The motel was in bad shape. He’d known that from the first time he’d seen it. But it wasn’t beyond saving. With a new roof, cooling and heating systems, carpet, furniture, bathroom and light fixtures, dining room and kitchen—and parking lot, he added as rain turned the gravel lot into a pond—the place could be as good as new. And with all those repairs or replacements, it might be cheaper to build new.
But cheaper wasn’t the point He’d done his fair share of million-dollar remodels on homes built around the turn of the century. No one had ever suggested tearing those houses down and starting again from scratch. Of course, those houses had been quality construction to start with. The Last Resort was a cinder-block motel, nothing more, nothing less. And it was Hannah’s heritage. It would be his children’s heritage.
“Want some coffee or tea?” Hannah stopped behind him, resting her hands on his shoulders, automatically giving them a squeeze or two.
“No, thanks.”
“What are you doing?”
“Making lists.” He fanned through the pages of the tablet, where he’d listed subcontractors, repairs, remodels, supplies, priorities. After this rain the roof was number one.
“You’re really serious about fixing this place up.”
Catching her hand, he pulled her into his lap. “I am. I’m really serious about you, too.”
She snuggled closer and curled her fingers around a fistful of his shirt, but didn’t say anything in response. He wished she would. Just a simple “Me, too,” would satisfy him.
Like hell it would. But it would be enough for now.
Since she didn’t say anything at all, he turned back to business. “What do you think about restoring the motel to look like exactly what it once was—a fifties-era motel and diner?”
“It’d be like stepping into a time warp.”
“People like time warps—especially when they have all the conveniences of today. They consider the fifties the good old days, when life was safer, happier, more idyllic.”
“Sounds interesting.” She sighed at the sound of her name from her mother’s quarters. Merrilee’s voice was weak—though strong enough to be heard out here—and quavery. “I’d better go. You’re welcome to join us if you want.”
He shook his head. She’d been baby-sitting Merrilee, who was having a bad day, since breakfast, coming out only briefly to help with the after-church dinner crowd. Sylvie had taken off after cleanup, going to Yates to visit friends, and Mick had settled here. He didn’t mind Merrilee when she was having one of those days, but he felt the need to get moving on the repairs and remodels as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to find himself in prison at all, but it would be worse if the work he’d promised Hannah remained undone.
She kissed him, then slid to her feet and headed for the laundry room, the shortcut into Merrilee’s rooms. At the doorway she looked back. “How serious?”
He knew immediately what she meant and grinned. “Serious enough to stay here forever.”
After a moment she nodded, turned away and closed the door quietly behind her.
He continued to look at the spot she’d been for a long time, then quietly murmured, “Serious enough to fall in love with you.”
It was crazy. He’d just taken the hard way out of a bad marriage. His present was uncertain, and he had no future, not until he was cleared in Sandra’s death. The last thing he needed was to fall in love.
Or maybe it was the first thing he needed.
Either way, he wasn’t about to question his luck. Whatever happened, he would get through it with Hannah. For Hannah.
And for all those babies they were going to have. They were going to make Sylvie a happy great-grandmother, and himself a happy man.
He’d just looked back at his lists when headlights flashed across the dining room and drew his attention outside. The car, a Grand Am that had seen better days, parked across three spaces right in front of the door, and Trey Landry climbed out. Mick laid his pen aside as the lawyer came inside, wiped his feet on the rug, then started across the dining room.
“Great day for a drive,” Mick remarked as Landry pulled off his damp jacket and wiped away the rain that dripped from his hair.
Landry muttered something that might have been a greeting, then asked, “How’s it going?”
“Well, let’s see. The sheriffs turned up a life-insurance policy on Sandra with my name forged on the application and the check. He’s also found a witness, a clerk at the motel where I stayed the past year and a half, who claims that, for the last few months, I was having an affair with a woman matching Hannah’s description. He discovered that Hannah’s alibi for last weekend doesn’t hold water, and in a misguided effort to turn his attention in the right direction, she confessed that she’s Elizabeth. Now he considers her a suspect, too. And how was your week?”
“Hannah? The blonde you were flirting with when I was here before? She’s Elizabeth?”
Mick nodded.
“And you knew that then? Of course you did. You spent the entire night having sex with her. More than likely you would recognize her even with her clothes on. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“She was being blackmailed. Telling the truth then would have hurt her, and it wouldn’t have helped me.”
“Blackmailed by whom?”
With his foot Mick pushed out the chair across from him. “Have a seat. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Landry sat down, and Mick started talking. He told the lawyer everything they knew, everything they suspected, every theory they’d considered. When he was finished, Landry sat quietly for a long time. Finally he met Mick’s gaze. “Are you willing to swear on your life that you had nothing to do with Sandra’s death?”
“Yes.”
“Are you convinced that Hannah can swear the same?”
“Yes. So...what do you think?”
“I think you two are in a world of trouble. I think you’d better stop cooperating with the sheriff. And I think Hannah needs a lawyer.”
“Can you represent her?”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Can you recommend someone?”
“Yeah, I’ll find someone first thing in the morning.” Landry leaned back in his chair. “Do you have the money for a private investigator?”
Mick nodded. “Do you think a PI can help?”
“The one I use is good. She’s resourceful, and she’s not bound by the same rules of evidence—or ethics—that lawyers and cops are. If anyone can find proof of an affair between your wife and your partner, she can. Get me the phone and credit-card statements, and I’ll turn them over to her tomorrow.”
While Landry waited, Mick retrieved the statements from his room. When he got back to the lobby, the lawyer was waiting just inside the door, watching as the rain slacked off. He accepted the files, stashed in a plastic bag to keep them dry, with one question. “Is there anything else?”
“Just one thing. Can you draw up a partnership agreement?”
“Between you and...?”
“Hannah. I’m buying half the motel.”
“Why?”
Mick grinned. “Because I like challenges. And if you can keep me out of prison, I intend to spend the rest of my life here.”
“With a woman you just met a week ago when she helped frame you on a murder charge,” Landry said flatly. “What was it? Lust at first sight, love at second?”
“You sound like a man who doesn’t have much faith in the concept of love.”
“I don’t necessarily see it as a good thing. People do crazy things for an emotion that comes and goes on a whim.” He returned to the subject. “You know, going into partnership with the woman you claim as your alibi for the time of the murder might not be such a great idea.”
“Why not? Are you planning to call her to testify?”
Landry considered it a moment. “I would’ve been happy to call Elizabeth—a stranger who has nothing to gain and presumably a lot to lose by tes
tifying—but Hannah?” He shook his head. “If I put her on the stand, the first thing the DA will do is impugn her testimony. He’ll call all the people she’s lied to about that night, and they’ll convince the jury that you and she planned and carried out the murder together. She would do you both more harm than good.”
“So what does it matter if I’ve become part owner of the Last Resort?”
Landry shrugged. “It’s your life. What are the terms of the purchase?”
Mick pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, placed there earlier for just this reason, and gave it to him. Just as Hannah and Sylvie had reacted strongly to the price he’d put on the place, so did Landry, but he didn’t say a word. He just slid the paper into the bag with the statements. “If the sheriff comes around, don’t talk to him. Tell Hannah not to talk to him, either. Give him my number and I’ll set up a time when I can be present. And don’t let him search your room or your truck for any reason. I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow.”
Mick watched him leave, then continued to gaze out. Sunshine wasn’t much of a town—a few blocks of nothing places like the motel. It couldn’t even measure up to the minimal standards of the hometown he’d been so eager to leave behind seventeen years ago. Of course, he admitted with a grin, seventeen years ago, he’d been a kid, eager to get out and experience the world, looking for something better than what he’d always known. After all those long years of searching, he’d finally found it here, in a town smaller and drearier than the one he’d left behind.
Now if he could just manage to keep it.
Hannah was in the kitchen, looking for something to munch on, when Sylvie blew into the lobby, bellowing her name with more force than Hannah had thought her grandmother capable of. Backing away from the refrigerator, she closed the door and reluctantly, fearfully, pushed the swinging door open wide.
Sylvie stood beside Mick’s table, untying the laces of a bright pink rain bonnet while her matching vinyl coat dripped water in a circle at her feet. Her face was pale, with two bright splotches of red centered high on her cheeks, and her hands were trembling. In fact, her entire body shook. Hannah had never seen her so angry, which seemed the best reason in the world to quietly slip back into the kitchen and out the back door. Who cared if it was still raining? She’d been wet before. Playing in the summer rain had been one of her favorite pastimes as a kid.
Before she could take even one small step back, though, Sylvie’s sharp blue eyes zeroed in on her, pinning her in place. “Don’t you even think about the back door, young lady. You get over here and sit down now.”
Now in that quiet, commanding voice was the equivalent of anyone else’s most furious shout. Hannah had heard it only a few times in her life, and never directed at her. She very quickly obeyed it.
Sylvie closed her eyes, breathed deeply a few times and finally managed to loosen the strings on her bonnet. She draped it over a nearby chair, hung the slicker over another, then rested her fists on her hips and gave Hannah another of those looks. “I’ve been to the ladies’ auxiliary luncheon,” she announced. “I don’t get to go every time, you know, so when I do make it, I expect to fully enjoy the companionship of my friends and acquaintances. Only there wasn’t much companionship today. Every time I turned around, someone was whispering behind her hand. Some of them didn’t even bother to whisper. They just talked right out loud, knowing I was right there to hear them. And do you know what they were talking about?”
Hannah wanted to take the cowardly way out and simply shake her head, but playing dumb never worked with Sylvie. “I imagine they were talking about Mick and me.”
“About Mick and you and the little tart Elizabeth.” Sylvie slapped the back of one hand to her forehead as if suddenly remembering. “That was redundant, wasn’t it? You are the little tart, aren’t you?”
Tart. It was a silly word, as hopelessly old-fashioned as her grandmother. Hannah had called herself worse, and so had Mick, but what should have been a laughable insult hurt worse than the others, because of its source.
“Some of them at the luncheon said that you changed the color of your hair and fixed it different, that you met him at a bar and brought him here to spend the night Some of them said there never was an Elizabeth, that she was just a story you two concocted to cover up where you really were that night. They said you were with him, all right, but not here. They said you went to the resort with him, helped him bash in his wife’s skull, then burned the place down around her. What do you say, Hannah?”
Mick looked more serious than he ever had facing the sheriff. Hannah felt more serious. After all, all the sheriff could do was arrest them Sylvie could break Hannah’s heart.
Lacing her fingers together, Hannah fixed her gaze on the napkin dispenser. Her voice came out low and unsteady. “I used one of those temporary rinses and Mom’s curling iron. I chose the name Elizabeth because I’d never known anyone by that name. I knew Mick would be in the bar, and I brought him here. I left early the next morning before he woke up. Before you were up.”
All the anger seemed to rush out of Sylvie, leaving her looking tinier, older, frailer. Mick pulled out a chair and guided her into it before returning to his own chair. “He was a stranger,” Sylvie said, her voice heavy with revulsion, flat with disillusionment. “You spent the night with a stranger, and you lied to everyone about it. You let the sheriff suspect him of murder when you knew he was innocent. You lied to the sheriff. You lied to me.”
“She didn’t have much choice, Sylvie,” Mick said, earning a scornful look for his efforts.
“You stay out of this. You’re not a part of this family yet. I don’t know why you would want to be, after what she’s done. I don’t know how you can even stand to look at her.”
Hannah closed her eyes on the tears that welled. When Mick took her hand, wrapping his fingers tightly around hers, she blindly held on.
“I won’t stay out of this,” he said hotly, and Hannah opened her eyes to see the anger that turned his own face a deep bronze. “What happened that night between Hannah and me is nobody’s business but ours. You don’t have a clue why she did it, and until you do know, you’re in no position to judge her. If you do, then you’re no better than those spiteful old biddies you let tell lies about her.”
“I didn’t ‘let’ anyone tell lies,” Sylvie said, her voice sharp with righteous indignation. “I almost poked Annabella Thompson in the nose. I would’ve, too, if Earlene hadn’t gotten in the way.”
“You didn’t poke Earlene, did you?”
“No!” A chuckle escaped before Sylvie could stop it. She clamped her hand over her mouth, then, in control again, fixed her hard gaze on Hannah. “Why did you do it? I want to know everything.”
Hannah looked at Mick, who nodded and held her hand more tightly. Drawing strength from him, she took a deep breath, then spoke in a rush, telling her grandmother everything. When she finished, the room remained silent for a long time, until Sylvie’s deep sigh echoed.
“I knew Brad Daniels was no good. I knew he couldn’t be trusted to treat you right.” Sylvie stared off into the distance. “When he asked you to do this thing for him—to help this woman cheat her soon-to-be ex-husband, whom you didn’t know from Adam—why didn’t you come to me?”
“And what would you have told me?”
“Not to do it! Someone else’s divorce is none of your business! You don’t help somebody mess up somebody else’s life just because you owe the first somebody some money!” Then her ire vanished, and she grudgingly offered a more realistic answer. “I’d’ve told you to get him so drunk that he’d pass out as soon as you got to the room and wouldn’t wake up until the next day.”
“I thought about that,” Hannah admitted. “But he’d had a couple of drinks, and he wouldn’t have any more.”
“Just your luck. All the drunks in bars, and you get the one man who’s not. Not a good thing in someone you’re trying to frame. Not a bad thing in someone you’re planning a future wi
th.” Sylvie patted Mick’s hand affectionately. “You are still planning a future, aren’t you? You don’t hold this against her?”
“She did what Brad forced her to do. Believe me, I know how persuasive he is. Besides, it’s not her fault I’m in this mess. If she had refused, Brad would have found someone else, and if I hadn’t been as receptive to her as I was to Hannah, it wouldn’t have mattered. At worst, I would have gone with her and would be in exactly the same situation. At best, I would have turned her down, gone back to my room and spent the night alone. I still wouldn’t have an alibi.”
“Would you have been as receptive to another woman as you were to Hannah?” Sylvie asked slyly.
He gave Hannah a look that warmed her from the inside out. “No. She wasn’t the first woman who tried to pick me up. But she was the first who succeeded.”
“You two need a plan.”
“What we need is a confession from Brad,” Mick said dryly.
“Well, you’re not likely to get that—at least, not so it would matter. When everything’s going exactly as he planned, why in the world would he confess? Not unless he planned to kill you as soon as he finished admitting to everything.”
Hannah wasn’t pleased that Sylvie agreed so readily with Mick on this. She knew Brad, knew how he liked to show off. She also knew how much he liked having her at his mercy. If she convinced him that she was desperate for a way out of this nightmare her life had become, if she persuaded him that she would do whatever she could to protect herself and her family—even become the state’s best witness against Mick—he very well might talk to her. He might tell her all the little details that only the killer would know, so she could use them against Mick.
In fact, there was no might about it. He would tell her. She was convinced of it. After all, she wasn’t the one he wanted most to get rid of. He’d made her a suspect only because she’d betrayed him. If it meant a guaranteed conviction for Mick, Brad would gladly change her from suspect to key witness.
The Overnight Alibi Page 21