The Overnight Alibi

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Good. Let’s have a seat over here. You, too, Mr. Reilly.” As he walked to the nearest table, the sheriff grinned. “A slice of Miz Clark’s banana cream pie would sure taste good about now, with a cup of coffee.”

  “I’ll get it,” Mick volunteered, detouring behind the counter.

  “You look pretty comfortable back there for a guest,” . Mills commented.

  “I’ve been here almost a week with nothing to do.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you asked me to stay around until further notice. It’s a little hard to work when your work’s two hours away and you’re not supposed to go there.”

  “So rather than sit around bored, you’ve started helping out. Making repairs, serving meals, running errands. Awfully generous for a stranger, isn’t he, Hannah?”

  Her face turned pink, and she was sure the sheriff noticed. “Yes, he is. Then again, some people just don’t like being idle. Sylvie’s one of them. She’s always got to be doing something.”

  Mick served Mills, ignored the deputies and took a seat. She ignored them, too, and waited for their boss to get to the point of this visit—her lies. She wished she hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning, because her stomach was queasy and unsettled, and if she got much more nervous, she just might lose it all.

  “I’m telling you, Hannah, Miz Clark makes the best pies I’ve ever had. Is she teaching you so you can take over when she’s gone?”

  Hannah hated the careless way he talked about Sylvie’s eventual death and answered stonily, “My crusts aren’t as flaky.”

  He took another bite, washed it down with coffee, then fixed his stare on her. “You know why I’m here. I had my girl call every motel within two miles of where you said you stayed last weekend, and no one had any record of you being there.”

  Grateful for the tabletop that hid her hands, she squeezed them tightly, trying to force every bit of fear and guilt out of her face and into her fingers. “I didn’t say I registered under my own name.”

  “You didn’t say you registered under somebody else’s name, either. What was it?”

  “I don’t know. Actually, Sheriff—” she glanced at Mick and each of the deputies and felt her face grow warmer “—I was with someone.”

  “A man.” He sounded skeptical. “What would be this man’s name?”

  “David Martin.”

  “Kind of a common name, isn’t it? There must be fifteen or twenty of ’em in the Tulsa phone book alone.”

  “He’s not from Tulsa. He lives in some little town in Kansas.” Without waiting to be asked, she launched into the rest of her story, sticking to the facts she had rehearsed with Mick yesterday, embellishing nothing.

  When she was finished, the sheriff looked at her a long time before finally speaking. “Let me see if I got this straight. You met this man with a pretty common name last summer and had an affair with him. Now I’m betting he wasn’t a guest here where his name and address would be a matter of record. That would be too easy—but that’s beside the point. After not seeing or hearing from him for a year, he sends you a note saying, ‘I’ll be in Tulsa without my wife. I want to have sex with you again. If you’re interested, meet me at the Red Lobster on 51st Street at noon Saturday.’ You destroy the note to keep your seventy-someyear-old granny from suspecting that you’re having an affair, and you go and have a wild weekend with him. Then he goes back home to his wife, and you come back here, still not knowing where he’s from, what name he registered under, what motel you spent those three days at or even what room you were in.” He paused, then quietly finished, “Uh-huh.”

  “Must’ve been a real wild weekend,” one of the depunties said with a snort.

  Now her face was blazing. “Pardon me for not paying more attention, Sheriff,” she said stiffly. “If I’d known I would need an alibi when I got back, I would have been prepared.”

  Without responding, Mills turned his attention to Mick. “Let’s look at your alibi for a minute. Elizabeth. That was her name, wasn’t it? How old did you say she was?”

  “Late twenties.” Mick sounded as defensive as she had. Lord help them, they were so bad at misleading the authorities that they were going to be the sheriff’s best help in convicting them.

  “And she was a redhead. Natural?”

  “How would I know?”

  Again the deputy snorted, then hastily put on a straight face at the sheriff’s frown.

  “You saw her naked, didn’t you?” Mills asked.

  “The room was dark.”

  “Was that at her request or yours?”

  “It wasn’t anyone’s request. We went to the room. It was dark. We didn’t bother turning the lights on.”

  “How tall did you say Elizabeth was?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  The sheriff pulled a notebook from his pocket and flipped it open. “I kinda figured you wouldn’t, so I brought my notes. Let’s see...only name she gave was Elizabeth, she was in her late twenties, five-seven, 120 pounds, long curly red hair and blue eyes.” Leaning back in his chair, Mills gave Hannah a long look. “Stand up for a minute, would you, Hannah?”

  Swallowing hard and hoping her legs could support her, she did so.

  “What do you think, Billy? She’s about five-seven, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, sir. About 120 pounds, too. Long hair. Definitely blue eyes.”

  “So, except for the curly and red part, she matches your description of Elizabeth to a T, doesn’t she, Mr. Reilly? Of course, curly and red can be done and undone real easy these days. I went home one day, and my daughter’s hair was purple. Next morning it was blond again.” He looked expectantly from Mick to Hannah. “So...is there anything either of you would like to tell me?”

  The silence in the room was a perfect example of deafening, Mick thought, though he was half-surprised his heartbeat wasn’t as audible to everyone else as it was to him. Looking at the stunned expression Hannah wore, he was completely surprised he couldn’t hear her heart thudding.

  Anything they would like to tell him? Mick would love to tell him to go to hell. Of course, to a man like Mills, that would be akin to an admission of guilt.

  Keeping his hands motionless and limp on the table, he tried desperately to think of another lie, but he could barely put a coherent thought together. He couldn’t think of anything original or halfway believable. All he could think of was the truth and how bad it would sound at this late date.

  “Well?”

  He glanced at Hannah, who looked utterly shocked. In making up her story, they had never considered that the sheriff might guess the truth about Elizabeth. They hadn’t given the man enough credit.

  He didn’t have a clue what to say.

  “Will it affect your answer any to know that the night clerk over at the Lakeside Motel in Yates said you’ve had a pretty, young blond woman making regular all-night visits to your room for the past few months?”

  At last he found his voice and flatly denied the sheriff’s assertion. “That’s not true. In the eighteen months I lived there, the only women who ever set foot in that room were my wife and the housekeeping staff.”

  “According to the clerk, a woman matching Hannah’s description was over there three, four nights a week since sometime in April. Driving a little blue car. You drive a little blue car, don’t you, Hannah?”

  She sat stiffly, unable to answer. Mick spoke, instead. “The clerk is lying.”

  “And why would he do that?”

  Because Brad paid him to. He’d threatened to make Hannah a suspect, and he’d started by yanking her alibi out from under her. Now he’d added another layer of suspicion. No doubt, when the sheriff questioned him next, he would heap on more with his manufactured tale of a relationship between her and Mick.

  “I’m waiting, Mr. Reilly. Why would this clerk—an upstanding member of the community, a hardworking man with no connection whatsoever to this case and no desire other than to see justice done—make up a l
ie like that?”

  “Maybe he’s not so upstanding. Maybe you just haven’t seen the connection.”

  “Maybe. And maybe he’s got nothing to hide. Maybe you do.” Mills’s gaze flickered over Hannah. “Maybe you both do.”

  Mick stared at the table, not trusting himself to look at either Hannah or the sheriff.

  Mills turned his attention to her. “Hannah, I’ve known your family all my life, and I just can’t believe you’d get tied up with something like murder. If you know something about this case, you need to tell us. Anything at all, Hannah.”

  “You’re right, Sheriff.” She drew a deep breath, and color slowly seeped back into her face. Mick kicked her under the table, tried to warn her, to catch her eye, but she was rigidly fixed on Mills. “I am Elizabeth. I’m—”

  “Hannah!” Mick said sharply, catching her hand, making her look at him. She could take back her words, could say it was just a lie. He would say it was just a lie.

  “Mick, he’s setting us up.” Her voice was taut, her eyes intense. “If we wait any longer to ask for help, it’ll be too late.”

  “It already is too late. He’s not going to believe us.”

  “We won’t know that until we try, will we?” After a long still moment, she turned back to the sheriff. “I’m the woman who picked Mick up in the bar. I brought him back here. I was gone when he woke up the next morning. He was here all that night. He never went near the resort. He didn’t have anything to do with Sandra’s murder.”

  Mills looked more serious than ever. There wasn’t a hint of the satisfaction Mick had expected to see. “How can you be so sure of that?”

  “Because I was with him. And because I know who killed her. It was the same man who bribed your motel clerk to lie. The man who blackmailed me into keeping Mick occupied Saturday night, then leaving him without an alibi. The man who left me without an alibi. The man who’s been pushing your investigation toward Mick from the very beginning. The man who stood to gain far more from Sandra’s death than Mick did.”

  “And who is this mystery man?”

  Hannah looked at Mick, giving him the opportunity to answer, and he did so heavily. “My partner. Brad Daniels.”

  Mills sat back, hanging one arm over the back of the chair, and studied first one, then the other. “Brad Daniels,” he repeated. “Of the manufacturing, industry, high-finance, blue blood, Social Register Danielses. And what would be his motive for killing your wife?”

  “Getting rid of me. Getting control of the company. Getting out from under the resort. Staying out of bankruptcy court. A million dollars.” Mick shrugged. “Take your pick.”

  “A million doll—From your wife’s life-insurance policy. It gets paid to the company, and if you’re in prison for her murder and he’s the sole owner of the company, then he’s the sole beneficiary.” Mills nodded thoughtfully. “Interesting. So, Hannah, if you spent Saturday night here, where were you the rest of the weekend?”

  “At the Daniels cabin on the lake.”

  “And if we go there, we’ll find...?”

  “A place that looks as unused as room 17 did when you checked it out. But I was there. I swear I was.”

  “A few days ago you swore you were at a girlfriend’s in Tulsa. Yesterday you swore you were alone at a motel. This morning you just said you were with a man, and now you’re swearing you were fifteen miles from here. You see the problem I have with believing you, Hannah?”

  Her expression was as dismal as Mick had ever seen. He tightened his fingers around hers and drew the sheriffs attention his way. “You’re planning to talk to Brad about this claim of an affair, aren’t you?” He took Mills’s shrug as a yes. “I’ll bet you Sandra’s insurance money that he tells you—with great regret, of course—that yes, I was having an affair with Hannah, that he’d known all along but he’d kept quiet about it because he was afraid it would make things look worse for me. And if you tell him about Hannah’s claim that she spent last weekend at his cabin, he’ll deny it. He’ll say the cabin hasn’t been used in months, that the gas, electricity and water have been turned off. He’ll invite you to see for yourself, even tell you that the key’s under the doormat.”

  “But you don’t have proof of any of this, do you?” Mills asked. “As for your bet, Brad Daniels is your partner and friend. Of course he wouldn’t want to volunteer any information that would be so damning against you. And if Hannah here used his cabin without his knowing, of course he would tell me it hadn’t been used in months. Your story works both ways, Mr. Reilly—with him setting you up and with you setting him up. Considering who he is and that the dead woman was your wife and that he’s been most cooperative and that you were involved in a nasty divorce, I have to say that right now I’d tend to believe him.”

  “What’s your theory, Sheriff?” he asked sarcastically. “Rich people don’t kill? Wealthy businessmen don’t commit crimes? How do you think a great many of them got wealthy in the first place?”

  “Brad Daniels was born into his money.”

  “And his greedy effort to get more cost him a fortune. He needed to get rid of the resort, and he wanted to get rid of me.”

  “So why kill your wife? Why not just kill you and leave your body in the resort while it burned?”

  “Stage a suicide? No one who knew me ever would have believed it. An accidental fire in an unoccupied building? Very difficult to pull off. But setting me up for a murder?” His smile was cool. “Piece of cake. All he needed was the right beautiful woman. The rest was easy.”

  Mills studied them awhile, his gaze dropping more than once to their clasped hands, then he slapped the table as he stood up. “Interesting theory. Kind of out there, but interesting. I’ll look into it.”

  Mick wouldn’t hold his breath waiting.

  The sheriff and his deputies were on their way out the door as Sylvie was coming in. They greeted her, and she turned to watch them leave before approaching the table where Mick and Hannah still sat, no longer touching. “What did they want?”

  “To prove that I killed my wife and to send me away for a long, long time.” He rubbed his neck to ease the tension there. “Mills just had a few more questions he wanted answers to.”

  “You’ve hired yourself a lawyer, haven’t you? Let him answer their questions.” Sylvie stood looking down at Hannah, who was still pale and staring off into the distance. “You okay?”

  She blinked, breathed, then gave her grandmother a smile. “I’m fine. Did you get what you needed in town?”

  “Get what I needed?” She patted her gray curls. “If you can’t tell, I reckon what I need is a new hairstyle.”

  “Oh. Yes, I forgot. Your hair appointment.”

  Sylvie sat down and wrapped her fingers around Hannah’s wrist. “I’ve had a hair appointment every Saturday morning for forty-five years, and you forgot? What’s wrong, Hannah? Are you worried about him?”

  Surprising Mick, Hannah reached for and squeezed his hand. “I have faith in the justice system.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Sylvie said. “If I were you, son, I’d clean out my bank account and be on my way. By the time Mills decided to arrest me, I’d be so far gone he would never, ever catch up.”

  “I can’t run away.”

  “Sure, you can. You tell the sheriff you have business to take care of at home and you’ll be gone overnight. Once you get there, you get all the cash you can, take anything worth selling and hit the road.”

  Ruefully he shook his head. Even when he’d suggested it to Hannah last night, he hadn’t been half-serious, though he’d said he was. He had never run from trouble in his life. It had been a nice thought, living with Hannah someplace where trouble couldn’t stalk them, but that was all. Just a thought.

  Before Sylvie could continue, he changed the subject. “We need to settle the terms of our business arrangement so the lawyer can draw up the papers. What’s the market value for a half interest in the Last Resort?”

  “Figure it out fo
r yourself,” Sylvie replied. “What you see is what you get. We have a lot of expenses. We’re badly in need of major repairs. We have no assets. We operate on a wish and a prayer. Speaking as the original owner, chief pastry chef and bottle washer, I’d say the place is worth about fifty dollars. Wouldn’t you agree, Hannah?”

  “If you’re feeling generous.”

  Mick looked from one to the other, then shook his head. He named his own price, plus additional funds for repairs, and both women burst out laughing. It was a substantial amount of money—particularly for a business operating on a wish and a prayer—but it seemed a bargain to him. They would get the cash, and he would get them. A home. A place to belong. People to belong to.

  “No cash,” Hannah suggested. “Just take care of the repairs.”

  “You need operating capital.”

  “You don’t need to take on that kind of debt. You might have major expenses of your own before long.”

  “No one sells half a business in exchange for repairs.”

  “No one buys half a business that requires the kind of repairs this one needs.”

  He looked at her for a long time, at the thin line of her mouth, the stubborn set of her jaw, the unyielding look in her blue eyes, and he grinned. “You know, darlin’, you could go away and let Sylvie and me take care of this.”

  “Sylvie’s not the owner. I am.”

  “She’s your business adviser.”

  “That I am,” Sylvie agreed. “I’ve been teaching her about the motel business since she was just out of diapers. I imagine I’ll be teaching you, too, and I hope to live long enough to teach my great-grandchildren. Keep that in mind, son, before you get yourself locked up in prison.”

  Hannah’s face flushed scarlet, and she stood up, gathering the sheriff’s empty dishes. “I have work to do even if you two don’t, so if you’ll excuse me...”

  Once she was gone, Sylvie sighed. “I wish you could take her away from here.”

  “I offered. She doesn’t want to go.”

  “It’s her mother and me, isn’t it? We’ve kept her tied down so long that she doesn’t know how to live without us.”