The Overnight Alibi

by Marilyn Pappano

  Hannah waylaid her at the next table, setting the chairs on the floor before Merrilee could, taking the cloth from her and giving the top a quick scrub. “Mom, you need to get dressed. The first customers will be here soon.” She searched her mother’s face for some hint of acknowledgment, not even hoping for recognition. At first she found nothing. Then, abruptly, a delighted smile spread across Merrilee’s face. Hannah’s relief was short-lived, though, because the smile wasn’t directed at her but behind her.

  “There you are, dear. I was wondering when you’d stop by.” Merrilee glided past Hannah to slip her arm through Mick’s. “It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen you. Now tell me, what have you been up to? No, no, not here. Let’s go the apartment where we can talk undisturbed.”

  He looked at Hannah, brows raised, but Merrilee pulled him away, still chattering. “Have you had breakfast? How about coffee?” Speaking imperiously to no one in particular, Merrilee commanded, “Bring breakfast and coffee to my. quarters. Something sweet—doughnuts or, oh, how about some sticky buns with pecans?”

  Feeling frustrated, angry and helpless as hell, Hannah watched them go, then all but slammed the next chair to the floor.

  “Honey, I know it’s upsetting, but breaking those chairs isn’t going to make everything better,” Ruby said. “I know for a fact that you don’t have any extras or the money to buy new ones.”

  She was right. No extras, no money, no choices. It was the story of her life.

  “You want to be the serving girl or you want me to?”

  “I’ll get it.” She finished with the rest of the tables, then went into the kitchen. A few minutes later, carrying a tray laden with food and coffee, she pushed through the swinging door and made her way into Merrilee and Sylvie’s apartment.

  Mick and her mother sat in the small living room. She was babbling about the cold weather this morning and the promise of snow in the air while he listened without even a hint that he’d been taken hostage by a crazy woman. He was a better sport about it than most people. Everyone tried to play along with Merrilee’s flights from reality, but only to the extent that it didn’t inconvenience them. Mick didn’t seem to mind at all.

  Hannah set the tray on the table, then walked out without a word to either of them. She didn’t want to hear one more word of Merrilee’s silly talk, didn’t want to deal with one more reason to like the man she had helped frame, the man she already felt far too much for, the man who could break her heart if she let him.

  The breakfast shift passed in a sullen blur. Her regulars recognized her mood. and kept the chatter to a minimum, and the few guests who’d spent the night were no more talkative than she was.

  She was rid of the last customer when Mick came out of the apartment, carrying the tray with its leftovers. “Your mother’s resting.” He spoke quietly, somberly, not with the pity, mockery or scorn she had too often heard over the years.

  Still, his soft words annoyed her, and she ignored them, ignored him.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I didn’t ask for your help. Don’t expect my gratitude.” She said it with a scowl, because she hated being rude, hated charity, hated feeling helpless and hopeless and alone. She hated being mean to him when she’d needed his help and he’d given it so freely, hated that he’d been there when she’d needed him, that he might be there the next time but not the tenth next time or the twentieth.

  Most of all, she hated who she was, who she’d become in the past ten years. She wanted to be someone else, someone whose life was far removed from Sunshine, the Last Resort and a fragile mother.

  “Pardon me for interfering,” Mick said stiffly. “I thought—” His voice changed, grew quieter, urgent. “We’ll talk about it later. We have bigger problems right now.”

  She looked up, then followed his gaze out the window. Sheriff Mills and one of his young deputies were getting out of their car out front. Shivering, she wiped her damp palms on her shorts, then picked up the tray of dishes just as the bell over the door rang. “Have a seat, Sheriff,” she said with false cheer. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  The sheriff stopped just inside the door, looked from her to Mick, then back again. “Why, this is cozy. I didn’t know you were staying here, Reilly.”

  “I left word with your office.”

  “Michelle forgets to give me my messages sometimes. I’d probably fire her except she’s my brother’s wife’s niece. Gotta keep the family happy. So, Hannah, I guess telling me he was a guest here just slipped your mind the other day. I asked if you knew him, and you said, ‘We’ve met.’ Seems logical that you would have gone on and said, ‘Oh, by the way, Sheriff, he’s a guest at the motel.’”

  “I don’t make a habit of telling anyone who our guests are.”

  “You don’t make a habit of telling a number of things, do you? Such as where you were last weekend.” Before she could respond, he added, “Where you really were.”

  A chill of fear swept over her and made her breath catch in her lungs. Grateful for the table nearby, she set the tray down before she dropped it, pushed her trembling hands into her pockets and faced the sheriff head-on, praying that her voice worked without a hitch. It didn’t, but the quiver was such a slight hitch, maybe it went unnoticed. “I told you. I was in Tulsa.”

  “I know that’s what you told me. I’ve been trying to figure out why you lied about it.”

  Over at the registration desk, Mick was watching her, his expression carefully guarded. The deputy was watching her, too, enjoying her discomfort. Sheriff Mills simply waited. “I didn’t exactly lie, Sheriff,” she said, drawing out the words while searching frantically for an explanation. It came slowly. “I was in Tulsa last weekend. I drove over Saturday morning, and I stayed until Monday morning.”

  “Then why did Miz Rebecca Marsters tell me she’d never heard of you in her life? That was your ‘friend’s’ name, wasn’t it? The name you gave me as the woman you stayed with?” The sheriff walked around behind the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee, sweetening it liberally before fixing his gaze on her again. “It took me a while to get in touch with her. I left about a dozen messages on her machine, and she finally called me back this morning. She apologized for not getting back to me sooner, but she had a good excuse. You see, she’s been out of the country for the past month and has the passport stamps to prove it. She just got back home around midnight last night.”

  He waited a long, tense moment, then said softly, “So, Hannah, let’s start over. Where were you last weekend? Who did you stay with? And why did you lie about it?”

  She stared at the three waiting men, all too afraid that her panic was easily read on her face. She knew without looking that she’d gone pale, that her eyes were probably rounded and filled with fear. If the sheriff possessed any deductive skills at all, he would walk over, slap the handcuffs on her and take her away.

  But he didn’t move. He waited behind the counter, sipping his coffee, and watched her.

  Forcing air into her lungs, she walked toward him and climbed onto a nearby stool. She clasped her hands loosely together, fighting the urge to clench them into fists, and worked out a relatively calm response. “All right, Sheriff. I was in Tulsa, but you’re right. I didn’t stay with Rebecca Marsters. Truth is, I hardly know her. We met briefly years ago. When I needed a name to satisfy Sylvie’s questions about the trip, Rebecca’s just popped into my mind.”

  “So where were you?”

  “I stayed at a motel.”

  “Why did you lie to your granny?”

  She shrugged and hoped she looked at least a little embarrassed. “You know how things are around here, Sheriff. We don’t have any money to waste on something as frivolous as a weekend away. But I thought I would go stark raving mad if I didn’t get away for a while. I didn’t want Sylvie to worry about the money or my safety or any of those things she always worries about, so I lied to her. I told her I was visiting an old friend from school. I wante
d her to think that the trip wouldn’t cost anything more than gas up there and back, that I’d be staying someplace safe, instead of a busy motel, that whatever running around I did would be with someone who knew her way around the city.”

  “All right. So that explains why you lied to Miz Clark. It doesn’t explain why you lied to me.”

  “I don’t normally lie to anyone, Sheriff.” At last she’d told the truth. But even though it was the truth, it didn’t feel like it. “I thought it best to stick to the story so I wouldn’t get the details confused. I mean, after all, I was out of town. I never met the dead woman. I don’t know any redheads named Elizabeth. I have nothing to contribute to your investigation. That’s why I told you the same story I told Sylvie. Because it didn’t matter.”

  Behind her the deputy snickered, and the sheriff gave him a warning look before shaking his head at Hannah. “Lying to the police, for any reason, always matters, Hannah. If you’ve got nothing to hide from anyone but your granny, you should have told me the truth. I wouldn’t have said anything to her about it.”

  “I just didn’t think... I’m not an experienced liar, Sheriff. If I were, I would have known better.” She said a silent prayer for forgiveness. All her life she’d been taught both in church and at home that lying was a grave sin, but surely God would understand the mess she’d gotten herself into. Surely He would make allowances because she was truly repentant. She just couldn’t stop lying yet.

  Because she wasn’t out of trouble yet. “So what motel did you stay at?”

  She went blank. She had seriously hoped he would accept her explanation and let the matter drop, but obviously that wasn’t the case. Now she had only two options: she could either tell the truth, or she could buy herself a little time with another lie. Telling the truth wouldn’t get her far. The sheriff would waste no time asking Brad if he’d given her use of the family cabin for the weekend, and Brad would say no. The sheriff would go out there to see for himself, and he would see exactly what she and Mick had seen: a cabin that looked as if it had been unoccupied since last fall’s deer season.

  The decision to buy time was an easy one. Unfortunately she. wasn’t terribly familiar with Tulsa, even though it was the nearest city of any size. In her short time in college, she and her roommates had often driven over to shop, but she remembered little about those trips, except... “I’m sorry, Sheriff. I don’t remember the name. It was one of the major chains, and it was located off the main highway...”

  “Skelly Bypass? I-44?”

  “Yes. And it was at the exit for the street...” She wrinkled her forehead as if in thought. “There’s a mall about a mile or so away.”

  “Yale,” the deputy supplied. “The Promenade.”

  “Yes, that’s it.” If memory served, there were several motels in that area. Naturally the sheriff would check each of them and find that she had lied again, but hopefully it would give her time to come up with yet another story, this one more plausible.

  And what was going to be plausible after two elaborate lies?

  “You don’t have a receipt or something with the name on it?” Mills asked. “You run a motel, Hannah. You give everybody receipts.”

  “I threw it away.”

  “You pay by credit card?”

  She made a sound that was equal parts disdain and amusement. “I haven’t had a credit card in more years than I can remember. I paid cash.”

  The sheriff subjected her to a long, unsettling look, then finally directed his gaze toward Mick. “I have a few questions to ask you, too. Do you mind giving us some privacy, Hannah?”

  “Of course not. I have work to do.” She slid to the floor, grabbed the tray of dishes and went into the kitchen. As the door swung shut behind her, she gave a sigh of relief, then immediately felt guilty for being grateful that it was Mick’s turn to be grilled. She shouldn’t, though. At least he was telling the truth.

  She was the one with all the lies.

  Chapter 7

  The door slowed to a stop, leaving the dining room in silence. Mick slowly shifted his gaze from it to the sheriff. The man was patiently waiting for him to make some move. He chose not to.

  “I got an interesting call yesterday afternoon from Mr. Daniels, who’d gotten an interesting call himself from American National Fidelity. You familiar with them?”

  Mick shook his head.

  “Funny. They’re familiar with you. Seems they have a life-insurance policy taken out by one Michael Reilly on his wife, Sandra. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  “I never carried insurance on Sandra.”

  “They have forms with your signature on them. They cashed a check a few months back from your company, again with your signature on it.”

  “I sign every check Blue Water pays out, but I didn’t sign one for insurance on Sandra.”

  “A company as big as yours doesn’t have somebody to pay the bills for it?”

  “We have a bookkeeper who prepares the checks. I compare them to the invoices and sign them so she can mail them.” It had always been that way—at least, since the inception of Blue Water Construction. Back when it was Reilly Homes and Sandra was his one and only office employee, she’d handled the books. She’d made out the checks, and after they were married, she had signed his name to them, too. They had sometimes joked that if he couldn’t tell her version of his signature from the real thing, the bank certainly wouldn’t notice.

  His muscles tensed, and a thin line of sweat trickled down his spine. He had a really bad feeling about this.

  “So how would you explain a check drawn on Blue Water’s account apparently signed by you, only not really signed by you?”

  “I would say it’s a forgery.”

  “Hmm. Interesting. Do you think your partner would recognize your signature?”

  “He’s seen it often enough.” Often enough to learn to forge it? Or had Brad somehow persuaded Sandra to forge it for him?

  “The insurance company faxed him a copy of the policy. He seems to think it’s your signature. The bank’s getting a copy of the check. They should have it later today.”

  “I didn’t take out a policy on Sandra,” he repeated tensely. “A few months ago we were already separated, already seeing divorce lawyers. You think I would take out a life-insurance policy on her when we’d already filed for divorce, then kill her? Jeez, how stupid do you think I am?”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid at all, Mr. Reilly. But you have to admit—it doesn’t look very good.”

  No, it didn’t, he acknowledged, feeling trapped and scared and damn near desperate. “Why did the insurance company contact Brad?”

  “Because the beneficiary is Blue Water Construction.”

  Damn Brad Daniels to hell. Getting total control of the company wasn’t enough for him. Getting out from under the Eagle’s Haven debt with the insurance settlement hadn’t satisfied him. He’d wanted a nice chunk of cash, too. Mick was damned lucky that Brad hadn’t decided to cash in on his life-insurance policy, too. If he’d felt confident about staging a murder/suicide, no doubt he would have.

  “How much is the policy worth?”

  “A million even.”

  A million dollars. For getting rid of a woman who’d meant nothing to him. Brad would really clean up on this deal. It would take time to settle the insurance claims, of course, since the loss of the resort was due to arson and Sandra’s death was murder. The insurance companies would want to be sure the money wasn’t paid to the guilty party, but Brad had convinced the authorities of his innocence, and they would convince the insurance companies. Once everything was settled, he would come out of the deal with his net worth about doubled.

  And all he’d had to do was destroy half a dozen or so innocent lives. All in a day’s work.

  “Now, the insurance company tells me it’s rather unusual for a man to take out a policy on his wife, pay for it with company funds and make the company the beneficiary unless she plays a role in the company. Did Mrs.
Reilly have anything to do with the ownership or running of Blue Water Construction?”

  “No.” Though Sandra had learned the business while working for him, she’d hated it. She’d especially hated that he was a hands-on sort of owner. She would have been happier if he’d modeled himself after Brad—wearing expensive suits, having business lunches and dinners in fancy restaurants, conducting meetings in some of the most beautiful homes in the city. She hadn’t liked that he’d worn jeans and work shirts, that he’d spent his days working side by side with the crews.

  Brad had claimed to be the dreamer while Mick was the builder. Sandra had thought Brad was the brains while Mick was the brawn. Brad provided the class. Mick provided the brute labor.

  “What other reason do you suppose a man might have for setting up a policy like that?”

  Grimly Mick turned to stare out the window. For a moment he focused on the heat waves rising from the pavement. Then a movement across the road caught his attention. There, in the same place where he’d settled in to watch for Elizabeth, was a man, slender, blond-haired. Brad. He was over there, watching them, watching the sheriff rake them over the coals.

  “Mr. Reilly?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at Mills, then looked back. Just like that Brad was gone. “I suppose to ensure that he got a portion of the money without all the scrutiny that being the sole beneficiary would bring.”

  “That’s what I suppose, too.” The sheriff came out from around the counter, pulled a chair from the nearest table and straddled it. “Is that what you did?”

  “No, it’s not.” Mick turned to face him. “You know, Sheriff, I’ve tried to cooperate, but it seems you’ve already got your mind made up that I’m guilty. You don’t listen to anything I say. You just try to twist it to suit your preconceived notions. For that reason, I believe it’s in my best interests not to talk to you anymore. My attorney is Trey Landry. He’s in the Tulsa phone book. If you have any further questions to ask, ask him.”