"I don't go to movies," Landry said.
"You don't happen to have a ticket stub, do you?" I asked.
Chad flashed a goofy smile with a little laugh. "Who keeps those things? Anal-retentives?"
"Then I'll ask you, Mr. Seabright. You strike me as a man who would keep his stub and have it laminated."
"No, I'm not."
"You're just the kind of man who would encourage his child to lie to a sheriff's detective," I said.
"Did you go with friends?" Landry asked. "Anybody who could say they saw you there?"
"No," Bruce said. "It was a father-son outing."
"Which theater?"
"The big one on State Road Seven."
"What time did the movie start?" I asked.
Seabright was on the verge of losing his temper again. "The late matinee." He glared at Landry. "Why are you standing here grilling us? If someone has taken Erin, they probably knew her from the equestrian center. Aren't there all kinds of lowlifes involved in the horse business? Shouldn't you be speaking with them?"
"Have you?" I asked. He looked at me blankly. "You set her up for that job through Trey Hughes. Have you spoken with him? Asked him if he's seen Erin, if he knows anything, if he's heard anything?"
Seabright's mouth moved, but nothing came out.
"After you saw the tape and knew Erin had been taken from the show grounds, you didn't call the one person you knew who had a connection to her?"
"I-well-Trey wouldn't know anything about it," he stammered. "Erin was just a groom."
"To Hughes. She's your stepdaughter."
Landry's cell phone rang and he excused himself from the office, leaving me and the Seabright males looking at each other. I thought they both should have been strung up by their scrotums and beaten with canes, but that isn't proper procedure even in south Florida.
"I've dealt with a lot of cold, rotten people in my time," I said to Bruce. "But you, Mr. Seabright, really must be crowned king turd on the shit pile. I'm going to step out for a moment now. I'm having anger management issues."
Landry was standing near the front door, brows drawn together as he spoke quietly into the phone. I looked upstairs and saw Molly, still sitting against the railing. She looked small and forlorn. She had to feel absolutely alone in this house. Krystal was of no help to her, and Bruce and his spawn were the enemy.
I wanted to go up the stairs and sit with her, and put my arm around her shoulders, and tell her I knew how she felt. But Landry had finished his call.
The look on his face made my stomach clutch.
"What is it?" I asked quietly, braced for the worst. And that was just what I heard.
"A girl's body has been found at the equestrian center."
21
There is nothing so humbling to a self-proclaimed cynic than to be so deeply affected by something as to be knocked breathless by it.
I literally felt the blood drain from my head when Landry told me about the body. He left me standing in the hall and went to tell Bruce Seabright.
Was it Erin? How had she died? Had she died because I'd failed her? What a selfish thought. If Erin was dead, the blame went first to the perpetrator, second to Bruce Seabright. In terms of culpability, I ranked way down the list. I thought perhaps it wasn't Erin, and in the next microsecond thought it couldn't be anyone else.
"What's happened?"
Molly suddenly appeared at my side. My tongue, which was usually quicker than my brain, was stuck in my mouth.
"Is it about Erin?" she asked, frightened. "Did somebody find her?"
"We don't know." It was the truth, but it tasted like a lie, and it must have sounded like one too. Molly took a step back from me.
"Tell me. I deserve to know. I'm not some-some stupid child everyone has to talk around and hide things from," she said angrily.
"No, you're not, Molly," I said. "But I don't want to scare you without knowing all the facts."
"You already have."
"I'm sorry." I took a breath to buy a moment so I could think through my delivery of the news. "Detective Landry just had a call from his captain. A body has been found at the equestrian center."
Her eyes went huge. "Is it Erin? Is she dead? It's because of the police. On the tape they said no police!"
"We don't know who it is, Molly," I said, taking hold of her by the shoulders. "But I can tell you, no one has killed Erin because Landry is here. The kidnappers have no way of knowing who he is or that he's from the Sheriff's Office."
"How do you know?" she demanded. "Maybe they're watching the house. Maybe the house is bugged!"
"That's not what's happened. The house is not bugged. That only happens in the movies. In real life, criminals are lazy and stupid. And whoever this dead body is, she's been dead longer than Landry has been in this house," I said. "I'm going to the show grounds now. I'll let you know as soon as I find out what's what."
"I'm coming with you," she said stubbornly.
"Absolutely not."
"But she's my sister!"
"And I'm doing my job. I can't have you there, Molly, for a whole list of reasons. And I don't want you there for a whole list of reasons."
"But I hate just sitting here," she argued. "Erin's in trouble. I want to help."
"If you want to help, keep your eyes open for any kind of a delivery. If the kidnappers send another video, we need to know about it the second it lands. That's your assignment. All right?"
I understood her frustration. She was the one person who had taken action to find Erin, and now she was being made to feel helpless.
"All right," she said on a sigh. I started to turn away. "Elena?"
"What?"
She looked up at me with wide eyes. "I'm really scared."
I touched her head as if I were giving some kind of benediction, wishing I had that kind of power, and knowing too well that I didn't. "I know. Hang in there. We're doing everything we can."
Landry came out of the office. Bruce Seabright did not emerge. I wondered if he was giving Krystal the news over the intercom.
"I'll call as soon as I know anything," I said to Molly, and went out the door, Landry right behind me.
"Do you know where barn forty is?" he asked.
"Yes. It's at the rear of the property. Follow me. I'll take you in the back way. It'll be much faster. Do you have any details?"
He shook his head. "Not that made any sense to me. The lieutenant said somebody dug her up. I don't know what that means-if it's a fresh body or a skeleton or what."
"We'll find out soon enough," I said, going around the front of my car. That sounded like a lie too. Every minute I didn't know felt like an hour. Because of Molly. I didn't want to have to tell her her sister was dead.
I took a route from Binks Forest through Aero Club-a housing development for people with their own planes-on to Palm Beach Point, to the dirt road that led to the back gate of the equestrian center. The gate where Erin Seabright had been snatched nearly a week before. Barn forty was in The Meadows, just beyond that gate.
As it was every weekend during the season, the area was bustling with riders and grooms and dogs and kids; cars and trucks and golf carts and motor bikes. The biggest crowd, however, was gathered around a rusty yellow front-end loader and a dump truck parked near one of the three-sided muck pits out in front of the tents. I could see a number of blue shirts. Security. A white and green county cruiser had parked in the mud at the edge of the road.
I pulled into a parking spot opposite the excitement, grabbed a hat out of my backseat, and got out of the car. Landry stopped in the road and opened his window. I leaned down and said, "You don't know me."