Dark Horse

5

We never know the quality of someone else's life, though we seldom resist the temptation to assume and pass judgment. Plenty of women would have looked at Krystal Seabright's situation through the filter of distance and assumed she had it made. Big house, fancy car, career in real estate, land developer husband. Looked good on paper. There was even a Cinderella element to the story: single mother of two swept out of her lowly station in life, et cetera, et cetera.

So too with the apparently well-heeled folks who owned the four thousand expensive horses at the equestrian center. Champagne and caviar every day for a snack. A maid in every mansion, a Rolls in every five-car garage.

The truth was more checkered and less glamorous. There were personal stories full of nasty little plot twists: insecurities and infidelities. There were people who came to the Florida season on a dream and a shoestring, saving every dime all year so they could share a no-frills condo with two other riders, take a few precious lessons from a big-name trainer, and show their mediocre mount to anonymity in the amateur arena just for the love of the sport. There were second-tier professionals with second mortgages on farms in East Buttcrack, hanging on the fringes of the big stables, hoping to pick up a real client or two. There were dealers like Van Zandt: hyenas prowling the water hole, in search of vulnerable prey. The lush life has many shades of gray beneath the gold leaf. It was now officially my job to dig up some of those darker veins.

I thought it would be best to put in as much time as possible near the Jade stable before someone attached to Don Jade went into the bathroom with a copy of Sidelines and came out with a revelation. I'd spent enough time working undercover as a narc to know the chances of that were small, but there nonetheless. People see what they're programmed to see, they seldom look for anything else. Still, a cop's life undercover is never without the fear of being made. It can happen any second, and the deeper under, the worse the timing.

My strategy working undercover had always been to get as much information as possible, as fast as possible; to sketch my illusion boldly and quickly. Dazzle the mark, draw them in close, then hit with the sucker punch and get out. My superiors in the Sheriff's Office had frowned on my methods because I'd borrowed my style from con artists rather than cops. But they had seldom frowned on the outcome.

Sean's parking pass still hanging from my rearview mirror, I rolled past the guard at the gatehouse and into the maelstrom of the Wellington show grounds day shift. There were horses everywhere, people everywhere, cars everywhere, golf carts everywhere. A show was under way and would run through Sunday. Horses and ponies would be jumping over fences in half a dozen competition rings. The chaos would work in my favor, like running a game of three-card monte on a corner in Times Square. Difficult to keep your eye on the queen when you're in the middle of a circus.

I parked in the second lot, cut past the permanent barns and the vet clinic, bypassed the concession stands, and found myself on the show grounds' version of Fifth Avenue: a row of mobile tack shops and pricey boutiques in tricked-out fifth-wheel trailers. Custom jewelers, custom tailors, antiques dealers, monogramming shops, cappuccino stands. I hit a couple of the boutiques to pick up trappings for my role as dilettante. Image is everything.

I purchased and put on a wide-brimmed straw hat trimmed with black grosgrain ribbon. Men never take seriously a woman in a hat. I chose a couple of silk blouses and long wraparound skirts made from vintage saris. I made sure the clerks went overboard with the tissue paper, making the shopping bags look full to bursting. I bought some impractical sandals and trendy bracelets, and put them on. When I thought I looked frivolous enough, I went in search of Don Jade.

There was no sign of him or of Paris Montgomery at his stalls. An underfed Guatemalan man was mucking out a stall, head down, trying not to attract attention lest the next stranger be an INS agent. The front of another stall had been removed to create a grooming bay. In it an overfed girl in a too-revealing tank top was grudgingly brushing a dappled gray horse. The girl had the mean, narrow eyes of someone who blames everyone but herself for the shortfalls in her life. I caught her looking at me sideways, her expression sour.

I tipped my head back and regarded her from under the brim of the ridiculous hat. "I'm looking for Paris. Is she around?"

"She's riding Park Lane in the schooling ring."

"Is Don with her?" Don, my old pal.

"Yeah." And did I want to make something of it?

"And you are…?"

She looked surprised I would bother to ask, then suspicious, then determined she would take advantage of the opportunity. "Jill Morone. I'm Mr. Jade's head groom."

She was Mr. Jade's only groom by the look of it, and by the anemic way she was wielding that brush, she defined the position loosely.

"Really? Then you must know Erin Seabright."

The girl's reactions were so slow, her brain might have been in another time zone. I could see her every thought move sluggishly through her mind as she tried to decide on an answer. She dragged the brush along the horse's shoulder. The horse pinned its ears and rolled an eye at her.

"She doesn't work here anymore."

"I know. Paris told me. Do you know where she went? A friend of mine wanted to hire her."

Jill shrugged, eyes sliding away. "I dunno. Paris said she went to Ocala."

"You guys weren't friends, I guess. I mean, you don't seem to know very much."

"I know she wasn't a very good groom." The pot calling the kettle.

"And I can assume you are?" I said. "Are you interested in moving?"

She looked pleased with herself, like she had a naughty little secret. "Oh, no. Mr. Jade treats me very well."

Mr. Jade probably barely knew her name-unless she was his latest alibi, which I doubted. Men like Don Jade went for girls who were pretty and useful. Jill Morone was neither.

"Good for you," I said. "I hope you still have a job to keep after that business with Stellar."

"That wasn't my fault."

"A horse dies like that. Suspicious circumstances. Owners get nervous, start making phone calls to other trainers… Business can go downhill fast."

"It was an accident."

I shrugged. "Did you see it happen?"

"No. I found him, though," she admitted with a strange spark of pride in her beady little eyes. The chance celebrity. She could be on the fringe of a dark spotlight for a week and a half. "He was just laying there with his legs straight out," she said. "And his eyes were open. I thought he was just being lazy, so I slapped him on the butt to make him get up. Turned out he was dead."

"God. Awful." I looked down the row of Jade's stalls-a dozen or more-each of them hung with a box fan outside the bars of the stall fronts. "I'm surprised you still have the fans up, considering."

She shrugged again and swiped the brush over the gray a couple more strokes. "It's hot. What else should we do?"

The horse waited for her to drift back a step, then whipped her with his tail. She hit him in the ribs with the brush.

"I wouldn't want to be the person who was careless enough to let that electrical cord hang into Stellar's stall," I said. "That groom would never work in this business again. I'd see to that if I had anything to do with it."

The little eyes went mean again in the doughy face. "I didn't take care of him. Erin did. See what kind of groom she was? If I was Mr. Jade, I would have killed her."

Maybe he had, I thought as I walked away from the tent.

I spotted Paris Montgomery some distance away in a schooling ring, golden ponytail bobbing, sunglasses shading her eyes as she guided her mount over a set of jumps. Poetry in motion. Don Jade stood on the sidelines, filming her with a camcorder, as a tall, skinny, red-haired, red-faced man spoke at him, gesturing angrily. He looked like a giant, irate Howdy Doody. I approached the ring a short way down the fence from the two men, my attention seemingly directed at the horses going around.

"If there's so much as a hint of something rotten in those test results, Jade, you'll face charges," the red-faced man said loudly, either not caring or else craving the attention of everyone in the vicinity. "This won't just be about whether or not General Fidelity pays out. You've gotten away with this crap for too long as it is. It's time someone put a stop to it."

Jade said absolutely nothing, nothing in anger, nothing in his own defense. He didn't even pause in his filmmaking. He was a compact man with the rope-muscled forearms of a professional rider. His profile looked like something that should have been embossed on a Roman coin. He might have been thirty-five or he might have been fifty, and people would probably still be saying that about him when he was seventy.

He watched his assistant go over a combination of fences with Park Lane, and frowned as the horse rapped his front ankles and took a rail down. As Paris cantered past, he looked up at her and called out a couple of corrections for her to make to get the horse to bring its hindquarters more fully under itself in preparation for takeoff.

The other man seemed incredulous that his threats had not elicited a response. "You're a real piece of work, Don. Aren't you even going to bother to deny it?"

Jade still didn't look at him. "Why should I bother, Michael? I don't want to be blamed for your heart attack on top of everything else."

"You smug bastard. You still think you can get people to kiss your ass and convince them it smells like a rose."

"Maybe it does, Michael," Jade said calmly, still watching his horse. "You'll never know the truth because you don't want to. You don't want me to be innocent. You enjoy hating me too much."

"I'm hardly the only one."

"I know. I'm a national pastime again. That doesn't change the fact that I'm innocent."

He rubbed the back of his sunburned neck, checked his watch, and sighed. "That's enough for her, Paris," he called, clicking the camera off.

"I'll be on the phone with Dr. Ames today," the other man said. "If I find out you've got connections at that lab-"

"If Ames tells you anything about Stellar, I'll have his license," Jade said calmly. "Not that there's anything to tell."

"Oh, I'm sure there's a story. There always is with you. Who were you in bed with this time?"

"If I have an answer to that, it's none of your business, Michael."

"I'm making it my business."

"You're obsessed," Jade said, turning toward the stables as Paris approached on Park Lane. "If you put as much energy into your work as you do into hating me, maybe you could actually make something of yourself. Now, if you'll excuse me, Michael, I have a business to run."

Michael's face was a twisted, freckled mask of bitter emotion. "Not for long if I can help it."

Jade walked off toward the barn, seemingly unaffected by the exchange. His adversary stood for a moment, breathing hard, looking disappointed. Then he turned and stalked off.

"Well, that was ugly," I said. Tomas Van Zandt stood less than ten feet from me. He'd watched the exchange between Jade and the other man surreptitiously, same as I had, pretending to watch the horses in the ring. He glanced at me in a dismissive way and started to walk off.

"I thought men from Belgium were supposed to be charming."

He pulled up short and looked at me again, recognition dawning slowly. "Elle! Look at you!"

"I clean up good, as they say down at the trailer park."

"You've never been to a trailer park," he scoffed, taking in the hat, the outfit.

"Of course I have. I once drove a maid home," I said, then nodded after the man Jade had argued with. "Who was that?"

"Michael Berne. A big crybaby."

"Is he an owner or something?"

"A rival."

"Ah… These jumper people are so dramatic," I said. "Nothing this exciting goes on in my neck of the equestrian woods."

"Maybe I should then sell you a jumper," Van Zandt suggested, eyeing my shopping bags, pondering my credit card limit.

"I don't know if I'm ready for that. Looks like a tough crowd. Besides, I don't know any of the trainers."

He took my arm. The courtly gentleman. "Come. I'll introduce you to Jade."

"Swell," I said, looking up at him out the corner of my eye. "I can buy a horse and collect the insurance. One-stop shopping."

Like flipping a switch, Van Zandt's face went from courtly to stormy; the gray eyes as cold as the North Sea, and frighteningly hard. "Don't say such stupid things," he snapped.

I stepped away from him. "It was a joke."

"Everything with you is a joke," he said in disgust.

"And if you can't take one, Van Zandt," I said, "fuck you."

I watched him struggle to put Mr. Hyde back in his box. The mood swing had come so quickly, I couldn't believe it hadn't given him whiplash.

He rubbed a hand across his mouth and made an impatient gesture.

"Fine. It's a joke. Ha ha," he said, still clearly angry. He started toward the tent. "Forget it. Come."

I didn't move. "No. Apologize."

"What?" He looked at me with disbelief. "Don't be silly."

"Keep digging that hole, Van Zandt. I'm stupid and silly, and what else?"

The muscles in his face quivered. He wanted to call me a bitch or worse. I could see it in his eyes.

"Apologize."

"You shouldn't have made the joke," he said. "Come."

"And you should apologize," I countered, fascinated. He seemed incapable of performing the act, and amazed that I was insisting.

"You are being stubborn."

I laughed out loud. "I'm being stubborn?"

"Yes. Come."

"Don't order me like I'm a horse to be moved from one place to another," I said. "You can apologize or you can kiss my ass."

I waited, expecting an explosion, not sure what would happen after it came. Van Zandt looked at me, then looked away, and when he turned back toward me he was smiling as if nothing had happened.

"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.