Dark Horse

13

My God, El, you look like one of Robert Palmer's all-girl eighties' bands."

I had put the top down for the drive home, hoping the air would clear my head. Instead, the sun had baked my brain, and the wind had swept my hair up into a 'do from a fashion shoot for the tragically hip. I wanted a drink and a nap in the sun by the pool, but knew I would allow myself neither.

Sean leaned down and kissed my cheek, then scolded me peevishly. "You stole my car."

"It matched my outfit."

I got out of the Mercedes and handed him the keys. He was in breeches and boots, and a tight black T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to show off biceps the size of grapefruits.

"Robert must be coming to teach you," I said.

"Why do you say that?" he asked, irritated.

"The muscle shirt. Darling, you're really so transparent."

"Well, meow, meow. Aren't we catty today?"

"A good beating will do that to me."

"I'm sure you deserved it. Invite me next time. I'd love to watch."

We walked together across the stable yard toward the guest house. Sean looked at me out of the corner of his eye and frowned.

"Are you all right?"

I gave the question undue weight and consideration, instead of tossing off the usual meaningless answer. What an odd moment to be struck by insight, I thought. But I stopped and acknowledged it within myself.

"Yes," I said. "I am."

As tangled and trying as this case was becoming, as unwilling a participant as I'd been, it felt good to use the old skills. It felt good to be necessary to something.

"Good," he said. "Now go powder your nose and transform yourself again, Cinderella. Your alter ego has company coming."

"Who?"

"Van Zandt." He spat the name out as if it were a bitter thing with a pit in it. "Don't say I never sacrificed for you."

"My own mother wouldn't do as much."

"You'd better believe that, honey. Your mother wouldn't let that slimebag in the service entrance. You've got twenty minutes to curtain."

I took a shower and dressed in one of the outfits I had purchased at the show grounds: a jewel-red wraparound skirt made from an Indian sari, and a yellow linen blouse. An armload of bracelets, a pair of thick-soled sandals, and tortoiseshell shades, and I was Elle Stevens, Dilettante.

Van Zandt had just arrived as I cut through the stables to the parking area. He was dressed to impress in the uniform of the Palm Beach patriarch: pink shirt, tan slacks, blue blazer, his signature ascot at his throat.

As he spotted me, he came toward me with his arms outstretched. My long-lost old friend.

"Elle!"

"Z."

I suffered through his cheek-kissing routine, bracing my hands against his chest so he couldn't embrace me.

"Three times," he reminded me, stepping back. "Like the Dutch."

"Sounds to me like an excuse to grope," I said with half a smile. "Clever lech. What other cultures do you steal from in order to cop a feel in the guise of good manners?"

He smiled the smarmy/suave smile. "That all depends on the lady."

"And I thought you'd come to see my horses," Sean said. "Am I just a beard?"

Van Zandt looked at him, puzzled. "Are you a beard? You don't even have a beard."

"It's a figure of speech, Z.," I explained. "You have to get used to Sean. His mother sent him to drama camp as a child. He can't help himself."

"Ah. An actor!"

"Aren't we all?" Sean said innocently. "I've asked my girl to saddle Tino-the gelding I was telling you about. I'd like to get eighty thousand for him. He's talented, but I've got too many that are. If you have any clients looking…"

"I may have," Van Zandt said. "I've brought my camera. I'll make a video to send to a client I have coming down from Virginia. And when you're ready to look for something new, I'll be happy to show you the best horses in Europe. Bring Elle along with you. We'll have a wonderful time."

He looked at me, taking in the skirt. "You are not riding today, Elle?"

"Too much fun last night," I said. "I'm recuperating. Sean and I went to the Pinkeye Ball."

"Elle can't resist a worthy cause," Sean said. "Or a glass of champagne."

"You missed all the excitement at the show grounds," Van Zandt said, pleased to have the gossip. "Horses being turned loose. Someone was attacked. Unbelievable."

"And you were there?" I asked. "In the dead of night? Might the police want to speak with you?"

"Of course I wasn't there," he said irritably. "How could you think I would do a thing like that?"

I shrugged. "Z., I have no idea what you might or might not do. I do know you can't take a joke. Really, these moods of yours are getting tedious, and I've only known you two days," I said, letting my irritation show. "You expect me to want to ride around Europe in a car with you and your multiple personalities? I think I'd rather stay home and hit my thumb with a hammer over and over."

He splayed a hand across his chest as if I'd wounded him. "I am a sensitive person. I want only good things for everyone. I don't go around accusing people for a joke."

"Don't take it personally, Tomas," Sean told him as we neared the barn. "Elle sharpens her tongue on a whetstone every night before bed."

"All the better to fillet you with, my dear."

Van Zandt looked at me, pouting. "It's not a sharp tongue that attracts a husband."

"Husband? Why would I want one of those?" I asked. "Had one once. Threw him back."

Sean grinned. "Why be a wife when you can have a life?"

"Ex is best," I agreed. "Half of the money, none of the headache."

Van Zandt wagged a finger at me, trying to rally a sense of humor. "You need taming, Miss Tigress. You would then sing a different song."

"Bring a whip and a chair for that job," Sean suggested.

Van Zandt looked like he'd already imagined that and then some. He smiled again. "I know how best to treat a lady."

From the corner of my eye I saw Irina coming. A flash of long bare legs and clunky hiking boots. I saw she had something in her hand. She looked angry, and I assumed-wrongly-angry with Sean for being late or upsetting her schedule, or one of the fifty other transgressions that regularly put Irina in a snit. She stopped five feet from us, shouted something nasty in Russian, and flung the thing in her hand.

Van Zandt cried out in surprise, just managing to bring an arm up and deflect the flight path of the steel horseshoe before it struck him in the head.

Sean jumped back in horror. "Irina!"

The groom launched herself at Van Zandt like a missile, screaming: "Pig! You filthy pig!"

I stood, flat-footed, watching in amazement as Irina pummeled him with her fists. She was slender as a reed, but strong as a teamster, the muscles in her arms clearly delineated. Van Zandt staggered backward and sideways, trying to shake her off, but she clung to him like a limpet.

"Crazy bitch!" he shouted. "Get her off! Get her off!"

Sean jumped to, grabbing hold of the girl's blond ponytail with one hand and catching a wildly swinging arm with the other. "Irina! Stop it!"

"Son of bitch! Stinking son of bitch!" she shouted as Sean peeled her off Van Zandt and pulled her backward down the aisle. She rattled off another slur in Russian and violently spat at the Belgian.

"She's crazy!" Van Zandt shouted, wiping blood from his lip. "She should be locked up!"

"I take it you two have met," I said dryly.

"I've never seen her before in my life! Crazy Russian cunt!"

Irina lunged against Sean's hold on her, the look on her face venomous with hate. "Next time I tear out your throat and shit in your lungs, cur! For Sasha!"

Van Zandt backed away looking stricken, his perfect hair standing up in all directions.

"Irina!" Sean shouted, appalled.

"Why don't we ladies retire for a moment?" I suggested, taking Irina by the arm and steering her toward the lounge.

Irina snarled and made a rude gesture in the direction of Van Zandt, but came with me.

We went into the lounge, a room paneled in mahogany and fitted with a bar and leather-upholstered chairs. Irina paced, muttering expletives. I went behind the bar, took a bottle of Stoli from the freezer, and poured three fingers in a heavy crystal tumbler.

"Here's to you, girlfriend." I raised the glass in a toast, then handed it to her. She drank it like water. "I'm sure he had it coming, but would you care to fill me in?"

She fumed and called Van Zandt more names, then heaved a sigh and calmed herself. Just like that: instant composure. "That is not a nice man," she said.

"The guy who delivers feed is not a nice man, but you've never gone to such an effort for him. Who is Sasha?"

She took a cigarette from a box on the bar, lit it, and took a long, deep drag. She exhaled slowly, her face tilted at an elegant angle. She might have been Greta Garbo in a past life.

"Sasha Kulak. A friend from Russia. She went to work for that pig in Belgium because he made all kinds of big promises. He would pay her and let her ride good horses and they would be like partners and he would make her a star in the horse shows. Stinking liar. All he wanted was to have her. He got her to Belgium and thought he owned her. He thought she should fuck him and be grateful. She said no. She was a beautiful girl. Why would she fuck an old man like him?"

"Why would anyone?"

"He was a monster to her. He kept her in a gypsy camper with no heat. She had to use the toilet in his stables and he spied on her through holes in the walls."

"Why didn't she leave?"

"She was eighteen and she was afraid. She was in a foreign country where she knew no one and could not speak their stupid language. She didn't know what to do."

"She couldn't go to the police?"

Irina looked at me like I was stupid.

"Finally, she went to bed with him," she said, shrugging in that way Americans can never mimic. "Still he was terrible to her. He gave her herpes. After a while she stole some money and ran away when they were looking for horses in Poland.

"He called her family and made threats because of the money. He told them lies about Sasha. When she came home, her father threw her out into the street."

"He believed Van Zandt over his daughter?"

She made a face. "They are two alike, those men."

"And what became of Sasha?"

"She killed herself."

"Oh, God, Irina. I'm sorry."

"Sasha was fragile, like a glass doll." She smoked a little more, contemplating. "If a man did this thing to me, I would not kill myself. I would cut off his penis and feed it to the pigs."

"Very effective."

"Then I would kill him."

"A little luckier in your aim with that horseshoe and you might have," I said.

Irina poured another three fingers of the Stoli and sipped at it. I thought about Van Zandt abusing his authority over a young girl that way. Most adults would have had a difficult time dealing with his mercurial temperament. An eighteen-year-old girl would have been in way over her head. He deserved exactly what Irina had imagined for him.

"I'd like to say I'll hold him down while you kick him," I said. "But Sean will expect you to apologize, Irina."

"He can kiss my Russian ass."

"You needn't be sincere."

She thought about that. If it had been me, I would still have told Sean to kiss my ass. But I couldn't afford to alienate Van Zandt, especially not in the light of what Irina had told me. Her friend Sasha was dead. Maybe Erin Seabright was still alive.

"Come on," I said before she could have a chance to set her mind against it. "Get it over with. You can kill him on your day off."

I led the way out. Sean and Van Zandt were standing on the grass near the mounting block. Van Zandt was still red in the face, rubbing his arm where the horseshoe had struck him.

Irina unhooked Tino from the grooming stall and led the gelding out.

"Sean, I apologize for my outburst," Irina said, handing him the reins. "I am sorry to have embarrassed you." She looked at Van Zandt with cold disdain. "I apologize for attacking you on Mr. Avadon's property."

Van Zandt said nothing, just stood there scowling at her. The girl looked at me as if to say, See what a swine he is? She walked away, climbed the stairs to the gazebo at the end of the arena, and draped herself on a chair.

"The czarina," I said.

Van Zandt sulked. "I should call the police."

"But I don't think you will."

"She should be locked up."

"Like you locked up her friend?" I asked innocently, wishing I could stick a knife between his ribs.

His mouth was trembling as if he might cry. "You would believe her lies about me? I have done nothing wrong. I gave that girl a job, a place to live-"

Herpes…

"She stole from me," he went on. "I treated her like a daughter, and she stole from me and fucked me in the ass, telling lies about me!"

The victim yet again. Everyone was against him. His motives were always pure. I didn't point out to him that in America if a man treated his daughter the way he had treated Sasha, he would go to prison and come out a registered sex offender.

"How ungrateful," I said.

"You believe her," he accused.

"I believe in minding my own business, and your sex life is not and never will be my business."

He crossed his arms and pouted, staring down at his tasseled loafers. Sean had mounted and was in the arena warming up.

"Forget about Irina," I said. "She's only hired help. Who cares what grooms have to say? They should be like good children: seen and not heard."

"These girls should know their place," he muttered darkly as he unzipped his camera case and took out a video camera. "Or be put in it."

A shiver ran down my spine like a cold, bony finger.

As we stood and watched Sean work the horse, I knew neither of us had our mind on the quality of the animal. Van Zandt's mood had gone to a very dark place. He had to be thinking about damage control to his reputation, probably believing Irina-and maybe I-would spread the Sasha story around Wellington and he would lose clients. Or maybe he was simply fantasizing about strangling Irina with his bare hands, the bones in her throat cracking like small dry twigs. Irina sat in the gazebo smoking, one long leg swinging over the arm of the big wicker chair, never taking her glare off Van Zandt.

My thoughts were running in another direction. I wondered if Tomas Van Zandt had thought Erin Seabright should be glad to accept his advances, or if he had "put her in her place." I thought about my feeling that Erin had dumped Chad, and wondered if Van Zandt or someone like him might have made her promises, then broken them in the most terrible way. And I wondered again if all these terrible possibilities had been made possible by Bruce Seabright.

Erin hadn't fit his idea of the perfect daughter, and now she was out of his way. If she turned up dead, would he feel a moment's guilt? If she never turned up at all, would he feel a second's responsibility? Or would he be pleased for a job well done?

I thought about my own father and wondered if he would have been relieved to have his ungrateful daughter simply disappear. Probably. I had loudly opposed everything he was, everything he stood for. I'd thumbed my nose at him and taken up a profession putting away the people he defended in court, the people who provided for the lifestyle I'd grown up in. Then again, maybe I had disappeared for him. I hadn't seen or spoken to him in years. For all I knew, I had ceased to exist in his mind.

At least my father hadn't set me up for doom. That had been my own doing entirely.

If Bruce had set Erin up with Trey Hughes, and Hughes had set her up with Jade, and via Jade she had been exposed to Van Zandt, Erin had never really had any say in her destiny. The irony was that she had thought she was gaining independence, taking control of her life. But the longer she was missing, the longer the odds were she would come out of this with a life at all.

By the time Sean had finished showing Tino, Sean's coach had arrived to teach him, leaving me to see Van Zandt off the property.

"Do you think your client from Virginia will be interested?" I asked.

"Lorinda Carlton?" He gave the Continental shrug. "I will tell her to be, so she will be," he said. The word of Van Zandt, amen. "She's not a talented rider, but she has a hundred thousand dollars to spend. All I have to do is convince her this horse is her destiny and everyone will live happily ever after."

Except the woman who bought a horse she couldn't handle. Then Van Zandt would convince her to sell that one and buy another. He would make money on both deals, and the cycle would begin again.

"You shouldn't reveal your trade secrets," I said. "You'll disillusion me."

"You are a very smart woman, Elle. You know the ways of this horse world. It's a hard business. People are not always nice. But I take care of my clients. I am loyal to them and I expect them to be loyal to me. Lorinda trusts me. She gives me the use of her townhouse while I am here for the season. See how grateful my friends are to me?"

"That's one word for it," I said dryly.

And he would blithely betray the trust of his grateful friend so he could foster a more lucrative relationship with Sean Avadon. He told me without batting an eye, as if it were nothing to him, and in the next breath he spoke of loyalty as if he were the poster boy for personal virtue.

"Are you free for dinner, Elle?" he asked. "I'll take you to The Players. We can talk about what kind of horse I want for you."

I found the suggestion revolting. I was exhausted and in pain and fed up to my eyeballs with this nauseating character and his bipolar mood swings. I wanted to do what Irina had done, jump on him and pummel him and call him every vile name I could think of. Instead, I said, "Not tonight, Z. I have a headache."

He looked hurt and angry again. "I am not a monster. I have integrity. I have character. People in this business, they get angry, they spread rumors. You should know better than to believe them."

I held up a hand. "Stop. Just stop, will you? Jesus. I'm tired. My head hurts. I want to spend my evening in the Jacuzzi with no one talking at me. As impossible as this might be for you to grasp, it's not about you."

He didn't believe that, but he changed tack at least. He stood straighter and nodded to himself. "You will see, Elle Stevens. I will do for you. I will make you a champion," he said. "You will see what kind of man I am."

In the end, that was the one prophecy he made that actually came true.