She looked up at me, cornflower-blue eyes wide and rimmed with red. She seemed almost afraid to see me, as if I were the agent of doom.

“What happened to your lip?” she asked.

So much for Sean’s theory on concealer and hemorrhoid cream.

“I fell. It’s nothing,” I said, then turned the conversation to her. “I’m surprised you’re working today. Mr. Brody knows how close you and Irina were. Wouldn’t he give you the day off?”

“I didn’t ask,” she said, her voice raspy and raw. “I don’t know what I would do.”

I wondered if she meant that she would have felt lost or that she would have been afraid of what she might do to herself. The first was understandable, the second extreme.

“You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?” she said to me.

“No.”

“Irina told me about you. You found that missing girl last year. That’s why you were asking me all those questions yesterday, isn’t it? You’re looking for the killer.”

I didn’t deny it.

“You told that detective about me. Detective Landry.”

“Has he spoken to you?”

“He came to the farm this morning. I told him everything I told you.”

“I went to Players last night,” I said. “The bartender told me you and Irina were arguing about something that night.”

“We were not,” she said, too sharply, a sure indicator that she was lying.

I shrugged. “He says he saw the two of you in the hall having words, that you looked upset, and then you left. He doesn’t have anything to gain by lying to me.”

“It wasn’t anything,” she insisted. “I wanted to go home and Irina didn’t. That’s all.”

“Did you go there in one car?”

“No.”

“Then what was the problem? She was having a better time than you?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed in that way perfected by teenage girls. She was a very young twenty-something, I thought.

“It doesn’t matter. There was no problem,” she said.

“Then why did it look like you were arguing?”

She wanted to tell me to fuck off, but I suspected she had been raised not to do that.

“Where are you from, Lisbeth?”

“Michigan. Why?”

“Good Midwestern upbringing. Your parents were churchgoing folks.”

“So? What does that make me? A hick?” she said, offended.

“It makes you polite, reserved, responsible, private. You’re a good and decent kid, I suspect. You know what it is to be a real friend to someone.”

She didn’t say anything, just kept putting one foot in front of the other, walking the horse, doing her job. She rubbed the medallion she wore between thumb and forefinger, probably making a wish I would disappear.

“You were a good friend to Irina,” I said. “You want to see her killer brought to justice, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why lie to me about this? What the two of you argued about that night might be nothing or seem like nothing to you, but it could point the investigation in a direction that takes us to a lead or leads us to the killer. If it was nothing, why don’t you just tell me?”

“I just thought she should leave too, that’s all,” she said.

“Because…?”

“It was late,” she said, still staring at the ground. “And sometimes those parties get… a little… weird.”

“Weird-strange? Weird-creepy? Weird-sexual?”

She didn’t say, but my imagination was already off and running. Wealthy men out for a good time, no wifely supervision, few morals, fewer scruples…

“Lisbeth, do you know what a material-witness order is?”

“No.”

“If Detective Landry thinks you’re withholding vital information in a murder investigation, he can put you in jail and compel you to testify,” I said, twisting the law to suit my needs. “All I have to do is tell him we had this conversation.”

She looked at me then, scared. “Jail? I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You’re doing something wrong in not telling all you know.”

Her gaze bounced around like a pinball, looking for a way to escape. She believed I was a private investigator. I had thrown around the royal we enough to imply the sheriff’s detectives and I were working in concert. She felt trapped. I hoped she would do what most good Midwestern girls would do in this situation-yield to authority and tell the truth.

Lisbeth looked around for witnesses, then back at the ground, embarrassed or ashamed or both. “Sometimes things get out of control. Everybody’s drunk or high or something. And they take the party to someone’s house, and there’s sex.”

“Like an orgy?”

The Big Sigh again. “Yes, like that.”

“And you didn’t want to go, but Irina didn’t care?”

“Something like that,” she said, her voice dropping off as we neared the Star Polo trailer again. She pulled the horse into his slot among the others and started to remove his tack.

I hung back, sensing I had pushed her as far as I could for the time being. I couldn’t say what she had told me surprised me at all. When people know they don’t have boundaries, they seldom set heir own. Too much money, idle time, and the devil’s workshop, etc, etc.

Was that what had happened the night Irina disappeared? The party had gotten out of control, the sex turned a little too rough, he game turned deadly?

Nothing fazed Irina. Combine her jaded sense of the world with her alleged desire to snag a wealthy American husband… It didn’t surprise me that she would have joined in the games-or that Lisbeth, with her down-home sensibilities, would not. On the other hand, for Lisbeth to know what she knew, she could have been a past participant. That would account for the embarrassment and/or shame.

I looked for witnesses and stepped in beside the horse. “Lisbeth, who went to those parties?” I asked quietly.

“All of those guys,” she mumbled, glancing nervously over her shoulder. “The Club.”

“What club? The Polo Club?”

“No. Mr. Brody and his friends. They call themselves the Alibi Club.”

An unpleasant feeling slithered through me when she said it. The Alibi Club. I had called Bennett Walker the Alibi Man. Now there was a club. Wealthy bad boys covering one another’s asses when there was trouble. There sure as hell was trouble now.

“Lisbeth!” Jim Brody barked from the back of a horse. “What the hell’s taking you so long? Manuel needs you over here.”

“Yes, Mr. Brody. Right away.” The girl took her opportunity to get away from me.

Jim Brody and I locked gazes for a moment. He was trying to figure out if he should know me, if he should bother to.

“Elena!” Barbaro jumped off a horse and tossed the reins to a groom. He was a vision of virility, in white breeches and tall boots. The animal in his element. “I’m so glad you’ve come!”

His smile was wide and white, his hair tousled. But the smile stalled when I turned to face him fully.

“What happened?” he asked, gently cradling my face in his hands.

“I tripped and fell,” I said. “I should make up a better story instead of admitting what a klutz I am, but there it is.”

“Is it very painful?”

His thumb brushed the outer corner of my mouth on the right side-the side with feeling-and something like electricity skimmed over every undamaged nerve in my body.

“Only to my pride,” I said.

His gaze lingered on my mouth long enough to make me think he might kiss me, but he kissed my cheek instead-the one I couldn’t feel.

“Elena, this is Mr. Brody, my patron.” He planted a gloved hand on my shoulder to guide me toward Brody. “Mr. Brody, my lovely new friend, Elena Estes.”

“Estes?” Brody said as he climbed off his horse. “Any relation to Edward Estes?”

Here was the moment I had been dreading. With Bennett involved in all of this, I couldn’t pretend to be someone else. And if Jim Brody knew my father, then my father was going to hear about me from one of his cronies. I hoped to God he didn’t decide to play the wounded party, waiting for the return of his prodigal child.