To cheer her up, while Joey stepped up a few stairs to check out below, Annabelle whispered in Caroline’s ear, “Okay, so you for sure have slept with hotter men than I have, your whole life.” Annabelle examined the athletic, strong leg muscles that were highlighted in the way Joey’s jeans were tightening on his body, as he contorted himself to see better. “And how could that happen or be remotely fair, when I’m technically the one with the much better body between us? You don’t even work out! What the fuck?”
Joey walked back down and said, “I think it’s safer if you two get out of this barn.”
“I’m not. I’m going down there and confronting Eddie,” Caroline said. “That’s why we came back.”
Joey’s lips curled in. He wasn’t able to hide a smile, knowing Caroline’s stubbornness was still alive. “Just meet me halfway then. Do not leave the property, just go to the landscaping shed in the back.”
Annabelle touched Joey’s shoulder to get his attention. “We’ve got a lot of questions that we would like answers to. My friend here is in shock just to be on the same planet as you. But you gotta tell us, why can’t she just go down there?”
“I found out Thierry wanted you to watch it play out; that’s why he told you to come over. Marcus and I were both surprised to see you today. But you have to stand back and let it happen, or the plan won’t work. Thierry is fine. But that trainer guy from France, Philippe de Montagyew or something, is going to have some explaining to do. As will your husband.”
“It’s de Montaigne,” said Annabelle, a bit self-conscious now about her summer mate.
“I still don’t understand, Joey,” Caroline said.
Joey kissed her forehead again, this time holding his lips there for several seconds, pulling Caroline tightly into his chest. With his thumbs tight, Joey clenched both of her hands. “Listen to me: I have been planning this moment for two years. Marcus McCree is in on it; his sister, Justine, and her lip-reading helped us more than she knows.”
Chapter 58
Crouching Tigers
Caroline and Annabelle sat in the landscaping shed in the corner of the main ring. From here, they could see the side entrance to the main stables where Philippe and the men had walked in earlier. They’d closed the wooden door, but enough sun was shining through a crack, so there was plenty of light inside. They heard men’s voices, first screaming, then quieting down. Caroline tried to make out the words, but she couldn’t decipher them.
“I hear Eddie,” she whispered. “I wish Joey could come in here. Jesus, Annabelle!”
“He’ll come back. And that will be one conversation I’d like to be in on,” Annabelle said, standing now on a lawn mower to get higher. She could see through a small slat in the side of the shed.
Caroline tried to push another crate over to the side, but it was too heavy. “I’m six inches shorter than you, and there’s nothing in here for me to stand on, not even a bucket!”
“There’s a large truck coming,” Annabelle said, narrating the scene.
“Is it white and old? Like a box truck? If yes, that’s like the truck I first saw Joey driving,” Caroline said. She tried to climb up on a mulch pile, but she kept slipping.
“Yeah. Oh God, now there’s Philippe’s orange Porsche. He’s opening the trunk. These guys are having a real fucking party.”
“Any sign of Marcus or Joey or Thierry?” Caroline asked.
“Nope. It just looks like a normal delivery or something,” Annabelle said.
“It’s not a normal delivery,” Caroline said. “And, though I do trust Joey, I just don’t understand why we have to wait in here.”
“We don’t.”
“I mean, I’ve got my old boyfriend, my husband, and my family’s livelihood out there, all smashing up against each other.”
“Don’t forget to throw my summer French fling into the shit show that your life has become. You’re right, let’s go,” Annabelle said as she opened the creaky door of the landscaping shed. “I’m not doing as told and waiting in here one more second.”
Once outside, the women walked briskly toward Eddie’s office, and up a circular staircase to the cupola. They heard the beeping of the truck backing up in the distance. Annabelle went back down the stairs and reported, “Looks like another truck is arriving. This one’s more like a dump truck.”
“I’m telling you there have to be more clues in Eddie’s office, we just have to piece them together,” Caroline said, quietly unlocking his office door. She then thought of Maryanne, relieved that she was not around on Mondays, and Caroline wondered how much that sourpuss knew. Probably all of it.
Annabelle watched Caroline unlocking and locking various file drawers. “What can I do? You want me to look for something in particular? And did you take all those keys from Eddie and copy them?”
Caroline spun the keys around in the air on her index finger without looking back at her friend. “The main one to the office door, he hid in our armoire. I grabbed it this morning. The others? For the cabinets? It’s just something I learned in the art gallery where I worked. Basically, every credenza in America has a cheap lock, and the same keys work on all of them or most. I’ve always had this set of various kinds from the gallery, and it’s come in handy various times in my life. Like now.” Caroline was on her knees, butt in the air, pushing a key into the bottom drawer of a wall of files.
“You used to break into files at work?”
“Just to see the prices people were paying,” Caroline said, looking back at Annabelle, a bit sheepishly. “Kinda like how I used to try on people’s clothes when I was a chambermaid at the Maidstone Arms in high school. It wasn’t illegal; I was just curious.” Caroline rifled through the files in Eddie’s bottom desk drawer. She found the ledger with payments to Thierry in the small book and flung it in Annabelle’s direction. “See? Eddie’s been paying Thierry since 2009, right when Gigi and Rosie were born. These are some sort of child support payments, right?”
“Have to be,” Annabelle said. “He only started working for Eddie formally this year, right? When the stables were created.”
“I guess so,” Caroline said, looking at more files, fanning the pages of more small books for clues inside. “I don’t know what happened to Rosie’s mom. Thierry told me a few times that she died of some illness during Rosie’s birth, but he didn’t elaborate. Thing is, the payments to Thierry go up in amounts, ten times higher this summer, since spring really, from five thousand a month to fifty thousand. And then, look,” her finger trailed lines on the pages, “To Maryanne and to Philippe: these are kooky numbers. Seventy-five thousand dollars for a trainer per month all summer? And fifty thousand for like two years now as a monthly bonus to an assistant?”
“I hear footsteps!” Annabelle said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We can’t, there’s only one staircase,” Caroline stood, jamming the files back into the drawer and locking it as fast as she could.
The door opened slowly. Marcus McCree appeared and said, “Come on, ladies. You gotta see what’s going down. Mrs. Clarkson, your formerly dead boyfriend and your husband are about to lock heads, and it’s not going to be pretty. But if you made the effort to get as far as you did, then you might as well see it all.”
“This is going to be good!” Annabelle said, grabbing Caroline’s arm and dragging her full speed down the shiny mahogany staircase.
Chapter 59
Bungling the Bricks
“Let’s go up to that storage area,” Caroline said, heading for the Branch Water Lounge. Annabelle and Marcus ascended the stairs, but Caroline waited at the bottom step. “I’ll be right there.”
“You’re not coming?” Annabelle asked. “You’re going to bust in on whatever they are doing? I’m not sure that’s wise.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Caroline told them. “Besides, this is my life colliding, not yours.”
Entering the stables from the far end, Caroline sidestepped in along the wall to make sure the men
down the halls could not see her. She walked three stalls down to Liza von Tattenbach’s trunk, which she’d seen Philippe standing over this morning with the duffel bag. Lifting the top, she slid the tray with horse treats, ribbons, and sunscreen to one side. Then, taking it out entirely to be able to see the entire interior, she removed a helmet, two rumpled show jackets, a huge Ziploc of rotten carrots, and tall leather boots.
Now that it was mostly empty, she could knock on the bottom floor of the trunk. It sounded hollow: Annabelle was right, no one would ever expect there to be a false bottom on one of these. She stood to the side and grabbed the bottom brass border, about four inches thick, and, yanking it hard, pulled it out from the bottom. There was a neat, metal drawer. She nodded to herself, remembering that Eddie insisted that every client had no choice but to purchase “special” navy and brass trunks from his supplier. No standard horse trunk had a secret compartment in the bottom.
The security men and Marcus had left the adjacent stalls, most likely, she assumed, to survey the grounds. Next, she slipped into the tack room where bridles hung on hooks and saddles straddled polished wooden bars. A window opened up to another corridor, and Philippe and the men were ten stalls down. Caroline crouched at the bottom sill to watch them.
The men murmured, surrounded by open duffel bags again. They pulled out the bottom drawer of the trunk beside them. Out came neatly packed, cellophane-wrapped bricks. One of the men placed them in a wheelbarrow of horse stall shavings, mixed with manure. Another man shoveled the shavings a bit to cover the bricks. Caroline trailed the wheelbarrow outside and watched the man dump it into the manure and shavings refuse bin.
Caroline returned to the landing where Annabelle waited and said, “This is beyond unbelievable. Everything is clear now, or almost. I just need to tie up a few more strings. The question is, who is doing what?” She started to explain, “Riders’ horse trunks get carted all over the East Coast for shows on the circuit, right?”
“Yes, Wellington near Palm Beach in winter,” Annabelle said. “Lexington in the spring, Harrisburg in the fall, Lake Placid in the summer . . . yeah, yeah, hurry up.”
“Philippe is hiding cellophane bricks inside that bottom compartment of the trunks, then mixing the packages into dirty shavings filled with manure, and carting them out to the horse manure pen,” Caroline said. “And that manure pile gets picked up with special handling. Not normal horse shit and shavings they’re handling. That’s like a really expensive kitty litter box.”
“So, what’s in the packages?” asked Annabelle. “Has to be drugs, right?”
“I think so, or cash,” Caroline answered. “The bricks aren’t in the shape of a bag of stolen jewelry or something like that.”
“Drugs,” said Annabelle. “Sorry, it has to be. I once saw a mirror laying on a side table at Philippe’s cottage and chose to ignore it.”
“Okay, so all drugs. The cash was just in his backpack,” Caroline announced. “I’m just scared for Eddie, for us. I’m sure Sea Crest manure and shavings don’t go to a dump. They go to some warehouse or whatever, and some guy has to dig the plastic-wrapped drugs out of the horseshit and shavings and voilà, presto, ingenious drug transport. An excellent way to deliver drugs up and down the East Coast.”
“Absolutely,” Annabelle said. “Who would ever suspect drugs in manure piles, or beneath rich little girls’ hair bows and peppermint horse snacks?”
“Philippe and the polo circuit French guys had to bring this to Eddie, and I guess he couldn’t say no,” Caroline said.
“Eddie may be an idiot for getting involved, but that’s a pretty damn smart plan,” Annabelle said. “That’s like putting drugs into some Park Avenue woman’s Balenciaga suitcases in the luggage section of her private plane.”
“Which I bet happens, by the way,” said Caroline. “I mean, what DEA agent goes into some little brat’s ribbon trunk?”
Annabelle added, “Or, if they did, the feds would do some racial profiling bullshit and look into the grooms’ quarters, just because most of those guys are from Latin America.”
“So true,” Caroline said. “They’d blame the grooms, the hardest working people on the circuit. All family men, photos of their kids all over their tack room. You take care of animals that well, you also take equal care of people around you. They’d try to bust the good guys. They’d never look to bust the fancy polo players.”
“Honey, I love you, but I gotta get out of here,” Annabelle said, feeling quite nervous now. “I think you should sneak out with me.” She grabbed her Céline tote off the floor and dusted off the bottom. “I don’t want to be involved in this, or implicated with Philippe in some way. Whether you come or not, I need to walk down Spring Farm Lane to that little coffee spot, get myself an Uber from there, and go back to my family. I’ve never been so grateful for Arthur!” She puffed up her gorgeous mane and wiped the dirt off her long, lean legs.
Caroline agreed, “Go, Annabelle, slip out the front, and go home to that darling husband of yours.”
As she took the first step down, sirens roared from every direction.
Chapter 60
I Pronounce You Husband and Wife
By the time Caroline reached the bottom step and looked out into the courtyard behind the stables, it was too late. Fifty yards away, Eddie was being led up against a police car, the guy she’d played spin the bottle with in seventh grade was placing handcuffs on his wrists. Upon seeing her, Eddie yanked his hand away, saying, “James, c’mon, my wife. Shit, can you forget the cuffs for a moment?”
Officer Vincent hesitated and looked around. His colleagues were watching him now, rounding up Philippe, Thierry, and the four men who’d arrived earlier with the duffel bags. “Eddie, I, this is official business. I can’t give you special treatment with everyone watching.”
Eddie put his hands in his pockets and said, “I was at your house for a barbecue two weeks ago, man. Could you just stall a few minutes?”
Caroline walked up to her old school friend, her eyes moist. “You can’t put him in jail, James. You just can’t.”
“Well, of course I can. But I’m not, we’re not,” he answered softly. “If he plays ball. Still, we have to bring him in. And he’s going to have to . . .”
“You’re not?” said Eddie. He turned around, placed his face in his hands and leaned his whole body over the car’s hood, praying to God. He convulsed as he started sobbing, relieved that he might have a chance to be spared for his greed.
James turned to Caroline and said, “Now I understand why you were speeding through town this morning.”
“How do you know he’s not going away?” Caroline asked. “Can you honestly confirm that?”
The officer’s answer was interrupted by Philippe de Montaigne, who was yelling obscenities in French, offended that anyone would accuse him of a crime worthy of lower-class riffraff. Two cops tried to reason with him and to cuff him.
“Well, Eddie here knew what was going on, it’s just he wasn’t a big player in it,” James explained. “He knew those French guys were into bad deals, and he let them use the girls’ horse trunks. There was this drawer system . . .”
“Yo! Caroline doesn’t know anything, James,” Eddie said. “You gotta go easy on the details with her or she’s gonna . . .”
“Eddie, stop,” Caroline said, glowering at her husband and willing him to be respectful to the officer. “I figured out everything. I pulled out a damn drawer this morning on my own. So, please, for once in your life, just shut up.”
Eddie turned around and faced the ground. How the fuck did his wife know about the drug drawers? He turned to James. “So I’m not confirming anything, but why do you think I’ll be okay, James?”
“Because Marcus McCree wanted it that way.”
“Marcus is the fuckin’ Executive Coach company owner!” Eddie said. “He has no idea . . .”
“Cool it, Eddie, or I’ll put the cuffs on in front of your wife. Yes, that Marcus McCree came to
us to protect you. And so did someone else,” James said, protecting his old friend Caroline. He was not sure if Eddie even knew that the man he’d tried to strangle on the Ultimate Frisbee field more than a decade ago was alive.
Caroline looked over at Marcus, who was talking to some policemen and guiding them around the stalls. He caught her eye and signaled—it was all under control now. She put her hands together in prayer and bowed her head to him in thanks. He nodded once elegantly.
She asked James, “When you say someone else was helping, do you mean Thierry Moinot?” What would happen to Rosie?
James shook his head no.
“So Thierry’s taking the fall for . . .”
“Last week, they got the bad guys already, up in Lake Placid, of all places. Apparently, two men put the pieces together for the agents. Marcus McCree was one of them, and the other I’m not going to name. Just know that they made sure everyone took care of Eddie and Thierry. Philippe should be fine if he can cool down his little hissy fit over there and talk some truth to us.”
Caroline saw that the four men with the duffel bags were in front of a larger police vehicle with DEA agents and dogs around them. Thierry sat in a police car, quietly taking orders.
“Give me a minute,” Caroline said.
She walked over to Thierry and asked the officers, “Can I talk to Mr. Moinot?”
“Not wise, ma’am,” a policeman said. “But . . . I guess a few words.”
“Thierry, I got Rosie’s back. You know that? She can move in for a while until all of this settles,” Caroline said. “I’ll take care of things, okay? And thanks for the text, I did need to see this through myself.”
Thierry, eyes closed, nodded, “You deserved to know.” And the cop shut the door.
When she got back to Eddie, James was explaining, “. . . and if you fill in those blanks, Eddie, you’ll all be relatively free to go.”
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