The Alibi Man (6 page)

chapter
8

         
I WAS LIVING
in a condo in the Polo Club off and on that winter season, 1987. Taking a break from my second year at Duke, my father’s alma mater.

I was not a good student—not because I wasn’t capable but because it irritated my father, and that was important to me at the time. I had chosen Duke for that very reason, of course.

All my life I had considered Edward Estes to be a father in name only. Even in my earliest memories he was always off to the side, disconnected, present for the sake of appearance. He probably could have said the same of me and my efforts at being his daughter, but I was a child and he was not.

Children are uncanny little creatures. They read the subtext and see the complex subtleties in people. They adjust their own thinking, their actions and reactions, accordingly. Children are closer to, and more trusting of, their intuition, and none of the influences that block and distract us as adults have had a chance to cloud that clarity of instinct.

Edward Estes was not my biological father. I had been adopted as an infant by him and his wife, Helen Ralston Estes. A private and costly adoption I would be reminded of on—at least—a yearly basis, and always in a moment when it could do the maximum emotional damage.

They had been unable to have children of their own. He had been pissed off at his own lack of ability to produce a proper heir and had, through the amazing contortions of his psyche, managed to corkscrew that anger around to direct it at Helen and at me. At Helen because of her insistence to adopt. At me because I was the living example of his physical shortfall.

Helen, a shallow, spoiled child of privilege, had found her life lacking the fashionable accessory all her friends were having at the time: a baby. So she found a baby broker, made a down payment, got her name on the list, and waited impatiently. The exercise would be repeated in exactly the same way, with exactly the same emotional depth, in the ’90s when she had to have a money-green Birkin bag from Hermès.

Unlike the classic Birkin bag, my trendiness had come and gone with the fashions in Helen’s life. The instant I discovered rebellion at age two, I was handed off to the nanny and was seldom seen in public until I reached the perfect age of cuteness: five. At five I once again became Helen’s favorite doll, to dress up and take out to mother–daughter functions and other ideal photo-op activities, such as riding lessons.

To my good fortune, I was a natural talent on a horse. Not only was I cute as a button in braids with bows and a velvet-covered helmet, I could stick on a pony like a burr and was, in no time, bringing home blue ribbons.

Everybody loves a winner.

Even my father, as much as he disliked me, very much liked the accolades and attention I brought as a budding equestrian star. My talent on a horse became the bargaining chip that kept me from being shipped off to boarding school in Switzerland when I was fourteen and got caught smoking pot and drinking booze with the gardener’s twenty-year-old son. The fact that my photograph would appear in many a magazine on every Palm Beach resident’s reading list allowed me to blow off half a semester at Duke to show horses in Wellington in the winter of 1987.

That was the winter I fell in love with a man for the very first time in my life. I had seen no point in it before then. In my experience and nineteen years of observation, I had only ever seen love go bad, crash, and burn. No one came out happy or unscathed. It seemed to me a much better idea to play around and have some fun and move on when the relationship started to head south, which they all invariably did.

I would have been so much better off if only I had stuck to that principle. But along came Bennett Walker. The day I fell in love with him, I knew that was the day that would change my life forever. I had no idea how true that statement would be, or how tragic.

The Walker family fortune had been made in the shipbuilding business during World War I. During the Depression, they bought up shipping companies and diversified into the steel business. The fortune was doubled, tripled, quadrupled through World War II and subsequent global conflicts. In the ’50s they had branched into commercial development and real estate.

Most of my father’s money he had made on his own as one of the country’s highest-priced, most sought-after defense attorneys to the rich and infamous. He himself had become a celebrity of sorts over the years by getting guilty wealthy people off the hook for their sins, and was worth more socially because of that than because of the age of his fortune. Old-money Palm Beachers were disdainful of how he came by his wealth—behind his back, of course. When they found themselves in a jam with the law, however, he was always a best and dearest friend.

He knew, of course. And he was both amused by it and resentful because of it. Resentment was my father’s forte. No one had ever carried a bigger chip on their shoulder than Edward Estes.

So imagine his glee when his rebellious daughter was seen on the arm of the most-eligible-bachelor son of the wealthiest old-money family in Palm Beach. His daughter, who was well-known for choosing wildly inappropriate boyfriends—polo players and rock musicians being my personal favorites. Outside of my riding accomplishments, falling in love with Bennett Walker was the first thing in my life I had ever done that pleased my father. It only stood to reason, I suppose, that it would be the thing that would ultimately destroy what relationship we had.

I left Star Polo in a daze and just started driving. I didn’t think, didn’t plan. I went on autopilot. It was a relief to be numb and empty. The bloody mess that had been the day sank into a dark corner of my mind as I drove. I didn’t hear anything. My surroundings seemed unreal and distant.

My conscious mind had overloaded. Escape seemed like a good idea at the time. But my subconscious had its own agenda, and after miles of blur and strip malls, I found myself driving over the Lake Worth bridge onto the Island. Palm Beach.

Palm Beach is a world of its own, a sixteen-mile-long sandbar studded with palm trees and mansions. The southern half of the island is so narrow, there is only one road leading north. As it widens, side streets branch off and wind around, the exorbitantly expensive half to the Lake Worth side and the obscenely expensive half to the ocean side. The landscaping is so lush it is difficult from the street to get more than a glimpse of many of the grand homes, much less their grand views.

My parents’ house was a pink Italianate villa behind tall iron gates. A cobblestone drive circled a fountain featuring a mermaid perched on a trio of sea horses, pouring water from an urn. More than once as a small child I had been hauled out of the fountain, naked as the day I was born, filled with the joy of freedom, God forbid.

I parked illegally across the street and just sat there. If I sat there another fourteen minutes, a squad car would come by and the uniform inside it would hassle me because I obviously didn’t belong there. The right corner of my mouth quirked upward in what passed for an ironic smile.

I hadn’t set foot in that house in nearly two decades. I hadn’t even driven past. It felt so strange to sit there across the street, looking in the gate. Absolutely nothing about the place had changed. I could have been looking back in time. I half-expected to see myself at ten, at fifteen, at twenty-one, coming out the tall black double doors.

At twenty-one I had come out those doors one day and never returned.

One of my parents was driving a black Bentley convertible these days. It sat parked under the portico. Probably my father. My mother had always abhorred the sun and swathed herself in silk and chiffon to hide every inch of her skin, until she looked like a mummy designed by Valentino. My father was always tan and fit, played golf and tennis, and piloted his own vintage cigarette boat in races on Lake Worth.

I wondered what he would do if he came out of the house, drove his Bentley out the gate, and saw me sitting there. Would he even recognize me? The last time he had seen me I had a long, wild mane of curly black hair. My expression had been furious, and to my horror there had been tears swelling in my eyes.

A year past, in a fit of rage, I had hacked my hair off boy-short and had kept it that way. My expression now was the unchanging, carefully neutral expression the plastic surgeons had given me after nearly two years of reconstructive surgery. And I was now physically incapable of crying.

Self-absorbed narcissist that he was, I doubted he would even see me as anything other than a loiterer. He would have his cell phone out and be speed-dialing the police as he went down the street.

My mother had come to see me in the hospital after my date with the asphalt under Billy Golam’s 4×4. Not because I had called her. Not because she was my mother and had been keeping tabs on me. She had come because her housekeeper had seen my name in the
Palm Beach Post
when the incident was in the news and had asked her if I was a relative.

Helen had come to see me, but she hadn’t known what to do or say when she got there. I gave her a point for trying to do the maternal thing, even though she had only a passing knowledge of the concept. I bore no resemblance to the daughter she remembered. Not physically or otherwise. I had been gone from her life almost as long as I had been in it.

She had been so uncomfortable that after fifteen minutes I pretended to fall asleep so she could leave.

I asked myself then why I had come here. Wasn’t it enough to have those old memories crack through the scars that covered them? Did I have to come here in person to make the pain sharper?

Apparently I thought so.

What strange irony that Irina’s death would somehow be intertwined with my past and that in wanting to help Irina I would have to face that past, something I had avoided doing my entire adult life.

I started the car and drove away. Drove home.

chapter
9

         
THE DAY
was nearly over by the time I got back to the farm. The horses, unaware and unconcerned with how my day had gone, were hungry. Cars from the SO were parked all over the place, including the one Landry had been driving. They were up in Irina’s apartment doing the same thing I had done hours before them.

A deputy stopped me as I got to the barn.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s an investigation in progress. You can’t go in.”

I looked straight in his face. “I can and I will. I own these horses,” I lied, “and they need to be fed. Do you want to be held responsible for the illness or death of any of these animals? Before you answer that, I should inform you that any one of them is worth more money than you’ll see in five years.”

He was officially intimidated. The young ones are so easy.

“No, ma’am. But could you please wait here while I go inform the detective in charge?”

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and walked past him. He didn’t stop me, but he did go into the lounge and, presumably, up the stairs to the apartment, where he would tell Landry about me. The man in charge.

As I went about feeding the horses their dinner, I tried to pretend the deputies and detectives and crime-scene investigators weren’t there. If they weren’t there, then I could pretend Irina wasn’t dead. If they weren’t there, I wouldn’t have to interact with Landry.

He didn’t come flying out of the lounge. That was a good sign. I went about my business, tending the individual needs of my charges. Witch hazel and alcohol on legs that tended to puff up overnight, carefully wrapped bandages—not too loose, not too tight. Lightweight sheets on all but Oliver, who thought it was hysterically funny to rip his expensive custom-made blankets to shreds. A few extra carrots for Arli, for his traumatic morning. A few extra carrots for Feliki, because she was the boss mare, and no one could get anything she didn’t get too or she would throw a tantrum in her stall.

I went last into the stall of the new princess of the barn: Coco Chanel. Coco was amazingly beautiful, dark chocolate brown with a splash of white on her hind legs and a perfect blaze down her face. Ears pricked at attention, she looked at me with huge liquid eyes filled with happiness that I was coming in to visit.

I spoke to her in a quiet voice, touched her neck, scratched her withers. She arched her neck, sniffed my head, ruffled my hair with her nose, and started scratching my shoulder. Reciprocity with no strings attached, no ulterior motives.

I wrapped my arms around her neck, closed my eyes, pressed my cheek against her, and hugged her. To experience such pure innocence and trust at the end of that day felt cleansing. This sweet horse had never been mistreated, had never been anything but adored her entire life. She didn’t know violence or hatred or the perversions that poisoned the minds of humans. I wished I could have said the same.

“Have you been in the apartment?”

I let go of the horse, turned, and looked at Landry. I wondered how long he had been standing there. The thought that he might have been there for a long time, watching me in an unguarded moment, irritated me.

“Yes,” I said. “I imagine my prints are still on file with the SO. You won’t need to take them again.”

“You shouldn’t have gone up there,” he said without any kind of rancor. His face was drawn. His tie was yanked loose.

“You should know better than to bother telling me.” I slipped out of the stall, closed and latched the door.

“Did you take anything?”

“Of course not,” I said, as if highly offended. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I don’t know procedure?”

“I think you don’t give a rat’s ass about procedure. You never have. Why start now?”

“Is there something in particular you want from me?” I asked. “Because, if not, I would like to go get out of these stinking clothes, have a shower and a drink, and go to bed. I’ve had as much of this day as I can stand.”

He was probably thinking the same thing. He’d been working this for ten hours without a break, I was sure. Without a meal, I was willing to bet. A steady diet of coffee, maybe a doughnut, or a candy bar, or some horrible fast-food beast on a bun that he would have eaten with one hand while he stood off to the side at the scene, continuing to direct people with the other hand. And now he would go back to the sheriff’s office and start on the paperwork. He still had a long night ahead of him.

I didn’t feel sorry for him. That was his job. Irina was just another DB (dead body) for him. He had known her well enough to say hello, that was all. Personal emotion would not be a factor in this for him, nor should it have been.

“What did you see up there?” he asked.

“The same things you did.”

“I mean, did it look like anything was out of place?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’d never been in Irina’s apartment before. She was a very private person.”

He nodded, then rubbed his hands over his face and down the back of his neck. The muscles there would be as tight and corded as ropes holding a great weight. His right shoulder would have a knot in it the size of a tennis ball. He would groan like a dying man if someone started to work the kink out with a massage.

I had no interest in doing that. I just knew it was so because I’d done it many times.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked, the same as he would ask if we had been meeting for dinner.
How was your day…where’d you go…what did you do….

“I need to sit down.”

I walked out the side of the barn toward the riding arena. The landscaping lights had come on as the sun sank low. I sat down on an ornate park bench. Landry sat on the opposite end.

I told him about the photograph on Irina’s laptop, the one from the tailgating party, and about finding Lisbeth Perkins at Star Polo and the things Lisbeth had told me about the encounter with the guy at the club on Clematis Street.

“She didn’t have a last name for him?”

“No, but she has a photo of him on her phone.” I didn’t tell him that I had the photos as well. I didn’t want to show him, didn’t want to deal with looking at that last photo again with an audience. “She also has photos of Irina later in the evening at a birthday party at Players. Lisbeth left the party around one. Irina stayed.”

“Anybody of interest at the party?”

“A lot of wealthy men with shaky morals,” I said. “Jim Brody, who owns Star Polo. A couple of hotshot polo players. Paul Kenner, Mr. Baseball—”

“Spitball,” he corrected me, scowling. Kenner had once hit on me, in front of him. Men.

“—A couple of Palm Beach rich boys. Bennett Walker.”

Somehow I expected Landry to have a big reaction when I said that name, as if he would instantly know all about my history with Walker. Stupid. Landry hadn’t even been living in South Florida at the time. And I certainly hadn’t spilled my heart out to him about it. Our pillow talk had consisted of more current events.

“Bennett Walker,” he said. “He races boats, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” I said, even though I did. Bennett and my father had the sport in common. They could have talked boats for hours. For all I knew, they still did. “He’s into the polo scene.”

“Rich.”

“Filthy. You’ll want to talk to him,” I said, dreading the thought.

He nodded. “I’ll want to talk to anyone who was at Players that night, down to busboys and valets.”

I should have told him about Bennett and the rape/assault charges back when. I should have told him I had testified at the trial.

I should have told him that I had loved Bennett Walker once. That I had loved him enough to say yes when he asked me to marry him. But I told Landry none of those things. He would find out soon enough.

Tearing all those memories out of the emotional and psychological scar tissue was going to be a terrible experience. I wanted to stall the inevitable as long as I could. I felt like Harrison Ford in the opening scene of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
when the gigantic stone is rolling after him as he tries to escape the secret temple. The huge ball that was my past and my pain was rolling toward me, and there was nothing I could do to escape it.

Landry reached over and stroked his hand over the back of my head tenderly. “Elena,” he said softly. “I’m sorry about this morning. About Irina. About the way I treated you when we first got to the scene. I’m not the most tactful guy when I’m angry.”

“You were cruel,” I said, looking straight at him. He looked away.

“I know. I wish I hadn’t said what I did about you quitting. I didn’t mean it.”

“Then why did you say it?”

He thought about his answer for a moment, weighing the truth versus something less.

“Because I wanted you to hurt…the way I hurt.”

I shouldn’t have wanted him to touch me, but I did. If I could have gone back in time to Sunday night, knowing what was going to happen that Monday, I probably wouldn’t have broken up with him. I probably would have put it off, just to give myself the luxury of turning to him. He probably expected that I still would turn to him.

I could have leaned forward and kissed him. He had moved that close. And then he would have wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. And we would have gone into my guest cottage, and we would have ended up in bed—because we always ended up in bed. And we would exhaust each other, and maybe I would be able to sleep and not dream.

Headlights turned in at the gate just then. Sean, back from his day at the beach.

“That’s Sean?” Landry asked. “You want me to tell him?”

I shook my head as I stood up. “I’ll do it.”

“I’ll need to talk to him.”

“Can it wait until tomorrow?” I asked.

He looked at his watch. “It can wait until later. I need to grab something to eat. I’ll go and come back.”

“Thank you.”

He wanted to say something more but thought better of it. I walked away before he could change his mind.

The best thing to do in a weak moment: walk away.

I didn’t look back.