The Alibi Man

Chapter 68

“Barbaro told me Irina wasn’t shy about her plans to entertain the boys that night,” I said. “Lisbeth begged Irina not to go, but Irina went anyway.”

“You think Lisbeth came back later to confront Irina?” Landry said. “That was when Barbaro saw her.”

He pulled into the drive and parked next to my car near the cottage.

I felt a terrible sense of urgency as I got out of the car. The fatigue that had taken hold of me burned off on a new rush of adrenaline.

Lisbeth was alone somewhere. I had a feeling Lisbeth had been alone a very long time. I thought that was perhaps the source of my sympathy for her-that I looked at Lisbeth Perkins and saw in her all the things that life had burned out of me long ago.

I called her name as I went inside, knowing she wouldn’t answer.

Sick as a dog from what she had gone through the night before, her Midwestern work ethic still had not allowed her to leave a mess in a host’s home. She had made the bed and fluffed the pillows.

The note was propped against the spring-green velvet bolster, in Lisbeth’s happy, loopy, girlish handwriting.

I read the message, my heart sinking deep inside me.

She thanked me for helping her.

She thanked me for being a good friend to Irina.

She apologized for everything she had done wrong, for every shortcoming she had, for every good thing she wasn’t.

She wrote down the names and phone number of her parents in Michigan.

She said good-bye.