Dark Horse

by Tami Hoag

  Javier was in the grooming stall with the gray, his attention on his work as he plied a rubber currycomb over the horse’s hide. The horse dozed, enjoying the process the way one might enjoy a good massage.

  I stepped into the doorway of the stall, properly introduced myself in Spanish, and asked politely if Javier knew where I might find Mr. Jade.

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and said he didn’t know.

  A lot of very bad things going on lately, I said.

  Yes, very bad.

  Terrible about what happened to Jill.

  Terrible.

  Had the detectives asked him questions about what he might know?

  He wanted no business with the police. He had nothing to say. He was with his cousin’s family that night. He didn’t know anything.

  It was too bad Señor Jade had not come by for night check that night and stopped the murder from happening.

  Or Señora Montgomery, Javier said as he kept working the brush.

  Of course, some people thought Señor Jade was the guilty one.

  People always like to think the worst.

  I also knew the detectives had spoken with Van Zandt. What did he think of that?

  Javier thought only of his work, of which he had too much with both girls gone.

  Yes, the other girl was gone too. Had he known Erin Seabright very well?

  No, he didn’t. He was nothing to those girls because he could not speak English very well.

  That makes things hard, I said. People don’t respect you. It never occurs to those people that you could feel the same way about them because they don’t speak Spanish.

  Young girls think only of themselves and the men they want.

  Erin had her eye on Señor Jade, yes?

  Yes.

  Did Señor Jade have his eye on her?

  No answer.

  Or maybe Van Zandt was the one?

  Javier only did his job. He didn’t mind the business of other people.

  That was the best way to be, I agreed. Why borrow trouble from others? Look at Jill. She said she knew something about Stellar’s death, and look what happened to her.

  The dead tell no tales.

  His gaze flicked past me. I turned to find Trey Hughes coming up behind me.

  “By golly, Ellie, you’re a woman of many talents,” he said. He seemed subdued, not his usual drunken, jovial self. “Speaking in tongues.”

  I lifted a shoulder. “A language here, a language there. It’s nothing every girl in boarding school doesn’t get.”

  “I’ve got all I can do with English.”

  “You’re not riding?” I asked, taking in his casual attire. Chinos, polo shirt, deck shoes.

  “Paris is taking him today,” he said, reaching past me to touch the gray’s nose. “She can undo all the confusion I wreaked on him in the last go-round Friday.”

  He looked at my outfit and lifted a brow. “You don’t exactly look yourself today either.”

  I spread my hands. “My disguise as one of the common folk.”

  He smiled a sleepy kind of smile. I wondered if he had taken the mood elevator down with a little chemical assistance.

  “I heard a little rumor about you, young lady,” he said, watching me out of the corner of his eye as he fed a stalk of hay to his horse.

  “Really? I hope it was juicy. Am I having a flaming affair with someone? With you?”

  “Are you? That’s the hell of getting old,” he said. “I’m still having fun, but I can’t remember any of it.”

  “Then it’s always new and fresh.”

  “Always look on the bright side.”

  “So what did you hear about me?” I asked, more interested in whom he had heard it from. Van Zandt? Bruce Seabright? Van Zandt would spread the news to turn people against me for his own sake. Seabright would have told Hughes because he valued his client more than he valued his stepdaughter.

  “That you’re not who you seem to be,” Hughes said.

  “Is anyone?”

  “Good point, my dear.”

  He came out of the stall and we walked to the end of the aisle to stand looking out. The sky had gone gray with the threat of rain. Across the road the water of the lagoon rippled silver under the skimming breeze.

  “So, who am I supposed to be—if I’m not who I seem?” I asked.

  “A spy,” he said. He didn’t seem upset, but strangely calm. Perhaps he was tired of playing the game too. I wondered just how key a player in all this he was, or if he had simply allowed himself to be swept along by someone else’s current.

  “A spy? That’s exciting,” I said. “For a foreign country? For a terrorist cell?”

  Hughes gave an elaborate shrug, tipping his head to one side.

  “I knew that I knew you,” he said quietly. “I just couldn’t quite place the face. The old brain doesn’t fire like it used to.”

  “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

  “I’d get a transplant, but I keep forgetting to call.”

  It was a terrible thing, I thought as we stood there side by side. Trey Hughes had had it all going for him: good looks, quick wit, money to do or be anything. And this was what he had chosen to become: an aging alcoholic wastrel.

  Funny, I thought, people who had known me along the way might say a similar thing: She had every advantage, came from such a good family, and she threw it all back in their faces. For what? Look at her now. What a shame.

  We can never know another person’s heart, what gives them strength, what breaks them down, how they define courage or rebellion or success.

  “How do you think you know me?” I asked.

  “I know your father. I’ve had occasion to call on his services over the years. The name made it click. Estes. Elle. Elena Estes. You had the most glorious mane of hair,” he reminisced. He had a faraway look as he stared through the haze of his memory. “A friend tells me you’re a private eye now. Imagine that.”

  “It’s not true. Call the licensing board and ask. They don’t know me by any name.”

  “Good business to be in,” he said, ignoring my denial. “Christ knows there’s never any shortage of secrets around here. People will do anything for a dime.”

  “Kill a horse?” I asked.

  “Kill a horse. Kill a career. Kill a marriage.”

  “Kill a person?”

  He didn’t seem shocked by the suggestion. “The oldest story in the world: greed.”

  “Yes. And it always ends the same way: badly.”

  “For someone,” he said. “The trick is not to be that someone.”

  “What character do you play in this story, Trey?”

  He tried a weary smile. “The sad clown. All the world loves a sad clown.”

  “I’m only interested in the villain,” I said. “Can you point me in a direction?”

  He tried to laugh, but didn’t have the energy for it. “Sure. Go into the hall of mirrors and take a left.”

  “A girl is dead, Trey. Erin Seabright’s been kidnapped. It’s not a game.”

  “No. It’s more like a movie.”

  “If you know something, now’s the time to tell it.”

  “Honey,” he said, staring out at the water. “If I knew anything, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

  He walked away from me then, got in his convertible, and drove slowly away. I watched him go, thinking I had been wrong at the start of this, when I had said everything led back to Jade. Everything led back to Trey Hughes—the land deal with Seabright, Erin getting the job with Jade, Stellar. All of it came back to Trey.

  And so, the big money question was: was he at the center of the storm because he was the storm, or had the storm blown up around him?

  Trey had an eye for the girls. That was no secret. And scandal was his middle name. God knew how many affairs he’d had in his lifetime. He’d had an affair with Stella Berne while Michael was his trainer. He’d been with her the night his mother died. It wasn’t hard to
imagine him having his eye on Erin. But kidnapping? And what about Jill Morone?

  I couldn’t imagine any of it. I didn’t want to. Monte Hughes III, my first big crush.

  I know your father. I’ve had occasion to call on his services over the years.

  What the hell had he meant by that? Why would he have needed the services of a defense attorney the caliber of my father? And how would I find out? Call my father after all these years of bitter silence and ask him?

  So, Dad, never mind that I defied you at every turn and dumped my education to become a cop. And never mind that you were always a lousy, distant, uninvolved parent, disappointed in me for the simple fact that I was not a child of your own making. Water under the bridge. Tell me why Trey Hughes has needed your esteemed expertise.

  My father and I hadn’t spoken in a decade. It wasn’t going to happen now.

  I wondered if Landry had interviewed Trey. I wondered if he’d run his name through the system as a matter of routine. But Landry hadn’t asked me any questions about Trey Hughes, only about Jade.

  I went to my car and climbed in to sit and wait. Paris would be getting on Hughes’ gray soon. Trey would come back to the barn after for the postmortem of the ride. And when he left the show grounds afterward, I would be behind him.

  Trey Hughes had just become the center of the universe. It all revolved around him. I was going to find out why.

  ACT TWO

  SCENE TWO

  FADE IN:

  EXTERIOR: THE HORSE PARK AT

  EQUESTRIAN ESTATES—SUNSET

  Wide open spaces on three sides. Trees and a canal at the back of the property. A paved road curves past the front. No one in sight, but the cops are there, hidden.

  A black car approaches and parks at the gate. Bruce Seabright gets out of the car and looks around. He looks pissed off and nervous. He thinks it’s a trap.

  He’s right.

  He opens the trunk and takes out two large blue duffel bags. He heaves the bags over the gate, then climbs over, picks the bags up, and looks around again. He’s looking for a sign, for a person. Maybe he’s even looking for Erin, though he would be just as happy if he never saw her again.

  He starts walking up the drive toward the building, reluctantly. He has the expression of a man who will wet his pants at the first sudden loud noise.

  Halfway to the building he stops and stands and waits. Slowly he turns around in a circle. He wonders what will happen next. He sets the bags down and checks his watch.

  6:05 P.M.

  Darkness is closing in. The security light comes on with a loud humming sound. The voice, the same mechanically altered voice from the phone calls, comes over the loudspeakers.

  THE VOICE

  Leave the bags on the ground.

  BRUCE

  Where’s the girl?

  THE VOICE

  Leave the bags on the ground.

  BRUCE

  I want to see Erin!

  THE VOICE

  In the box. Ring one. In the box. Ring one.

  BRUCE

  What box? Which ring?

  He is agitated, doesn’t know which way to turn. He doesn’t like not having control. He doesn’t want to leave the money. He looks at the two rings nearest the building and chooses the one to his right. He takes the bags with him and goes to stand at the corner of the ring.

  BRUCE

  What box? I don’t see any box!

  He stands there, impatient. It’s getting darker by the second. He stares for a moment at the judge’s booth—a small wooden shelter—at the end of the ring, then goes toward it.

  BRUCE

  Erin? Erin!

  He circles the booth cautiously. Someone might jump out and shoot him or stab him. Erin’s body might fall out onto the ground.

  Nothing happens.

  He inches toward the door, pulls it open, jumps back.

  Nothing happens.

  BRUCE

  Erin? Are you in there?

  No answer.

  Slowly, he sets the bags on the ground and inches toward the booth again, eventually stepping inside. There is no one in the booth. A videotape cassette has been left on the floor. Written in black block letters on a white label on the tape: PUNISHMENT.

  THE VOICE

  You broke the rules. The girl has paid the price.

  Cops come out of the woodwork. Several charge up the stairs of the building. They pry the lock off the door, kick the door in, burst into the room shouting with guns drawn. The beams of their flashlights bob and sweep around the room. There is no one there.

  As they approach the console of audio equipment situated under the bank of windows that allow full view of the grounds, they spot the simple timer that turned the machines on at precisely 6:05 P.M.

  The tape is still playing.

  THE VOICE

  You broke the rules. The girl has paid the price. You broke the rules. The girl has paid the price.

  The voice echoes across the emptiness of the night.

  FADE OUT

  Chapter 35

  Trey Hughes never came back to Don Jade’s barn.

  I waited in my car, checking my watch it seemed every three minutes as the time ticked on toward six. Javier led the gray, draped in a Lucky Dog cooler, away from the barn and came back leading Park Lane. Paris and Jane Lennox returned in the golf cart, then Lennox climbed into a gold Cadillac and drove away.

  I checked my watch again: 5:43.

  At another show grounds some few miles away, Landry and his team from Robbery/Homicide would be in place, waiting for the kidnappers to show.

  I wanted to be there to see how the drop played out, but knew I wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the place. I wanted to know where Jade and Van Zandt were, what they were doing, who was watching them. I wanted to know where Trey Hughes had gone. I wanted people reporting these facts to me. I wanted to be running the case.

  The old rush of adrenaline was there, speeding up my metabolism, making me feel a hum of electricity running just under my skin. Making me feel alive.

  Paris emerged from the barn in street clothes, climbed into a money-green Infiniti, and drove toward the truck exit. I started my car and followed, leaving a pickup truck between us. She took a left on Pierson and we began winding through the outskirts of Wellington, passing through Binks Forest.

  Molly would be in the Seabright house, tucked away in a corner like a mouse, eyes wide, ears open, breath held, waiting desperately for any word of Erin and what had happened at the ransom drop.

  I wish I could have been there for her, as much as for myself.

  I hung back as Paris brought her car to a stop at Southern—a busy east-west drag that led to Palm Beach one way or the rural county the other. She crossed to the Loxahatchee side of the road and continued down B Road, into the wooded darkness.

  I kept my eyes on the Infiniti’s taillights, very aware that we were traveling in the direction of Equestrian Estates.

  A creepy sense of déjà vu crawled down my back. The last time I’d driven these side roads at night, I’d been a narcotics detective. The Golam brothers’ trailer wasn’t far away.

  The Infiniti’s brake lights came on. No blinker.

  I slowed and checked my rearview as headlights glared through my back window. My heart rate picked up a beat.

  I didn’t like having someone behind me. This was not a heavily traveled road. No one came out here unless they had to, unless they lived here or worked at a nursery or a mulch-grinding place.

  I was revisited by the sick feeling I’d gotten in the pit of my stomach that morning when Van Zandt had shown up at the farm and I had thought I was alone with him.

  Until later, he had said when he kissed my cheek.

  Ahead of me, Paris had turned in at a driveway. I went past, catching a quick glimpse. Like most of the places out this way, the house was a seventies vintage ranch style with a jungle for a yard. The garage door went up and the Infiniti rolled inside.

&n
bsp; Why would she live out here? I wondered. Jade had a good business. Paris should have been making decent money. Enough that she could have lived in Wellington near the show grounds, enough to afford an apartment in one of the many complexes that catered to riders.