Short as it is, the link you provided has some terrific new info.
So if the Maverick clerk's recollection as to time frame is correct, their 8:30 PM departure from the housewarming party would probably be more accurate than 9:00 or 9:30.
Not surprising that he would deceive her about his smoking habit (another thing he was doing during his days of non-attendance at school while she was slaving away for Wells Fargo). Did he really think she wouldn't smell the smoke on his clothes? In my experience, women have hellacious sense of smell. You just can't get anything by them in that department. If we didn't have bloodhounds, we'd use women to track down our prison farm escapees. I suppose he had a plausible excuse prepared for her re the smoky-smelling clothes.
Clerk remembers she appeared "unhappy," so maybe something was already brewing between them that night. Maybe the re-assuring story he gave her on Friday broke down when somebody else at the housewarming clued her in and stirred up her doubts again. Or perhaps he made a conversational slip in her presence, possibly under the influence of libations, and that re-kindled her suspicions. The police have probably interviewed everybody at that party.
Re your understandable confusion between the two accounts of the Maverick visit -- the simplest explanation is that after parking in the lot, MH was the first to exit the car and enter the store, while Lori was maybe fussing with something in her purse, exiting the car and entering the store a little after he did. Again, given the clerk's description of her as not-so-happy, she may have delayed getting out of the car because she was upset and, for the moment, lost in her thoughts. I can well imagine her sitting there watching her husband ruefully or pensively as he walked into the store ahead of her, then thinking of some little item she needed and going in there herself.
If this were the case, it's easy to see how the discrepant accounts could both be accurate enough.
I hadn't heard this before. Have you?