Dark Horse

46

I went back to the day it all began. The day Stellar was found dead in his stall. The day Erin Seabright was snatched from the back gates of the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Center. I laid it all out in black and ecru on sheets of expensive stationery I found in the writing desk. A timeline. When Jade had allegedly purchased the cell phone. When Erin and Chad had argued. When Stellar had been found dead. When Erin had been taken. Everything I knew about the case, I wrote down and I spread the sheets out in order on my bedroom floor.

I had become focused on the idea that everything had come out of the death of Stellar, but looking at the timeline, reflecting on what I knew, I realized that it wasn't so. The kidnapping plan was already in motion when Stellar died. Someone had purchased the disposable cell phone. Someone had lined up the trailer where Erin had been held, had gathered the video and audio equipment, had procured the ketamine to drug Erin and found the van used in the abduction. An elaborate plan with at least two people involved.

I wanted to know everything that had transpired that Sunday, the day of Stellar's death and Erin's abduction. I wanted to know what had gone on between Erin and Jade that day and prior to it. I wanted to know where Trey Hughes had been that day, and Van Zandt.

I looked at my timeline and all the things I did know. No matter how many times I went over it, the simplest explanation was not the best. But I knew plenty of people would have been happy to stop there. Landry among them.

I have never been able to do things the easy way.

I went back into the living room, pulled out the tape of the kidnapping, and shoved it into the VCR.

Erin standing at the back gate, waiting. She watched the van approach. She stood there as the masked man got out. She said, "No!" Then she ran. He grabbed her.

I rewound the tape and played it again.

I thought about the things she had told Landry, and the things she had not told him.

I thought about who had come under suspicion and who had not.

Don Jade was sitting in jail. Bruce Seabright was under a microscope. Tomas Van Zandt, known predator, suspected murderer, was nowhere to be found.

I went back to the writing desk and dug through the mess I'd made to find the piece of paper I had taken from Van Zandt's trash. The flight schedule of horses being shipped to Brussels. The plane was scheduled to leave that night at eleven. I would have to give that information to Landry. And Landry would have to pass it on to Armedgian.

Screw that. I wasn't giving Armedgian anything. If I could find a way to make him look like an idiot, I would. God knew, after the fiasco at The Players, neither Armedgian nor Dugan was going to have anything to do with me anyway.

I decided, when the time came, I would go to the airport and wait for Van Zandt myself, then call in Landry. If Tomas Van Zandt thought he could get away with murder in my country, he could think again.