The Alibi Page 8

  Earlier in the evening, before she had started feeling sick and had to drive herself to the emergency room, she had heard about the Lute Pettijohn murder on TV. She’d watched Smilow’s press conference. He had conducted it in his typically efficient and unflappable manner. Steffi Mundell was already horning in where she wasn’t wanted or needed, overstepping her bounds, which it was said she was good at.

  Loretta chuckled. It did her old heart good to see them grappling for clues and following dead-end leads. The investigation couldn’t be going very well if their only possible witnesses were people sick with food poisoning. One thing was certain: Smilow didn’t have a viable suspect or he wouldn’t be chasing down emergency room patients.

  Loretta glanced at the wall clock. She had been waiting for over two hours and was feeling worse by the minute. She hoped help would be coming soon.

  To pass the time and keep her mind off her personal miseries, she stared through the plate-glass window at the spot, now empty, where their car had been parked. Rory Smilow and Steffi Mundell. Jesus, what a dangerous combination. God help the luckless murderer when they did catch him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  At the sound of her daughter’s voice, Loretta turned. Bev was standing over her, fists on hips, eyes judgmental, not at all happy to see her. She tried smiling, but felt her dry lips crack when she stretched them across her teeth. “Hi, Bev. Did they just now tell you I was down here?”

  “No, but I was busy and couldn’t get away until now.”

  Bev was an ICU nurse, but Loretta figured she could have asked someone to cover for her for five minutes if she had wanted to. Of course, she hadn’t wanted to.

  Nervously she wet her scaly lips with her tongue. “I thought I would come by and see… Maybe we could have breakfast together.”

  “When my shift ends at seven, I will have put in twelve hours. I’m going home to bed.”

  “Oh.” This wasn’t going even as well as Loretta had hoped, and she hadn’t held out much hope that it would go well. She picked at the buttons on the front of her dirty blouse.

  “You didn’t come here so we could have breakfast together, did you?” Bev’s voice had an imperious tone that grabbed the attention of the admitting nurse. Loretta noticed her glance at them curiously. “You ran out of money, so you couldn’t buy your booze, so you came begging to me.”

  Loretta lowered her head to avoid her daughter’s angry, unmerciful glare. “I haven’t had a drink in days, Bev. I swear I haven’t.”

  “I smell it on you.”

  “I’m sick. Truly. I—”

  “Oh, save it.” Bev opened her pocketbook and took out a ten-dollar bill. But she didn’t hand it to Loretta; she forced her to reach for it, adding to her humiliation. “Don’t bother me at work again. If you do, I’ll have hospital security escort you off the premises. Understand?”

  Loretta nodded, swallowing her pride and her shame. The rubber soles of Bev’s shoes squeaked on the tiles as she turned to go. When Loretta heard the elevator doors open, she raised her head and called plaintively, “Bev, don’t—”

  The doors closed before she could finish, but not before she could see that Bev’s eyes were averted, as though she couldn’t bear the sight of her own mother.

  Sunday

  Chapter 8

  It just didn’t make sense.

  Unexpectedly, out of the blue, you meet someone. It’s like getting a gift for no particular reason. The attraction is instantaneous, strong, and mutual. You enjoy each other’s company. You laugh, you dance, you eat corn on the cob and ice cream. You have sex that makes you feel like you’ve never known what it was all about before. You fall asleep in each other’s arms and feel more content than you can remember feeling, ever.

  Then you wake up alone.

  She’s gone. No so long, no goodbye. No hasta la vista, baby. No nothing.

  Hammond thumped the steering wheel of his car, angry at her, but angrier at himself for giving a damn. Why should he care that she had run out? Hey, he had had a terrific Saturday night. He’d had great sex with a gorgeous stranger who had accommodated him in bed, then, being even more accommodating, had disappeared, leaving no strings attached. The dream date, right? It didn’t get much better than that. Ask any single male his number one, primo fantasy, and that would be it.

  So accept it for what it was, you jerk, he reprimanded himself. Don’t make too much out of it. And don’t remember it better than it actually was.

  But he wasn’t making it out better than it was. It had been fantastic, and that’s exactly how he was remembering it.

  Cursing, he swerved around a motorist who was testing his patience by driving too slow. Everything was an irritant today. Since waking up this morning, he had been taking out his disappointment and frustration on inanimate objects. First on the bureau on which he had rammed his big toe as he had bolted from the bed and run into the living area of the cabin, frantically hoping to see her puttering around in the kitchen looking for a cereal bowl, or thumbing through a magazine in the living area, or sitting in the porch rocking chair watching the river flow languidly past as she sipped coffee and waited for him to wake up.

  His fantasies had taken on the soft-focus glow of greeting card commercials.

  But that’s all they had been—fantasies.

  Because the living room and kitchen were empty, her car was gone, and the only occupant of the front porch rocking chair had been a spider busily spinning a web that spanned the seat from one armrest to the other.

  Uncaring that he was bare-assed, he had brushed the spider aside and sat down in the rocker, pushing back his hair with all ten fingers, the gesture of a desperate man on the brink of losing all self-control.

  What time had she left? What time was it now? How long had she been gone?

  Maybe she was coming back. Maybe he was getting upset over nothing.

  For half an hour, he had deluded himself into believing that she had gone in search of donuts and danish. Or cream for her coffee. Or a Sunday newspaper.

  But she didn’t come back.

  Eventually he had relinquished the rocking chair to the spider and went indoors. In his attempt to make coffee, he had spilled grounds on the countertop. Angry over that, he had cracked the glass carafe and wound up throwing the whole damn machine onto the floor, breaking it apart and dumping the water with which he’d filled the tank.

  He had searched the cabin, looking for something she might have left behind, wishing for a business card… or, better yet, a note. He found nothing. In the bathroom, he had inspected the wastepaper basket beneath the sink, but there was nothing in it except the disposable plastic liner. When he came back up, he bumped his head on the open door of the storage cabinet. Furiously he slammed the door, but cursed with even more ferocity when he slammed it shut on his finger.

  Finally, although the bed was the most poignant reminder of her, he had returned to it, flinging himself down onto it and placing his forearm across his eyes, willing himself to get it together.

  What the hell was wrong with him? he had asked himself. No one who knew him would have recognized him this morning, prowling around naked and unshaven and not giving a damn, looking and behaving like a wild man, like a dangerously unbalanced lunatic. Hammond Cross, acting like a chump, like a lovesick calf. Our Hammond Cross? You gotta be kidding!

  Wait a minute, did you say lovesick?

  Slowly he had lowered his arm and turned his head toward her pillow. He touched it, placing his hand in the depression left by her head. Gradually he had rolled onto his side, drew the pillow against his chest, and buried his face in it, breathing deeply of her scent.

  Desire engulfed him, but this wasn’t about sex.

  Okay, it was, but not entirely.

  This wasn’t ordinary lust. He’d experienced that lots of times. He would recognize that. This was different. Deeper. More involving. He was in the grip of a… yearning.

  “Shit,” he had whispered. Would
you listen to yourself? Yearning?

  Rolling onto his back again, he had gazed up at the ceiling and dismally conceded that he didn’t know the term for what he felt. It was foreign to him. He had never experienced it before, so how could he put a name to it? He only knew that it was encompassing and debilitating, that he had never felt like this before even though he had been with a lot of beautiful, captivating, sexy women.

  From there his thoughts had wandered from his sexual history to hers. And that’s when he had remembered the telephone call. Frowning, he had looked at the telephone on the table across the room. When he had caught her using it, she had looked startled and guilty. Who could she have been calling?

  Suddenly he had sprung off the bed. Heart racing, he bent over the telephone and ran his finger along the rubberized buttons on the panel. He wasn’t even sure that this particular model had the feature he sought, but then, yes!, there it was.

  Auto Redial.

  Hesitating only a second, he depressed the button. Beeping a series of tones, the telephone automatically dialed the number, which simultaneously appeared on the LED. He grabbed a pencil and the only paper within reach—last season’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. He scribbled the telephone number across the cover girl’s abdomen.

  “Dr. Ladd.”

  He didn’t know what he had expected, but after two rings when his call was answered by a clipped, professional, female voice, it caught him off guard.

  “Pardon?”

  “Were you calling Dr. Ladd?”

  “Uh… I’m… I might have the wrong number.” He repeated the number he had jotted down.

  “That’s correct. This is an answering service. Were you trying to reach the doctor?”

  At a loss, he said, “Uh, yeah.”

  “Your name and a number where you can be reached, please.”

  “You know, on second thought, I’ll wait and call during office hours.”

  He had hung up quickly, but for a long time afterward, he had sat on the edge of the bed and pondered who the hell Dr. Ladd could be, and why she had been calling him in the middle of the night.

  He had run through a roster of names and faces in his memory bank. He mixed socially with a number of physicians. He was a member of two country clubs that were jam-packed with doctors of every specialty. But he couldn’t recall ever having met a Dr. Ladd.

  But had he met Dr. Ladd’s wife? Did he know Dr. Ladd’s wife intimately?

  Annoyed by that grim but very real possibility, he had forced himself to get up and shower. Not that a hot shower was indicative of anything. Not that he felt guilty and in need of cleansing. If she was married and had lied about it, he was blameless. Right? Right.

  After dressing, he had trudged into the kitchen, where he settled for two cups of decaf freeze-dried coffee. He even forced down half an English muffin, chewing and ruminating in sync. She had told him she wasn’t married, but hell, how could he believe a woman who hadn’t even told him her name?

  He didn’t even know her name, for chrissake!

  She had told him a lot of things. For instance, that she didn’t habitually go to bed with men she had only just met. Casually or routinely. Weren’t those her exact words? But how did he know if that was true?

  How did he know that she wasn’t a compulsive liar and slut, who happened to be married to a poor schmuck with a medical degree? She could be a wayward wife who had cheated on Dr. Ladd so much that he was no longer surprised by telephone calls in the middle of the night.

  The more Hammond thought about it, the more morose he became.

  As he straightened up the kitchen, he had checked the wall clock and was surprised to see that it was already midafternoon. How could he have slept so late? Easy. They hadn’t stopped making love.… They hadn’t drifted off to sleep until nearly six.

  He hadn’t intended to return to Charleston until dark. He had planned on spending a leisurely Sunday fishing, or sitting on the porch and taking in the scenery, basically doing nothing that required him to think too much.

  But staying in the cabin hadn’t held much appeal. Nor had thinking. So he had locked up the place and headed back ahead of schedule. Now as he crossed Memorial Bridge into the city, he wondered if she was a Charlestonian who had taken a similar route home.

  What if they bumped into each other some night at a cocktail party? Would they acknowledge their night together, or would they greet one another like polite strangers and pretend they had never met?

  It would probably depend on whether or not they were with other people at the time. How would he feel if he was introduced to the seemingly happy couple, Dr. and Mrs. Ladd, and was required to look her husband in the eye and shake his hand and make small talk and act like he hadn’t had carnal knowledge of the woman standing beside him?

  He hoped for many reasons that he would never be faced with a situation like that, but that if he was, he would handle it with a reasonable degree of aplomb. He hoped he wouldn’t look like a sap. He hoped he would be able to turn his back on her and walk away.

  He wasn’t sure he could. That’s what worried him most.

  When faced with a moral dilemma, Hammond usually chose on the side of right. Beyond normal childhood pranks, high school mischief, and college debauchery, his conduct was unimpeachable. Whether he was cursed with an extra measure of virtue or merely cowardice, he customarily abided by the rules.

  It hadn’t always been easy. In fact, his unshakable sense of right and wrong had been at the crux of most of his conflicts with friends and colleagues, even his parents. Especially his father. His father and he didn’t abide by the same rules of behavior. Preston Cross would consider this quandary over a woman amusing.

  Turning into the condo complex where he lived, Hammond asked himself what would have happened if he had walked in on her moments earlier last night and had heard her say into the telephone something to the effect of, “Darling, since it’s so late, I’ve decided to stay over with my friend [insert feminine name here]. That is if you don’t mind. I thought it might be dangerous to drive back alone this late. All right then, see you in the morning. Love you, too.”

  When the automated door opened, Hammond guided his car into his narrow garage. But for several moments after he had turned off the engine, he sat there and stared into near space, pondering whether or not he would have passed or failed that particular test of his moral fiber.

  Finally, annoyed with himself for engaging in such pointless speculation, he got out of his car and let himself into his townhouse through the door connecting the garage to the kitchen. Out of habit, he headed for the telephone to check his voice mail. On second thought, he ignored it. There was bound to be at least one message from his father. He wasn’t in the mood to rehash yesterday’s confrontation. He wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

  Maybe he would go for a quick sail. There were a few hours of daylight remaining. The sixteen-foot craft, a gift from his parents when he passed the bar, was moored across the street at City Marina. That’s why he’d bought a condo in this complex; it was a short walk to the marina.

  Today was a perfect day to take the boat out. It might help clear his mind.

  Quickening his pace, he went through the kitchen, into the hall, past the living room, and was headed for the stairs when he heard a key being inserted in the front door lock. He barely had time to turn before Steffi Mundell came in, a cell phone held to her ear.

  She was saying, “I can’t believe they’re being such hard-asses about this.” Juggling keys, phone, briefcase, and handbag, she waggled her fingers in a hello wave. “I mean, food poisoning isn’t exactly bone cancer.… Well, let me know.… I know I don’t have to be there, but I want to be. You have the number of my cell, right?… Okay, ’bye.” She clicked the phone off and looked at Hammond with exasperation. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “What happened to hello?”

  His colleague never stopped working. In an oversize briefcase, she carried aroun
d with her what amounted to a miniature desk. Upon joining the Charleston County Solicitor’s Office, she’d had a police scanner installed in her car, and she listened to it like other motorists listened to music or talk radio. It was a standing joke among the other attorneys and police officers that Steffi was the prosecution’s equivalent of an ambulance-chasing defense attorney.

  She dumped her plethora of belongings into a chair, stepped out of her high heels, and pulled her shirttail from her skirt waistband. She fanned her midriff with the loose blouse. “God, it’s stifling outside. I’m smothering. Why haven’t you answered your phone?”

  “I told you I was going to be at my cabin.”

  “I called there. About a million times.”

  “I turned off the ringer.”

  “For heaven’s sake why?”

  Because I was totally involved in a woman and didn’t want to be disturbed, he thought. But he said, “You must have the radar of a bat. I just came in through the back door. How’d you know I was here?”

  “I didn’t. Your place is closer to CPD than mine. I figured you wouldn’t mind me waiting here until I heard something.”

  “About what? Who were you talking to? What’s so urgent?”

  “Urgent? Hammond?” Facing him, hands on hips, she appeared at first to be mystified. Then her expression changed to one of profound amazement. “Oh, my God, you don’t know.”

  “Apparently not.” Her dramatics didn’t impress him. Steffi was always dramatic.

  So much for sailing. He didn’t want to invite Steffi to come along, and she wasn’t easy to shake, especially when her spirits were running this high. He suddenly felt very tired. “I need something to drink. What can I get you?”

  He retraced his steps into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Water or beer?”

  She padded along behind him. “I can’t believe it. You honestly don’t know. You haven’t heard. Where is that cabin of yours, Outer Mongolia? Doesn’t it have a TV?”