I actually laughed. “Oh, my, what would the neighbors think? Can’t have me tarnishing your sterling reputation. You are just un-fucking-believable,” I said, lowering my voice.
“Twenty years and you still hate me.”
“There is no statute of limitations for what you did, Bennett. Not with me.”
“Despite what you choose to believe, I was exonerated.”
“What an interesting reinvention of history.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you, Elena. Not here, not now.”
“Well, when you find you have room on your dance card, do pencil me in. There’s just nothing like reliving old times,” I said sarcastically.
I slid my gaze away from him to Barbaro. “Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me. It’s been a very bad, very long day. I’ll see myself out.”
I walked away and out the door, past the valet stand. I had parked in the lower lot. A Glock 9mm lived in a secret panel in the driver’s door of my car. I couldn’t take the risk of the gun falling into the hands of a minimum-wage sixteen-year-old bored with waiting on rich people.
“Elena!”
Barbaro. He jogged to catch up with me. But when he did, he didn’t seem to know what to say. He had the expression of someone who had come in on the middle of a conversation.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what just happened.”
“I’m sure your good friend will fill you in,” I said. “A word to the wise, though: Don’t invest too heavily in giving him an alibi. If I find out he had something to do with Irina’s murder, I’ll make very certain that he pays for it, and I won’t care who gets in my way.”
“That’s crazy! Bennett is a good friend.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Several years. He would never have anything to do with harming a woman.”
“Really? Why not? Because he’s handsome? Because he’s charming? Because he’s rich?” I asked. “For such a worldly man, Mr. Barbaro, you are terribly naive. When you go back in there and sit down to have a drink with your pal, ask him if the name Maria Nevin means anything to him.
“And whatever he tells you, know this: Bennett Walker is a liar and a rapist. I know, because I was his alibi once too.”
He didn’t know what to say to that and wisely chose to say nothing at all.
I turned to open my car door. Barbaro put a hand on my shoulder.
“Elena, please don’t leave angry.”
He was standing too close. I didn’t turn to face him.
“I’m not angry with you.”
“You are angry with the world, I think.”
“Yes,” I whispered, feeling very beaten by the day. Physically beaten. Emotionally spent. His hand moved from my shoulder to touch the back of my head.
“Please don’t try to comfort me,” I said. “I really don’t think I can take it right now.”
“You are always the strong one?”
“I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. If you’ll excuse me now, I really have to go.”
He moved a step to the side so I could open the car door.
“May I call you?” he asked.
I laughed without humor. “I can’t imagine why you would want to. I haven’t been the most pleasant company.”
“The death of a friend does not create pleasant circumstances. Still… This does not change the fact that you are a beautiful, complex, interesting woman, and I would like the chance to get to know you better.”
“Hmmm… You’re a brave soul,” I said, looking at him. In the film-noir black-and-white light of the parking lot, he was starkly beautiful, and I could feel the sexual energy that rolled off him in waves.
“Fortune favors the brave,” he said, and he leaned forward and kissed me gently, briefly. Just long enough to make me think I might want more.
“You’re naughty!”
The voice came from the far side of my car. A person of indeterminate gender stood in back of the car parked next to mine, staring at us. A woman, I thought from the voice. But there were no other indicators. She was covered in what looked to be a black unitard that exposed only the features of her face, features painted on like a character from Cirque du Soleil. On top of her head was a conical black hat with a pom-pom at the end.
“You’re very naughty!” she said. “Like the others. Very naughty!”
Barbaro took a couple of menacing steps in her direction. “Get away from here, Freak! Go! Go before I call the police and they arrest your crazy ass!”
The Freak curtsied and ran away awkwardly on high platform shoes. She crawled through the pipe gate that led onto the Palm Beach Polo development and was gone.
I turned to Barbaro. “What the hell was that?”
“The Freak,” he said. “Have you never seen the Freak?”
“No. I don’t get off the farm much.”
“She hangs around town. I’ve seen her here before. She’s crazy.”
“I got that.”
“Never mind her,” he said. “Go home and try to get some rest.”
He reached up and touched the left side of my face, gently, I’m sure, though I couldn’t really feel it.
I slid behind the wheel of the BMW and told him my phone number, and I drove away wondering what exactly I had just let myself in for.
I thought of Barbaro’s kiss and felt guilty. I thought of Landry and the moment we had shared outside the barn, how I had wanted to turn to him but hadn’t. And I felt guiltier. Not that I needed to. I had ended my relationship with Landry. He wanted something from me I couldn’t give, wouldn’t give. I’d done him a favor, whether he wanted to see it that way or not.
Maybe a fling with a hot polo star was a way to drive that point home.
Don’t read too much into it, Elena, I told myself. Inasmuch as I planned to use my new connection to Juan Barbaro to dig into this case, for all I knew he was planning to do the same thing. He had been there the night Irina went missing, as had Bennett Walker, and Barbaro’s patron, birthday boy Jim Brody. Perhaps he planned on being the distraction that would take my attention away from his wealthy friends.
I had no doubt that Juan Barbaro could have his pick of wealthy women and gorgeous girls in Wellington. Why pick me?
The lights were out in Sean’s house. I was glad. As much as I loved Sean, I didn’t want to interact with one more person.
I walked into the cottage and didn’t even bother to turn on a light. The moon was waxing toward fullness, giving off enough illumination for me to walk down the hall to my bedroom. I went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and started the shower running. The acrid smell of tension and stale cigarettes clung to me like a film.
I bent over the sink to brush my teeth. When I finished and looked up, I wasn’t alone.
A man stood in the doorway behind me. For a stunned second, I just stared at him in the mirror, then I spun around to face him. He was disheveled but wearing a suit, and the whites of his eyes were red.
“You are Elena Estes.” His voice was accented. Russian.
“Who the fuck are you?” I demanded.
“My name is Kulak. Alexi Kulak.”
Chapter 15
Magda’s was a shitty bar in a shitty industrial part of West Palm, a dingy clapboard building that looked as if it should have been condemned ten years before. Parking was in the back, a cracked concrete lot studded with weeds. A chain-link fence crowned with razor wire locked Magda’s patrons out of an auto salvage yard.
This would probably be an exercise in futility, Landry thought as he got out of the car. The old priest had named this bar as a possible spot to find Kulak. But the odds of anyone here talking to him were long. The Russian community was close-knit and tight-lipped. But he had to start somewhere.
He and Weiss had agreed to call it a day and start fresh in the morning. Landry glanced at his watch: 12:14 a.m. Morning. It would be hard enough to get these people to talk to one cop, let alone two. Particularly if one of the two was Weiss. Alexi Kulak was potentially too important a lead to screw up.