Dark Horse

8

Unlike me, Sean still enjoyed embarrassing his proper Palm Beach family by occasionally showing up at the charity balls that are the life of Palm Beach society during the winter season. The balls are lavish, over-the-top affairs that cost nearly as much to put on as they raise for their various causes. The net for the charity can be shockingly low, considering the gross, but a good time will be had in the process. If one goes for that sort of thing-designer gowns, designer jewels, the latest in cosmetic surgery, the posturing and the catty mind games of the ridiculously rich. Despite having been raised in that world, I had never had the patience for it.

I found Sean in his closet-which is larger than the average person's bedroom-in an Armani tuxedo, tying his bow tie.

"What's the disease du jour?" I asked.

"It starts with a P."

"Pinkeye?"

"Parkinson's. That's a hot one with the celebs these days. This will be a younger crowd than some of the more traditional diseases." He slipped his tux jacket on and admired himself in the three-way mirror.

I leaned against the marble-topped center island and watched him primp. "One of these years they're going to run out of afflictions."

"I've threatened my mother I'm going to put on a ball for genital herpes," Sean said.

"God knows half the population of Palm Beach could benefit."

"And the other half would catch it at the after-party parties. Want to be my date?"

"To catch herpes?"

"To the ball, Cinderella. Your parents are sure to be there. Double your scandal, double your fun."

The idea of seeing my mother and father was less appealing than going into the Sheriff's Offices had been. At least facing Landry had the potential for something good to come of it.

My mother had come to see me in the hospital a couple of times. The maternal duty of a woman without a maternal bone in her body. She had pushed to adopt a child for reasons that had nothing to do with a love of children. I had been an accessory to her life, like a handbag or a lapdog.

A lapdog from the pound, my heritage was called into question by my father every time I stepped out of line-which was often. He had resented my intrusion on his life. I was a constant reminder of his inability to sire children of his own. My resentment of his feelings had only served to fuel the fires of my rebellion.

I hadn't spoken to my father in over a decade. He had disowned me when I'd left college to become a common cop. An affront to him. A slap in his face. True. And a flimsy excuse to end a relationship that should have been unbreakable. He and I had both seized on it.

"Gee, sorry," I said, spreading my arms wide. "I'm not dressed for it."

Sean took in the old jeans and black turtleneck with a critical eye. "What happened to our fashion plate of the morning?"

"She had a very long day of pissing people off."

"Is that a good thing?"

"We'll see. Squeeze enough pimples, one of them is bound to burst."

"How folksy."

"Did Van Zandt come by?"

He rolled his eyes. "Honey, people like Tomas Van Zandt are the reason I live behind gates. If he came by, I didn't hear about it."

"I guess he's too busy trying to sweet-talk Trey Hughes into spending a few million bucks on horses."

"He'll need them. Have you seen that barn he's building? The Taj Mahal of Wellington."

"I heard something about it."

"Fifty box stalls with crown molding, for God's sake. Four groom's apartments upstairs. Covered arena. Big jumping field."

"Where is it?"

"Ten acres of prime real estate in that new development next to Grand Prix Village: Fairfields."

The name gave me a shock. "Fairfields?"

"Yes," he said, adjusting his French cuffs and checking himself out in the mirror again. "It's going to be a great big gaudy monstrosity that will make his trainer the envy of every jumper jockey on the East Coast. I have to go, darling."

"Wait. A place like you're saying will cost the earth."

"And the moon and the stars."

"Can Trey really live that large off his trust fund?"

"He doesn't have to. His mother left nearly the entire Hughes estate to him."

"Sallie Hughes died?"

"Last year. Fell down the stairs in her home and fractured her skull. So the story goes. You really ought to keep up with the old neighborhood, El," he scolded. Then he kissed my cheek and left.

Fairfields. Bruce Seabright had just that morning been on his way to close a deal at Fairfields.

I don't like or trust coincidence. I don't believe coincidence is an accidental thing. In college I had once attended a lecture by a well-known New Age guru who believed all life at its most basic molecular structure is energy. Everything we do, every thought we have, every emotion we experience, can be broken down to pure energy. Our lives are energy, driving, seeking, running, colliding with the energy of the other people in our small worlds. Energy attracts energy, intent becomes a force of nature, and there is no such thing as coincidence.

When I feel like believing strongly in my theory, I then realize I have to accept that nothing in life can truly be random or accidental. And then I decide I would be better off believing in nothing.

Considering the people involved in Erin Seabright's life, whatever was going on was not positive. Her mother seemed not to have known who Erin was working for, and I could believe that was true. Krystal wouldn't have cared if Erin had been working for the devil himself, so long as her little world wasn't rocked because of it. She probably preferred not to think Erin was her daughter at all. But what about Bruce Seabright? Did he know Trey Hughes? If he knew Hughes, did he then also know Jade? And if he knew either or both of them, how did Erin fit into that picture?

Say Bruce wanted Erin out of his house because of her involvement with Chad. If he knew Hughes-and via Hughes had a connection to Don Jade-he might have gotten her set up with Jade as a means to that end. The more important question was whether or not Bruce Seabright cared about what happened to Erin once she was out of his house. And if he cared, would his caring be a positive or a negative thing? What if he wanted her gone permanently?

These were the thoughts and questions that filled my evening. I paced the guest house, chewing the stubs of my fingernails. Quiet, smooth jazz seeped out of the stereo speakers in the background, a moody sound track to the scenarios playing through my head. I picked up the phone once and dialed Erin's cell phone number, getting an automated voice telling me the customer's mailbox was full. If she had simply moved herself to Ocala, why wouldn't she have picked up her messages by now? Why wouldn't she have called Molly?

I didn't want to waste a day going to Ocala on what my gut told me would be a fool's errand. In the morning I would call a PI up there and give him the pertinent information, along with instructions. If Erin was working at the Ocala show grounds, I would know it in a day, two at the most. I would have the PI page her from the show office, say that she had an important phone call. If someone answered the page, he could verify whether or not it was, in fact, Erin Seabright. A simple plan. Landry could have done the same utilizing local law enforcement.

Asshole. I hoped he was lying awake.

It was after midnight. Sleep was nowhere in sight for me. I hadn't had a real night's sleep in years-partly because of my state of mind, partly because of the low-level chronic pain the accident had left me with. I didn't wonder what the lack of sleep was doing to my body or to my mind, for that matter. I didn't care. I'd gotten used to it. At least tonight I wasn't dwelling on thoughts of the mistakes I'd made or how I should pay for those mistakes.

I grabbed a jacket and left the house. The night was cool, a storm blowing across the Everglades toward Wellington. Lightning backlit the clouds to the far west.

I drove down Pierson, past the truck entrance to the Equestrian Club, past the extravagant stables of Grand Prix Village, made a turn and found the stone entrance gates of Fairfields. A sign showed the layout of the development in eight parcels ranging in size from five to ten acres. Three parcels were marked "Sold." Gracious beauty for exclusive equestrian facilities was promised, and a number was listed for Gryphon Development, Inc.

The stone columns were up, and a guardhouse had been constructed, but the iron gates had yet to be installed. I followed the winding drive, my headlights illuminating weeds and scrub. Security lights glowed white at two building sites. Even in the dead of night I had no trouble identifying which of the two properties belonged to Trey Hughes.

The stable was up. Its silhouette resembled a big Kmart. A huge, two-story rectangle that ran parallel to the road, flaunting its size. It stood back maybe thirty yards from the chain-link construction fence. The gate was chained and padlocked.

I pulled into the drive as far as the gate allowed and sat there trying to take in as much as I could. My headlights bathed a piece of earth-moving equipment, and revealed torn ground and mounded piles of dirt. Beyond the stable on the near end I could just make out what must have been the construction boss's office trailer. In front of the stables, a large sign advertised the construction company, proud to be building Lucky Dog Farm.

I could only ballpark the cost of the place. Ten acres this near the show grounds was worth a fortune with nothing on it. A facility the likes of what Trey Hughes was putting up had to go two, maybe three million just for the buildings. And that would be for horse facilities alone. Like Grand Prix Village, there would be no stately homes in Fairfields. The owners of these stables had posh homes at the Polo Club or on the island or both. The Hughes family had a beachfront estate on Blossom Way, near the exclusive Palm Beach Bath and Tennis Club. Trey himself had had a mansion in the Polo Club when I'd last known of him. Now he had it all, thanks to Sallie Hughes taking a wrong step on the stair.

Lucky dog, indeed. Rid of the woman Trey used to call The Dominatriarch, and unfettered access to an obscene fortune in one simple fall. That idea writhed in the back of my mind like a snake in the shadows.

After speaking with Sean, I had gone online to find any stories on Sallie Hughes' death, and found nothing but her obituary. No story of any investigation.

Of course, there wouldn't be a story. How unseemly to allow such things in the papers, my mother would have said. The newspaper on the island was for social news and announcements. Not for such dirty business as death and police investigations. The newspaper my mother read was printed on glossy stock with ink that wouldn't rub off on the reader's hands. Clean in fact and in content.

The Post-printed in West Palm Beach (where the common folk live)-reported Sallie Hughes had died in her home at the age of eighty-two.

However it had happened, Trey Hughes was now a very fat golden goose. There were sure to be a few people willing to do him a little favor like getting rid of a jumper with more heart than talent. It didn't matter how much money Trey already had. Another quarter of a million was always welcome.

Don Jade had to be at the head of that list of helpful hopefuls. What a sweet deal for Jade, or any trainer: walking into a barn like this one, the kind of place that would give him legitimacy again and draw still more clients with bottomless pockets.

I wondered about the tension I'd sensed between the two men that morning. Trey Hughes could now afford to put nearly any big-name trainer he wanted in his stable. Why had he gone with Don Jade-a man whose reputation was based more on scandal than on success. A man with a reputation for doing bad deeds and getting away with them…

Whatever had put him there, Don Jade was in the catbird seat. That had to make him the envy of a lot of bitterly jealous people.

Michael Berne came to mind. I had recognized the name as soon as Van Zandt had blabbed it that morning. Berne had been mentioned in Stellar's obituary in the online magazine Horses Daily. He'd had the ride on Stellar before Jade, with only limited success in the showring. Then Jade got the horse. Got the horse, got the owner, got the Taj Mahal of Wellington. No wonder Berne was angry. He hadn't just lost a paycheck when Stellar had been led out of his barn. He'd lost a big-time meal ticket.

He wasn't just Jade's rival, as Van Zandt had said, he was an enemy.

An enemy could be a valuable source of information.

I drove back to the equestrian center, wanting time to prowl without having to worry about any of Jade's crowd seeing me. I wanted to find Berne's stable. If I could get a phone number off his stalls, I would be able to set up a meeting somewhere we weren't likely to be caught by any Jade confederates.

The guard came out of the gatehouse looking bored and unhappy.

"It is very late," he said in heavily accented English.

I heaved a sigh. "Tell me about it. We've got a horse with colic. I drew the short straw."

He frowned at me as if he suspected I might have just insulted him.

"A sick horse," I explained. "I have night watch, like you."

"Oh, yes." He nodded then. "I understand. I am very sorry to hear. Good luck with that, miss."

"Thank you."

He didn't bother to ask my name or what barn number this phantom horse was in. I had a parking pass and a believable story. That was enough.

I parked back in The Meadows, not wanting anyone's attention on my car. With my Maglite in hand and my gun in the back of my jeans, I walked the aisles of the tent barns, looking for Michael Berne's name, hoping not to run afoul of someone's groom or a roving security guard.

The storm was rolling closer. The wind was coming up, making tent tops billow and flap, making horses nervous. I kept my light low, looking at stall cards and emergency numbers, and still managed to spook some horses, sending them spinning around their small quarters, eyes rolling white. Others nickered at me, hoping for something to eat.

I cut the light as I walked the dogleg from The Meadows to the next set of tents. If I was lucky, Berne's horses were stabled relatively near Jade's. Their run-in had taken place at the schooling ring nearest Jade's barn. Maybe that was Berne's schooling area too. If I was unlucky, Berne had gone out of his way to pick a fight with Jade, and I would have to walk forty stables before I found what I wanted.

A gust swept in from the west, shaking the trees. Thunder rumbled overhead. I ducked into tent twenty-two and started checking names.

A quarter of the way down the first row I stopped and listened. The same sounds as in the other tents: horses moving, nickering, kicking against the pipes that framed the stalls. Only these sounds weren't coming from the horses around me. The disturbance was a couple of rows over. The creak and groan of a stall door opening. The shuffling sound of hooves moving through deep bedding. A horse whinnied loudly. The horse in the stall nearest me rushed its door and whinnied back.

I flicked the light up at it to see a bay, head high, ears pricked, white-rimmed eyes focused past me, past the horse across the aisle. The horse whinnied again and spun around. Another down the row followed suit.

I doused my light and crept down the aisle to the back end of the tent, the Maglite held like a club in my hand. The flashlight weighed three pounds. When I'd been in uniform I had once used this flashlight to defend my life against a 270-pound biker on PCP. He'd ended up in the hospital with a concussion.

I didn't draw my weapon. I wanted to see, not confront. The Glock was my last line of defense.

The wind howled and the tent top swelled upward like a balloon wanting to take flight. The thick ropes holding the tent stakes squeaked and groaned. I slipped around the end stalls, staying close to the wall. The land behind the tent dropped off sharply to ground that had been cleared and burned over the summer, being made ready for more tents, more schooling rings. It looked like a moonscape. The smell of ash flavored the air.

As I started to ease around the end stall to the next aisle, I heard a door swing back on its hinges, and there was a sharp, distinct sound that didn't register until the next thing had already happened.

Like a specter running from the otherworld, a huge, ghostly gray horse barreled down the aisle straight at me. He was nearly on top of me before I could react, knocking me backward. I scrambled to keep my feet moving, to throw myself out of his way. A tent spike caught my right ankle and jerked my leg out from under me, dumping me to the ground with a jarring thud. I tried to cover my head and pull myself into a ball, every inch of me braced for the horrible strike of steel-shod hooves and the driving weight of a half-ton animal coming down on soft tissue and fragile bones. But the gray leapt over me, then soared over the edge of the embankment. I scrambled to my knees and watched in horror as he stumbled hard down the bank, going down on his knees, hind legs still running. He squealed in fright, flailing to right himself, dragging himself up and running on into the night.

Pushing to my feet, I turned back toward the tent as another horse ran out. Dark with a blaze. Whinnying as it ran after the gray. I dove to the side as he bolted past.

A slap on the ass.

The sound I'd heard before: the flat of a hand slapping a horse's rump.

I ran back into the tent. The rest of the barn was in an uproar by now, horses screaming and banging in their stalls. The flimsy pipe-and-canvas stalls shaking and rattling. The tent walls shuddering as the wind kicked at them. I shouted, hoping to frighten the perpetrator with discovery and send him running.

Another horse pranced out of an open stall, saw me, snorted and bolted past, knocking me into the door of the stall behind me. Then that door shoved forward, pushing me with it, knocking me to my knees.

I scuttled ahead like a crab, reaching for the door across the way to pull myself up. The horse came out of the stall behind me like a rodeo bronc, a raw bellow coming from it as it bucked and kicked out at me. I felt the air whoosh past my ear as the hoof just missed its mark.

Before I could start to turn around, a smelly, suffocating blackness engulfed my head and upper body and I was shoved forward against a stall. I tried to claw at the blanket, but couldn't get my arms up. I wanted air. I wanted what little light there was. I wanted to be free to fight my assailant, who jerked me backward, then sideways, one way and then the other.

Dizziness swirled through my head and I staggered and stumbled and went down on one knee. Then something struck hard, hitting me across the back with enough force to make me see stars.

On the third blow I fell forward and lay still. My breath was a hot rasp in the shallowest part of my lungs. I couldn't hear anything but a roaring in my head, and I wondered if I would know what was happening before the next loose horse ran over me, crushing me beneath its hooves. I tried to push myself up and couldn't. The messages scattered somewhere between my brain and my nerve pathways. Pain kicked me in the back and I choked and coughed, needing air, unable to take a deep breath.

A moment passed. No horses trampled me. No pitchfork impaled me. I figured my attacker had run, which left me in a very bad place at a very bad time. Horses were running loose. If someone came rushing into this barn and found me…

I tried again to gather my strength and managed to shove the horse blanket off my head. Gulping air, fighting nausea, I grabbed hold of the stall door and dragged myself to my feet. Dizzy, the ground seeming to pitch beneath me, I stumbled out the back of the tent and fell down again.

The Maglite lay on the ground where it had landed when the first horse had hit me, its beam a yellow beacon in the dark. I scooped it up, grabbed hold of a tent rope, and pulled myself up.

Horses were running in the cleared ground down the slope. Some were running between this tent and the next. The wind was blowing harder, carrying the first pelting drops of rain. I heard someone shout in the distance. Time to go.

I stepped inside the tent just far enough to flick the beam across the front of an open stall.

In Case of Emergency Phone Michael Berne…

"Don't move. Drop the flashlight."

The voice came from behind me on a beam of light that spilled around my shoulders. I kept the Maglite in my hand, but held my arms away from my body.

"I heard a commotion," I said, turning slightly. "Someone was in here opening stall doors."

"Yeah, right," he said sarcastically. "Guess who. Drop the flashlight."

"It wasn't me," I said, turning a little more. "I tried to stop them. I've got the bruises to prove it."

"I'm not gonna tell you again, lady. Drop the flashlight."

"I want to see who you are. How do I know you're not the person who did this?"

"I'm with security."

I didn't find that reassuring. Security for the show grounds was contracted out to a private company that lowballed the bid for the job. The staff was probably as reliable and well trained as the people who let lunatics get on commercial airliners with guns and knives. For all I knew, half of them were convicted felons. With my back to him, I couldn't be sure he was even wearing the uniform.

"Let me see you."

He huffed an impatient sigh. Before he could say no, I turned around and hit him full in the face with the beam from the Maglite.

I noted his clothes second. I noted his gun first.

"Is that part of the uniform?" I asked.

"It's part of my uniform." He made a motion with it. "Enough with the questions. Cut the light and give it to me. Let's go."

I did as instructed, more than willing to get out in the open where I knew there were other people around. I considered and rejected the idea of making a break for it. I didn't want people looking for me, my description and sketch on the front page of the newspaper. Nor did I want to get shot in the back. Playing along for the moment could offer an opportunity to learn something.

Outside, people were calling, horses were whinnying. I could hear hoofbeats on the hard-packed road. The guard herded me to a golf cart parked on the side of tent nineteen-Jade's barn.

I wondered how long the cart had been parked there. I wondered how easy it would be to buy a guy like this to open some stall doors. Working nights for peanuts guarding horses worth more than the average man would make in a lifetime might alter a person's perspective of right and wrong.

I slid onto the passenger's side of the bench seat, the seat wet and slippery as the rain came harder. The guard kept his gun in his left hand as he started the cart and backed it around. I shifted positions, turning slightly toward him, and surreptitiously touched the Glock, still secure in the back of my jeans, beneath my jacket and turtleneck.

"Where are we going?"

He didn't answer. A walkie-talkie crackled on his belt. Other guards radioing about the loose horses. He didn't get on the air to tell anyone he'd apprehended me. I didn't like that. We started down the road toward the main part of the show grounds, a ghost town at two in the morning.

"I'll want to speak to your supervisor," I said with authority. "And someone will need to call Detective James Landry with the Sheriff's Office."

That turned his head.

"Why?"

I took my turn not answering. Let him wonder. We passed other guards, other people running through the rain to join in the fun of trying to catch half a dozen hot-blooded horses drunk on freedom.

We drove through the maze of tents and down a row of deserted retail shops. The rain came now in sheets. We drove farther and farther away from any source of help. My heart rate increased a beat. Adrenaline was like a narcotic in my bloodstream, the prospect of danger intoxicating and exciting. I stared at the security guard and wondered what he would think if he knew that. Most people would find it disturbing.

He pulled the golf cart alongside one of the big trailers that housed the various show grounds management offices and cut the engine. We clattered up the metal stairs and the guard ushered me inside. A heavyset man stood beside a metal desk, listening to the noise coming over a walkie-talkie the size of a brick. He had a throat like a bullfrog: a sack of flesh wider than his head, spilling over the collar of his shirt. He wore the blue security uniform too, with a couple of extra pins on the chest. Decorated for meritorious ass-sitting and delegating above and beyond the call, I guessed. He scowled at me as I stood dripping water all over the floor.

"She's the one," the guard said. "I caught her opening stall doors."

I looked him in the face and said with just enough point to make my meaning crystal clear: "Any more little surprises like that in your pocket?"

He had stuffed the gun. I could see him struggle with the notion that he'd blown it showing me the thing. I had something to use against him. He wasn't supposed to be carrying on the job. He probably didn't have a permit for it either. If that was true and I reported him to the police, there was a good chance he'd lose his job at the very least. I could see on his face all these things were just now occurring to him.

If he'd been overly bright he wouldn't have been working dog watch in a rent-a-cop uniform.

"You caught me standing in a barn with a flashlight," I said. "I was trying to help. Same as you."

"You got something against Michael Berne?" the bullfrog asked. He had the thick drawl of a panhandle Floridian, where the Sunshine State and the Deep South rub loins, as it were.

"I've never met Michael Berne, though I did see him having a loud, threatening argument with Don Jade this morning. You might want to find out where Mr. Jade is right now."

The supervisor stared at me. "Berne is on his way," he said. "And a couple of deputies. Have a seat, Miss…?"

I didn't answer and I didn't sit, though my back was aching like a son of a bitch from the beating I'd taken.

"You'll need to tell the deputies to treat that stall area as a crime scene," I said. "In addition to letting the horses loose, your perp assaulted me when I tried to run him off. They'll find a pitchfork or a broom-something with a long handle-that may have his prints on it. I'll want to press charges. And I'll want to go to the emergency room for an examination, and to have them take photographs of my bruises. I may sue. What kind of management does this place have if they can't keep people or animals safe?"

Bullfrog looked at me as if he'd never seen one of my kind before. "Who are you?"

"I'm not telling you my name."

"I need your name, miss. I have to make a report."

"That's a problem then, because I'm not telling you," I said. "I don't have to tell you anything. You're not an officer of the court or of the government, and therefore you have no right to demand information of me."

"Deputies are on the way," he said by way of a threat.

"That's fine. I'll be happy to go with them, though they have no grounds to arrest me. Standing in a barn aisle is not a crime that I'm aware of."

"Bud says you let them horses loose."

"I think you should ask Bud again what he saw."

He looked at Bud. "Was she letting them loose or not?"

Bud looked constipated, unable to tell the lie he wanted to tell either to cover his own ass or to grab a little glory with his boss. "She was right there."

"So were you," I pointed out. "How do we know you didn't open those doors?"

"That's ridiculous," Bullfrog said. "Why would he do something like that?"

"I could only speculate. Money. Maliciousness. Mental illness."

"Maybe those motives all apply to you."

"Not in this particular instance."

"You have horses here on the grounds, Miss-?"

"I'm through speaking with you now," I announced. "May I use your phone to call my attorney?"

He squinted at me. "No!"

I sat then in a straight chair beside the desk. Bullfrog's radio crackled. The gate guard announcing the arrival of the sheriff's deputies. A stroke of luck. I didn't want to meet Michael Berne in these circumstances. Bullfrog instructed the gate guard to send the radio car to the security office.

"Letting them horses loose is a serious crime," he said to me. "You could do time for that."

"No, I couldn't, because I didn't let the horses loose. The perpetrator might be charged with malicious mischief, which is a misdemeanor. There would be a fine and maybe community service. It's nothing compared to, say, illegally carrying a concealed weapon," I said, looking at the scowling Bud.

"I thought you said you were through talking," he said.

I smoothed my wet hair back with my hands and stood up as a car door slammed outside the trailer. The deputy came in looking like he'd been awakened from a sound sleep to answer the call.

"What's up, Marsh? Somebody let some nags loose? This her?"

"She was in the vicinity," Bullfrog said. "She may have information about the crime."

The deputy looked at me, unimpressed. "Do you, ma'am?"

"I'll speak directly to Detective Landry," I said.

"What's your name, ma'am?"

I moved past him, going to the door, checking out his name tag as I passed. "We'll talk in the car, Deputy Saunders. Let's get going."

He looked at Bullfrog, who shook his head and said, "Good luck with that, son. She's a pistol."