I just kept walking. I certainly didn’t care if people thought I was in ungrateful child. People had thought far worse things about me.
“Ms. Estes!”
“Ms. Estes!”
I held a hand up to indicate I had no intention of speaking to the media. They didn’t try to follow me into the ladies’ room.
The dizziness hit full force then, the shaking, the sweating. I threw up, rinsed my mouth, splashed cold water on my face. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror for fear of what I would see in my eyes- vulnerability. I would hate myself for it.
I rinsed my mouth again, then dug an Altoid out of my purse.
When I finally stepped out into the hall, I was alone. The jackals had all run back to try to pull some meat off my father.
As I turned toward the terrace, there was Barbaro looking at me.
My vision flashing red, I went straight at him and into his face. You rotten son of a bitch!“ I said, struggling to keep my voice own. ”You filthy, rat-bastard, son of a bitch! You set me up!“
“No! Elena, I swear!” he said.
I gave him such a look of disgust, he should have died from it.
“Elena! Please!” he said, and made to grab my arm as I turned away from him. I jerked out of his grasp. My pulse was roaring in my ears. I slammed out the side door to the external staircase and started climbing.
I knew he was behind me. I kept walking.
“I didn’t know they were here,” he said, hustling alongside me.
I went toward the parking lot.
“Oh, please. You can’t come up with anything better than that?”
“That’s the truth! I swear! I wouldn’t do that to you!”
“Why not?” I asked, finally stopping and turning to face him. We were well away from the building now and half hidden by trees.
“Why wouldn’t you, Juan? Jim Brody is your bread and butter. I’m supposed to believe you wouldn’t set me up if he asked you to? Bennett is your best friend. You wouldn’t help him if he asked? You already have, in something far more egregious than blindsiding me.”
“I didn’t-”
“Or did my dear old dad put you up to it himself?” I asked. “I’m sure you’ve met him. You’ve probably been out on one of his boats with Ben. Christ, he’s probably your lawyer too.”
“I refused,” he said. “Brody offered, I refused.”
“So, you’re a rat leaving a sinking ship. Is that it? Trying your luck on your own?”
“I’m not guilty of anything but looking the other way.”
“Yeah? Well, a girl died in that time you turned your head,” I said. “That makes the person looking away an accessory.”
“I wasn’t there,” he insisted.
“That’s your new story?”
“It isn’t a story. Listen to me,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, checking for cameras and microphones. No one had noticed us.
“I was not there with Bennett all night,” he said.
I stilled my temper and studied his face in the poor light. It had been a long time since I’d learned to spot a liar. I was very good at it. If Barbaro was trying to scam me, he was very talented.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“I went to Bennett’s house after the party, but I didn’t stay. I didn’t want any part of it.”
“Any part of what?” I asked, my mind running rampant with sordid and terrible possibilities.
He looked away. “I am not a Boy Scout. I’ve partied a lot. That’s not a secret.”
“Spit it out, for Christ’s sake,” I snapped. “I’m a big girl. And you, as you said, are no Boy Scout. Don’t waste my time pretending to be embarrassed or trying to break it to me gently. I was a cop for a long time. Nothing you have to say is going to shock me.”
“Irina… was high, she’d been drinking,” he began. “Everyone was on something or another. Irina told Jim Brody she wanted to give him a very special gift for his birthday.”
He was clearly uncomfortable with the memory. I waited.
“Irina was the only girl who came back to Bennett’s house that night,” he said.
I felt sick at the possibilities for the rest of the story. Irina, brash, high, full of herself, and half a dozen men with one thing on their minds.
“She wanted to-”
I held up a hand to forestall any details he might have been about to give me. The details of the debauchery didn’t matter. Only one thing did.
“Who killed her?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I told you, I left. I walked back here for my car.”
“Did anyone see you leave the party?”
“They were otherwise occupied.”
“Did anyone see you walking?”
“No, but I saw Beth-Lisbeth-when I got to the parking lot.”
“Try again,” I said. “Lisbeth left the party at Players around one.”
Barbaro shrugged. “I thought it was her. It looked like her. I was sitting in my car. She walked past. She looked at me. I remember thinking, how strange to see her there. Then again, I had been drinking. I suppose I may have been mistaken.”
“I suppose you may have been.”
“You could ask her,” he suggested.
I made a noncommittal sound. I remembered Barbaro’s handsome face staring up at me from the cover of Sidelines magazine on the table in Lisbeth’s apartment. I remembered the snapshots of him and his buddies on the refrigerator in her kitchen.
He may have figured she would back him up because he was who he was or because she had a crush on him. Or he might have been counting on her silence because it had been assured the night before when someone whispered in her ear: “This is what happens to girls who talk too much.”
“No one else,” I said.
“I saw the Freak creeping around,” he said.
“How did you get your car keys?” I asked. “I know you use the valet. They were gone by then.”
“I give them only the valet key. I keep my keys.”
“And no one was here to see you,” I said.
“No.”
“You have no one to corroborate your story.”
“No,” he said, growing impatient with my line of questioning while he was trying to do the good and noble thing.
I didn’t care. Good and noble were two words with which none of his cadre had more than a passing acquaintance.
I shrugged. “I’m only asking you the same questions the detectives will.”
He still took offense. “I wish I had seen ten people, but I did not. I didn’t know I would need an alibi later.”
“And it wouldn’t have mattered if you had, would it?” I said. “All you had to do was pick up a phone, right?”
Barbaro said nothing. He had no defense for that, and he knew it.
“Who killed her?” I asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
He rubbed his hands over his face and walked around in a little circle.
