Elena Estes - Dark Horse Part 26

"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 p.r.o.nounced. We stood alone along the rail of one of the compet.i.tion 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 compet.i.tive 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. a.s.shole. I bought oneanyway. "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 att.i.tude toward either of them."

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

"Oh, for G.o.d'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 horses.h.i.+t." "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 wh.o.r.e-" "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 f.u.c.k 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 heteros.e.xual." "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 agoal. 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 a.s.sessing 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 sayshe 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 s.e.x 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 a.s.sumption 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 p.i.s.sed 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 f.u.c.k 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.e.x 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 embarra.s.sed 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 G.o.ddam

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. "G.o.d, 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." "s.h.i.+t. 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 longtime 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 pa.s.s.

"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 G.o.dd.a.m.nedest 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 theheadlights, Landry thought. The expression was more focus than fear. She had brushed her hair and puton 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 thatshe 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 att.i.tude 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 waslooking 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? G.o.d, no. I mean, I know she had a crush on him, but that's as far as it went. Don had been afterme to get rid of her. He didn't trust her. She was always flapping her mouth to anyone who wouldlisten."

"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 p.i.s.s 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 hurther. I won't believe that. I just won't." "He doesn't have a temper?"