Van Zandt looked at me, pouting. "It's not a sharp tongue that attracts a husband."
"Husband? Why would I want one of those?" I asked. "Had one once. Threw him back."
Sean grinned. "Why be a wife when you can have a life?"
"Ex is best," I agreed. "Half of the money, none of the headache."
Van Zandt wagged a finger at me, trying to rally a sense of humor. "You need taming, Miss Tigress. You would then sing a different song."
"Bring a whip and a chair for that job," Sean suggested.
Van Zandt looked like he'd already imagined that and then some. He smiled again. "I know how best to treat a lady."
From the corner of my eye I saw Irina coming. A flash of long bare legs and clunky hiking boots. I saw she had something in her hand. She looked angry, and I assumed-wrongly-angry with Sean for being late or upsetting her schedule, or one of the fifty other transgressions that regularly put Irina in a snit. She stopped five feet from us, shouted something nasty in Russian, and flung the thing in her hand.
Van Zandt cried out in surprise, just managing to bring an arm up and deflect the flight path of the steel horseshoe before it struck him in the head.
Sean jumped back in horror. "Irina!"
The groom launched herself at Van Zandt like a missile, screaming: "Pig! You filthy pig!"
I stood, flat-footed, watching in amazement as Irina pummeled him with her fists. She was slender as a reed, but strong as a teamster, the muscles in her arms clearly delineated. Van Zandt staggered backward and sideways, trying to shake her off, but she clung to him like a limpet.
"Crazy bitch!" he shouted. "Get her off! Get her off!"
Sean jumped to, grabbing hold of the girl's blond ponytail with one hand and catching a wildly swinging arm with the other. "Irina! Stop it!"
"Son of bitch! Stinking son of bitch!" she shouted as Sean peeled her off Van Zandt and pulled her backward down the aisle. She rattled off another slur in Russian and violently spat at the Belgian.
"She's crazy!" Van Zandt shouted, wiping blood from his lip. "She should be locked up!"
"I take it you two have met," I said dryly.
"I've never seen her before in my life! Crazy Russian cunt!"
Irina lunged against Sean's hold on her, the look on her face venomous with hate. "Next time I tear out your throat and shit in your lungs, cur! For Sasha!"
Van Zandt backed away looking stricken, his perfect hair standing up in all directions.
"Irina!" Sean shouted, appalled.
"Why don't we ladies retire for a moment?" I suggested, taking Irina by the arm and steering her toward the lounge.
Irina snarled and made a rude gesture in the direction of Van Zandt, but came with me.
We went into the lounge, a room paneled in mahogany and fitted with a bar and leather-upholstered chairs. Irina paced, muttering expletives. I went behind the bar, took a bottle of Stoli from the freezer, and poured three fingers in a heavy crystal tumbler.
"Here's to you, girlfriend." I raised the glass in a toast, then handed it to her. She drank it like water. "I'm sure he had it coming, but would you care to fill me in?"
She fumed and called Van Zandt more names, then heaved a sigh and calmed herself. Just like that: instant composure. "That is not a nice man," she said.
"The guy who delivers feed is not a nice man, but you've never gone to such an effort for him. Who is Sasha?"
She took a cigarette from a box on the bar, lit it, and took a long, deep drag. She exhaled slowly, her face tilted at an elegant angle. She might have been Greta Garbo in a past life.
"Sasha Kulak. A friend from Russia. She went to work for that pig in Belgium because he made all kinds of big promises. He would pay her and let her ride good horses and they would be like partners and he would make her a star in the horse shows. Stinking liar. All he wanted was to have her. He got her to Belgium and thought he owned her. He thought she should fuck him and be grateful. She said no. She was a beautiful girl. Why would she fuck an old man like him?"
"Why would anyone?"
"He was a monster to her. He kept her in a gypsy camper with no heat. She had to use the toilet in his stables and he spied on her through holes in the walls."
"Why didn't she leave?"
"She was eighteen and she was afraid. She was in a foreign country where she knew no one and could not speak their stupid language. She didn't know what to do."
"She couldn't go to the police?"
Irina looked at me like I was stupid.
"Finally, she went to bed with him," she said, shrugging in that way Americans can never mimic. "Still he was terrible to her. He gave her herpes. After a while she stole some money and ran away when they were looking for horses in Poland.
"He called her family and made threats because of the money. He told them lies about Sasha. When she came home, her father threw her out into the street."
"He believed Van Zandt over his daughter?"
She made a face. "They are two alike, those men."
"And what became of Sasha?"
"She killed herself."
"Oh, God, Irina. I'm sorry."
"Sasha was fragile, like a glass doll." She smoked a little more, contemplating. "If a man did this thing to me, I would not kill myself. I would cut off his penis and feed it to the pigs."
"Very effective."
"Then I would kill him."
"A little luckier in your aim with that horseshoe and you might have," I said.
Irina poured another three fingers of the Stoli and sipped at it. I thought about Van Zandt abusing his authority over a young girl that way. Most adults would have had a difficult time dealing with his mercurial temperament. An eighteen-year-old girl would have been in way over her head. He deserved exactly what Irina had imagined for him.
"I'd like to say I'll hold him down while you kick him," I said. "But Sean will expect you to apologize, Irina."
"He can kiss my Russian ass."
"You needn't be sincere."
She thought about that. If it had been me, I would still have told Sean to kiss my ass. But I couldn't afford to alienate Van Zandt, especially not in the light of what Irina had told me. Her friend Sasha was dead. Maybe Erin Seabright was still alive.
"Come on," I said before she could have a chance to set her mind against it. "Get it over with. You can kill him on your day off."
I led the way out. Sean and Van Zandt were standing on the grass near the mounting block. Van Zandt was still red in the face, rubbing his arm where the horseshoe had struck him.
Irina unhooked Tino from the grooming stall and led the gelding out.
"Sean, I apologize for my outburst," Irina said, handing him the reins. "I am sorry to have embarrassed you." She looked at Van Zandt with cold disdain. "I apologize for attacking you on Mr. Avadon's property."
Van Zandt said nothing, just stood there scowling at her. The girl looked at me as if to say, See what a swine he is? She walked away, climbed the stairs to the gazebo at the end of the arena, and draped herself on a chair.
"The czarina," I said.
Van Zandt sulked. "I should call the police."
"But I don't think you will."
"She should be locked up."
"Like you locked up her friend?" I asked innocently, wishing I could stick a knife between his ribs.
His mouth was trembling as if he might cry. "You would believe her lies about me? I have done nothing wrong. I gave that girl a job, a place to live-"
Herpes…
"She stole from me," he went on. "I treated her like a daughter, and she stole from me and fucked me in the ass, telling lies about me!"
The victim yet again. Everyone was against him. His motives were always pure. I didn't point out to him that in America if a man treated his daughter the way he had treated Sasha, he would go to prison and come out a registered sex offender.