"Has she ever been involved with drugs?"
She snapped a look at me. "Is that what this is about? Is she mixed up with drug people? God. That's all I need."
"I'm concerned about where she's gone," I said. "Erin's disappearance happened to coincide with the death of a very expensive horse."
"You think she killed a horse?"
I thought my head might split in two. Krystal's concern seemed to be about everyone except her daughter. "I just want to ask her some questions about her boss. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"
She stepped outside, tapped her ash into a plant pot, and hopped back into the house. "Responsibility isn't Erin's thing. She thinks being an adult means doing whatever you damn well please. She's probably run off to South Beach with some boy."
"Does she have a boyfriend?"
She scowled and looked down at the tiled floor. Down and to the right: a lie. "How would I know? She doesn't check in with me."
"Molly said she hasn't been able to reach Erin on her cell phone."
"Molly." She puffed on the cigarette and tried to wave the smoke out toward the street. "Molly is twelve. Molly thinks Erin is cool. Molly reads too many mystery novels and watches too much A amp;E. What kind of child watches A amp;E? Law and Order, Investigative Reports. When I was twelve I was watching Brady Bunch reruns."
"I think Molly has reason to be concerned, Mrs. Seabright. I think you might want to speak with the Sheriff's Office about filing a missing person's report."
Krystal Seabright looked horrified. Not at the prospect that her daughter might have been the victim of foul play, but at the idea of someone from Binks Forest having to file a police report. What would the neighbors say? They might put two and two together and figure out her last house was a double-wide.
"Erin is not missing," she insisted. "She's just… gone somewhere, that's all."
A teenage boy emerged through a door into the upstairs hall and came thudding down the stairs. He looked maybe seventeen or eighteen and hungover. Gray-faced and glum, with platinum-tipped dark hair that stood up in dirty tufts. His T-shirt looked slept in and worse. He didn't resemble Krystal or her daughters. I made the assumption he belonged to Bruce Seabright, and wondered why Molly had made no mention of him to me.
Krystal swore under her breath and surreptitiously tossed her cigarette out the door. The boy's eyes followed it, then went back to her. Busted.
"Chad? What are you doing home?" she asked. A whole new tone of voice. Nervous. Obsequious. "Aren't you feeling well, honey? I thought you'd gone to school."
"I'm sick," he said.
"Oh. Oh. Uh… Would you like me to make you some toast?" she asked brightly. "I have to get to the office, but I could make you some toast."
"No, thank you."
"You were out awfully late last night," Krystal said sweetly. "You probably just need your sleep."
"Probably." Chad glanced at me, and slouched away.
Krystal scowled at me and spoke in a low voice. "Look: we don't need you. Just go away. Erin will turn up when Erin needs something."
"What about Erin?" Chad asked. He had come back into the hall, a two-liter bottle of Coke in one hand. Breakfast of champions.
Krystal Seabright closed her eyes and huffed. "Nothing. Just- Nothing. Go back to bed, honey."
"I need to ask her some questions about the guy she works for," I said to the boy. "Do you happen to know where I can find her?"
He shrugged and scratched his chest. "Sorry, I haven't seen her."
As he said it, the black Jag rolled back into the driveway. Krystal looked stricken. Chad disappeared down a hall. The man I assumed to be Bruce Seabright got out of the car and strode toward the open front door, a man on a mission. He was stocky with thinning hair slicked straight back and a humorless expression.
"Honey, did you forget something?" Krystal asked in the same tone she'd used with Chad. The overeager servant.
"The Fairfields file. I've got a major deal going down on a piece of that property this morning and I don't have the file. I know I set it on the dining room table. You must have moved it."
"No, I don't think so. I-"
"How many times do I have to tell you, Krystal? Do not touch my business files." There was a condescension in his tone that couldn't have been categorized as abusive, but was, in a subtle, insidious way.
"I'm-I'm sorry, honey," she stammered. "Let me go find it for you."
Bruce Seabright looked at me with a hint of wariness, like he suspected I might have a permit to solicit charitable donations. "I'm sorry if I interrupted," he said politely. "I have a very important meeting to get to."
"I gathered. Elena Estes," I said, holding my hand out.
"Elena is considering a condo in Sag Harbor," Krystal hurried to say. There was a hint of desperation in her eyes when she looked at me in search of a coconspirator.
"Why would you show her something there, darling?" he asked. "Property values in that neighborhood will only decline. You should show her something at Palm Groves. Send her to the office. Have Kathy show her a model."
"Yes, of course," Krystal murmured, swallowing down the criticism and the slight, allowing him to take away her sale. "I'll go find that file for you."
"I'll do it, honey. I don't want anything dropping out of it."
Something on the stoop caught Seabright's eye. He bent down and picked up the cigarette butt Krystal had thrown out. He held it pinched between his thumb and forefinger and looked at me.
"I'm sorry, but smoking is not allowed on my property."
"Sorry," I said, taking the thing away from him. "It's a filthy habit."
"Yes, it is."
He went into the house to find his errant file. Krystal rubbed at her forehead and stared down at her slightly too flashy sandals, blinking like she might have been fighting tears.
"Just go, please," she whispered.
I stuck the butt in the plant pot and went. What else could I say to a woman who was so under the thumb of her domineering husband, she would sooner abandon her own child than displease him?
Over and over in my life I've found that people are amazing, and seldom in a good way.
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.