The Overnight Alibi

by Marilyn Pappano

  “It’s that,” he acknowledged. “And this place. You and Merrilee are family. This is home. Leaving your family and your home is tough. Believe me, I’ve done it.”

  “Didn’t you ever want to go back?”

  “Sometimes. But I thought Sandra and I would have our own family, and she never would have moved to West Texas. Then that didn’t work out, but I had the business.”

  “And now that’s gone, but you’ve got Hannah. Do you intend to marry her?”

  He hadn’t let himself plan much beyond selling the house he’d built for Sandra, buying into the motel and being with Hannah. His future was too uncertain. But in a perfect world, one without suspicion and doubts, without murder charges and prison sentences and Brad Daniels, would he marry Hannah?

  In a heartbeat.

  He looked at Sylvie, waiting expectantly, and answered, “If I don’t go to prison, if she’ll have me, yes, ma’am, I do.”

  Sandra’s house—Hannah couldn’t bring herself to think of it as Mick’s—sat brightly lit in the warm night. It was impressive, absolutely beautiful, but she still didn’t like it. She would still rather not set foot inside the door, though she doubted Mick would agree to let her wait in the truck while he spent an hour or two inside looking for something to connect Sandra to Brad.

  He parked near the side door, picked up the mail he’d taken from the box outside the gate, then pulled her out of the truck after him. Inside the house, after switching on more lights, he led her to a room at the back. Uncurtained French doors topped with arched windows opened onto a brick patio, where steps led to a pool, then to a broad green lawn that stretched into darkness. The pool was long, rectangular, a pretty shimmery blue that invited a late-night swim.

  She preferred a moonlit lake.

  Turning from the windows, she took a look around. This office was more like Brad’s—elegant, beautifully appointed, lots of leather and gorgeous dark paneling. She felt as if she was in the domain of a high-powered attorney—one she couldn’t afford. “Nice office.”

  “Sandra’s interior designer did it. She refused to have anything held together with duct tape in the house.” He sat down in a plush chair of brown leather, the kind that looked softer than a cloud and twice as puffy. There was a matching sofa against one wall and an armchair against another.

  “You’ll miss all this.”

  He looked up from the mail he was sorting. “I built this house to satisfy Sandra’s need to flaunt our recent good fortune. I never wanted anything this ostentatious. I promise you, darlin’, I won’t miss any of it. I haven’t even lived here for a year and a half. I never felt at home here.”

  “And you can feel at home at the motel.”

  “I can. I do. But...” He held his hand out. When she took it, he drew her around the desk and onto his lap. “Someday I’d like to build you a house somewhere nearby.”

  “Nothing like this.”

  “No. It would be two stories, white, with dark green shutters and a black door, and it would look as if it had been there a hundred years. It would have a deep porch that goes all the way across the front and wraps around both sides, and a porch swing and big brick fireplaces in the living room and your bedroom. The floors would be heart of pine, and the dining room would be big enough to seat all the children you’ll have someday and all their children. There would be a bay window in the living room, where you would put the Christmas tree every year. There would be a room for Merrilee, if she ever wanted it, and one for Sylvie, if she ever needed it, and lots of room for babies.”

  “Sounds perfect,” she murmured, and it did. “But where are these babies and grandbabies going to come from if I live there alone?”

  “Not alone.” He brushed her hair back and left a lazy, sweet kiss beneath her ear. “With me. If I—”

  He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. Cupping his face between her palms, she kissed his mouth, then wriggled out of his arms and to her feet. “Then we’d better find something to get ourselves out of trouble, because I always did have a dream about a pretty white house with a porch and babies.” She circled to the other side of the desk for safety and sat down. “What are you looking for?”

  “Phone bills, credit-card bills, anything that might somehow connect Sandra to Brad. Even after I moved out, I always paid the bills and kept all the records in this desk.”

  “Could you talk to her friends? Was there someone she would have confided in?”

  “Not if Brad told her not to. He had more to lose with an affair becoming public knowledge than she did. Besides, her friends were her friends. They didn’t like me, and they wouldn’t talk to me, especially now, believing I killed her.”

  He handed Hannah a stack of file folders, and she flipped through them to find neatly organized stacks of credit-card statements, one card per folder, each statement in chronological order. “No doubt about it. You’re handling the paperwork at the motel.”

  Flipping through his own folder, he grinned. “You like my filing system?”

  “It’s amazing.” She returned the grin. “You’ll hate mine. It involves two-foot-high stacks on the bookcase.” Falling silent, she turned her attention to the statements. The credit limit on this particular card was higher than her income for the past two years, and the itemized list of charges for the past month filled more than four pages. Restaurants, department stores, jewelry stores, car rentals, gift shops—“You have a pen and paper?”

  He did. She made a few notes, moved to the previous statement and added a few more. After going back six months on that particular card, she moved to the next folder. Across the desk Mick was making notes, too, and wearing a frown. He had phone records and apparently wasn’t too pleased with what he was finding.

  Finally he sat back in the chair with a brooding look and waited until she closed the last file. “Well?”

  She read through the list of items that had interested her—airline tickets, car rentals and shopping sprees in Dallas two months ago, in Houston a few weeks later, in Kansas City only three weeks ago. Interestingly hotel charges were missing.

  Tapping his pen on the desk pad, he said flatly, “Brad was in Dallas on business two months ago—talking to a potential buyer for the resort. He met another one in Houston after that, and he went to Kansas City on family business early this month.” He dropped the pen and picked up a stack of bills. “I have phone-card calls from Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and Brad’s house at the lake. Sandra could never go anywhere for more than a few hours without checking her messages,” he said dryly. “The bills for her cellular phone show three to four calls a week to Brad’s house at the lake and his cellular. This latest bill covers up to a few days before she died. In the two weeks before she died, she started calling him three to four times a day. There are also a number of calls to his pager, followed every time by an incoming call that usually lasted awhile.”

  “Almost as if...”

  “As if what?”

  “They were planning something.”

  The thought had already occurred to him. She could see the evidence in his grim expression. Did that make it worse, she wondered, to suspect that not only had his partner been willing to frame him for murder, but his wife had helped? It must. Not loving him and betraying him with her affairs were one thing, but deliberately setting out to destroy his life... That was so much colder.

  “Sandra’s cooperation would explain my signature on the life-insurance policy. She used to sign my name to everything back when it was just the two of us. So...Sandra and Brad planned the setup together. She helped him get the life-insurance policy.”

  “That would explain the check, too,” she said, almost to herself. At Mick’s quizzical look, she explained. “When I first heard about Sandra’s murder, I called Brad. I didn’t realize he was behind it, and I told him I had to talk to the sheriff, to tell him the truth so you wouldn’t be implicated. That was when Brad threatened to frame me, too. He said that if I made any effort to clear you, he woul
d turn over to the sheriff a carbon from a check written the day before Sandra’s death. It was on your account, to me from you, for ten thousand dollars; and the purpose, according to his theory, was to buy my testimony for your alibi.”

  “So Sandra signed that for him, too.”

  “And she showed up at the resort to provoke you into making a public threat.”

  “But she damn well wouldn’t have met him there that night to let him kill her.” His voice turned sardonic, and his expression matched. “That would have been counter-productive.”

  “Right,” Hannah agreed. “But she might have gone to help him start the fire. She might have believed the frame was for arson and only arson.”

  “Not if she forged my signature on a life-insurance policy on herself. She must have known that for the policy to pay, she had to be dead.”

  “Or they had to fake her death. They would set the fire, she would leave her car there, and then she would disappear. Brad would remain behind and convince the authorities that she had died in the fire.”

  “And how would he do that when there was no body?”

  “Maybe he convinced her that the fire would burn so hot that a body would be destroyed. After all, they cremate people all the time.”

  “Yeah, in a crematorium, where the body is exposed to extremely high temperatures for an extended period of time. Even then, some bones survive. There’s no way this fire would get that hot.”

  “Then maybe he told her he would acquire a body from someplace else—an unclaimed body from a morgue. Maybe she thought he intended to kill some homeless person in her place.” She gestured impatiently. “He didn’t have to have a perfect plan, Mick. He just had to fool Sandra. If she trusted him enough to get involved in his scam in the first place, she would have trusted him to handle the police and all the problems afterward. She would have believed that she would be waiting somewhere for him to join her with the insurance money and a wedding ring.”

  “Which would explain the suitcases, the clothes, the jewelry.”

  Hannah nodded.

  “And all that is either at Brad’s house, at the bottom of the lake or, most likely, destroyed in the fire.”

  “The suitcases and the clothes, probably. But being the greedy bastard that he is, do you think it’s possible he kept the jewelry?”

  “I doubt it. There were some nice pieces, but nothing terrifically expensive. Certainly nothing worth risking getting caught. Besides, what would he do with them? Hock them? Give them to his next girlfriend? Save them for his future wife?”

  The idea made her shiver with revulsion, but she wasn’t convinced Brad was above such an act.

  Mick left the desk, paced the room, then settled on the couch. He leaned his head back, his eyes closed, then swung his legs onto the cushions. “We’re no better off than we were before. We know more, but we still can’t prove anything.”

  Hannah joined him, sitting on the edge of the cushion, resting her arm across his middle. “We’re getting there,” she disagreed. “It’s slow going, but we’ll find the proof.”

  “Maybe Sylvie was right. Maybe I should get the hell out of Dodge while I’m still a free man.”

  “That wouldn’t be the end of it. If Mills can’t pin it on you, he’ll make do with me. You’ll lose, I’ll lose, but Brad will be a richer, freer man.” She rubbed her palm across his stomach, lazily back and forth, while contemplating her life alone if Mick went on the run. It was too bleak to consider, and so she didn’t. She turned her attention to something much more interesting, much more satisfying. “When was the last time you had any fun in this house?”

  His eyes still closed, he grinned. “The day I wired the chandelier in the entry.”

  She thought of the high ceiling and the marble floor below—far below. “And why were you thirty feet up in the air wiring the chandelier? Didn’t you have electricians to do that?”

  “I do a little bit of everything. It helps me to know that I’m getting quality work from my subcontractors. It also helps with the bidding process and earns me a little respect.”

  “And what if you’d fallen?”

  “The floor would’ve broken a fall.”

  She toyed with the button that secured his jeans. “The floor would have broken your neck, too, along with every other bone in your body.”

  “And Sandra would have been a merry rich widow.”

  Instead, she was dead, and Hannah was considering seducing her husband in her house. The thought sent shivers down her spine. Leaving the button alone, she curved her fingers around his side, tucking the tips between his ribs and the leather. “How can we prove that Brad was having an affair with her?”

  “Without the sheriff’s help, I don’t know that we can. I could tell him that Brad was in those cities the same time Sandra was, but he’d probably say it was just coincidence. We know she didn’t charge a hotel bill, and she never paid cash for anything, but we can’t prove that she stayed with him. We can’t even prove that she talked to him in all those dozens of calls. About the only thing we can prove is that she’s dead.”

  After a long grim silence, he finally opened his eyes and grinned. “Want to climb up here on top of me and make a little fun of our own before we leave?”

  Though that had been her original intent when she’d sat down, she shook her head. “Let’s go home. It would be more fun there.”

  He slid the records they’d combed through into a briefcase, then they left the way they’d come in. As the electronic gate closed behind them, she took one last long look at the house. Unless it was to help Mick pack, she would never come back here again. She was glad.

  They were halfway home before she twisted in the seat to face him. “What if I talk to Brad?”

  “And get him to confess everything into a conveniently hidden tape recorder?” Mick sounded as if he would be amused if he wasn’t so scornful of the idea. “Darlin’, you’ve seen too much television. He’s in complete control. His plan is working perfectly. Why in hell would he confess anything now?”

  “Because he likes to brag. He’s already said things to me over the phone that implicate him. If I can get him to repeat them...”

  Mick shook his head emphatically. “He said those things because he thought you were scared senseless. Now that he knows you’re with me, there’s no way he’s going to tell you anything.”

  “But, Mick, this could be our best chance.”

  “Best chance at what? Getting you killed?” He took her hand, squeezing it tightly. “Promise me you’ll stay away from him, Hannah.”

  She stared down, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

  “Hannah?”

  Still she said nothing.

  He skidded to a stop on the shoulder, loosened her seat belt and pulled her across the seat to him. “Damn it, Hannah, he’ll kill you if he thinks you’re a threat. Too many people depend on you—Ruby and Earlene, your mother, Sylvie...me. We can’t lose you. I can’t lose you. Promise me you’ll stay away from Brad.”

  She swallowed hard because she knew she was about to make a promise she might not keep, and she pressed her face against his throat to keep him from seeing it in her eyes. “I promise.”

  He exhaled heavily. Relieved? Temporarily satisfied? After a time he let her go, but not all the way across the seat. He fastened the center lap belt over her hips, then rested his hand possessively on her thigh. They drove the rest of the way home like that.

  There were a half-dozen cars parked at the other end of the lot. It was a good night for the Last Resort. With Mick’s help and his money, they would soon have plenty of good nights. With his presence, she acknowledged, all her nights would be good, whether there was even a single guest in the place.

  “Are you tired?” she asked as they stepped onto the sidewalk.

  “Not really.”

  “There’s a place I’d like to show you. Just let me change shoes.” She went into her room, traded sandals for loafers, grabbed a quilt, a flashlig
ht and a few other necessities, then rejoined him outside. The moon was bright enough to make the flashlight unneeded until they moved into the heavy-growth woods fifty feet behind the motel. Even there the long-unused path was easy to follow as it made a straight run to the creek bank and the old bridge her father had built.

  On the other side the trees were sparse and had been planted in the neat rows of an orchard. She walked between two tall spreading apple trees, turned in a slow circle, then faced Mick. “When I was a little girl, I used to dream about having a house here, where I could walk out in the front yard and pick an apple, a pear or a peach—” she gestured to each type of tree “—or go a few feet farther and wade, swim or fish. This was my favorite place to play, to read, to dream. This was where I came after my grandfather’s funeral, after my father’s funeral, after I realized that, like it or not, I was home to stay. This is a special place.”

  “Then this is where we’ll build our house.”

  Not your house, but ours. She couldn’t imagine anything she wanted more than a future with him, with Sylvie and Merrilee and babies filling their house and their hearts.

  Well, just one thing.

  With his help, she spread the quilt over the tall grass and stepped out of her shoes. She removed the condoms from her pocket—the few necessary items she’d picked up—and tossed them on the quilt, then undressed, dropping her shorts here, panties there, shirt on top. The whole time, Mick watched her from the opposite end of the quilt with a half smile and evidence of serious arousal.

  Naked, she walked to him, kissed his jaw, his throat, removed his shirt. She helped him with his shoes, his jeans, the condom, then followed him onto the quilt.

  This had always been a special place, she thought as she took him deep inside her body.

  Now it was even more so.

  Chapter 9

  Sunday afternoon the sky opened up, swallowing the motel in a deluge of gray rain and grayer skies. Mick helped Hannah check the rooms for leaks, putting out buckets where necessary—and too many places it was necessary. After changing into dry clothes, he returned to the dining room with a legal pad and pen, made himself comfortable and began making notes.