Mr. Alibi

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

No-nonsense private eye Belinda Sweet, the only person in Los Angeles who wants no part in fame, avoids cases that bring her attention. Until she stumbles on one in a bar, when a barfly asks her to act as his alibi for killing his wife.

When the cops arrest him but then let him go, Sweet needs to know why. She’s lived in LA long enough to recognize an actor when she sees one. And she refuses to stop until she uncovers the real story—even if fame inevitably follows.

“Rusch’s short fiction is golden.”
—Kansas City Star

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: May 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533749680

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

The only person in Los Angeles who wants no part in fame, no-nonsense private eye Belinda Sweet avoids cases that bring her attention. Until she stumbles on one in a bar, when a barfly asks her to act as his alibi for killing his wife.

When the cops arrest him but then let him go, Sweet needs to know why. She’s lived in LA long enough to recognize an actor when she sees one. And she refuses to stop until she uncovers the real story—even if fame inevitably follows.

Will you be my alibi? asked the man at the end of the bar.

He wasn’t an attractive man and this wasn’t the kind of seedy bar where you’d expect to find someone trolling for an alibi. In the eighties, we would’ve called this a fern bar, by which we meant a yuppie bar, something all woodsy brown and forest green with fake Tiffany lamps over each booth and actual windows which let in actual sunlight.

The guy was exactly the kind of guy you expected to find in a fern bar, a no-neck former high school jock with too much fat around the middle and a face that had settled in on itself. He looked like the guy central casting would’ve have put into the fern bar as wallpaper, and honestly, until he spoke to me, the wallpaper thing worked. I had seen him, but only as the stock character at the end of the bar.

He moved a seat closer to me, leaned across the bar—which was polished so heavily that its surface could act as a mirror—and said, Miss? in that tone which meant excuse me, but I asked you a question and I really really really need an answer.

Still, I glanced over my shoulder to see which miss he was referring to. I’m not the kind of woman people would call miss, not even when I was young. Back then, I had one of those faces that I had to grow into, and then, everyone promised me, I’d be considered handsome.

Like a girl wants to be told that she’s going to be handsome, which is a boy word and code for Jesus, she’s ugly now, but maybe she’ll gain a little character as time goes on.

Time went on, and I gained character, but not enough to keep my face from resembling decades-old shoe leather. Don’t suppose I helped it any by living in Southern California and going without sunscreen for my entire life.

Yes, miss, I meant you, the guy said, interrupting my train of thought. He smiled to take the edge off his words, because the edge had taken him from excuse me, but I asked a question to Hey, stupid, I’m talkin’ to you.

What do you want? I asked, and instantly regretted it. I had a rule: don’t engage in bars. Generally, the rule only applied near last call, when the guys got so drunk, they’d sleep with anything that walked.

The anything-that-walked category included