Part 8 (2/2)

”Elle Stevens.”

”Do I know you?”

”No. I don't think so.” ”Thank G.o.d. I've always said I never forget a beautiful face. You had me thinking I might be getting OldTimer's.”

”Trey, your brain is too drenched in alcohol for it to contract anything,” Jade said dryly.

Hughes didn't so much as glance at him. ”I've been telling people for years: I drink for medicinalpurposes,” he said. ”Maybe it's finally paying off. ”Never mind me, darling,” he said to me. ”I never do.” His brows drew together. ”Are you sure . . . ?” ”I'm a new face,” I said, almost amused at my own joke. ”Have you ever been to Cleveland?” ”G.o.d, no! Why would I go there?” ”I was sorry to hear about Stellar.” ”Oh, yeah, well . . .” he rambled, making a dismissive gesture with his hand. ”s.h.i.+t happens. Right, Donnie?” The question had a barb to it. He still didn't look at Jade. Jade shrugged. ”Bad luck. That's the horse business.” C'est la vie. C'est la mort. Such is life. Such is death. His grief was underwhelming. ”G.o.d bless General Fidelity,” Hughes said, raising an imaginary gla.s.s. ”Provided they cough up.” Again, there was a bite to his words, but Jade seemed unaffected. ”Buy the Belgian horse,” Van Zandt said. ”You'll then say: Stellar who?” Hughes laughed. ”It's not enough I've given you my Mercedes. Now you're spending my money before it even gets into my pocket, V.?”

”That seems wisest, knowing you, my friend.”

”All my dough's going into the new barn,” Hughes said. ”Casa de Money Pit.”

”What good is a fancy stable with no horses to put in it?” Van Zandt asked.

”Let someone like Mr. Jade here come in with a truckload of clients to pay the mortgage and buy me a

new speedboat,” Hughes answered. ”Like half of Wellington.”

True enough. A great many Wellingtonians paid a year's mortgage with the exorbitant rents they chargedfor the three or four months the winter people were in town. ”Trey, get on your horse,” Jade ordered. ”I want you sober enough to complete the course.” ”h.e.l.l, D.J., booze is the only thing that gets me around. I couldn't do it sober.” He looked around, searching. ”Erin, my peach,” he called. ”Be a doll and bring my n.o.ble steed along.”

”Erin doesn't work here anymore, Trey. Remember?” Paris said, taking his coat bag and handing him his hard hat.

”Oh, right. You got rid of her.”

”She left.”

”Huh.” He looked off into the middle distance, smiling to himself. ”Seems like I just saw her.” He glanced

around to see that the coast was clear and said to Paris in a stage whisper: ”Honey, why couldn't you lose the little heifer instead?”

Paris rolled her eyes. ”Get on your horse, Trey.”

She called to the Guatemalan man in Spanish to bring the gray horse, and the entourage began to move out of the aisle. I turned to follow. Jade was still standing there, still watching me.

”It was nice meeting you, Elle. I hope we see you around-whether V. sells you a horse or not.” ”I'm sure you will. I'm intrigued now.” ”Like a moth to a flame?” he said. ”Something like that.” He shook my hand, and I felt that current pa.s.s through me again. I watched the pack of them make their way toward the schooling ring. Van Zandt walked alongside the gray, bending Hughes' ear about the jumper in Belgium. Hughes listed to one side on the horse's back.

Paris glanced backward, looking for Jade to catch up. I started the hike back to my car, wis.h.i.+ng I had time to go home and take a shower, to wash off the taint.There was a slick oiliness to Jade's crowd that should have had a smell to it, the same way I've alwaysbelieved snakes should have a smell to them. I didn't want to have anything to do with them, but thewheels were turning now. The old familiar buzz of anxious excitement in my head. Familiar, not altogetherwelcome.

I'd been on the sidelines a long time. I lived one day to the next, never knowing whether I would decide I'd lived one day too many. I didn't know if I had my head together enough to do this. And if I didn't,Erin Seabright's life could hang in the balance.

If Erin Seabright still had a life.

You got rid of her, Trey Hughes had said. An innocent enough statement on the face of it. A figure of speech. And from a man who didn't even know what day it was. Still, it struck a nerve.

I didn't know if I should trust my instincts, they'd been so long out of use. And look what happened the last time I trusted them, I thought. My instincts, my choice, and the consequences. All bad.

But it wouldn't be my action that did the damage this time. It would be inaction. The inaction of Erin Seabright's mother, of the Sheriff's Office.

Someone had to do something. These people Erin Seabright had known and worked for were far too dismissive when it came to the subject of her, and far too cavalier when it came to the subject of death.

The address Molly had given me as Erin's was a three-car garage some entrepreneurial sort had converted into rental property. Geographically, it was only a few miles from the Seabright home in Binks Forest. In every other respect it was in another world.

Rural Loxahatchee, where the side roads are dirt and the ditches never drain; where no one had ever met a building code they wouldn't ignore. A strange mix of run-down places, new middle-cla.s.s homes, and small horse properties. A place where people nailed signs to tree trunks along the road advertising everything from ”Make $$$ in Your Own Home” to ”Puppies for Sale” to ”Dirt Cheap Stump Grinding.”

The property where Erin had lived was overgrown with tall pines and scrubby, stunted palm trees. The main house was a pseudo-Spanish ranch style, circa mid-seventies. The white stucco had gone gray with mildew. The yard consisted of dirty sand fill and anemic, sun-starved gra.s.s. An older maroon Honda sat off to one side on the driveway, filthy and dotted with hardened gobs of pine sap. It looked like it hadn't gone anywhere in a long while.

I went to the front door and rang the bell, hoping no one would be at home in the middle of the day. I would have been much happier letting myself into the garage-c.u.m-guest house. I'd had enough human interaction to last me the day. I swatted a mosquito on my forearm and waited, then rang the bell a second time.

A voice like a rusty hinge called out: ”I'm around the back!”

Small brown geckos darted out of my path and into the overgrown landscaping as I walked around the side of the garage. Around the back of the house was the obligatory pool. The screened cage that had been erected to keep bugs out of the patio area was shredded in sections as if by a giant paw. The door was flung wide on broken hinges.

The woman who stood in the doorway was long past the age and shape anyone would care to see her in a two-piece swimming suit, but that was what she was wearing. Flab and sagging skin hung on her bent frame like a collection of half-deflated leather balloons.

”What can I do for you, honey?” she asked. A New York transplant in giant Jackie-O sungla.s.ses. She must have been pus.h.i.+ng seventy, and appeared to have spent sixty-eight of those years sunbathing. Her skin was as brown and mottled as the skin of the lizards that lived in her yard. She was smoking a cigarette and had two hugely fat ginger cats on leashes. I was momentarily stunned to silence by the sight of her.

”I'm looking for my niece,” I said at last. ”Erin Seabright. She lives here, right?”

She nodded, dropped her cigarette b.u.t.t, and ground it out with the toe of her aqua neoprene scuba diver's boot. ”Erin. The pretty one. Haven't seen her for a couple of days, darling.” ”No? Neither has her family. We're getting kind of worried.” The woman pursed her lips and waved my concern away. ”Bah! She's probably off with the boyfriend.” ”Boyfriend? We didn't know she had a boyfriend.” ”What a surprise,” she said sarcastically. ”A teenage girl who doesn't tell her family anything. I thought they were on the outs, though. I heard them fighting out in the yard one night.”

”When was that?”

”Last week. I don't know. Thursday or Friday maybe.” She shrugged. ”I'm retired. What do I know

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