“I know.”
She looked up at my face. “I don’t mean this alibi thing. I can handle that. I mean Jeri being gone. Allie, too, but mostly Jeri. God, Mort, I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t trust my voice, so I just held her. She laid her cheek on my chest. “I’m okay with this. Giving you an alibi.” She thumbed the elastic on my shorts. “You should take this off, like Ma said. It’ll be more like what we’re supposed to be doing here.”
So I did. It still had nothing to do with sex. I held her for a while. Holding her felt good, as if we were keeping each other from drifting away into a very dark place. I even fell asleep for a few minutes. Besides, if you’re going to go out and kill someone, it’s a good idea to rest up.
Finally, we got out of bed, showered together, got dressed, and did all the things Ma told us to do. Later, we went to my house on Ralston Street where the police finally caught up with us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE STORM CAME and went. It was a lot like Ma had said it would be. I ended up in a stuffy interrogation room with Fairchild and Officer Day and several others. Their eyes were hard and alert as I told them how I’d spent the past twenty or twenty-four hours— with Sarah Dellario, age twenty-four and gorgeous.
“Gifting,” Fairchild said. A gleam of respect appeared in his eyes. I wasn’t in the mood, but the gleam didn’t last long so I didn’t end up in the county jail on an assault charge.
Sarah verified my story—which was actually an alibi, but no one called it that—and I verified hers. We didn’t embellish a thing. Ma was good, she’d prepared us perfectly. They verified that gifting thing with her and it didn’t come up again, which might’ve been due to jealousy since they were essentially a herd of pigs.
Then the FBI had at us because of Reinhart’s involvement, but Fairchild’s interrogation had been good practice. We kept it simple. We didn’t know anything. A couple of them found it remarkable that young, beautiful Sarah would have anything to do with a crusty old relic like me. Sarah lit up at their suggestion that a girl like her couldn’t find me attractive. After they cut us loose, she told me she bit off a few heads, anger that lent much authenticity to her words.
With Jeri dead, I was a suspect, which is the way it works. It’s often the husband or boyfriend, although the boyfriend rarely has occasion to murder a presidential candidate and several others while doing away with the girlfriend. Reinhart’s and Wexel’s deaths were a shroud of mist over everything.
With Allie dead, Sarah was a suspect, which is also the way it works, although Reinhart was a good-sized wrench in that theory as well. I was beginning to like him better for all the muddy water he was churning up. If I’d still had his hand I might have shaken it. The FBI went through Sarah’s apartment with combs and shop vacs as Ma thought they might, but Ma’s details held up.
I stayed with Sarah that night and we comforted each other. She tried to study but had to give it up. We didn’t eat a lot. We watched a movie that barely made it as far as our retinas. By nine p.m. we were back in bed, still close, clinging to each other, and I finally went to sleep, so tired that I didn’t even dream.
At ten p.m. the following evening we walked into the Green Room. Ma was there, alone at a table, working on a glass of wine with the glow of a cell phone on her face. She glanced up when we came in, then went back to her phone.
As directed, Sarah and I sat in back, thirty feet from her. I went to the bar. It was O’Roarke’s night off. The barkeep was a woman, Ella Glover, twenty-eight, dark hair, good-looking, maybe fifteen pounds overweight, which is nothing in this day and age. She smiled, said hi. She’d been working there for eight months. I brought back a Tequila Sunrise for Sarah, a Wicked Ale for myself. We sat where we could keep an eye on the entrance and talked quietly.
Twenty minutes later, Ma came over and sat at our table.
“I think we’re okay,” she said. “If anyone comes in and gives us a second look, let’s meet tomorrow at the Fireside Lounge in the Peppermill, ten p.m., same as tonight.”
Then Ma dropped the bomb: Mary Odermann had boarded a flight late that afternoon in Vegas, headed for Orly Airport in France with a change of flights in Denver. For a woman who’d died two years ago, Mary really got around.
“Already gone,” I said, thinking that Mercedes SUV was going to end up in a Vegas chop shop.
“But not forgotten.”
“So now I’ve got to go to France,” I said. “Or wherever she goes once she gets there.”
“You and me both, bucko,” Ma said. “And me,” Sarah put in.
Ma looked at her. “Not sure about you, hon. I appreciate the thought, but it’s gonna be a pretty rough trip. In and out, fast as we can get it done.”
“I loved Jeri, too. I can help. Not with . . . with whatever you’re going to do, but finding her, maybe following her if we have to.”
Ma looked at her, finally nodded. “It’ll take some doin’. First thing, none of us can go under our own names, so we’ll need fake IDs, passports, credit cards, the whole nine yards, and that’ll take time and money. I know a guy, which’ll help. We can cut the time down, but that’ll mean the money will go up. A lot.”
“Whatever it takes,” I said.
“You and I can go as mother and son,” Ma said without batting an eye. “I still don’t think Sarah should go. I
