Alibis Can Be Murder

by Connie Shelton

  Fine until you get audited. I paced the kitchen floor. “Okay … Here’s the deal. I’ll set us up with a real accounting system, computerize everything. I can come up with the money to get started, but I can’t financially support the business if it isn’t making a profit.”

  “Oh, it is. I mean, there’s money every month.”

  “Yeah, but now you’re in trouble with unpaid bills.”

  “Bernadette—”

  “Okay, I’m not placing blame. Let me take a look at your last couple of tax returns so I get a basic picture.”

  His mood brightened by a dozen notches. “We can do this, Charlie. You and I have always gotten along real well.”

  True. Our other brother, Paul, is from a whole different planet, but Ron and I have always been close.

  “One other provision,” I said. “I don’t want to get into the investigation end of things. You bring in the cases and work them. I do finances only.”

  We hashed out the details for several more hours, until I realized I really should get to bed if I was going to be worth diddly at work tomorrow. The idea in my head was that I would give two weeks’ notice and use evenings and weekends during that time to locate new digs for RJP Investigations.

  He stood up and gave me a hug. “It’ll be a great partnership.”

  A big unknown, as far as I was concerned. But the thought of walking into Sloan and Mercer and handing in my notice raised my spirits way up the scale.

  “I’ll go home and gather the information you need,” he said, suddenly motivated. “Let’s get together again tomorrow night and go over it again. When can you get away so we can look at offices?”

  I laughed. “A step at a time, Ron.”

  We walked to the front door together, the dog trailing at our heels. Out on the porch, the music from the Delaney house was roaring louder than ever and at least a dozen kids had spilled out into the front yard.

  “Gram would have sent them all packing a long time ago, if I’d tried that,” I said.

  “She’d have tanned your hide. I can’t believe the parents are letting them do this. It’s almost midnight on a school night.”

  “I doubt they’re letting them. They travel a lot and I have a feeling they aren’t home.”

  “Thirteen-year-old girls home alone?”

  “Hey, boys do this stuff too. I hope Bernadette is keeping a better eye on your kids than this.”

  His mouth went into a firm line. “Yeah. She’d better be.”

  Chapter 15

  Drake and I decided to have a rare late-morning breakfast at a restaurant where we love the eggs Benedict. It’s out on the west side, so we each took our own cars. He’d lined up another flight with Michael the photographer. This time they would fly to the western part of the state to get shots of the dramatic red rocks in the Gallup area.

  I pored over the menu at CeeCee’s, deciding which version of the eggs I wanted. I’m partial to the traditional Benedict, but the Florentine version was also very good. Across the table from me, I sensed Drake’s movement and I looked up to see his customer standing near the door.

  “Okay if we invite him to join us?” Drake asked.

  “Sure.”

  He waved Michael over and he greeted us with a tired smile. “Sorry—late night,” he said after he’d attracted the waitress’s attention and signaled for coffee. “My wife called from Virginia. It was after two a.m. when our daughter got home and Joanne was fit to be tied. I guess Dru met up with some kids she talks with on Instagram all the time.”

  I can’t say I’m so out of it I don’t know what that is—social media is everywhere these days—but I so rarely check my Facebook page the few friends on there just assume I must have died or something. My real, actual friends still email or phone me when they want to chat.

  “I tell you, teenage girls are something else. They literally live with that phone in their hands every moment the darn thing isn’t on the charger.”

  I thought of the girls across the street and the few times I’d seen them recently, and yes, he was right about the constant presence of the cell phones.

  “So you guys are off to Gallup this morning?” I was tired of the teen subject.

  “Yeah, my editor thinks the whole Southwest consists of that type of stunning rock formations, so even though I’ve got a lot of other footage around the state he wants red rocks included in the spread.”

  Drake spoke up. “Getting tribal permission from the Navajos is why this part of the job has taken awhile longer to arrange.”

  I remembered a few other jobs that took us over Indian nation lands. Their sacred sites are normally completely off limits, so the flight plan has to be pretty specific.

  We ordered our eggs and chatted about helicopter work in general, Drake telling Michael about some of our adventures, particularly the one in Scotland where I had an incident over the North Sea. He made it sound as if I’d been more heroic than I actually was—at the time I’d been terrified.

  “What about that little cabin we landed by, the first day we went out over the Sandias?” Michael asked.

  “I’m still checking the land records,” Drake said. “There doesn’t seem to be a clear legal description for the plot. We’ll see. It may not work out.”

  I’d made the first cut into my egg dish when my phone beeped with a text message. Ron’s name showed on the screen, with the words “Bobby Lorrento is back in the news …” in the visible portion of the message. Unless this was an emergency, I wasn’t going to miss my favorite breakfast for an update on the client and his dysfunctional marriage.

  I read the message, replied to Ron that I would be in the office within an hour, and dropped the phone into the depths of my purse. I shouldn’t have left it out on the table in the first place. We finished our breakfast in peace, and I kissed Drake before getting into my car.

  At the office, I helped myself to a second cup of coffee and went upstairs to find Ron on the phone in a conversation that sounded like routine questions. Employment background checks have become the bread-and-butter of our business. I waved at him through the open doorway and proceeded to my own office to take a look at my email. He appeared in front of me about five minutes later.

  “So, what’s the latest news our football player friend has got himself into now?” I asked, distracted by a notice saying Macy’s had a big sale on jeans.

  “Apparently, he went down to the pawn shop yesterday evening and discovered Marcie had not pawned the rings—she sold them. On that basis, the owner had put them in his display case and one ring already sold. So Lorrento goes completely ballistic, leaps over the counter and punches the guy out before the shop security guard could pull out his truncheon. He gave Bobby a quick jab to the gut, called the police, and the cops hauled Bobby The Bomb to jail.”

  “How’s the shop owner?”

  “Broken jaw, but it will mend okay. He’s pissed as hell.”

  “And this affects us, how?” The link showed a super-good price on those jeans.

  “Marcie Lorrento called this morning and wants me to go down and post bond for Bobby. I wasn’t here and she left the message on the machine. I haven’t returned the call yet.”

  “Don’t they have an attorney for such things?”

  “I plan to suggest she call one. I could go down there and put up the bond money, but I sure can’t give Lorrento advice on this legal mess.”

  “I wasn’t aware the Lorrentos were even speaking. Wouldn’t she rather just leave him in jail, teach him a lesson?”

  “I don’t know what the situation—”

  His sentence got cut short by a ruckus downstairs.

  “Ron!” It was Sally’s voice and she sounded panicky.

  We both hit the stairs running. Marcie Lorrento stood in front of Sally’s desk, wearing a designer dress, six-inch heels, and a furious expression. Her hair hung in luxurious curls past her shoulders and her makeup was freshly applied, so I guessed she was hardly distraught over her husban
d’s situation.

  “There you are!” Marcie shouted at Ron. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  She shot a poison look toward Sally, who took a step back. Next, our employee would be demanding hazard pay for the receptionist job.

  “Marcie, tone it down. I got your message. Can we talk in the conference room?”

  “We’ll talk right here. Why haven’t you got Bobby back yet?” Her teeth showed as she snarled the words.

  Ron stood taller and squared his shoulders. “The retainer you paid us has been used up, and until we talk about this calmly I’m not doing anything more on your case.”

  “Fine.” She reached into her little clutch purse and took out a Gucci wallet, from which she drew five one-hundred-dollar bills. “Here’s more money. How much will you need for his bail?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather your attorney handle this?”

  “My attorney won’t speak to Bobby. She got an earful from him the other day when he received the divorce papers, and she says she’ll only talk to me now.” Marcie paced to the front door and back, the high heels clicking on the hardwood floor like angry typewriter keys.

  “So, who’s Bobby’s attorney?”

  “Tom Hawkins, back in Texas. He says he’s not licensed in New Mexico and, besides, he’s had it with Bobby’s temper getting him into trouble.”

  “Your husband needs legal advice I can’t give.”

  “Yeah, I’ll find somebody. Meanwhile, I need you to bail him out. How much do you need?” Her fingers were inside the wallet again.

  “I have no idea until I call the station. I don’t know what the charges are, or whether he’s even eligible for bond, so can you settle down?”

  She continued to pace and I’d finally had it with the staccato sound. I went upstairs to Ron’s Rolodex and prowled through the A’s until I came to an attorney we don’t especially like. It would be such great fun to know he was having to deal with Bobby and Marcie Lorrento. I copied the man’s name and phone number onto an index card and took it downstairs. Marcie seemed so grateful for the information I almost felt guilty for giving her the name of such a jerk. Almost—not quite.

  Ron, the big sell-out, took Marcie’s money, made a couple of calls and headed downtown to get Bobby. I couldn’t, in my wildest dreams, imagine the weird dynamic between that couple. He cheated, she wanted a divorce, she stole from him, he lost his temper, she bailed him out using money from selling his own jewelry. Somehow, apparently, it worked for them.

  I got home a little after five, to be met at the driveway by Elsa. Belatedly, I remembered I had planned to call NMSU again, but business hours had gotten away from me.

  “I talked to Donna Delaney,” Elsa said, a little breathless after dashing across our yard. “She finally reached her brother somewhere in Egypt. Zayne isn’t with them and they don’t know where she is. I told Donna about that boy who’s hanging around.”

  “And?”

  “Rick told her he knows Ryan Subro. The families have been friends for a long time.”

  “Did they ask us to do something to help?”

  “Well, not really. According to Donna, Rick and Jane aren’t worried. They say they’ve talked with both girls on the phone in recent days and everything’s fine.”

  “So, then … everything’s fine. We should butt out.”

  “It isn’t fine, Charlie. I just know it isn’t.”

  I really, really tried not to look as impatient as I felt.

  Chapter 16

  Five years ago …

  “So, what do you think of the colors?” I asked my brother.

  Ron and I were standing at the curb, staring at the half-painted Victorian house we’d decided to buy for our offices. The old house, in a neighborhood of similarly sized places, had good bones but was in severe need of TLC when we found it. We’d done a lot of the interior cleanup, wallpaper removal and refinishing the floors ourselves. When it came to the exterior, with two stories of trimmed wood, plenty of shutters and gingerbread, we’d hired a crew. My contribution to this part of the project had been to choose paint colors. The house would be light gray, shutters dark gray, and white for the fancy bits.

  So far, three weeks had been spent sanding away the old, peeling parts and priming the poor old dear until she looked like an ancient woman with a bad case of age spots. Now, the west face of the house, the side where a long driveway led to the back, was done in our color scheme, our first chance to see how it all came together. The painters had gone for the day and the midday heat had abated a little as the afternoon grew later.

  To my question, Ron gave a nod. “Looks good to me.”

  What did I expect from him anyway, a rousing cheer? This was the guy who’d not even bought a houseplant to brighten his previous dingy office. I needed a woman’s point of view. I was having lunch tomorrow with my friend, Linda Casper, who, after finishing medical school and her residency, was in the process of setting up her own practice. She’d be the ideal person to give an opinion about our project.

  Right now, my body was bone-tired. I rubbed an aching shoulder muscle and gave the structure a final appraisal.

  “Well, I like it. When it’s finished I think I’ll love it.”

  I brushed at the layer of drywall dust coating Ron’s shirt, but it was hopeless. Each of us arrived home at night to throw our clothing into the wash, take a long shower and fall into bed. If I’d known how exhausting the project would be, I might have steered toward a property without so much labor attached. The good part was, I now felt emotionally invested in the business, and the more I worked alongside Ron each day, the more certain I felt our partnership would be a good thing. I didn’t regret leaving Sloan and Mercer, not one little bit.

  “I could go for a margarita,” he said.

  I knew what he was hinting at, and Pedro’s is one place we could eat without having to go home and clean up first.

  “At least shake the dust off your shirt first,” I said. I looked at my own appearance, but I’d stayed away from the kitchen area where the new wallboard was being installed. I could get by with brushing my hair and washing my hands and face.

  We went back inside and performed our little cleanup duties, one by one, at the bathroom sink, then went to our vehicles. Another selling point for the Victorian house was its proximity to our favorite restaurant near Old Town. Four minutes later we pulled up outside the small side-street place.

  “Hola, Charlie and Ron,” Pedro called out from behind the bar. “Your usual?”

  I gave a nod and waved to his wife, Concha, who had just delivered two steaming plates to another table. Within two minutes we each had a frothy margarita sitting in front of us, along with a basket of chips and a bowl of Pedro’s homemade salsa. Concha didn’t even need to take our order. I always get the green chile chicken enchiladas and Ron will have a beef burrito. I can bet money on it.

  “So,” I said, once we’d wolfed down half the basket of chips, “the painter said one more week to finish the exterior, and the inside is nearly done. I think we could move furniture into the upstairs offices any day now.”

  We’d already gone shopping, so desks, file cabinets, shelving units, a conference table and chairs, and kitchen appliances were ready to be delivered as soon as we made the calls. While I’d handled a lot of those duties, Ron still had investigations to work so he’d been taking advantage of the quiet at his old office for phone calls and such.

  “Just say the word,” he said. “I’ve got two buddies with pickup trucks standing by and we can haul everything out of my old office and have it set up on a day’s notice. I tell you, I’m more than ready.”

  Our dinners arrived and I breathed deeply of the fragrant green chile scent.

  “All I really want at this moment is to sleep for a day and a half,” I said as I cut into my enchiladas to let the steam out. “Which I won’t do. Don’t worry, I’ll be back at the new office first thing in the morning.”

  Thirty minutes later, my tummy full
and my head pleasantly lulled from the margarita, I pulled into my driveway at home. Up the street, it appeared a gathering of some kind was happening at the Delaney house. Matching hatchback cars sat out front and I could see the shine of the twins’ blonde hair from the glow of the nearby street lamp. Several teens milled around. The family Mercedes was backing out of their driveway. It came my direction and slowed in front of my house.

  Jane Delaney powered down the passenger side window. “Hey, Charlie,” she called out.

  “Hey. How are you guys? Haven’t seen you in awhile.” It was sort of my standard greeting, since, in fact, I probably hadn’t had a conversation with any of the Delaneys in more than two years.

  “Gosh, I know. We’re constantly on the go these days. Redford’s looking at a new project to be filmed around Santa Fe and we’re on our way to a pre-production meeting now.”

  Rick grinned from his driver seat. “I’ll be assistant director on this one.”

  “If it comes through,” Jane reminded with a perky little wink. “Nothing’s for sure in this business.”

  He rolled his eyes in a you-know-how-it-is gesture. I smiled, but it felt like a tired one.

  “Looks as if the girls have a few friends over,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s their fifteenth birthday and we got them the matching Audis for their starter cars. If they take good care of these, I’ve promised something nicer next year. They’re so excited.”

  Again, my smile felt forced. At fifteen, I’d felt lucky to drive Elsa’s huge boat now and then. I was still stretching a few more years out of my mother’s old car, even now.

  “Well, we’re running a little more than fashionably late,” Rick said to his wife.

  “Right. So … we’ll see you around,” Jane said.

  I watched them drive away, thinking how sad it was they couldn’t stay for their daughters’ birthday party. Park a lavish gift outside and leave ’em on their own, I supposed was the philosophy. I was too tired to dwell on it. I went inside, gave my own neglected fur-baby some attention and hit the shower. By nine o’clock I was completely sacked out.