The Alibi Page 5

  “Well, that’s a change, at least.” She drained her glass.

  “When did you last see Lute?”

  “Last night? This morning? I can’t remember. This morning, I think.” Davee ignored Steffi Mundell’s harrumph of disbelief and kept her eyes on Smilow. “Sometimes we went for days without seeing one another.”

  “You didn’t sleep together?” Steffi asked.

  Davee turned to her. “Where up North are you from?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are obviously ill-bred and very rude.”

  Smilow intervened again. “We’ll invade the Pettijohns’ private life only if we need to, Steffi. At this juncture it isn’t necessary.” Back to Davee, he asked, “You didn’t know Lute’s schedule today?”

  “Not today or any day.”

  “He hadn’t indicated to you that he was meeting someone?”

  “Hardly.” She set her empty glass on the coffee table, and when she straightened, she squared her shoulders. “Am I a suspect?”

  “Right now everyone in Charleston is a suspect.”

  Davee locked eyes with him. “Lots of people had good reason to kill Lute.” Under her penetrating stare, he looked away.

  Steffi Mundell stepped forward as though to remind Davee that she was still there, and that she was somebody important, somebody to be reckoned with. “I’m sorry if I came on a little too strong, Mrs. Pettijohn.”

  She paused, but Davee wasn’t about to forgive her for her many infractions of the unwritten rules of decorum. Davee kept her expression impassive.

  “Your husband was a prominent figure,” Steffi continued. “His business concerns generated a lot of revenue for the city, the county, and the state. His participation in civic affairs—”

  “Is all this leading somewhere?”

  She didn’t like Davee’s interruption, but she persisted undaunted. “This murder will impact the entire community and beyond. My office will give this top priority until the culprit is captured, tried, and convicted. You have my personal guarantee that justice will be swift and sure.”

  Davee smiled her prettiest, most beguiling smile. “Ms. Mundell, your personal guarantee isn’t worth warm spit to me. And I’ve got unhappy news for you. You will not be prosecuting my husband’s murder case. I never settle for bargain-basement goods.” She gave Steffi’s dress a look of blatant distaste.

  Then, turning to Smilow, the former debutante mandated how things were going to be. “I want the top guns on this. See to it, Rory. Or I, Lute Pettijohn’s widow, will.”

  Chapter 5

  “A hunerd big ones, right here.” The man slapped the stained green felt, flashing a beery and obnoxious grin that made Bobby Trimble shudder with revulsion.

  Pinching his wallet from the back pocket of his trousers, Bobby removed two fifties and passed them to the stupid bastard, a cracker if he’d ever seen one. “Good game,” he said laconically.

  The man pocketed the bills, then eagerly rubbed his hands together. “Ready to rack ’em up again?”

  “Not right now.”

  “You pissed? Come on, don’t be pissed,” he said in a wheedling voice.

  “I’m not pissed,” Bobby said, sounding pissed. “Maybe later.”

  “Double or nothing?”

  “Later.” Winking, he fired a fake pistol into the other guy’s expansive gut, then ambled off, taking his drink with him.

  Actually he would love to try and win back his losses, but the sad fact of the matter was, he was strapped for cash. The last series of games, all of which he’d lost, had left him several hundred dollars poorer. Until his cash flow problem abated, he couldn’t afford to gamble.

  Nor could he indulge in the finer things of life. That last hundred would have gone a long way toward taking the edge off his nerves. Nothing fancy. Just a few lines. Or a pill or two. Oh, well…

  It was a good thing he still had the counterfeit credit card. He could cover his living expenses with that, but for extras he needed cash. That was a little harder to come by. Not impossible. It just required more work.

  And Bobby had his heart set on less work and more relaxation. “It won’t be long now,” he told himself, smiling into his highball glass. When his investment paid off, there would be years of recreation to look forward to.

  But his smile was short-lived. A cloud of uncertainty moved across the fantasy of his sunny future. Unfortunately, the success of his money-making scheme depended on his partner, and he was beginning to doubt her trustworthiness. In fact, doubt was burning his gut as fiercely as the cheap whiskey he’d been drinking all evening. When it came right down to it, he didn’t trust her any farther than he could throw her.

  He sat down on a stool at the end of the bar and ordered another drink. The maroon vinyl seat had once borne a leather grain imprint, but it had been worn almost slick from supporting decades of hard drinkers. Except for needing to keep a low profile, he wouldn’t have patronized a low-class tavern like this. He had come a long way since hanging out in joints of this caliber. He had moved up from where he’d started. Way up. Upwardly mobile, that was Bobby Trimble.

  Bobby had cultivated a new image for himself, and he wasn’t about to give it up. One couldn’t help what he’d been born into, but if he didn’t like it, if he knew instinctively that he was destined for bigger and better things, he could sure as hell shake one image and create another. That’s what he had done.

  It was this acquired urbane appeal that had landed him the cushy job in Miami. The nightclub owner had needed a guy with Bobby’s talents to act as host and emcee. He looked good and his line of bullshit drew the ladies in. He took to the job like a duck to water. Business increased significantly. Soon the Cock’n’Bull was one of the most happening nightspots in Miami, a city famous for happening nightspots.

  The nightclub had been packed every night with women who knew how to have a good time. Bobby had cultivated and then nurtured its raunchy reputation to compete with the other ladies’ entertainment clubs.

  The Cock’n’Bull made no apology for having a down-and-dirty floor show that appealed to women, not ladies, who weren’t afraid to really let their hair down. On most nights, the dancers went all the way down to the skin. Bobby kept his tuxedo on, but he talked the talk that whipped the women into a sexual frenzy. His verbal come-ons were more effective than the thrusting pelvises of the dancers. They adored his dirty dialogue.

  Then one night a particularly enthusiastic fan climbed up on the stage with one of the dancers, dropped to her knees, and started doing the nasty thing on him. The crowd went wild. They loved it.

  But the vice squad working undercover didn’t.

  They secretly called for backup, and before anyone realized what was happening, the place was lousy with cops. He had been able to sneak out the back door—but not before helping himself to all the cash in the office safe.

  Because of a fondness for the racetrack, and a recent streak of very bad luck, he had been in debt to a loan shark, who wouldn’t have understood that the club’s closing amounted to a temporary cessation of income, which would have been reversed soon. “Soon” wasn’t in a loan shark’s vocabulary.

  So, with the club owner, the cops, and the loan shark on his tail, he had fled the Sunshine State, with nearly ten thousand dollars lining the pockets of his tuxedo. He had his Mercedes convertible painted a different color and switched the license plates on it. For a time, he traveled leisurely up the coast, living well off stolen money.

  But it hadn’t lasted forever. He’d had to go to work, plying the only trade he knew. Passing himself off as a guest of the luxury hotels, he hung out at the swimming pools, where he worked his charm on lonely women tourists. The money he stole from them he considered a fair exchange for the happiness he gave them in bed.

  Then, one night, while sipping champagne and sweet-talking a reluctant divorcee out of her room key, he spotted an acquaintance from Miami across the dining room. Excusing himself to go to the men’s
room, Bobby had returned to his hotel, hurriedly packed his belongings into the Mercedes, and got the hell out of town.

  He laid low for several weeks, forgoing even the hustling. His reserve cash dwindled to a piddling amount. For all his affectations and polished mannerisms, when Bobby looked in the mirror, he saw himself as he’d been years ago—a brash, small-time hustler running second-rate cons. That self-doubt was never so strong as when he was broke, when it set in with a vengeance. One night, feeling desperate and a little afraid, he got drunk in a bar and wound up in a fight with another customer.

  It was the best thing that could have happened. That barroom brawl had been observed by the right person. It had set him on his present course. The culmination was in sight. If it worked out the way he planned, he would make a fortune. He would have the wealth that befitted the Bobby Trimble he was now. There would be no going back to the loser he had been.

  However—and this was a huge “however”—his success rested with his partner. As he had earlier established, women were not to be trusted to be anything other than women.

  He drained his drink and raised his hand to the bartender. “I need a refill.”

  But the bartender was engrossed in the TV set. The picture was snowy, but even from where he sat Bobby could make out a guy talking into the microphones pointed at him. He wasn’t anybody Bobby recognized. He was an unsmiling cuss, that was for sure. All business, like the welfare agents who used to come nosing around Bobby’s house when he was a kid, asking personal questions about him and his family, butting into his private business.

  The guy on TV was one cool dude, even with a dozen reporters stepping over each other to crowd around him. He was saying, “The body was discovered this evening shortly after six o’clock. It has been positively identified.”

  “Do you have—”

  “What about a weapon?”

  “Are there any suspects?”

  “Mr. Smilow, can you tell us—”

  Bobby, losing interest, said louder, “I need a drink here.”

  “I heard ya,” the bartender replied querulously.

  “Your service could stand some improve—”

  The complaint died on Bobby’s lips when the picture on the TV screen switched from the guy with the cold eyes to a face that Bobby recognized and knew well. Lute Pettijohn. He strained to catch every word.

  “There was no sign of forced entry into Mr. Pettijohn’s suite. Robbery has been ruled out as a motive. At this time we have no suspects.” The live special report ended and they returned to the eleven o’clock news anchor desk.

  Confidence once more intact, grinning from ear to ear, Bobby raised his fresh drink in a silent salute to his partner. Evidently she had come through for him.

  * * *

  “That’s all I have to tell you at this time.”

  Smilow turned away from the microphones, only to discover more behind him. “Excuse me,” he said, nudging his way through the media throng.

  He ignored the questions shouted after him and continued wedging a path through the reporters until it became evident to them that they were going to get nothing further from him and they began to disperse.

  Smilow pretended to hate media attention, but the truth was that he actually enjoyed doing live press conferences like this one. Not because of the lights and cameras, although he knew he looked intimidating when photographed. Not even for the attention and publicity they generated. His job was secure and he didn’t need public approval to keep it.

  What he liked was the sense of power that being filmed and quoted evoked.

  But as he approached the team of detectives who had gathered near the registration desk in the lobby of the hotel, he grumbled, “I’m glad that’s over. Now what’ve you got for me?”

  “Zilch.”

  The others nodded agreement to Mike Collins’s summation.

  Smilow had timed his return to Charles Towne Plaza from the Pettijohns’ home to coincide with the eleven o’clock news. As he had predicted, all the local stations, as well as others from as far away as Savannah and Charlotte, had led with a live telecast from the hotel lobby, where he imparted the rudimentary facts to the reporters and viewers at home. He didn’t embellish. Primarily because all he knew were the rudimentary facts. For once he wasn’t being coy when he had declined to give them more information.

  He was as anxious for information as the media. That’s why the detective’s terse summation of their success took him aback. “What do you mean, zilch?”

  “Just that.” Mike Collins was a veteran. He was less intimidated by Smilow than the others, so by tacit agreement he was generally the spokesperson. “We’ve got nothing so far. We—”

  “That’s impossible, Detective.”

  Collins had dark rings around his sunken eyes, proof of just how tough his night had been. He turned to Steffi Mundell, who had interrupted him, and looked at her like he would like to strangle her, then pointedly ignored her and continued his verbal report to Smilow.

  “As I was saying, we’ve put these folks through the ringer.” Guests and employees were still being detained in the hotel’s main ballroom. “At first they kinda enjoyed it, you know. It was exciting. Like a movie. But the new wore off hours ago. They’ve given the same answers to the same questions several times over, so now they’re getting surly. We’re not getting much out of them except a lot of bellyaching about why they can’t leave.”

  “I find it hard to believe—”

  “Who invited you, anyway?” Collins fired at Steffi when she interrupted again.

  “That out of all those people,” she said, speaking over him, “somebody didn’t see something.”

  Smilow held up his hand to squelch a full-fledged quarrel between his discouraged detective and the outspoken prosecutor. “Okay, you two. We’re all tired. Steffi, I see no reason for you to hang around. When we’ve got something, you’ll be notified.”

  “Fat chance.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared defiantly at Collins. “I’m staying.”

  Reluctantly, Smilow gave the go-ahead for the hotel guests to be allowed to return to their rooms. He then assembled his detectives in one of the meeting rooms on the mezzanine level and ordered pizzas to be delivered. While they decimated the pizzas, he reviewed the scanty amount of information they had gleaned after hours of exhaustive interrogation.

  “Pettijohn had a massage in the spa?” he asked, reviewing the notes.

  “Yeah.” One of the detectives swallowed a large mouthful of pizza. “Right after he got here.”

  “Did you question the masseur?”

  The man nodded. “Said Pettijohn asked for the deluxe massage, a full ninety minutes. Pettijohn showered in the locker room, that’s why the bathroom in the suite was dry.”

  “Was this guy suspicious?”

  “Not that I could see,” the detective mumbled around another bite. “Hired from a spa in California. New to Charleston. Met Pettijohn for the first time today.”

  Smilow studied the hastily compiled breakdown of registered guests. All appeared above suspicion. All claimed never to have met Lute Pettijohn, although a few knew of him through the media blitz given the opening of Charles Towne Plaza a few months earlier.

  Most were just plain folks on vacation with their families. Three couples were honeymooning. Several others pretended to be, when it was obvious that they were secret lovers on an illicit weekend getaway to a romantic city. These answered the detectives’ questions nervously, but not because they were guilty of murder, only adultery.

  All but three rooms on the fourth floor were occupied by a group of lady schoolteachers from Florida. Two suites were overfilled with a boys’ basketball team who had graduated high school in the spring and were having one last fling together before scattering to their respective universities. Their only crime was underage drinking. To the consternation of his buddies, one voluntarily turned over a nickel bag of marijuana to the interrogating officer.

 
; The consensus was that if Lute Pettijohn hadn’t been murdered the previous afternoon, it would have been a routine summer Saturday.

  “Long, hot, and sticky,” remarked one of the detectives, yawning hugely.

  “You talking about the day, or my dick?” another joked.

  “You wish.”

  “What about the security video?” Smilow asked, bringing the banter to a halt. The detectives smirked at what was obviously an inside joke. “What?” Smilow demanded.

  “You want to see it?” Collins asked.

  “Is there something to see?”

  After another round of snickers, Collins suggested that Smilow take a look, and even invited Steffi to watch the video with them. “You might learn something,” he said to her.

  Smilow and Steffi followed the detectives across the wide mezzanine lobby and into one of the smaller conference rooms, where a VCR machine was cued up and ready to play on a color monitor.

  With unnecessary fanfare, Collins introduced the video. “At first the guy monitoring the security cameras yesterday afternoon told me that the video from the camera on that floor had been misplaced.”

  Smilow knew from experience that surveillance cameras were usually attached to time-lapse recorders that exposed one frame of video every five to ten seconds, depending on the user’s discretion. That’s why they appeared jumpy when replayed. Typically they recorded for days before automatically rewinding.

  “What was the tape doing out of the machine? Aren’t the tapes generally left in the recorders and recycled unless there’s a need to view them?”

  “That was my first tip-off that he was lying,” Collins said. “So I kept after him. Finally he coughed up this video. Ready?”

  Getting a nod from Smilow, he pushed the play button on the VCR. Even if there had been no accompanying video, the sound track was unmistakably that of a triple-X-rated film. The sighs and moans were background for a grainy moving picture of a couple engaged in a sexual act.