“I have to go,” he said, and turned again for the door. Landry didn’t try to stop him.

“Are you playing later, Ben?” Barbaro called after his friend.

Walker didn’t turn around. “No.”

“He’s not doing so well, your pal there,” Landry said as Walker hustled out the front door.

Barbaro frowned. “My friend is a complex man with a complicated life.”

“Complicated in what way?”

“In the way of women, of course. His wife, she is… difficult.”

“Was she at the party that night?”

“No, no.”

“Was she at the house when you got there?”

“Mrs. Walker lives on ‘the Island,” as they say. They have a lovely home on the ocean side. Ben and I went to his home in the Polo Club.“

“They’re separated?”

“No,” Barbaro said. “They are wealthy. The wealthy do not live like you and me, Detective. Bennett keeps a home here in Wellington, where he stays for the polo season. He is quite a good amateur player.”

“And the wife?”

“Has her charities and so forth in Palm Beach. Benefits and balls, and so on.”

“And it’s fine with her that her husband is over here partying with twenty-some-year-old girls?”

Barbaro shrugged in that European way that made Landry want to smack him upside the head. “As I said, the wealthy are not like you or me.”

“Maybe not,” Landry said. “But in my experience, women are women, and women don’t like their husbands off fucking around on the side.”

Barbaro smiled like a wise man to a moron. “You have much to learn about these people, Detective.”

“Oh, I plan to learn everything about them. What about you, Mr. Barbaro? Did you spend any time with Irina Markova that night at the party?”

“To say hello, party talk. We may have danced, I think,” he said, looking up as if he might see the image of that on the ceiling.

“How well did you know her?”

Again with the shrug. “Irina enjoyed the scene, as many pretty young women her age do. I knew her socially. It’s a terrible thing that happened to her.”

“She was a groom,” Landry said. “Doesn’t seem like a groom would be included in this crowd.”

“Did you ever meet Irina?” Barbaro asked with raised brows. “Aye yi yi! She was a beautiful, sophisticated young woman. Very self-assured, very sexy. A young woman like that is welcome everywhere she goes, is she not?”

“Did you have a relationship with her?”

“No.”

“Did Bennett Walker?”

“You would have to ask him that.”

“I’m asking you,” Landry pressed.

“Ben is a wealthy man,” Barbaro said. “Irina liked wealthy men.”

“Was he sleeping with her?”

“I don’t know. They were friendly. But she was friendly with other wealthy men as well.”

“She slept around.”

“I don’t go into the bedrooms of my acquaintances, Detective. I find it unwise to know too much,” Barbaro said. “I am a polo player, a professional athlete. I am an entertainer. I am very good at what I do, and because of this, I am desirable to know among these wealthy people. But I am not one of them. I make my living off their largesse. I am an employee.”

“I don’t see any other hired help sitting at that table out there, Mr. Barbaro,” Landry pointed out.

“Nevertheless… If I was a player of no consequence, I would not be here. Inasmuch as these gentlemen may tell you otherwise, I know better.”

Strange, Landry thought. Barbaro was setting himself apart, distancing himself from the pack. Most people went out of their way to appear to belong to an exclusive social set.

“How long have you known these people?”

“I have been coming to Palm Beach and Wellington for four years, five years,” Barbaro said. “I came here to play for Ralph Lauren when I was only a three-goal player.”

“What does that mean?”

“That is a rating system, a handicap. Players are handicapped, based on their statistics and abilities, from one goal to ten. The higher the number, the better the player,” he explained. “When I was a three-goal player, Mr. Brody saw my potential and hired me away. I have now been a ten-goal player for three years.”

“Mr. Brody has a good eye.”

“Which is how he made his fortune.”

“You’ve earned your place at that table,” Landry said.

“I have been good for Mr. Brody. Mr. Brody has been very good to me,” Barbaro said, raising his hands. “And now I must go to work, so that all of this remains the same.”

Landry took his phone number and let him leave. Weiss came into the wide hall from the back terrace, still looking pissed off.

“I hate these people.”

“Because they’re rich?” Landry asked.

“Because they’re assholes.”

“Turning on your own kind?”

“Very funny. They didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, don’t know anything, and they all alibi one another. And,” Weiss said, “they want to know where they can send memorials. I could puke. What did yours have to say for themselves?”

“Same,” Landry said as they walked out. “Barbaro alibis Walker. Walker alibis Barbaro. They both knew the girl, but neither of them saw her leave the party. She’s screwing everybody, but nobody’s screwing her.”

“I don’t like it,” Weiss said. “I don’t like it that they’re all here. I don’t like it that they were talking about the girl.”

“It’s a fucking alibi club,” Landry said.

“So now what?”

Landry looked off toward the stables. “We find someone who isn’t a member.”

Chapter 20

I decided not to think about Alexi Kulak. It wasn’t denial. There just wasn’t anything I could do about him. I wanted to find Irina’s murderer. That was my priority. My priority happened to coincide with his. The rest I would deal with when I had to.

I wondered if Irina’s autopsy was under way. I wondered what information the medical examiner would come up with: Had she been raped? Tortured? When had she died? How much had she suffered? Had they by some miracle been able to find anything on or in the body that could yield a DNA profile of the killer?

Mother Nature is a strange old bird. I knew of cases where there should have been no hope at all of finding the perp’s skin cells under the victim’s fingernails-and yet it had happened. It could happen. The odds weren’t good, but…

I thought of the Laci Peterson case in California, where all hope of finding the woman’s body had gone overboard with her and the concrete anchor tied to her body. But that body had defied all odds, not only washing up onshore where it could be found but washing up onshore literally blocks from the state crime lab.

I knew that if there was any way Irina could have, she would have gone down fighting. I could only hope the ME had found evidence that was so.

Of course, I would not be privy to that information. When I was a cop, all the technology available had been at my disposal, provided the county wanted to pay for it. As a civilian, I felt as handicapped as Billy Quint.

I still had contacts in law enforcement, the few people who had not judged me as harshly as my fellow officers had judged me-or as I had judged myself-when my career went nova with the death of Hector Ramirez. I had known Mercedes Gitan when she was just made assistant chief at the ME’s office. I had stood and watched her perform more than one autopsy when I was on the other side of the badge.

It had been three years and a lifetime since I’d seen her. She had actually come to the hospital a couple of times in the first weeks following my near-death experience. I hadn’t wanted to know anyone then, certainly hadn’t wanted anyone to know me. The people who tried to support me, I had shut out, and they gave up. I wondered now if she would even take my call, let alone give me information only the sheriff’s detectives were supposed to have.

I stopped at a drive-through Starbucks on my way back to the farm to pick up something chokingly sweet and artificially flavored for Sean and a straight-up double-strong espresso for myself. Sean was leading a horse to the barn when I drove in. He looked like a Ralph Lauren ad. Tall, handsome, chiseled, narrow-hipped.