Tami Hoag - Dark Horse

"She did a good job, Don," Paris said, defending the missing girl. "I'd take her back in a heartbeat."

"A friend of a friend heard your girl might be looking to make a change," I said to Jade. "Now that the season has started, we can't be too fussy, right?"

"True enough. You have horses here, Elle?"

"No, though Z. here is trying to remedy that."

"V.," Van Zandt corrected me.

"I like Z. better," I said. "I'm going to call you Z."

He laughed. "Watch this one, Jade. She's a tigress!"

Jade hadn't taken his eyes off me. He looked beneath the stupid hat and past the chic outfit. He wouldn't be easily fooled. I found I didn't want to look away from him either. Magnetism hummed from within him like electricity. I thought I could feel it touching my skin. I wondered if he had control of it; could turn it on and off, up and down. Probably. Don Jade hadn't survived at his game without skill.

I wondered if I was up to matching him.

Before I had to answer that question, a more imminent danger swaggered into the picture.

"God in heaven! What kind of sadist put my class at this uncivilized hour of the day?"

Stellar's owner: Monte Hughes III, known as Trey to friends and hangers-on. Palm Beach playboy. Dissolute, debauched drunk. My first big crush when I'd been young and rebellious, and had thought dissolute, debauched, drunken playboys were romantic and exciting.

Sunglasses hid undoubtedly bloodshot eyes. The Don Johnson Miami Vice haircut was silver and wind-tossed.

"What time is it, anyway?" he asked with a lopsided grin. "What day is it?"

He was drunk or on something or both. He always had been. His blood had to have a permanent alcohol level after all the years of indulgence. Trey Hughes: the happy drunk, the life of every party.

I held myself very still as he came toward us. There was little chance he would recognize me. I'd been a young thing when last he'd seen me-twenty years before-and the term "pickled brain" didn't mean preservation of any kind. I couldn't say he'd ever really known me, though he had flirted with me on several occasions. I remembered feeling very impressed with myself at the time, ignoring the fact that Trey Hughes flirted with every pretty young thing to cross his path.

"Paris, honey, why do they do this to me?" He leaned into her and kissed her cheek.

"It's a conspiracy, Trey."

He laughed. His voice was rough and warm from too much whiskey and too many cigarettes. "Yeah, I used to think I was paranoid, then it turned out everyone really was out to get me."

He was dressed to ride in buff breeches, a shirt and tie. His coat bag was slung over his shoulder. He looked exactly the same to me as he had twenty years ago: attractive, fifty, and self-abused. Of course, he'd been thirty at the time. Too many hours in the sun had lined and bronzed his face, and he'd gone gray at an early age-a family trait. He had seemed dashing and sophisticated to me back when. Now he just seemed pathetic.

He leaned down and peered at me under the brim of my hat. "I knew there had to be a person under there. I'm Trey Hughes."

"Elle Stevens."

"Do I know you?"

"No. I don't think so."

"Thank God. I've always said I never forget a beautiful face. You had me thinking I might be getting Old Timer's."

"Trey, your brain is too drenched in alcohol for it to contract anything," Jade said dryly.

Hughes didn't so much as glance at him. "I've been telling people for years: I drink for medicinal purposes," he said. "Maybe it's finally paying off.

"Never mind me, darling," he said to me. "I never do." His brows drew together. "Are you sure…?"

"I'm a new face," I said, almost amused at my own joke. "Have you ever been to Cleveland?"

"God, no! Why would I go there?"

"I was sorry to hear about Stellar."

"Oh, yeah, well…" he rambled, making a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Shit happens. Right, Donnie?" The question had a barb to it. He still didn't look at Jade.

Jade shrugged. "Bad luck. That's the horse business."

C'est la vie. C'est la mort.

Such is life. Such is death.

His grief was underwhelming.

"God bless General Fidelity," Hughes said, raising an imaginary glass. "Provided they cough up."

Again, there was a bite to his words, but Jade seemed unaffected.

"Buy the Belgian horse," Van Zandt said. "You'll then say: Stellar who?"

Hughes laughed. "It's not enough I've given you my Mercedes. Now you're spending my money before it even gets into my pocket, V.?"

"That seems wisest, knowing you, my friend."

"All my dough's going into the new barn," Hughes said. "Casa de Money Pit."

"What good is a fancy stable with no horses to put in it?" Van Zandt asked.

"Let someone like Mr. Jade here come in with a truckload of clients to pay the mortgage and buy me a new speedboat," Hughes answered. "Like half of Wellington."

True enough. A great many Wellingtonians paid a year's mortgage with the exorbitant rents they charged for the three or four months the winter people were in town.

"Trey, get on your horse," Jade ordered. "I want you sober enough to complete the course."

"Hell, D.J., booze is the only thing that gets me around. I couldn't do it sober." He looked around, searching. "Erin, my peach," he called. "Be a doll and bring my noble steed along."

"Erin doesn't work here anymore, Trey. Remember?" Paris said, taking his coat bag and handing him his hard hat.

"Oh, right. You got rid of her."

"She left."

"Huh." He looked off into the middle distance, smiling to himself. "Seems like I just saw her." He glanced around to see that the coast was clear and said to Paris in a stage whisper: "Honey, why couldn't you lose the little heifer instead?"

Paris rolled her eyes. "Get on your horse, Trey."

She called to the Guatemalan man in Spanish to bring the gray horse, and the entourage began to move out of the aisle. I turned to follow. Jade was still standing there, still watching me.

"It was nice meeting you, Elle. I hope we see you around-whether V. sells you a horse or not."

"I'm sure you will. I'm intrigued now."

"Like a moth to a flame?" he said.

"Something like that."

He shook my hand, and I felt that current pass through me again.

I watched the pack of them make their way toward the schooling ring. Van Zandt walked alongside the gray, bending Hughes' ear about the jumper in Belgium. Hughes listed to one side on the horse's back. Paris glanced backward, looking for Jade to catch up.

I started the hike back to my car, wishing I had time to go home and take a shower, to wash off the taint. There was a slick oiliness to Jade's crowd that should have had a smell to it, the same way I've always believed snakes should have a smell to them. I didn't want to have anything to do with them, but the wheels were turning now. The old familiar buzz of anxious excitement in my head. Familiar, not altogether welcome.

I'd been on the sidelines a long time. I lived one day to the next, never knowing whether I would decide I'd lived one day too many. I didn't know if I had my head together enough to do this. And if I didn't, Erin Seabright's life could hang in the balance.

If Erin Seabright still had a life.

You got rid of her, Trey Hughes had said. An innocent enough statement on the face of it. A figure of speech. And from a man who didn't even know what day it was. Still, it struck a nerve.

I didn't know if I should trust my instincts, they'd been so long out of use. And look what happened the last time I trusted them, I thought. My instincts, my choice, and the consequences. All bad.

But it wouldn't be my action that did the damage this time. It would be inaction. The inaction of Erin Seabright's mother, of the Sheriff's Office.