The Alibi Man by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online

dawned on her then, and she said, “Wait,” and dug into another of the many pockets on her shorts, coming up with her cell phone. “I took some pictures.”
    She called the pictures up and scrolled through several, then stopped on one. “This is that guy. Brad.”
    The photo was cockeyed and the lighting wasn’t great, but I could make out his face. A good-looking kid with the spoiled expression of a privileged youth.
    “Can I send this to my phone?” I asked.
    “Sure,” she said, and handed me the phone. “There are a couple more.”
    I scrolled through them. Irina dancing. Irina laughing with another girl. “Who’s she?”
    “Rebecca something. She’s a tutor for Sebastian Foster’s kid.”
    Sebastian Foster had been a hell of a tennis player in his twenties. The Wonder from Down Under—wild blond hair, tan, quick as a cat, with a massive serve—until his shoulder had given out. I had read in
Wellington Lifestyles
magazine that he wintered in Wellington so his daughter could for the most part skip her education in favor of riding in horse shows.
    I had firsthand knowledge of that life. My mother had taken me out of school and brought me to Wellington more than one winter growing up so I could ride and show, the only activity that seemed to keep me out of trouble. I had routinely bribed my tutor to get out of doing work. Math? Why would I ever need to know that?
    I clicked to another photo. Partying hearty at Players, a restaurant and club just outside the Palm Beach Polo and Golf gated community. Like most places in Wellington, Players was overrun all winter with horse people. It was the place pretty young grooms and riders liked to go to cut loose. Not surprisingly, many wealthy gentlemen went there with eyes for those pretty young things half their age.
    “Who is this?” I asked.
    Lisbeth looked at the photo. “You’re kidding, right? That’s Barbaro. Juan Barbaro, the polo player.”
    “I don’t follow it,” I admitted.
    “He’s a ten-goal player. He’s the best in the world.”
    And he was gorgeous. Thick black hair, dark eyes that seemed to stare right out of the photograph with confidence and sexual energy to burn. Adonis should have looked like this guy.
    “He rides for us,” Lisbeth said. “For Star Polo.”
    I had no doubt that Juan Barbaro did a lot of riding, and not all of it on horses. This guy probably had women tossing their panties onto the polo field.
    Beside him in the next photo was Jim Brody with his arm around Irina, who was young enough to be his granddaughter.
    And on Irina’s other side was a face I hadn’t seen in years, except in very bad dreams.
    Time stopped. My body went numb. I stopped breathing but realized it only when black cobwebs began to encroach on my peripheral vision.
    Bennett Walker. Still handsome. Dark hair, blue eyes, tan. Scion to the Walker family that owned half of South Florida.
    Bennett Walker. The man I had meant to marry long ago, in a previous life, before everything about and around me changed.
    Before I dropped out of college.
    Before my father disowned me.
    Before I became a cop.
    Before I became a cynic.
    Before I stopped believing in happily ever after—twenty years ago.
    Before Bennett Walker asked me to give him an alibi for the night he raped and beat a woman nearly to death.

chapter 8
              I WAS LIVING in a condo in the Polo Club off and on that winter season, 1987. Taking a break from my second year at Duke, my father’s alma mater.
    I was not a good student—not because I wasn’t capable but because it irritated my father, and that was important to me at the time. I had chosen Duke for that very reason, of course.
    All my life I had considered Edward Estes to be a father in name only. Even in my earliest memories he was always off to the side, disconnected, present for the sake of appearance. He probably could have said the same of me and my efforts at being his daughter, but I was a child and he was