The Alibi Man

Chapter 21

The old yellow-painted Palm Beach Polo Club stadium, located a stone’s throw from Players, had been the polo mecca of the world for many winter seasons. Everyone who was anyone had drunk champagne and stomped divots during halftime on that field, including Prince Charles and Princess Diana. But big-time high-goal polo had decamped from there several years before and moved farther out of town to the new International Polo Club Palm Beach, leaving the old stadium at the mercy of hurricanes and the zoning commission. Plans were in the works to knock down the venerable old facility and put up yet another strip mall. So much for landmarks.

The International Polo Club on 120th Avenue had become the place to see and be seen, a state-of-the-art facility with a stadium for thirteen hundred spectators and seven impeccably groomed polo fields, each spanning more ground than nine football fields.

I turned in at the main gate and went past the entrance to the stadium and club. The palm-lined drive led past tennis courts to the stadium, the pool-house pavilion, and the Grand Marquee ballroom, where brunch was served on Sundays. Beyond all that, horse trailers were parked on the shoulder of the road-big gooseneck aluminum stock trailers, with polo ponies tied along the sides. Grooms tacked horses up, cooled horses out. A farrier had his truck-mounted oven glowing red-hot as he prepared a new horseshoe to replace one lost in the heat of battle. Iron rang against iron. Conversations rose and fell, interspersed with laughter, with orders, with fits of temper in three different languages.

Several of the fields were in use, riders rushing up and down, mallets swinging, whistles blowing. Cars, trucks, and SUVs were parked down the sidelines with friends, family, and spectators tail-gating and enjoying the day. The atmosphere was casual. No high-goal tournament matches were being played. These were less important contests, practice games, amateurs having a good time.

A line of small ponies walking nose-to-tail came down the road from one of the far fields. The kids riding them were so small, their helmets seemed to swallow their heads whole. They all wore numbered polo shirts and carried mallets. Pee Wee Polo.

Despite the elitist air about the game at its highest level, polo at the grass-roots level is accessible to anyone who can afford a horse and is talented enough not to fall off at high speeds. Young, old, man, woman, everyone is welcome to play or to watch. Pack a picnic, bring the family. Drive through a Wellington neighborhood where a lot of professional players live during the season and you will see their kids on bikes, swinging mallets, playing in the cul-de-sacs and parking lots.

I found a place to park and looked for the Star Polo trailer. Lisbeth Perkins was walking out a sweating, puffing polo pony. She stared at the ground as she walked, looking lost in sad thoughts, and jumped at the sound of my voice when I said her name.

She looked up at me, cornflower-blue eyes wide and rimmed with red. She seemed almost afraid to see me, as if I were the agent of doom.

“What happened to your lip?” she asked.

So much for Sean’s theory on concealer and hemorrhoid cream.

“I fell. It’s nothing,” I said, then turned the conversation to her. “I’m surprised you’re working today. Mr. Brody knows how close you and Irina were. Wouldn’t he give you the day off?”

“I didn’t ask,” she said, her voice raspy and raw. “I don’t know what I would do.”

I wondered if she meant that she would have felt lost or that she would have been afraid of what she might do to herself. The first was understandable, the second extreme.

“You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?” she said to me.

“No.”

“Irina told me about you. You found that missing girl last year. That’s why you were asking me all those questions yesterday, isn’t it? You’re looking for the killer.”

I didn’t deny it.

“You told that detective about me. Detective Landry.”

“Has he spoken to you?”

“He came to the farm this morning. I told him everything I told you.”

“I went to Players last night,” I said. “The bartender told me you and Irina were arguing about something that night.”

“We were not,” she said, too sharply, a sure indicator that she was lying.

I shrugged. “He says he saw the two of you in the hall having words, that you looked upset, and then you left. He doesn’t have anything to gain by lying to me.”

“It wasn’t anything,” she insisted. “I wanted to go home and Irina didn’t. That’s all.”

“Did you go there in one car?”

“No.”

“Then what was the problem? She was having a better time than you?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed in that way perfected by teenage girls. She was a very young twenty-something, I thought.

“It doesn’t matter. There was no problem,” she said.

“Then why did it look like you were arguing?”

She wanted to tell me to fuck off, but I suspected she had been raised not to do that.

“Where are you from, Lisbeth?”

“Michigan. Why?”

“Good Midwestern upbringing. Your parents were churchgoing folks.”

“So? What does that make me? A hick?” she said, offended.

“It makes you polite, reserved, responsible, private. You’re a good and decent kid, I suspect. You know what it is to be a real friend to someone.”

She didn’t say anything, just kept putting one foot in front of the other, walking the horse, doing her job. She rubbed the medallion she wore between thumb and forefinger, probably making a wish I would disappear.

“You were a good friend to Irina,” I said. “You want to see her killer brought to justice, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why lie to me about this? What the two of you argued about that night might be nothing or seem like nothing to you, but it could point the investigation in a direction that takes us to a lead or leads us to the killer. If it was nothing, why don’t you just tell me?”

“I just thought she should leave too, that’s all,” she said.

“Because…?”

“It was late,” she said, still staring at the ground. “And sometimes those parties get… a little… weird.”

“Weird-strange? Weird-creepy? Weird-sexual?”

She didn’t say, but my imagination was already off and running. Wealthy men out for a good time, no wifely supervision, few morals, fewer scruples…

“Lisbeth, do you know what a material-witness order is?”

“No.”

“If Detective Landry thinks you’re withholding vital information in a murder investigation, he can put you in jail and compel you to testify,” I said, twisting the law to suit my needs. “All I have to do is tell him we had this conversation.”

She looked at me then, scared. “Jail? I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You’re doing something wrong in not telling all you know.”

Her gaze bounced around like a pinball, looking for a way to escape. She believed I was a private investigator. I had thrown around the royal we enough to imply the sheriff’s detectives and I were working in concert. She felt trapped. I hoped she would do what most good Midwestern girls would do in this situation-yield to authority and tell the truth.

Lisbeth looked around for witnesses, then back at the ground, embarrassed or ashamed or both. “Sometimes things get out of control. Everybody’s drunk or high or something. And they take the party to someone’s house, and there’s sex.”

“Like an orgy?”

The Big Sigh again. “Yes, like that.”

“And you didn’t want to go, but Irina didn’t care?”

“Something like that,” she said, her voice dropping off as we neared the Star Polo trailer again. She pulled the horse into his slot among the others and started to remove his tack.

I hung back, sensing I had pushed her as far as I could for the time being. I couldn’t say what she had told me surprised me at all. When people know they don’t have boundaries, they seldom set heir own. Too much money, idle time, and the devil’s workshop, etc, etc.

Was that what had happened the night Irina disappeared? The party had gotten out of control, the sex turned a little too rough, he game turned deadly?

Nothing fazed Irina. Combine her jaded sense of the world with her alleged desire to snag a wealthy American husband… It didn’t surprise me that she would have joined in the games-or that Lisbeth, with her down-home sensibilities, would not. On the other hand, for Lisbeth to know what she knew, she could have been a past participant. That would account for the embarrassment and/or shame.

I looked for witnesses and stepped in beside the horse. “Lisbeth, who went to those parties?” I asked quietly.

“All of those guys,” she mumbled, glancing nervously over her shoulder. “The Club.”

“What club? The Polo Club?”

“No. Mr. Brody and his friends. They call themselves the Alibi Club.”

An unpleasant feeling slithered through me when she said it. The Alibi Club. I had called Bennett Walker the Alibi Man. Now there was a club. Wealthy bad boys covering one another’s asses when there was trouble. There sure as hell was trouble now.

“Lisbeth!” Jim Brody barked from the back of a horse. “What the hell’s taking you so long? Manuel needs you over here.”

“Yes, Mr. Brody. Right away.” The girl took her opportunity to get away from me.

Jim Brody and I locked gazes for a moment. He was trying to figure out if he should know me, if he should bother to.

“Elena!” Barbaro jumped off a horse and tossed the reins to a groom. He was a vision of virility, in white breeches and tall boots. The animal in his element. “I’m so glad you’ve come!”

His smile was wide and white, his hair tousled. But the smile stalled when I turned to face him fully.

“What happened?” he asked, gently cradling my face in his hands.

“I tripped and fell,” I said. “I should make up a better story instead of admitting what a klutz I am, but there it is.”

“Is it very painful?”

His thumb brushed the outer corner of my mouth on the right side-the side with feeling-and something like electricity skimmed over every undamaged nerve in my body.

“Only to my pride,” I said.

His gaze lingered on my mouth long enough to make me think he might kiss me, but he kissed my cheek instead-the one I couldn’t feel.

“Elena, this is Mr. Brody, my patron.” He planted a gloved hand on my shoulder to guide me toward Brody. “Mr. Brody, my lovely new friend, Elena Estes.”

“Estes?” Brody said as he climbed off his horse. “Any relation to Edward Estes?”

Here was the moment I had been dreading. With Bennett involved in all of this, I couldn’t pretend to be someone else. And if Jim Brody knew my father, then my father was going to hear about me from one of his cronies. I hoped to God he didn’t decide to play the wounded party, waiting for the return of his prodigal child.

“Not by choice,” I said sweetly, forcing the half smile, trying to look like trouble, the fun kind. “He used to be my father.”

Brody’s brows went up and he barked a laugh. “Stick around for drinks. I want to hear the rest of that story.”

He climbed up on a mounting block and got on a fresh horse. Whatever his amusement at me, he wasn’t going to let it get in the way of his polo match.

“He knows your father?” Barbaro asked, surprised.

“Small world.”

“Your father enjoys polo?”

“My father enjoys power. He used to race boats. Maybe he still does, I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” he asked, puzzled.

“I haven’t spoken to my father in twenty years,” I admitted. “Shouldn’t you be getting on a horse?”

He waved a hand in the direction of the field. “I’m sitting out this chukker. These friends of Mr. Brody’s, all are wealthy men who enjoy the game but are not so good with the mallet. They set up the match so in every other chukker each team gets one professional. The rest of the match they spend swinging at one another.”

He stopped talking and focused his full attention on me, taking in the look: Chanel ballet flats, slim white linen cigarette pants, a simple black ballet-neck top with three-quarter sleeves.

“Very chic,” he said, smiling. “Simple, elegant, confident.”

“Well, that’s just me in a nutshell.”

Barbaro chuckled. “Elegant and chic, yes. Simple, I don’t think so.

“Come, sit,” he said. “My car is on the sidelines.”

His car was a British racing-green Aston Martin convertible with buttery tan leather interior and a flag of Spain decal on one corner of the windshield. He held the door for me.

“Nice ride,” I said, settling in.

“I leased it for the season. That way I get a new toy every year.”

“And what do you do when the season is over?”

“I go someplace else and lease another. I’m going to Europe to play for the summer. I have my eye on a Lamborghini.”

“Polo is very good to you,” I commented.

“Modeling has been very good to me. Polo is my passion,” he said. “So, tell me why you have not spoken to your father in so long.”

“Because we don’t have anything to say to each other. It’s as simple as that,” I said. “It’s no big deal. It’s not like we’re related or anything.

“I was adopted,” I explained.

“But he is the only father you have known?”

“Edward Estes owned the house I grew up in. He had no interest in me beyond how I might be useful to him. And I made a point not to be useful to him at all.”

Barbaro said nothing. He looked very serious as he tried to figure me out.

“I can’t believe your good friend didn’t fill you in on some of this last night,” I said.

“All he said was that the two of you were once engaged.”

I laughed. “What a pretty liar you are. You even manage to look innocent. I outright accused him of being a rapist with the potential to be a murderer, and you’re telling me neither one of you brought that up after I left?”

He dragged a hand through his hair and looked away, uncomfortable. “He told me he was wrongly accused and you believed the worst about him; beyond that, I did not want to hear anything from him about you.”

I didn’t really believe him, but it was an interesting position he vas taking. I watched him openly and wondered what he was all about.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“That you intrigue me,” I said.

His eyebrows went up, and his mouth curved. “This is a good thing, I think.”

“That depends on what I find out.”

He shifted in his seat, leaning toward me. “You will find,” he aid in a low, sexy voice, “that I am a gentleman-as long as you would like me to be; that I am passionate…”

He leaned a little closer and cupped a hand around the side of my neck, his thumb brushing seductively back and forth just along my hairline. My pulse quickened.

“I have only just met you, Elena,” he said, “but already I have decided I have never known a woman quite like you.”

“Oh, I can guarantee that,” I said.

“Hey, Casanova!” The Aussie-accented shout came from a rider recognized as Sebastian Foster, the tennis player. He sat astride lot ten feet from the hood of Barbaro’s car. “You’re up, mate! You’d better hustle.”

Barbaro looked annoyed as he sat back; his hand fell away from my neck.

“Last chukker,” Foster said. “Seven minutes more and you’re a free man.”

“You’ll stay?” Barbaro said to me.

“Of course,” I said, but not for the reasons he wanted, at least not primarily. I was being brought into the fold of the Alibi Club, and I knew without question I would find Irina Markova’s killer among them. It was like being brought into a den of lions. Lucky for me I was an adrenaline junkie. “I wouldn’t miss it.”