The Alibi Man by Tami Hoag

Author:Tami Hoag [Hoag, Tami]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

chapter 26

HE WAS waiting for me, as I knew he would be, at the gate into the Palm Beach Point development. Alexi Kulak.

My headlights washed over him as he stood beside his car. He had pulled himself together since I’d seen him. He looked neat, dapper even, in a tailored brown suit. He had shaved and combed his hair. He looked like a businessman waiting for the auto club to show up and change his flat tire. Impatient.

I pulled my car over, parked it, and reached down into the hidden panel of my door. At least I was better prepared this time.

I got out of the car and walked toward him, my hands at my sides.

“Mr. Kulak,” I said, stopping just out of his reach.

“What have you found out?” he asked, skipping the social niceties.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing? Don’t tell me nothing,” he snapped.

“What do you want me to say, then? Should I make something up?”

“You have a smart mouth.”

“Fire me, then. I didn’t audition for this job.”

I had left my headlights on. I kept my back to the light so I could see him clearly but the glare and my shadow would make it difficult for him to see me. I could see he didn’t appreciate my chutzpah.

“Do you know how I fire people, Ms. Estes?” he asked quietly.

“Fifty-five-gallon drum and forty gallons of acid?”

He smiled like a shark and looked every bit as deadly. “That is a good one. Perhaps I should add that to my repertoire. Would you like to be the first?”

“No,” I said calmly. “Do you want to find out who killed Irina?”

“Yes.”

“Then let me do my job.”

“You spent half the day with those men.”

“Yes, I did. Did you expect me to just ask the group over drinks whether or not any of them killed her? And did you expect any of them to just stand up and say, ‘Why, yes, I killed her. Why do you ask?’”

He’d had it with my mouth. He took two aggressive steps forward, bringing a thick hand up to strike me or to grab me.

I pulled the 9mm from my waistband behind my back and planted it squarely between Kulak’s eyes, stopping him in his tracks.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” I said, in a very different tone of voice.

My anger pushed him back a step, and then another. I stayed with him, never losing the contact between the gun barrel and his forehead. He backed up until he was trapped against his car. His eyes were wide with surprise or fear or both.

“You will never touch me again,” I declared, adrenaline humming through me like a narcotic. “I will fucking kill you where you stand. Don’t think for a second that I wouldn’t do it. I would kill you and stand on your corpse and howl at the moon.”

He was breathing shallowly and quickly. He didn’t think I was bluffing. Good. He needed to know he wasn’t the only unpredictable one in this strange arrangement.

I backed off and lowered the gun to my side.

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