by Tami Hoag
Barbaro touched my shoulder. “I don’t want to see you upset, Elena, over something you cannot change.”
“But those are the very things to be upset about, Juan,” I said. “You want me to absolve him because that’s just easier? The system failed. Oh, well. Nothing I can do about it, so I might as well pretend he never brutalized a woman while he was engaged to marry me, then expected me to commit perjury for him.
“I don’t get that,” I said. “I don’t get how you can think that’s okay. It’s not okay.”
He looked away and sighed.
“If you can’t see that, what am I supposed to think about you?” I asked. “You just turn a blind eye to anything you find unpleasant? Did you turn a blind eye the night Irina was murdered? Someone got carried away, the girl is dead, so sorry, but there’s nothing to do about it now. Might as well party on.”
“How can you think that of me?” he demanded.
“How can I not?” I returned. “I’ve known you twenty-four hours. I met you because a girl was murdered. How do I know you didn’t do it?”
“I told you I didn’t.”
I laughed. “Oh, and nobody’s ever lied to me, so I should just take your statement at face value.”
“Do you trust no one, Elena?”
“No. I don’t,” I said truthfully. “I don’t know one person who wouldn’t lie to suit their own purposes if the situation arose.”
“That is a very sad state of affairs,” he said, pious. “I’m sorry for you.
“Oh, please,” I said. “You’re in the horse business, you run with this crowd—filthy rich, bored, spoiled, amoral, power-hungry. Life is a high-stakes game with no holds barred. Unless you’re the Forrest Gump of the polo world, you know damn well at least half a dozen people have lied to you before lunch.”
Barbaro looked down at the sidewalk, his hands on his hips. He seemed to have nothing more to say, or else he was at a loss which direction to take to get what he wanted out of the situation.
“I’m going home now,” I said, and started to turn away.
“No. Elena, don’t.” He took a gentle hold of my upper arm. “Don’t go. Please.”
“You can’t possibly think I’m going back in there.”
“No. Let me take you somewhere for dinner,” he said, standing a little too close. “Someplace quiet. Just the two of us.”
My instincts went on point. He must have felt the tension in me through his touch, but he didn’t have time to react.
“Is there a problem here?”
Landry. Guilt washed over me like cold water almost before I recognized the voice. I knew how this had to look to him, like exactly what it was: an intimate conversation between his now-former lover and the most eligible hot polo star on the circuit.
“No. We’re good,” I said. “Detective Landry, this is Juan Barba—”
“We’ve met,” Landry said, with the kind of distaste that suggested he hadn’t been impressed. “Take your hand off, the lady…”
“The lady doesn’t object,” Barbaro said.
“Is that right?” Landry said.
I turned to face him, forgetting how I looked.
His eyes went wide. “Did he do this to you?” he demanded, jabbing a finger at Barbaro.
He wouldn’t have heard me if I had tried to answer. He had already turned on Barbaro like an attack dog.
“Did you do this to her?”
Barbaro took a healthy step back and raised his hands. “No!”
Landry didn’t hear him either. He advanced aggressively. “I don’t know what they do where you’re from, Paco, but you strike a woman here, we throw your ass in jail.”
“Landry,” I said, thinking I might have to hit him with something to get his attention out of the red zone. “Landry! Detective Landry!”
Finally he glanced at me.
“I took a fall,” I said. “If some guy did this to me, do you think he’d be alive to tell the tale?”
He didn’t want to believe me. He wanted to pistol-whip Barbaro. But he looked at me hard and I lied to his face.
“No one hurt me.”
His gaze went from me to Barbaro and back and forth, not trusting either of us.
“No one hit me.”
Landry gave me the cop face. He was angry. I could feel it coming off him like steam. If he chose to believe Barbaro hadn’t assaulted me, then he had to go back to the original issue: why Barbaro had his hand on my arm, and why I hadn’t objected. It was a no-win situation all the way around.
“I need to have a word with you, Ms. Estes,” he said. “Regarding the murder of your groom.”
“Elena?” Barbaro asked. “Would you like me to stay with you?”
“No. Thank you, Juan. It’s fine.”
He was frowning at Landry. Landry was glaring at him.
Men.
I started backing down the sidewalk. “I assume you would like o speak to me in private, Detective Landry.”
He didn’t say, but he broke off the stare-down and followed me.
“Nothing like the smell of testosterone on the night air,” I commented.
“You think this is funny?” he snapped.
“I don’t know what ‘this’ is.”
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, stopping me with . hand on my arm.
I stared at the point of contact. “Take your hand off the lady, Detective.”
He let go but didn’t apologize. The concept was unknown to him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was having a conversation with an acquaintance.”
“An acquaintance? Since when?”
“Since it’s none of your goddamn business,” I snapped back.
“It’s my business if it’s been more than two days.”
I actually gasped in surprise, the statement was such a sucker punch.
“Why don’t you just call me a whore to my face?” I suggested. Two days ago you thought we should move in together. Now you think I’ve been screwing a polo player on the side all along. You are such an asshole.“
“I think you already said that yesterday.”
“Oh? Has something changed since then?”
He started to say something, checked himself, took a step back, and regrouped. I just stared at him and shook my head.
“I don’t want you hanging around with this crowd, Elena,” he confessed. “It’s not safe.”
“With what you apparently think of me, why would you care?” I asked. “Why don’t you just leave me alone? I know what I’m doing.”
“It doesn’t matter. There are more of them than there are of you.
“You think they’re going to cart me off like a pack of jackals?” I asked, not that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind in that instant Barbaro invited me to go somewhere alone with him. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“I know a lot of things,” he said cryptically.
I looked past his shoulder. Barbaro was hanging by the entrance to the stands, watching, waiting. He couldn’t hear us, but I’m sure his read on our body language was that Landry and I were anything but friends. Good. I didn’t want the Alibi Club thinking I still worked for the SO; bad enough that they knew what they knew about me.
“Really?” I said to Landry. “Do you know that these guys are going to back one another up no matter what? Do you know their parties usually end up being clothing optional—which, by the way, I don’t know from experience, as hard as that may be for you to believe. Do you know that they call themselves the Alibi Club?”
“The Alibi Club?”
Point to me. He didn’t know. I had managed to one-up him. I still had that edge, that need to grab a lead, a piece of evidence before anyone else could. Once a cop…
I glanced past him again just as Barbaro went back into the building.
“Who told you that?” Landry asked.
“Lisbeth Perkins. She argued with Irina at Players that night because she didn’
t want Irina to hang around for the after-party.”
“But she did anyway,” Landry murmured.
He turned away from me, thinking, sorting out puzzle pieces in his head. I knew the look.
“What do you know?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“What do you know?” I asked again, knowing he wasn’t going to tell me. The autopsy, I thought.
“You know what happened to her,” I said. “You know how she died, what the killer did to her. You know if there was one killer, more than one killer.”
He said nothing.
“She was my friend, Landry.”
He made a face. “Don’t call her your friend. You never did anything but complain about her attitude.”
“So? I used to complain about your attitude when I still considered you a friend. I guess since that’s not the case anymore, I shouldn’t expect you to tell me anything.”
He shrugged. “You sure as hell didn’t tell me anything.”
“About what? I’ve told you everything I know, everything I’ve been able to find out.”
“You didn’t tell me about you and Bennett Walker,” he said. “Why is that? You had to know I would find out.”
“I didn’t tell you because it isn’t relevant. It was twenty years ago.
“I’ll bet it’s relevant to you.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you’re thinking Walker did Irina.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” I said. “It’s becoming more and more apparent that you don’t know anything about me n any way that matters.”
“Maybe if you offered—”
“Why would I?” I demanded. “Why would I do that? Why would I share anything with you? Why would I trust you, James?
“You’ve shown me you’ll take anything I say and use it against me. If I learned anything being the daughter of Edward Estes, I learned not to do that. I have the right to remain silent.”
He touched my arm as I started to walk away from him. I jerked way from him and kept walking, wishing I could walk right out of my life and into another, where I had no past, and no one knew anything about me, and I could be whoever I wanted to be.
What a pleasant fiction that would be. If I could pull it off. But I didn’t know how to be anyone other than who I was, and I didn’t know what else to do but go on.
Chapter 25
Weiss drove up and parked at the curb on the wrong side of the drive as Elena walked away, headed toward her car.
“There goes trouble,” he said, getting out of the car.
“Shut up,” Landry said, and turned for the building.
He wanted a drink and a cigarette and to be able to shut his emotions off, like a sociopath. Life had to be a lot simpler with emotions stripped away, no energy wasted on overreaction, anger, regret. The way things were, he was going to drive himself to an early grave.
“They’re not going to cooperate,” Weiss said. “These are the kind of guys who have three-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorneys standing around in Brooks Brothers suits just on account of they look good.”
“So they can call in the dogs,” Landry snapped. “So what?”
“I’m just saying.”
“I don’t expect them to cooperate. I want to ratchet up a little tension. Refusing to give the DNA sample only makes them look guilty.”
“Of getting a group rate on blowjobs,” Weiss said. “We’re a long ways from proving a homicide.”
“They call themselves the Alibi Club,” Landry said.
“The Alibi Club? Where’d you hear that?”
“The Perkins girl,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. “She said things get pretty out of hand at their parties.”
“Was she there Saturday night? I thought she left.”
“She tried to talk the Markova girl out of staying.”
Weiss stopped and looked at him. “When did you get her to tell you all this? We could hardly get her to tell us her name this morning.”
“Maybe she just didn’t like you, Weiss,” Landry offered.
“Up yours, Landry.”
“Let’s go do this,” Landry said, and went into the 7th Chukker bar.
It was a far cry from Magda’s. Beautiful antique bar, plasma-screen TV showing a polo match, a waitress who didn’t look like she had to shave twice a day.
He went straight to the table where Brody, Walker, and Barbaro sat. Weiss took Sebastian Foster’s table.
Landry looked hard at Barbaro. It should be illegal for a guy to be that good-looking. The mental image of the Spaniard touching Elena sent a rush of angry heat through him.
“Sorry for the misunderstanding, Mr. Barbaro,” he said without much sincerity. “I’ve got a hot button when it comes to men abusing women. This murder has me on edge.”
“Understandable,” Barbaro said. He didn’t sound very sincere either. “You are a friend of Miss Estes?”
“I wouldn’t say that, no. She found Irina Markova’s body.”
“She used to be a detective,” Jim Brody said. “The two of you must go back.”
“No,” Landry said. “We don’t. I’m sure Mr. Walker here knows more about Ms. Estes than I do.”
Bennett Walker frowned, sulky. Spoiled rich kid at forty-something. If they had been little kids, Landry would have knocked him on his ass on the playground. He wondered how Elena had ever looked at this guy and thought it might be a good idea to marry him. But then, he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of Elena marrying anyone. She was so wary, so cynical.
Bennett Walker had to be a big part of the reason why.
“What brings you here, Detective?” Brody asked. He pushed himself up out of his chair, the genial host, half a cigar stuck in one corner of his mouth.
“We don’t pass for members?” Landry said. He looked over at Weiss; Weiss shrugged.
“No offense,” Brody said, “but if either of you boys has seven figures or more in your bank account, you must have one hell of a second job.”
“We’re trying to eliminate people from our list of possible suspects,” Weiss said.
“You can check us all off the list,” Brody said. “I thought we covered that this morning.”
“Not that we don’t believe you,” Landry said, “but this is the age of forensics. We’re collecting DNA samples from men Irina Markova spent time with the night she disappeared. It’s just a little swab inside the cheek. No big deal.”
Brody’s eyebrows went up. “DNA samples? Sounds like a very big deal to me.”
“It’s for elimination purposes,” Weiss said. “If you didn’t do anything to the girl, there’s no problem.”
“My attorney will have a problem with it,” Bennett Walker said, he rose from his seat as well, ready to make a break for it.
“Why is that?” Landry asked. “Because you’re already a suspected sex offender?”
“Because of that attitude,” Walker said, jabbing a finger at him. I was never convicted of anything. And I don’t have any intention )f having my name connected in any way to this murder.“
“It’s a little late for that,” Landry said. “You were in Irina Markova’s company in a public place the night she was killed. I’ll be surprised if that isn’t news at eleven tonight. You might want to call your wife and tell her to go to bed early.”
Walker was pissed. Landry could see an artery pulsing in the man’s neck. “You leaked that information to the media?”
“I have more important things to do with my time,” Landry said. “The media does a pretty good job of digging up dirt on their own. You ought to know by now how that works.”
Walker spoke to Brody. “I’m not putting up with this harassment. Are you?”
“No, of course not. I’m going to dinner,” Brody said, unconcerned. “If you want to get a court order, Detective Landry, go ahead. Then you can speak with my attorney.”
“That goes for me too,” Walker said. “I know too much about how evidence can b
e tampered with to make someone look guilty.”
Landry shrugged. “Suit yourself. But you look pretty damn guilty as it is refusing the test, considering your past. Don’t come crying to me when that hits the papers.”
