Dark Horse (20 page)

The conversation segued then into arrangements for several horses being flown to Florida from Brussels via New York, and two others being sent on the return flight to Brussels.

The horse business is big business in Europe. As a teenager I had once flown back home from Germany with a new horse, traveling in a cargo plane with twenty-one horses being shipped to new owners in the States. Flights like that one land every week.

Van Zandt ended the conversation and put the phone back in his pocket. “My shipping agent, Phillipe,” he said. “He is a stinking crook.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true. He is always wanting me to send things to him from the States. Pack it in with horse equipment and ship it with the horses. I do it all the time,” he confessed blithely. “No one ever checks the trunks.”

“And you’re angry because he’s cheating customs?”

“Don’t be stupid. Who pays customs? Fools. I am angry because he never wants to pay me. Five hundred dollars’ worth of Ralph Lauren towels, for which he still owes me. How can you trust a person like that?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I might have been standing with a serial sex offender, a kidnapper, a killer, and his biggest concern was getting stiffed for five hundred bucks of smuggled towels.

I disentangled myself from him when another dealer came by and they started talking business. I slipped away with a little wave and a promise that I was off in search of the meaning of my life.

A sociopath’s stock-in-trade is his ability to read normal humans in order to see their vulnerabilities and take advantage of them. Many a corporate CEO hit the Fortune Five Hundred on those skills, many a con man lined his pockets. Many a serial killer found his victims . . .

Van Zandt wasn’t smart, but he was cunning. It was with that cunning he had lured Irina’s friend to Belgium to work for him. I wondered how he might have used that instinct on Erin, on Jill. I didn’t like the way he had turned it on me when he’d said he didn’t believe I was happy. I was supposed to be the carefree dilettante to him. I didn’t like to think he could see anything else. I didn’t like to think anyone could see inside me, because I was embarrassed by what little there was to see.

He was wrong about one thing, though. I had a goal. And if I found him in my crossshairs on my way to that goal, I was going to be all too happy to take him down.

I made my way back to Jade’s barn on foot. Yellow tape blocked off the stalls from either end of the aisle. Despite the warning printed on the tape, Trey Hughes had crossed the line and was sitting in a chair with his feet up on a tack trunk, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

He squinted and grinned. “I know you!”

“Not really,” I reminded him. “Are you part of the crime scene?”

“Honey, I’m a one-man walking crime scene. What’s going on around here? It’s like a goddam morgue.”

“Yes, well, that would be because of the murder.”

“But that was days ago,” he said.

“What was days ago?”

His thoughts were tripping over each other in his beer-soaked brain. “I think I missed something.”

“I think
I
missed something if there was a murder here days ago. Who are you talking about? Erin?”

“Erin’s dead?”

I ducked under the tape and took a seat across from him. “Who’s on first?”

“What?”

“What’s on second.”

“I dunno.”

“Third base.”

Hughes threw his head back and laughed. “God, I must be drunk.”

“How could you tell?” I asked dryly.

“You’re a quick study. Ellie, right?”

“Close enough.”

He took a drag on his cigarette and flicked a chunk of ash onto the ground. I’m sure it never entered his head that he might start a fire in a tent full of horses. “So, who died?” he asked.

“Jill.”

He sat up at that, sobering as much as he probably could. “You’re joking, right?”

“No. She’s dead.”

“What’d she die of? Meanness or ugliness?”

“You’re a kind soul.”

“Shit. You never had to be around her. Is she really dead?”

“Someone murdered her. Her body was found this morning over by barn forty.”

“Jesus H.,” he muttered, running the hand with the cigarette in it back through his hair. Despite his comments, he looked upset.

“So far, no one misses her,” I said. “Poor thing. I heard she was hot for Don. Maybe he’ll miss her.”

“I don’t think so.” Hughes leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “He’d have gotten rid of her a long time ago if he’d known it was that easy.”

“She was a problem?”

“She had a big mouth and a little brain.”

“Not a good combination in this business,” I said. “I heard she was at The Players last night saying she knew something about Stellar.”

One bleary blue eye tried to focus on me. “What could she know?”

I shrugged. “What is there to know?”

“I don’t know. I’m always the last to know.”

“Just as well, or you might end up like Jill.”

“Somebody killed her,” he said to himself. Leaning forward, he put out his cigarette on the toe of his boot and sat there with his head down and his hands dangling between his knees, as if he was waiting for a wave of nausea to pass.

“The cops are questioning Don,” I said. “Do you think he could kill a person?”

I expected a quick denial. Instead, he was silent so long, I thought he might have gone into a catatonic state. Finally he said, “People can do the goddamnedest things, Ellie. You just never know. You just never know.”

P
aris Montgomery sat staring at him with her big brown eyes wide and bright. Not a deer in the headlights, Landry thought. The expression was more focus than fear. She had brushed her hair and put on lipstick while he’d been interviewing Jade.

“When did you last see Jill yesterday?” he asked.

“Around six. She was complaining about having to stay so late. She’d been dropping hints all day that she had big plans for the evening.”

“Did you ask her what those plans were?”

“No. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I have to admit I didn’t like the girl. She had a bad attitude and she lied all the time.”

“Lied about what?”

“Whatever. That she’d done a job she hadn’t, that she knew people she didn’t, that she’d trained with big-name people, that she had all these boyfriends—”

“Did she name names of these boyfriends?”

“I didn’t want to hear about it. I knew it wasn’t true,” she said. “It was just creepy and pathetic. I was looking for someone to replace her, but it’s hard to find good help once the season has started.”

“So, she left around six. Were you aware of anything going on between her and your boss?”

“Don? God, no. I mean, I know she had a crush on him, but that’s as far as it went. Don had been after me to get rid of her. He didn’t trust her. She was always flapping her mouth to anyone who would listen.”

“About what?”

She blinked the big eyes and tried to decide how much she should tell him. “About everything that went on in our barn. For instance, if a horse was a little lame or—”

“Dead?” Landry suggested.

“This is a very gossipy business, Detective,” she said primly. “Reputations can be made or lost on rumors. Discretion is an important quality in employees.”

“So if she was running around shooting her mouth off about the horse that died, that would probably piss you off.”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“And Don?”

“He would have been furious. Stellar’s death has been a nightmare for him. He didn’t need his own employee adding fuel to the fire.” She stopped herself and frowned. “I’m not saying he would have hurt her. I won’t believe that. I just won’t.”

“He doesn’t have a temper?”

“Not like that. Don is very controlled, very professional. I respect him enormously.”

Landry leaned over his notes and rubbed at the tightness in his forehead. “You didn’t see Jill later last night?”

“No.”

“You had night check last night. What time—”

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “Don did. I offered, but he insisted. After what happened in Michael Berne’s barn the other night, he said it wasn’t safe for a woman to wander around out there at night.”

“He told me you had the job last night,” Landry said.

Paris Montgomery’s pretty brow furrowed. “That’s not right. He must have forgotten. God, if one of us had been there last night, maybe we could have prevented what happened.”

Or one of them
had
been there and caused what had happened.

“What time would he have done the check—if he had remembered?” Landry asked.

“Normally, one of us will check the horses around eleven.”

Jade had said he’d been at The Players. If he’d gone to the barn later, he would surely have seen the vandalism, might even have caught the girl in the act. It wasn’t a stretch to think they might have argued, things might have gotten out of hand . . .

“Where were you last night?” he asked.

“Home. Doing my nails, doing my bills, watching TV. I don’t like to go out when we’ve got horses showing in the morning.”

“You were alone?”

“Just me and Milo, my dog. We fight over the remote control,” she said with a flirtatious smile. “I hope we didn’t keep the neighbors up.”

Landry didn’t smile back. He’d been at this job too long to be swayed by charm. It was a form of dishonesty, as far as he was concerned.

That should have meant Estes was the girl for him. He’d never known anyone as blunt as Elena.

“Have you noticed anyone strange hanging around your stalls?” he asked.

Paris made a face. “There are plenty of strange people around the equestrian center. I can’t say that I’ve noticed anyone in particular.”

“So, you’re fresh out of grooms now,” he said. “I hear you lost one a week ago.”

“Yes. Erin. Boom. Just like that. Quit and went somewhere else.”

“Did she give you any explanation as to why?”

“She didn’t talk to me about it. Never even said she was thinking about it. End of the day Sunday she told Don she was leaving, and off she went.”

“No forwarding address?”

She shook her head. “I have to say, that really hurt, her just dumping us that way. I liked Erin. I thought she would be with us a long time. She talked about how cool it was going to be when we moved into the new barn. She was looking forward to going with us to show in Europe in the spring. I just never expected her to leave.”

“You last saw her when?”

“Sunday afternoon. I left the equestrian center around three. I had a migraine.”

“And Erin seemed fine when you spoke with her?”

She started to give an automatic answer, then stopped herself and thought about it. “You know, I guess she’d been distracted the last week or so. Boyfriend blues. She had broken up with some guy her own age and had her eye on someone else. I don’t know who. Someone who wasn’t a child, she said. Then some jerk keyed her car a couple of nights before. She was upset about that. My money’s on Jill for that. She was horribly jealous of Erin.”

She stopped herself again, looking confused. “Why are you asking about Erin?”

“She seems to be missing.”

“Well, I think she went to Ocala—”

“No. She didn’t.”

The big brown eyes blinked as she took that in. “Oh, my God,” she said quietly. “You don’t think— Oh, my God.”

Landry slid a business card across the table to her and rose to his feet. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Montgomery. Please call if you think of anything that might be helpful.”

“We’re finished?”

“For now,” Landry said, going to the door. “I’ll need you to call with a number for Ms. Morone’s next of kin.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Oh—and a number for a Susannah Atwood and the rest of your clients, but first and foremost for Ms. Atwood.”

“Susannah? Why Susannah?”

“Seems Mr. Jade was performing a night check of his own last night,” he said, curious to see her reaction. He expected jealousy. He was disappointed.

Paris raised her eyebrows. “Don and Susannah?” she said, amusement turning one corner of her mouth. “I learn something new every day.”

“I would think it’d be hard to keep a secret in such a small world.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised, Detective Landry,” she said, standing too close to him, her hand just below his on the edge of the open door. “There are two things the horse world is full of: secrets and lies. The trick is telling which is which.”

24

People can do the goddamnedest things.

Words of insight from Monte Hughes III. Perhaps there was a scrap of substance beneath the self-absorbed, alcohol-soaked narcissist after all. Certainly there was something lurking beneath his well-worn surface, something that had penetrated the fog enough to trouble him.

“. . . that would be because of the murder.”

“But that was days ago.”

I had to think he’d been referring to Stellar, and in that, admitting the horse had been killed. But at the same time, I couldn’t get the image of Jill Morone’s corpse out of my mind. The connection between Jill and Erin made me anxious. If one could be murdered, why not the other?

I hated that all of this was happening in the world that had been my refuge. But people are people. The setting doesn’t change basic human emotions—jealousy, greed, lust, rage, envy. The players in this drama could have been plucked from this particular stage and placed on any other. The story would have been the same.

I left Trey Hughes and went in search of the one person no one had questioned who I thought might have something relevant to contribute. The one person in Jade’s barn who was ever-present, but practically invisible. Javier.

His inability to speak English did not render him blind or deaf or stupid, but it did give him a cloak of anonymity. Who knew what he might have witnessed among the staff and clients of Jade’s operation. No one paid any attention to him except to order him around.

But Javier had vanished that morning when Landry had come down the barn aisle, and I had no luck finding him. The Hispanic workers in the neighboring barns had nothing to say to a well-dressed woman asking questions, even if I did speak their language.

I felt at loose ends. For the first time that day I admitted to myself that I wished I still had a badge and could have been sitting in an interview room, pushing the buttons and pulling the strings of the people who had known and disliked Jill Morone, the people who had known Erin Seabright and may have held the key to her whereabouts. I knew those people and understood them in a way the detectives interviewing them never would.

At the very least I wanted to be there putting questions in Landry’s ear. But I knew I would never openly be allowed that near an active investigation. And, despite my threats to Bruce Seabright, I would now be held completely outside the kidnapping investigation. I couldn’t bully my way into that house with half the Palm Beach County detective division involved. I couldn’t even call Molly on the phone because the calls would be traced and recorded.

I had been relegated to the role of informant, and I didn’t like it—even though I had been the one dragging Landry into it in the first place.

I who had wanted no part of this case.

Grinding my teeth on my frustration, I left the show grounds and drove to a strip mall, to a cell phone store, where I purchased a prepaid, disposable phone. I would get it to Molly somehow so we could stay in contact without the Sheriff’s Office listening in.

I thought about the caller who had rung Bruce Seabright twice in that long list of numbers from his home office phone, and wondered if the kidnappers had been smart enough to do what I was doing. Did they have a phone they could ditch? Had they bought it with cash, given a phony ID?

I had given the list of phone numbers to Landry, who would be able to get a line on all of them through the phone company. I doubted we would be lucky enough to have one of the numbers come back listed to Tomas Van Zandt or Don Jade or Michael Berne. Landry would know by the end of the day. I wondered if he would tell me. Now that he was in this mess up to his neck, I wondered if he would include me at all. A small hollow ball of fear had taken up residence in my stomach at the thought that he might not.

Sean waved me to the barn as I drove into the yard. The afternoon was slipping away in the west. The sky was orange with a drift of black smoke billowing along the horizon. Farmers burning off the stubble of their sugarcane fields. Irina was feeding the horses their dinner. I breathed in the scent of animals and molasses and grass hay. Better than a Valium to me. D’Artagnon stuck his head out over the door of his stall and nickered to me. I went to him and stroked his face and rested my cheek against his and told him that I missed him.

“Just in time for cocktails, darling. Come along,” Sean said, leading the way to the lounge. He was still in breeches and boots.

“Sorry I haven’t been any help the last few days,” I said. “Are you going to fire me and throw me out into the street?”

“Don’t be silly. You’ve embroiled me in international intrigue. I’ll dine out on this for years to come.” He went to the bar and poured himself a glass of merlot. “Want some? Blood red. That should appeal to you.”

“No, thanks. I’ll be giddy.”

“That will be the day.”

“Tonic and lime sounds nice.”

He fixed the drink and I crawled onto a bar stool, tired and body sore.

“I spoke today with friends in Holland,” he said. “They had already heard Van Zandt had been in my barn.”

“That’s some grapevine.”

“Apparently, Van Zandt didn’t waste any time putting the word out that I might be buying and selling horses with him.”

“I’m sure he didn’t. You’re a plum catch, my peach. Great taste and lots of money. I’m sure he wanted that news to get to your longtime agent as soon as possible.”

“Yes. Thank Christ I had called Toine ahead of time and warned him I was sacrificing myself for a noble cause. He would have been on the first plane over from Amsterdam to rescue me from Van Zandt’s evil clutches.”

“And what did your other friends have to say about the evil Z.?”

“That he’s a pariah. He’s been banished from the best farms in Holland. They simply won’t do business with him.”

“But plenty of other people will.”

He shrugged. “Dealers always manage to find clients, and people with horses to sell need clients to sell them to. If no one did business with shady characters like Van Zandt, not much business would get done.”

“I’ll tell him you said so over dinner tonight.”

He made a face. “You’re having dinner with him? You’ll want to buy a case of liquid Lysol.”

“To drink?”

“To bathe in afterward. Seriously, Elle,” he said, frowning at me, “be careful with that creep. Irina told me what he did to her friend. And now there’s been a murder at the show grounds. Is he involved in that? That’s where you were all day, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know if he was involved. Other people may have had reason to want the girl dead.”

“Jesus, Elle.”

“I know what I’m doing. And the cops are involved now.”

“Is that who was here this morning?” he asked, a sly look coming into his eyes. “Mr. Very Good Looking in the silver car?”

“Detective,” I corrected. “Is he good-looking? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Honey, you need an optometrist if you haven’t noticed that.”

“His personality leaves something to be desired.”

“So does yours,” he said, trying not to grin. “Could be a perfect fit.”

“Could be you need your head examined,” I complained. “This mess I’m involved in—thanks to you, by the way—involves a lot of ugly stuff. Romance is not on the agenda even if I was interested—which I’m not.”

He hummed a note to himself, thinking something I was certain I didn’t want to know. I was uncomfortable with the idea of anyone thinking of me as a sexual being, because I had ceased to think of myself in that way two years before.

Deeper than the scars on my body, my sense of self had been stripped down to nothing that day in rural Loxahatchee when Hector Ramirez had been killed and I had gone under the wheels of Billy Golam’s truck.

Despite the fact that surgeons had spent the last two years repairing the physical damage to my body—mending broken bones, patching skin burned away by the road, rebuilding the shattered side of my face—I didn’t know that I would ever feel whole again. Essential parts of me were missing—parts of my soul, of my psychological self. Maybe the layers would fill in eventually. Maybe that process had begun. But I had a very long way to go, and most days I doubted I had the strength or the will for the journey. I did know I didn’t want anyone close enough to watch the process. Certainly not James Landry.

“Never say never, darling.” Sean finished his wine and went off to ready himself for a night on the town in Palm Beach. I went to the guest house and checked my e-mail.

Special Agent Armedgian, my contact with the FBI field office in West Palm, had come through with the Interpol info.

According to Armedgian, Van Zandt had no arrest record, but Interpol had a file on him, which said something. He had dabbled in a lot of business pies, always skirting the line of what was legal and what was not, but never quite crossing over it—or not getting caught, at any rate.

There was no mention of him coming under scrutiny for anything of a sexual nature. I was disappointed, but not surprised. If there were other victims of his dubious charms, they were probably like Irina’s friend: young, inexperienced, alone in a foreign country, afraid to tell anyone.

Needing to clear my head before the evening’s mind games, I changed into a swimsuit and went to the pool to let the warm, silky water soothe my body and clean the layers of grit from my brain.

The sun was gone, but the pool shimmered midnight blue, lit from within its walls. I thought of nothing at all as I swam lazy laps with slow-motion underwater turns at the end of each. The tension washed away, and for a short time I was simply a sleek, aquatic animal, bone and muscle and instinct. It felt good to be something that fundamental and uncontrived.

When I’d had enough, I rolled over onto my back and floated, looking up at the pinpoint stars in the black velvet sky. Then Landry came into view, standing at the water’s edge.

I dove under and came back up, shaking the water from my head.

“Detective. You got the drop on me,” I said, treading water.

“I’m sure that doesn’t happen very often.”

He was still in his work clothes, though he had jerked the tie loose and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.

“My fault for giving you the gate code,” I said. “Hard day turning the thumbscrews?”

“Long.”

“Sorry I missed it. No one makes a better bad cop than me.”

“I have no doubt about that,” he said with half a smile. “Aren’t you going to invite me in? Say the water’s fine?”

“That would be a cliché. I abhor predictability.”

I swam to the ladder and climbed out, forcing myself not to rush to cover my body with my towel. I didn’t want him to know how vulnerable I felt. Somehow I thought that even in the dim light around the pool he would see every scar, every imperfection. It made me angry that I cared.

I toweled myself off, rubbed my hair dry, then wrapped the towel around my waist like a sarong to hide the pitted, scarred flesh of my legs. Landry watched, his expression unreadable.

“Nothing about you is predictable, Estes.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, though I don’t think you consider unpredictability a virtue. Do you have any good news?” I asked, leading the way to the guest house.

“The deputies found Erin Seabright’s car,” he said. “Parked under about six inches of dust in a corner of that first lot at the truck entrance of the equestrian center.”

I stood with my hand on the doorknob, holding my breath, waiting for him to tell me Erin had been found dead in the trunk.

“The CSU is going over it for prints, et cetera.”

I let go a sigh at the initial sense of relief. “Where was it?”

“In the first parking lot as you come in the truck entrance, over by the laundry place.”

“Why would it be there?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “She would have parked near Jade’s barn, not half a mile away. Why would it be there?”

Landry shrugged. “Maybe she had dropped stuff off at the laundry.”

“Then walked all the way to Jade’s barn? And then walked to the back gate to meet whoever she thought she was meeting? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense for the kidnappers to move it there either,” Landry said. “They kidnapped her. Why would they care where her car was parked?”

I thought about that as we went into the house. “To buy time? Monday would have been Erin’s day off. If not for Molly, no one would have missed her until Tuesday morning.”

“And no one would have missed her then, because Jade claimed she’d quit and moved to Ocala,” Landry finished the theory.

“How did he take the questioning?”

“It was an inconvenience to him. The interview and the murder.”

“Any nerves?”

“Not worth mentioning.”

“Well . . . the guy makes a living riding horses over fences taller than I am. It’s not a game for the faint of heart.”

“Neither is murder.”

A game. It would be difficult for the average person to consider murder and kidnapping a game, but in a macabre way it was a game. A game with very serious stakes.

“Any word from the kidnappers?”

Landry sat against the back of a chair, hands in his pockets. He shook his head. “No. The phones are rigged at the Seabright house. I’ve had a couple of guys checking out the neighbors. That’s a dead end.”

“There’s a bar in that armoire under the TV,” I said, pointing into the living room. “You look like you need it. Help yourself while I change.”

I made him wait while I took a quick shower, then stood in front of the mirror for five minutes, staring at myself, trying to read my own inscrutable expression.

I didn’t like the anxious feeling lingering in my belly. The bubble of fear had been replaced by something I almost didn’t recognize: hope. I didn’t want it to mean so much that Landry had come back, that he was filling me in, including me.

“You told Seabright you’re a private investigator,” he said. His voice was strong and clear. He must have been standing just on the other side of the bedroom door. “Are you?”

“Not exactly.”

“That’s fraud.”

“No. It’s a lie,” I corrected. “It would only be fraud if I were misrepresenting myself and accepting money from the Seabrights based on that misrepresentation. I’m not.”