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 sport. 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.
My strategy working undercover had always been to get as much information as possible, as fast as possible; to sketch my illusion boldly and quickly. Dazzle the mark, draw them in close, then hit with the sucker punch and get out. My superiors in the Sheriff's Office had frowned on my methods because I'd borrowed my style from con artists rather than cops. But they had seldom frowned on the outcome.
Sean's parking pass still hanging from my rearview mirror, I rolled past the guard at the gatehouse and into the maelstrom of the Wellington show grounds day shift. There were horses everywhere, people everywhere, cars everywhere, golf carts everywhere. A show was under way and would run through Sunday. Horses and ponies would be jumping over fences in half a dozen competition rings. The chaos would work in my favor, like running a game of three-card monte on a corner in Times Square. Difficult to keep your eye on the queen when you're in the middle of a circus.
I parked in the second lot, cut past the permanent barns and the vet clinic, bypassed the concession stands, and found myself on the show grounds' version of Fifth Avenue: a row of mobile tack shops and pricey boutiques in tricked-out fifth-wheel trailers. Custom jewelers, custom tailors, antiques dealers, monogramming shops, cappuccino stands. I hit a couple of the boutiques to pick up trappings for my role as dilettante. Image is everything.
I purchased and put on a wide-brimmed straw hat trimmed with black grosgrain ribbon. Men never take seriously a woman in a hat. I chose a couple of silk blouses and long wraparound skirts made from vintage saris. I made sure the clerks went overboard with the tissue paper, making the shopping bags look full to bursting. I bought some impractical sandals and trendy bracelets, and put them on. When I thought I looked frivolous enough, I went in search of Don Jade.
There was no sign of him or of Paris Montgomery at his stalls. An underfed Guatemalan man was mucking out a stall, head down, trying not to attract attention lest the next stranger be an INS agent. The front of another stall had been removed to create a grooming bay. In it an overfed girl in a too-revealing tank top was grudgingly brushing a dappled gray horse. The girl had the mean, narrow eyes of someone who blames everyone but herself for the shortfalls in her life. I caught her looking at me sideways, her expression sour.
I tipped my head back and regarded her from under the brim of the ridiculous hat. "I'm looking for Paris. Is she around?"
"She's riding Park Lane in the schooling ring."
"Is Don with her?" Don, my old pal.
"Yeah." And did I want to make something of it?
"And you are…?"
She looked surprised I would bother to ask, then suspicious, then determined she would take advantage of the opportunity. "Jill Morone. I'm Mr. Jade's head groom."
She was Mr. Jade's only groom by the look of it, and by the anemic way she was wielding that brush, she defined the position loosely.
"Really? Then you must know Erin Seabright."
The girl's reactions were so slow, her brain might have been in another time zone. I could see her every thought move sluggishly through her mind as she tried to decide on an answer. She dragged the brush along the horse's shoulder. The horse pinned its ears and rolled an eye at her.
"She doesn't work here anymore."
"I know. Paris told me. Do you know where she went? A friend of mine wanted to hire her."
Jill shrugged, eyes sliding away. "I dunno. Paris said she went to Ocala."
"You guys weren't friends, I guess. I mean, you don't seem to know very much."
"I know she wasn't a very good groom." The pot calling the kettle.
"And I can assume you are?" I said. "Are you interested in moving?"
She looked pleased with herself, like she had a naughty little secret. "Oh, no. Mr. Jade treats me very well."
Mr. Jade probably barely knew her name-unless she was his latest alibi, which I doubted. Men like Don Jade went for girls who were pretty and useful. Jill Morone was neither.
"Good for you," I said. "I hope you still have a job to keep after that business with Stellar."
"That wasn't my fault."
"A horse dies like that. Suspicious circumstances. Owners get nervous, start making phone calls to other trainers… Business can go downhill fast."
"It was an accident."
I shrugged. "Did you see it happen?"
"No. I found him, though," she admitted with a strange spark of pride in her beady little eyes. The chance celebrity. She could be on the fringe of a dark spotlight for a week and a half. "He was just laying there with his legs straight out," she said. "And his eyes were open. I thought he was just being lazy, so I slapped him on the butt to make him get up. Turned out he was dead."
"God. Awful." I looked down the row of Jade's stalls-a dozen or more-each of them hung with a box fan outside the bars of the stall fronts. "I'm surprised you still have the fans up, considering."
She shrugged again and swiped the brush over the gray a couple more strokes. "It's hot. What else should we do?"
The horse waited for her to drift back a step, then whipped her with his tail. She hit him in the ribs with the brush.
"I wouldn't want to be the person who was careless enough to let that electrical cord hang into Stellar's stall," I said. "That groom would never work in this business again. I'd see to that if I had anything to do with it."
The little eyes went mean again in the doughy face. "I didn't take care of him. Erin did. See what kind of groom she was? If I was Mr. Jade, I would have killed her."
Maybe he had, I thought as I walked away from the tent.
I spotted Paris Montgomery some distance away in a schooling ring, golden ponytail bobbing, sunglasses shading her eyes as she guided her mount over a set of jumps. Poetry in motion. Don Jade stood on the sidelines, filming her with a camcorder, as a tall, skinny, red-haired, red-faced man spoke at him, gesturing angrily. He looked like a giant, irate Howdy Doody. I approached the ring a short way down the fence from the two men, my attention seemingly directed at the horses going around.