The Overnight Alibi

by Marilyn Pappano

  Brad pulled right up to the yellow police tape, then shut off the engine. “Let’s look around while we talk.”

  Her muscles were so quivery that she wasn’t sure her legs could support her, but when he unlocked the doors, she managed to climb out. She had changed into jeans before she’d left and pulled on a windbreaker. Now she adjusted the jacket over her right front pocket to offer the tape recorder protection from the drizzling rain.

  Brad came around the car, took a firm grip on her arm again and pulled her underneath the yellow tape and onto a walkway that led toward the main entrance. “It would have been a beautiful place, Hannah. It would have brought in people from all over the country. It would have been one of the top resorts anywhere.”

  Surreptitiously she reached into her pocket and pushed the record button. “Then why did you burn it down?”

  He gave her a look as they crossed the driveway, then climbed a set of blackened steps to the foundation. An unpleasant smoky smell lingered over the place as if it had seeped into the concrete, the stone, the steel. Even once the demolition was completed and all these tons of rubble had been disposed of elsewhere, that smell would remain in the soil, the trees and anything that dared to grow here. It was the smell of destruction. Of sickness. Of death.

  “This was the lobby. There were the elevators. This was the bar. This was an atrium.” He pulled her over and around sodden black lumps until finally they reached a place where the damage was minimal. Millions of shards of glass littered the tile floor. Soot smudged the stone walls. Ash and debris were scattered all over, but for the most part, the single-story room was in good shape. “This is the poolside restaurant.”

  This was where Sandra had died.

  Hannah gave the room a more intense look. Had Sandra stood here beside the stone bar? Had she walked over to the glass wall, turning her back on Brad for one fatal moment? Was that a bloodstain there on the floor? Had she died there, less than five feet from where Hannah now stood? The thought made her shiver.

  Brad strolled around the perimeter of the room, paying the rain no notice. Dressed in khakis and a bloodred polo shirt, with deck shoes and a tailored windbreaker, he looked ready for a sunny afternoon on an obscenely expensive sailboat. He didn’t look dressed to kill.

  Circling around behind the bar, he rested his hands on the surface. The base was a solid slab of granite, rough cut, but the top was polished smooth and gleamed in the rain. “What is it you want to talk about?”

  She faced him. All the time she’d been getting ready to meet him, she had rehearsed what she would say. The words came easily. She hoped they sounded convincing. “I want out.”

  “Out of what?”

  “This whole mess. I can’t go to trial, Brad. I can’t go to prison. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “You got me into this. You can get me out. Quit paying people like the desk clerk to lie about me. Quit pushing the sheriff to see me as a suspect. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll tell the sheriff whatever you want. Just please don’t set me up for this.”

  He looked skeptical. “And what about Mick? I’ve seen you two together. I know you’re having an affair with him. I know you’ve told him everything. Do you really expect me to believe that now you’re willing to be a witness against him? You spent last night in his bed, and today you’re willing to testify against him?”

  She knotted her fingers together. “I like Mick. I like sex with him. But that’s all he can give me. You can give me freedom. You can keep me out of jail. All you have to do is fill in the missing details. I’ll tell the sheriff how Sandra died, how the fire was set. I’ll tell him that Mick told me. That will be all Mills needs to arrest him.”

  “Missing details. You talk as if you’ve already figured most of it out. Tell me your theory.”

  Hannah looked around for someplace to sit, but the only place was a low stone wall a dozen feet away. For the sake of the tape recorder, she remained where she was. “You were having an affair with Sandra. You and she planned this whole thing together. She forged Mick’s name to the life-insurance policy and to the check you threatened me with last week. She came here last Saturday intending to start a fight with Mick, to goad him into making threats against her in front of witnesses. She brought suitcases with her—clothes, jewels. She wasn’t planning to go back to Oklahoma City. She intended to go someplace, probably under an assumed name, and wait for you to join her, with the insurance money in hand and Mick in prison.” She looked again at the dark dried stain on the tile. “She never knew she was helping plan her own murder, did she?”

  Brad studied her for a long moment. “Quite a story. Did you come up with that on your own, or did Mick help?” He made a gesture as if an answer wasn’t necessary. “Tell me why I should trust you, Hannah. Convince me that you’re not playing me for a fool. Give me one reason why I should believe you.”

  “I’ll give you two. My mother and Sylvie. You know me, Brad. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for them. I’ve taken money from you. Slept with a stranger. Lied to the authorities. Lied to my grandmother. I’ve shamed and degraded myself. I’ve become no better than you. All I’m offering is to tell more lies. All you have to do is keep me out of trouble.”

  For another interminable moment he looked at her. Then, as if reaching a decision, he shrugged. “Once Sandra got her hooks into a man, she made him suffer. Mick can tell you that. He was a fool for marrying her in the first place, and he was a bigger fool for staying married to her. For a time he thought things could be worked out, and then he just quit caring. He didn’t live with her, didn’t sleep with her or hardly even speak to her, but he remained faithful to her. She was sleeping with anything that stood still, and he was sleeping alone, because he was a married man.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t understand such integrity.

  He gave the ruins a sweeping look. “He hated this resort. He liked the challenge, liked doing top-quality work on such a grand scale, but he hated the debt, hated that one project could wipe us out. I convinced him that it wouldn’t, but I was wrong. I didn’t count on our buyers backing out, on bad weather or labor problems or cost increases—all the things Mick warned me about before we even started. He gave me the way out, you know. We’d be better off burning the place down, he said. The insurance would pay off the bank, we could cut our losses, and we could get back to our real business of building houses.

  “I knew he was just talking. He would never do anything like that. He was just frustrated, angry. But it stuck in my mind. The more desperate the situation got, the more practical his suggestion sounded. Why not torch the place? The insurance would pay off the bank, and we would be out of trouble. We’d be out a lot of money. The resort had required so much of our time and trouble that we’d had to cut back on the houses that were our bread and butter. Our profits had dropped substantially. But we could bounce back from that.”

  “When did you decide to frame Mick for the arson?”

  “Sandra was making sounds about getting married once the divorce went through. Mick and I hadn’t been on the best of terms for the past six months. He blamed me for bad judgment, and I blamed him—” he smiled “—for being right. Then one day it just occurred to me that I could get rid of them both, have the company all to myself and make a nice bit of change on the side.”

  He gazed past her, his expression contemplative and not the least bit remorseful. He wasn’t at all sorry that he’d killed his lover and framed his best friend. He wasn’t at all bothered by the fact that he was soon going to kill her.

  And he was. Hannah was convinced of it. He wouldn’t be talking so freely if he didn’t feel supremely confident that what he was saying would go no further. She wished she’d listened to Mick and Sylvie and kept her distance. She wished she’d left a note for Mick, telling him she’d gone to meet Brad, so that when her body was found, the sheriff would look in the right direction. She wished she’d told Mick she loved him.<
br />
  Most of all, she wished there was some way she could leave the tape recorder behind, hidden where the sheriff could find it, because she didn’t doubt that Brad would search her before or after he killed her.

  “You were right,” Brad said. “Sandra never knew she was helping plan her own murder. I told her that I’d gotten a body from the morgue, a woman who had no family and would be buried in a pauper’s grave. I convinced her that not enough of it would survive the flames to identify her conclusively, that the hick sheriff would see her car, know she’d disappeared and assume the body was hers. I told her it was in the ballroom at the opposite end of the hotel and asked if she wanted to see it, but she said no, it was too gruesome.”

  Hannah walked over to what had once been a glass wall and stared out at the empty swimming pool. There was so much rubble around, but no place where she could hide the tape recorder without crouching to do so. That would surely make Brad suspicious. “So she came here with you that night to set the fire, believing that by morning she would be settled someplace safe and far away. Instead, you crushed her skull.”

  “She never guessed she was one of the loose ends I had to tie up.” His voice came from right behind her, making her jump, making her skin crawl. His hands gentle, he turned her to face him. “She wasn’t as smart as you are. You know, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Her throat was tight with fear and unshed tears. It made her answer sound choked.

  “I’m going to tell the sheriff that you called me, that you said Mick was forcing you to provide him with an alibi. I’ll tell him that you were frightened, that you had proof of Mick’s guilt, that you wanted to meet me at Smoky Joe’s. I drove there and found your car in the parking lot, but there was no sign of you. I’ll suggest that the sheriff check the resort. After all, criminals often return to the scene of the crime. He lured Sandra here to crush her skull, then set the place on fire. He might lure you here to crush your skull and set you on fire.”

  “He’s probably out looking for me right now.”

  “Great. I hope he is. That means he’ll have no alibi. He’ll look that much guiltier.”

  She swallowed hard, swallowed her pride and begged. “Please don’t do this, Brad.”

  “You leave me no choice. You think I want to? I told you to stay away from Mick. I told you not to cooperate with him in any way. But you did. Now you have to pay.”

  Tears filled her eyes, and her entire body began to tremble. “Please, Brad. Please.”

  “Go over there.”

  His hands were still frighteningly gentle as he gave her a little push toward the bar. That was when she saw the gasoline can on the bar, right next to a three-foot length of two-by-four. She took a few stumbling steps, then with one last desperate surge of energy, she started to run. If she could make it to the parking lot, if she could just put some distance between them...

  But he anticipated her move, caught her arm and swung her around hard, giving her a shove at the same time. Her feet slipped on the wet tile, and she went down, cracking her head against the floor. Lights exploded, then her vision went dark as waves of pain washed over her. She tried to speak but couldn’t make her mouth work, tried to move but couldn’t find the strength.

  She was dimly aware of hands grabbing her jacket, lifting her, then of falling again, the side of her head slamming against the massive granite with excruciating pain. For one blessed moment she felt, saw, knew nothing. She wanted to stay like that, wanted to sink into unconsciousness, but she remembered Mick and struggled, fought her way back.

  Rain splashed in her face and over her body, rain and something else, something pungent, cool... Oh, God, it was gasoline. Brad was pouring the contents of the gas can over her. She tried frantically to sit up, to move, but her body was a leaden weight. She wasn’t able to lift more than one hand, and even that drained her of strength.

  A shadow appeared above her. She worked to focus her gaze, saw three shapes that slowly merged into two, both of them Brad. He was looking down at her with sympathy, such heartless, soulless sympathy, and his mouth was moving. The sounds were slow to penetrate the roaring in her ears, the words slow to reach her brain.

  “...sorry to do this, but you leave me no choice. If you hadn’t tried to run, it would have been easier. I would have made sure you were unconscious first. You never would have felt the flames. But now...” His sigh was dramatic. “I’m so sorry, Hannah.”

  He moved, and a bright object, silver and gold, came into her narrow vision. In spite of the rain, the yellow flickered two inches above the silver, a pretty sight, welcoming in the bleak damp gray of the day. She stared at it, mesmerized as it came closer, then with a sudden terror, she realized what it was—a cigarette lighter, the flame burning high, coming closer, closer. Any instant now the gasoline would burst into fire, burning her alive, destroying her clothes, her body, her evidence to clear Mick...

  “Nooo!”

  The scream sounded with more power than Hannah thought she was capable of, but as a form raced across her field of vision, she realized that it wasn’t her scream. Mick was here! Thank God, Mick had come to save her.

  As his tackle brought Brad to the ground, the cigarette lighter was knocked loose. The flame went out immediately, and she breathed a sigh of relief as the lighter clattered, unlit, to the floor. She wished she could reach it, could throw it so far away it would never be found, but it had landed near the outside wall. Whatever strength she could summon had to be used for more important things.

  Gritting her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut on the blurry vision that left her queasy, she lifted her arm, worked her fingers into the front pocket of her jeans, pulled out the tape recorder. From her lower vantage point, she could see a niche in the bar where the granite base didn’t quite meet the polished top. To the background accompaniment of grunts, curses and fists against flesh, she turned onto her left side, dragged herself partway off the floor and worked the tape recorder into the recess. It probably wouldn’t be found until the bar was removed during the demolition process, and Mick might already be in prison by then, but better late than never.

  Exhausted, in pain and nauseated from a combination of the blows and the gasoline fumes, she sank down again and tried to focus on the two men. Brad landed a blow that knocked Mick off balance. He fell backward over a pile of rubble and tumbled to the floor. She heard a sickening crack as his head came in contact with the low stone wall, then for an instant his body was motionless.

  “Mick?” In her head her voice was a scream. In her ears it had no sound at all.

  Before she could try again, Brad turned to face her. He looked bruised and battered and was smiling the unholiest of smiles. The cigarette lighter burned brightly in his right hand. Ignoring Mick, who was shaking his head, trying to get to his feet, Brad stopped a half-dozen feet away. He was starting to bend when a shot echoed around them. His smile froze, then slowly faded, and he crumpled to the floor in a heap. His hand, still clutching the lighter tightly, landed in a pool of gasoline, and Hannah’s world went up in flames.

  Mick sat on the steps leading to the resort lobby, rested his bandaged hands on his knees and stared out at the parking lot. The local paramedics helped the flight crew load the stretcher onto the helicopter, then dashed away as the rotors picked up speed in preparation for takeoff. The medics who had worked to stabilize Brad until the helicopter arrived hadn’t looked hopeful. Shot once in the chest and badly burned over most of his body, he was on his way to the burn center at Hillcrest in Tulsa.

  Mick hoped he didn’t survive the flight.

  Sighing wearily, he tilted his head back and let the rain drizzle over his face. It had been a hell of an afternoon. After following Brad’s Mercedes onto the resort road, he’d parked his truck a half mile back and set off through the woods. He’d been afraid to drive right up out front—afraid that Brad would panic and kill Hannah. He’d wanted surprise on his side, and so he had cut through the woods and sneaked up to the rear of the
hotel.

  He had almost been too late. When he’d seen Hannah lying there on the floor, when he’d smelled the gasoline and seen Brad holding the lighter, his heart had damn near stopped. He had moved on pure adrenaline, pure terror, and with the intention of killing his one-time friend and partner. Instead, it was Hannah who had almost died.

  With any luck, Brad would die.

  Footsteps approached across the driveway, stopping right in front of him. He stared at the muddy boots and dark trousers for a moment before wearily sitting back and raising his gaze to Sheriff Mills’s face.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Mick shrugged. “Like I’ve been beaten and burned.”

  The sheriff’s gaze flickered to his hands, treated and bandaged by the paramedics with orders that he see a doctor right away. “You feel like talking?”

  He didn’t. He didn’t feel like doing anything but going home, stripping off his wet, singed and smoky clothes and crawling into bed for a week or two. “What do you want to know?”

  “Not to me. To her.” He gestured to the ambulance, where Hannah stood with a blanket around her shoulders.

  All he had to do was close his eyes, and he would hear again her scream as the gasoline exploded into flames. It had propelled him to his feet and across the room, had allowed him to drag her away, to beat out the flames with his bare hands without feeling the pain. She’d been unconscious by the time he’d carried her out of the ruins and into the rain. He’d been terrified by her lack of responsive-ness—and grateful, too, that she hadn’t been awake to know that her clothes had been on fire, that she hadn’t seen her shoes melting, that she hadn’t felt the flames on her skin.

  The sheriff had insisted on taking her from him, on turning her over to the paramedics who had arrived moments later. Mick had been surprised by their quick response, but the sheriff had called them miles before he’d reached the resort himself—which had been just in time to shoot Brad.