by Tami Hoag
We halted in the center of the ring at the place known as X. In that moment I felt joy and peace.
I dropped the reins on his neck and patted him. He lowered his head and started to walk forward, then stopped and came to attention.
A girl sat on the white board fence that ran along the road. She watched me with a sense of expectation about her. Even though I hadn't noticed her, I could tell she'd been there, waiting. I judged her to be about twelve. Her hair was long and brown, perfectly straight, and neatly held back from her face with a barrette on each side. She wore little round black-rimmed glasses that made her look very serious. I rode toward her with a vague feeling of apprehension that made no sense at the time.
“Can I help you?” I asked. D'Ar blew through his nostrils at her, ready to bolt and save us from the intruder. I should have let him.
“I'm here to see Ms. Estes,” she said properly, as if she'd come on business.
“Elena Estes?”
“Yes.”
“And you are . . . ?”
“Molly Seabright.”
“Well, Molly Seabright, Ms. Estes isn't here at the moment.”
“You're Ms. Estes,” she declared. “I recognize your horse. His name is D'Artagnon, like in the Three Musketeers.” She narrowed her eyes. “You cut your hair.” Disapproval.
“Do I know you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know me?” I asked, the apprehension rising up like bile through my chest to the base of my throat. Maybe she was a relative of Hector Ramirez, come to tell me she hated me. Maybe she'd been sent as a decoy by an older relative who would now pop out of nowhere to shoot me or scream at me or throw acid in my face.
“From Sidelines,” she said.
I felt like I'd walked into the middle of a play. Molly Seabright took pity on me and carefully climbed down from the fence. She was slightly built and dressed neatly in sensible dark slacks and a little blue T-shirt with a small daisy chain embroidered around the throat. She came up along D'Artagnon's shoulder and carefully held the magazine out to me, folded open to an interior page.
The photograph was in color. Me on D'Ar, riding through thin ribbons of early-morning fog. The sunlight made his coat shine as bright as a new penny. My hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail.
I had no memory of being photographed. I had certainly never been interviewed, though the writer seemed to know things about me I didn't know myself. The caption read: Private investigator Elena Estes enjoys an early-morning ride on D'Artagnon at Sean Avadon's Avadonis Farm in Palm Beach Point Estates.
“I've come to hire you,” Molly Seabright said.
I turned toward the barn and called for Irina, the stunning Russian girl who had beat me out for the groom's job. She came out, frowning and sulky. I stepped down off D'Artagnon and asked her to please take him back to the barn. She took his reins, and sighed and pouted and slouched away like a sullen runway model.
I ran a gloved hand back through my hair, startled to come to the end of it so quickly. A fist of tension began to quiver in my stomach.
“My sister is missing,” Molly Seabright said. “I've come to hire you to find her.”
“I'm sorry. I'm not a private investigator. This is some kind of mistake.”
“Why does the magazine say that you are?” she asked, looking stern and disapproving again. She didn't trust me. I'd already lied to her once.
“I don't know.”
“I have money,” she said defensively. “Just because I'm twelve doesn't mean I can't hire you.”
“You can't hire me because I'm not a private investigator.”
“Then what are you?” she demanded.
A broken-down, busted-out, pathetic ex–sheriff's detective. I'd thumbed my nose at the life I'd been raised in, been ostracized from the life I'd chosen. What did that make me?
“Nothing,” I said, handing the magazine back to her. She didn't take it.
I walked away to an ornate park bench that sat along the end of the arena and took a long drink from the bottle of water I'd left there.
“I have a hundred dollars with me,” the girl said. “For a deposit. I expect you have a daily fee and that you probably charge expenses. I'm sure we can work something out.”
Sean emerged from the end of the stable, squinting into the distance, showing his profile. He stood with one booted leg cocked and pulled a pair of deerskin gloves from the waist of his brown breeches. Handsome and fit. A perfect ad for Ralph Lauren.
I headed across the arena, anger boiling now in my stomach. Anger, and underlying it a building sense of panic.
“What the fuck is this?” I shouted, smacking him in the chest with the magazine.
He took a step back, looking offended. “It might be Sidelines, but I can't read with my nipples, so I can't say for certain. Jesus Christ, El. What did you do to your hair?”
I hit him again, harder, wanting to hurt him. He grabbed the magazine away from me, took another quick step out of range, and turned to the cover. “Betsy Steiner's stallion, Hilltop Giotto. Have you seen him? He's to die for.”
“You told a reporter I'm a private investigator.”
“They asked me who you were. I had to tell them something.”
“No, you didn't have to. You didn't have to tell them anything.”
“It's only Sidelines. For Christ's sake.”
“It's my name in a goddam magazine read by thousands of people. Thousands of people now know where to find me. Why don't you just paint a big target on my chest?”
He frowned. “Only dressage people read the dressage section. And then only to see if their own names are in the show results.”
“Thousands of people now think I'm a private investigator.”
“What was I supposed to tell them? The truth?” Said as if that were the most distasteful option. Then I realized it probably was.
“How about ‘no comment'?”
“That's not very interesting.”
I pointed at Molly Seabright. “That little girl has come here to hire me. She thinks I can help her find her sister.”
“Maybe you can.”
I refused to state the obvious: that I couldn't even help myself.
Sean lifted a shoulder with lazy indifference and handed the magazine back to me. “What else have you got to do with your time?”
Irina emerged from the barn, leading Oliver—tall, elegant, and beautiful, the equine version of Sean. Sean dismissed me and went to his teak mounting block.
Molly Seabright was sitting on the park bench with her hands folded in her lap. I turned and walked to the barn, hoping she would just go away. D'Artagnon's bridle hung from the ceiling on a four-pronged hook near an antique mahogany cabinet full of leather-cleaning supplies. I chose a small damp sponge from the work table, rubbed it over a bar of glycerine soap, and began to clean the bridle, trying to narrow the focus of my mind on the small motor skills involved in the task.
“You're very rude.”
I could see her from the corner of my eye: standing as tall as she could—five-feet-nothing—her mouth a tight little knot.
“Yes, I am. That's part of the joy of being me: I don't care.”
“You're not going to help me.”
“I can't. I'm not what you need. If your sister is missing, your parents should go to the cops.”
“I went to the Sheriff's Office. They wouldn't help me either.”
“You went? What about your parents? They don't care your sister is missing?”
For the first time Molly Seabright seemed to hesitate. “It's complicated.”
“What's complicated about it? She's either missing or she's not.”
“Erin doesn't live with us.”
“How old is she?”
“Eighteen. She doesn't get along with our parents.”
“There's something new.”
“It's not like she's bad or anything,” Molly said defensively. “She doesn't do drugs or anything like that.
It's just that she has her own opinions, that's all. And her opinions aren't Bruce's opinions . . .”
“Who's Bruce?”
“Our stepfather. Mom always sides with him, no matter how asinine he is. It makes Erin angry, so she moved out.”
“So Erin is technically an adult, living on her own, free to do whatever she wants,” I said. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
Molly shook her head, but avoided my eyes. She wasn't so sure of that answer, or she thought a lie might better serve her cause.
“What makes you think she's missing?”
“She was supposed to pick me up Monday morning. That's her day off. She's a groom at the show grounds for Don Jade. He trains jumpers. I didn't have school. We were going to go to the beach, but she never came or called me. I called her and left a message on her cell phone, and she never called me back.”
“She's probably busy,” I said, stroking the sponge down a length of rein. “Grooms work hard.”
Even as I said it I could see Irina sitting on the mounting block, face turned to the sun as she blew a lazy stream of cigarette smoke at the sky. Most grooms.
“She would have called me,” Molly insisted. “I went to the show grounds myself the next day—yesterday. A man at Don Jade's barn told me Erin doesn't work there anymore.”
Grooms quit. Grooms get fired. Grooms decide one day to become florists and decide the next day they'd rather be brain surgeons. On the flip side, there are trainers with reputations as slave masters, temperamental prima donnas who go through grooms like disposable razors. I've known trainers who demanded a groom sleep every night in a stall with a psychotic stallion, valuing the horse far more than the person. I've known trainers who fired five grooms in a week.
Erin Seabright was, by the sound of it, headstrong and argumentative, maybe with an eye for the guys. She was eighteen and tasting independence for the first time. . . . And why I was even thinking this through was beyond me. Habit, maybe. Once a cop . . . But I hadn't been a cop for two years, and I would never be a cop again.
“Sounds to me like Erin has a life of her own. Maybe she just doesn't have time for a kid sister right now.”
Molly Seabright's expression darkened. “I told you Erin's not like that. She wouldn't just leave.”
“She left home.”
“But she didn't leave me. She wouldn't.”
Finally she sounded like a child instead of a forty-nine-year-old CPA. An uncertain, frightened little girl. Looking to me for help.
“People change. People grow up,” I said bluntly, taking the bridle down from the hook. “Maybe it's your turn.”
The words hit their mark like bullets. Tears rose behind the Harry Potter glasses. I didn't allow myself to feel guilt or pity. I didn't want a job or a client. I didn't want people coming into my life with expectations.
“I thought you would be different,” she said.
“Why would you think that?”
She glanced over at the magazine lying on the shelf with the cleaning supplies, D'Artagnon and I floating across the page like something from a dream. But she said nothing. If she had an explanation for her belief, she thought better of sharing it with me.
“I'm nobody's hero, Molly. I'm sorry you got that impression. I'm sure if your parents aren't worried about your sister, and the cops aren't worried about your sister, then there's nothing to be worried about. You don't need me, and believe me, you'd be sorry if you did.”
She didn't look at me. She stood there for a moment, composing herself, then pulled a small red wallet from the carrying pouch strapped around her waist. She took out a ten-dollar bill and placed it on the magazine.
“Thank you for your time,” she said politely, then turned and walked away.
I didn't chase after her. I didn't try to give her her ten dollars back. I watched her walk away and thought she was more of an adult than I was.
Irina appeared in my peripheral vision, propping herself against the archway as if she hadn't the strength to stand on her own. “You want I should saddle Feliki?”
Erin Seabright had probably quit her job. She was probably in the Keys right now enjoying her newfound independence with some cute good-for-nothing. Molly didn't want to believe that because it would mean a sea change in her relationship with the big sister she idolized. Life is full of disappointments. Molly would learn that the same way as everyone: by being let down by someone she loved and trusted.
Irina gave a dramatic sigh.
“Yes,” I said. “Saddle Feliki.”
She started toward the mare's stall, then I asked a question for which I would have been far better off not having an answer.
“Irina, do you know anything about a jumper trainer named Don Jade?”
“Yes,” she said casually, not even looking back at me. “He is a murderer.”
KILL THE MESSENGER
by TAMI HOAG
On sale July 2004
LOWELL HANDED HIM a five-by-seven-inch padded manila envelope. He hung a cigarette on his lip and it bobbed up and down as he spoke while he fished in his baggy pants pocket for a lighter. “I appreciate you dropping this for me, kid. You've got the address?”
Jace repeated it from memory.
“Keep it dry,” Lowell said, blowing smoke at the dingy ceiling.
“Like my life depends on it.”
FAMOUS LAST WORDS, Jace would think later when he looked back on this night. But he didn't think anything as he went out into the rain and pulled the U-lock off his bike.
Instead of putting the package in his bag, he slipped it up under his T-shirt and tucked the shirt inside the waistband of his bike shorts. Warm and dry.
He climbed on the bike under the blue neon of the Psychic Readings sign and started to pedal, legs heavy, back aching, fingers cold and slipping on the wet handlebars. His weight shifted from pedal to pedal, the bike tilting side to side, the lateral motion gradually becoming forward motion as he picked up speed, the aches gradually melding into a familiar numbness.
One last run.
He would leave his paperwork 'til morning. Drop this package, go home, and crawl into that hot shower. He tried to imagine it: hot water pounding on his shoulders, massaging out the knots in the muscles, warm steam cleansing the stink of the city from his nostrils and soothing lungs that had spent the day sucking in car exhaust. He imagined Mrs. Chen's hot and sour soup, and clean sheets on the futon, and did his best to ignore the cold rain pelting his face and deglazing the oil on the surface of the street.
His mind distracted, he rode on autopilot. Past the 76 station, take a right. Down two blocks, take a left. The side streets were empty, dark. Nobody hung around in this part of town at this time of night for any good reason. The businesses in the dirty, low, flat-roofed buildings—a glass shop, an air-conditioning place, a furniture stripping place, an auto body shop—closed up at six.
He might have thought it was a strange destination for a package from a lawyer, except that the lawyer was Lenny, and Lenny's clients were what Jace's mother would have naively described as “colorful.”
He checked address numbers as lighting allowed. The drop would be the first place on the right on the next block. Except that the first place on the right on the next block was a vacant lot.
Jace cruised past, checked the number on the next available building, which was dark save for the security light hanging over the front door.
Apprehension scratched like a fingernail on the back of his neck. He swung around in the street and rode slowly past the vacant lot again.
Headlights flashed on, blinding him for a second.
What the hell kind of drop was this? Drugs? A payoff? Whatever it was, Jace wasn't making it. Only a fool would ride into this and ask for a signature on a manifest.
Now he was pissed. Pissed and scared. Sent to a vacant lot in the dead of fucking night. Fuck that. Fuck Lenny Lowell. He could take his package and shove it up his ass.
Jace stood on his pedals and started to go.<
br />
The car lurched forward, engine roaring like a charging beast as it made straight for him.
For a split second it seemed Jace didn't—couldn't—move. Then he was going, legs pumping like pistons, the bike's tires slipping on the wet street. If he ran straightaway, the car would be on him like a cat on a mouse. He turned hard left instead. The bike's back end skated sideways on the slick pavement. He stuck a foot down to keep from falling, pulled the bike back under himself. Then he was charging the car.
Heart in his throat, he juked right, nearly too late, jumped the curb back into the vacant lot, shooting past the car—big, dark, domestic. He heard the grind of metal on pavement as the car went off the curb and bottomed out. Tires squealed on the wet street as it swung a wide, awkward, skidding turn.
Jace made for the alley as hard as he could go, praying it wouldn't dead-end. In the heart of downtown he was like a street rat that knew every sewer pipe, every Dumpster, every crack in a wall that could offer a shortcut, escape, shelter, hiding place. Here he was vulnerable, a rabbit caught in the open. Prey.
The car was coming after him. The predator. The headlights bucked up and down in the gloom as the car banged back up over the curb.
Jace had had cars come after him in traffic—kids screwing around, men with rage disorders pissed off that he had cut in front of them or skitched a ride up a hill or knocked a side mirror. Assholes trying to make a point, trying to give him a scare. He had never been set up. He had never been hunted.
If he could get to the end of the alley before the car turned down the alley and spotlit him, he had a fifty-fifty shot at ditching them. The end of the alley looked nine miles away.
And it was already too late.
The high beams slapped at his back like a paw reaching out to tag him. The car came, as loud as a train, sending trash cans scattering like bowling pins.