The Alibi Man

Chapter 24

Outside, night had fallen. It was chilly enough to want a jacket. I didn’t have one, but my residual anger was more than enough to heat me from my core outward.

What the hell would I do now? How could I take what had just transpired and turn it to my advantage? Had I just bought myself a ticket out of the inner circle, or would Jim Brody be the kind of man who kept his friends close and his enemies closer?

I was an ex-cop. I had an ax to grind with Bennett Walker, one of Brody’s chosen few. I had just threatened to make trouble for him.

Nothing that had happened was a surprise, I told myself. Of course Bennett would show up. These were his friends. Of course they would all find out I had been a detective.

My guess-my gamble-was that Brody would want me where he could see me and try to influence me. And I suspected he would use Barbaro to do it.

“Elena.”

Bingo. I turned. He was still in his polo shirt and white breeches, saddle-tan boots to his knees. He looked every bit as sexy when he was serious as he did with the bright rakish grin. Maybe more so.

“I was just thinking damage control might be your assignment,” I said.

He pretended not to know what I meant.

“Your patron sent you.”

“No one sent me,” he said, irritated. “I am not a servant. I don’t want to see you upset. I don’t want our evening to be ruined by this… this bitterness between you and Bennett.”

“That’s a tall order. You’re talking about anger that’s been contained and aged like single-malt scotch in a barrel for twenty years.”

“His behavior…” he said, searching for what he wanted to convey to me. “He was not a gentleman. I apologize for that.”

“Why should you apologize? Besides, I was hardly a lady,” I confessed.

He raked a hand back through the thick, wavy mane. He should have been on the cover of a romance novel.

“I’m sorry, Juan,” I said. “I don’t know it for a fact, but I suspect I come from a long line of bitter, vindictive women.”

“What purpose does that serve?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What purpose does it serve to hold that anger? What good does it do?”

“He beat and raped a woman,” I said impatiently. “Someone should be angry about that.”

“The woman you say he raped.”

“I say? I say it because it’s true.”

“And what does your anger do about it? Does it punish Bennett? Does he lie awake nights feeling the weight of your rage against him?”

Of course he didn’t. If my anger had been able to bear down on Bennett Walker, he would have been crushed to death by it long ago.

“Hatred is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die of it.”

“Thank you, Father Barbaro,” I said sarcastically. “Save the rest of your homily for someone who cares. It’s easy for you to say let bygones be bygones. You weren’t there. You never saw what he did to that girl.”

Or to this one, I thought, but I would never say that.

“You are not punishing him, Elena. You punish yourself.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to go down that road, not even in my own mind. And I certainly had no intention of forgiving Bennett Walker for his sins. Why would I? Why would anyone? Why should anyone?

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.