The Alibi Man

by Tami Hoag

  “Not Saturday night,” the tall one said. “Last week. Remember? You were here.”

  Jeff stared at his pal, wide-eyed. “You are so fucking stupid! Shut up! You’re not supposed to talk about the customers!”

  “Guess what, Jeff?” I said flatly. “If one of these guys was the last person to see that girl alive, we’re not talking about a customer. We’re talking about a killer. And you’re not part of the Wink-Wink-Boys-Will-Be-Boys Club. You’re aiding and abetting in a felony murder. You don’t get sent to juvie hall for that. You ask your mother to pack you clean underwear and a big tube of K-Y Jelly, because you’re going away to live with the big dogs.”

  I pulled my phone out of my bag and called Landry while I stood there. I wasn’t sure whether he would pick up or not. To his credit, he did.

  “There are two valets working the parking lot at Players tonight,” I said without preamble. “You need to speak with them as soon as possible. They have information.”

  I hung up. The boys stood side by side, Mutt and Jeff—literally—mouths hanging open.

  “You’ll be meeting Detective Landry from the sheriff’s office shortly,” I informed them. “Please give him my regards.”

  I left them standing there panicking and walked down to my car. When I pushed the button on the remote to unlock the doors, the lights flashed and the car made a little wolf-whistle sound— and someone jumped off the hood and spun around to face me.

  I don’t know which of us was more startled: me, or the peculiar little character caught with her hand in the Burger King bag I had left on the hood.

  We stared at each other. She was in the same strange getup as the last time—the black unitard that covered everything but her face, the conical hat with the pom-pom, the platform shoes. Only her makeup had changed. Tonight her face was painted a dark color—blue or purple, I thought, though I couldn’t really tell in le poor light of the parking lot. The area around her left eye was outlined in silver. She had painted a trail of curving lines from the right corner of her mouth up diagonally across her cheek to the corner of her right eye.

  “You’re naughty!” she declared.

  “I’m naughty? That’s my dinner you’re eating.”

  She wadded up the fast-food bag and put it behind her back.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Do you have a name?” I asked.

  “My name is No Name,” she said. “You can’t put that on my permanent record.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. What should I call you?”

  Her eyes darted to the left, as if she were listening to the counsel of an invisible friend. “You may call me Princess Cindy Lullabell.”

  “Cindy,” I said. “My name is Elena.”

  “I don’t care,” she said bluntly. “You’re naughty. Like the others.”

  “What others?”

  She shook her head from side to side, pom-pom waggling back and forth at the top of her pointy hat.

  “What does it mean to be naughty, Cindy?” I asked. “If I know, I can try not to be.”

  Princess Cindy Lullabell dropped the Burger King bag on the ground, turned her back to me, wrapped her arms around herself like a lover would wrap his arms around her, and started wiggling. She paused once to look over her shoulder at me and blow me a kiss.

  “Are you talking about people kissing?” I asked.

  “They’ll put that on your permanent record, even if you have a special pass.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Can I show you something, Cindy?”

  She gave me a dubious look.

  “It’s just a photograph,” I said.

  She looked sideways at her invisible consultant. “Is it a trick?”

  “No. I just want to know if you’ve seen this woman.”

  I held the photograph out, hoping there was enough illumination from the sodium vapor light to allow her to see. She reached up into her pom-pom and turned on a pinpoint light. The mother of invention.

  She took the photo from my hand and studied Irina and Lisbeth.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “They’re VERY naughty. They won’t be allowed to graduate, and that will go into their files.”

  I took the snapshot back and pointed at Irina. “Did you see her here Saturday night?”

  She thought about that, conferred with whatever voice she was hearing. When she turned back to me, she said, “When is Saturday?”

  “Three days ago. There was a big party that night.”

  “I don’t attend parties,” she said. “There might be drinking and naughtiness. My advisor says I have to go now. Thank you very much. Dinner was lovely. Good night.”

  She curtsied, then bolted and made for the pipe gate and the Polo Club development on the other side of it. She was surprisingly quick in those awkward thick-soled shoes. I followed her at a distance, not so much interested in catching her as in seeing where she went.

  I didn’t want her to be frightened of me. Who knew what kind of information was locked up with the butterflies in her head? I climbed through the gate and started to jog after her.

  She ran on ahead of me, elbows pinned to her sides, her lower arms flailing up and down, as if she were some strange wounded bird trying to take flight. She turned onto a cul-de-sac lined with lower-end condos—lower-end meaning they rented for a mere $3,500 a month for a one bedroom, one bath.

  As I turned to cut across the grass, the toe of my adorable Chanel ballet flat tripped me, and I fell forward onto my knees and elbows. When I got up and looked around, Princess Cindy Lullabell was nowhere to be seen.

  Damn.

  I retrieved my shoe and jogged down the cul-de-sac to the spot I had seen her before I’d gone down. There was a shed row of double garage doors, all closed. The growth of tropical trees and banana plants and giant ferns had created a dark corridor down the side of the last of the condo buildings.

  I didn’t have a flashlight and wasn’t inclined to go in there even if I’d had one. The potential for a nasty surprise was enough to keep me out. The lush landscaping was a haven for rats and mice. Rats and mice attract snakes. On the other side of the thicket of trees was a canal. Canals attract alligators.

  The image of the gator rolling with Irina’s lifeless body in its jaws flashed through my mind.

  I went between the condo buildings instead, where light spilled out from the windows, allowing me to see what I was stepping on, mostly.

  Horse people populated Palm Beach Polo and Golf. Horse people and their multitude of Jack Russell terriers, Welsh corgis, Westies, Labradors, Labradoodles, cocker spaniels, and every other breed of dog known to man. The owners weren’t always so conscientious about cleaning up after them.

  I looked around for another fifteen minutes, checked the storage sheds. Tried the doors. No luck. I went down the street to the west-entrance guard shack, which faced South Shore. The guard was watching a movie on a tiny television set. I went up to the glass door and tapped politely. She turned and glared at me and made no move to invite me in. I pulled the handle myself and hoped she wouldn’t pull a gun and shoot me.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt, but did you see anyone run past here a few moments ago? A person dressed in black with a cone-shaped hat and big platform shoes?”

  “The Freak?” she said, indignant that I had asked her a question.

  “Yes.”

  “No, I ain’t seen her.”

  The woman was the size of a baby hippopotamus. She had planted herself on that chair like Jabba the Hutt.

  “Do you know anything about her?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “No. Why would I know that? Do I look like I would hang out with the Freak?”

  “Not at all. But working here, I imagine you see and know about all kinds of things.”

  Her name tag read J Jones.

  “You don’t happen to know her name, do you, Ms. Jones?”

  “The Freak,” she said im
patiently. “Are you deaf?”

  “I don’t imagine that her mother gave birth to her, looked at her, and proudly said, ”Let’s call her the Freak,“ do you?”

  J. Jones made a face. “You don’t need to get flip with me,” she said.

  “Apparently, I do.”

  She looked me up and down, taking in the fat lip, the grass-stained white pants.

  “Do you live here, ma’am?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then why are you here? You can’t be here for no good reason. How did you get on the property?”

  “I climbed through the gate from Players.”

  “That’s criminal trespass,” she said. “And why are you running round looking like that? What do you want with the Freak, looking like that? All grass stains and dirt, like you been rolling around on the ground like an animal.”

  “I tripped and fell.”

  “Running after the Freak,” she said with disgust. “What’s up with that?”

  I surrendered. “Never mind. Thank you for all your help.”

  She snorted. “I didn’t give you any.”

  “Exactly,” I said, my attention no longer on the guard but on the TV screens showing cars coming in and going out through the gate.

  Guests were required to stop at the gate to talk their way in. Residents drove through, bar-code stickers on their cars being read by a sensor, which opened the residents’ gate as they approached, and all of it was caught on tape. I wondered how many of the residents were aware of that.

  Barbaro had said he and Bennett crashed at Bennett’s house in le Polo Club Saturday night. They had to have come through either this gate or the main gate on Forest Hill Boulevard. If Irina had voluntarily come in with one of them—or drove herself—that would be on tape.

  Exhausted, I hiked back to the parking lot and to my car. I drove home, went into my cottage, and went facedown on the bed, thinking about what to do next.

  Chapter 29

  Landry looked through the photographs Lisbeth Perkins had taken with her cell phone the night Irina Markova went missing. He had sent the photos from the girl’s phone to his computer, where he had the added advantage of making the pictures large enough to study.

  It always bothered him—seeing the victims frozen in time in a happy moment. In that moment, the person had not been thinking they would be dead soon, that someone would end their life with an act of violence. And more often than not, the person who ended their life was someone the victim knew. What a feeling that had to be—to look into a familiar face and see death coming.

  Gorgeous girl, he thought absently. The looks of a model, attitude to spare. A girl with a lot of life ahead of her, life she would have lived with intent.

  Weiss had taken a print of the photograph showing the guy the Perkins girl said had been bothering Irina that night and headed to Clematis Street, downtown West Palm Beach, to try his luck at getting a name to put to the face.

  Felt like a dead end to Landry, but they had to check it out. But he couldn’t see some guy following Irina back to Wellington, to the party at Players, to wherever she had gone after that. Way too much effort. The clubs were packed belly-to-belly on the weekends, full of hot young girls looking for trouble and guys happy to provide it. More likely Brad Something had washed the bad taste of rejection out of his mouth with alcohol and moved on to a more willing piece of ass.

  The photos from Jim Brody’s party were much more interesting. There were snaps of Irina doing what appeared to be some kind of hot fertility dance with Mr. Hotshot Barbaro; of her sitting between Jim Brody and Bennett Walker; of her dancing with girlfriends. Either Irina or Lisbeth had held the phone at arm’s length and snapped one of the two of them, side by side, mugging like supermodels.

  Juan Barbaro interested him. Partly because he was still pissed off at the idea of the guy touching Elena, he admitted, but mostly for legitimate reasons. Professional athletes are notorious for feeling entitled to have anything they want, including women—especially women.

  He sent off a couple of e-mail queries to the FBI and to a contact he had at Interpol, requesting any information available on the Spaniard.

  Bennett Walker interested him for the obvious reasons.

  Jim Brody interested him. It had been Brody’s birthday. Had Irina been a gift? Had she given herself freely? Had someone paid her? According to the ME, Irina had been a busy girl giving blow-jobs before her death.

  So far, it seemed she had vanished into thin air. Nobody admitted to seeing her leave Players. He didn’t know if she had left in her own vehicle or with one of the men. There had been no sighting of her car anywhere.

  It would have helped to know where the after-party had been.

  He was guessing it was at Brody’s house, but guesses wouldn’t get him a warrant to search the property.

  Elena’s phone call earlier in the evening had sent him back to Players to interview the two valets, but one had split before he got there, and the other one hadn’t been working Saturday night. That kid had told him about seeing Irina Markova with different gentlemen in their cars, but that wasn’t worth much.

  He wondered what the other kid might have had to say. If it had been a big revelation, Elena would have just said so when she called. Maybe she thought if he leaned on the valet who had been working that night he would be scared enough to spill his guts.

  Landry had taken the kid’s name and phone number. Tried to call. No answer. He would try again in the morning. He was convinced one of Jim Brody’s posse knew something about the girl’s death, but until someone could put her leaving that club—or being seen later on—with one of the self-proclaimed Alibi Club, he had squat.

  He had been through Irina’s e-mails, but most of them were in Russian, and he had set them aside until they could get the old priest back to interpret. He had briefly considered the idea of recruiting someone from Magda’s bar to do the job, but he had no doubt he would be lied to six ways from Sunday. If it happened that one Russian had killed another Russian, and the motive was written in Russian in one of those e-mails, no Russian was going to tell him about it.

  He had checked the girl’s phone records and discovered that she liked to talk to girlfriends on the phone. Not exactly a revelation. Interestingly, she seemed to have a direct line to some of the wealthiest men in the Palm Beach area.

  Popular girl for a horse groom.

  Landry thought of the expensive clothes in the girl’s closet. If she hadn’t gotten the money for those clothes from her mobster pal, Kulak, where had she gotten it? Were these guys she knew just generous, or were they clients? Did she have something on one of them? Blackmail made a good motive for murder.

  There was probably plenty to be had on Brody and his crowd. Men who gave one another alibis as a hobby had to be guilty of something.

  He looked back through the notes he had made in the victim’s apartment, detailing everything he’d seen there. Nothing out of the ordinary. The usual junk mail. A couple of bills. No sexually explicit photographs of Jim Brody naked and trussed up like a turkey in full S&M regalia. A coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond, a bill from a clinic, and an offer to join a health club.

  The bill from the clinic was written in what might as well have been Sanskrit. She was being charged seventy-five dollars for an alphanumeric code.

  Landry made a note to himself to call the clinic in the morning. He pulled his reading glasses off and rubbed his hands over his face. Out of gas. Time to call it, get some sleep, come back fresh.

  The last thing he wanted to do was answer his phone.

  “Landry.”

  “Detective Landry, there’s a man here asking to see you.”

  The girl at the desk downstairs.

  “Who is it?”

  “A Mr. Kulak. Alexi Kulak.”

  Chapter 30

  “Mr. Kulak.” Landry offered his hand, the Russian accepted.

  He was a very neat man—neat suit, neat hair, tie perfectly knotted, as Landry
’s had been twelve hours ago.

  “Detective. I have come to see about Irina Markova,” he said.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Kulak nodded and Landry showed him out the door. “We’ll take my car over to the morgue.”

  Neither of them spoke as Landry drove from one parking lot to the next. He buzzed the front door, and the security guard let them in.

  As long as he had been at this business, Landry had never quite shaken the creepy feeling of being in the morgue at night. It was too quiet in the halls; the lights were dim. Kulak walked beside him, staring straight ahead, his face blank. The tension in the man’s body was so strong Landry could feel it.