She was surprisingly quick in those awkward thick-soled shoes. I followed her at a distance, not so much interested in catching her as in seeing where she went.
I didn’t want her to be frightened of me. Who knew what kind of information was locked up with the butterflies in her head? I climbed through the gate and started to jog after her.
She ran on ahead of me, elbows pinned to her sides, her lower arms flailing up and down, as if she were some strange wounded bird trying to take flight. She turned onto a cul-de-sac lined with lower-end condos- lower-end meaning they rented for a mere $3,500 a month for a one bedroom, one bath.
As I turned to cut across the grass, the toe of my adorable Chanel ballet flat tripped me, and I fell forward onto my knees and elbows. When I got up and looked around, Princess Cindy Lullabell was nowhere to be seen.
Damn.
I retrieved my shoe and jogged down the cul-de-sac to the spot I had seen her before I’d gone down. There was a shed row of double garage doors, all closed. The growth of tropical trees and banana plants and giant ferns had created a dark corridor down the side of the last of the condo buildings.
I didn’t have a flashlight and wasn’t inclined to go in there even if I’d had one. The potential for a nasty surprise was enough to keep me out. The lush landscaping was a haven for rats and mice. Rats and mice attract snakes. On the other side of the thicket of trees was a canal. Canals attract alligators.
The image of the gator rolling with Irina’s lifeless body in its jaws flashed through my mind.
I went between the condo buildings instead, where light spilled out from the windows, allowing me to see what I was stepping on, mostly.
Horse people populated Palm Beach Polo and Golf. Horse people and their multitude of Jack Russell terriers, Welsh corgis, Westies, Labradors, Labradoodles, cocker spaniels, and every other breed of dog known to man. The owners weren’t always so conscientious about cleaning up after them.
I looked around for another fifteen minutes, checked the storage sheds. Tried the doors. No luck. I went down the street to the west-entrance guard shack, which faced South Shore. The guard was watching a movie on a tiny television set. I went up to the glass door and tapped politely. She turned and glared at me and made no move to invite me in. I pulled the handle myself and hoped she wouldn’t pull a gun and shoot me.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt, but did you see anyone run past here a few moments ago? A person dressed in black with a cone-shaped hat and big platform shoes?”
“The Freak?” she said, indignant that I had asked her a question.
“Yes.”
“No, I ain’t seen her.”
The woman was the size of a baby hippopotamus. She had planted herself on that chair like Jabba the Hutt.
“Do you know anything about her?” I asked.
“No.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
“No. Why would I know that? Do I look like I would hang out with the Freak?”
“Not at all. But working here, I imagine you see and know about all kinds of things.”
Her name tag read J Jones.
“You don’t happen to know her name, do you, Ms. Jones?”
“The Freak,” she said impatiently. “Are you deaf?”
“I don’t imagine that her mother gave birth to her, looked at her, and proudly said, ”Let’s call her the Freak,“ do you?”
J. Jones made a face. “You don’t need to get flip with me,” she said.
“Apparently, I do.”
She looked me up and down, taking in the fat lip, the grass-stained white pants.
“Do you live here, ma’am?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why are you here? You can’t be here for no good reason. How did you get on the property?”
“I climbed through the gate from Players.”
“That’s criminal trespass,” she said. “And why are you running round looking like that? What do you want with the Freak, looking like that? All grass stains and dirt, like you been rolling around on the ground like an animal.”
“I tripped and fell.”
“Running after the Freak,” she said with disgust. “What’s up with that?”
I surrendered. “Never mind. Thank you for all your help.”
She snorted. “I didn’t give you any.”
“Exactly,” I said, my attention no longer on the guard but on the TV screens showing cars coming in and going out through the gate.
Guests were required to stop at the gate to talk their way in. Residents drove through, bar-code stickers on their cars being read by a sensor, which opened the residents’ gate as they approached, and all of it was caught on tape. I wondered how many of the residents were aware of that.
Barbaro had said he and Bennett crashed at Bennett’s house in le Polo Club Saturday night. They had to have come through either this gate or the main gate on Forest Hill Boulevard. If Irina had voluntarily come in with one of them-or drove herself-that would be on tape.
Exhausted, I hiked back to the parking lot and to my car. I drove home, went into my cottage, and went facedown on the bed, thinking about what to do next.
Chapter 29
Landry looked through the photographs Lisbeth Perkins had taken with her cell phone the night Irina Markova went missing. He had sent the photos from the girl’s phone to his computer, where he had the added advantage of making the pictures large enough to study.
It always bothered him-seeing the victims frozen in time in a happy moment. In that moment, the person had not been thinking they would be dead soon, that someone would end their life with an act of violence. And more often than not, the person who ended their life was someone the victim knew. What a feeling that had to be-to look into a familiar face and see death coming.
Gorgeous girl, he thought absently. The looks of a model, attitude to spare. A girl with a lot of life ahead of her, life she would have lived with intent.
Weiss had taken a print of the photograph showing the guy the Perkins girl said had been bothering Irina that night and headed to Clematis Street, downtown West Palm Beach, to try his luck at getting a name to put to the face.
Felt like a dead end to Landry, but they had to check it out. But he couldn’t see some guy following Irina back to Wellington, to the party at Players, to wherever she had gone after that. Way too much effort. The clubs were packed belly-to-belly on the weekends, full of hot young girls looking for trouble and guys happy to provide it. More likely Brad Something had washed the bad taste of rejection out of his mouth with alcohol and moved on to a more willing piece of ass.
The photos from Jim Brody’s party were much more interesting. There were snaps of Irina doing what appeared to be some kind of hot fertility dance with Mr. Hotshot Barbaro; of her sitting between Jim Brody and Bennett Walker; of her dancing with girlfriends. Either Irina or Lisbeth had held the phone at arm’s length and snapped one of the two of them, side by side, mugging like supermodels.
Juan Barbaro interested him. Partly because he was still pissed off at the idea of the guy touching Elena, he admitted, but mostly for legitimate reasons. Professional athletes are notorious for feeling entitled to have anything they want, including women-especially women.
He sent off a couple of e-mail queries to the FBI and to a contact he had at Interpol, requesting any information available on the Spaniard.
