Dark Horse

22

When I arrived at the Jade stalls there was a major cleanup under way. Paris was supervising as the Guatemalan man carried articles of clothing out of a stall and dumped them into a muck cart. She alternated snapping at the man with snapping at someone on the other end of her cell phone.

"What do you mean clothing isn't covered? Do you know what this stuff is worth?"

I looked at the pile in the muck cart. White and buff show breeches; an olive green three-season wool jacket, probably custom-made; custom tailored shirts. All of it worth a lot of money. All of it stained with manure.

"What happened?" I asked.

Paris clicked her phone shut, furious, dark eyes burning with anger. "That rotten, ugly, stupid, fat girl."

"Your groom?"

"Not only has she not shown up, not gotten the horses groomed, did not clean the stalls yesterday when Javier was gone; she did this." She thrust a finger at the pile of ruined clothing. "Spiteful, hateful, little-"

"She's dead," I said.

Paris pulled up mid-tirade and looked at me like I'd sprung a second head. "What? What are you talking about?"

"Haven't you heard? They found a body in the manure pile at barn forty. It's Jill."

She looked at me, then looked around as if there might be a hidden camera somewhere. "You're kidding, right?"

"No. I drove in the back way. The cops are there now. I'm sure they'll be here soon enough. They know she worked for Don."

"Oh, great," she said, thinking about the inconvenience, not the girl. I saw her catch herself mentally and put on an appropriate expression of concern. "Dead. That's terrible. I can't believe it. What happened to her? Did she have an accident?"

"I don't suppose she accidentally buried herself in horseshit," I said. "She must have been murdered. I wouldn't move anything around here if I were you. God knows what the detectives will think."

"Well, they can't think any of us would kill her," she said huffily. "She's the only groom we had left."

As if that was the only reason not to kill her.

"Why do you think she made this mess?" I asked, pointing at the clothes.

"Spite, I'm sure. Don said he saw her at The Players last night and he reprimanded her for something. Oh, my God," she said, eyes widening. "You don't think she was killed here, do you?"

I shrugged. "Where else would she have been?"

"I don't know. She might have been meeting a guy in one of the other barns or something."

"She had a boyfriend?"

Paris made a face. "She talked about guys like she was the village slut. I never believed she had one."

"Looks like she had one last night," I said. "You jumper people have all the excitement. Murder, mayhem, intrigue…"

Javier asked her in Spanish if he should keep cleaning the stall. Paris looked in through the bars. I looked too. The stall was a mess of churned-up muck and pine shavings and leather oil.

"Is that blood?" I asked, pointing. There were some drops that might have been blood splashed on curls of white pine bedding. It might have belonged to the dead girl. It might have belonged to her killer. It might have belonged to the horse that normally occupied the stall. Only a lab would tell us for sure. Who knew what else had already been dug out of the stall and hauled away.

Paris stared. "I don't know. Maybe. Oh, this is just too creepy for words."

"Where's Don?"

"Off buying clothes. He has to show today."

"I wouldn't count on that. He saw Jill last night. She came here and did this, and now she's dead. I think the cops are going to want to talk to him."

Paris found her way to a director's chair with JADE embroidered on the seat back. "Elle, this is just horrible," she said, sitting down, as if she suddenly didn't have the strength to stand. "You don't think Don could have…?"

"It doesn't matter what I think. I barely know the man. What do you think? Is he capable of something like that?"

She stared off into the middle distance. "I want to say no. I've never seen him violent. He's always so in control…"

"I heard he'd been in trouble for killing horses for the insurance money."

"Nothing was ever proven."

"What about Stellar?"

"That was an accident."

"Are you sure? What did the claims adjuster say?"

She put her head in her hands for a moment, then smoothed them back over her golden hair. On her right hand she wore an antique emerald and diamond ring that looked to be worth a fortune.

"The company will look for any reason not to pay," she said with disgust. "Because Don's involved. It's fine for owners to pay thousands in premiums, but God forbid they actually file a claim."

"But if it was an accident…"

"The adjuster called this morning and claimed the postmortem on Stellar turned up a sedative in the horse's bloodstream. It's ridiculous, but if they can deny the claim, I know they will. Trey is going to be furious when he hears."

And there goes the million-dollar stable, I thought. Even if Hughes had wanted the horse dead, he didn't want to be caught involved with insurance fraud. He would blame Jade and fire him.

"Was there any reason the horse would have had anything in his system?" I asked.

Paris shook her head. "No. We have the stuff around, of course. Rompun, acepromazine, Banamine-every stable has that stuff on hand. A horse colics, we give him Banamine. A horse is difficult having his feet worked on by the farrier, we give him a little ace. It's no big deal. But there wasn't any reason for Stellar to have anything in his system."

"Do you think Jill might have known something about it?" I asked.

"I can't imagine what. She barely did her job. She certainly wouldn't have been here in the middle of the night when Stellar died."

"She was last night," I pointed out.

Paris looked to the end of the aisle as Jade came into the tent. "Well. I guess we never really know the people we work with, do we?"

Jade held shopping bags in both fists. Paris jumped out of the chair and went into the tack room with him to break the news about Jill. I strained to hear, but couldn't make out more than the urgent tone and the odd word, and Jade telling her to calm down.

I looked at Javier, who was still standing at the door of the stall waiting for instructions, and asked him in Spanish if this was a crazy business or what. More than you know, señora, he told me, then he took his pitchfork to a stall farther down the row.

Landry's car pulled up at the end of the tent. He had had to wait for the crime scene unit and the medical examiner's people to arrive at the dump site, and he had probably called in extra deputies to canvass the grounds, looking for anyone who might have seen Jill Morone the night before. He came in with another plainclothes cop at the same time Michael Berne stormed into the tent from the side, red-faced.

Berne stopped at the tack room door, sweeping the curtain back with one hand. "You're through, Jade," he said loudly, his voice full of excitement. "I'm telling the cops what I saw last night. You can get away with a lot of things, but you're not getting away with murder."

He seemed almost gleeful at the idea that someone had died.

"What do you think you saw, Michael?" Jade asked, annoyed. "You saw me speaking with an employee."

"I saw you arguing with that girl, and now she's dead."

Landry and the other detective arrived to hear the last of Berne's declarations. Landry flashed his badge in Berne's face.

"Good," Berne said. "I definitely want to talk with you."

"You can speak with Detective Weiss," Landry said, moving past him into the tack room. "Mr. Jade, I need you to come with me."

"Am I under arrest?" Jade asked calmly.

"No. Should you be?"

"He should have been a long time before now," Berne said.

Landry ignored him. "We believe an employee of yours has been found dead. I'd like you to come with me to identify the body and answer some routine questions."

"Ask him what he was doing with her at The Players last night," Berne said.

"Ms. Montgomery, we'll need to speak with you as well," Landry said. "I think we'll all be more comfortable at the Sheriff's Office."

"I have a business to run," Jade said.

"Don, for God's sake, the girl is dead," Paris snapped. "She may have been killed right here in our barn for all we know. You know she was here last night, busy ruining your wardrobe, and now-"

"What was she doing here last night?" Landry asked.

Jade said nothing. Paris got an oh shit look on her face and clamped her pretty mouth shut.

Landry stared at her. "Ms. Montgomery?"

"Uh… well… someone came in late last night and vandalized some things. We assumed it was Jill because she knows the combination to the lock on the tack room door."

Landry looked at Weiss, communicating something telepathically. Weiss went out to the car. Calling the CSU to come to Jade's stalls when they finished at the dumping site. Calling deputies to come secure the area until the CSU could get here.

Berne pointed at Jade. "I saw him fighting with the dead girl last night at The Players."

Landry held up a hand. "You'll get your turn, sir."

Perturbed by Landry's lack of interest in him, Berne stepped back out of the stall and turned to me. "They were in the bar together," he said loudly. "She was dressed like a hooker."

He looked back into the tack stall.

"You're not getting out of this noose, Jade. I heard that girl say she knew about Stellar. You killed her to shut her up."

"That's completely ridiculous. I did nothing of the sort."

"Let's go, Mr. Jade," Landry said. "The medical examiner's people are going to want to move the body."

"You don't want me to look at her here, do you?" Jade said. "I won't be the centerpiece of a sideshow."

Bad for business. Don Jade seen peering at his dead groom.

"We can meet them at the morgue."

"Can't we do this later? After I've finished my day?"

"Mr. Jade, a girl is dead. Murdered. I think that's a little more serious than your average day's work," Landry said. "You'll come with us now, voluntarily or not. How do you think it would be for your reputation to be seen in handcuffs?"

Jade heaved a big put-upon sigh. "Paris, call the clients and let them know what's going on. I don't want them hearing the news from unreliable sources," he said, glaring at Michael Berne. "Then stop at the show office and scratch our rides for the day."

"Scratch them for the rest of his life," Berne said with a sneer. "And I couldn't be happier."

I watched them walk out of the tent: Landry, Jade, and Paris Montgomery; Michael Berne bringing up the rear, mouth flapping. I thought about what Berne had said. I had punched his buttons the day before, suggesting he might have killed Stellar himself in order to ruin Jade. But maybe there was something to it. To Berne's way of thinking, Jade had robbed him of a dream life when he'd taken Trey Hughes away from him. What would it have been worth to get that dream back, to get revenge? The life of an animal? The life of a human? Jealousy can be a powerful motivator.

Stellar had had a sedative in his system when he died. Like Paris had said: those kinds of drugs were in every tack room on the grounds-Berne's included, no doubt.

The horse had died of electrocution-the method of choice among equine assassins, because it left no obvious signs and mimicked death by colic, a common and sometimes fatal illness in horses. The murder was easily accomplished by one person with a couple of wires and a power source. Done correctly, it was difficult to prove the death was anything other than natural.

If the rumors about his past were true, Jade certainly knew that. But having a sedative show up in the postmortem was a big red flag, and Jade knew that as well. If he had killed the horse, he never would have put anything in the animal's system that would show up in the tox screen.

For that matter, if Jade had killed Stellar, why wouldn't he have claimed the horse died of colic? Why wouldn't he have simply said he didn't know what happened? Why the story about the accidental electrocution? There must have been some kind of evidence. Too bad the person who had found the horse dead was no longer around to tell us what that evidence might have been.

"I heard her say she knew about Stellar."

Berne had said it to further implicate Jade, but if Berne had killed the horse and Jill Morone knew and had been about to tell Jade… Motive.

Berne had seen the girl at The Players. He could have seen her leave. He could have followed her here… Opportunity.

I sank back into the chair Paris had occupied and wondered how Erin Seabright's kidnapping figured into any of this.

"This is some glamorous business you're involved with," Landry muttered as he came back. "A girl gets murdered, and all these people can think about is the inconvenience of it all."

"Take a good look at Berne," I said quietly as he stopped beside me. "If the girl's death is connected to the horse's death, he could be as much a suspect as Jade. He lost a big opportunity when the owner moved his horses to Jade's care."

"All right. You can explain that to me later. I don't even know these people ten minutes and I can believe they might be capable of anything. What about the Belgian guy?"

"Haven't seen him, but he's sure to turn up. There might be some blood in this stall," I said, tipping my head in that direction. "You'll want to give the CSU a heads-up."

He nodded. "Okay. I'm running Jade in for questioning. Weiss has Berne. The techno-geeks and my lieutenant are at the Seabrights' hooking up the phones."

"I hope to God it isn't too late."

An uneasy feeling crept down my right side, then Van Zandt came into focus in my peripheral vision. I didn't know how long he'd been standing there.

"Really, I don't know anything, Detective," I said. "I knew the girl by sight, that was all." I turned toward Van Zandt. "Z., did you see Jill last night?"

He looked like he had a sour stomach and a bad disposition. "Jill who?"

"Jill. The groom. Don's groom."

"Why would I see her?" he snapped irritably. "He should fire her. She's good for nothing."

"She's dead," Landry said.

Van Zandt looked perturbed. "Dead? How is she dead?"

"That's for the medical examiner to find out. My job is to find out why she's dead and who killed her. Did you see her last night?"

"I don't pay attention to grooms," Van Zandt said with disdain, and went into the tack room.

"Sir, I have to ask you not to touch anything," Landry said.

Van Zandt had the mini-fridge open. He closed the door and gave Landry an imperious look. "And who are you to ask anything of me?"

"Detective Landry. Sheriff's Office. Who are you?"

"Tomas Van Zandt."

"And what's your connection to Don Jade?"

"We are business associates."

"And you don't know anything about this girl Jill? Except that she was good for nothing."

"No."

The deputies came in then to secure the scene, and herded us out of the tent into the blinding sun. Landry got in his car with Jade and drove away.

"They are arresting Jade?" Van Zandt said. He looked pasty and ill in the daylight. He was wearing a blue and red ascot at the throat of his blue dress shirt. Perhaps it was cutting off the blood supply to his brain.

"No. Routine questioning," I said. "His employee was murdered. Don't you find that shocking?" I asked. "I've never known anyone who was murdered."

Van Zandt shrugged. He didn't seem disturbed in the least. "The girl was a slut, always talking about this boy and that boy, dressing like a whore. It's no surprise she would come to a bad end."

"Are you saying she was asking for it?"

"I am saying if you lie down with the dogs, sometimes they bite."

"Well, there you go. A lesson to us all."

"This fucking sun," he complained, putting on his shades, changing the subject as if a girl's violent death was of no more consequence than a bad round in the showring. Less.

"What's your story, Z.?" I asked. "You look like death, yourself. Were you out partying last night without me?"

"Bad food. I don't get a hangover," he said stubbornly. "I never become drunk."

"Is that from lack of trying or are you superior to the rest of us?"

He mustered a thin smile. "The second, Elle Stevens."

"Really? And I thought the Germans were supposed to be the master race."

"It is only Germans who think that."

"You've got it all figured out, Z. Come on," I said, taking him by the arm. "I'll buy you a Bromo-Seltzer and you can tell me all about the New World Order."