by Tami Hoag
“Jesus, what a fucking mess,” Landry mumbled. He finished his scotch and set the glass on the coffee table. “I wouldn’t mention any of this to Lieutenant Dugan, if I were you.”
“Why would I?”
Landry’s pager went off. He checked the display, then glanced up at me. “Because he wants you in his office ASAP.”
L andry held the door for me as we entered the building. I didn’t have the manners to thank him. My mind was on the meeting ahead. I needed a strategy going in or Dugan and Armedgian would run me off the case on a rail.
They were waiting in the lieutenant’s office: Dugan, Armedgian, and Weiss. Weiss gave me the glare as I entered the room, the flat cop eyes with a mountain of pent-up anger behind them. I dismissed him and went straight to Dugan, looking him in the eye, offering my hand.
“Lieutenant. Elena Estes. I’d say it’s a pleasure, but I’m sure it won’t be.” I turned to Armedgian. “Wayne. Thanks for the info on Van Zandt. The whole truth would have been more helpful, but what the hell? Nobody liked Jill Morone anyway.”
Armedgian’s round face colored. “I can’t give sensitive information to a civilian.”
“Sure. I understand. And that’s why you called Lieutenant Dugan here straightaway, right? To warn him, so he could have someone keep an eye on the guy, right?”
“We had no reason to believe Van Zandt was an immediate danger to anyone,” Armedgian defended himself. “I hadn’t been made aware of the Seabright girl’s kidnapping.”
“I’m sure that will be a comfort to Jill Morone’s family.”
“Your concern for the family is touching, Ms. Estes,” Dugan said. “And surprising, considering the way you’ve treated the Seabrights.”
“I’ve given due courtesy to the Seabrights.”
“Not according to Bruce Seabright.”
“He wasn’t due any, as you’ve probably found out for yourself by now. Frankly, I’m not convinced he isn’t involved in the kidnapping.”
“I’m not interested in your theories, Ms. Estes,” Dugan said.
“Then why am I here?”
“The Seabrights want to lodge a complaint against you. Seems you’ve misrepresented yourself to them.”
“Not so.”
“You are not a private investigator,” Dugan said.
“I never told anyone that I was. The Seabrights have made an erroneous assumption.”
“Don’t try to bullshit me with semantics. If you want to play word games, become a lawyer.”
“Thanks for the career advice.”
“Too bad she couldn’t have taken it before she got one of ours killed,” Weiss muttered behind my back.
I kept my focus on Dugan. “I got into this to try to help a little girl who believed her sister was in trouble when no one—including this office—believed her. That’s my only purpose in this, Lieutenant. If Bruce Seabright somehow feels threatened by that, you might want to have a hard look at why.”
“We’ve got it under control,” Dugan said. “I want you out of it. Now.”
I looked around the room. “Gee, did I miss something? Have I been rehired by this agency? Because, if I haven’t been, then I’m pretty certain you can’t tell me what to do or where to go or with whom I might have a conversation. I’m a private citizen.”
“You’re impeding an official investigation.”
“There wouldn’t be an investigation if not for me.”
“I can’t have a citizen running loose, breaking and entering homes, tampering with evidence—”
“Breaking and entering is a crime,” I said. “If you have some kind of proof I’ve committed a crime, then you should arrest me.”
“Say the word, Lieutenant,” Weiss offered. “I’ll do the honors.”
“Van Zandt is our business now, Elena,” Armedgian said. “The sheriff’s and the FBI’s.”
I looked at him, bored. “Uh-huh. Great job. He came to my house this morning and threatened me. Where were you then, Wayne? And you know what? I’ll bet a hundred dollars you don’t know where he is right now. Do you?”
The look on his face spoke for him.
“The Seabrights intend to file a restraining order against you, Ms. Estes,” Dugan said. “If you go near them, their home, Mr. Seabright’s place of business, we’ll have to pick you up.”
I shrugged. “You could have sent a deputy to tell me that. Unless you really want to talk about this case, Lieutenant, you’re wasting my time.”
Dugan arched an eyebrow. “You have pressing business somewhere?”
I pulled my cell phone out of my jacket pocket, scrolled through a few numbers, and hit the call button. I kept my gaze on the lieutenant as the phone rang on the other end.
“Van Zandt? Elle. Sorry I had to rush off this morning. Especially after you took all that time to scream at me and make me feel like I couldn’t ride a bicycle, much less a horse.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Only background noise. He was in a car. I figured to proceed with the conversation even if Van Zandt hung up on me. I wanted Dugan to know he didn’t own me, and at the same time know that I could be an asset, whether he liked the idea or not.
“You think I was too tough on you?” Van Zandt asked.
“No. I like it rough,” I said suggestively.
Another pause, and then he chuckled. “I don’t know anyone like you, Elle.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I think that remains to be seen. I’m surprised you are calling me.”
“The moth to the flame,” I said. “You exercise my brain, Z. Sean and I are going to Players for a late dinner and a drink or three. Are you free?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Later?” I suggested.
“I don’t think I should trust you, Elle.”
“Why not? I don’t have any power. I’m the odd one out.”
“You don’t trust me,” he said. “You think bad things about me which are not true.”
“So convince me you’re a good guy. It’s never too late to make friends. Besides, it’s only drinks, for God’s sake. Bring your friend Lorinda. You can sell her Sean’s horse over dessert. See you later. Ciao.”
I ended the call, put the phone back in my pocket.
“Yes,” I said to Dugan. “I have pressing business. Seems I have a date with Tomas Van Zandt.” I turned to Wayne Armedgian. “Do you think you can pick up the tail from a dead standstill in a parking lot?”
I didn’t wait for an answer.
“It’s been real, guys,” I said, and with a wave of my hand, I left the room.
I felt dizzy. I felt like I had walked up to a giant and spit in his eye. I’d managed to alienate the head of Robbery/Homicide and a regional supervisory special agent of the FBI in one fell swoop.
What the hell. I’d been the alien going in. They had excluded me, not the other way around. I would have happily told them anything about the case I could, but they didn’t want me. I had just put them on notice I couldn’t be bullied. I knew my rights, I knew the law. And I knew I was right: They wouldn’t have had a case if I hadn’t badgered Landry into it, if I hadn’t called Armedgian looking for information. I wouldn’t let them pat-pat me on the head now and send me to the sidelines.
I walked up and down on the sidewalk outside the building, breathing in the thick, warm night air, wondering if I’d played it right, wondering if it would even matter or if it was already too late.
“That’s some set you’ve got on you, Estes.”
Landry came toward me with a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other.
“Yeah, it’s a wonder my pants fit.”
“Think Van Zandt will show at Players?” he asked, lighting up.
“I think he will. He likes the game too much. And it’s not as if he’s in imminent danger of arrest. He knows you don’t have anything on him or he’d be in jail already. I think he’ll show to rub your face in it—and mine.”
“You smoke?” he asked.
“No,” I said on a trail of smoke. “I quit years ago.”
“Me too.”
“Desk pack?” I asked.
He took the cigarette back. “It’s this or a flask. I can’t get suspended for this. Yet.”
“Weiss has a real bug up his ass.”
“He’s short,” Landry said by way of explanation.
“I know I’m not welcome in this,” I said. “But it was my case first, and I can still serve a purpose.”
“Yeah, I know. You just slapped my lieutenant in the face with it.”
A hint of a smile pulled at his mouth. His approval meant too much to me.
“Subtlety is overrated and it takes too long,” I said. “We don’t have time to fuck around.”
I took the cigarette for one last puff, my lips touching where his had been. I didn’t want to let myself think there was anything erotic in that, but of course there was, and Landry knew it too. Our gazes locked and held, a current running between us.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, backing down the sidewalk.
Landry stayed where he was. “What if Dugan wants you back inside?”
“He knows where I’m going. He can come and buy me a drink.”
He shook his head in wonder. “You’re something, Estes.”
“Just trying to survive,” I said as I turned and went to my car.
As I pulled around past the sidewalk on my way out of the lot, my headlights flashed on Weiss standing in the doorway to the building. Little prick. I figured he would make trouble for Landry sharing his smoke with me, but that was Landry’s business. I had problems of my own. I had a date with a killer.
Chapter 38
Women. Stupid, ungrateful bitches. Van Zandt spent most of his life courting them, flattering them—no matter what they looked like—carting them around to look at horses, giving his advice and counsel. They needed him to tell them what to do, what to think, what to buy. And were they grateful? No. Most of them were selfish and silly and didn’t have a brain in their heads. They deserved to be cheated. They deserved whatever happened to them.
He thought of Elle. He still thought of her by that name, even though he knew it to be false. She was not “most women.” She was clever and devious and bold. She thought with the hard logic of a man, but with a woman’s slyness and sexuality. He found that exciting, challenging. A game worth playing.
And she was right: there was nothing she could do to hurt him. There was no evidence against him, therefore he was an innocent man.
He smiled at that, feeling happy and clever and superior.
He snatched up his cell phone, punched the speed-dial number for the town house, and listened to it ring unanswered on the other end. His mood spiraled back down. Another ring and he would get the machine. He didn’t want to speak to a fucking machine. Where the hell was Lorinda? Off somewhere with that obnoxious dog of hers. Horrible, flea-ridden beast.
The machine picked up and he left a curt message for her to meet him at The Players later.
Angry now, he ended the call and threw the phone onto the passenger’s seat of the cheap piece-of-shit car Lorinda had given him to drive. He hadn’t wanted to tolerate the police following him around. Following him for no good reason, he had told her. He was the innocent victim of police harassment. She had believed him, of course, despite the fact that she had seen the bloody shirt. He had excused that away, and she had believed him in that too.
Stupid cow. Why she didn’t rent a better car when she traveled was beyond him. Lorinda had money she had inherited from her family in Virginia. Tomas had taken it upon himself to do the research. But she wasted it on charities for abandoned dogs and broken-down horses, instead of using it for herself. She lived like a gypsy on the farm that had belonged to her grandmother, renting out the grand plantation house and living herself—with a pack of dogs and cats—in an old clapboard farmhouse that she never cleaned.
Tomas had told her she needed to get a face-lift and a boob job, and fix herself up or she would never get a rich husband. She laughed and asked him why she should get another husband when she had Tomas to look out for her best interests.
Stupid creature.
Women. The bane of his existence.
He drove east on Southern Boulevard, thinking about the woman he was to meet. She thought she could blackmail him. She told him she knew all about the dead girl, which, of course, she did not. But she had already become a problem before that, because of the lies she told the Americans about him. Bitter, vindictive cunt. That was the Russians. A more vicious race of people had never lived.
The death of this one would be, of course, the fault of Sasha Kulak. Tomas had taken her in, given her a roof over her head, a job, an opportunity to learn from him and take advantage of his vast knowledge—in the barn and in the bedroom.
She should have worshiped him. She should have wanted to please and service him. She should have thanked him. Instead, she had stolen from him and stabbed him in the back and spread stories about him.
He had, at great cost to himself, called any clients she might have known, might have contacted after she had left him, to warn them this girl was trouble, that she was a thief and probably on drugs; to tell them of course he hadn’t done anything wrong.
And now he had to deal with her friend, Avadon’s Russian girl. Avadon should have fired her on the spot Friday when the girl had tried to kill him in Avadon’s own stable. Incredible what these Americans would tolerate.
He’d had his fill of Florida. He was ready to go back to Belgium. He had a flight already lined up. A cargo plane traveling to Brussels with a load of horses. Going as a groom, he never had to pay. One more day he would do business here, showing everyone he had nothing to hide, no reason to worry about the police. Then he would return to Europe for a time, and come back when people had better things to gossip about than him.
He slowed the car as he looked for the sign. He had suggested meeting at the back of the show grounds, but the girl had refused, insisting on a public place. This was the place she had chosen: Magda’s—a shitty bar in an industrial part of West Palm Beach. A clapboard building that even in the dark looked as if it needed paint and had termites.
Van Zandt pulled in the drive alongside the bar and drove around back to find a parking place.
He would find the girl in the bar, buy her a drink. When she wasn’t looking, he would slip her the drug. It was a simple thing. They would talk, he would try to assure her there had been a misunderstanding about Sasha. The drug would start to take effect. When the moment was right and she was incapable of protest, he would assist her outside.
She would appear to be drunk. He would put her in the car and drive away to a place where he could kill her and dispose of her body.
He found a spot to park, backing in along a chain-link fence that separated the bar’s property from an auto salvage yard. The perfect place. Out of sight. This problem would be dealt with quickly and neatly, and then he would go to The Players to have a drink with Elena Estes.
I went into The Players alone. If Van Zandt showed with Lorinda Carlton, I would make Sean’s excuses, but I wouldn’t drag Sean any further into the drama than I already had.
The club was busy. Celebrants from the showring and losers drowning their sorrows. Most stables are closed on Mondays so everyone can recuperate from the weekend’s competition. No reason to go to bed early on Sunday.
The place was a stage with a hundred players. Women showing off the latest in Palm Beach fashions and the newest plastic surgery. Swarthy polo players from South America hitting on every rich thing in a skirt. Minor celebs in town for a long weekend. Saudi Arabian royalty. Every pair of eyes in the place sliding to the next most promising conversation partner in the room.
I found a small table in the corner of the bar and settled in with my bac
k to the wall and a view of the room. I ordered tonic and lime and fended off an ex-baseball star who wanted to know if he knew me.
“No,” I said, amused he had singled me out. “And you don’t want to.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m nothing but trouble.”
He slid into the other chair and leaned across the table. His smile had lit up many an ad for cheap long distance service and colorful underwear. “Wrong thing to say. Now I’m intrigued.”