, according to you, there is evidence. Sandra’s body was left in the one place in the hotel where the fire wouldn’t reach it Why didn’t he move it? Why didn’t he want it destroyed?”
“Maybe the actual murder wasn’t as easy as the planning. Maybe he panicked.”
The screen door creaked as Earlene came in, her cigarette break over. She gave Mick a look, but didn’t show any curiosity as to whom he was eavesdropping on or why. Still, he felt embarrassed and more than a little guilty as he directed his gaze back to Hannah.
“And maybe he didn’t kill her at all,” she was saying. “Maybe whoever did kill her wanted it to look as if Mick were responsible.”
“Who besides her husband would want her dead?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded evasive, even a bit guilty. “I don’t know that he wanted her dead.”
“This divorce was going to eat him alive. According to his partner, the wife had evidence of his infidelity and was going to use it to squeeze every last nickel from him.”
His infidelity was blushing now. Mick hoped the sheriff put it down to the heat and wished Hannah could better control her responses. On the other hand, he was relieved to see that she wasn’t an accomplished deceiver, grateful that the lies didn’t come easily to her.
“Reilly threatened to stop her, to get rid of her once and for all. He also threatened to burn down the resort if Daniels couldn’t find a buyer right away. Then surprise, surprise, the resort’s burned down and the wife is gone.” Mills changed the subject with an abruptness that made Mick’s nerves tighten. “So... what did you do up there in Tulsa?”
“Nothing special. Went shopping, saw a movie, went out to dinner and talked.”
“You stayed with a friend?”
“Yes.”
“And what would her name be?” The sheriff’s voice became sharper, less genial, and the friendliness didn’t disguise the fact that he was talking business again.
“Rebecca. Rebecca Marsters.”
“How would I get in touch with Miz Marsters if I wanted to?”
Hannah drew a deep breath and clasped her hands behind her back, her fingers working nervously against each other. “I have her address and phone number in my room. If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll get them for you.”
“Go ahead. Take your time. I’ll just have another cup of coffee.”
Mick leaned back against the wall beside the door. Rebecca must be a friend of Hannah’s, the sort of friend Sandra had surrounded herself with, the sort who would lie to God Himself if their best friend asked. It was only through her friends’ willingness to cover for her that Sandra had kept her affairs secret for so long. They had provided her with excuses and alibis until she’d decided that she didn’t care anymore. He had learned to hate them almost as much as he’d hated her. For that reason alone, he would find it easy to hate Rebecca, too.
But he didn’t hate Hannah. Even though she’d helped Brad frame him. Even though she refused to try to clear him. Even though she was putting her own concerns ahead of his freedom and his life.
No, not her own. That sounded selfish. Hannah hadn’t cooperated with Brad—and she wasn’t refusing to cooperate with him—for personal gain. Everything she’d done was for this place and her family—her fragile mother and the three old women who depended on her. If she’d had only herself to look out for, Mick had no doubt circumstances would be different. If she had only herself, she would have walked away from the motel, the town and her life here before agreeing to Brad’s scheme.
She returned to the dining room and gave the sheriff a slip of paper. He looked at it, then put it in his pocket as he slid from the stool. “Tell Miz Clark that was mighty good pie as usual. And give my best to your mama. And you take care of yourself, too.”
Mick watched Hannah watch him leave. After one long moment, the tension that held her stiff drained away, and she leaned on the counter for support, bowing her head. He pushed through the door and joined her. “Who is Rebecca?”
She didn’t lift her head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You gave her name to the sheriff as your alibi for this weekend. Who is she?”
Finally she straightened and faced him. “A friend of Brad’s. I don’t know.”
He stared at her as a chill shivered down his spine. “You let Brad provide you with an alibi? Brad? The man who set this whole thing up? The man who’s got you up to your pretty neck in trouble? The man who blackmailed you into this mess and is still blackmailing you to keep you there?”
“He told me to tell anyone who asked that I stayed with Rebecca. He said she would swear that I was with her from ten o‘clock Saturday morning until one o’clock Monday afternoon.”
Curling his fingers around her upper arms, Mick gave her a gentle shake. “Think about it, Hannah. The man threatened to destroy you, to implicate you as my partner in Sandra’s murder, to take everything you have and put your mother in Vinita. And you’re trusting the alibi he gave you? What if Rebecca Marsters doesn’t even exist? What if she does exist and the sheriff calls her and she says, ‘Why, no, I didn’t have a houseguest last weekend. I’ve never even heard of that woman’? For all you know, he could have copied her name and address out of the phone book.”
“But he told me—” She broke off, apparently—hopefully—realizing the futility of trusting in anything a lying, scheming murderer told her.
“He told you he would implicate you. What better way to do that than to give you an alibi that doesn’t stand up?”
Looking frightened, dismayed and weary, she asked, “So what do I do? Call the sheriff and say, ‘Sorry, I made a mistake. I wasn’t with Rebecca Marsters, after all. I was someplace else, but I can’t tell you where’?”
“Where were you? Besides with me?”
“I went shopping Saturday to buy the clothes and the hair-color rinse. After I left the motel Sunday morning, I went to Brad’s cabin.”
Mick knew the place. He’d been there once before they broke ground on the resort. It actually belonged to Brad’s grandfather and had been used by the men in the family for hunting and fishing trips for the past fifty years. The old man had offered it to Brad for the duration of their work in the area, but, beyond air-conditioning, electricity and running water, the cabin had none of the luxurie
s Brad was accustomed to. Instead, he had rented a steel-and-glass showplace on a bluff overlooking the lake.
So the cabin wasn’t good enough for him, but it was fine for Hannah. Typical of Brad’s thinking.
“Had you ever been to the cabin before?”
She shook her head. “He gave me the key and directions.”
“Where’s the key?”
“He told me to leave it there. Under the welcome mat.”
“The job on the room here—making it look unoccupied—who was responsible for that?”
“Brad.”
“I wonder if he’s done the same at the cabin. Want to find out?”
“I’ve got to work.”
“This evening, then. When you’re finished.” He released her, took a few steps back. “Want your first plumbing lesson?”
Wide-eyed and wary, she nodded. He wished he could tell her that everything would be okay, but he had no reassurances to offer. He might go to trial and face prison for the rest of his life, and she might let him. Brad might leave her alone, bankrupt or kill her. If her conscience got the better of her and she tried to help Mick, Brad would expand his frame to include her, and she would almost certainly face prison herself. Without a miracle, there was no rosy future ahead for either of them.
He retrieved the plumbing supplies and the necessary tools from the back of his truck, then went into his room. The space around the sink was limited, but there was no cabinet underneath to deal with. “First you have to figure out which side is leaking. You do that by turning off one shutoff valve underneath. If you shut off the left valve and the leak stops, then the problem is in that handle. But check both, just to be safe, because both sides could have a leak.”
She looked from him to the sink, then back, as if waiting for him to do something. All he did was lean one shoulder against the bathroom door and gesture. “Go ahead.”
She knelt, disappeared halfway under the sink, then came back up to check. The spout was still dripping. “When I turn off the water on the other side, do I turn this side back on?”
“You can’t find a leak with both valves shut off.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “A simple yes will suffice.”
Once she’d figured the leak was in the right handle, she got to her feet, and he gave her step-by-step instructions to repair it. She worked in silence, her lower lip caught between her teeth, totally absorbed in the learning. While there were repairs on this old place that required a professional’s expertise, there was much that she could fix herself, if she just had someone to teach her—and the time to devote to learning, the money for supplies and tools, the time to make the repairs. She was already in over her head here, and there was no one to help her.
Except him. Temporarily.
Until he got arrested or cleared of suspicion. If he was cleared, he wouldn’t care if he never saw Yates, Lake Eufala or this place again.
Though he suspected he might care a great deal if he never saw Hannah again.
“This place has a lot of potential,” he remarked even as his gaze settled on a water stain on the ceiling that had crept more than two feet down the wall. “How long has it been around?”
“My grandparents built it in 1950.” She looked ruefully at the stern she’d removed using a tape-wrapped wrench. “I think some of this is original equipment.”
He showed her how to replace the washer, then returned to the subject. “With some money and a lot of work, it could be turned into a nice little motel. You could cater to the lake crowd in spring and summer, to the hunters in fall and the fishermen year round, and keep a pretty high occupancy rate.”
“The only problem is I don’t have any money. I can’t make repairs or improvements without guests, and guests don’t want to stay at a place in disrepair.”
“How long have you been in trouble?”
“Since my father died.” She reassembled the faucet, then bent to open the valve. When the spout remained drip free, she allowed herself one tiny smile of triumph before picking up the tools. “The motel was never a major success. Granddad and Sylvie did all right, and so did Mom and Daddy. But I never wanted to be in the business. After high school I went away to college intending to never come back for more than a few days at a time. I had all kinds of plans and dreams.” For a moment there was such wistfulness in her eyes, then it faded and was replaced with grim acceptance. “Now I just try to keep from going under for the third time.”
Before he could respond to that, she walked away, going through the connecting door into her own rooms. He picked up the bag of washers and O-rings and followed.
All too aware of the man behind her, Hannah went into the bathroom, set the tools on the counter and knelt on the vinyl floor. Years ago, when these quarters had belonged to her grandparents, her grandfather had done a little remodeling—adding the tiny kitchen, the glass doors and enclosed patio, building a closet into the bedroom and moving the sink so it was part of the bathroom and not in a corner of the bedroom. The changes made the rooms a little homier, a little less motel-like.
But it still wasn’t a real home—not a house, with rooms of different sizes and shapes, hallways, space. At the rate things were going, she might never have a real home. She might go from here directly to jail. Do not pass Go, as her favorite childhood board game said. Do not collect $200. Or, in her case, ten thousand dollars.
Her mood turned bleaker as she worked. She couldn’t handle jail. Oh, maybe if she didn’t have Merrilee and Sylvie to worry about. Maybe if she were actually guilty of something other than stupidity and desperation. But she did have family to worry about, and she hadn’t done anything illegal. Unethical, maybe. Immoral, definitely. But not illegal.
She had to disassemble the stems in both handles on this sink, replace both washers, then reassemble them. When she was finished, she turned the water on again, then stared at the sink. The spout had dripped for more years than she could recall. In the beginning, it had driven her crazy. Now she had become so accustomed to it that she suspected she would lie awake at night, unable to sleep for the silence.
That silence was broken almost immediately by Mick. “What was the ten thousand dollars for?”
Uncomfortable with the cramped location now that her work was done, she gathered the tools and went into the living room. Mick sat on the arm of the easy chair. She chose to stand at the window, even though she didn’t bother to open the drapes. Instead, she stared at pale yellow curtains that covered ugly, rubber-backed drapes. “It was twelve thousand, actually. I’ve already paid back two thousand. We had a couple of particularly bad years. Our insurance increased substantially. Mom was worse than usual. Sylvie and I had both been sick, and the guests just didn’t come. We couldn’t make our bills. We were only a couple of weeks away from having our power shut off and the phones disconnected. We’d been turned over to a collection agency for the medical bills, and our restaurant supplier was demanding payment before we could get another shipment. We were about to be put out of business.”
She had foolishly thought that was as desperate as she could possibly get. She’d been wrong. “I went to the bank for a loan, but our local bank had gone out of business itself, and the new bank over in Yates didn’t think I was a very good credit risk.”
“So you asked Brad for the money, and after a particularly satisfying evening, he gave it to you.”
The muscles in her jaw tightened so much that her teeth hurt. “No,” she said flatly. “I wasn’t seeing him by then. I ran into him in Yates one day, and he invited me to lunch. He asked what was wrong, and when I told him, he offered the loan.” After a moment’s silence, she quietly asked, “Why do you do that?”
He didn’t ask for an explanation. He knew she was referring to the sarcastic comment about her, Brad and sex. For a long time she thought he wasn’t going to answer. When he did, his voice was full of self-directed mockery. “Do you want the truth? I don’t like the idea of you with him.”
She wo
uld like to think that what he was describing was jealousy, but it sounded more like a case of revulsion that he and Brad might have been intimate with the same woman.
Still staring at the curtains, she went on, “Brad gave me twelve thousand dollars. It was a straightforward loan—interest, signed papers, regularly scheduled payments of five hundred dollars a month. The money went for bills, supplies, a few critical repairs. It was gone in no time. I set aside enough to cover the first four months’ payments, hoping that by the time it ran out, I would be able to manage the payments on my own. But I couldn’t.”
And her failure had given Brad the perfect ammunition to force her into his scheme. On the bright side—though she had to look really hard to find one in all this bleakness—in becoming Brad’s prostitute, she’d met Mick and had one special night to remember, a night she could never forget. On the down side, she’d destroyed his life, her own, her mother’s and Sylvie’s, and there was nothing she could do to make things right.
“What will you do if you lose this place?”
“I don’t know. I’m not exactly overwhelmed with options or talents. I’ve proved I can’t run a motel. I’m not particularly handy. I dropped out of school before completing my second semester, so I have no education to fall back on.”
He stood up and started toward the kitchen. “Since you’re ill prepared for anything else, we’ll just have to see to it that you keep the motel.”
“And how will we do that?”
“By proving that Brad killed Sandra.”
“And how will we do that?”
“I don’t know.” He grinned over his shoulder as he opened the cabinet under the sink. “We’ll have to come up with something. Starting with the cabin tonight.”
She didn’t want to go back to the cabin, didn’t want to see that Brad had. worked his magic and erased every sign of her two days there. She didn’t want to face the truth of just how much trouble she might be in, didn’t want to have to worry about whether the alibi he’d provided her would cause the sheriff to look at her as Mick’s accomplice. She didn’t want to do anything at all. She just wanted to wake up from this nightmare.
The Overnight Alibi Page 9