Brody raised his eyebrows. He probably wasn’t used to women who had opinions and could speak in compound sentences. This made me intriguing to him, which was a good thing.

“Should I give him your regards when I see him, then?” he asked.

“Only if you want to ruin his evening,” I said sweetly. “And when will that be? I’ll put it on my calendar.”

“Some disease-of-the-week charity shindig at Mar-a-Lago next week.”

How surreal it seemed, sitting there, suddenly one degree of separation away from my father after twenty years of living in an alternate universe. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the idea of him knowing anything about me. I didn’t want to be in his head.

I didn’t want to imagine my mother thinking about me, wondering what I was up to. Which meant I had managed to convince myself that neither of them had ever had a thought about me in years. Out of sight, out of mind. It was easier for me to think that. Easier for me to stay away.

If they wanted to reach me, they had to know where I was. My name was in the papers the year before, connected to the Erin Seabright kidnapping case, connected to Sean. If they wanted me to be a part of their lives, they could have reached out then. They didn’t.

“This is looking entirely too serious,” Barbaro said, taking a seat next to me. “What has he done?” he asked, nodding his head toward Brody.

“We were just reliving old times,” I said.

“No sense in doing that unless they were the kind of old times that make us smile and laugh,” Barbaro said.

That would have severely limited my ability to converse, I thought, but I didn’t say it.

The waitress delivered a round of drinks. Her eyes never left Barbaro. She managed to put her cleavage in his face as she bent over to get the cocktail napkins just right. He graced her with a polite smile as he said, “Gracias. ” But his attention was on me.

Impressive. All the godlike playboys I had ever known wouldn’t have shown that kind of restraint, no matter how much they wanted to retain my attention.

“Elena works with horses,” he said to Brody.

For a second, Brody looked a little confused, trying to put together the fact that I was the daughter of Edward Estes but worked in a stable. But he was at least as good a poker player as my father, and the confusion was hidden so quickly anyone else might have thought they had imagined it.

“I prefer to make an honest living,” I quipped, toasting him with my drink. “I ride for Sean Avadon.”

“I don’t know him. He’s not into polo.” This said as if no one outside polo was worth knowing.

“No,” I said. “But don’t feel bad. I’m sure he doesn’t know or care who you are either.”

Brody laughed, loud and from his belly. “I like her, Juan,” he said to Barbaro, as if Barbaro was presenting me as a prospective concubine. “She’s got sass. I like sass.”

“It’s your lucky day,” I said. “I’m overflowing with sass.”

“Elena worked with Irina Markova,” Barbaro said.

Brody didn’t miss a beat. He must have been something at the bargaining table. “Irina. Nice girl. Terrible shame what happened.”

“Yes,” I said, though it had become quite clear to me that “nice girls” didn’t run with this crowd. “We’ll miss her. I understand you saw her that night she went missing.”

Brody nodded as he took a sip of his thirty-year-old scotch. “She was at the party at Players. I think she gave me a dance, but I have to say, as the guest of honor, I was having too good a time to remember much.”

“You don’t remember if she was at the after-party party?” I asked. I could have been a hell of a poker player myself.

“There was no after-party that I know of,” Brody said. He looked away from me as he dug into the breast pocket of his aloha shirt.

“I must have misunderstood,” I said. “I thought someone told me there was. I guess she could have said maybe there was an after-party.”

“Who’s that?” he asked, glancing at me from under his brows.

I shook my head. “Not important. Obviously I misheard.”

“Tony Ovada drove me home. We sat and smoked cigars,” Brody said, pulling one out of his pocket like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

“Are you sure you’re not your father’s daughter?” he asked. “This is sounding a lot like an interrogation.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting back. I took a sip of my vodka tonic. “What can I say? That’s what passed for conversation in our house. I grew up thinking cross-examination and redirect were normal components of social intercourse.

“Irina was a friend. I want to see her killer brought to justice.”

“So do I,” Brody said.

“I just think someone who saw her that night might know something, might have seen something and not even realized it.”

Brody made a motion with his cigar. “Juan was there. Did anything strike you as odd, Juan?”

“Elena and I have already had this conversation,” Barbaro said. “I wish I could say I saw something, heard something, but I was busy having a good time, like you, like everyone.”

Brody lit the cigar, took a big pull on it, and exhaled, looking up at the smoke.

The attraction of cigars is entirely lost on me. They smell like burning dog shit.

“Maybe we should establish a reward of some kind,” he said. “Money talks-or makes people talk.

“I’ll do that,” he said, making the executive decision. “I’ll call that detective. What was his name?”

“Landry?” I asked.

“What’s a good amount for a reward? Ten thousand? Twenty? Fifty?”

“I’m sure that’s up to you,” I said. “That’s very generous of you, whatever you decide.”

He waved it off. “It’s the least I can do. I feel responsible in a way. After all, she was last seen at my birthday party.”

“Except by her killer,” I pointed out.

The doors to the bar opened and Bennett Walker stepped in. His hair was slicked back, and he wore a pair of black Gucci wraparounds, despite the fact that the sun had already begun to slip over the horizon. He was halfway to our table before he realized I was sitting there. He hesitated, but I didn’t give him a chance to escape.

“What interesting timing you have, Ben,” I said dryly.

Barbaro frowned at me.

Bennett sat down across from me. “The joke’s on me, I guess.”

“Something like that.”

He waved a hand at the waitress, and she turned and went back to the bar to get his drink without having to ask what he wanted. A regular. Maybe too regular. He looked a little rough around the edges.

“Surprised to see you here, Bennett,” Jim Brody said, his face neutral.

Bennett shrugged. “A guy’s gotta be somewhere. Why not among friends?” He looked directly at me and said, “Exception noted, Elena.”

Brody raised an eyebrow. “You two know each other?”

“In a past life,” I said.

I could see the wheels turning in Brody’s head. He would be all over this. He hadn’t made his fortune without knowing the background on every client-and every adversary-he had: their mother’s maiden name, the date they lost their first tooth and their first job and their virginity. He had probably known before anyone that Dushawn Upton was capable of having a pregnant woman killed.

He would have the story on my relationship with Bennett Walker with the snap of his fingers. He now knew my father was Edward Estes. He probably knew that my father had been Bennett’s defense attorney. Not hard to put the pieces together. My life was a jigsaw puzzle for ages nine and up.

“Mr. Brody has decided to offer a reward for information leading to the arrest of Irina Markova’s killer,” I said to Bennett.

“Good thinking,” he said, glancing at his friend.

A vaguely strange response, I thought. Good thinking because it would help the case, or good thinking because it would take away suspicion? Was Jim Brody’s generous offer tantamount to the Alibi Club version of O.J. hunting for the real killer? In that case he could make the reward as extravagant as he wanted, because he knew he would never pay out.