I took a deep breath and let it go, trying to clear my head of the argument with Sean. I had been invited into a circle of suspects. I needed to be sharp.
“I have to go,” I said to Sean, and turned and walked away.
I should have apologized to him. He was the only person in my life I truly considered to be my friend, and I knew that he was. But I felt like being petty and childish, so I went with that instead.
Chapter 21
The old yellow-painted Palm Beach Polo Club stadium, located a stone’s throw from Players, had been the polo mecca of the world for many winter seasons. Everyone who was anyone had drunk champagne and stomped divots during halftime on that field, including Prince Charles and Princess Diana. But big-time high-goal polo had decamped from there several years before and moved farther out of town to the new International Polo Club Palm Beach, leaving the old stadium at the mercy of hurricanes and the zoning commission. Plans were in the works to knock down the venerable old facility and put up yet another strip mall. So much for landmarks.
The International Polo Club on 120th Avenue had become the place to see and be seen, a state-of-the-art facility with a stadium for thirteen hundred spectators and seven impeccably groomed polo fields, each spanning more ground than nine football fields.
I turned in at the main gate and went past the entrance to the stadium and club. The palm-lined drive led past tennis courts to the stadium, the pool-house pavilion, and the Grand Marquee ballroom, where brunch was served on Sundays. Beyond all that, horse trailers were parked on the shoulder of the road-big gooseneck aluminum stock trailers, with polo ponies tied along the sides. Grooms tacked horses up, cooled horses out. A farrier had his truck-mounted oven glowing red-hot as he prepared a new horseshoe to replace one lost in the heat of battle. Iron rang against iron. Conversations rose and fell, interspersed with laughter, with orders, with fits of temper in three different languages.
Several of the fields were in use, riders rushing up and down, mallets swinging, whistles blowing. Cars, trucks, and SUVs were parked down the sidelines with friends, family, and spectators tail-gating and enjoying the day. The atmosphere was casual. No high-goal tournament matches were being played. These were less important contests, practice games, amateurs having a good time.
A line of small ponies walking nose-to-tail came down the road from one of the far fields. The kids riding them were so small, their helmets seemed to swallow their heads whole. They all wore numbered polo shirts and carried mallets. Pee Wee Polo.
Despite the elitist air about the game at its highest level, polo at the grass-roots level is accessible to anyone who can afford a horse and is talented enough not to fall off at high speeds. Young, old, man, woman, everyone is welcome to play or to watch. Pack a picnic, bring the family. Drive through a Wellington neighborhood where a lot of professional players live during the season and you will see their kids on bikes, swinging mallets, playing in the cul-de-sacs and parking lots.
I found a place to park and looked for the Star Polo trailer. Lisbeth Perkins was walking out a sweating, puffing polo pony. She stared at the ground as she walked, looking lost in sad thoughts, and jumped at the sound of my voice when I said her name.
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.
