The Alibi Man

by Tami Hoag

  In Bennett’s death, I saw the wheels of justice turn in their own time, not in mine. And the old hatred and bitterness I had harbored for him all those years simply ceased to be. I didn’t feel happy. I didn’t feel relieved. I didn’t feel vindicated or triumphant or anything else. What I felt was the absence of feeling, and I knew it would be a long time before I fully understood what that was all about.

  In Lisbeth’s death, I saw too much, too close up, and it hurt so badly to look at it, I could only take it out of the most secret part of my heart and glance at it askance for just the briefest part of time before I had to put it back.

  Lisbeth had been the child I never was, had worn on her sleeve the heart I’d learned to guard so carefully so very long ago. And perhaps because I had never been allowed to mourn the loss of that child in me, I felt her death the hardest of all. It left me feeling wounded in a place so deep inside, I had thought nothing and no one could ever reach it.

  I didn’t like being wrong.

  I phoned Lisbeth’s parents back in Michigan and spun them a story about their sweet daughter and a tragic accident. They had no need to know anything about how tragic Lisbeth’s life had been in the weeks leading up to her death. Some truths are too cruel to pass along. I kept Lisbeth’s for her.

  The hoopla surrounding the shoot-out at Alexi Kulak’s salvage yard would take weeks to die down. It was something to be endured, like a mosquito bite.

  I gave no interviews, made no comments. I turned down an offer for a movie-of-the-week. I took a day and had a boat with no holes in it delivered to Billy Quint.

  When I returned, Barbaro was at the farm waiting for me.

  “I have much to apologize for,” he said, holding my car door as I got out.

  “Not to me,” I said. “You did the right thing in the end.”

  “Too little, too late.”

  I didn’t comment.

  “How are you, Elena?” he asked. He didn’t look at the sling on my arm. That wasn’t what he meant.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know,” I said. “The benefit of being jaded and cynical. It’s difficult to be either shocked or disappointed.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” Barbaro said. “I’m sorry we could not have known each other in a different time, under different circumstances.”

  “So far as I know, this is the only time we’ve got,” I said. “All we can do is play the hand we’re dealt.”

  He nodded and sighed, and looked away. “I’m going back to Spain for a while,” he said.

  “What about the season?”

  “There’ll be another. I just wanted to say good-bye. And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  He smiled a sad, weary smile, and touched my cheek. Gently, I’m sure, though I couldn’t really feel it.

  “For being who you are,” he said. “And for helping me to see who I had become.”

  The sun was low in the western sky, flame orange and fuchsia on the low flat horizon, when Landry stopped by later that day.

  I stood beside the dark four-plank fence that created a paddock for Sean’s pretty mare Coco Chanel. She grazed as delicately as if she were eating cucumber sandwiches at a garden party.

  Landry came over and stood beside me. We both watched the horse for a moment.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “I’ve had better days,” I said. “I’ve had worse.”

  “Your father gave a press conference today. Did you see it?”

  “My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.”

  “He’s trying to pin the whole thing on the Russian mob. According to him, Irina was part of an elaborate scheme to get Alexi Kulak hooked up with the Walker family.”

  “That’s why he makes the big bucks. I guess the movie people should go to him.”

  “I’m sorry for you he had to be a part of all this,” Landry said.

  “I’m sorry any of us had to be a part of it,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry he has to be my father, period. But let’s not talk about him,” I suggested. “He’ll only ruin a lovely sunset.”

  He nodded and slipped an arm around my shoulders. It felt good to have him touch me, to have him be there, to know that despite his many rough spots, he would be there for me when it counted. Of the lessons I had learned during that week, that was the one I decided was most important to me.

  I thought of asking him what would happen to the remaining members of the Alibi Club, but I knew the answer. Nothing. Nothing would happen to Jim Brody or any of the rest of them.

  Aside from some minor recreational drugs, they hadn’t done anything illegal. They would probably lay low for a month or two, or maybe for the season. But then it would be business as usual.

  That’s just the way of the world. Would there be more Irinas, more Lisbeths? Absolutely. But they would go into that circle of their own free will, and they would pay the price they paid. I couldn’t be everyone’s savior—nor did I want to be. I had my own life to go on with.

  “You’re no box of chocolates, Estes,” Landry said at last.

  I smiled the little Mona Lisa smile. “Neither are you.”

  “Nope.”

  “We must deserve each other, then, huh?” I said.

  He smiled and nodded.

  I sobered then and looked up at him. “I don’t know what I want, James. I don’t know what I need.”

  He tipped my head against his shoulder and pressed a kiss against my hair.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly. “We have what we have, and I won’t let it go. That’s what matters,” he said.

  And he was right.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tami Hoag’s novels have appeared regularly on national bestseller lists since the publication of her first book in 1988. She lives in Los Angeles and Wellington, Florida. She is a Grand Prix dressage rider competing at the international level.