Last Hour by Mary Stone

Author:Mary Stone [Stone, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

19

Amber Wilson lived at the end unit of a long apartment building. Mia glanced at Emma. “Ah, lovely. Welcome to the Bates Motel.”

Emma snorted.

The building looked more like a motel than a cluster of apartments, with battered white siding and a flickering marquee in the parking lot reading, Vacancy. As they made it to the end of the narrow passageway, black-stamped metal numbers, showing 112, hung crookedly below the peephole on Amber’s door. They rattled when Mia knocked.

Footsteps thumped on the other side of the door, followed by the clattering of a chain and the click of the dead bolt.

The door opened, revealing Amber in a short, silky nightgown and a long see-through robe. “I’m waiting on a…guest, and I see you two through the peephole. What the hell do you want?”

Emma shot a quick glance at Mia. That was some getup to greet company in. “Amber, we just have a few⁠—”

“Questions? Isn’t that what you said last time you interrupted me?” Amber sighed dramatically, but then stepped back from the door and waved a hand as if welcoming them into a dinner party. “Fine. Whatever. Come on in, already.”

As they stepped up to the door, Amber glared from Mia to Emma as if daring either woman to say anything about her clothing. They didn’t, and she flounced backward into her place, leaving the door hanging open.

Emma led the way in after her.

What appeared shabby and tiny from the outside turned out to be a little bit larger, but no fancier. Amber’s one-room home had space for a queen-size bed, a living room set with a sofa and coffee table, and a corner kitchen. A closed door beside the fridge presumably led to a bathroom.

Mia shut the door behind them, and the petite stripper dropped herself onto the sofa. Gazing at them with a pout on her lips, she put her bare legs up and crossed her arms over her chest, which pulled her nightgown a touch too far down for decency’s sake.

“Well?” Amber’s bright-red fingernails tapped against one elbow where she held her arms to herself in a poor attempt not to betray her nerves. “What do you want now?”

Emma remained standing and did her best to ignore the woman’s state of undress. “We’d like you to go over your alibi for Sunday night. Last night also.”

Her tongue darted out to her lips, and she pouted. “I came home Sunday night, right after Veevee closed up. I left around two thirty.”

“You walked home? Drove?”

“I got a lift from Celine.”

They’d heard the dancer’s name a couple times, and it wouldn’t take much to confirm Celine had both been on shift Sunday night and driven away with Amber in her car.

But we won’t be talking to Veevee about that, unless he’s suddenly decided to show up again.

“What about last night, Amber? Between nine p.m. and midnight?”

“I was at a friend’s bachelorette party. You ask around or look at video over at the Beggar’s Dream Club, you’ll see me all over the footage.

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