fists until Sean grabbed her by her blond ponytail and one arm and pulled her off.
I had brought her into the lounge while Sean tried to smooth things over with the Belgian. She told me the story of a girlfriend from Russia who had gone to work for the dealer, who used and abused her. In the end the girl killed herself. Irina had wanted revenge. I’d admired her for that. There had never been anyone in my life I felt strongly enough about to seek revenge on their behalf.
Full of passion. The heart of a tigress. I wondered if she had fought as fiercely for herself. Was there a killer holed up somewhere with fingernail scratches down his face, missing an eye, unable to walk straight? I hoped so.
I raised my glass in salute and finished off the vodka.
Putting on a pair of thin, tight riding gloves, I climbed the spiral stairs that led to Irina’s apartment. If Landry caught me doing what I was about to do, there would be hell to pay. Of course, the idea of negative ramifications had never stopped me from doing anything in my life.
A very private person, Irina always locked her door, but I knew where the key was hidden and I helped myself to it. The violence perpetrated on her had not happened here. The place looked lived-in, not tossed. A single coffee cup sat in the drain basket in the sink. The latest fashion magazines were strewn across the coffee table.
She had left her makeup out on the counter in the bathroom. I remembered she had been eager to go on Saturday. She had rushed off alone, dressed to kill. She could have been on the cover of one of the magazines in her living room as easily as working in a barn. Even in a T-shirt, baggy shorts, and muck boots, she had exuded an almost royal sense of confidence and elegance. I often referred to her as “the Czarina.”
The drawers in the vanity yielded the usual stuff: nail polish, tampons, cotton balls, condoms. I wondered if she’d dropped a couple of the latter in her purse that evening, anticipating a conquest.
What kind of man would Irina go for? Rich. Very rich. Definitely good-looking. She would never settle for the money if the guy with the purse strings was some short, fat, balding toad with sweaty palms. She thought too highly of herself for that.
Wellington during the season had no shortage of gorgeous men with lots of money. Elite equestrian sports have been underwritten by the wealthy since the time of Caesar, probably longer. Privileged sons and daughters, the princes and princesses of America -and a dozen other countries-were a part of the scenery at the horse show grounds and the international polo fields here. They populated the parties and charity fund-raisers that filled the social calendar from January through March.
Had Irina planned to snag a scion that night? I could too easily imagine the raw, cold terror that must have come over her when she realized her life was about to go horribly wrong.
I went into the bedroom and there found ample evidence of the royal Russian attitude. The bed was strewn with clothes that had been considered, then cast aside, as she dressed for her night out.
She had a very pricey wardrobe for an illegal alien who groomed horses for a living. Then again, in Wellington a good groom could make six hundred dollars or more per month per horse, plus day fees for horse shows, and another thirty-five to fifty dollars per horse per day for braiding manes each day of a show.
There were eight horses in Sean’s barn. And Irina’s apartment was hers rent-free. Her living expenses were minimal-cigarettes (which she smoked outdoors only, away from the barn; there wasn’t so much as a lingering whiff of smoke in the apartment) and food (for which she seemed to have only a passing fancy, from what I’d seen in her refrigerator). Her priority seemed to be clothes.
The tags spoke volumes: Armani, Escada, Michael Kors. Either she spent every dime she earned on clothing or she had an alternate source of income.
But Irina put in long days at the barn. The first horse had to be groomed and tacked up by seven-thirty a.m. Night check happened at ten p.m. Her only day off was Monday. Not a lot of free time for a big-bucks second career.
Among the items on the dresser: an Hermes scarf, several bottles of expensive perfume, silver bangle bracelets, a lint brush, and a digital camera the size of a deck of playing cards. That I took and slipped into my pocket.
I checked her dresser drawers. If-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it lingerie. Skimpy. Sexy. An array of T- shirts and shorts she wore to work. The big drawer on the bottom right held a burled-wood jewelry box, and in the box were some very nice pieces- several pairs of diamond earrings, a couple of diamond tennis bracelets, a couple of necklaces, a couple of rings.
I picked up a heavy white-gold charm bracelet and examined the charms-a cross studded with small, blood- red garnets, a green enameled four-leaf clover, a silver riding boot, a sterling heart. A sterling heart inscribed To I. From B.
B.
A small table sat adjacent to one side of the bed, serving as nightstand and writing desk. Irina had left her laptop on in her haste to leave Saturday. The screen saver was a slide show of personal photographs.
I sat down on the chair and watched. There were snapshots of the horses she cared for, of Sean riding in the big arena at the Wellington show grounds. There was one of myself riding D’Artagnan, Sean’s handsome copper chestnut, early-morning fog hugging the ground beneath us, making it look as if we were floating.
The more interesting photos were of Irina and her friends partying, tailgating along the side of the polo field. The stadium of the International Polo Grounds rose up in the background. A polo match was in full swing.
No jeans and T-shirts at this party. Everyone was dressed to the nines. Irina wore a big pair of black Dior sunglasses and a simple black sheath dress that showed off a mile of leg. Her hair was slicked back in a tight ponytail. Her girlfriends were similarly turned out. Big hats, big smiles, champagne glasses in hand.
I didn’t recognize any of them. Even if they had been other grooms from the neighborhood, I wouldn’t have recognized them out of their barn attire. That’s how it is in the horse world. At social events the first hour of the party is spent trying to recognize the people we see every day in breeches and baseball caps.
The photos were not limited to girlfriends. There were half a dozen shots of gorgeous Argentinian polo players, some on horses, some standing, laughing, an arm around one or more of the girls. I wondered if any of them was B.
I touched the mouse. The screen saver disappeared, revealing the last Web site Irina had been looking at: www.Horsesdaily.com.
Without hesitation, I put my gloved hands on the computer’s keyboard and went to work, clicking and double- clicking until I located the files that contained the photographs. I wanted to e-mail them all to myself, but that would leave a trail that would bring Landry down on my head like a ton of bricks. Instead, I pulled Irina’s digital camera from my pocket and simply took pictures of the snapshots as each appeared on the screen.
The desktop screen returned when I closed the file on the pictures. The AOL icon beckoned. If I was very lucky, Irina would have her account set up with the password saved so she didn’t have to enter it every time she signed on. She lived alone. There was no nosy roommate she needed to protect herself from.
I clicked to sign on and was immediately rewarded with the AOL greeting and the announcement that Irina had mail. Mail I couldn’t open because no one should have been on this computer after Irina’s death. The mail had to remain new. But I pulled a white note card out of the table drawer and wrote down the e-mail addresses of the senders.
Access to saved mail was another story. I brought that up and browsed through the list, opened everything from the three days before I last saw Irina, and printed them out. Later I would go through them carefully, looking for signs and portents of the evil that was to come. Now I couldn’t take the time.
Also on the writing desk was a basket holding mail. A coupon for Bed Bath amp; Beyond, a doctor’s bill, an offer to join a health club. On the back of one of the e-mails, I jotted down the name and address of the doctor.
The message light on the phone was blinking, but as much as I wanted to listen to her messages, I couldn’t do it without being found out, for the same reason I couldn’t open her new e-mail. I could, however, check the numbers of the missed calls without disturbing the voice mail itself.
The readout in the small window of the phone told me Irina had missed four calls. Using the tip of the pen, I touched the button to scroll through the calls, and jotted the numbers down. Two were local, one looked like a Miami number, one was Unknown, a blocked call. All had come on Sunday, the latest being logged at 11:32 p.m. A call from Lisbeth Perkins.
