Dark Horse

by Tami Hoag

  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.

  Chapter 3

  Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Center is like a small sovereign nation, complete with royalty and guards at the gates. At the front gates. The back gates stood open during the day and could be reached from Sean’s farm by car in five minutes. People from the neighborhood regularly hacked their horses over on show days and saved themselves the cost of stabling—ninety dollars a weekend for a pipe-and-canvas stall in a circus tent with ninety-nine other horses. A guard making night rounds would lock the gate at some point late in the evening. The guard hadn’t made his rounds yet that night.

  I drove through the gates, a yellow parking pass stolen from Sean’s Mercedes hanging on my rearview mirror, just in case. I parked in a row of vehicles along a fence opposite the last of the forty big stabling tents on the property.

  I drove a sea-green BMW 318i convertible I bought at a sheriff’s auction. The roof sometimes leaked in a hard rain, but it had an interesting option that hadn’t come from the factory in Bavaria: a small, foam-lined metal box hidden in the driver’s door panel, just big enough to hold a good-sized bag of cocaine or a handgun. The Glock nine millimeter I kept there was tucked into the back of my jeans, hidden by my shirttail as I walked away.

  On show days the show grounds are as busy and crazy as the streets of Calcutta. Golf carts and small motorcycles race back and forth between the barns and showrings, dodging dogs and trucks and trailers, heavy equipment, Jaguars and Porsches, people on horses and children on ponies, and grooms walking charges done up in immaculate braids and draped in two-hundred-dollar cool-out sheets in the custom colors of their stables. The tents look like refugee camps with portable johns out front, people filling buckets from pump hydrants by the side of the dirt road, and illegal aliens dumping muck buckets into the huge piles of manure that are carted away in dump trucks once a day. People school horses on every available open patch of ground, trainers shouting instructions, encouragement, and insults at their students. Announcements blare over the public address system every few minutes.

  At night the place is a different world. Quiet. Almost deserted. The roads are empty. Security guards make the rounds of the barns periodically. A groom or trainer might drop by to perform the ritual night check or to tend an animal with a medical problem. Some stables leave a guard of their own posted in their elaborately decorated tack room. Baby-sitters for horseflesh worth millions.

  Bad things can happen under cover of darkness. Rivals can become enemies. Jealousy can become revenge. I once knew a woman who sent a private cop everywhere with her horses after one of her top jumpers was slipped LSD the night before a competition offering fifty thousand dollars in prize money.

  I’d made a couple of good busts at this show grounds when I’d worked narcotics. Any kind of drug—human or animal, remedial or recreational—could be had here if one knew whom and how to ask. Because I had once been a part of this world, I was able to blend in. I had been away from it long enough that no one knew me. Yet I could walk the walk and talk the talk. I had to hope Sean’s little joke in Sidelines hadn’t taken away my anonymity.

  I made the dogleg turns from the back area known euphemistically as “The Meadows,” the tent ghetto where show management always sticks the dressage horses that ship in for only several shows each season. From those back tents it takes twenty minutes to walk to the heart of the show grounds. Earth-moving equipment sat parked at one corner, backed into freshly cleared land amid the scrubby woods. The place was being expanded again.

  Lights glowed in the tents. A woman’s melodic laugh floated on the night air. A man’s low chuckle underscored the sound. I could see the pair standing at the end of an aisle in tent nineteen. Elaborate landsc
aping at the corner of the tent set the stage around a lighted stable sign with one golden word on a field of hunter green: JADE.

  I walked past. Now that I had found Jade’s stalls, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I turned on the far side of tent eighteen and doubled back around, coming up through the aisles of nineteen until I could hear the voices again.

  “Do you hear anything?” The man’s voice. An accent. Maybe Dutch, maybe Flemish.

  I stopped breathing.

  “Gut sounds,” the woman said. “She’s fine, but we’ll go through the drill with the vet anyway. Can’t be seen looking careless after Stellar.”

  The man gave a humorless laugh. “People have made their minds up about that. They believe what they want.”

  “The worst,” the woman said. “Jane Lennox called today. She’s thinking of putting Park Lane

  with another trainer. I talked her out of it.”

  “I’m sure you did. You’re very persuasive, Paris.”

  “This is America. You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Innocent always if you’re rich or beautiful or charming.”

  “Don is beautiful and charming, and everyone believes he’s guilty.”

  “Like O.J. was guilty? He’s playing golf and fucking white women.”

  “What a thing to say!”

  “It’s true. And Jade has a barn full of horses. Americans . . .” Disdain.

  “I’m an American, V.” An edge to the tone. “Do you want to call me stupid?”

  “Paris . . .” Smarmy contrition.

  “Stupid Americans buy your horses and line your pockets. You should show more respect. Or does that just prove how stupid we are?”

  “Paris . . .” Smarmier contrition. “Don’t be angry with me. I don’t want you angry with me.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  A Jack Russell terrier came sniffing around the corner then and stared at me while he raised his leg and peed on a bale of hay, considering whether or not to blow my cover. The leg went down and the dog went off like a car alarm. I stood where I was.

  The woman called out: “Milo! Milo, come here!”

  Milo stood his ground. He bounced up and down like a wind-up toy every time he barked.

  The woman rounded the corner, looking surprised to see me. She was blond and pretty in dark breeches and a green polo shirt with a couple of gold necklaces showing at the throat. She flashed a thousand-watt toothpaste-ad smile that was nothing more than jaw muscles flexing.

  “Sorry. He thinks he’s a Rottweiler,” she said, scooping up the Russell. “Can I help you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m looking for someone. I was told she works for Don Jade. Erin Seabright?”

  “Erin? What do you want with her?”

  “This is kind of awkward,” I said. “I heard she was looking for another job. I have a friend in the market for a groom. You know how it is during the season.”

  “Do I ever!” She gave a dramatic, put-upon sigh, rolling the big brown eyes. An actress. “We’re looking too. Erin quit, I’m sad to say.”

  “Really? When was that?”

  “Sunday. Left us high and dry. Found something more interesting up in Ocala, I guess. Don tried to talk her out of it, but he said her mind was made up. I was sorry to hear it. I liked Erin, but you know how flighty these girls can be.”

  “Huh. I’m surprised. The way I understood it, she wanted to stay in the Wellington area. Did she leave an address—to have her paycheck sent?”

  “Don paid her before she left. I’m Don’s assistant trainer, by the way. Paris Montgomery.” Keeping the dog tucked against her, she held a hand out and shook mine. She had a strong grip. “And you are . . . ?”

  “Elle Stevens.” A name I had used undercover in my past life. It fell off my tongue without hesitation. “So, she left Sunday. Was that before or after Stellar went down?”

  The smile died. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Well . . . a disgruntled employee leaves and suddenly you lose a horse—”

  “Stellar bit through an electrical cord. It was an accident.”

  I shrugged. “Hey, what do I know? People talk.”

  “People don’t know shit.”

  “Is there a problem here?”

  The man stepped into the picture. Mid-fifties, tall and elegant with silver temples highlighting a full head of dark hair. He wore a stern, aristocratic expression, pressed tan slacks, a pink Lacoste knit shirt, and a black silk ascot at his throat.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I was just looking for someone.”

  “Erin,” Paris Montgomery said to him.

  “Erin?”

  “Erin. My groom. The one that left.”

  He made a sour face. “That girl? She’s good for nothing. What would you want with her?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “She’s gone.”

  “What’s your friend’s name?” Paris asked. “In case I hear of someone.”

  “Sean Avadon. Avadonis Farm.”

  The man’s cold blue eyes brightened. “He has some very nice horses.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “You work for him?” he asked.

  I supposed I did look like hired help with my hacked-off hair, old jeans, and work boots. “He’s an old friend. I’m leasing a horse from him until I can find what I’m looking for.”

  He smiled then like a cat with a cornered mouse. His teeth were brilliantly white. “I can help you with that.”

  A horse dealer. The third-oldest profession. Forerunners of used-car salesmen the world over.

  Paris Montgomery rolled her eyes. A truck pulled up at the end of the tent. “That’s Dr. Ritter. I’ve got to go.”

  She turned the big smile back on and shook my hand again. “Nice meeting you, Elle,” she said, as if we’d never had that moment of unpleasantness at the mention of Stellar’s death. “Good luck with your search.”

  “Thanks.”

  She set the Russell down and followed the barking beast around the corner as the vet called for her.

  The man held his hand out to me. “Tomas Van Zandt.”

  “Elle Stevens.”

  “My pleasure.”

  He held my hand a little too long.

  “I’d better be going,” I said, drifting back a step. “It’s getting late for a wild-goose chase.”

  “I’ll take you to your car,” he offered. “Beautiful women shouldn’t go around unescorted here in the dark. You don’t know what kind of people might be around.”

  “I have a pretty good idea, but thanks for your concern. Women shouldn’t get into cars with men they’ve only just met either,” I said.

  He laughed and placed a hand over his heart. “I am a gentleman, Elle. Harmless. Without designs. Wanting nothing of you but a smile.”

  “You’d sell me a horse. That would cost me plenty.”

  “But only the best horses,” he promised. “I will find you exactly what you need and for a good price. Your friend Avadon likes good horses. Maybe you could introduce us.”

  Horse dealers. I rolled my eyes and gave him half a smile. “Maybe I just want a ride to my car.”

  Looking pleased, he led the way out of the tent to a black Mercedes sedan and opened the door for me.

  “You must have a lot of satisfied customers if you can rent a car like this for the season,” I said.

  Van Zandt smiled like the cat that got the cream and the canary. “I have such happy clients, one gave me the loan of this car for the winter.”

  “My goodness. If only my ex had made me so happy, he might still be considered in the present tense.”

  Van Zandt laughed. “Where are you parked, Miss Elle?”

  “The back gate.”

  As we started down the road toward The Meadows I said, “You know this girl, Erin? She’s not a good worker?”

  He pursed his lips like he’d gotten a whiff of something rotten. “Bad attitud
e. Smart mouth. Flirting with the clients. American girls don’t make good grooms. They’re spoiled and lazy.”

  “I’m an American girl.”

  He ignored that. “Get a good Polish girl. They’re strong and cheap.”

  “Can I get one at Wal-Mart? I’ve got a Russian now. She thinks she’s a czarina.”