The Alibi Man

Chapter 47

A couple of TV news vans had taken up residence in the main parking lot at Players. Python-size tangles of cord had been snaked from the vans up to the prime exterior-shot spots, where blinding white lights and screens stood on spider legs, ready for the on-camera talent to step in front of them.

Irina’s murder was Big News again, with the rumors about the Alibi Club and its members. This was the last public place Irina had been seen Saturday night, a natural choice for a backdrop. As I watched, a blond woman with a very serious expression stepped into one of the setups to do her thing.

The tall gangly kid was working the valet stand. His hair was sticking up. He looked overwhelmed, which I imagined happened all the time, considering the slow-turning wheels of his brain.

“Where’s your pal Jeff?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said, breathing a little fast. “He’s late. I know that. And it’s real busy.”

He hustled off to open the doors of a cream-colored Bentley. I went inside the club, took the stairs down, and told the maitre d‘ I was there to meet Mr. Barbaro.

We were just far enough into the dining room that I couldn’t gracefully back out when I saw the real focus of the media attention: Bennett Walker and my father having dinner. A publicity stunt that had my father’s fine hallmark all over it. He wanted the public to see Bennett-handsome, well-dressed, well-behaved- having a serious discussion with his handsome, well-dressed, well-respected attorney. Only my father could have bullied club management into allowing cameras into the dining room.

My feet stopped moving forward and I couldn’t seem to help but look right at them.

My father was holding court and had yet to notice me. His hair bad gone entirely gray and his face was a little drawn, but otherwise he looked exactly the same to me: arrogant, intelligent, and in his element in front of cameras.

The mix of emotions that bombarded me in that moment were diverse and upsetting. Just as I had with Bennett, I wanted not to feel anything when I saw my father for the first time in all these years. But of course that couldn’t happen. The emotional memories of the first twenty-one years of my life rose up like a tidal wave inside me.

Anger, rebellion, guilt, that devastating sense of inadequacy I had always felt when he looked at me with that cold, disapproving stare. The stare that met my eyes now as he sat at a table with the rapist and probable murderer who had shattered my world twenty years past.

“Elena,” he said, with that same subtle hint of condescension as ways, as if he were a king deigning to speak to a commoner. The backs of my eyes burned, and I was furious with myself for. But I had only that split second to think about it, because the couple of still cameras and video cameras there to make my father id Bennett Walker the news at eleven swung toward me with the realization of who I was.

I was trapped. I could leave and look like a coward or stay and face them both. There really wasn’t a choice at all, considering the options.

I reached somewhere very deep inside me to hold my composure.

He wasn’t ten feet away. I took a step, and another, toward him.

“Edward,” I said, echoing his tone of voice exactly.

I saw the almost imperceptible tension in his jaw. I had stopped calling him Father when I was twelve, a defiance he hated. I wouldn’t be subservient to him. He had punished me time and again for my disrespect. I had never wavered. The only currency that meant anything to me had been the horses, and I knew he would never take them away from me, because it would reflect badly on him and make him look like the tyrant he was.

I glanced at Bennett, then back at Edward.

“Just like old times,” I said. “Bennett destroying a woman’s life, you defending his actions, and me on the side of right.”

He was furious with me, but he would never show it in public. He rose, as any gentleman would. Bennett stayed seated and pouted.

“Be careful, Elena,” my father said very quietly.

“Be careful?” I said so everyone could hear. “Of what? Are you threatening me?”

“You wouldn’t want to say anything slanderous,” he said, in that same quiet voice he might use to speak to a small child.

I laughed and smiled the sardonic half smile. “It’s only slander if it isn’t true.”

Shutters and motor drives went mad.

He shook his head sadly. “It’s a shame you became so bitter.”

The benevolent monarch. My ass.

“How can you be disappointed?” I asked calmly. “I’m exactly what you made me.”

He sighed the sigh of the long-suffering parent. “You shouldn’t upset yourself, Elena. It isn’t good for you.”

Implying that I wasn’t psychologically stable.

“Well, Father,” I said, with such venom he would never want to hear the word again, “just when I think you can’t possibly disappoint me more than you already have, you manage to find a way. Congratulations.”

I turned my back to him and walked away.

“I’ll give your regards to your mother,” he said. “If you want me to.”

I just kept walking. I certainly didn’t care if people thought I was in ungrateful child. People had thought far worse things about me.

“Ms. Estes!”

“Ms. Estes!”

I held a hand up to indicate I had no intention of speaking to the media. They didn’t try to follow me into the ladies’ room.

The dizziness hit full force then, the shaking, the sweating. I threw up, rinsed my mouth, splashed cold water on my face. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror for fear of what I would see in my eyes- vulnerability. I would hate myself for it.

I rinsed my mouth again, then dug an Altoid out of my purse.

When I finally stepped out into the hall, I was alone. The jackals had all run back to try to pull some meat off my father.

As I turned toward the terrace, there was Barbaro looking at me.

My vision flashing red, I went straight at him and into his face. You rotten son of a bitch!“ I said, struggling to keep my voice own. ”You filthy, rat-bastard, son of a bitch! You set me up!“

“No! Elena, I swear!” he said.

I gave him such a look of disgust, he should have died from it.

“Elena! Please!” he said, and made to grab my arm as I turned away from him. I jerked out of his grasp. My pulse was roaring in my ears. I slammed out the side door to the external staircase and started climbing.

I knew he was behind me. I kept walking.

“I didn’t know they were here,” he said, hustling alongside me.

I went toward the parking lot.

“Oh, please. You can’t come up with anything better than that?”

“That’s the truth! I swear! I wouldn’t do that to you!”

“Why not?” I asked, finally stopping and turning to face him. We were well away from the building now and half hidden by trees.

“Why wouldn’t you, Juan? Jim Brody is your bread and butter. I’m supposed to believe you wouldn’t set me up if he asked you to? Bennett is your best friend. You wouldn’t help him if he asked? You already have, in something far more egregious than blindsiding me.”

“I didn’t-”

“Or did my dear old dad put you up to it himself?” I asked. “I’m sure you’ve met him. You’ve probably been out on one of his boats with Ben. Christ, he’s probably your lawyer too.”

“I refused,” he said. “Brody offered, I refused.”

“So, you’re a rat leaving a sinking ship. Is that it? Trying your luck on your own?”

“I’m not guilty of anything but looking the other way.”

“Yeah? Well, a girl died in that time you turned your head,” I said. “That makes the person looking away an accessory.”

“I wasn’t there,” he insisted.

“That’s your new story?”

“It isn’t a story. Listen to me,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, checking for cameras and microphones. No one had noticed us.

“I was not there with Bennett all night,” he said.

I stilled my temper and studied his face in the poor light. It had been a long time since I’d learned to spot a liar. I was very good at it. If Barbaro was trying to scam me, he was very talented.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“I went to Bennett’s house after the party, but I didn’t stay. I didn’t want any part of it.”

“Any part of what?” I asked, my mind running rampant with sordid and terrible possibilities.

He looked away. “I am not a Boy Scout. I’ve partied a lot. That’s not a secret.”

“Spit it out, for Christ’s sake,” I snapped. “I’m a big girl. And you, as you said, are no Boy Scout. Don’t waste my time pretending to be embarrassed or trying to break it to me gently. I was a cop for a long time. Nothing you have to say is going to shock me.”

“Irina… was high, she’d been drinking,” he began. “Everyone was on something or another. Irina told Jim Brody she wanted to give him a very special gift for his birthday.”

He was clearly uncomfortable with the memory. I waited.

“Irina was the only girl who came back to Bennett’s house that night,” he said.

I felt sick at the possibilities for the rest of the story. Irina, brash, high, full of herself, and half a dozen men with one thing on their minds.

“She wanted to-”

I held up a hand to forestall any details he might have been about to give me. The details of the debauchery didn’t matter. Only one thing did.

“Who killed her?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I told you, I left. I walked back here for my car.”

“Did anyone see you leave the party?”

“They were otherwise occupied.”

“Did anyone see you walking?”

“No, but I saw Beth-Lisbeth-when I got to the parking lot.”

“Try again,” I said. “Lisbeth left the party at Players around one.”

Barbaro shrugged. “I thought it was her. It looked like her. I was sitting in my car. She walked past. She looked at me. I remember thinking, how strange to see her there. Then again, I had been drinking. I suppose I may have been mistaken.”

“I suppose you may have been.”

“You could ask her,” he suggested.

I made a noncommittal sound. I remembered Barbaro’s handsome face staring up at me from the cover of Sidelines magazine on the table in Lisbeth’s apartment. I remembered the snapshots of him and his buddies on the refrigerator in her kitchen.

He may have figured she would back him up because he was who he was or because she had a crush on him. Or he might have been counting on her silence because it had been assured the night before when someone whispered in her ear: “This is what happens to girls who talk too much.”

“No one else,” I said.

“I saw the Freak creeping around,” he said.

“How did you get your car keys?” I asked. “I know you use the valet. They were gone by then.”

“I give them only the valet key. I keep my keys.”

“And no one was here to see you,” I said.

“No.”

“You have no one to corroborate your story.”

“No,” he said, growing impatient with my line of questioning while he was trying to do the good and noble thing.

I didn’t care. Good and noble were two words with which none of his cadre had more than a passing acquaintance.

I shrugged. “I’m only asking you the same questions the detectives will.”

He still took offense. “I wish I had seen ten people, but I did not. I didn’t know I would need an alibi later.”

“And it wouldn’t have mattered if you had, would it?” I said. “All you had to do was pick up a phone, right?”

Barbaro said nothing. He had no defense for that, and he knew it.

“Who killed her?” I asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“Who do you think killed her?”

He rubbed his hands over his face and walked around in a little circle.

“I had a call from Bennett,” he said. “Just before dawn.”

“He needed an alibi?”

“Yes.”

I remembered that call myself. Not a phone call, a personal call. Twenty years ago. Four in the morning. I had been sound asleep.

Bennett had let himself into my condo. The sound of the shower in the guest bath woke me-and confused me. Why would he shower in the guest bath? When I went to ask him, the door was closed and locked.

Still feeling unsettled, I had gone back to bed. Some time later, he slipped under the covers next to me, warm and naked, and when I stirred, he told me he had been there for hours.

“No, you haven’t, ” I whispered, a strange apprehension stirring inside me.

“But you’ll say that for me, won’t you, baby? You’ll say that for me…

I felt sick at the memory.

“Later he told me Irina was dead,” Barbaro said. “That she was dead when he found her in his pool. He said she must have drowned.”

“And you believed him,” I said.

“I wanted to believe him. He’s my friend. I couldn’t imagine it hadn’t been an accident.”

“If it was an accident, why didn’t he call 911?”

“She was dead,” he rationalized. “He was afraid of the scandal, he’s a very visible, wealthy man, from an influential family. His wife is a fragile person-”

“I wonder if he ever thought of that while he was busy fucking twenty-year-old girls,” I said. “And so, because Irina was already dead, and out of his touching concern for his invalid wife, he- and you-thought it was a perfectly acceptable idea to dump her body in a canal so aquatic organisms could feed on her eyes and her lips, and an alligator could stick her corpse under a sunken log to rot until it was just right for dinner.”

Barbaro squeezed his eyes closed, as if that would stop him from seeing the image I had just painted for him. His voice trembled a little when he said, “I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know what he did with her until I heard on Monday.”

“And would it have made any difference to you if you had, Juan?” I asked. I shook my head and held my hands up to prevent an answer. “Don’t answer. Don’t bother.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Barbaro stared off in one direction, thinking I don’t know what. I stared off in another direction, thinking about the vibrant, promising young woman Irina might have been if not for a couple of twisted priorities and a half dozen men who believed the rules of decent society didn’t apply to them.

She had made a couple of stupid, careless choices. It was nothing short of tragic that she had paid for them with her life.

“Did Irina think Bennett would marry her?” I asked.

Barbaro looked at me, confused. “Why would she think that? She knew he’s married.”

“I think she might have been pregnant. She had set her sights on him… All things considered, I don’t think it would have occurred to her that his wife would be an obstacle.”

She was young, beautiful, vibrant, exciting, sexy. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize those are qualities a wealthy man looks for in a mistress, not a wife. And the two things she was lacking were the only things that counted to a man like Bennett Walker: money and connections.

“I never thought anything like this would happen,” Barbaro said softly.

“Yeah,” I answered in kind. “It’s all fun and games-until somebody loses their life.”

“What happens now?” he asked.

“You talk to Landry.”

I took my cell phone out of my bag but hesitated before hitting Landry’s number.

“You could have called him yourself,” I said. “Why did you want to talk to me first?”

“I’m doing this because of you, Elena,” he said, the big brown eyes earnestly on me. “Because of the things you said to me last night. That’s not the kind of man I want to be.”

What a pretty line, I thought. But I didn’t believe him. And I didn’t trust him.

“I’m flattered,” I said without sincerity, then opened my phone and called Landry.