The Alibi by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online

others were compared, even to this day.
    They were a sublime match.
    Their three adorable daughters had been given
    boys' names, either because Maxine was drunk when
    she went into labor each time, or because she was so
    far gone she was confused about the gender of her
    newborn, or because she wanted to spite the wayward
    Clive, who yearned for male offspring and blamed
    her for producing only females. Never mind the absence
    of Y chromosomes.
    So little Clancy, Jerri, and Davee grew up in a
    household where serious domestic problems were
    swept beneath priceless Persian rugs. The girls
    learned at an early age to keep their reactions to any
    situation, no matter how upsetting, to themselves. It
    was safer that way. The atmosphere at home was unreliable and tricky to gauge when both parents were
    volatile and given to temper tantrums, resulting in
    fights that shattered any semblance of peace and tranquillity.
    Consequently the sisters bore emotional scars.
    Clancy had healed hers by dying in her early thirties
    of cervical cancer, which the most vicious gossips
    claimed had been brought on by too many bouts
    of venereal disease.
    Jerri had gone in the opposite direction, becoming a convert to a fundamentalist Christian group her
    freshman year in college. She had dedicated herself
    to a life of hardship and abstinence from anything
    pleasurable, particularly alcohol and sex. She grew
    root vegetables and preached the gospel on an Indian
    reservation in South Dakota.
    Davee, the youngest, was the only one who remained
    in Charleston, defying shame and gossip,
    even after Clive died of cardiac arrest in his current
    mistress's bed between his board meeting in the
    morning and his tee time that afternoon, and following
    Maxine's being committed to a nursing home
    with "Alzheimer's" when everybody knew the truth
    was that her brain had been pickled by vodka.
    Davee, who looked as soft and malleable as warm
    taffy, was actually tough as nails. Tough enough to
    stick it out. She could survive anything. She had
    proved it.
    "Well," she said, corning to her feet, "even if y'all
    declined a drink, I believe I'll have one."
    At the liquor cart, she dropped a few ice cubes into
    a crystal tumbler and poured vodka over them. She
    drank almost half of it in one swallow, then refilled
    the glass before turning back to them. "Who was
    she?"
    "Pardon?"
    "Come on, Rory. I'm not going to have vapors. If
    Lute was shot in his fancy new hotel suite, he
    must've been entertaining a lady friend. I figure that
    either she or her jealous husband killed him."
    "Who said he was shot?" Steffi Mundell asked.
    "What?"
    "Smilow didn't say your husband had been shot.
    He said he'd been murdered."
    Davee took another drink. "I assumed he was shot.
    Isn't that a safe guess?"
    "Was it a guess?"
    Davee flung her arms wide, sloshing some of her
    drink onto the rug. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"
    Steffi stood. "I represent the D.A.'s office. Or, as
    it's known in South Carolina, the county solicitor."
    "I know what it's known as in South Carolina,"
    Davee returned drolly.
    "I'll be prosecuting your husband's murder case.
    That's why I insisted on coming along with
    Smilow."
    "Ahh, I get it. To gauge my reaction to the news."
    "Precisely. I must say you didn't seem very surprised
    by it. So back to my original question: Where
    were you this afternoon? And don't say that it isn't
    any of my goddamn business because, you see, Mrs.
    Pettijohn, it very much is."
    Davee, curbing her anger, calmly raised her glass
    to her lips once again and took her time answering.
    "You want to know if I can establish an alibi, is that
    it?"
     
    "We didn't come here to interrogate you, Davee,"
    Smilow said.
     
    "It's okay, Rory. I've got nothing to hide. I just
    think it's insensitive of her"—she gave Steffi a
    scathing once-over—"to come into my house and
    start firing insulting and insinuating questions at me
    seconds after I've been informed that my husband
    was