Dark Horse

by Tami Hoag

  I looked at Landry as his cell phone rang. “Time to have another chat with Bruce. Is he still in custody?”

  “No. They cut him loose. Landry,” he said into the phone. The muscles in his face tightened and his brows pulled low. “What the hell do you mean, gone? Where was the fucking guard?”

  Erin, I thought.

  “When?” he demanded. “Well, that’s just fucking fantastic. Tell that deputy when he gets his head out of his ass, I’m gonna rip it off his shoulders and shout down the hole!”

  He snapped the phone shut and looked at me. “Erin’s gone. Someone set a fire in a trash can on the other side of the nurses’ station and the deputy at her door left his post. When he came back, she was gone.”

  “She’s with Chad.”

  “And they’re running.” Landry started the car. “I’ll drop you at the emergency room. I’ve got to roll.”

  “Leave me at my car,” I said. “I’ll drive myself.”

  “Elena . . .”

  “It’s a finger, Landry. I’m not going to die of it.”

  He heaved a sigh and closed his mouth.

  I t was a slow night in the ER. My finger was x-rayed and found to be dislocated rather than broken. The doctor shot my hand full of lidocaine and manipulated the finger back into a straight line. I refused the cumbersome splint in favor of taping the finger to its neighbor. He handed me a prescription for painkillers. I gave it back.

  On my way out I stopped at the desk and asked if anyone had come in with a severe eye injury. The clerk told me no.

  I checked my watch as I walked out of the hospital. Five hours until Van Zandt’s plane left for Kennedy Airport, then on to Brussels.

  Every uniform in Palm Beach County was looking for him, looking for Paris, looking for Chad and Erin. Meanwhile, Don Jade was out on bail, and Trey Hughes had written the check.

  It all revolved around Trey Hughes—the land deal, Stellar, Erin—and to my knowledge, no one was looking for him. I went in search. If he was at the center of it all, maybe he held the key.

  Last I’d known, Trey had a house in the Polo Club, a gated community near the show grounds that caters to horse people with money. I headed in that direction, taking the back streets that would swing me past Fairfields on the way.

  The gate stood open at Lucky Dog Farm. I could make out the shape of a car near the construction boss’s trailer. I turned in and my headlights washed over the back of Trey’s classic Porsche. I killed the engine and got out, the Glock in my left hand.

  The only light I could see was the big security light on the pole, but somewhere nearby Jimmy Buffett was singing a song about the joys of irresponsibility.

  I followed the sound, walking the length of the huge, dark stables, and around the end. A second-story balcony ran the length of the building, overlooking the jumping field. Candles and lanterns illuminated the scene. I could see Trey dancing, the end of his omnipresent cigarette a glowing orange dot in the dark.

  “Come on up, honey!” he called. “I thought you’d never get here! I started the party without you.”

  I climbed the stairs, keeping my eyes on him. He was high. On what, I couldn’t know. Cocaine had been his thing in the eighties. It was making a comeback when I’d checked out of the Narcotics division. Nostalgia among the tragically hip.

  “What are we celebrating, Trey?” I asked as I stepped onto the balcony.

  “My illustrious and stellar life,” he said, still dancing. He held a bottle of tequila in one hand. His aloha shirt hung open over a pair of khaki pants. He was barefoot.

  “Stellar,” he said, and started to laugh. “What a bad joke! Shocking!”

  The song ended and he fell back against the railing and took a long pull on the bottle.

  “Were you expecting me?” I asked.

  “No, actually I was expecting someone else. But you know, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “I don’t know, Trey. I think it might—depending on your reasons. You were expecting Paris?”

  He rubbed his face, tiny embers of cigarette ash floating around his head like fireflies. “That’s right. You’re the private eye, now. The gumshoe. The private dick—or is that politically incorrect? It really should be private pussy, shouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t think Paris will be here tonight, Trey. She’s been unavoidably detained.”

  “Yeah? What’s she up to?”

  “Running from the law,” I said. “She and Chad Seabright tried to kill me today.”

  He squinted at me, waiting for the punch line. “Honey, what have you been smoking?”

  “Come on, Trey. You’ve been to her place a hundred times. I know about your affair. Don’t try to tell me you don’t know anything about the trailer, about Erin.”

  “Erin? Somebody kidnapped her. The whole fucking world’s going to hell on a sled.”

  I shook my head. “It was all a play. Didn’t you know? A play for you.”

  I could see his face in the candlelight. He was trying to find his way through the fog in his brain. Either he didn’t know what I was talking about, or he wanted to convince himself he didn’t know.

  “A three-act play,” I said. “Deceit, double-crosses, sex, murder. Shakespeare would have been proud. I don’t know the whole script yet, but it begins with a quest for the holy land—Lucky Dog Farm—and its king—you.”

  The last of his puzzled smile faded away.

  “Here’s what I know so far: The story opens with a girl named Paris who wants very much to be queen. So much so that she plots to ruin the one person standing between her and the fulfillment of her dreams: Don Jade.

  “It shouldn’t be that hard to do, she thinks, because he’s already got a bad reputation. People are ready to believe the worst about him. They’ll believe he would kill a jumper who wouldn’t bring top dollar. Insurance fraud? He’s done it before and gotten away with it.

  “His groom disappears. He’s the last person to see her. Turns out she’s been kidnapped. And when she gets away, who does she name as one of her abductors? Don Jade.

  “Surely, Paris thinks, now Trey will dump him. Jade will be in prison soon, at any rate. And she’ll become queen of Lucky Dog Farm.”

  “That’s not a very funny story,” Trey said. He put his cigarette out on the cast stone railing and flicked the butt out into the night.

  “No. It isn’t. And it’s not going to have a happy ending either,” I said. “Did you think that it would?”

  “You know me, Ellie. I try not to think. I’m just a Dixie cup on the sea of life.”

  He sniffed and rubbed his face again. A round patio table squatted like a mushroom in front of an open set of French doors that led into a dark room. A dozen candles burning on the table spilled their light over a glass tray of cocaine that had been cut into lines. Near the tray lay a .32 caliber Beretta pistol.

  “What’s the gun for, Trey?” I asked, reassured by the weight of my own weapon—even if it was in the wrong hand.

  “Rats,” he said, digging another cigarette out of his pocket. He flicked a lighter and took a drag, exhaling into the night sky. “Maybe a little Russian roulette later.”

  “That’ll be a very short game,” I said. “That’s an automatic weapon.”

  He smiled and shrugged. “The story of my life: stuck in a rigged game.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got it hard. How much did you inherit when Sallie died? Eighty million? A hundred?”

  “With a string attached to every one,” he said.

  “They don’t seem to be holding you back from spending.”

  “No.”

  He turned and looked out at the property, nothing to see but a patchwork in varying shades of black.

  “Why did you bail Jade out, Trey? Why did you get him Shapiro?” I asked, moving to stand down the railing from him.

  He flashed a smile. “Because your father was unavailable.”

  “You’ve never been more loyal than a tomcat your whole life. Why stick
by Don Jade?”

  “He made me what I am today,” he said with another crooked smile.

  “He killed Sallie, didn’t he?” I said. “You were with Michael Berne’s wife, fucking your alibi, and Jade was at the house, hiding in the shadows. . . . And now you can’t walk away.”

  “Why would I walk away from all this?” he asked, spreading his arms wide. The cigarette bounced on his lip. “I’m king of the world!”

  “No, Trey,” I said. “You were right the first time. You’re the sad clown. You had it all. And you’re going to end up with nothing.”

  “You know a little something about that, don’t you, Ellie?” he said.

  “I know all about it. But I’m climbing out of that hole, Trey, and you’re going to end up buried in it.”

  I pulled my phone off the pocket of my jeans and tried to dial Landry’s number, my right hand awkward, still half-numb and under the numbness a hot, throbbing pain waiting to come fully to life. Landry needed to know Trey had been expecting Paris. She had probably thought to come to him for a car the cops wouldn’t be on the lookout for. Perhaps she thought to come to him for money to live on in Europe. Or perhaps she would try to convince Trey to go with her. Wealthy fugitives on the lam in Europe’s glamour capitals.

  I took a couple of steps back from Trey, switching hands with phone and gun, my eyes on him, the pathetic playboy, Peter Pan corrupted utterly by time and self-indulgence.

  Landry’s line was ringing as Paris Montgomery came out of the darkness beyond the open French doors. Without hesitation, she scooped the Beretta off the patio table and pointed it right at my face.

  Chapter 53

  We manage a lot of properties, Detective,” Bruce Seabright said. “I have nothing to do with most of them.”

  “I only care about what you have to do with this one,” Landry said.

  They stood in Seabright’s home office. Seabright turned around in a circle and heaved a sigh up at the ceiling. “I don’t have anything to do with it!”

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  “I don’t know where that videotape came from,” he said. “Someone planted it.”

  “Yeah, right. You stick with that story. I’m asking you about the property in Loxahatchee.”

  “I have an attorney,” Seabright said. “Talk to him.”

  “This is an unrelated line of questioning.”

  “And I told you, I don’t have anything to do with the rental property.”

  “You expect me to believe that someone involved in Erin’s kidnapping just happened to rent that property from your company? The same way these people you sent Erin to for a job just happened to turn out to be killers and rapists and Christ knows what all.”

  “I don’t care what you believe,” Seabright said, reaching for his phone. “I had nothing to do with any of this, nor did my son. Now get out of my office or I’m filing harassment charges.”

  “File it up your ass, Seabright,” Landry said. “You and your rotten kid are both going to jail. I’ll see to it personally.”

  Landry left the office, thinking he just wanted to drive the lot of these people out to Lion Country Safari and dump them inside the pen with the big cats.

  Krystal Seabright was standing in the hall a few feet from the office door. For once, she didn’t look stoned, but stricken. She held a hand out to stop him from passing her, her mouth opening to form words that didn’t come out.

  “Can I help you, Mrs. Seabright?”

  “I did it,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “That woman came to me, to my office. I rented her that property. I remember her name. Paris. I’ve always wanted to visit Paris.”

  She didn’t know quite how she should be reacting to the news, Landry thought. With guilt? With shock? With outrage?

  “How did she happen to come to you?” he asked.

  “She told me a friend sent her.” Tears shone in her eyes. She shook her head and looked toward her husband’s office. “Was it him? Do you think it was him?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Seabright,” Landry confessed. “I guess you have to ask him.”

  “I guess I do,” she murmured, staring at the office door. “I have to do something.”

  Landry left her there in the hall, glad he was just a cop. He could walk away from this mess when it was over. Krystal Seabright wouldn’t be so lucky.

  Chapter 54

  I stared at the barrel of the gun in Paris Montgomery’s hands. Jimmy Buffett was still singing in the background.

  “Put down the phone and the gun,” Paris said to me.

  I now held the Glock in my weak and damaged right hand. I could have tried to raise it up and call her bluff, but I couldn’t have done it convincingly. I couldn’t have pulled the trigger if I needed to. I weighed my options as Landry’s voicemail message came on the line.

  Paris came toward me. She was angry and she was afraid. Her neat little scheme was fraying at the edges like a cheap rag.

  “It seemed a simple plan, didn’t it, Paris?” I said. “You got Erin to help you frame Jade. She and Chad got to ruin Bruce Seabright in the process. It would have worked like a charm if Molly Seabright hadn’t come to me for help.”

  “Put down the phone and the gun,” she ordered again.

  I clipped the phone onto my jeans and glanced at Trey, who stood flat-footed and expressionless.

  “Why did you let Van Zandt in on it?” I asked. “Or did he force his way in?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then why are you pointing a gun in my face, Paris?”

  She glanced at Trey. “This is all Don’s doing,” she said. “He killed Stellar. He kidnapped Erin. He killed Jill. It’s all Don, Trey. You have to believe me.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Because it’s part of your plan?”

  “Because I love you!” she said emphatically, though her eyes were on me, sighting down the barrel of a gun. “Erin saw Don kill Stellar. Don did horrible things to her, to punish her. And he killed Jill.”

  “No, he didn’t, honey,” Trey said wearily. “I know he didn’t.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You had night check the night Jill was killed. You left my bed to go do it. Just like you did the night before, when Berne’s horses were turned loose.”

  “You’re confused, Trey,” Paris said, an edge in her voice.

  “Generally, yes. Life’s easier that way. But not about this.”

  She took another step toward me, her patience wearing thin. “Put the fucking gun down!”

  I heaved a sigh and slowly crouched down as if to set the gun on the floor, then ducked and rolled sideways.

  Paris fired twice, one of the bullets hitting the floor near me and spitting up shards of travertine marble.

  I switched my gun to my left hand, trying to steady it with my right, came to my feet, and rushed her before she could adjust her position to fire at me a third time.

  “Drop it, Paris! Drop it! Drop it!”

  She turned and bolted for the stairs at the far end of the balcony. I ran after her, pulling up short as she turned the corner and fired off a shot behind her.

  Cautiously, I peered around the corner, looking down on an empty stairwell faintly illuminated by the glow of the security light. She could have been waiting beyond the landing, tucked against the wall, waiting for me to charge after her. I could see myself turning the corner on the landing and the bullet hitting me square in the chest, my blood the only color in a black-and-white scene.

  I went instead to the end of the balcony and looked down. She was gone. I ran down the stairs. The engine of Trey’s Porsche roared to life as I hit the ground. The headlights blinded me as the car leapt toward me.

  I brought my gun up and put a round through the windshield, then dove to the side.

  Paris tried to swing the Porsche around, tires spinning, dirt and gravel spraying out behind it. The car skidded sideways and sl
ammed violently against the side of the concrete building, setting off the horn and alarm system.

  Paris shoved the door open, fell out of the vehicle, got up and started to run down the driveway, a hand pressed to her left shoulder. She stumbled and fell, got up and ran another few steps, then stumbled and fell again. She lay sobbing on the ground within sight of the sign proudly announcing construction of Lucky Dog Farm.