“This is going to be one hell of a shitstorm,” Dugan said.
Weiss’s cell phone rang. Dugan waved him out of the office.
Landry turned to go.
“Tell me about Alexi Kulak being here last night.”
Landry shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell. Irina Markova was his niece, or so he says. He came to see the body, find out about making arrangements.”
“In the dead of night?”
“If you were Alexi Kulak, would you come strolling into the sheriff’s office at high noon?”
“Is he a suspect?” Dugan asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Alexi Kulak has someone clipped, he goes out for borscht or whatever the hell Russians eat,” Landry said. “He doesn’t go see them in the morgue. He doesn’t fall down on his knees, break down sobbing, and vow revenge.”
“Weiss told me Elena Estes found the girl’s body.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So you neglected to mention that to me.”
“It’s in my report.”
“Which I have yet to see.”
“I’ve been a little busy,” Landry snapped. “Besides, it’s not relevant,” he said. “She was minding her own business and she happened to find a corpse.”
“And the vie worked where she lives,” Dugan pressed.
“You want me to pin it on her?” Landry cracked. “That’d make some juicy tabloid headlines. We could make it out to be a lesbian thing. Or we could spin it that she killed the girl to frame her ex-fiance, to make him pay for the rape he got away with back when. And then her father represents the asshole in the trial again. All we need is Bat Boy and a nine-hundred-sixteen-pound man and we’ve got a complete edition of the Weekly World News.”
Dugan rubbed his hands over his face and groaned. “That’s right. Elena Estes is Edward Estes’s daughter.”
“Yep.”
“I need some Advil.”
“You might as well drink,” Landry suggested, as his cell phone began to ring.
“Is she digging around in this case?” Dugan asked. “I can’t have that. Especially because of her father. There’s no way it doesn’t bite his in the ass one way or another.”
He checked the caller ID. Elena.
“I recommend vodka,” Landry said, backing out the door. “It goes with everything.”
Chapter 37
“Landry.”
He picked up on the third ring. I had been hoping for voice mail.
“If that party moved from Players to Walker’s house, every car that went there is on tape in the guard shacks at the entrances to the Polo Club,” I said without preamble. I was beyond social niceties.
“But we don’t know where the party moved,” Landry said. “Polo Club management is making right-to-privacy noises. They aren’t cooperating without a warrant.”
“Damn.”
“We’re working on it,” he said. “We’ll get it. I’m sorry about last night.”
It took me half a minute to digest that.
“I was way out of line,” he said. “It doesn’t matter why.”
“No,” I said quietly. “It doesn’t.”
I hung up. Not out of anger, but because there was no point in continuing the conversation. He didn’t try to call me back.
I drove out to Star Polo, to the barns, in search of Lisbeth.
“She’s not working,” one of the hands told me in Spanish. “No one has seen her today.”
“She went someplace?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Is her car gone?”
“No. Her car is here.” He pointed out the end of the barn to a sporty little red Saturn convertible.
I thanked him and went to have a look at the car. Where would she have gone without a car? It was a fair hike back into town. I doubted anyone would choose to walk it.
Did she have a hot date the night before? We she sleeping in with Bennett or one of his pals? I doubted it. Lisbeth was in over her head with these people, and she knew it. With Irina gone, I suspected she didn’t know what to do, how to get out of being one of the girls with this crowd. She was probably scared. And rightly so. Her best friend had been murdered.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d quit her job. And like any horse person in Wellington during the season, immediately I wondered if I could poach her to take Irina’s spot at Sean’s. That would endear me to Jim Brody.
“Elena!”
And there he was in a blue button-down shirt and riding breeches, his belly spilling over at the belt.
“Good morning-I hope,” I said, feigning apprehension. “I was coming to look for you.”
“Well, here I am,” he said, jovial as ever.
I walked away from Lisbeth’s car to where he stood on the drive. “I want to apologize for last night,” I said.
“There’s nothing for you to apologize for,” he said. “Ben was out of line.”
“Nevertheless-”
“I didn’t know him back then,” he said. “But I’ve known him for quite a few years. He can be a real prick, but under that he’s a decent guy.”
A decent guy who openly cheated on his mentally unstable wife with girls half his age. Someone had apparently lowered the bar on decency since I last checked.
“We just shouldn’t be allowed within twenty feet of each other,” I said. “There’s too much history.”
“Well, that shouldn’t preclude the rest of us from enjoying your company,” he said. “You don’t really think he had anything to do with Irina’s murder, do you? I can tell you he was quite fond of the girl.”
“Fond?” That came out exactly how it shouldn’t have.
Brody didn’t take offense. In fact, he chuckled. “Maybe that’s not quite the right word. Irina liked to have a good time. She was strong, knew what she wanted. She would have made something of herself. She was hungry.”
“That’s not always a good thing,” I said, thinking of the bill from the Lundeen Clinic and what that might have been about. “I guess it all depends on what one wants. Maybe Irina wanted too much.”
His brows lowered ever so slightly. “There’s no such thing,” he said. “You know what they say: Nothing succeeds like excess.
“Who did say that?” he asked. A twitch of a brow, a twinkle in the eye. He was trying to move me off topic.
“Oscar Wilde,” I said. “It didn’t work out so well for him. He died destitute in a rented room.”
“Well…” He frowned. Tough to find a snappy comeback for that.
“Live ‘til you die, that’s what I say,” I said, forcing the happiness aura. “Grab the gusto and all that.”
“I’m all for that,” Brody agreed. “That’s what we all should do. That’s what we can learn from this tragedy.”
“I would rather learn who killed her first and hope I have the luxury of time to reflect on the moral to the story
