The Alibi Man (7 page)

chapter
10

         
LANDRY WATCHED
her walk away. He followed at a distance, until he was standing in the open doorway of the stable. Sean Avadon had pulled his black Mercedes in among the official vehicles. He got out, looking puzzled. Elena went up to him. They talked. Landry recognized the expressions, the body language. The confusion, the shock, the denial, the crushing weight of the emotion that came with realization of the terrible truth.

Sean put his arms around Elena and hugged her, and Landry felt a sharp cut of jealousy slice through him. Even knowing that Sean Avadon was gay didn’t lessen it. It didn’t matter that the embrace was not romantic or sexual. He envied Avadon for being allowed to touch her.

He turned away and went back upstairs to the apartment. Weiss was digging through Irina Markova’s dresser drawers, checking out her lingerie.

“Where’ve you been?” he said, scowling at Landry, irritated.

“Why? You want me to go back out so you can have a moment of privacy to whack off with a dead girl’s underwear?”

“Fuck you, Landry.”

“Fuck yourself.”

The latent-prints person didn’t even bother to glance at them.

“You were with Estes,” Weiss said. “Was she giving you a blowjob or what?”

Landry wanted to kick him. Hard. Then maybe shove him out a window. He checked the position of the windows. One overlooked the riding arena. He wondered if Weiss had been watching.

“She was giving me information, dickhead. About our vic’s movements Saturday night.”

The telephone rang then, and everyone looked at it like it was a bomb about to go off. Landry went to the writing desk next to the bed and squinted at the caller ID.
Private
. No number. When the machine picked up, Irina’s voice told the caller to leave a message, no cutesy girly greeting. After the beep came a whole lot of Russian. A man’s voice.

Landry waited for a moment, then picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

The Russian went silent.

“Hello?” Landry repeated. “Who is this?”

“Who are
you
?” the voice demanded.

“Are you trying to reach Irina Markova?”

Another hesitation. “Who wants to know?”

“This is Detective Landry, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Who is this?”

“What are you doing on this telephone?”

“I’m talking to you. Are you a relative of Ms. Markova?”

“Why?”

“Are you?”

“Yes. She is my niece.”

Landry took a deep breath and let it out. “Sir, I regret to inform you that Irina Markova is deceased.”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

The confusion.

“Her body was discovered this morning in a canal outside of Wellington.”

“The fuck! No! You are lying! Who the fuck are you, sick bastard!”

The shock, the denial.

“I’m sorry, sir. The body was positively identified at the scene by an acquaintance.”

The man’s breathing was shallow and fast. “She is dead? You are telling me she is dead? Irina?”

“Yes.”

“This was car accident?”

“No, sir. She appeared to have been murdered.”

“Murdered? What? Who would do this? What kind of animal would do this?”

“We don’t know. I would like to speak to you in person,” Landry said. “You might be able to help us.”

Silence. A long silence. He mumbled something in Russian that sounded like a prayer, then, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Irina.”

The crushing weight of the emotion that came with realization of the terrible truth.

“Sir?” Landry said. “I’ll need to get your name and address. I’ll need to speak with you in person about the disposition of your niece’s body.”

The line went dead.

Landry put the phone down and used his own phone to call the watch commander at the county jail, to get a line on a Russian interpreter. Drunks, derelicts, and criminals of all nationalities routinely passed through the jail. It was essential to have people available to translate their rights to them, tell them how to manipulate the system, and teach them all the English they needed to know:
I want a lawyer
.

Landry wanted to know what message the caller had begun to leave. He had no way of knowing whether or not the caller was in fact Irina Markova’s uncle or if he was related by language only.

The Russian mob had put down roots in Miami in the ’80s and, like kudzu, had spread all over the state, infiltrating every illegal and corrupted business there was. The Russians were smart and ruthless, a scary combination.

He had no reason to think Irina Markova had any connections to criminal types, but he did know she had very expensive tastes that no groom’s salary could begin to pay for. Designer clothes, designer shoes, designer bags, a boxful of diamond jewelry.

“Did he give you a name?” Weiss asked.

“No.”

“Is he a relative or what?”

“Maybe. He said so.”

Landry sat down at the desk and grabbed Irina’s phone to try the speed-dial numbers. The first number belonged to someone named Alexi.

He hit
dial
. The phone on the other end began to ring. No one answered. After four rings the voice mail picked up.

“I can’t take your call. Leave message.”

“Bingo,” Landry whispered to himself. An instant winner. The voice was the same. Now he had a first name to put with it. Alexi.

The beep sounded.

“Sir, this is Detective Landry calling back. Your niece’s body has been taken to the medical examiner’s office at the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Complex at 3126 Gun Club Road, West Palm Beach. An autopsy will be performed tomorrow. Her remains should be available for release by the end of the week. Please call me back at your convenience.”

He gave his cell-phone number and ended the call.

“Did you get his number?” Weiss asked.

“No.”

Landry crouched down and unplugged the phone cords.

“I’m going back to the office,” he said. He grabbed the phone and its base, wrapped the cords around it, and started for the door.

“What am I supposed to do?” Weiss said, irritated he was being shut out.

“Go home. I don’t need you.”

Landry went down the spiral stairs and left the stable. Lights were on in Elena’s house but not in the main house. Sean was probably with her. They were probably having a drink. Avadon would be asking questions. Elena would give him the play-by-play. They would share their disbelief, their shock, their grief.

He knew he wasn’t invited. She would be pissed as hell if he tried to join them. He hadn’t known Irina more than in passing. He would have been a stranger intruding. Elena didn’t want him there anyway. She had made that decision. She didn’t want a relationship, didn’t need him. He was surprised she had allowed him to stroke the back of her head as they sat on the park bench. A weak moment. He wished it had lasted longer.

Pushing the thought aside, he got into his car and started the engine. He had a job to do, and the night was young.

Alexi Kulak went out the back door of the bar and began to pace. Back and forth, back and forth, the same four strides over and over, like a caged animal. He couldn’t hear the noise from the bar for the pounding inside his brain. He was unaware of his surroundings, except for knowing that it was night and the only light came from a bulb over the door to the bar.

Irina dead. That couldn’t be. That could not have happened. He wasn’t going to believe it. There had to be some kind of mistake.

He felt sick and angry and…and lost. Things like this did not happen to him. He was the one always in control. The world around him ran according to his rules, by his permission. It was inconceivable that some person had come into his world and done this terrible thing. It just couldn’t be.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket with trembling hands and pressed the number for her cell phone. It didn’t matter that he had already called that number twice and had been passed immediately to voice mail.

“This is Irina. Please leave message.”

He waited impatiently for the beep. “Irina? Irina, answer the goddamn phone. Answer me! Answer me!”

He screamed into the phone, still pacing. Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes. His hair was wet with it. His heart was pounding.

“Irina? Irina!”

He called her name over and over, until finally the only sound that came out of him was a wild animal cry of pain.

Alexi Kulak was well-known for his mastery over his emotions. Most people would have said he didn’t have any, but that was not true. In that moment he knew the kind of grief from which the only escape is death. In that moment he knew the kind of fury that could scorch the earth and everything on it. In that moment he knew the kind of hopelessness that crushed the spirit.

Irina was dead. He knew it now. He felt the absence of her life force. The emptiness was like an anvil pressing down on him.

His phone fell from his hand and bounced on the cracked pavement. He put his hands to his face, feeling the heat of his tears, and he dropped to his knees and slumped forward, heedless of the impeccably tailored suit he wore.

What did it matter, a suit? It meant nothing. Nothing meant anything. Irina was gone, dead, murdered, her life torn from her and crushed. Her body was cast aside like the carcass of an animal, thrown into a filthy canal.

What mattered now was that someone would have to pay for her death. He would find that person. He would find that person, and that person would suffer in every conceivable way until they begged and prayed for death.

This Alexi Kulak promised, and all knew that Alexi Kulak was a man of his word.

chapter
11

         
THE CELL PHONE
was encrusted with pink crystals. Very girlish, which surprised him. Irina had been in no other way a child. Old far beyond her years, he thought. Jaded in a way one didn’t expect. An old soul, some would say.

He didn’t believe in souls.

The ring tone the phone played when it was being called was classical, melancholy.

The thing had been ringing all evening. He waited for several moments after the song had played, then opened the phone. The screen told him there was voice mail. He touched the call button and listened.

There were three messages, all of them in Russian, all from the same man. The tone of the first message was casual. Tension crept into the second one. Tension and impatience. The third call was desperate, panicked.

He saved the messages, then scrolled through the menu to
settings
and to
voice message
.

“This is Irina. Please leave message.”

He hit the button again.

“This is Irina. Please leave message…. This is Irina. Please leave message…. This is Irina. Please leave message…. This is Irina. Please leave message….”

chapter
12

         
I HAD THE
shower and the drink, but as exhausted as I was, I didn’t go to bed after Sean left. What would have been the point of it? I would have slept fitfully for a couple of hours, if I slept at all. I would have been up prowling the house at two in the morning, avoiding even making an effort to go back to sleep, because I knew that nightmares were lying in wait for me.

A little wax to spike up the hair a bit. A pair of slim dark jeans, a simple black top, sexy sandals. Mascara, lip gloss, and a pair of diamond earrings. At least I looked presentable, even if I didn’t feel fit for public interaction.

Landry’s car turned into the drive, and he parked and stood beside it for several moments, looking my way. I watched through the barely opened plantation shutters in my bedroom. Then he turned and went to Sean’s house.

I waited for a couple of minutes, then left, driving at a crawl, hoping no one would hear me leave.

Players was relatively tame on Monday nights. Everyone who had to have a job had to be at that job bright and early Tuesday morning. Hangovers were not a good idea for people who had to muck stalls and ride horses all day in the South Florida sun. Those who didn’t have to have jobs were free to do as they pleased, but with a shortage of twenty-something girls looking for a good time, the club didn’t hold the appeal it did on the weekend.

The entertainment for the evening was a Jimmy Buffett wannabe with a guitar, a harmonica, and a bad-looking aloha shirt (as if there is some other kind). He had a guy on keyboard who wore a captain’s hat and a double-breasted blue blazer with shiny brass buttons, and a drummer who was young enough, and looked bored and embarrassed enough, to be the son of one of them.

I walked into the bar and skirted the dance floor, where a dozen people were drunk enough to have lost their inhibitions. I’ve always thought there should be a public-service ad showing video of middle-aged drunk people dancing. The rate of alcoholism would surely plummet, simply from the humiliation factor.

The bartender, a hunky young fellow with dark eyes and five o’clock shadow, came over as I took a seat toward the end of the bar.

“What can I get for you, ma’am?”

“For starters, you can not call me ma’am, you darling boy,” I said with a wry smile tucking up the right corner of my mouth. “How do you ever expect to have a mad hot affair with an older woman if you treat them like your old aunt Biddie?”

He grinned. Excellent orthodontia. “What was I thinking?”

“I can’t imagine. Next, you can bring me Ketel One vodka with tonic and a big squeeze of lemon.”

“You got it.”

He turned away to see to it. Someone had abandoned a pack of cigarettes on the bar. I helped myself to one, feeling vaguely guilty, not that I had stolen it but that I was smoking at all. Filthy habit. When he came back with the drink, I asked him his name.

“Kayne Jackson.”

“Kayne Jackson. My God, you’re a soap star waiting to happen,” I said. “Kayne Jackson, I’m Elena Estes.” I took a sip of the drink, savored it, and sighed. “It’s a wonderful pleasure to meet you. Were you working here Saturday night?”

“Yeah, why?”

I had downloaded and printed the photos from Lisbeth Perkins’s cell phone. I showed him the one of Irina sitting between Jim Brody and Bennett Walker. “Did you see this girl here?”

“Yeah. That’s Irina. She’s a regular with that crowd. Hot babe, but she wouldn’t look at me twice.”

“Do you think she had a problem with her eyesight?”

“I think I don’t have a big enough wallet.”

“Ahhh…One of those. Looking to snag herself a rich husband?”

He shrugged.

“Did you happen to see when she left?”

“No. I couldn’t say. It was Jim Brody’s birthday. It was a zoo in here. Why?” He looked a little suspicious. “Are you a cop or something?”

I took another sip of the drink, another drag on the cigarette. “Or something…Did she seem to be having a problem with anyone?”

“No. She was having a good time,” he said, then checked himself. “She and Lisbeth Perkins got into it about something out in the hall. Lisbeth looked pissed and left. Must have been around one.”

“With anyone?”

“Alone.”

The band had decided to give it a rest. More people came to the bar. Kayne Jackson excused himself and went to serve people who wouldn’t make him work so hard for his tip.

“Are you enjoying my cigarette?”

The voice was smooth and warm like a fine brandy, almost seductive, a little amused, accented. Spanish.

I looked at him from the corner of my eye as I exhaled a stream of smoke. “Why, yes, I am, thank you. Would you like one?” I said, offering the pack to him.

His dark eyes sparkled. “Thank you. You are too generous, señorita.”

“Señorita. 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
patrón,
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 España?”

“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 Cánovas 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.

What if he had come back? Irina knew too much about him. She had accused him of keeping a girl she knew as his sex slave in a camper trailer in Belgium. To Van Zandt’s twisted way of thinking, the worst part of her charges had been the potential damage to his reputation.

Maybe he had decided to reinvent himself. He would never be able to show his face in Wellington without getting arrested, but if he was clever and very careful, and arrogant enough to believe he could pull it off, he might be able to weasel his way into a smaller market. The Midwest, the Northwest. He could still cheat people and swindle himself a small fortune among those not quite wealthy enough or connected enough to winter in Florida. But he would always know Irina was out there, lying in wait to ruin him. Grooms change jobs, move around, network….