“Who's Bruce?”
“Our stepfather. Mom always sides with him, no matter how asinine he is. It makes Erin angry, so she moved out.”
“So Erin is technically an adult, living on her own, free to do whatever she wants,” I said. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
Molly shook her head, but avoided my eyes. She wasn't so sure of that answer, or she thought a lie might better serve her cause.
“What makes you think she's missing?”
“She was supposed to pick me up Monday morning. That's her day off. She's a groom at the show grounds for Don Jade. He trains jumpers. I didn't have school. We were going to go to the beach, but she never came or called me. I called her and left a message on her cell phone, and she never called me back.”
“She's probably busy,” I said, stroking the sponge down a length of rein. “Grooms work hard.”
Even as I said it I could see Irina sitting on the mounting block, face turned to the sun as she blew a lazy stream of cigarette smoke at the sky. Most grooms.
“She would have called me,” Molly insisted. “I went to the show grounds myself the next day—yesterday. A man at Don Jade's barn told me Erin doesn't work there anymore.”
Grooms quit. Grooms get fired. Grooms decide one day to become florists and decide the next day they'd rather be brain surgeons. On the flip side, there are trainers with reputations as slave masters, temperamental prima donnas who go through grooms like disposable razors. I've known trainers who demanded a groom sleep every night in a stall with a psychotic stallion, valuing the horse far more than the person. I've known trainers who fired five grooms in a week.
Erin Seabright was, by the sound of it, headstrong and argumentative, maybe with an eye for the guys. She was eighteen and tasting independence for the first time. . . . And why I was even thinking this through was beyond me. Habit, maybe. Once a cop . . . But I hadn't been a cop for two years, and I would never be a cop again.
“Sounds to me like Erin has a life of her own. Maybe she just doesn't have time for a kid sister right now.”
Molly Seabright's expression darkened. “I told you Erin's not like that. She wouldn't just leave.”
“She left home.”
“But she didn't leave me. She wouldn't.”
Finally she sounded like a child instead of a forty-nine-year-old CPA. An uncertain, frightened little girl. Looking to me for help.
“People change. People grow up,” I said bluntly, taking the bridle down from the hook. “Maybe it's your turn.”
The words hit their mark like bullets. Tears rose behind the Harry Potter glasses. I didn't allow myself to feel guilt or pity. I didn't want a job or a client. I didn't want people coming into my life with expectations.
“I thought you would be different,” she said.
“Why would you think that?”
She glanced over at the magazine lying on the shelf with the cleaning supplies, D'Artagnon and I floating across the page like something from a dream. But she said nothing. If she had an explanation for her belief, she thought better of sharing it with me.
“I'm nobody's hero, Molly. I'm sorry you got that impression. I'm sure if your parents aren't worried about your sister, and the cops aren't worried about your sister, then there's nothing to be worried about. You don't need me, and believe me, you'd be sorry if you did.”
She didn't look at me. She stood there for a moment, composing herself, then pulled a small red wallet from the carrying pouch strapped around her waist. She took out a ten-dollar bill and placed it on the magazine.
“Thank you for your time,” she said politely, then turned and walked away.
I didn't chase after her. I didn't try to give her her ten dollars back. I watched her walk away and thought she was more of an adult than I was.
Irina appeared in my peripheral vision, propping herself against the archway as if she hadn't the strength to stand on her own. “You want I should saddle Feliki?”
Erin Seabright had probably quit her job. She was probably in the Keys right now enjoying her newfound independence with some cute good-for-nothing. Molly didn't want to believe that because it would mean a sea change in her relationship with the big sister she idolized. Life is full of disappointments. Molly would learn that the same way as everyone: by being let down by someone she loved and trusted.
Irina gave a dramatic sigh.
“Yes,” I said. “Saddle Feliki.”
She started toward the mare's stall, then I asked a question for which I would have been far better off not having an answer.
“Irina, do you know anything about a jumper trainer named Don Jade?”
“Yes,” she said casually, not even looking back at me. “He is a murderer.”
KILL THE MESSENGER
by TAMI HOAG
On sale July 2004
LOWELL HANDED HIM a five-by-seven-inch padded manila envelope. He hung a cigarette on his lip and it bobbed up and down as he spoke while he fished in his baggy pants pocket for a lighter. “I appreciate you dropping this for me, kid. You've got the address?”
Jace repeated it from memory.
“Keep it dry,” Lowell said, blowing smoke at the dingy ceiling.
“Like my life depends on it.”
FAMOUS LAST WORDS, Jace would think later when he looked back on this night. But he didn't think anything as he went out into the rain and pulled the U-lock off his bike.
Instead of putting the package in his bag, he slipped it up under his T-shirt and tucked the shirt inside the waistband of his bike shorts. Warm and dry.
He climbed on the bike under the blue neon of the Psychic Readings sign and started to pedal, legs heavy, back aching, fingers cold and slipping on the wet handlebars. His weight shifted from pedal to pedal, the bike tilting side to side, the lateral motion gradually becoming forward motion as he picked up speed, the aches gradually melding into a familiar numbness.
One last run.
He would leave his paperwork 'til morning. Drop this package, go home, and crawl into that hot shower. He tried to imagine it: hot water pounding on his shoulders, massaging out the knots in the muscles, warm steam cleansing the stink of the city from his nostrils and soothing lungs that had spent the day sucking in car exhaust. He imagined Mrs. Chen's hot and sour soup, and clean sheets on the futon, and did his best to ignore the cold rain pelting his face and deglazing the oil on the surface of the street.
His mind distracted, he rode on autopilot. Past the 76 station, take a right. Down two blocks, take a left. The side streets were empty, dark. Nobody hung around in this part of town at this time of night for any good reason. The businesses in the dirty, low, flat-roofed buildings—a glass shop, an air-conditioning place, a furniture stripping place, an auto body shop—closed up at six.
He might have thought it was a strange destination for a package from a lawyer, except that the lawyer was Lenny, and Lenny's clients were what Jace's mother would have naively described as “colorful.”
He checked address numbers as lighting allowed. The drop would be the first place on the right on the next block. Except that the first place on the right on the next block was a vacant lot.
Jace cruised past, checked the number on the next available building, which was dark save for the security light hanging over the front door.
Apprehension scratched like a fingernail on the back of his neck. He swung around in the street and rode slowly past the vacant lot again.
Headlights flashed on, blinding him for a second.
What the hell kind of drop was this? Drugs? A payoff? Whatever it was, Jace wasn't making it. Only a fool would ride into this and ask for a signature on a manifest.