Berne had said it to further implicate Jade, but if Berne had killed the horse and Jill Morone knew and had been about to tell Jade… Motive.
Berne had seen the girl at The Players. He could have seen her leave. He could have followed her here… Opportunity.
I sank back into the chair Paris had occupied and wondered how Erin Seabright's kidnapping figured into any of this.
"This is some glamorous business you're involved with," Landry muttered as he came back. "A girl gets murdered, and all these people can think about is the inconvenience of it all."
"Take a good look at Berne," I said quietly as he stopped beside me. "If the girl's death is connected to the horse's death, he could be as much a suspect as Jade. He lost a big opportunity when the owner moved his horses to Jade's care."
"All right. You can explain that to me later. I don't even know these people ten minutes and I can believe they might be capable of anything. What about the Belgian guy?"
"Haven't seen him, but he's sure to turn up. There might be some blood in this stall," I said, tipping my head in that direction. "You'll want to give the CSU a heads-up."
He nodded. "Okay. I'm running Jade in for questioning. Weiss has Berne. The techno-geeks and my lieutenant are at the Seabrights' hooking up the phones."
"I hope to God it isn't too late."
An uneasy feeling crept down my right side, then Van Zandt came into focus in my peripheral vision. I didn't know how long he'd been standing there.
"Really, I don't know anything, Detective," I said. "I knew the girl by sight, that was all." I turned toward Van Zandt. "Z., did you see Jill last night?"
He looked like he had a sour stomach and a bad disposition. "Jill who?"
"Jill. The groom. Don's groom."
"Why would I see her?" he snapped irritably. "He should fire her. She's good for nothing."
"She's dead," Landry said.
Van Zandt looked perturbed. "Dead? How is she dead?"
"That's for the medical examiner to find out. My job is to find out why she's dead and who killed her. Did you see her last night?"
"I don't pay attention to grooms," Van Zandt said with disdain, and went into the tack room.
"Sir, I have to ask you not to touch anything," Landry said.
Van Zandt had the mini-fridge open. He closed the door and gave Landry an imperious look. "And who are you to ask anything of me?"
"Detective Landry. Sheriff's Office. Who are you?"
"Tomas Van Zandt."
"And what's your connection to Don Jade?"
"We are business associates."
"And you don't know anything about this girl Jill? Except that she was good for nothing."
"No."
The deputies came in then to secure the scene, and herded us out of the tent into the blinding sun. Landry got in his car with Jade and drove away.
"They are arresting Jade?" Van Zandt said. He looked pasty and ill in the daylight. He was wearing a blue and red ascot at the throat of his blue dress shirt. Perhaps it was cutting off the blood supply to his brain.
"No. Routine questioning," I said. "His employee was murdered. Don't you find that shocking?" I asked. "I've never known anyone who was murdered."
Van Zandt shrugged. He didn't seem disturbed in the least. "The girl was a slut, always talking about this boy and that boy, dressing like a whore. It's no surprise she would come to a bad end."
"Are you saying she was asking for it?"
"I am saying if you lie down with the dogs, sometimes they bite."
"Well, there you go. A lesson to us all."
"This fucking sun," he complained, putting on his shades, changing the subject as if a girl's violent death was of no more consequence than a bad round in the showring. Less.
"What's your story, Z.?" I asked. "You look like death, yourself. Were you out partying last night without me?"
"Bad food. I don't get a hangover," he said stubbornly. "I never become drunk."
"Is that from lack of trying or are you superior to the rest of us?"
He mustered a thin smile. "The second, Elle Stevens."
"Really? And I thought the Germans were supposed to be the master race."
"It is only Germans who think that."
"You've got it all figured out, Z. Come on," I said, taking him by the arm. "I'll buy you a Bromo-Seltzer and you can tell me all about the New World Order."
23
You saw her at The Players last night. You had an argument."
"It wasn't an argument," Jade said calmly. "She was dressed inappropriately-"
"What's it to you? Was she there with you?"
"No, but she's my employee. The way she conducts herself in public reflects on me."
"You weren't there to meet her?"
"No. She worked for me. I didn't socialize with the girl."
Landry raised his brows. "Really? That's funny, because she told me yesterday you were sleeping with her."
"What? That's a lie!"
Finally, a human reaction. Landry had begun to suspect Jade didn't have a nerve in his body. They sat on opposite sides of a table in an interview room, Jade-until that moment-perfectly composed, every hair in place, a crisp white shirt accentuating his tan, his monogram on the cuff of the sleeve.
Michael Berne was next door with Weiss. The blonde was cooling her heels in the reception area. Jill Morone was on a slab in the morgue with an assortment of contusions but no obvious fatal injuries. Landry figured strangulation or suffocation. She appeared to have been sexually assaulted.
Landry nodded as he took a bite out of his tuna salad sandwich. "She told me she was with you Thursday night when Michael Berne's horses were being turned loose."
Jade rubbed his hands over his face and muttered, "Oh, that stupid girl. She thought she was helping me."
"Helping you, as in giving you an alibi? Why would she think you needed one? She was right there when you told me you were with someone that night. Did she know otherwise?"
"Of course not. Jill didn't know anything about anything. She was a dim, pathetic girl with a vivid fantasy life."
"She had a thing for you."
He let go a long sigh. "Yes, I suppose she did. That was why she was at the club last night. She was waiting for me, apparently with ideas to seduce me."
"But you didn't want to see her."
"I asked her to leave. She was embarrassing herself."
"And you."
"Yes," Jade admitted. "My clients are wealthy, sophisticated people, Detective. They want to be represented in a certain way."
"And Jill didn't fit the bill."
"I wouldn't take Javier to The Players either, but I didn't kill him."
"He hasn't claimed you were fucking him," Landry said, reaching again for his sandwich. "That I know of."
Jade looked annoyed. "Do you need to be so crude?"
"No."
Landry sat back and chewed on his lunch, more to be irritating than out of hunger.
"So," he said, making a show of running the facts through his head as he formed a thought, "she got all dolled up and went to The Players to meet you… just on the off chance maybe you'd be interested?"
Jade made a gesture with his hand and shifted positions on his chair. He was bored.
"Come on, Don. She was around, she was hot for it, it was free. You're telling me you never took advantage?"
"That suggestion is repugnant."
"Why? You've fucked your help before."
The zinger hit its mark. Jade twitched as if at a small electrical shock. "I once had an affair with a groom. She was not Jill Morone. Nevertheless, I learned my lesson, and have made it a policy ever since, not to become involved with the help."