Dark Horse (6 page)

“You’re a tigress, Elle! I like that. You have character.” He nodded to himself, suddenly enormously pleased. “That’s good.”

“I’m so glad you approve.”

He chuckled to himself and took my arm again. “Come along. I’ll introduce you to Jade. He’ll like you.”

“Will I like him?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t care what I liked or didn’t like. He was fascinated that I had challenged him. I was sure he didn’t get much of that. Most of his American clients would have been wealthy women whose husbands and boyfriends had no interest in horses. Women who gave him undue credit simply because he was European and paid attention to them. Insecure women who could be easily charmed and manipulated, impressed by a little knowledge, a little Continental elegance, and a big ego with an accent.

I had witnessed the phenomenon firsthand many times over the years. Women starved for attention and approval will do a lot of foolish things, including parting with large sums of money. That was the clientele that made unscrupulous dealers a hell of a lot of money. That was the clientele that made dealers like Van Zandt snicker and sneer “stupid Americans” behind the client’s back.

Park Lane came out of the tent with Jill the groom in tow just as we were about to step into the aisle. Van Zandt snapped at the girl to watch where she was going, muttering “stupid cow” only half under his breath as the horse dragged her away.

“D.J., why can you not find any girls with brains in their heads?” he asked loudly.

Jade stood at the open door to a tack stall that was draped in green and hung with ribbons won in recent shows. He calmly took a drink of Diet Coke. “Is that some kind of riddle?”

Van Zandt took a beat to get it, then laughed. “Yes—a trick question.”

“Excuse me,” I said politely, “but do I look like I’m standing here with a penis?”

“No,” Paris Montgomery said, coming out of the tack stall. “A couple of dicks.”

Van Zandt made a growling sound in his throat, but pretended good nature. “Paris, you’re the quick one with the tongue!”

She flashed the big grin. “That’s what all the fellas say.”

High humor. Jade paid no attention to any of it. He was looking at me. I stared back and stuck out my hand. “Elle Stevens.”

“Don Jade. You’re a friend of this character?” he asked, nodding at Van Zandt.

“Don’t hold it against me. It was a chance meeting.”

The corner of Jade’s mouth flicked upward. “Well, if there’s a chance, Tomas will be right there to take it.”

Van Zandt pouted. “I don’t wait for opportunity to come and knock on the door. I go and invite it politely.

“And this one came to steal your groom,” he added, pointing at me.

Jade looked confused.

“The cute one. The blonde,” Van Zandt said.

“Erin,” Paris said.

“The one that left,” Jade said, still looking at me.

“Yes,” I said. “Apparently someone beat me to her.”

He gave no kind of reaction at all. He didn’t look away or try to express his sadness that the girl had left. Nothing.

“Yeah,” Paris joked. “Elle and I are going to start a support group for people without grooms.”

“What brought you looking for Erin in particular?” Jade asked. “She didn’t have very much experience.”

“She did a good job, Don,” Paris said, defending the missing girl. “I’d take her back in a heartbeat.”

“A friend of a friend heard your girl might be looking to make a change,” I said to Jade. “Now that the season has started, we can’t be too fussy, right?”

“True enough. You have horses here, Elle?”

“No, though Z. here is trying to remedy that.”

“V.,” Van Zandt corrected me.

“I like Z. better,” I said. “I’m going to call you Z.”

He laughed. “Watch this one, Jade. She’s a tigress!”

Jade hadn’t taken his eyes off me. He looked beneath the stupid hat and past the chic outfit. He wouldn’t be easily fooled. I found I didn’t want to look away from him either. Magnetism hummed from within him like electricity. I thought I could feel it touching my skin. I wondered if he had control of it; could turn it on and off, up and down. Probably. Don Jade hadn’t survived at his game without skill.

I wondered if I was up to matching him.

Before I had to answer that question, a more imminent danger swaggered into the picture.

“God in heaven! What kind of sadist put my class at this uncivilized hour of the day?”

Stellar’s owner: Monte Hughes III, known as Trey to friends and hangers-on. Palm Beach playboy. Dissolute, debauched drunk. My first big crush when I’d been young and rebellious, and had thought dissolute, debauched, drunken playboys were romantic and exciting.

Sunglasses hid undoubtedly bloodshot eyes. The Don Johnson
Miami Vice
haircut was silver and wind-tossed.

“What time is it, anyway?” he asked with a lopsided grin. “What day is it?”

He was drunk or on something or both. He always had been. His blood had to have a permanent alcohol level after all the years of indulgence. Trey Hughes: the happy drunk, the life of every party.

I held myself very still as he came toward us. There was little chance he would recognize me. I’d been a young thing when last he’d seen me—twenty years before—and the term “pickled brain” didn’t mean preservation of any kind. I couldn’t say he’d ever really known me, though he had flirted with me on several occasions. I remembered feeling very impressed with myself at the time, ignoring the fact that Trey Hughes flirted with every pretty young thing to cross his path.

“Paris, honey, why do they do this to me?” He leaned into her and kissed her cheek.

“It’s a conspiracy, Trey.”

He laughed. His voice was rough and warm from too much whiskey and too many cigarettes. “Yeah, I used to think I was paranoid, then it turned out everyone really was out to get me.”

He was dressed to ride in buff breeches, a shirt and tie. His coat bag was slung over his shoulder. He looked exactly the same to me as he had twenty years ago: attractive, fifty, and self-abused. Of course, he’d been thirty at the time. Too many hours in the sun had lined and bronzed his face, and he’d gone gray at an early age—a family trait. He had seemed dashing and sophisticated to me back when. Now he just seemed pathetic.

He leaned down and peered at me under the brim of my hat. “I knew there had to be a person under there. I’m Trey Hughes.”

“Elle Stevens.”

“Do I know you?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Thank God. I’ve always said I never forget a beautiful face. You had me thinking I might be getting Old Timer’s.”

“Trey, your brain is too drenched in alcohol for it to contract anything,” Jade said dryly.

Hughes didn’t so much as glance at him. “I’ve been telling people for years: I drink for medicinal purposes,” he said. “Maybe it’s finally paying off.

“Never mind me, darling,” he said to me. “I never do.” His brows drew together. “Are you sure . . . ?”

“I’m a new face,” I said, almost amused at my own joke. “Have you ever been to Cleveland?”

“God, no! Why would I go there?”

“I was sorry to hear about Stellar.”

“Oh, yeah, well . . .” he rambled, making a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Shit happens. Right, Donnie?” The question had a barb to it. He still didn’t look at Jade.

Jade shrugged. “Bad luck. That’s the horse business.”

C’est la vie. C’est la mort
.

Such is life. Such is death.

His grief was underwhelming.

“God bless General Fidelity,” Hughes said, raising an imaginary glass. “Provided they cough up.”

Again, there was a bite to his words, but Jade seemed unaffected.

“Buy the Belgian horse,” Van Zandt said. “You’ll then say: Stellar who?”

Hughes laughed. “It’s not enough I’ve given you my Mercedes. Now you’re spending my money before it even gets into my pocket, V.?”

“That seems wisest, knowing you, my friend.”

“All my dough’s going into the new barn,” Hughes said. “Casa de Money Pit.”

“What good is a fancy stable with no horses to put in it?” Van Zandt asked.

“Let someone like Mr. Jade here come in with a truckload of clients to pay the mortgage and buy me a new speedboat,” Hughes answered. “Like half of Wellington.”

True enough. A great many Wellingtonians paid a year’s mortgage with the exorbitant rents they charged for the three or four months the winter people were in town.

“Trey, get on your horse,” Jade ordered. “I want you sober enough to complete the course.”

“Hell, D.J., booze is the only thing that gets me around. I couldn’t do it sober.” He looked around, searching. “Erin, my peach,” he called. “Be a doll and bring my noble steed along.”

“Erin doesn’t work here anymore, Trey. Remember?” Paris said, taking his coat bag and handing him his hard hat.

“Oh, right. You got rid of her.”

“She left.”

“Huh.” He looked off into the middle distance, smiling to himself. “Seems like I just saw her.” He glanced around to see that the coast was clear and said to Paris in a stage whisper: “Honey, why couldn’t you lose the little heifer instead?”

Paris rolled her eyes. “Get on your horse, Trey.”

She called to the Guatemalan man in Spanish to bring the gray horse, and the entourage began to move out of the aisle. I turned to follow. Jade was still standing there, still watching me.

“It was nice meeting you, Elle. I hope we see you around—whether V. sells you a horse or not.”

“I’m sure you will. I’m intrigued now.”

“Like a moth to a flame?” he said.

“Something like that.”

He shook my hand, and I felt that current pass through me again.

I watched the pack of them make their way toward the schooling ring. Van Zandt walked alongside the gray, bending Hughes’ ear about the jumper in Belgium. Hughes listed to one side on the horse’s back. Paris glanced backward, looking for Jade to catch up.

I started the hike back to my car, wishing I had time to go home and take a shower, to wash off the taint. There was a slick oiliness to Jade’s crowd that should have had a smell to it, the same way I’ve always believed snakes should have a smell to them. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them, but the wheels were turning now. The old familiar buzz of anxious excitement in my head. Familiar, not altogether welcome.

I’d been on the sidelines a long time. I lived one day to the next, never knowing whether I would decide I’d lived one day too many. I didn’t know if I had my head together enough to do this. And if I didn’t, Erin Seabright’s life could hang in the balance.

If Erin Seabright still had a life.

You got rid of her,
Trey Hughes had said. An innocent enough statement on the face of it. A figure of speech. And from a man who didn’t even know what day it was. Still, it struck a nerve.

I didn’t know if I should trust my instincts, they’d been so long out of use. And look what happened the last time I trusted them, I thought. My instincts, my choice, and the consequences. All bad.

But it wouldn’t be my action that did the damage this time. It would be inaction. The inaction of Erin Seabright’s mother, of the Sheriff’s Office.

Someone had to do something. These people Erin Seabright had known and worked for were far too dismissive when it came to the subject of her, and far too cavalier when it came to the subject of death.

6

The address Molly had given
me as Erin’s was a three-car garage some entrepreneurial sort had converted into rental property. Geographically, it was only a few miles from the Seabright home in Binks Forest. In every other respect it was in another world.

Rural Loxahatchee, where the side roads are dirt and the ditches never drain; where no one had ever met a building code they wouldn’t ignore. A strange mix of run-down places, new middle-class homes, and small horse properties. A place where people nailed signs to tree trunks along the road advertising everything from “Make $$$ in Your Own Home” to “Puppies for Sale” to “Dirt Cheap Stump Grinding.”

The property where Erin had lived was overgrown with tall pines and scrubby, stunted palm trees. The main house was a pseudo-Spanish ranch style, circa mid-seventies. The white stucco had gone gray with mildew. The yard consisted of dirty sand fill and anemic, sun-starved grass. An older maroon Honda sat off to one side on the driveway, filthy and dotted with hardened gobs of pine sap. It looked like it hadn’t gone anywhere in a long while.

I went to the front door and rang the bell, hoping no one would be at home in the middle of the day. I would have been much happier letting myself into the garage-cum-guest house. I’d had enough human interaction to last me the day. I swatted a mosquito on my forearm and waited, then rang the bell a second time.

A voice like a rusty hinge called out: “I’m around the back!”

Small brown geckos darted out of my path and into the overgrown landscaping as I walked around the side of the garage. Around the back of the house was the obligatory pool. The screened cage that had been erected to keep bugs out of the patio area was shredded in sections as if by a giant paw. The door was flung wide on broken hinges.

The woman who stood in the doorway was long past the age and shape anyone would care to see her in a two-piece swimming suit, but that was what she was wearing. Flab and sagging skin hung on her bent frame like a collection of half-deflated leather balloons.

“What can I do for you, honey?” she asked. A New York transplant in giant Jackie-O sunglasses. She must have been pushing seventy, and appeared to have spent sixty-eight of those years sunbathing. Her skin was as brown and mottled as the skin of the lizards that lived in her yard. She was smoking a cigarette and had two hugely fat ginger cats on leashes. I was momentarily stunned to silence by the sight of her.

“I’m looking for my niece,” I said at last. “Erin Seabright. She lives here, right?”

She nodded, dropped her cigarette butt, and ground it out with the toe of her aqua neoprene scuba diver’s boot. “Erin. The pretty one. Haven’t seen her for a couple of days, darling.”

“No? Neither has her family. We’re getting kind of worried.”

The woman pursed her lips and waved my concern away. “Bah! She’s probably off with the boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend? We didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”

“What a surprise,” she said sarcastically. “A teenage girl who doesn’t tell her family anything. I thought they were on the outs, though. I heard them fighting out in the yard one night.”

“When was that?”

“Last week. I don’t know. Thursday or Friday maybe.” She shrugged. “I’m retired. What do I know from days? One’s the same as the next. I know I came out to walk my babies the next morning and someone had run a key down the side of Erin’s car and ruined the paint. I have a gate to keep the riffraff out, if my lazy son would come and fix it. He could care if I’m raped and killed. He thinks he inherits.”

She chuckled and looked down at the ginger cats, sharing a joke telepathically. One of the cats lay on its back in the dirt with its hind legs stretched out. The other pounced at her foot, ears flat.

“Bah! Cecil! Don’t bite Mommy’s toe!” she scolded. “I got an infection the last time. I thought I would die of it!”

She swatted at the cat and the cat swatted back, then scuttled to the end of its leash and growled. It had to weigh twenty-five pounds.

“Could I possibly take a look in her apartment?” I asked politely. “Maybe I can get an idea where she’s gone. Her mother’s worried sick.”

She shrugged. “Sure. Why not? You’re a relative.”

The kind of landlady we all want. Fourth Amendment? What Fourth Amendment?

She tied the cat leashes to the handle of the broken screen door and dug in the fanny pack slung around her waist, coming out with a set of keys, a cigarette, and a hot pink Bic lighter. She fired up as we went around to the front of the garage, where two doors flanked windows that had been set into the plywood wall where the original garage doors had once been.

“When I did the guest house I had them put in two apartments,” the woman confided. “One bath. You can get more rent that way. Semiprivate. Seven-fifty a month per.”

Seven hundred and fifty dollars a month to live in a garage and share a bathroom with a stranger.

“I’m Eva by the way,” she said, sliding her sunglasses on top of her head. “Eva Rosen.”

“Ellen Stuart.”

“You don’t look like family,” Eva said, squinting at me as we went into the apartment.

“By marriage.”

The apartment was a single room with dingy vinyl flooring and an assortment of hideous thrift store furniture. An efficiency kitchen setup was tucked into one corner: a small sink full of dirty dishes crawling with ants, two burners, a microwave, and a mini-fridge. The bed was at the back, unmade.

There was no other sign anyone lived there. There were no clothes, no shoes, no personal effects of any kind.

“It looks like she’s moved out,” I said. “You didn’t see her packing stuff in her car?”

Eva turned around in the middle of the room, mouth agape, cigarette stuck to her lower lip and bobbing precariously. “No! No one said anything to me about moving out. And left me dirty dishes, no less! You give people a nice place and this is how they treat you!”

“Have you seen anyone else coming in and out in the past few days?”

“No. Just that other one. The chubby one.”

“Jill Morone?”

“She’s a mean one. Those beady little eyes. I’d never leave my babies with that one.”

“She lives in the other half?”

“Someone is going to have to answer to me,” Eva muttered. “They rented for the season. They have to pay.”

“Who pays the rent?”

“The checks are from Jade Farms. That nice girl, Paris, always brings the check herself. She’s so nice. I can’t believe she would let this happen.”

Puffing angrily on the cigarette, she went to the sink and turned the water on. The pipes kicked and spat. When the water finally ran, it looked brown. “People can’t just move out in the middle of the night and think they don’t have to pay. My no-good son is good for one thing: he’s a bail bondsman. He knows people.”

I followed as Eva opened a door and went through the shared bath to Jill Morone’s side of the garage. The floor was piled with wet towels, the walls of the shower stall orange and black with rust and mildew.

“This one’s still here,” Eva muttered. “The little pig. Look at this mess.”

The place looked like it had been tossed, but I suspected that was simply the girl’s mode of housekeeping. Clothes and magazines were strewn everywhere. An ashtray heaped with butts sat on the coffee table. I spotted the issue of
Sidelines
with my photo in it lying on the floor, and surreptitiously toed it under the sofa.

“I wouldn’t let dogs live like this,” Eva Rosen muttered, freely pawing through Jill Morone’s things. “Where does she get all this? Clothes from Bloomingdale’s. The tags still on. I bet she steals. She’s the type.”

I didn’t argue. I browsed through the tangled mess of jewelry on the girl’s dresser, wondering if any of it might have walked over from next door. An even trade for a stack of dirty dishes.

“Were you around here Sunday, Mrs. Rosen?”

“It’s
Miz.
I was here all day.”

“What about Sunday night?”

“Sunday nights I go with my friend Sid to A-1 Thai. I had the chicken curry. So spicy! I had a heartburn for days.”

“What time did you get home?”

“That would be none of your business.”

“Please, Ms. Rosen, it could be very important. Erin is missing.”

She pretended to be stubborn for a moment, then tipped her head on one side and shrugged. “Sid is a special friend, if you know what I mean. I didn’t get home until Monday. Noon, maybe.”

Ample time for Erin to have packed up her own stuff, or for someone to have done it for her.

“She’s run off with a boy, that’s what,” Eva said, finishing off her smoke and adding it to the heap in the ashtray. “No offense to your family, but she had that look with the tight shirts and the bare belly button.”

This from a seventy-year-old in a bikini.

“What can you tell me about her boyfriend?” I asked. “Do you know what kind of car he drives?”

“Sixty-seven years I lived in Queens. I should know from cars?”

I tried to breathe slowly. Another of my shortcomings as a cop: lack of diplomacy with the general public. “Color? Size? Anything I could give to the police?”

“Black, maybe. Or dark blue. I only saw it the one time, and it was night.”

“What about the boy? What does he look like?”

“What’s with the third degree?” she asked, pretending indignation. “I’m on
Law and Order
now? You’re Miss District Attorney or something? Is Sam Waterston going to come out of the closet now?”

“I’m just concerned about my niece, Ms. Rosen. I’m afraid something might have happened to her. She didn’t tell anyone she was moving. Her family doesn’t know anything about this boyfriend. How can we be sure she went with him willingly?”

Eva thought about that, her eyes brightening for a second at the possibility of intrigue, then she waved a hand, pretending indifference. “I didn’t get a good look. I heard arguing, I looked through the blinds, I saw the back of a head.”

“Could you tell if he was tall or short? Younger or older?”

She shrugged. “He was average. His back was to me.”

“Have you ever met the man Erin worked for?” I asked.

“What man? I thought she worked for Paris.”

“Don Jade. Middle-aged, on the slight side, very good-looking.”

“Don’t know him. I only know Paris. She’s such a nice person. Always takes the time to ask after my babies. I have to think she doesn’t know Erin ran off, or she would have spoken to me about it.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” I said. “Did you notice anything at all about the boyfriend, Ms. Rosen? Anything.”

Eva Rosen shook her head. “I’m sorry, darling. I would help if I could. I’m a mother too, you know. Do you have children of your own?” she asked, looking suspiciously at my haircut.

“No, I don’t.”

“They drive you crazy with worry. And then there’s the disappointment. It’s a trial.”

“Did you ever hear Erin call the boyfriend by name?” I asked.

She searched her memory. “Maybe. I might have heard her mention a name that night. Yes. It was something like it was from a soap opera. Brad? Tad?”

“Chad?”

“That’s it.”

Chad Seabright.

F
orbidden love. I wondered if that Shakespearean story line had contributed to Erin’s defection from the Seabright home. I couldn’t imagine Bruce Seabright would have approved of his son and his stepdaughter dating, regardless of the fact they weren’t blood relatives. And if Bruce didn’t like it, Krystal wouldn’t like it.

I wondered why Molly hadn’t told me about Erin and Chad, why she hadn’t told me about Chad at all. Maybe she believed I would disapprove too. If that was the case, she overestimated me. I didn’t care enough to have an opinion on her sister’s morality. My only interest in Erin’s love life was as motive in her disappearance.

I drove back to the Seabright home. Chad the Invalid was in the driveway, washing his black Toyota pickup. The all-American boy in khakis and a white T-shirt. He glanced up at me through a pair of mirrored Oakley shades as he rinsed the soap off his wheel rims.

“Nice ride,” I said as I walked up the driveway. “Eva Rosen told me about it.”

“Who’s Eva Rosen?”

“Erin’s landlady. She doesn’t miss a trick, old Eva.”

Chad stood up, the hose and the wheels forgotten. “I’m sorry,” he said politely. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Elena Estes. I’m looking for your stepsister.”

“Like I told you this morning, Ms. Estes: I haven’t seen her.”

“That’s funny, because Eva tells me you were in her yard just the other night. She seems to know some pretty interesting things about you,” I said. “About you and Erin.”

He shrugged and shook his head, then added a boyish grin to complete the whole Matt Damon look. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, Chad,” I cajoled. “I’ve been around the block a few times. It doesn’t matter to me if you and Erin are involved. A boy fucking his stepsister isn’t going to make me turn a hair.”

He frowned at the accusation.

“That’s why Erin left the house, isn’t it?” I said. “Your father wouldn’t put up with the two of you doing it under his nose.”

“We’re not involved,” he insisted.

“Eva tells me the two of you had a fight the other night in her driveway. What happened, Chad? Did Erin dump you? Let me guess: you weren’t nearly so interesting as a boyfriend once her Mommy and Stepdaddy weren’t watching anymore.”

He looked away from me, trying to decide how to play this. Respond with the truth, with outrage, stick with denial, stay calm? He had chosen the latter tack to start, but my bluntness was beginning to irritate him.

“I’m not sure who you are, ma’am,” he said, still trying to hang on to the false good humor, “but you’re crazy.”

I found a dry patch along the front fender of the pickup, leaned back against it, and crossed my arms. “Who’d she dump you for, Chad? An older man? Her boss, maybe?”

“I don’t know who Erin is seeing,” he said curtly. “And I don’t care.”

He dumped the wash water on the driveway and carried the bucket into the garage. I followed.

“Okay. Maybe I’m way off base. Maybe the fight was about something else altogether,” I offered. “If that hangover you had this morning is anything to go by, you’re a guy who likes to party. From what I’ve heard, Erin might like a wild time. And there she is at the equestrian center, a whole new world of drug dealers and users. Maybe that’s what you fought about in Eva Rosen’s driveway: drugs.”