The Alibi Page 3

  “You know, confusion. General screwup. The tape is temporarily unaccounted for.”

  “Missing?”

  “They wouldn’t commit that far.”

  Smilow muttered a curse.

  “The guy in charge promises we’ll have it soon. But, you know…” The detective raised his shoulders as though to say with deprecation, Civilians.

  “Let me know. I want to see it ASAP.” Smilow addressed them as a group. “This is going to be a high-profile murder. Nobody talks to the media except me. Keep your mouths shut, got that? The perp’s trail gets cooler with each minute, so get started.”

  The detectives filed out to begin the questioning of hotel guests and employees. People automatically resented being questioned because it implied guilt, so it would be an unpleasant and tiresome task. And Smilow, they knew from experience, was an unrelenting and merciless taskmaster.

  He now turned to Dr. Madison again. “Can you get this done quickly?”

  “A couple of days.”

  “Monday?”

  “It’ll mean my weekend’s shot to hell.”

  “So’s mine,” Smilow said unapologetically. “I want toxicology, everything.”

  “You always do,” Madison said with a good-natured smile. “I’ll do my best.”

  “You always do.”

  After the body had been removed, Smilow addressed one of the CSU techs. “How is it?”

  “It’s in our favor that the hotel is new. Not that many fingerprints, so most of them will probably be Pettijohn’s.”

  “Or the perp’s.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” the technician said, frowning. “It’s as clean a site as I’ve ever seen.”

  When the suite was empty, Smilow walked through it himself. He personally checked everything, opening every drawer, checking the closet and the built-in safe, looking between the mattresses, underneath the bed, inside the bathroom medicine cabinet, the tank of the toilet, looking for anything that Lute Pettijohn might have left behind that hinted at his killer’s identity.

  The sum total of Smilow’s find was a Gideon Bible and the Charleston telephone directory. He found nothing personal belonging to Lute Pettijohn, no date book, receipts, tickets, scribbled notes, food wrappers, nothing.

  Smilow counted two bottles of scotch missing from the minibar, but only one glass had been used, unless the murderer had been smart enough to take the one he’d used with him when he left. But Smilow learned after checking with housekeeping that the standard number of highball glasses stocked in a suite was four, and three clean ones remained.

  As crime scenes go, it was virtually sterile—except for the bloodstain on the sitting room carpet.

  “Detective?”

  Smilow, who’d been thoughtfully staring at the blood-soaked carpet, raised his head.

  The officer standing in the open doorway hitched his thumb toward the corridor. “She insisted on coming in.”

  “She?”

  “Me.” A woman nudged aside the patrol officer as though he were of no significance whatsoever, removed the crime scene tape from the doorway, and stepped inside. Quick, dark eyes swept the room. When she saw the dark bloodstain, she expelled a breath of disappointment and disgust. “Madison has already got the body? Damn!”

  Smilow, crooking his arm in order to read the face of his wristwatch, said, “Congratulations, Steffi. You’ve broken your own speed record.”

  Chapter 3

  “I thought you might be waiting on the husband and kids.”

  “When?”

  “When you came into the pavilion.”

  “Oh.”

  She didn’t take Hammond’s bait, but only continued licking her ice-cream bar. Not until the wooden stick was clean did she say, “Is that your way of asking if I’m married?”

  He made a pained face. “And here I thought I was being so subtle.”

  “Thanks for the chocolate nut bar.”

  “Is that your way of avoiding an answer?”

  Laughing, they approached a set of uneven wooden steps leading down to a pier. The platform stood about three feet above the surface of the water and was about ten yards square. Water lapped gently against the pilings beneath the weathered planks. Wooden benches formed the perimeter, their backs serving as a safety railing. Hammond took her ice-cream stick and wrapper and discarded them along with his in a trash can, then motioned her toward one of the benches.

  At each corner of the deck was a light pole, but the bulbs were dim and unobtrusive. Clear Christmas lights like those on the ceiling of the pavilion had been strung between the light poles. They softened the rusticity, making the ordinary, unattractive pier a romantic setting.

  The breeze was soft, but strong enough to give one a fighting chance against mosquitoes. Frogs croaked in the dense undergrowth lining the riverbank. Cicadas sang from the low-hanging, moss-strewn branches of the sheltering live oak trees.

  “Nice out here,” Hammond remarked.

  “Hmm. I’m surprised no one else has discovered it.”

  “I reserved it so we could have it all to ourselves.”

  She laughed. They had laughed a lot in the last couple hours while sampling the high-caloric fares of the food vendors and walking aimlessly from booth to booth. They had admired home-canned peaches and string beans, got a lesson on the latest in workout equipment, and tried out the cushioned seats of high-tech tractors. He had won a miniature teddy bear for her at a baseball toss. She had declined to try on a wig, although the saleswoman had been very persuasive.

  They had taken a ride on the Ferris wheel. When their car stopped at the summit and swayed precariously, Hammond had felt downright giddy. It was one of the most carefree moments he could remember since…

  He couldn’t remember a more carefree moment.

  The tethers that kept him grounded so securely—people, work, obligations—seemed to have been snipped. For a few minutes he had been floating free. He had felt free to enjoy the thrill of being suspended high above the fairgrounds. Free to enjoy a lightheartedness he rarely experienced anymore. Free to enjoy the company of a woman he had met less than two hours ago.

  Spontaneously he turned to her now and asked, “Are you married?”

  She laughed and ducked her head even as she shook it. “So much for subtlety.”

  “Subtlety wasn’t doing it for me.”

  “No, I’m not married. Are you?”

  “No.” Then, “Whew! I’m glad we got that clarified.”

  Raising her head, she looked across at him, smiling. “So am I.”

  Then they stopped smiling and just looked at each other. The stare stretched into seconds, then moments, long, still, quiet moments on the outside, but clamorous where emotions were housed.

  For Hammond it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime-if-you’re-lucky moments. The kind that even the most talented movie directors and actors can’t quite capture on film. The kind of connecting moment that poets and songwriters try to describe in their compositions, but never quite nail. Up till now, Hammond had been under the misconception that they’d done a fair job of it. Only now did he realize how miserably they had failed.

  How could one, anyone, describe the instant when it all comes together? How to describe that burst of clarity when one knows that his life has only just now begun, that everything that’s happened before was rot compared to this, and that nothing will ever be the same again? The elusive answers to all the questions ceased to matter, and he realized that the only truth he really needed to know was right here, right now. This moment.

  He had never felt like this in his life.

  Nobody had ever felt like this.

  He was still rocking on the top car of the Ferris wheel and he never wanted to come down.

  Just as he said, “Will you dance with me again?” she said, “I really need to go.”

  “Go?” “Dance?”

  They spoke at the same time again, but Hammond overrode her. “Dance with me again. I wasn’t
in top form last time, what with the Marine Corps watching my every step.”

  She turned her head and looked in the direction of the parking lot on the far side of the fairgrounds.

  He didn’t want to press her. Any attempt at coercion probably would send her running. But he couldn’t let her go. Not yet. “Please?”

  Her expression full of uncertainty, she looked back at him, then gave him a small smile. “All right. One dance.”

  They stood up. She started for the steps, but he reached for her hand and brought her around. “What’s wrong with here?”

  She pulled in a breath, released it slowly, shakily. “Nothing, I guess.”

  He hadn’t touched her since their last dance, short of placing his hand lightly on the small of her back to guide her around a bottleneck in the crowd. He’d offered her his hand when they stepped into and out of the Ferris wheel car. They’d been elbow to elbow and hip to hip for the duration of the ride. But other than those few exceptions, he had curbed every temptation to touch her, not wanting to scare her off, or come across as a creep, or insult her.

  Now he pulled her forward gently, but firmly, until they were standing toe to toe. Then he curved his arm around her waist and drew her close. Closer than before. Against him. She went hesitantly, but she didn’t try to angle away. She raised her arm to his shoulder. He felt the imprint of her hand at the base of his neck.

  The band had called it a night. Music was now being provided by a DJ who had been playing a variety ranging from Creedence Clearwater to Streisand. Because it was growing late and the mood of the dancers had turned more mellow, he was playing slower songs.

  Hammond recognized the tune, but couldn’t name the singer or the song currently coming from the pavilion. It didn’t matter. The ballad was slow and sweet and romantic. At first he tried to get his feet to execute the sequence of steps that he had learned as a youth reluctantly attending cotillions his mother roped him into. But the longer he held her, the more impossible it became to concentrate on anything except her.

  One song segued into another, but they never missed a beat, despite her agreeing to only one dance. In fact, neither noticed when the music changed. Their eyes and minds were locked on each other.

  He brought their clasped hands up to his chest and pressed hers palm down, then covered it with his. She tipped her head forward and down until her forehead was resting on his collarbone. He rubbed his cheek against her hair. He felt rather than actually heard the small sound of want that vibrated in her throat. His own desire echoed it.

  Their feet shuffled to a decreasing tempo until eventually they stopped moving altogether. They were still except for the strands of her hair that the breeze brushed against his face. The heat emanating from every point of contact seemed to forge them together. Hammond dipped his head for the kiss that he believed was inevitable.

  “I must go.” She broke away and turned abruptly toward the bench where she’d left her handbag and cardigan.

  For several seconds he was too stunned to react. After taking up her things, she made to move past him with a rushed, “Thanks for everything. It was lovely. Truly.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  She eluded his touch and quickly went up the steps, tripping once in her haste. “I have to go.”

  “Why now?”

  “I can’t… can’t do this.”

  She tossed the words over her shoulder as she hurriedly made her way toward the parking area. She followed the string of pennants, avoiding the midway, the pavilion, and the waning activity in the booths. Some of the attractions already had closed. Exhibitioners were tearing down their booths and packing up their arts and crafts. Families loaded down with souvenirs and prizes trudged toward their vans. The noises weren’t so joyful or so loud as earlier. The music in the pavilion now sounded more forlorn than romantic.

  Hammond stayed even with her. “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s not to understand? I’ve told you I must go. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Desperate to detain her, he reached for her arm. She stopped, took several deep breaths, and turned to face him, although she didn’t look at him directly.

  “I had a lovely time.” She spoke in a flat voice with little inflection, as though these were lines she had memorized. “But now the evening is over and I have to leave.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t owe you an explanation. I don’t owe you anything.” Her eyes made brief contact with his before skittering away again. “Now please, don’t try and stop me again.”

  Hammond released her arm and stepped back, raising his hands as though in surrender.

  “Goodbye,” was all she said before turning away from him and picking her way over the rough ground toward the designated parking area.

  * * *

  Stefanie Mundell tossed Smilow the keys to her Acura. “You drive while I change.” They had left the hotel by the East Bay Street entrance and were moving briskly down the sidewalk, which was congested not only with the usual Saturday night crowd, but with curiosity-seekers drawn to the new complex by the emergency vehicles parked along the street.

  They moved through the curious onlookers without drawing notice because neither’s appearance denoted “public official.” Smilow’s suit was still unwrinkled, his French cuffs unsoiled. Despite the hullabaloo surrounding Pettijohn’s murder, he hadn’t broken a sweat.

  No one would suspect Steffi of being an assistant county solicitor, either. She was dressed in running shorts and sports bra, both still damp with perspiration that even the hotel’s air-conditioning system couldn’t dry. Her stiff nipples, along with her lean and muscled legs, attracted several male passersby, but she wasn’t even aware of their appreciative glances as she motioned Smilow toward her car, which was illegally parked in a tow-away zone.

  He depressed the keyless entry button but didn’t go around to open the passenger door for her. She would have rebuffed the gesture if he had. She climbed into the back seat. Smilow got behind the wheel. As he started the car and waited to pull into traffic, Steffi asked, “Was that the truth? What you told those cops as we came out?”

  “Which part?”

  “Ah, so some of it was bullshit?”

  “Not the part about us having no apparent motive, no weapon, and no suspect at this time.” He had told them to keep their mouths shut when reporters started showing up asking questions. Already he had called a press conference for eleven o’clock. By scheduling it at that time, he ensured the local stations going live with it during their late newscasts and consequently maximizing his TV exposure.

  Impatient with the endless line of cars crawling down the thoroughfare, he poked Steffi’s car into the narrow lane and earned a loud horn blast from an oncoming vehicle.

  Showing the same level of impatience that Smilow exhibited with his driving, Steffi whipped the sports bra over her head. “Okay, Smilow, no one can overhear you now. Talk. This is me.”

  “So I see,” he remarked, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

  Unabashed, she wiped her underarms with a hand towel she took from her gym bag. “Two parents, nine children, one bathroom. In our house if you were timid or prissy, you stayed dirty and constipated.”

  For someone who disclaimed her blue-collar roots, Steffi frequently referred to them, usually to justify her crass behavior.

  “Well, hurry and dress. We’ll be there in a few minutes. Although you don’t even need to be there. I can do this alone,” Smilow said.

  “I want to be there.”

  “All right, but I’d like not to get arrested on the way, so stay low where no one can see you like that.”

  “Why, Rory, you’re a prude,” she said, playing the coquette.

  “And you’re bloodthirsty. How’d you smell out a fresh kill so fast?”

  “I was running. When I passed the hotel and saw all the police cars, I stopped to ask one of the cops what was going on.”

 
; “So much for orders not to talk.”

  “I have my persuasive ways. Besides, he recognized me. When he told me, I couldn’t believe my ears.”

  “Same here.”

  Steffi put on a conventional bra, then peeled off her shorts and reached into the bag for a pair of panties. “Stop changing the subject. What have you got?”

  “About the cleanest crime scene I’ve had in a long time. Maybe the cleanest I’ve ever seen.”

  “Seriously?” she asked with apparent disappointment.

  “Whoever did him knew what he was doing.”

  “Shot in the back while lying face down on the floor.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Hmm.”

  He glanced at her again. She was buttoning up a sleeveless dress, but her mind wasn’t on the task. She was staring into near space, and he could practically see the wheels of her clever brain turning.

  Stefanie Mundell had been with the County Solicitor’s Office a little more than two years, but during her tenure she had made quite an impression—not always a good one. Some regarded her as a royal bitch, and she could be. She had a rapacious tongue and wasn’t averse to using it. She never, ever backed down during an argument, which made her an excellent trial lawyer and a scourge to defense attorneys, but it didn’t endear her to co-workers.

  But at least half the men, and perhaps some of the women, who worked in and around the police department and county judicial building had the hots for her. Fantasy alliances with her were often discussed in crude detail over drinks after work. Not within her hearing, of course, because no one wished on himself a sexual harassment rap filed by Stefanie Mundell.

  If she was aware of all the closet lusting for her, she pretended not to be. Not because it would bother her or make her uneasy to know that men were applying the lewdest terms to her. She would simply look upon it as something too juvenile, silly, and trivial on which to waste time and energy.

  Secretly Rory watched her in the mirror now, as she buckled a slim leather belt around her waist and then pushed her hands through her hair as a means of grooming it. He wasn’t physically attracted to her. Watching her operate didn’t spark in him any mad, carnal desire, only a deep appreciation for her keen intelligence and the ambition that drove her. These qualities reminded him of himself.