by Tami Hoag
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, 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 arc
hed 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.
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…
“Did you notice when she left the party?” I asked. “Was she with anyone?”
“I couldn’t say. I remember her dancing. I remember her dancing with Jim Brody. He danced with all the young girls.”
“Party animal. Does Mr. Brody have a Mrs. Brody?”
“Several. All in the past tense.”
“He likes the young ladies?”
Barbaro shrugged. Very European. “He is a man.”
“How much did he like Irina?”
He frowned at me. “You can’t possibly think he would do such a thing.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Senor Brody is a very powerful, wealthy man. He can have anything he wants.”
“You think a wealthy man won’t commit a violent crime?”
His dark brows knit together in what seemed more like confusion or frustration than irritation. “He doesn’t need to force himself on women, or kill women.”
“What happened to Irina wasn’t about need, Mr. Barbaro,” I said. “What happened to Irina was about power and control. What animal knows more about power and control than a wealthy man?”
Barbaro shook his head and held up his hands to ward off my theory. “No, no, no… Only a psycho does these kinds of things: kills a young woman, throws her body away like garbage.”
I put an elbow on the table and propped up my chin in my hand. I watched his face, bemused by his discomfort at the idea that murderers might be hiding among the upper crust, even though I knew many people labored under the same misconception. I had never understood it, and I never would.
“What do you think a killer looks like, Mr. Barbaro?” I asked. “Do you think a killer has matted hair and bloodshot eyes? Beard stubble? Scars? Tattoos? Do you think every killer, every rapist looks like a monster? I can assure you, that isn’t the case. Dangerous creatures can be very beautiful.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “This is true. They can be. Tell me, Elena, are you speaking from experience? I hate to think of that.”
“That, my new friend, is a tale for another time. As fascinating as I’m sure you are, I’ve had a very long day.”
“You have.” He rose with me. “Allow me to walk you out. As you said, there is a killer running loose in our town.”
“How do I know you aren’t the one?”
“I am guilty of many things, Elena,” he said. “But not that. I have an alibi.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” he said as we walked back through the restaurant. He rested a hand against the small of my back in a gesture that was without thought or guile. “I admit to having had too much to drink that night. I went to the home of a friend here in the Polo Club to sleep my sins away.”
“And she’ll vouch for you, I’m sure,” I said as we climbed the stairs.
“He will vouch for me. Neither of us was sober enough to entertain ladies. I sp
ent the night on his pool table, which I’m sure seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so much the following morning.”
“And this friend has a name?”
“Of course,” he said as we came up to the entry hall.
A Hollywood director couldn’t have timed the moment better. The front door opened, and Barbaro laughed and said, “Speak of the devil!”