His dark eyes sparkled. “Thank you. You are too generous, senorita.”
“Senorita. You could give Junior here a lesson or two. He called me ma’am.”
He looked shocked and disapproving. “No, no. This is unacceptable.”
“That’s what I said.”
He smiled the kind of smile that should require some kind of permit to use, because of the impact it could have on unsuspecting women. “I haven’t met you.”
I offered my hand. “Elena Estes.”
He took it gently, turned it over, and brushed his lips across my knuckles. His eyes never left mine. “Juan Barbaro.”
Barbaro. The great man. Mr. Ten-Goal Polo Star. I didn’t react, just to see how he would take it. He seemed not to care. The raw sexual magnetism that was his aura didn’t diminish in the least.
“Estes,” he said. “I feel I know that name for some reason.”
I shrugged. “Well, you don’t know me.”
“I do now.”
Eye contact. Direct, consistent, very effective. His eyes were large and dark, with luxurious black eyelashes. Many a Palm Beach lady paid six hundred dollars a pop every month to have an aesthetician glue on lashes like that-one hair at a time. He was tanned, with unruly black hair that fell nearly to his shoulders.
“What brings a beautiful woman here alone on such a boring evening?”
I looked down at the photos I had brought with me, losing the will to play anymore. “I’m looking to make sense of something senseless,” I said.
I held up a photograph to show him, as if it were a tarot card.
Barbaro’s broad shoulders sagged a little, and he looked sad as he reached out and took the picture from me. “Irina.”
“You knew her.”
“Yes, of course.”
“She was found dead today.”
“I know. Our groom Lisbeth told me. They were very good friends. Poor Beth is devastated. It’s hard to believe something so violent, so terrible, could happen to a person we know. Irina… so full of life and fire, so strong in her character…”
He shook his head, closed his eyes, sighed.
“You knew her well?” I asked.
“Not well. Casually. At a party, to say hello, to exchange small talk. And you?”
“We worked together,” I said. “I found her.”
“Madre de Dios, ”he whispered. “I’m very sorry for that.”
“Me too.”
The bartender brought him a drink without being asked, and he took a long sip of it.
“This was the last public place anyone saw her,” I said. “Do you remember seeing her that night?”
“It was the birthday party of my patron, Mr. Brody. Everyone was having a very good time. The kind of good time that makes memories vague,” he admitted. “But I know that Irina was here. We spoke.”
“About what?”
“Party talk.” He gave me a long, curious look. “For someone who works in the stables, you sound very much like a policewoman.”
“I watch too much television.”
“Lisbeth said Irina was murdered,” he said. “Is that true?”
“That’s what the detectives think,” I said.
“Murder. These things… They should not happen in Wellington.”
Wellington, Palm Beach, the Hamptons-the little Camelots of the East Coast wealthy. Where every day and evening should be filled with entertainment and pleasantry and beauty. Never anything so ugly as murder. Violent crime was a stain on the fabric of polite society, like red wine on white linen.
“A girl was murdered at the show grounds last year,” I said.
“Smothered facedown in a horse stall during an attempted sexual assault.”
“Really? I don’t remember hearing of it, but then, my world is elsewhere. What goes on off the polo fields, I do not know. The crimes may be related, you think?”
“No. They’re not,” I said.
“You knew that girl also?”
“Yes, actually. I did.” Jill Marone. A nasty pig-eyed girl. Liar, petty thief, shoplifter. A groom also.
Barbaro arched a thick brow. “That is a very strange coincidence.”
I forced a half smile, though my mind had taken a sudden turn off the track. “You may want to rethink becoming acquainted with me.”
“I don’t think so, Miss Estes,” he said, taking gentle hold of my left hand. He raised it for closer examination of my naked ring finger.
The band was warming up again. The respite was over. Barbaro glanced at them, frowning.
“Come with me,” he said, moving away from his bar stool. My hand was still in his.
“That wouldn’t be very wise of me,” I said. “Considering there is a killer running loose.”
“I’m not taking you anywhere there won’t be witnesses.”
He led me out into the hall and down the stairs to the restaurant, where at ten-thirty there were still several tables of diners. Everyone recognized Barbaro. I had no doubt that one of the many framed caricatures of famed polo stars on the walls was of him.
We went out onto the terrace. He whispered something to a waiter, and the waiter scurried away.
“This is better, yes?” he said, holding a chair for me. “All that noise seems suddenly very inappropriate.”
“Yes. It’s surreal, watching other people having a good time. My tragedy hasn’t touched their lives.”
“No,” he said. “They cannot help their ignorance. A happy place isn’t meant for mourners.”
The waiter returned with a bottle of Spanish red and two glasses.
“Not Argentine?” I asked.
“No. And neither am I. I am a Spaniard through and through.”
“That’s interesting in a sport dominated by South Americans.”
He smiled. “The Argentines do not find it so interesting. Pompous bastards.”
“As I’m sure they would say of all Spaniards.”
He grinned. “I have no doubt.”
I sipped the wine. Very good. Warm, smoky, smooth, with a long, soft finish. “Where in Spain? The south? Andalusia?”
“The north. Pedraza. Castilla.”
“Beautiful country. Not exactly a hotbed of polo.”
“You know Espana?”
“I was sent there for a semester when I was sixteen and had scandalized my family in some way or another. Somehow it never occurred to my parents I could be just as scandalous abroad.”
“And were you?”
I shrugged. “If you count dancing naked with a diplomat’s son in the fountain on the Plaza de Canovas del Castillo.”
Barbaro laughed. “I’m sure you were the toast of Madrid!”
“My misspent youth.”
“You are so different now?”
I looked out across a moonlit polo field, thinking that all that seemed more than two lifetimes ago, and I could barely remember even a ghost of how it felt to be that devotedly, joyfully rebellious.
“Forgive me,” he said quietly, reaching across the table to rest his hand on mine. “This is not the night…”
“I was just thinking Irina was not so different from me when I was her age. Headstrong, opinionated-”
“Passionate, determined,” he said. He raised a brow. “I suspect she was not so different from how you are now.”
“That’s true.”
“This is why you came here tonight. No matter you had the shock of finding her, no matter the weight of grief. You are here to find answers, to fight for her somehow. Yes?”
“Yes.” I took another sip of the wine. “Saturday night-did you happen to notice a tall man, mid-fifties, dark hair, silver temples? Belgian.”
Barbaro shook his head. “No. Does this man have a name?”
“I’m sure he has several. I doubt he would be so stupid as to use the one people would recognize: Tomas Van Zandt.”
“I’ve never heard of him. Should I?”
“No. He’s someone Irina had a grudge against.”
The horse dealer she had tried to bludgeon with a horseshoe in Sean’s barn a year past. Van Zandt, who had been a suspect in the murder of the girl at the show grounds, had simply vanished two days after the killing. Neither Van Zandt nor the rental car he had been driving was ever seen again. I had always suspected he’d ditched the car and gotten himself out of the country on a cargo plane with a load of horses-a shockingly easy thing to do, despite the media hype on Homeland Security.