half a day, but he’d found her.
Belatedly, he wished he’d brought flowers. She was undoubtedly still angry with him for the accusations he’d thrown at her Saturday night. That had been stupid of him.
The elevator couldn’t move fast enough to suit him. When he finally alighted on the fifth floor, he practically sprinted down the hall until he found her apartment number. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he knocked. Decisively. Twice.
The woman who opened the door was hardly recognizable as the sultry vixen who’d taken his breath away Saturday night, seducing him so shamelessly. She stood before him in sweats and an old Bryn Mawr College T-shirt, her face pale and devoid of makeup, her hair pulled back untidily in an elastic band.
She was still achingly beautiful.
“Liz.” Somehow, that was the only word that would come out of his mouth.
She turned, leaving the door open, and he followed her into her apartment. It was an expensive-looking space, open and airy. The walls were painted in soft pastels; the furnishings looked classy but not formal or pretentious. The only item that looked out of place was a huge bouquet of orchids on the dining-room table, wilted and turning brown. Everything else was clean and well-maintained.
“I can explain,” she finally said.
“There’s no need.” He felt a little off-balance. She was the one apologizing? “I don’t blame you for bailing out on me. I said some awful thing, things I didn’t mean. If I’d bothered to use half a brain before I spouted off...”
She looked at him curiously, as if an apology wasn’t what she expected, either.
He closed the door. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Her expression changed rapidly from guilt to suspicion. What had he done now?
“I stopped at your clinic first,” he explained, figuring she didn’t appreciate his intrusion into her privacy. “Someone there told me you’d had a death in your family.”
“Dear God, you still don’t know.”
“Uh...guess I don’t. Pretty clueless here. Liz, I don’t mean to intrude on your grief. But I’m in a difficult situation here, and you’re the only one who can help me. Believe me, I wouldn’t have bothered you otherwise. I mean, I did want to see you again. And I’m kind of glad I had an excuse to track you down—”
“I can’t help you. You have to leave.” She strode toward her front door, obviously expecting him to vacate.
“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.”
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