Page 79 of The Alibi Club

“I know of a house that looks like a lifeguard shack. I walk by it all the time on The Strand,” Cliff finally said. “But this is crazy. I am not the man I was. I am not a thief.”

Rick nodded along vigorously, as if eager to agree that everyone deserved a chance at a new life. He looked over at Holly, whose discerning eyes were trained on Cliff, her face betraying no emotion whatsoever.

Jamie, her skepticism in overdrive, barreled ahead. “A master thief arrives in Manhattan Beach, one of the wealthiest enclaves on the California coast, and decides to go straight.” She smiled sadly. “In my many years as a forensic psychiatrist, I would say that the chances are low that someone like you ever changes.”

Kyle interjected, “Hey, I thought we agree people could change?”

Jamie looked to Detective Roverson, “What was stolen?”

The detective shrugged and said, “That’s the thing. We don’t know.”

“What?” Cliff asked, incredulous. “I’m being accused of a theft and no one knows what was actually stolen?”

“Well, we’re working on it,” Roverson muttered.

Jamie turned to SWAT team member Jon Robey. “Who owns the house?”

“Duncan Reeves,” Robey answered.

Cliff whipped his head toward Robey. “No. That’s not right.”

Jamie seized on that. “How do you know that?”

Robey confirmed. “Yes, sir, Duncan Reeves, the tech mogul millionaire.”

Cliff looked puzzled. He squinted and looked sideways, trying to work something out. “My mistake, I guess.”

Jamie concentrated on Cliff with growing doubt gathering like thunder. She stepped toward him. “And then there’s the twenty minutes you went missing after the lights went out. And you wouldn’t put your phone up, come to think of it. You could have used that to detonate the bombs.”

Cliff looked at Jamie and the other four singles he’d come to think of as new friends.

Rick and Kyle reluctantly nodded. Shannon shrugged and held out her hands helplessly. Holly noted with a tone of regret, “You did disappear for roughly twenty minutes.”

“You guys,” he looked around the group, pleading. “Do you all think I did this?” Cliff looked at Kyle, then Shannon, Rick and Holly, none of whom could meet his gaze but chose rather to stare at the floor, ceiling, the middle distance. Finally, Cliff turned back to Jamie, defeated.

Jamie picked up her conclusion like a fumbled football and ran with it. “Twenty minutes. More than enough time for a master thief to execute his best laid plan and duck into a nearby mansion to steal the object of his desire. What was it? Diamonds? The Cross of Coronado? A Renoir?”

“Come on, Jamie.” Cliff exclaimed as he shook his head. “For those twenty minutes I was locked in the walk-in freezer!”

Jamie felt herself riding high on her Sherlock Holmesian thread, coming closer to the truth. “You don’t expect us to believe that, do you? You told me you were locked in the bathroom. Why were you locked in the freezer? By whom?”

“By the crazy woman who locked me in it!” Cliff pointed to Amber, the sly waitress who was carrying a tray of glasses back to the bar. She froze like a cat in a corner.

All eyes were on Amber as she stared innocently while blinking her fake eyelashes. “Why would I lock him in a freezer?”

Cliff looked at Amber even harder and reluctantly said, “Because we had a one-night stand three weeks ago and I never called you.”

The words hung in the air like a toxic cloud.

Amber wore a look of complete shock. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

Cliff fumed as Amber dropped her surprised expression and stalked back into the safety of the kitchen. He turned back to Jamie, resigned to his fate. “Jamie, don’t do this. I am innocent. Except about the Amber thing.”

Jamie ignored the flutter in her heart, as if it was trying to get her attention. She bowed her head, not wanting to believe the evidence in front of her, but finding it incontrovertible. Her mind flashed to the report on Cliff, also known as Clifford Montgomery Weston. She recalled her exact initial write-up: superior intelligence, master thief, pathological liar. She realized with a rather large amount of despair that the only man that had sparked something inside her, in a cruel twist of fate, was also a career criminal, a liar, and evidently, a self-professed womanizer.

The others in the room began to encircle Cliff, including Detective Roverson and SWAT team member Jon Robey, who had checked for his cuffs hanging on his belt and put his hand on his gun. Robey shot Jamie a look, and she gave him a nod. He stepped away and spoke into his radio.

Cliff made a quiet plea to only her. “Listen, I was a thief. But I paid my debt to society. I am a legitimate businessman now. I have no intention of returning to that life. I want to be a better man,” Cliff said, but it sounded hollow somehow.