Dark Horse

23

You saw her at The Players last night. You had an argument."

"It wasn't an argument," Jade said calmly. "She was dressed inappropriately-"

"What's it to you? Was she there with you?"

"No, but she's my employee. The way she conducts herself in public reflects on me."

"You weren't there to meet her?"

"No. She worked for me. I didn't socialize with the girl."

Landry raised his brows. "Really? That's funny, because she told me yesterday you were sleeping with her."

"What? That's a lie!"

Finally, a human reaction. Landry had begun to suspect Jade didn't have a nerve in his body. They sat on opposite sides of a table in an interview room, Jade-until that moment-perfectly composed, every hair in place, a crisp white shirt accentuating his tan, his monogram on the cuff of the sleeve.

Michael Berne was next door with Weiss. The blonde was cooling her heels in the reception area. Jill Morone was on a slab in the morgue with an assortment of contusions but no obvious fatal injuries. Landry figured strangulation or suffocation. She appeared to have been sexually assaulted.

Landry nodded as he took a bite out of his tuna salad sandwich. "She told me she was with you Thursday night when Michael Berne's horses were being turned loose."

Jade rubbed his hands over his face and muttered, "Oh, that stupid girl. She thought she was helping me."

"Helping you, as in giving you an alibi? Why would she think you needed one? She was right there when you told me you were with someone that night. Did she know otherwise?"

"Of course not. Jill didn't know anything about anything. She was a dim, pathetic girl with a vivid fantasy life."

"She had a thing for you."

He let go a long sigh. "Yes, I suppose she did. That was why she was at the club last night. She was waiting for me, apparently with ideas to seduce me."

"But you didn't want to see her."

"I asked her to leave. She was embarrassing herself."

"And you."

"Yes," Jade admitted. "My clients are wealthy, sophisticated people, Detective. They want to be represented in a certain way."

"And Jill didn't fit the bill."

"I wouldn't take Javier to The Players either, but I didn't kill him."

"He hasn't claimed you were fucking him," Landry said, reaching again for his sandwich. "That I know of."

Jade looked annoyed. "Do you need to be so crude?"

"No."

Landry sat back and chewed on his lunch, more to be irritating than out of hunger.

"So," he said, making a show of running the facts through his head as he formed a thought, "she got all dolled up and went to The Players to meet you… just on the off chance maybe you'd be interested?"

Jade made a gesture with his hand and shifted positions on his chair. He was bored.

"Come on, Don. She was around, she was hot for it, it was free. You're telling me you never took advantage?"

"That suggestion is repugnant."

"Why? You've fucked your help before."

The zinger hit its mark. Jade twitched as if at a small electrical shock. "I once had an affair with a groom. She was not Jill Morone. Nevertheless, I learned my lesson, and have made it a policy ever since, not to become involved with the help."

"Not even Erin Seabright? She's no Jill Morone either, if you get my drift."

"Erin? What's she got to do with this?"

"Why isn't she with you anymore, Don?"

He didn't like the familiarity. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly every time Landry used his name.

"She quit. She told me she took another job elsewhere."

"So far as I've been able to find out, you're the only person she actually told about this big change in her life," Landry said. "Taking a new job, moving to a new town. She never even told her family. I find that strange. She only told you. And no one has seen or heard from her since."

Jade stared at him for a moment, speechless, or knowing the wisdom of holding his tongue. Finally, he stood up. "I don't like the direction this conversation is taking. Are you charging me with something, Detective Landry?"

Landry stayed in his seat. He leaned back in the chair and rested his elbows on the arms. "No."

"Then I'd like to leave now."

"Oh. Well… I just have a few more questions."

"Then I'd prefer to have my attorney present. It's becoming clear to me you have an agenda that isn't in my best interest."

"I'm just trying to get a clear picture of the things going on in your business, Don. That's part of my job: to map out the victim's world, put all the pieces in place. You don't want me to get to the truth behind Jill Morone's death?"

"Of course I do."

"Do you feel you need an attorney present to do that? You're not under arrest. You've told me you don't have anything to hide."

"I don't."

Landry spread his hands. "So… what's the problem?"

Jade looked away, thinking, considering his options. Landry figured he was maybe good for another five minutes, tops. A sergeant supervisor sat in a room down the hall watching the interview via closed-circuit TV, watching the readout of a computer voice-stress analysis machine, looking for lies.

"Feel free to call your attorney if you like," Landry said generously. "We can wait for him…"

"I don't have time for this," Jade muttered, coming back to the table. "What else?"

"Mr. Berne said he heard Jill tell you she knew something about Stellar-this horse that died. What did she know?"

"I have no idea what she was talking about. The horse died accidentally in the middle of the night. There was nothing for her to know."

"There was plenty to know if it wasn't an accident."

"But it was an accident."

"Were you there when it happened?"

"No."

"Then you don't really know what happened. If it was an accident, why did the horse have a sedative in its system?"

Jade stared at him. "How do you know that?"

Landry looked back at him like he was an idiot. "I'm a detective."

"There was nothing criminal in Stellar's death."

"But the owner stands to pick up a big check from the insurance, right?"

"If the insurance company decides to pay, which is unlikely now."

"Would you have gotten a cut of that money?"

Jade stood again. "I'm leaving now."

"What time did you leave Players last night?"

"Around eleven."

"Where did you go?"

"Home. To bed."

"You didn't swing by the show grounds, check on your horses?"

"No."

"Not even after what went on the night before? You weren't worried?"

"Paris had night check last night."

"And she didn't notice anything wrong? She didn't see the vandalism?"

"Obviously, she was there before it happened."

"So, you went home to bed. Alone?"

"No."

"Same friend as Thursday night?"

Jade sighed again and looked at the wall.

"Look, Don," Landry confided, rising from his chair. "You need to tell me. This is serious business. This isn't just some nags running around in the middle of the night. A girl is dead. I realize in your world, she might not have counted for much, but in my world, murder is a big deal. Everyone who knew her and had a problem with her is going to have to account for their whereabouts. If you have a corroborating witness, you'd better say so or I'm going to end up wasting a lot more of your valuable time."

He thought Jade might let his arrogance get the best of him and just walk out. But he wasn't a stupid man. Landry imagined the guy's mind sorting information like a computer. Finally he said, "Susannah Atwood. She's a client. I would appreciate if you didn't mention this to any of my other clients."

"Everybody wants to be the trainer's pet?" Landry said. "That's quite a gig you've got going, Don. Ride the horses, ride the owners too."

Jade went for the door.

"I'll need her address and phone number, and the name and number for Jill Morone's next of kin," Landry said.

"Ask Paris. She takes care of my details."

His details, Landry thought, watching him go. That was what a young girl's life came down to for Don Jade: details.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Jade."

J ade needs to run his business differently," Van Zandt pronounced.

We stood alone along the rail of one of the competition rings, watching a pint-sized rider take her pony over a course of small, elaborately decorated fences. Both girl and pony wore expressions of absolute concentration, eyes bright with determination and the fire of competitive spirit. They were a team: girl and pony against the world.

I remembered that feeling well. Me and a bright copper pony called Party Manners. My very best friend and confidant. Even after I had outgrown him, I had taken all my troubles to Party and he had listened without prejudice. When he died at the ripe old age of twenty-five I mourned his loss more deeply than the loss of any person I had known.

"Are you listening to me?" Van Zandt asked peevishly.

"Yes. I thought you were making a rhetorical statement." I had offered to buy him lunch, he had declined. I had offered to buy milk shakes and he had told me they would make me fat. Asshole. I bought one anyway.

"Yes," I agreed. "Murder puts off potential clients."

Van Zandt scowled. "I am in no mood for your sense of humor."

"You think I was joking? One groom disappears. One turns up dead-"

"Disappears?" he said. "That one left."

"I don't think so, Z. The detective was asking about her."

He turned sharply and looked down his nose at me. "What did you tell him?"

"Nothing. I've never even met the girl. I'm just letting you know. He'll probably ask you too."

"I have nothing to say about her."

"You had a lot to say the other night. That she flirted with clients, that she had a smart mouth- Come to think of it, pretty much the same things you said about Jill. You know, you shouldn't speak ill of the dead, Z. Especially not when there's a detective in earshot."

"They have no right to question me."

"Of course they do. You knew both girls. And frankly, you didn't have a very good attitude toward either of them."

He puffed up in offense. "Are you accusing me?"

"Oh, for God's sake," I said, rolling my eyes. "Behave this way with the cops and they'll pin the murder on you out of spite. And I'll volunteer to push the plunger when they stick the needle in your arm."

"What are you talking about? What needle?"

"This is a death penalty state. Murder is a capital offense."

"That's barbaric," he said, highly offended.

"So is burying a girl in a pile of horseshit."

"And you think I could do such a terrible thing?" Now he put on his expression of hurt, as if he were being betrayed by a lifelong friend.

"I didn't say that."

"This is all because of that Russian whore-"

"Watch it, Van Zandt," I said, giving him a little temper back. "I happen to be fond of Irina."

He huffed and looked away. "Are you lovers?"

"No. Is that your attempt to offend me? Accuse me of being a lesbian?"

He made a kind of shrugging motion with his mouth.

"That's pathetic," I said. "I'll bet you say every woman who won't fuck you is a lesbian."

A hint of red came into his face, but he said nothing. The conversation was not going his way. Again.

"Not that it's any of your business," I informed him as the girl and the pony concluded their round and the spectators applauded, "but as it happens, I am happily heterosexual."

"I don't think happily."

"Why? Because I haven't had the pleasure of your company in my bed?"

"Because you never smile, Elle Stevens," he said. "I think you are not happy in your life."

"I'm not happy with you trying to get inside my head-or my pants."

"You have no sense of purpose," he announced. He was thinking he was back in control of the situation, that I would listen to him the way too many weak, lonely women listened to him. "You need to have a goal. Something to strive for. You are a person who likes a challenge and you don't have one."

"I wouldn't say that," I muttered. "Just having a conversation with you is a challenge."

He forced a laugh.

"You have a nerve, making presumptions about me," I said calmly. "You don't know a thing about me, really."

"I am a very good judge of people," he said. "I am a long time in the business of assessing people, knowing what they need."

"Maybe I should set solving Jill's murder as my goal," I said, turning the tables around on him again. "Or solving the disappearance of the other girl. I can start by interviewing you. When was the last time you saw Erin Seabright alive?"

"I was more thinking you need a horse to ride," he said, unamused.

"Come on, Z., play along," I needled. "You might start me on the path to a career. Did you hear her say she was going to quit, or is that just D.J.'s story? Inquiring minds want to know."

"You are giving me a headache."

"Maybe she was kidnapped," I said, pretending excitement, watching him carefully. "Maybe she's being held as a sex slave. What do you think of that?"

Van Zandt stared at me, his expression blank. I would have paid a fortune to know where his mind was at that moment. What was he imagining? Was he thinking about Erin, hidden away somewhere for his own perverse pleasure before he cashed in? Was he remembering Sasha Kulak? Was he considering me as his next victim?

His cell phone rang. He answered it and started conversing in fluent French. I sucked on my milk shake and eavesdropped.

Europeans generally make the correct assumption that Americans can barely speak their own language, let alone anyone else's. It never occurred to Van Zandt that I had an expensive education and a talent for languages. From listening to his side of the conversation, I gleaned that Van Zandt was cheating someone in a deal and was pissed off that they weren't being entirely cooperative pigeons. He told the person on the other end of the call to cancel the horse's transportation to the States. That would teach them they couldn't fuck with V.

The conversation segued then into arrangements for several horses being flown to Florida from Brussels via New York, and two others being sent on the return flight to Brussels.

The horse business is big business in Europe. As a teenager I had once flown back home from Germany with a new horse, traveling in a cargo plane with twenty-one horses being shipped to new owners in the States. Flights like that one land every week.

Van Zandt ended the conversation and put the phone back in his pocket. "My shipping agent, Phillipe," he said. "He is a stinking crook."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it's true. He is always wanting me to send things to him from the States. Pack it in with horse equipment and ship it with the horses. I do it all the time," he confessed blithely. "No one ever checks the trunks."

"And you're angry because he's cheating customs?"

"Don't be stupid. Who pays customs? Fools. I am angry because he never wants to pay me. Five hundred dollars' worth of Ralph Lauren towels, for which he still owes me. How can you trust a person like that?"

I didn't know what to say to that. I might have been standing with a serial sex offender, a kidnapper, a killer, and his biggest concern was getting stiffed for five hundred bucks of smuggled towels.

I disentangled myself from him when another dealer came by and they started talking business. I slipped away with a little wave and a promise that I was off in search of the meaning of my life.

A sociopath's stock-in-trade is his ability to read normal humans in order to see their vulnerabilities and take advantage of them. Many a corporate CEO hit the Fortune Five Hundred on those skills, many a con man lined his pockets. Many a serial killer found his victims…

Van Zandt wasn't smart, but he was cunning. It was with that cunning he had lured Irina's friend to Belgium to work for him. I wondered how he might have used that instinct on Erin, on Jill. I didn't like the way he had turned it on me when he'd said he didn't believe I was happy. I was supposed to be the carefree dilettante to him. I didn't like to think he could see anything else. I didn't like to think anyone could see inside me, because I was embarrassed by what little there was to see.

He was wrong about one thing, though. I had a goal. And if I found him in my crossshairs on my way to that goal, I was going to be all too happy to take him down.

I made my way back to Jade's barn on foot. Yellow tape blocked off the stalls from either end of the aisle. Despite the warning printed on the tape, Trey Hughes had crossed the line and was sitting in a chair with his feet up on a tack trunk, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

He squinted and grinned. "I know you!"

"Not really," I reminded him. "Are you part of the crime scene?"

"Honey, I'm a one-man walking crime scene. What's going on around here? It's like a goddam morgue."

"Yes, well, that would be because of the murder."

"But that was days ago," he said.

"What was days ago?"

His thoughts were tripping over each other in his beer-soaked brain. "I think I missed something."

"I think I missed something if there was a murder here days ago. Who are you talking about? Erin?"

"Erin's dead?"

I ducked under the tape and took a seat across from him. "Who's on first?"

"What?"

"What's on second."

"I dunno."

"Third base."

Hughes threw his head back and laughed. "God, I must be drunk."

"How could you tell?" I asked dryly.

"You're a quick study. Ellie, right?"

"Close enough."

He took a drag on his cigarette and flicked a chunk of ash onto the ground. I'm sure it never entered his head that he might start a fire in a tent full of horses. "So, who died?" he asked.

"Jill."

He sat up at that, sobering as much as he probably could. "You're joking, right?"

"No. She's dead."

"What'd she die of? Meanness or ugliness?"

"You're a kind soul."

"Shit. You never had to be around her. Is she really dead?"

"Someone murdered her. Her body was found this morning over by barn forty."

"Jesus H.," he muttered, running the hand with the cigarette in it back through his hair. Despite his comments, he looked upset.

"So far, no one misses her," I said. "Poor thing. I heard she was hot for Don. Maybe he'll miss her."

"I don't think so." Hughes leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "He'd have gotten rid of her a long time ago if he'd known it was that easy."

"She was a problem?"

"She had a big mouth and a little brain."

"Not a good combination in this business," I said. "I heard she was at The Players last night saying she knew something about Stellar."

One bleary blue eye tried to focus on me. "What could she know?"

I shrugged. "What is there to know?"

"I don't know. I'm always the last to know."

"Just as well, or you might end up like Jill."

"Somebody killed her," he said to himself. Leaning forward, he put out his cigarette on the toe of his boot and sat there with his head down and his hands dangling between his knees, as if he was waiting for a wave of nausea to pass.

"The cops are questioning Don," I said. "Do you think he could kill a person?"

I expected a quick denial. Instead, he was silent so long, I thought he might have gone into a catatonic state. Finally he said, "People can do the goddamnedest things, Ellie. You just never know. You just never know."

P aris Montgomery sat staring at him with her big brown eyes wide and bright. Not a deer in the headlights, Landry thought. The expression was more focus than fear. She had brushed her hair and put on lipstick while he'd been interviewing Jade.

"When did you last see Jill yesterday?" he asked.

"Around six. She was complaining about having to stay so late. She'd been dropping hints all day that she had big plans for the evening."

"Did you ask her what those plans were?"

"No. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I have to admit I didn't like the girl. She had a bad attitude and she lied all the time."

"Lied about what?"

"Whatever. That she'd done a job she hadn't, that she knew people she didn't, that she'd trained with big-name people, that she had all these boyfriends-"

"Did she name names of these boyfriends?"

"I didn't want to hear about it. I knew it wasn't true," she said. "It was just creepy and pathetic. I was looking for someone to replace her, but it's hard to find good help once the season has started."

"So, she left around six. Were you aware of anything going on between her and your boss?"

"Don? God, no. I mean, I know she had a crush on him, but that's as far as it went. Don had been after me to get rid of her. He didn't trust her. She was always flapping her mouth to anyone who would listen."

"About what?"

She blinked the big eyes and tried to decide how much she should tell him. "About everything that went on in our barn. For instance, if a horse was a little lame or-"

"Dead?" Landry suggested.

"This is a very gossipy business, Detective," she said primly. "Reputations can be made or lost on rumors. Discretion is an important quality in employees."

"So if she was running around shooting her mouth off about the horse that died, that would probably piss you off."

"Yes. Absolutely."

"And Don?"

"He would have been furious. Stellar's death has been a nightmare for him. He didn't need his own employee adding fuel to the fire." She stopped herself and frowned. "I'm not saying he would have hurt her. I won't believe that. I just won't."

"He doesn't have a temper?"

"Not like that. Don is very controlled, very professional. I respect him enormously."

Landry leaned over his notes and rubbed at the tightness in his forehead. "You didn't see Jill later last night?"

"No."

"You had night check last night. What time-"

"No, I didn't," she said. "Don did. I offered, but he insisted. After what happened in Michael Berne's barn the other night, he said it wasn't safe for a woman to wander around out there at night."

"He told me you had the job last night," Landry said.

Paris Montgomery's pretty brow furrowed. "That's not right. He must have forgotten. God, if one of us had been there last night, maybe we could have prevented what happened."

Or one of them had been there and caused what had happened.

"What time would he have done the check-if he had remembered?" Landry asked.

"Normally, one of us will check the horses around eleven."

Jade had said he'd been at The Players. If he'd gone to the barn later, he would surely have seen the vandalism, might even have caught the girl in the act. It wasn't a stretch to think they might have argued, things might have gotten out of hand…

"Where were you last night?" he asked.

"Home. Doing my nails, doing my bills, watching TV. I don't like to go out when we've got horses showing in the morning."

"You were alone?"

"Just me and Milo, my dog. We fight over the remote control," she said with a flirtatious smile. "I hope we didn't keep the neighbors up."

Landry didn't smile back. He'd been at this job too long to be swayed by charm. It was a form of dishonesty, as far as he was concerned.

That should have meant Estes was the girl for him. He'd never known anyone as blunt as Elena.

"Have you noticed anyone strange hanging around your stalls?" he asked.

Paris made a face. "There are plenty of strange people around the equestrian center. I can't say that I've noticed anyone in particular."

"So, you're fresh out of grooms now," he said. "I hear you lost one a week ago."

"Yes. Erin. Boom. Just like that. Quit and went somewhere else."

"Did she give you any explanation as to why?"

"She didn't talk to me about it. Never even said she was thinking about it. End of the day Sunday she told Don she was leaving, and off she went."

"No forwarding address?"

She shook her head. "I have to say, that really hurt, her just dumping us that way. I liked Erin. I thought she would be with us a long time. She talked about how cool it was going to be when we moved into the new barn. She was looking forward to going with us to show in Europe in the spring. I just never expected her to leave."

"You last saw her when?"

"Sunday afternoon. I left the equestrian center around three. I had a migraine."

"And Erin seemed fine when you spoke with her?"

She started to give an automatic answer, then stopped herself and thought about it. "You know, I guess she'd been distracted the last week or so. Boyfriend blues. She had broken up with some guy her own age and had her eye on someone else. I don't know who. Someone who wasn't a child, she said. Then some jerk keyed her car a couple of nights before. She was upset about that. My money's on Jill for that. She was horribly jealous of Erin."

She stopped herself again, looking confused. "Why are you asking about Erin?"

"She seems to be missing."

"Well, I think she went to Ocala-"

"No. She didn't."

The big brown eyes blinked as she took that in. "Oh, my God," she said quietly. "You don't think- Oh, my God."

Landry slid a business card across the table to her and rose to his feet. "Thank you for your time, Ms. Montgomery. Please call if you think of anything that might be helpful."

"We're finished?"

"For now," Landry said, going to the door. "I'll need you to call with a number for Ms. Morone's next of kin."

"Yes, of course."

"Oh-and a number for a Susannah Atwood and the rest of your clients, but first and foremost for Ms. Atwood."

"Susannah? Why Susannah?"

"Seems Mr. Jade was performing a night check of his own last night," he said, curious to see her reaction. He expected jealousy. He was disappointed.

Paris raised her eyebrows. "Don and Susannah?" she said, amusement turning one corner of her mouth. "I learn something new every day."

"I would think it'd be hard to keep a secret in such a small world."

"Oh, you'd be surprised, Detective Landry," she said, standing too close to him, her hand just below his on the edge of the open door. "There are two things the horse world is full of: secrets and lies. The trick is telling which is which."