One-Night Alibi

“What? I haven’t even told you what the problem is.”

“I already know. You want me to vouch for your whereabouts on Saturday night.”

“Well, yeah. How do you know about that?” Then he slapped his own forehead. “Duh. It’s probably been in the news.” He hadn’t turned on a TV in days. “Look, I understand if you don’t want to see me again, or if you don’t want the whole world to know you picked up some strange guy at a wedding. But there’s no need for anyone to know. Just talk to a couple of detectives. Tell them you were with me, that I couldn’t possibly have killed Mandalay.”

She paused at the door, her hand hovering over the knob. Finally she turned and looked at him with something approaching honest regret. “I would help you if I could. I’m not embarrassed. It’s just that using me as an alibi won’t do you much good. Because if there’s one person in the world who had a better reason than you to kill Franklin Mandalay, it’s me.”

Oh, God. This did not sound good. “Maybe I better sit down.”

“No, no, you have to leave.” The urgency had returned to her voice. “We can’t be seen together.”

“We’ve already been seen together. Your security man downstairs knows I came to see you. The valet at the wedding saw us leave together. You think cops won’t figure that out?”

Her face fell. She returned to the living room and more or less collapsed onto that comfy-looking sofa. Hudson sat in the chair opposite her.

“Maybe you better tell me everything,” Hudson said. “Why would you want to kill Franklin Mandalay?”

“Because he’s my father. And we’re estranged. He is manipulative and controlling and a liar. And I’m his sole heir.” With that, her eyes filled with tears. “Jesus, I have no idea why I keep crying. He was not a very nice man.”

Mandalay was her father? Hudson’s head was spinning like a gyroscope. “I knew there was something off about that night,” he murmured. Then, louder, he said, “Tell me everything. All of it, Liz. If I get even a whiff of deception from you I’m going straight to the police.”

CHAPTER FIVE

LIZ MASSAGED HER temples and looked as if she was collecting herself, rounding up her thoughts. “Our meeting was accidental,” she began. “Well, sort of. I already told you I recognized you from the newspaper. I wanted to meet you. I actually admired you for standing up to my father, and I knew you hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“Hmm.” Should he believe her now? He had no idea.

“When I saw you at the wedding, I planned to just talk to you. But then one thing led to another and I completely forgot why I’d wanted to meet you in the first place.”

“Hmm,” he said again.

“Hudson, I really liked you. But I knew if you found out who I was you’d be freaked out, and I just didn’t see any happy ending if the truth came out. That’s the real reason I left your house so fast. I saw my opportunity, and I dashed. I didn’t want you to know anything more about me—I was afraid you’d try to find me.”

“Guess your fears came true.” He pondered the situation for a few seconds. “So, you called a cab?” Her cell phone would have a record of that call, he realized.

“Using your phone. My cell was out of juice.”

Okay. That was probably good news. “And you went straight home?”

“Hudson, of course! Jesus, don’t tell me you think I did it.”

“The time-of-death window goes until 5:00 a.m. That’s more than an hour after you left my place.” At her stricken expression, he changed tacks. “No, Liz, I know you didn’t do it. But the cops are going to ask you that. They’re going to ask you a lot more. You better be prepared for it.”

“The cops already talked to me.”

Oh, hell, of course they had. She’d probably been notified first thing after the body was identified, then asked at least a few preliminary questions. “When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I went straight home from the wedding. I didn’t talk to anyone or see anyone. I went home alone, and no one can corroborate my whereabouts.”

Hudson jumped up and started to pace. “You lied to the police?”

“You think I should have told them I was with you? How would that look?”

“You should never lie to the police. They always find out, Liz.”

“They don’t have to find out. What did you tell them?”

“I said I was with you, of course. How the hell was I supposed to know you would be the other main suspect?” He thought some more. “There’s only one thing to do. You have to go to the Montgomery County sheriff’s office and tell them the truth. We’ll go together.”

“No! Hudson, no, we can’t do that. It’ll look so bad that I lied. For me and for you. Because if they think I did it, and they know we were together, you’ll go down with me.”

She had a point. Still... “I don’t know how we can keep it secret. The cabdriver who took you home—”

“I didn’t tell the police anything about a cab.”

“Yeah, but I did.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. “We’ll deal with that if we have to.”

“They’ll ask people at the wedding. The valet, for instance. He saw us leave together.”

“I can’t tell them I lied, Hudson. I won’t.”

Great. If he tried to claim she was his alibi, and she denied his story, he would look even worse. The valet might not recall seeing them together; the place had been a zoo. If he could find which cab company she’d called...

“Hudson, there must be something else we can do.”

“We could fly to the Bahamas, but they probably already have our passports flagged.”

“Really?”

“Liz, focus. We aren’t going to flee the country. Let’s think this through. You didn’t kill your father. And I didn’t kill him. Ergo—”

“Someone else did. We just have to find that person!”

Easier said than done. He prided himself on being a good, thorough detective. But without his badge—without the authority of the Montgomery County sheriff behind him—his efforts would be severely hampered.

“Any ideas who could have done it?”

“One of his desperate clients. Or someone he swindled.” She shrugged. “He wasn’t a part of my life anymore. I have no idea what was happening in his world.”

Hudson had a hard time understanding that. His parents were his rocks, and he loved them both fiercely and saw them on a regular basis. “How long have you been estranged from him?”

“Since I was eighteen. I got an academic scholarship to Bryn Mawr. He refused to let me go, insisted I go to Rice University and live at home.”