The Alibi Man by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page B

repeated in exactly the same way, with exactly the same emotional depth, in the ’90s when she had to have a money-green Birkin bag from Hermès.
    Unlike the classic Birkin bag, my trendiness had come and gone with the fashions in Helen’s life. The instant I discovered rebellion at age two, I was handed off to the nanny and was seldom seen in public until I reached the perfect age of cuteness: five. At five I once again became Helen’s favorite doll, to dress up and take out to mother–daughter functions and other ideal photo-op activities, such as riding lessons.
    To my good fortune, I was a natural talent on a horse. Not only was I cute as a button in braids with bows and a velvet-covered helmet, I could stick on a pony like a burr and was, in no time, bringing home blue ribbons.
    Everybody loves a winner.
    Even my father, as much as he disliked me, very much liked the accolades and attention I brought as a budding equestrian star. My talent on a horse became the bargaining chip that kept me from being shipped off to boarding school in Switzerland when I was fourteen and got caught smoking pot and drinking booze with the gardener’s twenty-year-old son. The fact that my photograph would appear in many a magazine on every Palm Beach resident’s reading list allowed me to blow off half a semester at Duke to show horses in Wellington in the winter of 1987.
    That was the winter I fell in love with a man for the very first time in my life. I had seen no point in it before then. In my experience and nineteen years of observation, I had only ever seen love go bad, crash, and burn. No one came out happy or unscathed. It seemed to me a much better idea to play around and have some fun and move on when the relationship started to head south, which they all invariably did.
    I would have been so much better off if only I had stuck to that principle. But along came Bennett Walker. The day I fell in love with him, I knew that was the day that would change my life forever. I had no idea how true that statement would be, or how tragic.
    The Walker family fortune had been made in the shipbuilding business during World War I. During the Depression, they bought up shipping companies and diversified into the steel business. The fortune was doubled, tripled, quadrupled through World War II and subsequent global conflicts. In the ’50s they had branched into commercial development and real estate.
    Most of my father’s money he had made on his own as one of the country’s highest-priced, most sought-after defense attorneys to the rich and infamous. He himself had become a celebrity of sorts over the years by getting guilty wealthy people off the hook for their sins, and was worth more socially because of that than because of the age of his fortune. Old-money Palm Beachers were disdainful of how he came by his wealth—behind his back, of course. When they found themselves in a jam with the law, however, he was always a best and dearest friend.
    He knew, of course. And he was both amused by it and resentful because of it. Resentment was my father’s forte. No one had ever carried a bigger chip on their shoulder than Edward Estes.
    So imagine his glee when his rebellious daughter was seen on the arm of the most-eligible-bachelor son of the wealthiest old-money family in Palm Beach. His daughter, who was well-known for choosing wildly inappropriate boyfriends—polo players and rock musicians being my personal favorites. Outside of my riding accomplishments, falling in love with Bennett Walker was the first thing in my life I had ever done that pleased my father. It only stood to reason, I suppose, that it would be the thing that would ultimately destroy what relationship we had.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    I left Star Polo in a daze and just started driving. I didn’t think, didn’t plan. I went on autopilot. It was a relief to be numb and empty.