by Tami Hoag
“Jesus. You make me feel like we should sign a contract,” I said, shaking her hand.
“Technically, we should. But I trust you.”
“Why would you trust me?”
I had the feeling she had an answer, but that she thought it might be too much for me to comprehend and so thought better of sharing it with me. I began to wonder if she was really from this planet.
“Just because,” she said. A child’s pat answer to people who aren’t really paying attention. I let it go.
“I’ll need some information from you. A photograph of Erin, her address, make and model of her car, that sort of thing.”
As I was asking, she bent down, unzipped a compartment of her book bag, and withdrew a manila envelope, which she handed to me. “You’ll find everything in there.”
“Of course.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. “And when you went to the sheriff’s department, who did you speak with?”
“Detective Landry. Do you know him?”
“I know who he is.”
“He was very rude and condescending.”
“So was I.”
“You weren’t condescending.”
A black Jag backed out of the Seabright garage, a suit at the wheel. Bruce Seabright, I assumed. He turned away from us and drove down the street.
“Is your mother home?” I asked. “I’ll need to speak with her.”
The prospect didn’t thrill her. She looked a little nauseated. “She goes to work at nine. She’s a real estate agent.”
“I’ll have to speak with her, Molly. And with your stepfather, too. I’ll leave you out of it. I’ll tell them I’m an insurance investigator.”
She nodded, still looking grim.
“You should leave for school now. I don’t want to be arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
“No,” she said, heading back toward the house, head up, her little book case rattling along on the sidewalk behind her. We should all have so much character.
K rystal Seabright was on a cordless phone when Molly and I walked into the house. She was leaning over a hall table, peering into an ornate rococo mirror, trying to stick down a false eyelash with a long pink fingernail while she chattered to someone about an absolutely fabulous town house in Sag Harbor Court
. No one would have picked her out of a lineup as Molly’s mother. Having met Molly first, I might have pictured her mother as a buttoned-up attorney or a doctor or a nuclear physicist. I might have, except that I knew firsthand children and parents didn’t always match.
Krystal was a bottle blonde who’d used one too many bottles in her thirty-some years. Her hair was nearly white and looked as fragile as cotton candy. She wore just a little too much makeup. Her pink suit was a little too tight and a little too bright, her sandals a little too tall in the spike heel. She glanced at us out of the corner of her eye.
“. . . I can fax you all the details as soon as I get to my office, Joan. But you really need to see it to appreciate it. Places like this just aren’t available now during the season. You’re so lucky this just came up.”
She turned away from the mirror and looked at me, then at Molly with a what now? expression, but continued her conversation with the invisible Joan, setting up an appointment at eleven, scribbling it into a messy daybook. Finally she set the phone aside.
“Molly? What’s going on?” she asked, looking at me, not her daughter.
“This is Ms. Estes,” Molly said. “She’s an investigator.”
Krystal looked at me like I might have beamed down from Mars. “A what?”
“She wants to talk to you about Erin.”
Fury swept up Krystal’s face like a flash fire burning into the roots of her hair. “Oh, for God’s sake, Molly! I can’t believe you did this! What is the matter with you?”
The hurt in Molly’s eyes was sharp enough that I felt it myself.
“I told you something bad’s happened,” Molly insisted.
“I can’t believe you do these things!” Krystal ranted, her frustration with her younger daughter clearly nothing new. “Thank God Bruce isn’t here.”
“Mrs. Seabright,” I said, “I’m looking into a case at the equestrian center which might involve your daughter Erin. I’d like to speak with you in private, if possible.”
She looked at me, wild-eyed, still angry. “There’s nothing to discuss. We don’t know anything about what goes on over there.”
“But Mom—” Molly started, desperately wanting her mother to care.
Her mother turned a withering, bitter look on her. “If you’ve told this woman some ridiculous story, you’re going to be in such hot water, young lady. I can’t believe the trouble you’re making. You don’t have any consideration for anyone but yourself.”
Two red dots colored Molly’s otherwise paste-pale cheeks. I thought she might start to cry. “I’m worried about Erin,” she said in a small voice.
“Erin is the last person anyone needs to worry about,” Krystal said. “Go to school. Go. Get out of this house. I’m so angry with you right now . . . If you’re late for school you can just sit in detention this afternoon. Don’t bother calling me.”
I wanted to grab a handful of Krystal Seabright’s overprocessed hair and shake her until the hair broke off in my fist.
Molly turned and went outside, leaving the front door wide open. The sight of her wheeling away her little book bag made my heart ache.
“You can leave right behind her,” Krystal Seabright said to me. “Or I can call the police.”
I turned back to face her and said nothing for a moment while I tried to wrestle my temper into submission. I was reminded of the fact that I had been a terrible patrol officer when I’d first gone on the job because I lacked the requisite diplomatic skills for domestic situations. I have always been of the opinion that some people really do just need to be bitch-slapped. Molly’s mother was one of those people.
Krystal was trembling like a Chihuahua, having some control issues of her own.
“Mrs. Seabright, for what it’s worth, Molly has nothing to do with this,” I lied.
“Oh? She hasn’t tried to tell you her sister has vanished and that we should be calling the police and the FBI and America’s Most Wanted?”
“I know that Erin hasn’t been seen since Sunday afternoon. Doesn’t that concern you?”
“Are you implying I don’t care about my children?” Again with the bug-eyes and the practiced affront—always a sign of low self-esteem.
“I’m not implying anything.”
“Erin is an adult. At least in her own mind. She wanted to live on her own, take care of herself.”
“So you’re not aware that she was working for a man who’s been involved in schemes to defraud insurance agencies?”
She looked confused. “She works for a horse trainer. That’s what Molly said.”
“You haven’t spoken with Erin?”
“When she left she made it very clear she wanted nothing more to do with me. Living a decent life in a lovely home was just all too boring for her. After everything I’ve done for her and her sister . . .”
She went to the hall table, glanced at herself in the mirror, and dug her hand into a big pink and orange Kate Spade purse. She came out of the bag with a cigarette and a slim lighter, and moved toward the open front door.
“I’ve worked so hard, made so many sacrifices . . .” she said, more or less to herself, as if it comforted her to portray herself as the heroine of the story. She lit the cigarette and blew the smoke outside. “She’s done nothing but give me grief since the night she was conceived.”
“Does Erin’s father live in the vicinity? Might she have gone to spend time with him?”
Krystal burst out laughing, but not with humor. She didn’t look at me. “No. She wouldn’t have done that.”
“Where is her father?”
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t heard from him in fifteen years.”
“
Do you know who Erin’s friends are?”
“What do you want with her?” she asked. “What’s she done now?”
“Nothing I’m aware of. She may have some information. I’d just like to ask her some questions about the man she’s been working for. Has Erin been in trouble in the past?”
She leaned way out the door, took another hard drag on the cigarette, and exhaled the smoke at a hibiscus shrub. “I don’t see that my family is any business of yours.”
“Has she ever been involved with drugs?”
She snapped a look at me. “Is that what this is about? Is she mixed up with drug people? God. That’s all I need.”
“I’m concerned about where she’s gone,” I said. “Erin’s disappearance happened to coincide with the death of a very expensive horse.”
“You think she killed a horse?”
I thought my head might split in two. Krystal’s concern seemed to be about everyone except her daughter. “I just want to ask her some questions about her boss. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”
She stepped outside, tapped her ash into a plant pot, and hopped back into the house. “Responsibility isn’t Erin’s thing. She thinks being an adult means doing whatever you damn well please. She’s probably run off to South Beach with some boy.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
She scowled and looked down at the tiled floor. Down and to the right: a lie. “How would I know? She doesn’t check in with me.”
“Molly said she hasn’t been able to reach Erin on her cell phone.”
“Molly.” She puffed on the cigarette and tried to wave the smoke out toward the street. “Molly is twelve. Molly thinks Erin is cool. Molly reads too many mystery novels and watches too much A&E. What kind of child watches A&E? Law and Order, Investigative Reports. When I was twelve I was watching Brady Bunch reruns.”
“I think Molly has reason to be concerned, Mrs. Seabright. I think you might want to speak with the Sheriff’s Office about filing a missing person’s report.”
Krystal Seabright looked horrified. Not at the prospect that her daughter might have been the victim of foul play, but at the idea of someone from Binks Forest having to file a police report. What would the neighbors say? They might put two and two together and figure out her last house was a double-wide.
“Erin is not missing,” she insisted. “She’s just . . . gone somewhere, that’s all.”
A teenage boy emerged through a door into the upstairs hall and came thudding down the stairs. He looked maybe seventeen or eighteen and hungover. Gray-faced and glum, with platinum-tipped dark hair that stood up in dirty tufts. His T-shirt looked slept in and worse. He didn’t resemble Krystal or her daughters. I made the assumption he belonged to Bruce Seabright, and wondered why Molly had made no mention of him to me.
Krystal swore under her breath and surreptitiously tossed her cigarette out the door. The boy’s eyes followed it, then went back to her. Busted.
“Chad? What are you doing home?” she asked. A whole new tone of voice. Nervous. Obsequious. “Aren’t you feeling well, honey? I thought you’d gone to school.”
“I’m sick,” he said.
“Oh. Oh. Uh . . . Would you like me to make you some toast?” she asked brightly. “I have to get to the office, but I could make you some toast.”
“No, thank you.”
“You were out awfully late last night,” Krystal said sweetly. “You probably just need your sleep.”
“Probably.” Chad glanced at me, and slouched away.
Krystal scowled at me and spoke in a low voice. “Look: we don’t need you. Just go away. Erin will turn up when Erin needs something.”
“What about Erin?” Chad asked. He had come back into the hall, a two-liter bottle of Coke in one hand. Breakfast of champions.
Krystal Seabright closed her eyes and huffed. “Nothing. Just— Nothing. Go back to bed, honey.”
“I need to ask her some questions about the guy she works for,” I said to the boy. “Do you happen to know where I can find her?”
He shrugged and scratched his chest. “Sorry, I haven’t seen her.”
As he said it, the black Jag rolled back into the driveway. Krystal looked stricken. Chad disappeared down a hall. The man I assumed to be Bruce Seabright got out of the car and strode toward the open front door, a man on a mission. He was stocky with thinning hair slicked straight back and a humorless expression.
“Honey, did you forget something?” Krystal asked in the same tone she’d used with Chad. The overeager servant.
“The Fairfields file. I’ve got a major deal going down on a piece of that property this morning and I don’t have the file. I know I set it on the dining room table. You must have moved it.”
“No, I don’t think so. I—”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Krystal? Do not touch my business files.” There was a condescension in his tone that couldn’t have been categorized as abusive, but was, in a subtle, insidious way.
“I’m—I’m sorry, honey,” she stammered. “Let me go find it for you.”
Bruce Seabright looked at me with a hint of wariness, like he suspected I might have a permit to solicit charitable donations. “I’m sorry if I interrupted,” he said politely. “I have a very important meeting to get to.”
“I gathered. Elena Estes,” I said, holding my hand out.
“Elena is considering a condo in Sag Harbor,” Krystal hurried to say. There was a hint of desperation in her eyes when she looked at me in search of a coconspirator.
“Why would you show her something there, darling?” he asked. “Property values in that neighborhood will only decline. You should show her something at Palm Groves. Send her to the office. Have Kathy show her a model.”
“Yes, of course,” Krystal murmured, swallowing down the criticism and the slight, allowing him to take away her sale. “I’ll go find that file for you.”
“I’ll do it, honey. I don’t want anything dropping out of it.”
Something on the stoop caught Seabright’s eye. He bent down and picked up the cigarette butt Krystal had thrown out. He held it pinched between his thumb and forefinger and looked at me.
“I’m sorry, but smoking is not allowed on my property.”
“Sorry,” I said, taking the thing away from him. “It’s a filthy habit.”
“Yes, it is.”
He went into the house to find his errant file. Krystal rubbed at her forehead and stared down at her slightly too flashy sandals, blinking like she might have been fighting tears.
“Just go, please,” she whispered.
I stuck the butt in the plant pot and went. What else could I say to a woman who was so under the thumb of her domineering husband, she would sooner abandon her own child than displease him?
Over and over in my life I’ve found that people are amazing, and seldom in a good way.
Chapter 5
We never know the quality of someone else’s life, though we seldom resist the temptation to assume and pass judgment. Plenty of women would have looked at Krystal Seabright’s situation through the filter of distance and assumed she had it made. Big house, fancy car, career in real estate, land developer husband. Looked good on paper. There was even a Cinderella element to the story: single mother of two swept out of her lowly station in life, et cetera, et cetera.
So too with the apparently well-heeled folks who owned the four thousand expensive horses at the equestrian center. Champagne and caviar every day for a snack. A maid in every mansion, a Rolls in every five-car garage.
The truth was more checkered and less glamorous. There were personal stories full of nasty little plot twists: insecurities and infidelities. There were people who came to the Florida season on a dream and a shoestring, saving every dime all year so they could share a no-frills condo with two other riders, take a few precious lessons from a big-name trainer, and show their mediocre mount to anonymity in the amateur arena just for the love of the spo
rt. There were second-tier professionals with second mortgages on farms in East Buttcrack, hanging on the fringes of the big stables, hoping to pick up a real client or two. There were dealers like Van Zandt: hyenas prowling the water hole, in search of vulnerable prey. The lush life has many shades of gray beneath the gold leaf. It was now officially my job to dig up some of those darker veins.
I thought it would be best to put in as much time as possible near the Jade stable before someone attached to Don Jade went into the bathroom with a copy of Sidelines and came out with a revelation. I’d spent enough time working undercover as a narc to know the chances of that were small, but there nonetheless. People see what they’re programmed to see, they seldom look for anything else. Still, a cop’s life undercover is never without the fear of being made. It can happen any second, and the deeper under, the worse the timing.