Dark Horse

2

The horse world is populated by two kinds of people: those who love horses, and those who exploit horses and the people who love them. Yin and yang. For every good thing in the world, there is something bad to counterbalance. Myself, I've always felt the bad far outweighs the good, that there is just enough good to buoy us and keep us from drowning in a sea of despair. But that's just me.

Some of the finest people I've known have been involved in the horse business. Caring people who would sacrifice themselves and their own comfort for the animals who relied on them. People who kept their word. People with integrity. And some of the most loathsome, hateful, twisted individuals I've ever known have been involved in the horse business. People who would lie, cheat, steal, and sell their own mother for a nickel if they thought it would get them ahead. People who would smile to your face, pat you on the back with one hand, and stab you in the back with the other.

From what Irina told me, Don Jade fit into that second category.

Sunday morning-the day before Erin Seabright didn't show to pick up her little sister to go to the beach-a jumper in training with Don Jade had been found dead in his stall, the victim of an allegedly accidental electrocution. Only, according to gossip, there was no such thing as an accident where Don Jade was involved.

I went online and tried to learn what I could about Jade from articles on horsesdaily.com and a couple of other equestrian sites. But I wanted the story in full, uncensored, and I knew exactly who to call.

If Don Jade defined my second category of horse people, Dr. Dean Soren defined the first. I had known Dr. Dean for a lifetime. Nothing went on in the horse world Dean Soren didn't know about. He had begun his veterinary career in the year aught on the racetrack, eventually moving on to show horses. Everyone in the business knew and respected Dr. Dean.

He had retired from his veterinary practice several years before, and spent his days holding court in the café that was social central of the large stable he owned off Pierson. The woman who ran the café answered the phone. I told her who I was and asked for Dr. Dean, then listened as she shouted across the room at him.

Dr. Dean shouted back: "What the hell does she want?"

"Tell him I need to ask him a couple of questions."

The woman shouted that.

"Then she can damn well come here and ask me in person," he shouted back. "Or is she too goddammed important to visit an old man?"

That was Dr. Dean. The words charming and kindly were not in his vocabulary, but he was one of the best people I had ever known. Whatever softer elements he lacked, he more than made up for in integrity and honesty.

I didn't want to go to him. Don Jade interested me only because of what Irina had said about him. I was curious, but that was all. Curiosity wasn't enough to make me want to interact with people. I had no desire to leave my sanctuary, especially in light of the photo in Sidelines.

I paced the house, chewing at what was left of my fingernails.

Dean Soren had known me off and on most of my life. The winter season I was twelve, he let me ride along with him on his rounds one day a week and act as his assistant. My mother and I had moved to a house in the Polo Club for the season, and I had a tutor so that I could ride every day with my trainer, and not have a school schedule interrupt my horse show schedule. Every Monday-rider's day off-I would bribe the tutor and slip off with Dr. Dean to hold his instrument tray and clean up used bandages. My own father had never spent that kind of time with me. I had never felt so important.

The memories of that winter touched me now in an especially vulnerable place. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt important. I could hardly remember the last time I had wanted to. But I could remember very clearly riding beside Dr. Dean in the enormous Lincoln Town Car he had tricked out as a rolling vet clinic.

Perhaps it was that memory that made me pick up my car keys and go.

The prime property Dr. Dean owned was populated by hunter/jumper people in one large barn and by dressage people in the other. The offices, Dr. Dean's personal stable, and the café were all located in a building between the two large barns.

The café was a simple open-air affair with a tiki bar. Dr. Dean sat at the centermost table in a carved wooden chair, an old king on his throne, drinking something with a paper umbrella in it.

I felt light-headed as I walked toward him, partly afraid to see him-or rather, for him to see me-and partly afraid people would come out of the woodwork to stare at me and ask me if I was really a private investigator. But the café was empty other than Dean Soren and the woman behind the counter. No one ran over from the barns to gawk.

Dr. Dean rose from his chair, his piercing eyes on me like a pair of lasers. He was a tall, straight man with a full head of white hair and a long face carved with lines. He had to be eighty, but he still looked fierce and strong.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" he said by way of a greeting. "Are you in chemotherapy? Is that what happened to your hair?"

"Good to see you, too, Dr. Dean," I said, shaking his hand.

He looked over at the woman behind the counter. "Marion! Make this girl a cheeseburger! She looks like hell!"

Marion, unfazed, went to work.

"What are you riding these days?" Dr. Dean asked.

I took a seat-a cheap folding chair that seemed too low and made me feel like a child. Or maybe that was just Dean Soren's effect on me. "I'm riding a couple of Sean's."

"You don't look strong enough to ride a pony."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not," he pronounced. "Who is Sean using for a vet now?"

"Paul Geller."

"He's an idiot."

"He's not you, Dr. Dean," I said diplomatically.

"He told Margo Whitaker her mare needs 'sound therapy.' She's got headphones on the poor horse two hours a day, playing the sounds of nature."

"Gives Margo something to do."

"The horse needs not to have Margo hovering around. That's what the horse needs," he growled. He sipped his umbrella drink and stared at me.

"I haven't seen you in a long time, Elena," he said. "It's good you're back. You need to be with the horses. They ground you. A person always knows exactly where they stand with horses. Life makes more sense."

"Yes," I said, nervous under his scrutiny, afraid he would want to talk about my career and what had happened. But he let it go. Instead, he quizzed me about Sean's horses, and we reminisced about horses Sean and I had ridden in years past. Marion brought my cheeseburger and I dutifully ate.

When I had finished, he said, "You said on the phone you had a question."

"Do you know anything about Don Jade?" I asked bluntly.

His eyes narrowed. "Why would you want to know about him?"

"A friend of a friend has gotten mixed up with him. It sounded a little sketchy to me."

His thick white brows bobbed. He looked over toward the jumper barn. There were a couple of riders out on the jump field taking their mounts over colorful fences. From a distance they looked as graceful and light as deer bounding through a meadow. The athleticism of an animal is a pure and simple thing. Complicated by human emotions, needs, greed, there is little pure or simple about the sport we bring the horses into.

"Well," he said. "Don has always made a pretty picture with some ragged edges."

"What does that mean?"

"Let's take a walk," he suggested.

I suspected he didn't want anyone showing up to eavesdrop. I followed him out the back of the café to a row of small paddocks, three of them occupied by horses.

"My projects," Dr. Dean explained. "Two mystery lamenesses and one with a bad case of stomach ulcers."

He leaned against the fence and looked at them, horses he had probably saved from the knackers. He probably had half a dozen more stashed around the place.

"They give us all they can," he said. "They do their best to make sense out of what we ask them to do-demand they do. All they want in return is to be cared for properly and kindly. Imagine if people were like that."

"Imagine," I echoed, but I couldn't imagine. I had been a cop a dozen years. The nature of the job and the people and things it had exposed me to had burned away any idealism I might ever have had. The story Dean Soren told me about Don Jade only confirmed my low opinion of the human race.

Over the last two decades, Jade's name had twice been connected to schemes to defraud insurance companies. The scam was to kill an expensive show horse that hadn't lived up to potential, then have the owner file a claim saying the animal had died of natural causes and collect a six-figure payout.

It was an old hustle that had come into the spotlight of the national media in the eighties, when a number of prominent people in the show-jumping world had been caught at it. Several had ended up in prison for a number of years, among them an internationally well-known trainer, and an owner who was heir to an enormous cellular phone fortune. Being rich has never stopped anyone from being greedy.

Jade had lurked in the shadows of scandal back then, when he had been an assistant trainer at one of the barns that had lost horses to mysterious causes. He had never been charged with any crime or directly connected to a death. After the scandal broke, Jade had left that employer and spent a few years in France, training and competing on the European show circuit.

Eventually the furor over the horse killings died down, and Don Jade came back to the States and found a couple of wealthy clients to serve as cornerstones for his own business.

It might seem inconceivable that a man with Jade's reputation could continue on in the profession, but there are always new owners who don't know about a trainer's history, and there are always people who won't believe what they don't want to believe. And there are always people who just plain don't care. There are always people willing to look the other way if they think they stand to gain money or fame. Consequently, Don Jade's stable attracted clients, many of whom paid him handsomely to campaign their horses in Florida at the Winter Equestrian Festival.

In the late nineties, one of those horses was a jumper called Titan.

Titan was a talented horse with an unfortunately mercurial temperament. A horse that cost his owner a lot of money and always seemed to sabotage his own efforts to earn his keep. He earned a reputation as a rogue and a head case. Despite his abilities, his market value plummeted. Meanwhile, Titan's owner, Warren Calvin, a Wall Street trader, had lost a fortune in the stock market. And suddenly one day Titan was dead, and Calvin filed a $250,000 claim with his insurance company.

The official story pieced together by Jade and his head groom was that sometime during the night Titan had become spooked, had gone wild in his stall, breaking a foreleg, and had died of shock and blood loss. However, a former Jade employee had told a different tale, claiming Titan's death had not been an accident, that Jade had had the animal suffocated, and that the horse had broken his leg in a panic as he was being asphyxiated.

It was an ugly story. The insurance company had immediately ordered a necropsy, and Warren Calvin had come under the scrutiny of a New York State prosecutor. Calvin withdrew the claim and the investigation was dropped. No fraud, no crime. The necropsy was never performed. Warren Calvin got out of the horse business.

Don Jade weathered the rumors and speculation and went on about his business. He'd had a convenient alibi for the night in question: a girl named Allison, who worked for him and claimed to have been in bed with him at the time of Titan's death. Jade admitted to the affair, lost his marriage, but kept on training horses. Old clients either believed him or left him, and new pigeons came to roost, unaware.

I had learned pieces of this story from my research on the Internet, and from Irina's gossip. I knew Irina's opinion of Jade had been based on the stories she'd heard from other grooms, information that was likely grounded in fact and heavily flavored with spite. The horse business is an incestuous business. Within the individual disciplines (jumping, dressage, et cetera) everyone knows everyone, and half of them have screwed the others, either literally or figuratively. Grudges and jealousies abound. The gossip can be vicious.

But I knew if the story came out of Dean Soren's mouth, it was true.

"It's sad a guy like that stays in business," I said.

Dr. Dean tipped his head and shrugged. "People believe what they want. Don is a charming fellow, and he can ride the hell out of a jump course. You can argue with success all you want, Elena, but you'll never win. Especially not in this business."

"Sean's groom told me Jade lost a horse last weekend," I said.

"Stellar," Dr. Dean said, nodding. His ulcer patient had come to our corner of the paddock and reached her nose out coyly toward her savior, begging for a scratch under the chin. "Story is he bit through the cord on a box fan hanging in his stall and fried himself."

The mare stepped closer and put her head over the fence. I scratched her neck absently, keeping my attention on Dean Soren. "What do you think?"

He touched the mare's head with a gnarled old hand, as gentle as if he were touching a child.

"I think old Stellar had more heart than talent."

"Do you think Jade killed him?"

"It doesn't matter what I think," he said. "It only matters what someone can prove." He looked at me with those eyes that had seen-and could see-so much about me. "What does your friend's friend have to say about it?"

"Nothing," I said, feeling sick in my stomach. "She seems to be missing."

On Monday morning Don Jade's groom, Erin Seabright, was to have picked up her little sister to take her to the beach. She never showed and hadn't been in contact with her family since.

I paced the rooms of the guest house and chewed on the ragged stub of a thumbnail. The Sheriff's Office hadn't been interested in the concerns of a twelve-year-old girl. It was doubtful they knew anything about or had any interest in Don Jade. Erin Seabright's parents presumably knew nothing about Jade either, or Molly wouldn't have been the only Seabright looking for help.

The ten-dollar bill the girl had given me was on the small writing desk beside my laptop. Inside the folded bill was Molly's own little homemade calling card: her name, address, and a striped cat on a mailing label; the label adhered to a little rectangle of blue poster board. She had printed her phone number neatly at the bottom of the card.

Don Jade had been sleeping with one of his hired girls when the horse Titan had died half a decade past. I wondered if that was a habit: fucking grooms. He wouldn't have been the first trainer with that hobby. I thought about the way Molly had avoided my eyes when she'd told me her sister didn't have a boyfriend.

I walked away from the desk feeling anxious and upset. I wished I'd never gone to Dr. Dean. I wished I had never learned what I'd learned about Don Jade. My life was enough of a mess without looking for trouble. My life was enough of a mess without the intrusion of Molly Seabright and her family problems. I was supposed to be sorting out the tangle of my own life, answering inner questions, finding myself-or facing the fact there was nothing worth finding.

If I couldn't find myself, how was I supposed to find someone else? I didn't want to fall down this rabbit hole. My involvement with horses was supposed to be my salvation. I didn't want it to have anything to do with people like Don Jade, people who would have a horse killed by electrocution, like Stellar, or by shoving Ping-Pong balls up its nostrils, cutting off its air supply, like Warren Calvin's Titan.

That was how suffocation was accomplished: Ping-Pong balls in the nostrils. My chest tightened at the dark mental image of the animal panicking, throwing itself into the walls of its stall as it desperately tried to escape its fate. I could see the eyes rolling in terror, hear the grunt as it flung itself backward and hit a wall. I could hear the animal scrambling, the terrible sound of a foreleg snapping. The nightmare seemed so real, the sounds blaring inside my mind. Nausea and weakness washed through me. My throat felt closed. I wanted to choke.

I went outside onto the little patio, sweating, trembling. I thought I might vomit. I wondered what it said about me that in all the time I'd been a detective, I'd never gotten sick at anything I'd seen one human being do to another, but the idea of cruelty to an animal undid me.

The evening air was fresh and cool, and slowly cleared the horrible images from my head.

Sean had company. I could see them in the dining room, talking, laughing. Chandelier light spilled through the tall casement windows to be reflected in the dark water of the pool. I had been invited to dinner, but turned him down flat, still furious with him for the Sidelines fiasco. He was probably, even as I stood there, telling his pals about the private investigator who lived in his backyard. Fucking dilettante, using me to amuse his Palm Beach pals. Never giving a thought to the fact that he was playing with my life.

Never mind he had saved it first.

I didn't want the reminder. I didn't want to think of Molly Seabright or her sister. This place was supposed to be my sanctuary, but I felt as if half a dozen unseen hands were grabbing at me, plucking at my clothes, pinching me. I tried to walk away from them, going across the damp lawn to the barn.

Sean's barn had been designed by the same architect who designed the main house and the guest house. Moorish arches created galleries down the sides. The roof was green tile, the ceiling teak. The light fixtures hanging down the center aisle had been taken out of an art deco-era hotel in Miami. Most humans don't have homes that cost what his stable cost.

It was a lovely space, a place I often came to at night to calm myself. There are few things as quieting and reassuring to me as horses browsing on their evening hay. Their lives are simple. They know they are safe. Their day is over and they trust the sun will rise the next morning.

They trust their keepers absolutely. They are utterly vulnerable.

Oliver abandoned his food and came to put his head out over his stall door to nuzzle my cheek. He caught the collar of my old denim shirt between his teeth and seemed to smile, pleased with his mischief. I hugged his big head and breathed in the scent of him. When I stepped back, extricating my collar, he looked at me with eyes as kind and innocent as a small child's.

I might have cried had I been physically able to do so. I am not.

I went back to the guest house, glancing in again at Sean's dinner party as I passed. Everyone looked to be having a grand time, smiling, laughing, bathed in golden light. I wondered what I would see if I were to walk past Molly Seabright's house. Her mother and stepfather talking around her, preoccupied with the details of their mundane lives; Molly isolated from them by her keen intelligence and her worry for her sister, wondering where to turn next.

When I went inside my house, the message light on my phone was blinking. I hit the button and braced myself to hear Molly's voice, then felt something like disappointment when my attorney asked me to please return his call sometime this century. Asshole. We'd been waging the battle for my disability pay since I had left the Sheriff's Office. (Money I didn't need, but was entitled to because I had been injured on the job. Never mind that it had been my own fault, or that my injuries were insignificant compared to what had happened to Hector Ramirez.) What the hell didn't he know about the situation after all this time? Why did he think he needed me?

Why would anyone think they needed me?

I went into my bedroom and sat on the bed, opened the drawer of the nightstand. I took out the brown plastic bottle of Vicodin and poured the pills out on the tabletop. I stared at them, counted them one by one, touching each pill. How pathetic that a ritual like this might soothe me, that the idea of a drug overdose-or the thought that I wouldn't take them that night-would calm me.

Jesus God, who in their right mind would think they needed me?

Disgusted with myself, I dumped the pills back in the bottle, put the bottle back in the drawer. I hated myself for not being what I had always believed myself to be: strong. But then I had long mistaken being spoiled for being strong, being defiant for being independent, being reckless for being brave.

Life's a bitch when you find out in your thirties that everything you ever believed to be true and admirable about yourself is nothing but a self-serving lie.

I had painted myself into a corner and I didn't know how to get out of it. I didn't know if I could reinvent myself. I didn't think I had the strength or the will to do it. Hiding in my own private purgatory required no strength.

I fully realized how pathetic that was. And I had spent a lot of nights in the past two years wondering if being dead wasn't preferable to being pathetic. So far I had decided the answer was no. Being alive at least presented the possibility for improvement.

Was Erin Seabright somewhere thinking the same thing? I wondered. Or was it already too late? Or had she found the one circumstance to which death was preferable but not an option?

I had been a cop a long time. I had started my career in a West Palm Beach radio car, patrolling neighborhoods where crime was a common career choice and drugs could be purchased on the street in broad daylight. I had done a stint in Vice, viewing the businesses of prostitution and pornography up close and personal. I had spent years working narcotics for the Sheriff's Office.

I had a head full of images of the dire consequences of being a young woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. South Florida offered a lot of places to get rid of bodies or hide ugly secrets. Wellington was an oasis of civilization, but the land beyond the gated communities was more like the land that time forgot. Swamp and woods. Open, hostile scrubland and sugarcane fields. Dirt roads and rednecks and biker meth labs in trailer houses that should have been left to the rats twenty years past. Canals and drainage ditches full of dirty black water and alligators happy to make a meal of any kind of meat.

Was Erin Seabright out there somewhere waiting for someone to save her? Waiting for me? God help her. I didn't want to go.

I went into the bathroom and washed my hands and splashed water on my face. Trying to wash away any feelings of obligation. I could feel the water only on the right side of my face. Nerves on the left side had been damaged, leaving me with limited feeling and movement. The plastic surgeons had given me a suitably neutral expression, a job so well done no one suspected anything wrong with me other than a lack of emotion.

The calm, blank expression stared back at me now in the mirror. Another reminder that no aspect of me was whole or normal. And I was supposed to be Erin Seabright's savior?

I hit the mirror with the heels of my fists, once, then again and again, wishing my image would shatter before my eyes as surely as it had shattered within me two years ago. Another part of me wanted the sharp cut of pain, the cleansing symbolized in shed blood. I wanted to bleed to know I existed. I wanted to vanish to escape the pain. The contradictory forces shoved against one another inside me, crowding my lungs, pushing up against my brain.

I went to the kitchen and stared at the knife block on the counter and my car keys lying beside it.

Life can change in a heartbeat of time, in a hairsbreadth of space. Without our consent. I had already known that to be the truth. In my deepest heart I suppose I knew it to be true in that moment, that night. I preferred to believe I picked up the keys and left the house to escape my own self-torment. That idea allowed me to continue to believe I was selfish.

In truth, the choice I made that night wasn't safe at all. In truth, I chose to move forward. I tricked myself into choosing life over purgatory.

Before it was all over, I feared I might live to regret it-or die trying.