The Overnight Alibi

by Marilyn Pappano

  For a long time the sheriff just looked at him. Then, getting to his feet with a grunt, he grinned. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Reilly.” At the door he turned back. “Does Hannah have an attorney, too?”

  Mick shrugged. “As far as I know, she has no need for one.”

  “We’ll see. Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll talk to you again soon.”

  Mick watched until they were out of sight, then left the lobby and started across the parking lot. At the road’s edge he heard Hannah call his name, but he didn’t slow or look back. Beside the old gas station, he pushed through the vines, crouched and looked around. Were the weeds bent a little there, as if someone had stood on them? Had those leaves been torn from the vine by a person or by something as harmless as the wind or a wild creature?

  It was a certain bet that toothpick hadn’t been broken in half by the wind or a raccoon. When Brad had given up smoking a few years ago, he’d taken up toothpicks—at least, out here in the uncultured lake communities. He had been here. It hadn’t been his imagination.

  “Mick, what are you doing?”

  “Brad was watching us. He set the sheriff on us, then came over here to watch the fun.” He stood up and ground the toothpick halves into the dirt under his boot.

  “He was here?” Hannah looked as pale as when the sheriff had first confronted her with her lies. Mick had wanted to offer her some sort of support then, but he couldn’t. He wanted to now, but he shouldn’t. Not out in the open. Not if Brad was anywhere around.

  “He’s tying us up into a neat little package for the sheriff and the DA to deliver to the jury, and I don’t know how to stop him.” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Do you know anyone in Tulsa who would lie for you?”

  She shook her head. “Do you?”

  He shook his head, too. His only acquaintance in the city was his lawyer, and it certainly wouldn’t do much for his case to ask Landry’s help in providing the elusive Elizabeth with an ironclad alibi. “What about anyone else? An old boyfriend? Someone you went to school with?”

  She gave another negative response, and he accepted her answer as fact. She worked such long hours that she didn’t have much time to spare for friends or boyfriends, and there were few prospects for either in Sunshine. Besides, it took a really good friend to lie for you to the cops. Neither he nor Hannah was that lucky.

  Resting his hand on her shoulder, he steered her toward the motel. “You know Mills will be back as soon as he finds out you weren’t registered at any of the motels in that area. We’ve got to have a story ready to tell him.”

  “I’ll tell him the truth.”

  “He won’t believe it.”

  She stopped at the front door and looked up at him. “Sort of the truth. I’ll tell him I was with a man.”

  It was stupid, totally irrational, but he felt a stirring of jealousy. “What man?”

  She thought for a moment, then said decisively, “David. David Martin.”

  “And when he finds no record of that name at the motels?”

  “He didn’t register under his own name. He’s married. He was afraid of his wife somehow finding out, so he used a fake name and paid cash.”

  He wondered if the sheriff would buy version number three. Maybe—if she looked ashamed enough, guilty enough. After all, she was a beautiful, healthy, young woman with the same needs as any other woman. She was surrounded by elderly or sick women and had little opportunity for sexual relationships in her daily life. She wouldn’t be the first woman to take a trip out of town for the sole purpose of sex. Hell, Sandra had done it plenty of times.

  “Where did you meet this man?”

  “At a bar.”

  “Which bar?”

  “I’ll get the phone book and find one.”

  Mick shook his head. “I think it’s a little too coincidental that both your alibi and mine involve having sex at a motel with a stranger we met in a bar.”

  With a nod, she chose a different course. “We met here last summer. He was spending the weekend at the lake, and we had a fling then. I hadn’t seen him since, but when I got a note from him saying he would be in Tulsa for the weekend and asking me to meet him, I agreed.” She shrugged. “I liked him. He was fun, and I needed some fun.”

  “Where is the note?”

  “I threw it away. I didn’t want Sylvie to see it.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Kansas. I don’t remember the town.”

  “How did you get in touch with him to accept the invitation?”

  “I didn’t. The note said he would be there. If I was interested, I could meet him at a particular restaurant at noon.”

  He nodded, reasonably hopeful. “Be sure you look up the name and address of a restaurant. Pick a popular one, one that’s guaranteed to be really busy for Saturday lunch, so the staff couldn’t be expected to remember you.”

  She started to go inside, but hesitated. “Do you think he’ll believe me?”

  She wanted reassurance. He offered the best he could. “I doubt it. But without a lie-detector test, it’ll be virtually impossible for him to prove you wrong.”

  “Unless Brad pays someone to come forward and say they saw you and me together Saturday afternoon or having breakfast together Sunday morning.”

  He wished he could tease her about having a wild imagination, but what she suggested was entirely possible. For an additional nail or two in their coffins, Brad very well might provide witnesses to their long-standing affair.

  Once again she started to go inside. Once again she stopped. “About this morning...”

  “It’s all right,” he said, even though it wasn’t. He wanted answers, explanations, insights. He wanted to know everything about her, wanted to share her most private secrets and her darkest fears.

  On the last two at least, he was pretty sure he did.

  “Sometimes I just get...”

  Overwhelmed. Frustrated. Tired of struggling, of being responsible not just for herself but for everyone around her, of giving herself 110 percent to a job she never wanted in a place she’d wanted to leave behind.

  He brushed his fingers across her cheek. “It’s all right, Hannah. Forget it.”

  For just a moment she seemed to lean into his touch. Then, with a tight smile, she went into the lobby. After one last look at the station across the road, he followed.

  “What was the sheriff doing here?”

  At first he didn’t see Sylvie behind the counter. She was so short and standing so still. How long had she been there? Long enough to see him and Hannah checking out the weeds across the road? Long enough to watch the involved conversation in which they’d made up more lies?

  Long enough to see him touch her granddaughter?

  Hannah gave him a look over her shoulder before disappearing into the laundry room. She was a coward—not that he blamed her. He’d rather answer the sheriff’s questions than Sylvie’s anytime. Still, affecting a casual air, he went to sit in front of the old lady. “He wanted to ask me a few questions about an insurance policy.” Briefly, without a hint of the renewed anger he felt showing, he covered the highlights of the conversation. Sometime in the middle of it Hannah left the lobby, pushing the big housekeeping cart in front of her.

  When he was done, Sylvie fixed a sharp gaze on him. “Did you kill your wife?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you have any theories about who did?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And have you shared these theories with Sheriff Mills?”

  “No. I don’t intend to, until I have proof.”

  “Have you shared them with my granddaughter?”

  He hesitated just an instant too long. If he lied, she would know it was a lie, and so he said nothing.

  Sylvie’s expression shifted from solemn to grim. “Don’t put that girl in danger. She’s all we’ve got.”

  He offered his hand, and she laid hers in it. It was so small, so thin. “I won’t let anyone h
urt her.” He would do anything to keep her safe. But what could he do about Brad? How could he protect her from him?

  After a moment Sylvie’s fingers curled around his, and she gave his hand a good solid squeeze. When he would have pulled away, though, she held on. “What else have you shared with my granddaughter?”

  “You put me in a difficult position, Miz Clark,” he teased. “My mother taught me to respect my elders, which sort of rules out the proper answer to your question.”

  “I’ve been disrespected before, so answer.”

  He leaned closer. “What’s between Hannah and me is none of your business.”

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She tugged her hand free and shook her finger in his face. “Don’t you make her fall for you, then get yourself sent off to prison.”

  “Believe me, staying out of prison is my top priority. Besides, can you imagine anyone making Hannah do something?” Anyone besides Brad, of course, who had succeeded only because of her devotion to her family.

  Sylvie’s expression turned sad and distant. “We made her come back here after her daddy died. We needed her help. Merrilee was beside herself with grief, and I...”

  She had grieved, too. Mothers weren’t supposed to bury their children, no matter how old those children were. Losing her son must have broken her heart, but she hadn’t had the luxury of falling apart, as Merrilee had. Someone had to be strong for the family, someone besides her teenage granddaughter.

  “I just didn’t see a way we could possibly run the place without Hannah’s help. I hated bringing her back. She’d had such plans.” Her smile was faded and regretful. “A fourth-rate motel in a one-horse town like Sunshine doesn’t have much to offer a young woman. There’s no excitement, no young people, no picture theaters, no shopping. Me, I didn’t mind. I was born here. I met my husband here, raised my son here, and I intend, God willing, to die here. Merrilee didn’t mind, either. Wherever Mark was, was fine with her. But Hannah... It’s been a hard, disappointing life for her, and she won’t be free of it until her mother, God bless her, is dead and buried.”

  Mick didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t try to make Sylvie feel better by telling her that Hannah wasn’t nearly as regretful over the way her life had gone as Sylvie was, because it just wasn’t true. He couldn’t remind her that she hadn’t had a choice in bringing Hannah back, because she was well aware of that. Not having a choice didn’t make such a decision any easier.

  “She doesn’t hate it here,” he said, not entirely sure he was right. “She just wants—”

  “To be someplace else. To be someone else.”

  “Maybe if life was easier here...”

  Sylvie answered him with a challenge. “You gonna make it easier?”

  “I could.” He could give Hannah the benefit of his construction skills, along with the use of his checkbook, and make this place the classiest motel in five states. He could advance her the money for major remodeling, one or two rooms at a time, or he could invest enough to hire some badly needed help.

  “And what would you want in return?”

  The moment’s consideration he gave her question wasn’t necessary. He knew what he wanted. “Her. Hannah.”

  “In what way? For how long?”

  “Isn’t this a conversation I should be having with her?”

  “Yes, but you haven’t, have you?”

  No, with Hannah, he hadn’t gone beyond reminding her how good the sex had been and wondering, asking, if they might ever try it again. She thought probably not. He wanted a definite yes.

  Standing up, he leaned his elbows on the counter. “I’m not making any plans for the future until I’m sure I have one. Like you said, I don’t want to go falling for Hannah, then get myself locked up in prison.”

  Even as he said it, though, he knew it might already be too late. He’d started falling the moment she’d stopped beside his table Saturday night, and he hadn’t felt solid ground under his feet since. If he had a future, one that didn’t involve prison...

  Hannah just might be it.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when Hannah approached Mick in the dining room. He was sitting in one chair, his feet propped on another, and contemplating the scene outside the plate-glass window with a distant, speculative look on his face. Pushing her hands into her hip pockets, she stepped into his line of vision and waited for him to notice her. He did so slowly, with a look that focused somewhere around her midriff, drifted lazily lower, then slowly up, slowly enough to heat her blood as it went, brushing over her breasts, up the length of her throat, finally reaching her face. Her flushed, pale and flustered face.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “That look. That...” She shrugged and felt the worn cotton of her shirt brush her sensitive nipples.

  He feigned innocence. “I just looked at you. If you didn’t want me to, you shouldn’t have stepped in front of me.”

  “Yeah, you looked at me as if...” Again she ran out of words, but this time she didn’t shrug. She didn’t move at all.

  A smile, dark, secretive and wicked, played about his mouth. “As if I know how you look under those clothes? As if I know intimately the body you work so hard at hiding? As if I’ve experienced the pleasures of your body and would like to do so again?”

  She struggled against the urge to hug her arms across her chest, struggled even harder against the urge to offer what he wanted, what she wanted, even if it would be wrong.

  And it would be wrong, wouldn’t it? She was trying to protect herself from him, wasn’t she? Hadn’t she acknowledged just this morning that he was so far out of her league that they didn’t even play the same games? He was rich. She wasn’t. He’d grown accustomed to so much better. She hadn’t. He had options in his life. She didn’t.

  He would leave here.

  She couldn’t.

  But he wanted her, and she wanted him. And loss was loss, whether she kept him at arm’s length or not.

  She managed to give him a chastening look. “Does your offer still stand—”

  “Yes.” He didn’t look at all chastened. In fact, he looked extraordinarily pleased with himself.

  “—to teach me how to repair the cracks and holes in the walls so they can be painted?”

  His smile softened and turned intimate, and she knew, damn him, that he was thinking about the paint. Morning Blush. It’s an exact match for your cheeks when you’re naked and sweaty and you’ve just—

  “All my offers still stand. Including the use of my bed until the paint fumes clear.”

  “And where would you sleep?”

  “Who’d sleep?” He let his feet hit the floor with a thud, then stood up, so fluidly unfolding his body. The man was fully dressed, in jeans and a chambray shirt, and yet the movement was purely sexual. Of course, as he’d reminded her, she knew what he looked like underneath those clothes. She knew his skin was a dozen shades darker than her own, that it was soft in places, hair-roughened in others, that she could make his muscles bunch and tighten with one lazy caress, that the lightest brush of her fingertips across his belly made his skin ripple and quiver. She knew if she unzipped his jeans and slid her hand inside, he would suck in his breath, would turn pale under the dark bronze, would catch her hand, hold it closer, swell to fit it.

  Biting back a groan, she turned away and headed for the storeroom. She gathered an armful of supplies, and Mick got the rest, then followed her outside.

  Maybe this was a bad idea, she thought, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the big window. The last thing she needed was to be alone with him in her rooms, with locks on all the doors and her bed only a few yards away. She wasn’t very good at resisting temptation. It was only shame and a fierce need to protect herself that had kept her away this long, and both could be overcome with a little seduction.

  And he was pretty damn good at seduction.

  The sun blazed overhead, blinding in a clou
dless sky. The heat made her long for a lazy day at the lake, wearing only what clothing was necessary, wading barefoot in the water, listening to the insects hum, relaxing away one long minute after another. It reminded her of childhood days at the creek out back, lying on her stomach on the bank with a cane pole dangling over the water and the dappled shade of a grand elm offering a few degrees’ coolness. It was a perfect day for renting a boat and finding an isolated cove on the lake, for stripping down for a cool dip, then baking dry on the deck. It was even more perfect for making love on the deck, naked and carefree, under the sky and the sun, daring and natural and—

  Scowling, she opened her door with more force than necessary. Sunlight fell in a merciless wedge across the room, highlighting tired, worn carpet, tired, worn furniture. All the Morning Blush in the world wouldn’t give this place any more character, any more class. But at least it would be just the tiniest bit prettier, and every look at the walls would remind her of Mick and what could have been.

  What still could be, if God and fate looked favorably on her.

  He closed the door, set his load down and looked around. Was he comparing this to his beautiful house in the city, finding cheap-motel construction lacking next to his own outstanding work, thinking of marble floors and leather couches while looking at stained twenty-year-old carpet and garage-sale finds?

  “First we need to get everything off the walls and move the furniture toward the center of the room,” he said, lifting the coffee table onto the sofa, then scooting both from the wall.

  They worked quickly and in silence, at least until Mick reached her desk. He picked up a picture frame there and studied it much the way she had studied the photos on his office wall. She didn’t join him, didn’t offer to identify everyone. He already knew her, Merrilee and Sylvie, and it was obvious the other two were her father and grandfather. After a moment he laid it down, then moved the desk. “You were a cute kid.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You still are.”

  “That’s just what every twenty-nine-year-old woman wants to hear,” she said dryly. “Thank you.”

  “Okay, let’s see... What does a woman of your advanced age want to hear?” He turned to lean against the desk while pretending to think. “How about, ‘You were a beautiful redhead, but I like you better like this’? Or maybe, ‘Last night when we got back to the motel, before I woke you, I sat in the truck and touched you—just your face—and I thought about how lovely you are and how good it felt to touch you. And I wished we could start over, without Sandra, without Brad or Elizabeth, just you and me, meeting for the first time, with no lies, no threats, nothing between us, just you and me...”’